I arrived in Nairobi for the Kenya leg of my trip … the longest coffee trip I have taken actually, at 20 days. It’s nice to have a travel day, some hotel time here in Nairobi, and a chance to reflect on Ethiopia. Having gone to both the West (Dire Dawa, Harar) and the South (Sidama, Yirga Cheffe) was interesting. They are so different! One thing is clear, that the crop is small in all areas, and that the new Coffee Exchange that replaces the Auctions, called the ECX, has everyone confused. (http://www.ecx.com.et/) I am not even going to try to explain it here, but the consequence is that the entire coffee supply chain is constipated. Nothing is moving; cooperatives and private mills aren’t delivering coffee, the Addis Ababa dry mills are not running, and nothing is shipping. That’s not good for the coffee either, to sit in parchment when it ready for hulling, sorting, and export. So we’ll see how it plays out in the next couple weeks, which are critical. I was able to do a fair amount of cupping of new crop lots, alongside some of my compadres, and am happy with the quality of both the wet-process and dry-process coffees. Koratie is cupping really well, and the raised-bed Harar project lots were ranging from really good to fantastic! While I have been to Ethiopia several times, it was my first real trip to the south and that leg was so rewarding. I have uploaded a few preliminary pictures to flickr (see the sidebar to the left) and am still sorting through a bazillion more.
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
the title? well, i am just humoring myself. I have one clean t-shirt left and it’s black. the fact is, i arrived in addis ababa on the unlikely on-time ethiopia airlines flight from dire dawa completely covered in fine dirt from the soils of east harar. we headed out at 5:30 am, before sunrise, to see the “raised bed project” we have been supporters of in a place called choma, way off the main road in the prime east hararghe growing region. it was one of those days in “coffee travel” that seemed perfect from beginning to end. how many coffee buyers go to choma? zero. were we the first there. definitely, aside from our partner in harar coffee, rashid ogsaddey. how many cars come down this road? about 1 every 2 months, and that is the local government official. in fact the road was completely constructed with hand tools by locals - no engineering, no machines, and it sure felt like it too. we arrived to see how the raised bed program was implemented, if the dry-processed harar coffees would benefit from this method, and if the farmers liked it. the answer to all was a resounding yes! they want more raised beds, they feel the coffee dries faster, better, and in fact i have never smelled whole dry cherry pods and sensed sweet floral (rose-like) notes. with traditional harar dp coffees, laid out on mats on the ground to dry, it took 3 days longer … which means that much more time from musty, earthy flavors to infiltrate the coffee. it was an amazing day, with all of choma decending on us, so excited someone cared so much about their coffee to come from america to visit! i admit to some egotism here - i felt like a bit of a celebrity. but, through translation into the local oromo language, i think i conveyed the real appreaction we have for harar longberry coffee, for the local culture and local cultivars, and for their willingness to embrace the raised bed drying idea. it’s a small crop this year, and that will be hard on the farmers, but they are still willing to try something new. and in the normal crop cycle of these heirloom, ancient ethiopian cultivars, next year promises to be a bountiful coffee season, and the raised bed program will be in full effect, yielding better drying in a shorter time, and ultimately better coffee in the cup! i am off to yirga cheffe tomorrow, hoping the next place i stay can wash a few shirts for me … we’ll see. -tom
It’s way, way to early to be awake, but it’s way too hard to sleep. The problem with traveling to Africa or Indonesia is you are totally flipped, time-zone wise. Nothing seems right, and I am not especially good with time zone changes. I brought this second hand book with me, The Devil’s Cup, a coffee travelogue with lots of neat information (not all of it accurate - is Harar where Robusta “evolved” into Arabica coffee? I don’t think so). Along with mistakes, there’s the general swashbuckling traveler narritive; dusty roads, broken-down trains, sweaty street-side cafes, bitter coffee. Ironically, I have been to most of the places this guy has, but I didn’t arrive on an Eritrean smuggler’s boat, or hitchhiking in the back of a cargo truck. I flew, and quite nicely. It’s not like Addis, or Harar, or Dire Dawa, or Sana’a are that difficult to reach; in fact on Emirates airline I had a massaging seat and more movies than my cable at home! It’s just that it takes time that many people don’t have. But that doesn’t make for a great “coffee adventure story”. I guess you have to read the book to know what I am talking about, but I have a very different impulse when it comes to a great trip like this. I think it is good enough as it is, no need to dress it up. The facts are plenty interesting, not enough to sell books, but certainly to those already interested in coffee. That’s my 5 am thought; I will cup here in Addis again today, checking out new lots as they start to come in to the warehouses from the micro-regions. And if today is like the first day’s cupping, things should be great this season!
If a “blog” is supposed to reflect real everyday life, then between every post about coffee there would have to be a post about washing dishes. A good part of cupping is washing dishes. I spend a LOT of time washing dishes, and spittoons, and dumping the grind thing over the spittoon, which gets really gross. Since I think, next the average coffee roaster shop, we cup a lot, we generate a lot of dishes, a lot of spent grounds, a lot of full spittoons. Gross, yes, but that’s the way it goes. I think we might be on par with some green brokers/importers on daily cupping chores, and they usually have someone tasked with cleanup. I pity that person. On the plus side, I am headed to Ethiopia on Saturday, to Dire Dawa and Harar region first, then to Yirgacheffe and Sidamo. After that I will be in Kenya. More on that later… for now, it’s just cupping and spittoons around here.
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Bruno and Chiago came by, two real Minieros …ie coffee guys from smack dab in the center of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Bruno runs Beccor in Portland and we get some coffees from him, including the really nice Carmo de Minas lots from Sertao; my favorite of last year, the La Esperanca, and the Fazendo do Serrado we just added to the list. The odd thing is to cup Indonesia coffees with coffee people from … well, anywhere but Indonesia. It completely baffles them. They think we’re insane. How can we accept Sumatra wet-hulled coffees with fruity notes, earthy flavors, a rustic finish, then turn around and reject a Brazil lot with those same tastes? How can a Central America coffee with no acidity be sold at commercial prices, yet a Sumatra with no acidity attains healthy specialty prices? These Indonesians are defect coffees right? Yes and no. As consumers we have decided we don’t want one flavor standard for all coffees. It’s a specialty trade, right, and like a specialty store we want 15 types of mustard and 20 olive oils and just as many balsamic vinegars. Some of those push the envelope on “good taste” as well, in order to discover a wider range of flavors, some produced on the tree, some influenced heavily by the processing methods after the coffee is picked. Purists may cringe, but I think it’s important to represent a wide range of coffee “characters” with the exception of those which are downright revolting or, quite possibly unsafe (moldy and musty coffees are indeed unsafe!) We look to each origin to perfect their own techniques, to “do what they do best” with their coffee. We don’t want a Sumatra coffee from Panama, and we know for sure we cannot get the classic Panama cup profile from a Sumatra. What this says about our Gesha lots, our Nicaragua Java, our dry-process Centrals from Guatemala and Mexico … I will leave that for further discussion. -Tom
We added a new RSS feed to notify about new coffees. The link is feed://www.sweetmarias.com/rss/rss.php and it’s easy to add to any browser (ie Firefox) or other device. Here’s the new lots:
Costa Rica Violeta -Don Teófilo Estate
A clean, bright coffee with honey toast aromatics, bright lemon tea liveliness, hints of raspberry and strawberry, nutty roast tones, medium body, crisp aftertaste.
El Salvador Los Luchadores Pacamara
Tropical fruit aromas, lychee and passionfruit, with chocolate bittersweetness, baked peaches, mango, papaya, and anise seed.
Kenya AA Auction Lot - Ndaroini
A balanced Kenya with restrained acidity, grape, berry aroma and flavor with winey hints in the finish, syrupy sweetness, creamy body.
Brazil Carmo de Minas - Fazenda do Serrado
Lighter roasts have nut, caramel and orange rind hints with creamy body. FC+ roasts have chocolate, caramel, dense mouthfeel, minerals in the long finish. Great as SO espresso!
In case you had not noticed, we are able to offer the very popular blends Liquid Amber and Moka Kadir again, since their ingredient coffees are back in stock. While we are really enthused about the new “Espresso Workshop” limited edition coffees, it’s nice to have our Standards. But when we can’t find the correct ingredient coffees for the Standards, we chose not to offer them. In this case, there was a gap in time where a really good Yemeni coffee for Moka Kadir was not available, and that is a key component. With the Liquid Amber, the trouble was with the quality of India Monsooned lots, and with a perfect Robusta component. Both of those lots, while available from any number of coffee brokers any time of the year, are very difficult to find at high quality levels. We have a new Rwanda Robusta, the first time we have ever had one, and it does the trick perfectly for the blend! We’ll be offering it as a selection on our list soon as well, so folks can experiment with it in their own blends. -Tom
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