Here is a video of a baby anteater, an evening impromptu concert by a brother and sister, and a huge ancient iga tree waving in the wind on Finca de Eleta coffee farm in Panama.
I always post about the coffee-related things I do in my job, on the road. I thought it would be nice to share some of the little slices of life that happen on the periphery; they are the simple details that make life beautiful.
Since my last post in December I have been traveling a lot, with much more actual coffee-related stuff to post on. Over the next week I hope to go through some of my notes, videos, and pictures and clean them up a bit to share here on the blog.
Back in July, after teaching some roasting seminars in Guatemala City, I spent a morning in the nearby town of Antigua with some coffee friends. Peter Giuliano, one of the key leaders of the specialty coffee industry in the United States — and indeed the world — was with us, too.
You could write an entire book and still not name all the important work Peter has done in the coffee industry. His company, Counter Culture Coffee, has helped revolutionize the way people grow, buy, roast, and drink coffee. He's also been a key leader at the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
But in addition to being a coffee guru, Peter's also just a fun guy to be around. He's willing to try anything, and his enthusiasm for life and for people is contagious. If you're having a hard time getting motivated on a Monday morning, check out Peter cheerfully learning how to make tortillas in Guatemala... and this was on a Saturday morning after a long week of work and travel. And he never lets dropping a few get him down.
My sister got married in May. After the ceremony, my job was to drive the happy couple to a special location on Lake Washington to shoot some extra photos. From there we had to drive to the U-District in Seattle for the reception.
Rick, my brother in law (as a Brazilian, he's a man with coffee in his blood), said suddenly, "Do we have coffee at this reception?"
My sister and her husband realized that they might have another 3 or 4 hours of speeches, dinner, toasts, greeting, dancing, etc, before they would get a cup of coffee. This, of course, after hours of getting ready, taking photos, and the ceremony itself.
That was all the prompting I needed. I took them to Solstice on the Ave, where I used to study my Cervantes and my Lord Byron back in my college days. How many times do you see a beautiful 5'10" blonde woman in a flowing white wedding dress in the middle of a college café? That's my sister for you. It runs in the family, see...
So when the newlywed-mobile rolled up to the reception, we all got out holding our americanos (extra shot, natch), and Rick and Jane-o powered through the festivities with a smile.
I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area this week, where it's in the mid-90's (???), where I'm shooting some instructional videos; from Wednesday to Friday I'm teaching a course on roast profiling, cupping, and sensory evaluation. Anticipating, "Teacher can we have class outside today?" we're setting up an awning and folding chairs. A little delayed summertime, nice!
Part three of my videos in Panama, featuring the beautiful Tesse, the adorable Tiborcito, Daniel being way too excited to be crossing the Panama Canal, and a place that attracts bird-watchers and entomologists from all over the world.
Incidentally, I'm quite serious about organizing a trip to Ojo de Agua. We are looking at the week of January 3rd or January 10. I will of course post more about that if it's happening, but if you want to get at the top of the list, send me an email at daniel@coffeescholars.com.
Just to give you an idea of where all this is, I've included a map. The marker here is for the town of Volcán. Just to the northeast, you can see the large volcano. On the far side of the volcano is Finca Sofia (featured in the earlier videos, and quite close to the place shown in this video). Just north of that, shrouded in clouds in this Google Map view, is a vast protected forest land called Palo Seco. The farm lies right up against this protected zone, surrounded, in fact, on three sides by protected forest land.
I shot these videos in Ethiopia last spring. Just some nice local color, including Danish barista champion Søren Stiller Markussen showing the staff at our hotel how to make a proper cappuccino. Also: the monkey that stole someone's passport (for real).
The woman feeding the monkey is named Montserrat Olivier. I didn't know she was such a big star when I met her. You can see the segment they made in Harar for Mexican television below. I saw the hyena-feeding when I was in Harar in 2008; on this last trip I skipped it. But if you like seeing monkeys get fed, seeing hyenas get fed is pretty cool too:
I'm in California to teach a roasting course and host a cupping. But in the meantime here's a little video from my trip last week to Portland with Sarah Dooley. We were putting on a cupping of Ethiopian coffees for the local specialty coffee roasters. Jeremy Adams of Cellar Door Coffee Roasters was kind enough to let us use his space. After the cupping he showed us his new baby, a Diedrich IR-12 roaster. To cut down on smoke without installing an expensive and carbon-hungry afterburner, Jeremy installed this cool scrubbing system instead.
Check it out... the videos a little shaky, but if you stick around till I get my camera in the right spot, you can see the super-fine particulate mist he's talking about.
Hi everyone. I am back from my seven week trip which took me to San Francisco, Ethiopia, New York City, and Los Angeles. From the safety and comfort of Seattle in the springtime, I'll be writing a running diary of what happened on my trip, complete with pointers and diagrams and photos and videos.
On my trip I did lots of cupping, roasting, brewing, shot-pulling, and other assorted coffee activities; plus goat-roasting, cold-catching, storm-dodging, train-taking, whiskey-drinking, and people-meeting. So stay tuned for stories and pointers from the World of Coffee.
In the meantime, I would like to offer a hearty congratulations to Søren Stiller Markussen for winning the Danish Barista Championship this week. Søren was part of the Harar Cupping Caravan in March. He's a really great guy, and I have a couple of stories about him to tell in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here's a picture. Søren's in the front-middle, in the plaid shirt. Hard to tell here, but he's crouching slightly. He's actually a quite tall man (taller than yours truly, behind him in the pink shirt).
A report on the Danish Championship from Coffee Collective here.
This is the project I have been working on for the last couple of months. I helped organize two of these "Cupping Caravans." The first one was just completed! In Yirgacheffe and Sidama. I'm really proud and pleased to see that it went off well.
The second one is in two weeks, in Harar. I will be there to lead that group. I'm really excited.
I made this video for the Ethiopian Coffee Roundtable that's happening in Addis Ababa this week, and figured I would share it here. A couple of the clips you have seen part of before on this blog. The music is Mulatu Astatqe.
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