Daniel's World of Coffee

Jeremy Explains his Non-burning Afterburner

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.

Ethiopia Cupping Thursday in Portland

I'll be hosting a cupping at Cellar Door Coffee Roasters in Southeast Portland this Thursday, May 13th.

On the table: fresh crop Ethiopian coffees, from all sides of the specialty industry in that country. Private exporters, farm owners, and smallholder farmer cooperatives. We'll do two flights of top grade coffees, and I'll be giving a short presentation on the state of the coffee industry in Ethiopia.

Thursday, May 13th, 2 pm. Cellar Door Coffee: 2001 Southeast 11th Avenue. Portland, OR.

This cupping is primarily aimed at roasters and importers. Please send me an email at [email protected] if you are interested in coming.

Article on Varietals in Fresh Cup

There's a nice article on coffee varietals in the new issue of Fresh Cup, including quotes from George Howell and yours truly! Check it out in print, or read it online here. The article begins on page 62, and it's written by Dan Leif.

Here's a nice quote to give you an idea:

GEISHA: Unless you and your Probat have been holed up in a cave recently, you've heard about this varietal, which has become the toast of Panama's coffee scene. But what does it actually taste like when roasted correctly? Howell answers without hesitation: "Sweet lemon apricot. It's very intense." Humphries is more metaphorical. "It's got a very sweet character, but it's very citrusy," he says. "I always think about fresh-squeezed orange juice from oranges right of the tree, when they're still warm. And it will smell like jasmine or fresh lilies. It's extraordinary."

$12 cup of coffee now for sale at New York cafes - NYPOST.com

"It is a higher-end coffee, and you have to take a lot of time developing and processing it," said Holt. "Once the coffee is harvested, it is dried on a raised African drying bed -- the actual coffee cherries never sit on the ground."

via www.nypost.com

New York Post covers my old friends at Café Grumpy.

First comment on their website after this post went up? "I can buy 2 32 oz. cans of Folgers for that and get a much better cup of coffee."

Let's see that's one TRUE, and one FALSE.

I'm only disppointed we didn't get any of the Post's trademark rhyming, punning headlines. But I guess we always have the Sprudge Report for that.

Road Coffee, Part 3

Road Coffee, Part 1

Road Coffee, Part 2

I brought my little mini french press to Ethiopia with me, which is standard operating procedure. Also took along some whole bean roasted coffee, and just enough ground coffee to (I hoped) last me till I got to a grinder.

At breakfast the first day our whole group was together in Addis Ababa, one fellow broke out a funny looking paper pouch. That fellow turned out to be the since-crowned Danish Barista Champion, Søren Stiller Markussen. And that paper pouchy thing was THIS THING:

(Keep watching till he gets to the pouch!)

The Coffeebrewer. And it was awesome. Søren's company, Grower's Cup in Denmark, makes these little beauties. This is not product placement. This is just acknowledging the fact that this little pouchy thing that Søren brought saved our butts each and every morning of that trip. Sure we had french presses, and we even made a few. But so much easier to just let Søren break out the Coffeebrewers and pass around the goodness.

Cup quality, you ask? Perfectly good. Way, way better than anything you can get at the hotel in Dire Dawa, I will tell you that.

Of course we asked: Do you have a US distributor yet? Well... stay tuned. I'll let you know as soon as I do.