Isla del Encanto

Hello from Puerto Rico. This is just the way this blog goes sometimes. I go on trips for my work in the coffee industry, and while I'm gone, I have trouble posting. Sometimes there's no internet, sometimes I'm up in the mountains somewhere, sometimes I'm just having too much fun to hole up indoors and work on my computer. Then I get home from a trip, camera fat with pictures and video, and I have lots to say, and the posts come at a faster clip.

Right now I'm in Puerto Rico for a research project investigating the effect of different soil types on coffee plants and coffee flavors. Did you know that Puerto Rico has almost every type of soil in the world represented somewhere on the island? I did not know that before recently. But it does, and this project is going to take advantage of that little fact nicely.

It sounds a little funny to call Puerto Rico "undiscovered," because as far as tropical locales go, this island is as un-exotic as they come, at least for United Statesians. But as far as specialty coffee is concerned, it is indeed undiscovered; it might as well not even exist Puerto Rico has some very, very nice coffees, but you would never know that from inside the insular world of specialty coffee in North America.

Why is that? Why can you find an El Salvador coffee in every single hoity-toity super-specialty tattoo-bedecked-barista-having coffee shop in western Brooklyn, but you can't find a single Puerto Rican coffee? Is this because the coffee in El Salvador is categorically superior to that of Puerto Rico. No, it is because of a whole host of other factors, having to do with development, history, economics, and well shoot...

It's 85 degrees outside, it's Friday afternoon, the sun is starting to go down, I'm two blocks from the beach, and I'm ready for a little relaxation after a week of tramping around the research station and driving the curvy roads in the mountains. Suffice it to say, I've had an extremely interesting time, and I'll have lots more to share when I get back, on the blog, in person in Seattle, and perhaps in New York City, too, the Dear willing.

In the meantimes, enjoy your coffee, wherever you might be.

Comments

[Daniel Humphries]

Typos!

[rob berghmans]

Why you don't see so much Puerto Rican coffees in Brooklyn (for example)?
It's expensive.
There's not so much.
Most of the export, i believe, goes to Europe.

But, in Belgium the championship this year is won with a Puerto Rican coffee!

[Chris]

Same issue you have with Hawaiian coffees. As a US territory it has similar cost structure such as land cost and labor. The only reason its not as expensive as Hawaiian coffees is it is still less expensive to live there and less government regulations on their coffee, i.e. Kona.

[Daniel Humphries]

You guys are both right about it being expensive, of course. And Chris you are right this is partially because of a high cost of production. And Rob, I didn't know that! Very interesting.

However, it goes deeper than this. For example, there is a floor-price set by the gov't for PR coffees, but no such floor that I know of in Hawaii. Second, both the actual quality and the perception of quality are generally higher in the case of Hawaii. So it's not merely high cost of production or high price that does this.

Chris, there are actually *more* government regulations on the coffee in PR, not fewer. They have their hands wrist-deep in every sector of the industry there.

But this still doesn't answer our question about quality. Other expensive coffees do very well in the specialty industry...

[Chris]

Never realized that PR had a more heavy handed regulation than Hawaii. I think PR makes a good coffee and have a nice shade grown here but will still take my Ka'u coffee I made this morning (Sea Mountain). What is the annual production of PR? I believe its only 30 Million pounds for Hawaii and Maui's largest coffee farm only does 300,000 pounds a year.

Hawaii is just a different breed and like no other place I have lived in the mainland. I am just pleased that areas outside of Kona are starting to get recognition such as Ka'u and Hamakua. Have you ever dealt with farms that do aged coffee?