As we continue to add exciting new coffees to our offering list, we believe it is equally important to bolster the digital resources we have supporting the countries we source on the ground in. We recently added origin pages for Bolivia, India, and Flores to our site.
In sensory analysis, common physiological and psychological sensory errors should be accounted for when designing cupping protocols. Welcome to a new blog series by Ian Fretheim, Director of Sensory Analysis, diving into how we control for these common sensory errors.
A brand new coffee education platform offering classes developed for both students and trainers.
This past week our Director of Sensory Analysis, Ian Fretheim, joined Zachary Cartwright as a guest on his podcast “Water in Food.” The two dove into a discussion on the role water plays in specialty green coffee, exploring findings from our sensory team’s long-term study on water activity (Aw), talking about sensory science as it relates to coffee, and getting excited about the future of cupping with our new Coffee Rose.
One area that has been rightly ripping, in particular relative to historical norms, has been the introduction, interest in, and acceptance of new coffee varieties. When Castillo was introduced many people wanted to turn their noses up at it. In our lab, we were more accepting, as the results on the cupping table were impossible to deny. We regularly found it to perform well against Caturra, Typica, and the many other varieties that we blinded it against. When it won the Cup of Excellence, people were somehow shocked, going so far as to disbelieve the results.
And then, seemingly overnight, Castillos were broadly accepted. What happened?
Watch our latest video – a profile of Tega & Tula in Kaffa, Ethiopia.
Meet Ashok Patre, a third-generation producer revolutionizing coffee production and processing in the Karnataka State. Watch our interview with him, and learn more about his farm, Ratnagiri Estates.
And we are off to Athens! Join us at Booth 2-R38 for a weekend full of coffees, cuppings, challenges, and parties. See our full schedule here, and follow us at @cafeimportseurope for more details! See you soon!
As a nimble and independently owned importer, we recognize that a roaster’s selections can only be made in advance with real-time information. Our green buying team is passionate about working actively with producers at origin throughout the year and sharing their knowledge and experiences with roasters like you.
Interest in innovative post-harvest processing styles is building across the coffee supply chain. Producers and consumers are seeing benefits like unique flavor profiles that add value to coffee, help producers, processors, mills, farms, and coffees stand out from the crowd, and help diversify offerings.
Finca Juan Martin and Manos Juntas are two different projects, both striving to make coffee production more profitable for producers and consistently delicious for consumers, all under the Banexport umbrella. Banexport is our longstanding partner and friend, sourcing and exporting many of our Cauca, Huila, and Nariño offerings. Their commitment to quality, sustainability, and economic equality for producers is exemplified in their projects, particularly Finca Juan Martin and Manos Juntas.
When coffee is processed, the layers of skin, fruit, and parchment are broken down and removed, leaving behind the seeds we roast and brew. Those discarded layers once provided life and protection to the seeds, but don’t have to all go to waste. The skin of the coffee cherry can be dried and sold as a singular product called Cascara.
We couldn’t be more excited to announce the addition of two new faces to Cafe Imports, representing our Education team.
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.
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 a new year, a new crop, and a whole new selection of opportunities to shrink the distance between your roaster’s hopper and coffee’s source. We at Cafe Imports would like nothing more than to have you join us on our travels into the field (literally) as we seek, study, cup, and source the world’s finest specialty coffees. Throughout the year, we gladly invite our roaster partners along on visits to the producers, mills, and exporters with whom we work year in and year out, to develop personal connections and long-standing relationships, and, of course, to bring home the most delicious coffees we can find.
We are excited to introduce a new section to our webpage: “Purchase Planning.” This section can be accessed at cafeimports.com/purchase-planning, or under the “Purchasing Info” menu bar option on our homepage. While there is no real formula for how one company or another should approach purchasing coffee, we hope our Purchase Planning page will be a useful resource for roasters, not only to learn what tools and buying assistance Café Imports provides, but also which of those tools will best serve your company’s needs.
