Daniel's World of Coffee

Road Coffee, Part 2: Video Edition

Yesterday I had some thoughts on having coffee on the road. This morning, here's a little snippet of my philosophy in action.

Aylwyn and I were heading out for our fourth straight day of meeting with committee members from coffee cooperatives in Harar, Ethiopia. I like to flatter myself that it's important work. But after a while, the goof factor takes over. So here's a little unedited glimpse into what I actually worry about when I make trips like this.

Notice the cool little blue-and-white three-wheel Bajaj taxis on the road. Also, incidentally, I mentioned before on this blog that my friend got sick. After watching this video a couple times, I realized that it was that very afternoon that Aylwyn went down for the count (not to arise again for at least four days). I'm thinking it was that egg "sandwich," because I never had a bite and I was fine.

I'll try to resume with some actually useful posts for y'all later in the day.

Road Coffee

I travel a lot, and one of my constant concerns is where I can get a good cup of coffee on the road. You would think, considering what I do for a living, that I would be constantly surrounded by great coffee. But it's a perpetual surprise to find myself in situations where it's either bad coffee or no coffee at all.

I think we've all been there when stuck at an airport or, heaven forbid, on the airplane.

But even when fully on the ground, you often find yourself in situations where it's difficult to find good coffee. One of the dirty secrets of people who travel in the coffee industry is that coffee in coffee producing countries is not good. To begin with, all the good stuff gets exported. Local coffee is generally floor-sweepings and rejects. Even in places where there is a strong local coffee culture (and therefore some of the good stuff stays in the local market), like in Ethiopia, there's still no guarantee you'll get a decent cup. It's just like in the USA — there's good and there's bad and you can't always control what you get.

When I travel I always take a small french press, like the kind seen here (I use the fiberglass "unbreakable" one for obvious reasons). It's small, it's elegant, and it's functional.

Also interesting are these travel presses. But I prefer to drink out of a real cup like a civilized person, and anywhere you go in the world, there's always a cup, yes? The travel presses would be good for driving, I suppose, or maybe camping (but really... is it that hard to bring a tin cup?)

If it's a short trip, I will pre-grind some fresh roasted coffee and store it in a ziplock bag. If it's a longer trip, I will take some ground coffee to get me through the first few days, and some whole bean coffee for later. If you look hard enough, you can always find a way to get your coffee ground. If I'm working a coffee job, I impose upon the people I am working with. If not, I hang out at the local café and make a friend on the staff.

If you bring fresh coffee and a way to prepare it, the only consistent problem you will have will be getting water that is hot enough. I learn how to say "really, really hot water" in the local language (in Amharic: "bet'am bet'am mook ooha"), but it still usually takes a while for a hotel staff to get it right. People often think you want water that has been boiled (at some time in the past, for health reasons), rather than water that is literally boiling hot. At the cozy little hotel I have stayed at many times in San Salvador, they know me as "hot water man." What a pleasure it was to have the woman who does the cooking there bring me super hot water as soon as I sat down at the breakfast table last time.

Uusally I do my best to blend in when I travel. But of course making your own coffee at the table is strange, whether you are in Addis Ababa or Alabama. It tends to make one stick out a little.

But there are certain things in life that must not be sacrificed.

Women Sorting Coffee, Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia

Although most of my visits to coops in Sidama, Yirgacheffe, and Harar involved a lot of indoor meetings, explaining our quality improvement and marketing project to the committee members, there were some amazing moments like this one. This is the Bele Kara cooperative in the Wenago district of the Yirgacheffe region.

I actually shot a much longer video of these women singing, but I've edited it down here for size. Part way through you can see the men in the upper areas of the facility, carrying coffee and helping with the washing of the coffee. The women do most of the work of sorting and turning the coffee in the sun. At the end of the video you can see what a beautiful setting this is.

Since a couple people have asked me, yes, I get permission from people before taking pictures and videos. These people understood I was not a tourist, and that this video would ultimately go toward the promotion of their coffee in the United States. (I will be editing together a video of this trip to show when I host cuppings around the US featuring this coffee in 2010.)

Have a great weekend, and enjoy your coffee.

Language and the Brain

On the first day of one of my cupping classes in Harar, I asked the group what they thought was the #1 word Americans use when describing the flavor they desire in Harar coffees. Three people called out, "Blueberry!"

"How many of you have ever tasted a blueberry?" I asked.

Out of sixteen people present, only one hand up, from an exporter who used to live in the United States. So we tasted some blueberries. Later, a few people told me that was the most important moment of the whole class for them.

Whether we have a sense experience of something often determines if we have a word for it. But the opposite is true. Whether we have a word for something often determines if we are even capable of discerning it.

Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names-not English's light blue and dark blue, for instance, but Russian's goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that's a trivial finding, showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English speakers when the colors had distinct names, suggesting that having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.

That's from an article in Newsweek, What's in a Word?

Food for thought for anyone attempting to describe the flavor of a coffee.

Coffee of the Week: Salty Coffee

The last week I was in Ethiopia I spent a few days visiting the mills of farmer cooperatives in Sidama and Yirgacheffe.

Most of my time was taken up with lengthy meetings with the cooprative committee members and union representatives, explaining to them our program, asking their blessing and participation, and listening to their comments and questions. But we also found time to visit the milling stations of these co-ops, where coffee cherries are brought to be pulped, washed and dried.

I probably visited about 10 such mills in four days. One of the most memorable stops was at the Wottolna Butulma cooperative mill in Aleta Wondo. When we arrived at the mill, the workers were taking their mid-morning break. Coffee is prepared for the workers in the traditional style. A woman (always a woman) roasts the coffee over coals, then the coffee is ground using a mortar and pestle, and boiled in a traditional urn. When it's ready, the woman pours it out into small cups which are passed around to all the workers.

I had heard before of the salted coffee sometimes drunk in Ethiopia, but I in all my travels here, I had never tasted it. When we sat down to join the workers for their coffee break, I was warned that it would be salty. In fact, I was offered a cup without salt, sensitive as they were to my faranji tastes.

To which I said, "Hell no! I want the salty stuff."

Well, it was SALTY. The cup is like an espresso cup, and they put a whole teaspoon of salt in there. It was actually kinda good, though it made me very thirsty. My Ethiopian agriculturalist friend later told me he was impressed with the quality of the coffee they had served. All I could think was, "How on earth could you evaluate the coffee? All I could taste was the salt."

But that's the nature of trying new things. Other people are more accustomed to certain things, and they can "taste past" something that stops me dead. It's like when I have to teach people to really taste and evaluate espresso for the first time.

Anyway, it was a memorable morning, and like I said, the coffee was actually pretty tasty. So I'm making it my Coffee of the Week.

I'm Serious: Your Coffee is Undrinkable.

You may have seen the first one of these, but have you seen them all?

Folger's Misogynistic Megamix! - watch more funny videos

"Funny or Die" called these misogynistic, but that seems like nervous pomo hand-wringing on their part.

Personally, I think they're awesome.

Smell and Memory

Here's an interesting article on the topic of how the brain processes scent. I sometimes touch on this topic in my classes. It can be frustrating to coffee people when they recognize a smell but can't put a name to it. I always remind people: it's not your fault! It is difficult. Keep trying!

Why is smell so sentimental? One possibility, which is supported by this recent experiment, is that the olfactory cortex has a direct neural link to the hippocampus. In contrast, all of our other senses (sight, touch and hearing) are first processed somewhere else - they go to the thalamus - and only then make their way to our memory center. This helps explain why we're so dependent on metaphors to describe taste and smell. We always describe foods by comparing them to something else, which we've tasted before. ("These madeleines taste just like my grandmother's madeleines!" Or: "These madeleines taste like the inside of a lemon poppy seed cake!") In contrast, we have a rich language of adjectives to describe what we see and hear, which allows us to define the sensory stimulus in lucid detail. As a result, we don't have to lean so heavily on simile and comparison.

Smelling, tasting, and using words to describe the two all at the same time is like trying to play basketball, soccer, and a video game all at the same time. The key to getting "good at smelling" is to practice again and again. And when you try something new and unusual, try to make a distinct memory of the experience (including non-smell things like the people you are with, the sounds and sights, etc).

Coffee of the Week: An "Interesting" Journey Edition

[Ed. note: This is a post that I wrote over a week ago and tried to post to the blog from Ethiopia. But my connection was so lousy that it got lost in the ether. I think it's a good story though, and ends with a nice coffee, so I'm re-posting it. This is the Coffee of the Week entry for two weeks ago.]

Well Saturday I slept in late and had coffee in bed. I had a shower, a shave with a fresh razor and hot water, and a haircut from a genteel barber with salt-and-pepper hair. I got some fresh band-aids on my annoying minor cuts. I got my shirts all ironed, and I got all my various electronic devices recharged. I had a coke and a sandwich and fries poolside, and another cup of coffee and a Cuban cigar sitting on the balcony and reading The Charterhouse of Parma. I had a right American whiskey (not the counterfeit gasoline stuff that's everywhere in this country) at the hotel bar with some fellow faranji coffee people, and talked to some interesting expatriot Brits. I felt right civilized.

Three days ago, however, I was a bit deeper in the muck. Our trip around Hararge province got bogged down the last two days. Constant rough offroad driving had cost our two vehicles four tires in three days. Then my traveling companion fell ill. It's ironic that it was him and not me... he grew up in this country and I did not. I should be the one with the senstitive foreign stomach. But I think for that reason, I take extra precautions with what I eat and drink; it usually saves me (but, ugh, not always).

Anyway, with my buddy bedridden and miserable, living off of bottled water, rehydration salts and glucose solution, I was left to maunder about in the town of Asebe Tefari for two days. "Asebe Tefari," I'm told means "The Dream of Tefari" or "The Place Tefari Thought About." The Tefari in question here is the famous king Ras Tefari (later the emperor Haile Selassie), from whom the religion Rastafarianism derives its name. Incidentally, the relationship between Jamaicans and Ethiopians is fascinating. To Rastas this is the holy land, the birthplace of God's incarnation. But the Ethiopians themselves seem only vaguely aware of — and often just amused by — the Jamaicans obsessed with their country.

Asebe Tefari is a fine place, but it's not the kind of place you want to get stranded in. Communication is spotty, foreigners stand out like sore thumbs, and there's not much more to eat but goat meat. When my companion decided he was ready to move on to the city of Nazret (Nazereth) and their quality hospital, I was eager.

We drove the few hundred kilometers west to Nazret on a wobbly wheel that barely got us there. In fact, the tire went flat and we were riding on the rim just as we pulled into town. Either really great timing or really horrible timing, depending on your philosophical point of view. I got the spare on the truck with the help of some local kids, then got my friend to the hospital. I spent a few hours around Nazret drinking Coca-Colas and meeting friends. It's much cooler and greener than Asebe Tefari, and seemed cleaner. The "gomista" (tire-fixer) showed me that our tire was completely shot, the threads were splayed and coming undone. So we rotated the spare onto the back (front-wheel drive SUV) and put the "good" tires up front. My friend emerged from the hospital with a prescription and looking a little better and more hopeful.

From there it was just two hours back to Addis Ababa, through the central mountains and then the rather dismal exurban industrial center of Debre Zeit with its black smoke and hundreds of diesel trucks; and finally the chaotic traffic of Addis Ababa itself.

Well, all's well that ends well. My friend is well on his way to total recovery. The car is safely returned to its owners, and I'm here in Addis Ababa in a comfortable room with clean shaves and whiskey and computers and what-not. In fact, I even had a time to have Coffee of the Week.

Yes, on Friday afternoon I visited my friend Rachel Peterson and Daniel Mulu where they were teaching a Q-Grader course for CQI, with Manuel Diaz. (Daniel is an old friend from here in Ethiopia, and Rachel is of the Hacienda la Esmeralda Petersons of Panama — longtime readers will recall I did a cupping event with here famous geisha coffee in New York City a couple years back.) While some students were taking their exams, the staff kindly made me a cup of coffee...

It came in the little demitasse cups that are de rigeur here, and it had a very strange and different taste, and the aroma of gingerbread. Everyone looked at me strangely and asked me what I thought, concealing smiles. I told them in all honesty that I thought it tasted fantastic, but it had a strange taste I couldn't identify.

Turns out they had made the coffee with rue, which is a common practice here. Just a little bit of the stem of the rue plant, broken open to release the flavor, then soaked in the already-brewed coffee for a short while as it cools. A subtle flavor, and very unique. It's like the intersection of ginger, lemongrass, and tea rose, with a slight sweetness to it. In Ethiopia it is called tena adam.

You already know that I normally avoid doctoring my coffee. I take it with two ingredients: water and coffee. But there was something very nice about this little cup of rue-coffee. It was like the capper to a hell of a week, and felt like a well-earned cup of something exotic, sweet, and relaxing.

Rue-infused coffee, safely consumed in the confines of civilization: my Coffee of the Week.

Pictures from Sidamo

Some of the people in Sidama and Yirgacheffe, where perhaps the most famous coffee on earth is born.

I am in transit back to the USA for the next 36 hours or so. I'll be back with regular posts on Monday, including some more thoughts and observations from the last four weeks in Ethiopia.

Coffee Circa 1957, Part 4

Last batch of images from "Coffee: The Story of Good Neighbor Product."

Some kids activity pages, with interesting design and words. Click images to enlarge.

And the final farewell page...