Month: April 2007 Page 1 of 2

Coffee review: Coffee Labs Doghouse Blend

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On April 27, 2007

In Blends/Multiple, Coffee reviews, Latin America

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #22.

Coffee Labs Roasters Doghouse Blend, Peru and El Salvador.

Coffee Labs Roasters is a cafe/roaster located in Tarrytown, NY (northwest of White Plains). Owners Mike Love and  Alicia Kelligrew are devoted to sustainable coffee. Dogs, too — they are welcome in the cafe, featured in their logo and name, and honored in their Doghouse Blend, which we review here.

This coffee is certified by both Rainforest Alliance and Smithsonian (SMBC Bird Friendly), and is certified organic and Fair Trade.

Coffee Labs sources Peruvian coffees from La Florida, which comes from the Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera La Florida, a co-op of over 1000 members in the central Chanchamayo Valley, Junin department. Peru is the second largest producer of organic coffee (after Mexico). While much of Mexico’s organic coffee is grown in rustic shade or traditional polyculture, Peru grows a lot of its organic coffee in commercial polyculture or shade monoculture (definitions here), a less-desirable situation for biodiversity.  Therefore, knowing that La Florida is certified by Smithsonian as Bird-Friendly is reassuring, as their environmental standards are the strictest in the certifying business (see more info after the jump). Also, Peru produces a lot of inexpensive, mediocre organics often used in blends, but Chanchamayos are often considered the best in the country.

The El Salvador portion is from “Santa Rita,” in Sonsonate department of western El Salvador. I believe this is a farm or group of farms, certified by Rainforest Alliance, in the big Las Lajas cooperative.  You can read a lot more about El Salvador coffees in a previous post outlining coffee growing in the country and its importance to birds.

This is a “black and tan” blend — French roasted Peru, medium-dark with oil; and light roasted El Salvador, tan and dry. This was the correct choice for this blend — a dark roast would have overwhelmed the El Salvador’s more delicate flavor. It was a really pleasant cup — even brewed in our neglected office pot through a paper filter (what we consider to be the most punishing circumstances for a coffee being reviewed). We would describe it as subtle rather than complex, but the careful roast of each variety and the just-so proportions of each seems to have harmoniously balanced the flavors; each brought what it should to the cup. Several people independently noted that the flavor stayed consistently stable as it cooled, and even tasted decent cold. It didn’t acquire any funky flavors the way some dark roasts do when they cool.  The Doghouse Blend ended up with 3 motmots.

Coffee Labs does not have online ordering yet, but you can order the Doghouse Blend by email (coffeelabsroasters@mac.com) or phone (914-332-1479) for $12.50/lb. They have quite a variety of organic, Fair Trade, and SMBC Bird-Friendly coffees. Coffee is shipped within 48 hours of roasting.  It’s also available at several Whole Foods Markets near their Tarrytown location, with plans to distribute to the entire Northeast region in the future.

A little further information on Peru:

It’s important to be careful when purchasing Peruvian coffee. Here is an excellent example. At one time there was great bird diversity of rustic shade coffee in Villa Rica, central Peru (in Pasco department, north of Junin), and a Smithsonian survey in 1998 found Cerulean Warblers on these farms. A survey for Cerulean Warblers in these same farms in 2006 found none. Survey leader Gunnar Engblom noted,

“We hardly found any such habitat [rustic shade]. Most that was there 6-8 years ago has been replaced with fast growing Inga and Albizia as shade trees species that carry no epiphytes and less leaf cover. [There is a] strong indication that the coffee boom of shade-grown coffee does not promote the more bird friendly ”song bird coffee” plantations (rustic), but rather promotes more monocultures with Inga and Albizia. It seems that both yield and quality is higher in such conditions and that the market (ultimately the consumers) does not know how to separate between terms such as organic, song bird coffee, shade-grown coffee, etc. We interviewed people at the farms and it is clear that many of those area considered rustic has converted to being mono-cultures today. Maybe this is also the case with other areas north of Villa Rica.”

You can read his full report (PDF) here.

The Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification requires a minimum shade cover of 40%, and the overstory should include at least ten different species of shade trees, with no more than 70% of the trees being Inga species, which means more habitat remains appropriate for birds.

Tanzanian coffee

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On April 20, 2007

In Coffee regions

It was over a year ago when I did an overview of coffee growing in Africa, and since then most of our African coffee discussions have been about Rwanda or Ethiopia. I’d like to focus on Tanzania, as a prelude to an upcoming review.

Tanzania grows both arabica (70%) and robusta. The majority of coffee is grown by small farmers, typically as one of several cash and subsistence crops; coffee is often grown under banana trees. Much of it is passive organic. The rest comes from nationalized estates that have been rehabilitated in recent years after much neglect. Coffee is a major crop in Tanzania and important to their economy.

Most arabicas are grown in the north, near the Kenyan border, on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro and nearby Mt. Meru. They may be called Kilmanjaros, Moshis, or Arushas, and tend to be brighter and a little more acid.  Coffees called Mbeyas or Pares are arabicas grown in southern Tanzania, between the rift lakes of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa, and generally have more body.

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In the early 1970s, coffee berry disease and coffee rust began to attack coffee crops in east Africa. The larger Tanzanian holders that could afford to do so used pesticides, which had little of the desired effect, but decreased biodiversity. Part of Tanzania’s is ambitious plan to improve coffee production involves replacing all their coffee trees to more disease-resistant types. This project has been going on for about ten years now, and millions of disease-resistant coffee plants have been planted. As many of these trees were very old, this was not as wasteful as it might seem, and if it helps prevent the use of pesticides, or other exploitation of the environment due to an inability for small holders to make a living growing coffee, than it is a worthwhile mission.

One more problem in the region is water. With snow caps on the mountains diminishing (global climate change is a factor), farmers are struggling with irrigation issues, especially at Kilamanjaro. Some of these issues are being addressed by various organizations. KILICAFE is the Association of Kilamanjaro Specialty Coffee Growers; they have a set of sustainable company standards which include some environmental and biodiversity standards. See their web site for photos of coffee farms in their various regions (they include farms outside the Kilamanjaro area). Because deforestation also contributes to a lack of rainfall, sustainable farming methods will — one expects — become more and more important to the Tanzanian coffee industry.

Tanzania is rich in biodiversity. Most of the familiar Serengeti National Park is in Tanzania, on the border and sharing some land with neighboring Kenya. The crescent-shaped mountain ranges extending from Meru and Kilamanjaro in the north to Mbeya in the south are known as the Eastern Arc, rich in endemic species (for example, 43 butterflies, 96 species of vertebrates, and 800 plants are found no place else on earth). Two new species of coffee have been found recently in the Eastern Arc, Coffea bridsoniae and C. kihansiensis. The Pare Mountains are part of the Eastern Arc.

Any discussion of Tanzania coffee would be incomplete without mentioning peaberries. The fruit of a coffee plant, known as a cherry, has two flat-sided coffee seeds (beans) inside. A peaberry is just a fused bean — a small, round bean with a cleft down the middle, caused by the lack of fertilization of only one of the two ovaries of the coffee flower.  Since about 5-10% of coffee cherries produce peaberries, why are so many Tanzanian coffees sold as peaberries?  Nobody is sure how this marketing niche began, but you can read an excellent essay, the Tanzanian Peaberry Mystery, at Coffee Review.

Read more about the history of the coffee industry over the last few decades at TechnoServe and an article about bird diversity in Tanzania at the African Bird Club web site.

Sign the Save Organic Coffee petition

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On April 17, 2007

In Certifications, Organic coffee

An article in Salon outlines a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture ruling which will require every farm in a cooperative to be inspected annually in order to receive organic certification. Previously, about 20% of the farms were inspected annually. The growers and management of the co-op made sure all farms, not just those being inspected, followed the rules.  Given the large number of small farmers in some co-ops and their often remote locations, this staggered inspection is the only practical way to certify these growers.

Since farms must pay inspectors, the added cost could prove to make organic certification too expensive for small farmers. Should this ruling really be enforced, it would surely drastically reduce the number of farms offering organic coffee (big plantations would be able to afford it). Stripping the added revenue brought in by organic certification would drive many small farmers out of the coffee business (the ruling covers all organic crops, by the way).  Hello land-clearing, pastures, drug crops, and other far less ecologically-friendly alternatives. For a bit more, a little backgrounder on organic coffee and why it’s important from Bloggle, and a deeper post at the Gristmill blog on how this ruling will impact farmers in the developing world. I’ve also written a series on coffee pests, pesticides, and organic certification.

This was an (apparently overzealous) administrative ruling in response to an appeal by a Mexican farmer who was denied certification. I’m not familiar with how binding these rulings are and how they are codified and enforced. But the coffee industry and consumers have started to mobilize.  And Nora Edison and Chris Neumann of Sweetwater Organic Coffee Roasters sent me a link to a petition to be sent to the USDA asking them to reconsider their policy change. They are seeking 10,000 signatures, so it can’t hurt to sign on:

Sign the “Save Organic Coffee” Petition.

Cerulean Warbler review update

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On April 15, 2007

In Coffee reviews, Latin America

Please see the update of the review of the Cerulean Warbler coffee in the original post. Rather than post a second review, I wanted to make sure anybody reading the first one with all the background information sees the updated information.

Some recommended reading

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On April 13, 2007

In Coffee-related products, Fair and Direct Trade, Organic coffee

Book: Organic Coffee: Sustainable Development by Mayan Farmers by Maria Elena Martinez-Torres. This book is based on a PhD dissertation, but has been skillfully adapted and is very readable while still preserving the excellent information including tables, charts, and references. The book explains the history of coffee farming in Chiapas, Mexico, including growing techniques and political and social considerations.  The author ties it all together with chapters on the economic and ecological benefits of organic coffee farming. A really worthwhile book that is very helpful in understanding organic coffee.

Article: Ethical Certification — Sustainability with a Rich Aroma by Ethical Corporation magazine. Contrasts, compares, and discusses three certification schemes: Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, and Utz Kapeh (which has just changed its name to Utz Certified), from a European perspective. Frames the discussion around McDonald’s decision to serve Rainforest Alliance certified coffee in all its UK stores and the controversy around that move. It branches out into the various other certification programs and their costs and requirements, and wades into organic certification and even Starbucks and the trademark issue. Wide-ranging (obviously) to the point of wandering, not too deep, but offers some interesting facts.

Research: Forest birds using Costa Rican coffee farms

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On April 10, 2007

In Birds and other biodiversity, Coffee regions, Research on coffee growing

Persistence of forest birds in the Costa Rican agricultural countryside. C. H. Sekercioglu, S. R. Loarie, F. Oviedo Brenes, P. R. Ehrlich, and G. C. Daly. 2007.  Conservation Biology 21:482-494.

This study radiotracked several species of resident forest birds in the Coto Brus province of southern Costa Rica, now "dominated by sparsely-shaded coffee farms" — recall that in my post on coffee growing in Costa Rica that most farms, including those marketed as "shade" coffee, have few shade trees of only a couple of species, and lack the structural complexity necessary for true biodiversity preservation.  Two of the three species studied, Silver-throated Tanager (Tangara icterocephala) and White-throated Thrush (Turdus assimilis) are more habitat-sensitive and utilized the coffee farms, but were highly dependent on the remaining trees, and spent more time in remnant forest. The third species, Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush (Catharus aurantiirostris), is more tolerant of deforestation, and preferred coffee farms and second-growth areas. The authors concluded that agricultural areas have high potential conservation value, which can be enhanced with even modest increases in tree cover. Imagine what true shade coffee would do!

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