Daniel's World of Coffee

Colombia

In late June, I was in Antioquia, a large department of Colombia. Antioquia (the Spanish version of the name of Antioch, an ancient Anatolian city known for its holy hand grenades), is not as well known in specialty circles as some other areas of Colombia, such as Cauca and Huila.

However, the total arabica production there is huge. If Antioquia were its own country, it would export more coffee than the entire nation of Costa Rica! And a lot of that coffee, naturally, is very high quality. They have stupendous altitude... in many places you have to go down from the roads and towns to get to the coffee growing zone; and they have expertise, varietals, soil, and everything else to produce great coffee.

Here are some pictures from my trip. It's "fly crop" season in Colombia right now. That means that most fields are not in production, or only with very low volumes, but that there is still some fresh coffee being picked and processed in some areas. Most of the volume in this area is harvested in November and December.

Typical street in Medellín, the beautiful capital of Antioquia

Lunch in the mountains

The mountains around Montebello

Another vista

Caballo

The reliquary of a 350 year old church; the oldest one in the region

Parque Botero in Medellín

Coffee: defects, sorted, and unsorted. (I brought about 3 pounds of pure defects back with me for training purposes... it's amazing how much they stunk up my suitcase!)

Cappuccino at Café Pergamino in Medellín

Mountain village of Jardín

I expect to be back in Colombia again soon. We cupped a lot of coffees while I was there, as part of a cup-profiling activity that is ongoing. There were some very good profiles we encountered: some real surprises to go along with some real classic Colombian profiles. The country is so beautiful, the people are so nice, and it's so big with so much to explore, I can't wait to go back.

Photos from Bukidnon, Philippines

Thanks to my friend Zee Zamorah Perez for sharing these beautiful pictures of Bukidnon province on our trip to the village of Miarayon. This trip was in late May of this year; I spent a month in the Philippines and got to visit Bukidnon towards the end of the month.

Miarayon is on the lands of indigenous people there, on the southern island of Mindanao. We had such a lovely trip. There was even a double-rainbow.

Yes, those are coffee trees overhead, and coffee wildlings underfoot.

Panama in Winter

It's spring in North America, but in Panama the winter is just starting. Although it's pushing 90 degrees in the lowlands, and not much cooler up here in the mountains, the rainy season has begun in full force. And that's what defines the winter here.

I'm here with a group of coffee farmers from Puerto Rico, who are here to learn how things are done in Panama. Here are some pictures that show what coffee country looks like in the down times.

Amazing Pictures of Ethiopian Coffee Bean Morphology

These pictures are part of the Ethiopian Coffee Buying Guide I helped put together. Click the images for full-size. Photos by Willem Boot.

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.

Hey, That's My Latte!

Longtime coffee expert and überblogger Tonx took some pictures many years ago of lattes made at Victrola Coffee in Seattle, where I used to work. He put the set on flickr and it has over half a million views. In fact, he made these pictures available on the web even before they were put on flickr.

Many, many more beautiful lattes have been poured (though rarely have they been as well-photographed); but because these pictures were some of the first high-resolution pictures of really excellent latte art that were freely available on the web, they quickly spread all over the place. Now, as is so often the case with internet property, they're completely out of tonx's control; he told me he long ago gave up trying to get credit for all these pictures.

Anyway, a lot of those lattes are mine, and though I'm used to seeing them pop up randomly, sometimes it still takes me by surprise.

With the new Google insta-search that debuted this week (in which it starts showing you results before you have even finished typing... try it!), even if you aren't looking for images, if you type "latte ...", before you even get to the a in "art" a bunch of pictures pop up, and at least as of this week, the one in the upper right is my latte. Kinda weird; it links to some auto-bot sight called thatsweird (dot) net (no linkage for them!).

Bing.com takes you to this page in which one of my lattes is used as an interstitial illustration meant to encourage you. "Latte Art is all the new craze, and looks great," it says, "go on, have a go..."

Lifehacker has this pic, which is my favorite:

But, God bless them, they give tonx credit.

It's been a while since I jumped behind the bar and made two hundred lattes in a morning. I know I still have the chops, but I wonder if my "handwriting" has changed at all. Have you ever looked at old notebooks or letters or schoolwork and marveled at how your handwriting has changed over the years? I wonder if it's the same with latte art.

Check out my own flickr page. I have some latte art pics there, but the nicest photo sets are the ones from Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Peru.

Colorful Coffee Photos of Ethiopia... and Latte Art

I just uploaded over 180 high-resolution, colorful photos from my most recent trip to Ethiopia. You can see the batch on < ahre="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7591145@N02/sets/72157623133036298/" target='_new'>my flickr page.

Also a few fun latte art pics here, since that's always a crowd pleaser.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend! See you in the morning for more great coffee.

Philosophy

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
—Thomas H. Huxley

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...