Daniel's World of Coffee

The Best Shoes For Traveling to Origin

In the last five years I have traveled to origin 30 times, to the best of my recollection. That's about 6 trips a year, spread over 12 or 13 countries, mostly in Latin America, but also in Africa and Asia.

On all but one of those trips, I have taken the same pair of shoes. Not the same brand, no... the exact same pair of shoes. These shoes set me back about 65 bucks, if I recall. I've worn them in Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, the Philippines, etc.

The one time I didn't bring these shoes, it was purely by accident. It was my first trip to the Philippines, and I was apparently so excited by the prospect of white sand beaches that I forgot to pack sensible coffee farm shoes. Ironic because some of the roughest terrain I've encountered in my coffee travels was on that trip, in the tribal lands of Mindanao. I had to hike the whole slippery mess in thin-soled tennis shoes. My friends showed me infinite patience as I fumbled around helplessly in the muck and mire. (Hi Zee!)

Anyway, I come from Seattle originally, where people wear mountain-climbing gear to formal events. It's actually become a point of pride for me to wear snazzy city shoes whenever possible, just to stand out from the NorthFace and New Balance. But when you're hiking a real, functioning coffee farm at the peak of harvest, style somehow takes a back seat.

The shoes I have are from ECCO. I think they might have discontinued the exact model I have. They're somewhat similar to these, but low top and less space-age looking. I like the ones I have because if you dust them off and spit-shine 'em, they don't look too bad in a city setting. But the main reason I like them is because they are as tough as nails, but very comfortable. I've abused the ever-living hell out of these shoes and never once replaced the laces or even thought about them. I just toss them in my bag when I'm headed to origin and then inflict the pain.

Here's a mash-up video of my most recent trip to Ethiopia and a trip I made to Honduras in 2011. In the first part (grainy, sorry) I am stepping on a rural road between two farms, on my way up to the waterfall at Wondo Genet in Sidamo. I started filming because I was amazed at the thin crust that overlaid the two inches of powder-thin red dust that made up the road. It felt like walking on the moon, except it was about 100 degrees and the sun was BRUTAL. In the second part, as you can tell from the angle of my legs, I'm stumbling down a very steep, very muddy and slippery hillside in Honduras. Same shoes, two years and half a world apart.

So anyway, I don't work for ECCO and they aren't giving me any money. But if you are heading to a coffee farm soon (and if you're not.. why not???), maybe check out some of these shoes.

Here's my pair in all their dusty glory after I got back from my most recent trip last week:

Roasting at Origin Article

I've got a short article in the March issue of Fresh Cup magazine. It's not available online, but for those of you in the coffee industry, you should be reading Fresh Cup anyway!

It's for the "Roaster's Realm" column, and I wrote about roasting quality coffee at origin. Often you can't get very well-roasted coffee in producing countries. There's some striking irony when you are surrounded by lovely, green, growing coffee trees and drinking a cup of something that's diner quality at best.

But things are changing. I interviewed three quality-oriented roasters I have worked with in three different countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico), and came up with some interesting results. Check it out.

Fresh Crop El Salvador Cupping

Hello from Marin County, California. Yesterday we roasted over 40 samples of fresh crop El Salvador coffees and weighed out cups. This morning we got up extra early to do a preliminary selection cupping of the 40+ samples. We picked out 16 exemplary lots, bourbons and pacamaras, washed and honey process. Some friends at Bay Area super specialty roasters came over and cupped them more fully with us.

These are very young, very fresh coffees. All micro-lots, specially selected in El Salvador by Graciano Cruz. 30 bags maximum exist of each of these coffees. They are super high-grade coffees that in the past were getting mixed together and lost at the exporter level. We're doing some really exciting work to keep them separated out and offered to roasters like these folks who will give them the TLC they deserve. There are a ton more honey process coffees on the way too, but they are still being processed at this point.

Thanks to everyone who came by.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Ethiopia for the Cupping Caravan in Harar. More on that to come!

No Pacamara, No Cry

I went on and on about pacamara coffee yesterday, and included some links to places you can buy some. One of those places was Plowshares Coffee in New York State.

A good buddy of Coffee Scholars, coffee expert-roaster and all-around good person Anthony Kurutz, founder of Plowshares, dropped me the following notice on Twitter:

Plowshares_@CoffeeScholar I sold out of Pacamara for the year just before you posted this! Thanks for the shoutout anyway. btw it was delish.

I can vouch for the delish-ness. I had some of this coffee back in — July, I think? — and it was a classic pacamara, and expertly-roasted. Anyway, if you are looking for pacamaras, don't go to Plowshares.

But, ironically, that's a good sign that if you are looking for good coffee, you should go to Plowshares. Anybody who has perfect coffee from every world origin in stock at all times of the year is either lying to you or clairvoyant. Either they are selling you old-crop coffee, or they somehow, magically, sold out of the last bean of one year's coffee on the same day they received their shipment of the next year's coffee.

I'm sure Anthony doesn't enjoy running out of a great coffee like his pacamara. But the very fact he did is a good sign that you should feel good about buying whatever else he has on the shelf. And try the pacamara next year! They usually hit the shores of North America right around June 1st.

For more way-too-in-depth coffee talk, follow me on Twitter, or be my friend on Facebook.

Understand Coffee Varieties: Pacamara

What's in a varietal? Everything! The kind of coffee plant determines how your coffee tastes. In this video I explain all about one of my favorite coffee varietals: the exotic and delicious Pacamara.

Try Pacamara coffee from PT's Coffee, "Finca Los Planes."

Try Pacamara coffee from Dancing Goats, the "Siberia Pacamara."

Try Pacamara coffee from Barefoot Coffee, "Tablon 12."

Try Pacamara coffee from Plowshares Coffee, "Las Delicias."

Merry Roastmas

Nothing says happiness in the holiday season like a great cup of coffee. I made this video right after rolling out of bed on Christmas morning... all y'all who make fun of me for wearing a suit and tie to the coffee conventions, here you can see me all bleary-eyed wearing my zipper-hoodie and Seahawks shirt. That's organic Daniel there.

In this video I took some medium-high grown Bourbon coffee from El Salvador and roasted it just past second crack. I'm serving it to a big crowd of people (sisters and parents and various suitors of said sisters, natch), so I chose a medium roast for this coffee. It's a versatile bean and could go darker or lighter, but in my experience this style of bean at this level of roast is a real crowd pleaser.

I just had a cup of it while I was waiting for the video to upload, and it's really sweet and chocolatey. Remember... theory is great, but in the end, coffee should taste good!

Happy holidays to everyone. I hope your day is merry and bright.

Event(s) Report: Coffee Fest Madness

I work in coffee and I was born and raised in Seattle, WA, and yet it's been four years (!) since I participated in Coffee Fest Seattle. Well, this last weekend I got my fill of Coffee Fest-ivities at the Convention Center downtown, as well as at various spots around town. This is really more than one event...

One. The Actual Show. Lots of great coffee and interesting products on the show floor again this year. There was an understandable skewing toward Northwest companies, like Caffé Vita, Synesso, and the honorary Northwesterners, La Marzocco USA.

The best cup of brewed coffee I had all weekend (though not the Coffee of the Week... I'll get to that in another post), came from the Hario booth, where I got a perfect pour-over cup of Intelligentsia's fresh crop Kenya. Thanks to Bronwen for taking me by the hand and guiding me to the Hario booth when I was jonesing on Friday morning. (Hario also wins best business cards for their flaming hot pink numbers).

The funnest little activity at the show was the Aroma Challenge where you had to take a quiz on matching Le Nez du Café vials of essential aromas to a list of aromas. Very tough! I got 10 out of 16, though as soon as I turned in my sheet I realized I had misidentified the most obvious one (potato!) and should have got 11 right. Anyway, it was a fun challenge.

2. The Northwest Regional Barista Competition. I didn't actually see even 2 minutes of this thing, though I hear it was fantastic as always. Northwest barista legend Billy Wilson took the gold. You can read about it on coffeed.

3. Party Madness. Lots of fun at the party at Visions Espresso on Friday night, where baristas played with their array of different espresso machines while the wine and cheese flowed. Coffee people are the most fun people there are to have parties with, I've decided. They get really wired on coffee, then they start drinking. Sarah Allen also led an expeditionary party up the hill from downtown to Linda's, which is actually my old stomping grounds (those many years ago), where we took over an entire banquette outside and drank Tecate and argued about coffee.

On Saturday night it was thee Latte Art competition between Seattle and LA hosted by Victrola. Even more people at this one. Got to see lots of great friends. The LA folks took the competition pretty handily, to Seattle's undying shame. But a good time was had by all. Victrola really has the perfect location and space for parties of this kind (fire marshall regulations aside... it got a little too full at one point).

4. Cupping at Coffee Enhancement Lounge. Sunday it was back down to Visions for a wonderful, peaceful, clean cupping of those pacamara coffees I have been talking about lately. It was the perfect way to wrap up the weekend. The CEL has great natural lighting... the sun was shining in through the skylight. Sarah put on Elvis Presley, and we cupped 14 beautiful coffees in peace and calm.

I really hope to do more stuff at CEL soon. It's such a great location and the folks at Visions are the greatest.

....

At some point this weekend, I did have the Coffee of the Week. But this post is getting too long, and I have a coffee shop review I want to get to, too. So I'll post that a little later. The hint is the picture at the top of this page, if you know that man.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/latteart/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Event Announcement: Pacamaras in Seattle!

If you're like me, when Coffee Fest (or any other coffee get-together) ends, you always wish you could have cupped more coffees. Somehow the whole weekend goes by and, while you got to sit in some lectures and visit some booths, you never got a chance to really dig in there with your spoon and explore the latest crops.

I am sitting on some absolutely stunning fresh-crop pacamaras and bourbons from El Salvador — micro-lots that aren't available anywhere else — but I had begun to despair of finding the right location for a cupping at such a late date.

Lucky for me, I ran into Sarah Dooley of Visions Espresso the other day (what a great town Seattle is!) and she told me about the Coffee Enhancement Lounge that Visions has boldly created. It's a roaster-neutral site where specialty coffee people — roasters, equipment people, retailers, baristas — can come together in the name of exploring great coffee.

Well, great coffee samples + great location + great coffee people = the cupping is ON!

You are cordially invited to join us for a cupping of these fantastic coffees, including the famous and elusive El Salvador pacamara. It's this Sunday, September 27th, at 1 pm. That's late enough for you to sleep in after the latte art smackdown and still hit the show floor. And it's early enough for you to get out of town plenty early in the day. If you AREN'T EVEN GOING TO COFFEE FEST, you should still come to our cupping. It's going to be a beautiful Sunday in Seattle.

The CEL at Visions is located a hop skip and a jump from the Convention Center, at 2737 1st Avenue South, just south of the intersection of 1st and Lander. Plenty of easy, safe street parking there.

These coffees are not to be missed! And Visions' Coffee Enhancement Lounge is something you DEFINITELY want to check out! Please RSVP to Daniel Humphries at [email protected] if you would like to come. I anticipate we will have a full house, so RSVP early to ensure your spot!

Cheers, and happy cupping!

Coffee of the Week: Pacamara from Finca El Carmen, El Salvador

Last Wednesday I held a cupping that included some pacamaras that I was raving about. My two favorites in the session, which was half-blind (I knew which coffees were pacamaras and which bourbons, but did not know the farms until I later looked at my cheat sheet), were both from Finca El Carmen in the San Vicente region of El Salvador.

El Carmen is on a volcano called Volcán Chinchontepec (which, roughly translated from the Nahuatl tongue means "Mountain Shaped Like Breasts" and no, I am not making that up.). This is an absolutely beautiful place which I visited on my last trip to El Salvador in February.

The producers at El Carmen are taking really remarkable care of their coffee. Pacamara in micro-lots like this is a relatively new endeavor for them. From the high profile that pacamaras are starting to get, you might get the impression that they represent a big proportion of the Salvadoran coffee export each year. But in reality, it's somewhere around 1%. Just one percent! But demand is sky-high, both in the States, and around the world. There's really nothing quite like a pacamara from El Salvador; and El Carmen is producing some of the very best.

What is a pacamara? Well, it's a hybrid coffee plant. Just like a merlot grape yields different flavors than a cabarent franc grape, different coffee varietals give you different coffee flavors. Pacamara is a unique blend of two varietals. One half of pacamara is the pacas varietal, itself a mutation of the more widespread bourbon varietal. Pacas is un café muy El Salvador, named for a member of the well-known Pacas family of coffee people and sharing many of the characteristics of the sweet, luscious bourbon. The other half comes from the maragogype line, best known as the "elephant bean" coffee for it's huge leaves, fruit, and beans. Blend these two together and you get Pacas-Maragogype, or paca-mara.

Pacamaras are true artisan coffees. They have strange, exotic, yet pleasing aromatics and tastes. They can also vary noticeably in size and shape. This makes them a challenge to roast, though well worth the effort.

In the two El Carmen samples that wowed me last Wednesday, I noticed a perfect foundation of chocolatey sweetness and medium acidity. What made these two stand out for me, though, was an incredible buttery richness coupled with a strongly prevalent herbal characteristics. These coffees were like a really luscious, creamy, sinful dessert you might get at a French restaurant. If you have never tried it, there's really nothing like a great pacamara.

These coffees are not commercially available... yet! Some savvy roaster is going to snap them up and offer them soon. When I find out who buys these coffees, I'll be sure to post it here so the rest of you can try them. (As a side note, I'll actually be cupping more El Sal pacamaras in about a week or so... if you are in the Seattle area, stay tuned because I will make an announcement about that, and you can come cup them for yourself.)

So there you have it. Pacamara samples from Finca El Carmen. This week's Coffee of the Week!

Event Report: Micro-lot El Salvador Cupping

Thank you to everyone who participated in yesterday's cupping at Think Coffee in Manhattan!

Graciano Cruz was unable to make the trip up from Panama at the last moment, which left everyone to deal with me. Somehow they endured, and we had a great cupping session with some really interesting and fantastic coffees on the table.

I've done a lot of events for/about/thanks-to El Salvador over the last few years. I've gotten to know the industry there so well that at times I think I begin to take it for granted. Or I assume that people know more about it than they do. I'm hoping to do another event featuring these great coffees in another week or two, in Seattle, and leading up to that event, I intend to write more about exactly why they are so great.

In the meantime, I can tell you we did one table of six washed bourbon coffees, and one table of six washed pacamaras and two natural coffees (one bourbon, one pacamara). The bourbons were very nice gems: sweet, medium-bodied, good acidity and clear as bells. But, as anyone who's cupped it before knows, the pacamaras were the real stars. There's such a unique, exotic edge to those coffees: a buttery mouthfeel and a peculiar herbaceous quality, on top of the chocolatey sweetness found in their bourbon cousins.

Of course, the other stand-outs were the natural coffees. People don't expect these flavor profiles from Central American coffees. I overheard a couple of people discussing how much they tasted like Ethiopians or Yemens, but cleaner. There's a lot of potential for natural-process coffees in Latin America in the coming years. Very, very few producers in Latin America understand how popular that flavor profile has become in the United States. The savvier ones are starting to get wind, and you get coffees like the ones we cupped yesterday (and reactions like the ones I witnessed). I want to feature the farms that are experimenting with this kind of processing on this blog, but first I want to get some more information from my friends in Central America.

Finally, a huge word of thanks to Think Coffee. If you ever want to see a really well-run coffee shop, stop by Think, get a table near the register and watch the baristas work their high-speed magic. Special thanks to Jason and especially Sarah, for allowing us to do the event and for their hard work and kindness.