Coffee news and miscellany

One of the best things to happen at the the Specialty Coffee Association of America expo in Atlanta this year was meeting coffee people I had only corresponded with up to that time. Surely one of the highlights was getting to meet and talk to Steve Leighton of Has Bean Coffee in the U.K. I’ve been a secret fan of Steve’s for a long time. In addition to sourcing great coffees, he has excellent descriptions on his web site, travels frequently to origin and blogs about his experiences and other coffee news, and through his strong online presence really conveys his passion for coffee. Every roaster should aspire to communicate to consumers about coffee the way Steve does.

One of Steve’s gigs is In My Mug, a weekly video in which he describes a particular coffee he offers. Somewhere along the line people started sending him mugs to use in the videos. When I got home from Atlanta the first thing I did was send Steve a mug. Since Coffee & Conservation doesn’t have a mug, I sent him the simple but stylish Rouge River Bird Observatory mug from my real job.

This week Steve used the mug to review his Guatemala San Rafael Pacun, a 2008 Cup of Excellence winner. I should say that the second thing I did, once I packed the mug and sent it overseas, was place an order from Steve. Shipping is a bit pricey from the U.K. to the U.S., but I got my coffee just five days after ordering/roasting. Although I didn’t order the Guatemala, the coffees I got were excellent — especially the Bolivia Machacamarca, which Irish barista champion Colin Harmon served us in a cappuccino while he was practicing for the WBC finals.

Thanks, Steve, for the C&C shout out, and for your fantastic coffee!

In a previous post I mentioned that I had kept track of all the coffee I had in 2008. That post emphasized the low price ($2.70 a day) of drinking only really good, sustainable, specialty coffee.

Here, I’d like to make some brief comments on a few of the coffees themselves.

As I noted, my 2008 list included 63 different coffees, nearly all single origin  coffees, from 22 countries. Most were Latin American, with El Salvador leading the pack; Kenya topped the choices from the rest of the world. I drank coffee from 23 roasters, turning most often to Counter Culture and Terroir Coffee Company.

My three favorite coffees were:

• Mamuto, Terroir Coffee Company, Kenya. Coffee Review gave this coffee an amazing 97 points, deservedly so.
• Finca Kilimanjaro, PT’s Coffee Company (I mentioned roaster and coffee here). A Kenyan bean grown in El Salvador, literally the best of both worlds.
• Finca Nueva Armenia, Counter Culture, Guatemala. From a Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified farm, it has to be the current best certified sustainable coffee in the world (my review here).

One disappointing coffee stood out: Trader Joe’s Cafe Feminino Peru. I’ve tried these beans from this source before, as they are widely available; my brief review from Grounds for Change was very positive. The Trader Joe’s version, which was supposed to be a medium roast, was very dark and oily, more like a French roast. That shouldn’t be a problem — I liked the Grounds for Change in a dark roast. Yet I found the Trader Joe’s was awful: thin, harsh, and sooty. Trader Joe’s doesn’t use roast dates, and the (lack of) bloom indicated this batch was not particularly fresh. I will be devoting a post to Trader Joe’s coffee in the future.

A few of you may be wondering why, if I drink so many different coffees, so few are reviewed here on Coffee & Conservation (eleven reviews were published in 2008). There are several reasons. First, although I’ll occasionally give just my own opinion on a coffee, fair reviews involve a bunch of people tasting each coffee, often more than once. Sometimes, it’s just hard to corral a panel. Second, as I pointed out in the introduction to how we do reviews, most coffee ratings are lumped in the middle of the 1 to 5 motmot range. The value in the reviews is the background information provided about the origin/region, farm, growing methods, and roaster. This research is time-consuming. Sometimes, I don’t come up with enough solid information to make a good review.

In 2009, reviews will focus on sustainability stars and outstanding coffees, as well as more reviews of the coffee of popular retailers, such as I’ve done with Panera, Einstein Bros, or Tim Hortons.  Starbucks and Caribou will also get more attention since they are how many people are introduced to “specialty” coffee. In many ways, these are more difficult to write…the more corporate the company, the less they divulge about their sources.

As always, if you have any suggestions or things you’d like to see, please drop me a line (contact info here).

Coffee bag photo by Biskuit.

At the beginning of 2008, I started keeping track of all the coffee I purchased. Since I drink (and share) a lot of coffee — all specialty coffee and some quite expensive — I was curious how many kinds I went through in a year and what I spent.

After a year of enjoying a wide variety of beans, my final tally really surprised me — especially how little it cost to truly enjoy this great beverage.

The cost of all the coffee I drank in 2008, including shipping charges and the retail price of some coffee that I was given free, was $987.03. Not a small piece of change, but it works out to a piddling $2.70 a day. Every day, that’s a full pot for my husband and I. Two or three times a week I make a French press in the afternoon. Once a month or more, I share coffee at work with a group to do coffee reviews (or just hang out). I give away a half-dozen bags or so in a year. A lot of indulgence for less than $3 a day!

How much indulgence? My list consisted of 63 different coffees — only two were blends, the rest were single origin coffees. I had around a dozen selections more than once. Some I just liked so much I bought them again. Sometimes I tried the same coffee by two different roasters, or the same coffee but different crops. The coffees came from 22 countries and from 23 roasters.

Unfortunately, I kept track by order and not by bag, so I can’t tell you what the cheapest and most expensive coffees were. Most were 12-oz. bags, and I don’t think I paid less than $8 for a bag. I paid over $20 fairly often, with the most expensive about $35. Because I didn’t keep track of each bag, I am also unable to calculate a price per cup using the nifty tool that I provided here earlier this year. I’ve already set up the 2009 spreadsheet to include these variable so I can provide more detail next year.

I think this is insanely cheap for what can be one of life’s most satisfying daily luxuries. If you drink less coffee than we do, have a good roaster nearby and can avoid shipping costs, or splurge less often on really expensive beans, you’ll spend much less. If you still think it’s too expensive to drink only decent, sustainably-grown coffee, then you are probably only drinking it for the kick. Try NoDoz, and you won’t be destroying the environment and impoverishing farmers for your caffeine fix.

Half cup photo by MissBeckles.

My husband and I attended the Coffee Conference at Miami University in Oxford, OH. I’ve now been to meetings that covered coffee from every angle: ecological (ornithological conferences), trade (SCAA annual meeting) and now the academic and scholarly. This event had a wide range of speakers on a variety of topics. The audience was also varied. As far as I could tell, there were perhaps 75 registered participants, including small roasters, academics from many disciplines (history, economics, literature), and representatives from producing countries and NGOs. Many Miami U. students also attended.

I will be following up with a more detailed post on what for me was the most interesting message I came away with: the fairly uniform negative attitudes toward certification agencies, ranging from distrust to disgust. Right now, I’ll just try to burnish my own legitimacy by doing some name dropping and showing you photos of famous coffee people.

Geoff Watts, left, of Intelligentsia gave a talk about Direct Trade relationships. In his discussion, Geoff noted that environmental sustainability has to be part of what is fostered and encouraged in direct relationships with farmers. He said that although a farm might be producing great coffee, if the land isn’t taken care of then it cannot continue to produce the same quality coffee over the years. Ecological integrity is part of the equation.

Geoff also offered a lot of the kind of insightful commentary on other talks, especially regarding Fair Trade, that only someone who has been intimately involved with producers can provide.

Ken Davids gave a great talk on interpreting the iconography and images of coffee through time. He grouped them by theme, such as the 1950s “Good Cuppa Joe” — coffee as every man’s luxury — or the “Safari in a Cup” adventure at exotic origins symbolism of the early specialty coffee movement. If  Ken hadn’t noted that his early background was as a novelist and college writing teacher, I would have guessed it by his presentation. It was creative, clever, and reminded me of the kind of deep interpretation of literature that I recall from my undergrad days. Very enjoyable — and I can’t imagine seeing a talk like this at any other kind of coffee conference.

At dinner, George Howell (center in front of laptop) showed off his new Extract MoJo software to Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia, David Waldman of Rojo’s Roastery in New Jersey, and yours truly.  Just listening to coffee guys talk about coffee was quite a learning experience. I was glad that I could keep up with a lot of it, and that I was able to make some contributions from a consumer and ecological viewpoint.

George and I, in fact, had several great talks about some of the pros, cons, and the future of various certifications, and he was very gracious about answering my questions. He gave a really lively presentation on the many points from crop to cup where quality can fall off. I was once again amazed that we ever end up with a decent cup of coffee, much less brilliantly delicious cups. And also again, I am sure that if more people know the many steps involved in bringing this crop to market, and the intense labor that goes into it, that they’d be willing to pay a lot more for it. As they should.

I asked Hacienda La Esmeralda’s Price Peterson some coffee-growing advice. I brought home some beans from Panama last winter, and have five little plants growing right now. A couple of them are looking a little anemic. Price was a bit stumped and was not sure exactly what to recommend. The guy can grow some of the most lauded and expensive coffee in the world, but didn’t know what to tell me about some mundane Caturra growing under lights at 193 meters in Michigan.

It was a really great conference, and all the other participants I talked to agreed. The small size allowed for a lot of interaction and discussion. Its interdisciplinary nature, and the varied backgrounds of participants made for a wide range of opinions as well more balance. There is a plan for a book derived from the proceedings which I look forward to. Kudos to the organizers, especially Robert Thurston. I’ll be incorporating more information from the conference into future posts, especially regarding the backlash against certifications.

I have a lot to report on sustainability and certification issues from the SCAA conference, but it will be doled out over the coming weeks. Here, I thought I’d like to give some quick impressions of some of the most notable things we encountered.

Best origin booth: Guatemala. Many origins had booths, most with green or brewed coffee samples and lots of literature. The biggest, most colorful, and most informative was, hands down, Guatemala’s. The display really focused on the fact that nearly all of their coffee is shade grown, and preserves biodiversity and birds. This information is duplicated in a terrific book available at the display called The Green Book. Here are a couple of the display panels.

Best tag line: “Don’t take coffee from strangers” — Crop to Cup. That sums up a piece of advice every consumer should take to heart. Crop to Cup Coffee Company is a small coffee roaster with really direct relationships with farmers; on their web site you get very thorough information.

Coolest people I finally got to meet: Peter Giuliano and Kim Elena Bullock from Counter Culture Coffee. I’ve had so many good conversations and learned so much from the folks at CCC, it was a great pleasure to finally meet Peter and Kim in person.

Best coffee I tried: Mystery Coffee #103 from the Roaster’s Guild Coffee of the Year competition. Yesterday alone, I tried at least 20 coffees. And I don’t mean tasting and spitting out, I mean drinking. I can’t say I really recommend this strategy (I ended up both overtired and jittery), but it was interesting! The coffee I liked the best, as far as one I would like to drink daily, was #103 at the coffee of the year competition. Conference attendees got to sample and vote on the top ten finalists.

With all this coffee, perhaps this category deserves a couple of subcategories.