If you’re wondering what the ideal conditions are for storing your green, we’ve got a long answer and a short answer for you. The short answer, according to Cafe Imports’ sensory analysis director Ian Fretheim, is, “Cool and dry. That’s really it.”
Of course, there’s never just a short answer. Read on to find out about some specific conditions and containers that might help you preserve the quality and longevity of your favorite lots.
Nothing stays the same in coffee for very long, and producers are always seeking new and improved ways to differentiate themselves, moderate their coffee’s flavor profiles, and offer exciting and interesting flavors to roasters and consumers all over the world. Sometimes a little experimentation and ingenuity can go a long way without having to re-invent the wheel, which is why we’re interested in the increasing popularity of anaerobic-environment fermentation.
Roasters who are looking for a special opportunity leading up to Berlin Coffee Festival in October, we’ve got something special for you: We’ve partnered with the Don Sabino Micromill in Carrizal de Alajuela, Costa Rica, on a project we’re calling the Berlin Batch, a limited run of special-process coffees with full traceability and price transparency, as an experiment and a collaboration to explore the real nature of relationships in the coffee supply stream. Read on to find out more.
Ecuador is not typically the first place that comes to mind for fans of specialty coffee, but it’s not because the country lacks great cups: Some of our favorite South American coffees come from the misty mountains of Pichincha in the north and the biodiverse province of Loja in the south. Ecuador’s border neighbors of Colombia and Peru tend to outshine it in terms of annual yield and recognition, but every year the country’s reputation for quality, clarity, and personality inspires more and more specialty-coffee hunters to look to the farmers here for new profiles, captivating stories, and strong potential for growth.
Specialty-coffee people around the world are motivated to make change to our corner of the industry, perhaps now more than ever: More and more we’re engaging in open conversations about the coffee price crisis, evaluating the existing coffee business models, considering our appeal to the consumer marketplace, and looking for potential positive solutions to the historically low C-market price for coffee, and low coffee prices overall.
The Oxcart Coffee – Cafe Imports Latin America office officially opened in San José, Costa Rica earlier this year, before the busiest part of the harvest season in that producing country. It was intended as a full-service export-import office where our green-coffee sourcing team in Costa Rica (green-coffee buyer Luis Arocha and green-buyer’s associate Francine Ramirez, along with Adriana Abarca in logistics and Eduardo Ramirez in sensory analysis) could receive, catalog, roast, cup offer samples, and contract and pay for coffees from the local producers with whom we’ve been working the past many years—but it very quickly became much more than that.
For the past two years, we have hosted a Resource trip to visit some of the associations who participate in our Women Coffee Producers program, a coffee-sourcing project through which we buy coffee from co-ops comprised entirely of women, or subgroups of women who are members of coed associations.
The coffees we buy from WCP participating women are given a gender-equity premium on top of their quality premium, as a way of attempting to bridge the pay and recognition gap that exists in most coffee-growing countries. Just a few weeks ago, our WCP trip went to Cauca, Colombia to visit AMACA and ASMUCAFE, and the experience was unforgettable for everyone. Click below to read a blog about the trip, featuring reflections from Cafe Imports staff as well as a few of the strong women roasters who came along.
Cafe Imports’ sensory analysis director, Ian Fretheim, is so curious about cupping that he’ll happily travel to the most remote place in the world to study it. (It helps that the world’s most remote landmass also happens to be Hawaii.) He’s had some thoughts about both Hawaiian coffee in general as well as our industry-wide cupping practices after coming back from the Kona Coffee Festival and after serving as head judge in the 2019 Hawaiian Coffee Association Cupping Competition. Climb into the mind of Ian Fretheim here.
There are lots of coffee-growing regions with potential, but when we think of untapped opportunities to invest in producers and make a real impact on quality and recovery, we can’t help but think of Mexico as a perfect example of what “potential” means from a coffee source. There are good varieties, a strong cooperative culture, and more streamlined logistics—so what has kept Mexico from truly shining as a growing region?
Single-farm traceable certified-organic coffees are hard to come by from Ethiopia, but Cafe Imports’ strong relationship with Tega & Tula Specialty Coffee Farm in Keffa, Ethiopia, is a special exception to that rule. Read more about T&T and its primary owner, Ahadu Woubshet.
Coffee people are naturally curious, and we are no different at Cafe Imports: We love learning new things about this amazing plant, seed, and beverage, and we’re passionate about sharing any information we have on our Education page and through other free, accessible resources-like the brand-new Coffee Processing video series, which debuted last week on the Cafe Imports YouTube channel!
It’s been another season to celebrate forward momentum and growth in El Salvador, senior green-coffee buyer Piero Cristiani reports after the end of the recent harvest. After several years of struggle following an outbreak of coffee-leaf rust, this small but strong producing country is boasting a bigger yield and stellar cups of Pacas and Pacamara, the latter variety “a national treasure of El Salvador,” Piero says.
In March of 2019, we held the first-ever Best Cup cupping competition and live auction event in the small but mighty coffee-growing region of Chalatenango, El Salvador. This video tells the story of the Best Cup competition and our history working in Chalate, and hopefully inspires you to reserve your seat at the next auction event.
In the mood to take a deep dive into coffee varieties? We’ve got just the thing for you: The Cafe Imports Coffee Variety Glossary and Photo Gallery.
Just last month, Cafe Imports editorial manager Ever Meister visited four cities in Australia as the featured speaker in the most recent outing of Toby’s Estate Coffee’s “Knowledge Talks” series. Rather than give a straightforward lecture, she opted to create more of a conversation with the audience about coffee traceability and marketing ethics—two of her very favorite things to talk about and puzzle through, as anyone in the Cafe Imports office will tell you. Click through to watch the full video of her presentation.
Best Cup is designed to highlight the great work and vast potential for high-end specialty coffee within a particular microregion, and Carmo de Minas is a perfect location for that kind of signal boosting: CarmoCoffees, a developer and exporter of specialty lots there, works with more than 2,000 small- and medium-size farms in Carmo de Minas and has been one of the most active supporters of farmers transitioning from a focus solely on volume to one that takes quality into account.
While Costa Rica accounts for just about 1 percent of the world’s total coffee volume, it has a huge place in our hearts (and our offerings sheet) at Cafe Imports. In this year’s harvest report, we’ll take a trip around the country’s growing regions with Oxcart Coffee: Cafe Imports Latin America, visiting some of our longest-term producer partners to find out how the 2018/19 cycle performed, and to get a sneak peek at what fantastic new-crop top lots will be arriving in our international warehouses shortly.
At the end of each year, we take a look back over how well we have lived up to our mission, stayed true to our values, and kept up focus on the guiding principles that inspire and motivate us at Cafe Imports: Quality, Service, Education, and Progress. This year’s Progress Report is condensed into a single analysis of our engagement with our communities, our educational outreach, and our efforts toward the development of ever-better coffee quality. Click to read the full report.
We know that water is wet, but that fact alone isn’t enough to capture water’s immense power. That power is evident in coffee, not simply in the cup but also in the seeds themselves: Water activity (Aw) is the relative equilibrium that exists (or doesn’t exist) between the vapor pressure inside a food or a coffee seed as compared with the surrounding humidity or environment. In perishable foods, it is a significant measure for the sake of safety and the prevention of food-borne illness, but in coffee, it’s a significant measure…why, exactly? Click to find out.
How is a roaster or green-coffee buyer supposed to know what coffees are arriving when? With the first edition of the Cafe Imports Specialty-Coffee Harvest Chart, natch.
