Brazil has long been the backbone of flagship blends and espresso programs, but with the U.S. now imposing a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods, we explore some alternatives that could help fill its place.
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.
It turns out there has been one good thing that’s happened so far in 2020: Weather so perfect for the most recent harvest in Brazil that we can’t wait to tell you all about the coffee’s we’ll begin receiving shortly.
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.
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.
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.
A few times every year we pile into a chiva with 20 or 30 of our roaster friends from around the world, drive into the heart of a coffee-growing community, cup for days and days, and discover some of the most exquisite microlot coffees in the world by ranking the top 30 out of hundreds of submitted samples. Then we all wake up on the last day of a long week and top the whole thing off with a wild and wooly live auction, surrounded by dozens of coffee growers and their families in a sea of auction paddles, music, food, tears, and camaraderie…
Have you ever shown up for a birthday party a week late (or a week early)? Of course it’s a little embarrassing at first, but it can also be an opportunity to, you know, just have an extra party, right? Some of the origins we work in are a little bit like that party bonus, except it’s not that they arrive at the wrong time—they just party on a slightly different schedule.
Saying “everyone’s a winner” might be a cliché in most instances, but when it comes to the fantastic but not auction-winning coffees we discover at Best Cup events, the saying is actually true—especially for our customers.
The Earth made another trip around the sun, and we at Cafe Imports made another trip around the world—visiting partners, sourcing lots, making introductions, managing logistics, and rounding out another year of bringing you the finest specialty coffees. As we get ready to stow our passports for a little holiday break, and before we jet off into the next adventure, we’d like to take a moment to wrap up our year at origin as well as offer a glimpse of what’s to come.
When it comes to geeking out over coffee stuff, there’s the totally cool (drone videos over coffee farms), really cool (processing experiments at micromills), and very nerdy but still pretty cool (heat transfer comparisons between a Loring and a Probat).
Every once in a while, though, we find ourselves completely geeked out over something that’s decidedly not cool—or at least not particularly sexy.
You know… like, bags.
