Two new coffees. One isn’t that new–we’ve been using it for a few months now in a couple of our blends, and are now offering it as a single origin. It’s a coffee from Bolivia, and it is a simple statement of deliciousness. Look for sweet, crisp coffee flavor, with a long mocha finish.

The second is so new, it’s not even in-house yet. We’ve just contracted for a new coffee from the Huehuetenango region of Guetamala. It’s a pretty big coffee, on the one hand: lots of ripe red fruit that is almost winey in character, accompanied by plenty of chocolate. And yet it’s also very Central American (as you would expect), specifically in its acidity, and the way the coffee carries itself. It’s not like a dry-process Ethiopia. Rather, I would liken it in profile to a Kenya (an origin that we have not been able to carry, because of its dearth of organically-certified producers), but more “juicy.” Maybe a mix of cherry and blood orange, or something along those lines. Tastes like breakfast. But these are all descriptions based on cupping it out of the sample roaster. We’ll see how it turns out, and what we can do with it, when we drop it in the Petroncini next week.

Finca La Ilusion

sorting table at dry mill--rocks and defective beans are removed as the coffee passes on a conveyer.

Maine? Nope. El Salvador at 1600 meters. Bordering Finca La Ilusion.

Loading the truck with sacks of harvested coffee cherry at the end of the day. Finca Suiza.

Ernesto came in 5th place with a coffee from Los Andes, and Francisco came in 1st with coffee from Suiza. Wow! These are exceptional performances. That these two brothers now have five top ten finishes between them, including two wins from two different farms, is remarkable.

And this is as good a place as any to spill the beans: I confess that it was the Suiza that I liked best on the cupping table in El Salvador. Pretty cool to find out that I was slurping coffee from the #1 farm in the country in 2010.

At the airport I was picked up by Erneresto Menendez, a farmer in the Santa Ana area, and went out to dinner at a cafeteria in Salvador City. I had had what I thought were pretty good pupusas at a place in Portland known to serve the real deal, but things taste a little different in the country from which they originate. That is, they taste better. Probably the 12 foot by 6 foot hibachi-type skillet in the cafeteria, seasoned for years, had something to do with it.

The following day Ernesto and I headed to Santa Ana to visit the J. Hill mill and cup his current crop.

But first a little more about Ernesto. He is a skilled producer with a pretty impressive track record: Cup of Excellence 7th place finish in 2007, Cup of Excellence 1st place finish in 2008. He’s also done computer and quality control work at the Hill mill itself. He knows his stuff. So it was pretty humbling to have the welcome mat rolled out for little old me.

All four coffees were very good, and very different. The farms represented were Fincas Ilusion, Alaska, Andes and Suiza (the latter being the family farm, currently owned and managed by Ernesto’s brother, Francisco). There was one particular coffee that I think I liked better than the others, but I’m hoping to bring in a couple of these coffees this year, so I’m going to hold off on revealing it at present. Ernesto has entered a lot from Los Andes in this year’s Cup of Excellence competition. I would not be at all surprised to see him to very well once again. In fact, I’m kind of expecting it.

Francisco and a couple of the mill's big depulpers

Welcome to Finca Los Andes.

traffic jam in Santa Ana

So: Kenyan coffee in El Salvador on a farm named after a South American mountain range

thousands of baby Kenya trees in waiting

To this end, Ernesto has a “small” nursery where he is growing thousands of Kenya and orange bourbon seedings, just waiting for a home on one of his fincas. Many will be planted after this year’s harvest is finished.

Another interesting characteristic of the farms is the microclimates that they occupy. These are high altitude farms–1500 meters and up–but that’s just the beginning. For instance, La Ilusion occupies a small pocket in a national park, and is bordered on two of its sides by mature conifers–cedar and a kind of pine. It was mid-March when I visited, and Ernesto still had only one “cut” (or round of picking) completed on this particular farm, because it was so far behind in its ripening cycle. In fact, the entire farm had been harvested by mid-March the previous year, so the farm was almost two months behind. There were ripe cherries, completely green cherries, and coffee  blossoms within spitting distance of one another. Really weird, and not really explainable. But such is coffee. Ernesto has an analytical mind, but with coffee, you have to be open to mystery–or magic.

the "grids" are planted windbreaks for the coffee that grows in the middle (not Ernesto's farm--a neighbor's)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

green pacamara--see the points on the end?

Finca Alaska-El Salvador is steep!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, I suppose this is also a trip report of sorts, as it has to do with time spent at the NERBC (Northeast Regional Barista Championship) in March in Somerville, MA and the SCAA Convention in Anaheim the week before last. The short of it is this: I went to the NERBC just to check out the competition and say hello to some folks, entered the Northeast Regional Cup Tasters Championship (being held in conjunction with the Barista competition) last minute, and ended up winning the thing. This meant a free hotel room and a “buy” into the semi-finals (top 6) in Anaheim at the annual SCAA event. (It also meant purchasing a plane ticket, renting a car and finding the time to attend a convention I hadn’t planned on going to, not that I’m complaining or anything.)

Here’s the deal: each “competitor” is given eight sets of coffee.

In each set, two are the same, and one is different. The task is to pick out the one that doesn’t belong–just like on Sesame Street (or is it The Electric Company?).

Me on the left, Jen Howell (who came in second in Anaheim and cruised through her sets) on the right

It’s relatively easy with some of the sets, when the coffees are radically different (origins, processing styles, etc.), but some are more challenging. Your tongue and mind play tricks on you. When you get to cup #3 in the “triangle,” it’s difficult to recall the specific flavor and aromatic profile of the first one in the set. But that’s the point, in part. Aside from testing senses of taste and smell (and feel), the exercise challenges concentration and recollection.

I went eight for eight twice in Somerville, and now carry the prestigious title of Northeast Cup Tasting Champion 2010. No trophy or tiara, unfortunately. And in Anaheim?

Not quite as good. Perhaps it was the lights . . .

I got 6 out of 8. I didn’t embarrass myself, but I didn’t advance to the final three, either. I was surprised at one of the sets I got wrong–I was pretty sure I had picked out the odd cup–but the other one I missed was an educated guess, and I guessed wrong. As for the competition, Ben Kaminsky of Ritual–last year’s champion–won again. He’ll be going to London to compete in the World Championship.

What does this all mean? I don’t know. Perhaps that the descriptions that I write on the website and on the bags are not completely made up? I’ve been told I have good buds. Take it for what it’s worth. Not much, probably. But all in all, it was fun, and has provided additional incentive to work on my cupping skills. Who would have guessed: I was slurping and spitting coffee on a stage, and people actually sat and watched.

The above is, basically, a table top dry mill. It strips the parchment and remaining fruit (not so much for honeys, a lot for naturals) from the green bean itself. Honeys are tricky. We clogged up the machine a couple of times. But we finished, did a little bit of defect culling, and were ready to rock and roll.

naturals on the left, honeys on the right

And the cupping. We did it at Jose David Garridos’ really nice milling facility. He’s got a well-appointed and ample cupping room. No fooling around here.

We were late getting to another cupping of some of Garrido’s own coffees, but got to check them out on the cool side. Graciano’s own coffees were quite good, and I’m happy to report that, assuming all goes well, we’ll have a natural from Los Lajones on hand within a couple of months. On the cupping table, it tasted exactly–yes, exactly–like sweetened strawberries in syrup–the kind that you put on ice cream. Seriously. It was very, very good.

and yellow catuai.

From the base of the farm–more like a little valley, or lava flow–we ascend.

We arrive to see not gorillas in the mist, but these little guys:

Those are geisha coffee trees, growing at two thousand meters plus. It’s the highest geisha farm in Panama. Actually, it’s the highest farm in Panama, period.

Graciano is experimenting with the synergies of his farm by planting the coffee trees in the midst of the native bamboo that grows in the area. The bamboo provides additional shade as well as a windbreak.

It will be a while before these trees produce an actual harvest. Most coffee trees can begin producing fruit within four years of their being planted, but at such a high altitude growth rates slow way, way down. These geishas have been in the ground for about two years, but are still another six or seven years away from harvestable amounts of coffee cherry.

Happily, Graciano doesn’t mind waiting. (I imagine the fact that this coffee will most likely command spectacularly high prices makes the waiting a little easier.) But he’s also a long-term thinker. He told me that his farm has another two hundred years of life. Every seven hundred years–just like geological clockwork, you might say–the volcano hovering over Boquete has blown its top, and is currently sitting at about year 500 in the cycle.

Ngobe kids coming back from school

not too shabby

how 'bout them apples?

baby pacamara

Tongues in the front. Want to guess what's in the back? Hint: they come in pairs . . .

http://www.wcsh6.com/life/programming/local/207/story.aspx?storyid=115912&catid=50

Emporium in the afternoon rain

I spent the next few days with Graciano Cruz, a Panamanian farmer whom I had met last summer and who had extended the invitation for me to visit. Graciano owns two certifiied organic farms in Boquete, Emporia and Los Lajones, and in the last year has also started working with a number of farmers in El Salvador.

Los Lajones

Caturra and Catuai at 1700 meters

Graciano is a big proponent of honey and natural coffees. Actually, that’s not quite correct. It’s not that he’s a proponent of them, but that he believes in them–in their quality, and in their environmental footprint, which is relatively small. In particular, honey coffees need no water during processing. The most common way of processing coffee, especially in Central America, is to ferment the coffee cherry in water tanks for twelve hours or more, remove the pulp, and then ferment and wash them again to remove the remaining mucilage. But with honey coffees, the ripe cherries (they have to be very ripe) are put through a depulper and then placed directly on raised drying tables with the mucilage still intact.

Graciano and his honey coffee, Los Lajones

Thus the name “honey”: those bad boys are sticky. And sweet smelling. (When mucilage-covered coffees are dried on patios, they will actually drain a thick, sticky liquid that actually looks and feels like honey itself.) The aroma wafting from the tables (or African beds, as they are often called) is pretty nifty.

Honey on the bed, almost ready to go

 Water usage might not seem like that big of a deal, but waste water from coffee processing can be a real problem. It needs to be filtered and cleaned (getting most of the coffee solids out) before it is dumped–otherwise local water supplies suffer from the same kinds of things that you would expect from dumping tons of organic matter into a stream or creek.

Natural, or dry process, coffees have an even simpler path to the drying bed. They are picked, and they are placed on the bed to dry. That’s it. I’m a big fan of these kinds of coffees, when they are done well. The cherry fruit that is left intact on the coffee bean imparts sugars and fruit flavor and aroma to the bean during the drying process.

This year, Graciano will not be washing any of his coffee. All will be either honeys, or full naturals. The radical nature of this decision cannot be understated. For starters, these processes have more risk associated with them. If damp weather prolongs the drying period of the coffee, their cleanliness can be compromised, and the result can be off-notes that one might associate with, well, rotten fruit. But the beauty of the African beds is that they allow the coffee to dry more quickly and evenly than patios (which, of course, are solid, and so do not allow air to circulate fully around the bean.) And Graciano’s land is one of the more arid places in Boquete (as another farmer noted to me–perhaps with a little jealousy). Naturals are relatively controversial because of the risk involved, but so far, Graciano’s found success. And he’s willing to take the risk, because he believes in both the method and its low impact.

African beds at Los Lajones

A coupla other cool things about drying beds: they are relatively simple and cheap to build. Graciano makes his out of bamboo, which is native to the area and grows like, well, a weed. It comes back quickly. Then, over the bamboo frame goes some chicken wire and a breathable tarp. That’s it. There is no need for an expensive concrete patio, no permanent construction. And because they dry coffee relatively quickly, there is no need for any mechanical drying, fueled by wood or anything else. More on that later.