COOPAC coop is located in the western Rwandan provinces of Rabavu and Rutsiro.  Rabavu lies on the shores of the great African Lake Kivu, the border between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo.  Lake Kivu has long been the center of African lore because of its unparalleled beauty and surprising volcanic nature.  Tribesmen in this region of Rwanda have long reported seeing explosions far out in the lake.  The geologic activity of this region may be one of the main factors contributing to the incredible soil used to crow coffee trees here.  COOPAC is revered for its wonderful ecological environment in the steep slopes of the volcanic mountains, and also for its abundance in healthy rain.  All of these factors come together to create the ideal coffee growing environment for COOPAC.

COOPAC Coop is Fair Trade Certified, and their membership has doubled every year over the past 10 years to over 2000 farmers in 2010.  People here are proud to be a member of COOPAC, and truly look out for one another like family.  COOPAC has invested a significant amount of money into the infrastructure for processing coffee.  They have committed to exporting only high quality fully washed coffee, and their efforts have paid off; this year COOPAC took home the top price in the 2010 Rwandan Cup of Excellence.  Jason was in Rwanda for the event, and said it was an incredible time.  

We are so proud to have worked with COOPAC over the past several years.  Right now we have some very nice Fair Trade COOPAC Coffee (ID P2310).  We also bought several other lots, including really nice Peaberries that will be on our offering sheets soon, while Jason was on the ground this year and are very excited for them. We are working with COOPAC as we speak to further develop a microlot program. We want to continue to work with COOPAC not only for their amazing coffee, but because this organization is doing amazing things for the quality of life of the people of Rwanda and raising the bar on coffee quality industry wide.

Keep an eye out for new COOPAC Coffees!

This weekend Noah and Jamin took off to Skamania Washington for the 2010 Roasters Guild Retreat. We really enjoyed visiting some of our friends and their shops in Portland before the event and checking out the city Minneapolis ousted at the #1 bike friendly city in the US. I could go off on a tangent about this, but honestly, Portland shut down a main road in the city and made it a bike lane permanently, so I highly doubt any city can top that, including my beloved Minneapolis.

The retreat itself was an amazing experience. The backdrop of the Skamania Lodge looks like it was just cut out of a postcard. As Jamin so eloquently put it, "Oh this is what Pandora is like". What a great spot in the Colombia River Gorge.

The variety of classes and workshops at the retreat were extremely insightful. We were able to brush up on Q skills, Roasting, Grinding, and other coffee related topics. I personally found the breakout session round table discussion extremely eye opening. We were broken down into tables and asked to challenge a number of topics like the future of Fair Trade, the supply of specialty coffee, and how relationship coffee can survive plus $2.00 prices to name a few. There were other greenies like us, roasters, shop owners, and others that made up an extremely wide cross section of our industry. I loved hearing perspectives from everyone.

The other really fun challenge was being broken up into 12 teams of 8 and asked to roast and blend an award winning mix of Guatemalan Coffee graciously donated by ANACAFE. Our team made a blend of creamy Coban (25%), intense Acatenango (50%), and sweet San Marcos (25%). We were pretty proud of our blend, but came up just short of the glory. We got 2nd place. Next year we are going to take it all.

What a great weekend and great experience.

We cannot wait for next year! For more information on future Roasters Guild events, visit www.roastersguild.org.

Cafe Imports is Proud to Announce that 2010 Has Been By-Far the Biggest Year Ever for Microlots!

What is a microlot?  We define a microlot as a specific harvest of coffee, usually 10-75 bags that contains exceptionally cared for beans with an elevated level of traceability back to the farm where it came from.  We believe that microlots are some of the world'd best coffee because of the care and attention given to them.  

This year we have brought in nearly 5x as many Microlot containers than last year.  At the end of the year, we anticipate having successfully imported over 25 containers of microlots. 

What is a container you ask?  Well, our lingo, what we call a "container" or a "box" is a ship loaded freight container that holds around 270 bags of coffee.   If we estimate that each bag is about 150 pounds, then each container would hold about 40,000 pounds of coffee.  Wowza!  How many pounds in 25 containers? 

1,000,000 pounds of microlot coffee! 

We are very proud of this year's achievement in helping create a market for well grown, beautifully processed, and delicately handled, small lots of the world's best coffee beans.  And thank you guys for buying these beans and continuing to raise the bar in the industry.  

So what is on hand now?  

Right now we have:

Brazilian Microlots

Costa Rican Microlots

El Salvadorian Microlots

Guatemalan Microlots

Kenyan Microlots

Nicaraguan Microlots

What is coming yet this year??

Colombian Microlots are on their way!

Sulawesi Microlots are soon to ship!

Feel free to ask your sales rep all about current or upcoming microlots, or email sales@cafeimports.com

Ethiopia 2010

Ethiopian govt was approaching a problem with illegal activity amongst exporters. 50k tons of coffee which was supposed to be exported was either blended with lower grade coffees and sold into the local market at better prices or substituted with lower grade coffee and exported. Profits on selling into the local market were above 30% at times. Additionally the act of buying from your own company when they are not legally separate was everywhere. It was something which was technically not supposed to happen but the transactions were being allowed. Prices for direct coffees were very high. The govt was revising its auction system and the CLU (coffee liquoring unit) to address transparency to producers and improve the integrity of the quality grading at CLU.

The great bulk of coffees out of Ethiopia were simplified but also homogenized by this process. When the Prime Minister heard of the illegal local selling of export grade coffee he arrested and shut down many exporters.

The result is that unless you are a union or cooperative or association of growers with a license to sell to foreign buyers or a large farm with the resources to sell via the second window, you cannot export your coffee as a specific brand or specific to a location beyond the ones the ECX has. The coffee is delivered to an ECX warehouse and catalogued and then auctioned as one of many regional types on the ECX. It is still illegal for an exporter to buy their coffee if they are also involved in milling.

The DST is the Direct Specialty Trade capability of the ECX. It is an auction system developed to allow buyers to cup the coffees they want to bid on and to buy directly from a producer who will then elect a Service Provider (formerly known as exporter) to export the coffee. The auction was a success for the project in terms of the prices received but the great majority of coffees did not move.

Many Coffees were submitted and paid just above the going rates from the Unions. The opportunity to have growers organize into groups and be able to assign a good miller to represent their coffees is still in progress. Very few have been successful.

I visited Idido and Beloya with Johannes from Bagersh. It should be a 6 hour drive to yirga but it ended up much longer. Obstacles are many.

The road is basically swarming with dogs, goats, people horse and mule drawn carts. And vehicles of every imaginable type. There is a built in survival mechanism in almost every animal that lives near this road. This Hyena likely was bolting across the road at night. They are not well liked by the locals as evident by the stones and fruit that the kids pelted its corpse with.

Johannes is the manager of Idido and Beloya. The stations (both washed and natural special prep) are managed by a manager also. Currently the stations are idle and the amount of top natural coffee coming out is nil. Small bits have made it to the auction and also to a couple of US buyers. Some of this special natural was auctioned off by Bagersh and raised $2.95/lb FOB Djibouti. This coffee was intense but potentially edgy with a lot of edgy fruit. Some buyers apparently liked it very much. Ultimately I think this was a fair price for this coffee.

The Idido mill is located Southeast of the town of Yirgacheffe. The coffee comes from 1850-1980 masl (meters above sea level). Half of the mill is devoted to sun dried coffee (all of which is ripe and carefully selected) which can produce a total of 4-5 containers/year. Currently the mill is only producing washed coffee as the ECX has made this the only option. Specific coffees are still unattainable via the ECX unless it is from a producer group that has elected to organize and gain access to the export market via the second window. If Idido were to produce top natural coffee it would be homogenized into a yirgacheffe natural and blended. The specific origin of the coffee would be erased.

The near side of this picture is where the drying beds would go for the washed coffee. One crosses a small bridge over a stream to get to the area for the drying beds for the natural coffee. This is one of the great coffees of Ethiopia and the pinnacle of cherry red production. Abdullah Bagersh is really the pioneer of this coffee and his techniques in dry milling are secret and increase the capability of removing the quakers from this coffee.

The coffee at left is just regular sun-dried coffee. It is better than much of the sun-dried coffee in Ethiopia but still a grade below what we would need. The coffee is dried in the cherry to appr 12% moisture and then it is milled to remove the hull. This milling process results in a very mixed quality of coffee which needs to be separated by gravity tables, catadors (vertical air sorters) and by hand in the dry mill.

The dehuller operates with a stone or a metal rotary press against a pressure plate which can be adjusted. All of these processes can be adjusted to allow some sorting along the way. What comes out of this particular de-huller is likely a traditional grade 4 Natural Yirga which needs to be further sorted for export.

As with most processes in Ethiopia the coffee is moved by hand. Labor is available and the processing of coffee is a major supplement to the income of farmers in any given area. Women will sort coffee on the drying tables and men will do the moving of coffee in the mills as it is processed.

We had a bit of coffee in the coffee hut at the mill. Buna Arbol is the first boiling of the coffee. Buna Baraka is the second. This is a tradition in Ethiopia. The local consumption is high and it is competition for the coffee that we buy as the local price is competitive with export levels.

We hope is that the grouping of producers who make great coffee and enabling them to lease milling capabilities will allow them to sell their coffee direct. We are a bit dubious as to the potential of organizing these groups for 2010 harvest.

3 options exist for buying coffee in Ethiopia.

Unions such as Oromia, Sidama, Yirgacheffe (recently FT re-certified) or private estates with grower groups surrounding them such as Mordecofe which can access the second window.

ECX coffees which are regional in designation, but not geographically specific.

These coffees have lower value as a result of their lack of specificity so we have to be careful where we buy.

Or

DST coffees from the auction which are specific small lots from producers. These seem to be mostly coffees from Coops at this point and this was not the opening up of direct trade with producer groups we hoped for. It did create the framework for this process but we will have to wait and see how it progresses for the 2010 harvest beginning this autumn.

The Next DST Auction is on April 29, 2010 and samples should be available around the time of this writing.

I apologize in advance if this is a bit longwinded, but the view out of the window was totally amazing.

A full moon out of the plane window over  the late afternoon sky above Sudan.  A Mars like scenery below with the dust up at forty thousand feet that you can taste in the cabin.  Touching down in Khartoum on route to Ethiopia.

As the sun sets, the blue sky merges with the dust and a purple-brown replaces it.  A raspberry hue bands across the horizon beneath the moon.  Now below on the deep desert floor, waves of red sands break around black volcanic rock with the moon radiating a full moon glow.

All this color and transformation occurs quickly but smoothly, and it’s now dark outside, besides the stars in the sky.

As always, I’m excited about the trip in front of me and about seeing my travel buddies again.  This time, I was off to Harrar, the old walled city, to see Harrar coffee as it has been grown for hundreds of years.

The first thing that I note, as we drive into the highlands of Harrar, is that this does not look like any other place that I’ve seen where coffee is grown.  It’s dry, almost arid.  It looks like a place where coffee should not be found, yet it is here, and has been here for almost ever.

Donkeys are still the mode of transport most used to bring coffee down from these hills. The many Akrabis (collectors) bring coffee from the farmers to their small stations to ship via truck to the suppliers with their hulling machines.  The camels for the most part have been replaced here by trucks, but the little else has changed.

The trees are old, some of them, very old, up to two hundred years old, and the methods of farming are passive at best.  No fertilizer or pruning here.  “Garden coffee” was a term used often, and that seems to mean that the coffee grows, and you pick the cherries when (hopefully) perfectly ripe.

Why is Harar coffee an unwashed coffee?  Well, there’s really not a lot of water.  This is old school coffee.  It grows naturally here, it’s picked, it’s laid to dry, and it’s hulled and roasted. 

In Ethiopia, the varietals seem to be endless.  There are estimates for over four thousands varietals that exist that seem to be spontaneous mutations of typical.  In most Yergacheffee’s (don’t tell me this is misspelled, I saw the same poster in Ethiopia have two different spellings for Yirgachefe) if you look at the green, you’ll see small little “bourbon-esque” beans, along with long canoe looking beans.  One of the things that I noticed in Harrar was a difference between East and West Harrar coffee.

The Eastern Harrar was lighter yellow in color.  This is the home of the famed Golden beans, coffee this is pure soft yellow.  The bean size was larger too.  The Western Harrar coffee was more longberry, and overall the coffee looked rougher than the Eastern.  Not rougher in preparation, but just less moist and round, and like it had had a tougher time.  Cup wise, I’ve noticed smoother mocha profiles and less earth in Eastern Harrar coffees, but have not cupped exclusively enough to confirm this.  The woodier cedar cup seems to be Western Harrar phenomena.

I’ll blog a bit more later this month about the trip, but wanted to toss in a few photos here from our visit to the city of Harrar.  The Hyenas are a bit funky up close.  They are not small dogs, but large animals with supposedly one of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom.

The house here is Arthur Rimbaud’s, the famed French Poet, who moved to Harrar in the late 1800’s, ran guns, met Haile Selassie's father, and apparently, in the spirit of troubled French intellectuals, ran amuck, and died quite early at 37 years of age.

Lastly, here are a few pictures of the city.  The rest of the pictures will be online later this week. 

This trip was assembled with a number of buyers of Cenfrocafe coffee and we wanted to focus on the producers, quality controllers and association from whom we buy the coffee. (This is my first Blog ever!!!) We were introduced to this association a number of years ago by Cafe Verde and have been impressed by their professionalism and capabilities in producing great coffees. They have individual day lot cupping at their lab backed up by Cafe Verde which means that the lots are built properly and achieve quality objectives. We gathered in Lima on Monday and had a calibration and educational cupping @ Cafe Verde which is a cafe and cupping facility in Mira Flores. It is just up the road from the beach and it was awesome to have great coffee just next to the hotel in their cafe. KC O'Keefe is the founder and owner of Cafe Verde and has been living in Peru on and off for the better part of his adult life. He is shown here with Luis who is the lead cupper in the Cafe Verde Lab.

It is a long road to Jaen in Northern Peru. We flew to Chiclayo from Lima and from Chiclayo on the coast it is a 4.5 hour drive on a nicely paved road. We were excited by the new toyotas and the apparently professional drivers. The trip at night might be bearable but our driver decided that he was going to be the first to Jaen no matter how many times we stopped to vomit. We arrived in Jaen on Monday night and slammed into our pillows in the brand new Luna Del Valle. Jaen is a fascinating little town with lots of Che Guevara and Tiger (Shining Path) mud flaps. The 3 wheeled taxis have motorcycle front ends. We ended up using these for rides around town in the evening. Jaen is a bustling little town even though it was established in the 1970s.

Our first stop in the field was an association in San Ignacio called Nueva Generacion in San Ignacio.

The managers of the associations that were part of this area were present at the initial meeting before a farm visit. We visited the farm of Maximilliano who was one of the more energetic and enthusiastic farmers in the area.

He explained his pruning techniques and replacement of aging trees. This was a relatively new production area having been planted in 1994. His farm was 3 hectares with production of 40qq/hectare. (400 lbs) He harvests about 15 times/year and employs 20 employees seasonally to harvest and prune as they harvest. His farm is around 1650 meters and is a great example of how to grow coffee in this region. One important advantage of these growers is drying. They use Solar Driers and are very good at getting the coffee to 12% in parchment before delivering to the Cenfro Receiving station (More later on this)

These driers can take a little long to dry coffee if it is rainy and the growers are looking at options to make mechanical drying available in micro drying mills around the growing regions. We had lunch and a meeting with the association heads and enjoyed some of the local CUY (roasted guinea pig). At the end of the meal they brought out coffee for us which was delicious and much needed. This coffee was roasted at Cenfrocafe where they sell roasted coffee around the country. The farmers in this area are leading the way in pricing in the country and have contributed to Cenfrocafe delivering the highest ave prices to any group of farmers in Peru. The farmers who have their coffee find it into the best categories get paid extra for their efforts. Our next stop was a farm owned by a woman in the Flor y Fauna Association. Her name was Jenara Campos Garcia.

She is looking to start using the Guano de Isla (sea bird Guano) fertilizer on her farm to improve tree health and production. The trees have a better chance of resisting Ojo de Pollo (Chicken Eye fungus) if they are healthy.

On our second full day we stayed in Jaen & visited the Cenfrocafe Coffee Bar.

We will be keeping you posted on these coffees as we cup pre-ships and as they arrive later this autumn.