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:

Ethiopia Again

Greetings from the Motherland. I'm in Ethiopia now, preparing for the Taste of Harvest competition and all kinds of cupping activities that are happening before and after. I'm getting an up close and personal view of how this year's crop is; I will share some general impressions once I hit the cupping tables early next week. For now I am just fighting off the jet lag and indulging in some injera and chickina tibs.

I promised pictures and videos from Brazil and the Philippines, but of course all the big files are back at home on my big computer. I travel lean and mean, data-wise. Got to have plenty of storage room for all the photos of farm visits in Jimma and Sidamo later on this trip. So that will have to wait until I return, unless I can dig up a few things in the corners of my smartphone, or from friends that were on those trips with me.

Ethiopia is such a lovely country; it's been a couple years since I have had the privilege to visit. Even the somewhat dirty chaos of Addis Ababa is charming, and that pales next to the stunning countryside vistas in the coffee lands. The sun is so powerful during the day, but the air is almost crisp, and it never gets that hot thanks to the mile-high altitude. The sounds and smells here are so unique: driving on the way to a meeting today, I detected a familiar scent, that of "mitmitta", an unmistakeable spice mix used in cooking here. I commented and the taxi driver just laughed and nodded and said, "That's Ethiopia."

That's Ethiopia indeed. Just some cultural musings for now. I'll have more to say about the coffee when the rubber hits the road next week.

Coffee — Every Year is Better Than the Last

Happy New Year. I have been in the specialty coffee industry for over ten years now, and I can honestly say that every single year has been better than the year before, both for me professionally and, more importantly, for the industry as a whole.

Not everything is perfect all the time, of course. Sometimes we uncover new problems just as we think we are solving an old one. For years we bemoaned the low price of commodity coffee. Then it shot through the roof in a matter of months, and suddenly we were wondering if this industry was sustainable anymore. But crises are just opportunities. High costs, for example, just highlighted the need for increased efficiency and more resourceful practices.

The past year took me all over the world again, gracias a Diós, as they say in lands to the south: I had the chance to make coffee trips to Panama, Honduras, the Philippines, and Brazil. Not to mention the exotic, far-off land of Portlandia; my second-home New York City, and always-gorgeous San Francisco. In the coming year, I hope to make it back to Central America, to spend some quality time in Colombia, several weeks in the MOTHERLAND (Ethiopia, of course), get some real development work off the ground in the Philippines, and of course teach more courses in San Francisco.

Before my next trip, I'll be getting caught up right here on the blog with a few more articles, some picture and video posts, and whatever else coffee-centric that comes my way.In the meantime, from the chilly, dark, and crisp Pacific Northwest, here's hoping that 2013 brings you more wonderful coffee moments than ever before.

Ethiopia Guide Redux

Over the winter I completed work on an Ethiopian Coffee Buying Guide. Willem Boot was the driving force behind this and he's got main author credit, and he made the amazing coffee morphology photos it contains. I wrote most of the copy and created the maps and was responsible for the overall form.

Reader Dave Janetta was kind enough to create a smaller version of the document, for ease of downloading. I only have 4 hard copies left, of the hundred or so I took to Houston for the Ethiopian delegation, so if you want a copy, Download Ethiopian coffee guide sm.

Thanks, Dave!

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.

Ethiopia Buying Guide Available Now

The buying guide I was working on for Ethiopian coffee, under the aegis of the USAID-ATEP project there, is finally finished.

We are printing up about a hundred coffees to take to the SCAA show in Houston at the end of the month. In the meantime, people can get access this document online here. This is a very big file and will take a couple minutes to load, even with a fast connection. Or you can download the pdf file by right-clicking the link.

This is a complete guide to understanding Ethiopian coffee, from production, to processing, to buying and selling. It includes phone numbers and emails of all the major cooperative unions and exporters, logistical information about buying Ethiopian coffee (and coffee in general). It even has an extended section showing the morphology of different coffee beans from different regions of Ethiopia (with astonishing high-resolution pictures).

I'll post some of the most interesting pictures and information here on the blog, but if you want to take a free master class on understanding how coffee really works, I recommend you download a copy for yourself.

Ethiopia Guide

I've been composing a rather long guide to buying coffee in Ethiopia. There are still a few more drafts to go through, but I thought it would be nice to post some of the information here on the blog.

The completed guide will be online eventually, and I'll be sure to post the URL when it becomes available. Some of it is quite technical stuff, but for now, here's a little 101 stuff by way of introduction...

Coffee Characteristics

The most important thing to remember about Ethiopian coffee is that Ethiopia is the Motherland of all arabica coffee. In a certain sense, all arabica coffee is Ethiopian, whether it is grown in Latin America or Indonesia or on a hillside in Sidama.

When coffee was taken to other countries, people had to find ways to adapt it to the local climate. You find that arabica coffee grows best — worldwide — in places that have climates similar to that of Ethiopia: mountainous, tropical, with moderate wet and dry seasons.

Generally, in Ethiopia, no such adaptation is necessary! The coffee has been growing there for literally thousands of years, in the forests of southeastern Ethiopia. It is already perfectly adapted to the climate. This is the immense advantage that Ethiopia has over all other coffee producing countries.

As the “origin of all origins,” Ethiopia has another unique feature: hundreds of heirloom varietals. In many cases, farmers grow their own unique heirloom varietals. The majority of these varietals grow nowhere else in the world, and a great many of them have not even been classified.

In many places — often in Sidama and in Harar, for example — many smallholder farms will pool their coffees at a small local milling station, each contributing his own special coffee. The result is a complex melange of unique flavors, the truest expression of local terroir to be found anywhere on the planet. The rich complexity in a cup of Yirgacheffe, for example, is largely a product of this special combination that occurs nowhere else in the world.

It is difficult to make generalizations about the flavor of Ethiopian coffee, for all the reasons stated above. Furthermore, each coffee growing region is home to unique flavors. These are explained in greater detail in this guide, under the subheadings of each region in Part Two.

If one had to make some broad generalizations about Ethiopian coffee — keeping in mind that there are many exceptions to the rule — one can say the following. Ethiopian coffees tend to be grown at middle-high to very-high altitudes. The result is generally a hard-bean type, with intense flavors and aromatics. Fruit flavors are common in all regions, though the specific fruit character varies from region to region. Berry aromatics are relatively common, as well as citrus and chocolate. Ethiopian coffees can be full-bodied (natural Grade 4 Limu, for instance) or light in body (washed Grade 1 Yirgacheffe, for instance), but in either case the mouthfeel of top quality Ethiopian coffees is generally smooth and pleasing.

Ethiopia grows and exports only arabica coffee, not robusta.

Coffee Tasting All Over America

How do coffee buyers decide which coffees they will carry? They taste them. In this video you can get an inside look at this process.

We put over 60 fresh-crop lots of Ethiopian coffees, each with a different flavor profile, in front of coffee buyers all over the United States this past spring. I posted about this project in the spring, here, here, and here. This video explains the outcome.

Monkey in the Airport

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:

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.