Daniel's World of Coffee

The Next Wave in Coffee Auctions?

My friend and former colleague (at Intelligentsia), Steve Mierisch has been in contact lately about his family's farms' coffees in Honduras and Nicaragua.

Coming up on April 25th, they are holding an auction for these coffees. The Mierisches are working with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, who own the Cup of Excellence auction system, the best known and most elite coffee auction program in the world. This is the first time that ACE has put on a private coffee auction program.

I've had many of Steve's family's coffees before, and they are excellent quality. What's really interesting here to me is seeing producers take it on themselves to make direct sales to their clients. In order to do this, you have to have high quality, you have to be extremely organized, and you have to have a ton of initiative. However, if things go well, I imagine that a successful auction will allow the family to continue investing in their own land and improving quality. That should be the model for as many producers as possible. This auction is exciting for that reason.

The Mierisches are not the first private producers to hold an internet auction, but it's still extremely rare and this bears watching, not least for the involvement of ACE.

Interested buyers can sign up for the auction here.

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:

Backstreet Boys in the Philippines

Cute kids; Backstreet Boys; Coffee stall in the Baguio Market; Arabica growing under cover of chayote vines; Rainstorms; Flooded river; Wild coffee plantation; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; More cute kids.

Word Clouds for Different Varietals

Here is some more analysis, in visual form, of the soil and varietal analysis I did of last year's coffee crop in Puerto Rico. I entered each word every time it appeared on a cupping form, and correlated the data with different varietals. I have many of these charts made, but the files are large, so I'm posting just four here to give you an idea of how they look.

Most of these descriptors are aromatics, because the standard cupping forms have numerical scores for acidity, flavor, balance, and other major categories. Still, if a cupper (myself included) made a note of anything specific, no matter what the category, I included it in these diagrams.

The larger the word is, the more often it came up. The colors are included for contrast only — there is no data attached to the word colors. Click on the pictures to see them up close.

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Fig. 7: descriptors for BOURBON Strong positive aromatics, including notable honey, chocolate, toast, and caramel. Strongest presence of the very positive sweet, as well as the positive tangy.

Fig. 4: descriptors for CATIMOR Dry is the dominant characteristic, indicated a dry, unpleasant mouthfeel or aftertaste. Ordinary nutty aromatics dominate, with malty tendencies. Negative peanutty and astringent notes are common.

Fig. 9: descriptors for TOP NINE COFFEES (all varietals) In all we find that the very best Puerto Rican coffees tend to be sweet, bright, tangy and smooth or delicate, with high incidence of honey, nutty, lemon, caramel, chocolate, toast, and floral aromatics

Fig. 10: descriptors for BOTTOM NINE COFFEES (all varietals) Overall, below-average to poor Puerto Rican coffees suffer from musty and peanutty aromatics, and show high incidence of sourness, dryness, and a lack of sweetness.

Does Altitude Matter More For Certain Varietals Than For Others?

Here are some of the results I've compiled of our large project classifying soil types and investigating the influence of soil, climate, and varietal on cup quality in Puerto Rico.

These graphs and comments are part of a much larger report, with databases and maps, which will be released soon. Just a little preview, which I hope you find interesting. The purpose of this project is to help farmers improve quality and prices in Puerto Rico. All the data collected, and all of the analysis, will be published and distributed to farmers (in Spanish and Enlgish), so that they can put our findings into action for their own benefit.

How did I arrive at these data points? The altitude and varietal information was provided by the USDA researchers in Puerto Rico. Each sample was collected individually, and sample collectors made a GPS recording on-site, standing next to the trees from which the cherries were taken. These readings include latitude, longitude, and altitude above sea level. The cupping scores are the result of a week of extensive blind cupping done by a team of Q-graders (myself included) in California, in May. Each sample was cupped multiple times, in random order, and the scores you see here are means taken from all the individual scores recorded.

The portion quoted here refers to other sections of the document which are not publicly available yet. Sorry, you'll just have to wait!

(click on graphs to embiggen)

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Altitude

There is a strong correlation between the quality of the samples and the altitude at which the coffee was grown at. As one would expect, generally speaking, the higher the coffee was grown, the higher it scored on the cupping table. This is one of the strongest relationships we found in all the data.

While not all of the high-grown coffees were in the very upper echelon of cupping scores, most of them were. And the relationship is even stronger at the low end of the spectrum. All of the lowest scoring coffees belonged in the lower altitude categories.

The following graph illustrates the relationship between coffee quality and altitude, across all varietals and soil types:

This graph shows an average gain in quality of just over 2 points from the lowest altitudes to the highest.

Altitude by varietal

One of the most interesting findings in all of the data we collected and analyzed was that improvements due to altitude were much stronger when certain varietals were used. This leads us to the conclusion that producers at higher altitudes would benefit even more by switching to the preferred varietals.

Once again, the average improvement (shown above) for higher altitudes was just over 2 points.

The next graph shows what that improvement looked like when we limit the analysis to just limaní, fronton, and catimor (three low-scoring varietals):

We can observe the same general upward trend that we saw in the comprehensive data set. However, if we read the graph closely, we can observe that the improvement is much less dramatic. In fact, there is barely 1 point of quality improvement in over 2000 feet of altitude increase. Producers who plant these varietals (fronton, limani, and catimor) at high altitude are not receiving the full benefit of their natural altitude advantage.

Let us now contrast this with the data from a different subset, using the high-scoring varietals pacas, bourbon, and caturra.

Once again, we see the expected increase in quality as altitude increases. However, in this case, the increase is far more dramatic. The low-altitude coffees score just above 80 points. But the high-altitude coffees are nearly at 84. That is nearly a 4 point gain in cup quality due to altitude, the kind of quality gains that tend to bring much higher prices in the specialty market.

Producers who are planting pacas, bourbon, and caturra at high altitude are getting a much better return on the natural advantage of high altitude.

Conclusion: As we saw in the first section, all coffee producers can expect an increase in quality by switching to higher-quality varietals. However, this switch is even more crucial for higher altitude producers. The higher the altitude, the more benefit producers can see from using these better varietals. Producers who plant lower quality varietals at higher altitudes are missing out on the huge benefit that altitude can provide.

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More to come...

What I've Been Up To

The last time I posted in May, I was in Panama. I'm in Seattle now, and here's a quick run-down on what I've been up to in the coffee world.

1) First of all that Panama trip. As I noted before, I was acting as host for a group of Puerto Rican coffee farmers who were sent to Panama to observe specialty coffee practices in Panama. There were a dozen people in our group, and we spent our time in the western highlands of Chiriqui. I knew it was going to be fun before I left, but it really ended up exceeding my expectations. I'll post some videos and comments about this project over the next few days.

2) Speaking of Puerto Rico, I'm finishing up the analysis of the soil-data project I started way back in November. There's a huge document detailing all of our findings that I've created. I will share part of that this week, and the rest of it when it's all officially available.

3) As always, I'm teaching roasting and cupping courses in California with Boot Coffee. In May and June I was down there with Willem, Jodi, and the rest of the crew for some really great courses. I will be going down there again at the end of July for another 10 days, into August.

4) In the next 12 months I'll be teaching courses in Honduras (twice), Panama, and hopefully Colombia as well. Stay tuned here for more information. Or you can check out the Boot Coffee website.

5) After a long and arduous journey through my own preconceptions, I've become a full-on believer in Kahlua. It's just so much better than every other coffee liqueur I've tasted (and you'd be surprised how many I have tasted.... think double digits). Last September I did some work for Kahlua in Stockholm. In June, this project took me to grand old New York, where the Ost Café folks were as good as good can be to me, despite new babies and new pork sandwich stands springing up left and right. Best cafe in NYC, y'all. In the next few months I'll be doing more work for Kahlua here in the USA. I'm excited to share with you what I've been doing. I'll be sure to mention it here on the blog when it becomes appropriate. Did I mention I get free rum, coffee, and Kahlua?

6) Fresh Cup Magazine published an article I wrote in the June issue, about branching out from the old familiar origins and finding new gems (Nepalese coffee, anyone?). I'll post some snippets here, copyright permitting.

7) Theoretically I have something coming out in Parade Magazine... but I have yet to see it appear and your guess is as good as mine.

7) Somewhere along the line there I was in Houston for the SCAA conference. Somewhere along the line there, Alejandro Mendez from Viva Espresso in San Salvador won the World Barista Championship. Anyone who reads this blog is already well-informed of that stuff. But still... it did happen.

8) All work and no play makes Homer something something...

(PS I am in Seattle currently... oh wait, I already said that).

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.

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.

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.

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.