Daniel's World of Coffee

Panama Course: Crafting Quality at Origin

I just want to give a heads up to those of you that follow this blog: I'm teaching a course in Panama in March of 2011.

This is for folks who are damn serious about their coffee businesses and their coffee careers. The world's most unique coffee education course, among the coffee farms and cloud forests of Panama. A truly unforgettable learning experience that will launch you into the next level (and possibly several more levels beyond that).

This course is five days of intensive coffee education amid the splendor of coffee farms growing along a nature preserve in the volcanic cloud forests of Panama. It's as beautiful as it sounds.

And by the way, March is absolutely the month you want to be in the mountains of Panama. Warm and sunny without being humid. Cool breezes among the trees and mountainsides... it's paradise. The farm we are staying at is surrounded by nature preserves, and serves as a stopover for dozens of different tropical and migratory birds. In fact, they get annual groups of ornithologists that come and stay in these cabins.

But this is no idle sightseeing trip. We'll be studying intensively the workings of a coffee farm, with a special eye towards how quality is crafted. Course topics include:

• • Introduction to Sensory Analysis
• • Intensive Tasting Exercises
• • Coffee Tasting Training and Triangulation
• • Applied Roasting Theory
• • Hands-on Roasting Sessions
• • The Workings of a Coffee Farm
• • Tours of High Altitude Specialty Coffee Farms
• • Theory of Growing Coffee
• • Coffee Processing Up Close and Personal
• • Environmental and Social Sustainability
• • Buying Coffee for Your Business
• • Developing Relationships with Growers

Finally I should mention too that March is the end of the harvest season in Panama. We will have dozens upon dozens of fresh-crop, unsold specialty coffees on site for roasting and cupping. It would be great to see some of you blog-readers in Panama, but space is very limited, of course.

There's a website about the class here. Or you can send me an email to [email protected]

Consulting with Confidence

Every once in a while, people ask me what I do for a living in a funny way, like "So what exactly do you do?" Sometimes it's people from within the coffee industry who want to know why I'm always traveling to origin; sometimes it's people on the outside of the coffee industry who are thinking about making a career change.

It's often hard to respond, but that's because I have a very unique job, and I provide a very unique service.

I am a quality coffee consultant. There are three parts to that:

• QUALITY — I work on the specialty side of the coffee industry. I help people take average coffee and make it good, good coffee and make it great, great coffee and make it completely unique. Quality also characterizes the kind of instruction I give. If I cannot give you absolutely top-flight instruction, I will not take the job.

• COFFEE — The production chain in coffee is extraordinarily long. Many people who are experts at one step along the way (a great barista, an artisan roaster, a family farmer) have little knowledge about what happens at the other steps. My specialty is the whole chain... all of coffee... from the soil to the harvest to the export mill to the warehouse to the roasting plant to the packaging to the cafe to the demitasse. I help make connections and further education all along the coffee chain.

• CONSULTANT — I don't buy or sell coffee, neither green nor roasted. I help people who buy and sell coffee do a better job, make a better product, meet their goals as a company, and increase their bottom line. There are huge dollar values hidden in plain sight everywhere in the coffee industry. Every cappuccino or bag of green coffee could be better, more satisfying, and more profitable. For a fraction of what you spend on your machinery, labor, goods and operating costs, you can hire a world-class expert to maximize your potential.

I don't make sales pitches on this blog usually. This blog is where I write about what's interesting to me in coffee, and where you can get free nuggets of the kind of information I provide when I am working as a quality coffee consultant. But to answer the questions I often get, I'm posting this today.

So that is what I do. I have worked as a consultant in Alabama and New York City and San Francisco and Seattle; and Peru and Ethiopia and Guatemala and El Salvador. And many more places.

Check out my consulting website, recently updated with several new pages. If you are seriously considering improving your coffee knowledge, here is a partial resume of the work I have done in specialty coffee.

Photos from SCS

Dan Baumfeld of Neptune Coffee, one of the many excellent, industry-leading coffee professionals we had at the Seattle Coffee Society meeting last week, has some nice pictures up of the get-together. Check out the whole set here.

Influence of Soil Type on Coffee Flavor (Video)

Stage one of a long project studying the influence of soil type and weather on coffee flavor profile: on-site in Puerto Rico.

Thanks, Coffee Society

Thursday's meeting went very well. A big thank you to Seattle Coffee Works for letting us crash their lovely coffee shop right in the middle of closing time. Thanks to everyone who showed up and participated, and thanks to everyone who helped spread the word.

We had a very interesting discussion, and lots of topics for future meetings were raised. It was great to see some old friends, and to make some new ones. If you missed the meeting, you missed out! But that's ok, we'll have more.

My plan is to have the next Seattle Coffee Society meeting some time in late January. Fresh crop northern hemisphere coffees will start making their appearances here and there, so if you have access to samples and want to donate them for a cupping, please contact seattlecoffeesociety (at sign) gmail (dot com). I'm happy to roast, set up the cupping, and do research on the samples, if you can provide them.

Also, if you are interested in donating either your time, your coffee, or your venue, please contact us! Cheers.

Seattle Coffee Society Inaugural Meeting

Well, it's official.

The Seattle Coffee Society will convene its first meeting Thursday, December 9th, at 6:30 pm. Our venue is the lovely Seattle Coffee Works downtown on Pike between 1st and 2nd. A perfect, super-Seattley, super-coffee-oriented location for our first every get-together. What could be more appropriate?

We will brew coffee, look at some video from origin, and have a discussion on how different coffee origins distinguish themselves in the specialty coffee market. Also, what can we expect to see from different origins in the next few years? It will be fun and relaxed, but pitched at a high knowledge-level. If that sounds like your cup of caturra, send me an email at [email protected] You can also email me if you want to be on our mailing list.

If you wonder what the heck I am talking about, my original post about the Seattle Coffee Society is here.

Even if you can't make it next Thursday, please help spread the word about this!

Again: Dec 9. 6:30 pm. Seattle Coffee Works. 107 Pike Street. Be there!