Highlighting Carlos Guerra: Legendary Coffee Exchange Participant
Enjoy our interview with Roaster and Honduras Barista Champion Carlos Guerra, who won an Ikawa Pro 50 through the Legendary Coffee Exchange at the 2023 SCA Expo.
The Legendary Coffee Exchange
Since 2021, we’ve been hosting the Legendary Coffee Exchange, a community-driven coffee swap with the goal of drawing human connections across the industry. Facilitated by Cafe Imports, roasters worldwide contribute a bag of their coffee in exchange for another roaster’s offering. Everyone will taste their new coffee and then contact its roaster to share their thoughts and feedback, but more importantly, meet another passionate coffee professional. What’s more legendary than exchanging coffees and making new friends?
This year’s Legendary Coffee Exchange occurred at the 2023 SCA Expo in Portland, Oregon. 88 roasters came by the booth to drop off their coffee and pick up a new one, and all the participants were entered into a drawing for an Ikawa Pro50 Sample Roaster (a special thank you to Ikawa for partnering on this year’s exchange)!
On Sunday, the last day of the Expo, we drew the winner’s name – Karla Calidonio of IHCAFE in Honduras. We set out across the show floor to give her the news. After finding her, she told us she gave her spot to a roaster in Honduras, Carlos Guerra. She insisted that he receive the roaster, so we gave him a call to share the news.
Carlos Guerra: Coffee Roaster and Barista Champ
Carlos wasn’t at the Expo when we called him, and he sounded wonderfully surprised to be winning an Ikawa Pro50. Once he got to the Expo floor, we all got to know each other, took photos together, and packed his new Ikawa into a travel case bound for Honduras. At that time, Carlos didn’t have a sample roaster. We were touched that someone could win the Pro50 and immediately put it to good use at their home roastery.
A few weeks ago, we caught up with Carlos for a wonderful conversation. We wanted to learn more about him, and find out how the Ikawa was treating him. He’s been in coffee his entire life working with his parents on their coffee farm. Over time, the family opened a cafe in Copan Ruinas where they began roasting and serving their coffee, among other locally-produced goods. He is an exemplary ambassador of the coffee industry in Honduras, and it was a pleasure to learn more about him, his career, and his coffee.
One of the greatest aspects of specialty coffee is the shared passion that connects individuals across the globe. We’ve always been honored to continue hosting the Legendary Coffee Exchange after hearing stories of new friendships that have formed. The LCE provides an opportunity to try something new and support one another. Openness to one another inspires us, grounds us, and reminds us of what drew us into this industry.
If you participated in this year’s Legendary Coffee Exchange, don’t forget to connect with your swap! We know they’d love to hear from you. Thank you again to Ikawa for partnering. Thank you to Carlos for being so gracious with his time and story. And thanks to you for watching! Keep being legendary.
Earlier Posts
¡Felicidades a Los Naranjos! New Competition Coffees
There must be something in the air in and around the town of San Agustín in Colombia’s Huila department, because this microregion and the coffee producers in it have put out consistently some of the best lots we’ve tasted from the country, year after year. This season, to honor the hard work of the 52 members of La Asociación de Los Naranjos, we held a micro-competition to highlight their quality and commitment.
Knowledge Talks featuring Ever Meister
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.
The Decaf Dreams Are Made Of
When specialty-coffee professionals say, “You gotta try this decaf,” you know you should either worry about them (“Decaf?? Are you…feeling ok?”) or maybe—just maybe—you should listen and give it a try. Well, we’ve been saying you gotta try our E.A. decafs for a while now, and you don’t need to worry about us at all: They really are that good. Like, 86 or 87 points good. Like sweet and tart fruit, lemon, apple, berry, and caramel flavors good. Well, we’ve got big news for decaf lovers and we don’t want you to sleep on it: While we’ve previously focused on Colombian coffees for this decaf process, we’re thrilled to now offer E.A. decafs from other regions as well!
Contest-Winning Coffees from Inzá, Cauca
We taste a lot of coffee every year, and we probably taste the most from Colombia in particular, so when something stops us in our tracks from that growing country we know there’s more to the story. That’s how we came to love coffees from Inzá, a valley town in the department of Cauca, practically pressed up against the Huila border.
CriaCarmo Program Supports At-Risk and Underprivileged Youth in Carmo de Minas, Brazil
In an effort to provide social and educational opportunities for the young family members of many of the coffee growers, pickers, and mill employees in the Carmo de Minas region, CarmoCoffees established a program called CriaCarmo, which offers a range of enrichment activities to at-risk and underprivileged youth in Carmo de Minas.
Carmo Best Cup 2018
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.
Harvest Report: Costa Rica 2019
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.
Our 2018 Progress Report
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.
Water Activity in Specialty Green Coffee: A Long Term Observational Study by Ian Fretheim
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.
The Cafe Imports Specialty-Coffee Harvest Chart, first edition
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.
Harvest Report: Colombia 2019
When it comes to highlights and harvest reports, Colombia has a very square advantage: The size, terroir, and geographical location of this coffee-producing force make sure that there is always news coming from some corner of the country, and its multiple harvest and shipping seasons make it a constant source of interest for us as well as for our customers.
The Cafe Imports Coffee Family Tree, fourth edition
There are hundreds of varieties with individual proper names planted all over the world, and many of them grow differently, look different, and certainly taste different from each other—but when you dig below the soil and research each plant’s roots, you’ll often find yourself tangled in a network of related, crossed, back-crossed, and derivative genetic lines that, well, often lead back to one or two or three main branches.