Fresh Cup Magazine | December 2016

LET’S TALK COFFEE | INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS | ROASTERY & CAFÉ SPOTLIGHTS | YUNNAN | COSTA RICA | TANZANIA

December 2016 » freshcup.com

MOTORCYCLE CAFÉS Page 46

The Coffee Collective in Copenhagen Page 28 freshcup.com | November 2014

T H E M AGA Z I N E FO R S P E C I A LT Y C O F F E E & T E A P R O F E S S I O N A L S S I N C E 1 9 9 2

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FEATURES

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CAFFEINE RACERS

YUNNAN COFFEE

At the junction of roaring engines and hand-poured latte art is an inviting space for exploration, community, and learning.

On the mountainsides of Southern Yunnan, coffee shares a rich history together with the people who farm it.

BY TIM HEINZE

BY ELLIE BRADLEY

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HOME-GROWN COFFEE: THE EVOLUTION OF COSTA RICA’S CAFÉ CULTURE

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TANZANIA: A RISING STAR ON THE WORLD COFFEE MAP

After two centuries as a top producer, the quality of coffee consumed in Costa Rica is catching up to the diverse, flavorful coffees the country is known for exporting.

Thanks to the Ngorongoro Coffee Group, Tanzanian coffee farmers are coming together to share knowledge, expanding market opportunities and helping the East African country emerge as its own star on the world coffee map.

BY KETTI WILHELM

BY NATHANAEL MAY

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

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DEPARTMENTS

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December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine » Vol. 25 » No. 12

THE FILTER

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#TRENDING

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Let’s Talk Coffee Mexico, p. 18

Marketplace, p. 22

The Coffee Collective

Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award, p. 20

Green Coffee Sourcing

BY MICHAEL KAISER, p. 26

Copenhagen, Denmark

IN THE ROASTERY

MANE, p. 21

BY ELIZABETH CHAI

INTERVIEWS 30 CHRISTOPHE MONTAGNON

32 DAN SIBOMANA

Scientific director for World Coffee Research

Question Coffee barista and roaster from Rwanda

34 JULIETA VÁZQUEZ RIVERA Café owner and two-time Mexico barista champion

CAFÉ SPOTLIGHTS

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42

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PORTLAND ROASTING COFFEE

KROSS COFFEE WORKS

THREE PINES COFFEE

COLLECTIVE ESPRESSO

Portland International Airport

BY ELLIE BRADLEY

Chaniá, Crete

BY ELIZABETH HOTSON

Salt Lake City, Utah

BY AUSTIN WRIGHT

Cincinnati, Ohio

BY MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH

12 16 80 82 FROM THE EDITOR | CONTRIBUTORS | EVENTS CALENDAR | ADVERTISER INDEX 10

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

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FROM THE EDITOR Our Annual Coffee Almanac THIS FALL, I WAS FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO ATTEND

CONNECT WITH US

/FreshCupMagazine

@FreshCupMag

@FreshCupMag

ON THE COVER: MOTORCYCLE CAFÉS See See Moto Coffee Co. in northeast Portland, OR

ELLIE BRADLEY, EDITOR ellie@freshcup.com

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

Photo by Cynthia Meadors

EDITOR P HOTO BY CYNTHIA MEA DO RS; YUNNA N CO FFEE BAG P HOTO BY TIM HEINZ E

the Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award event in New York. I found myself in a small meeting room, surrounded by coffee growers from nine countries who had the unique opportunity to share their insights and challenges as growers, and benefit from the stories and experiences of others. While there are more than nine growing countries (as evidenced by Dave Selden’s awesome map on page 22), the group represented the diversity throughout the global grower community. Despite a range of cultures and languages, the conversation and coffee flowed, and the cohesion was evident, leaving me feeling encouraged to know we are one united group tackling industry-wide issues like changing climate.

It seems fitting to have our Coffee Almanac close out the 2016 editorial year. Just like that meeting room in New York, this issue is packed with stories and insights from across the globe. These are stories of people coming together to solve problems, to challenge standards of quality, and to help their neighbors.

Nathanael May recounts a recent trip to Tanzania, where a group of farms has come together to elevate coffee quality and make the country a standout producer. Tim Heinze relays some of his experience living in Yunnan, China, through the story of Hu XiXiang, a Chinese coffee farmer who has managed to thrive despite weathering all the challenges of the nation’s young coffee market.

We’re taken to a roastery in Denmark taking a new approach to the roaster-farmer relationship; we travel to cafés in Greece and Costa Rica, where coffee culture is rapidly growing and changing. We hear from baristas bridging the farm-to-café knowledge gap in Mexico and Rwanda, from scientists leading the way in preserving the future of coffee through cutting-edge research, and how your next cup of airport coffee might not be so bad.

This month, we also have a collection of stories on motorcycle cafés. These spaces have become a gathering place for motorcycle and coffee enthusiasts alike—welcoming, inclusive environments that encourage community, exploration, and, learning.

The reach of coffee is overwhelmingly broad. You and I can only dream of seeing all the places and people touched by the supply chain. But by coming together to share stories and experiences, we can learn from each other, building a community that’s stronger than ever.

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

CONTRIBUTORS MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH From eighth-grade science projects to opening a café, Dave Hart and Dustin Miller share a history of successful collaboration. In a café spotlight on page 44, Michael Butterworth tells how the duo came to open Cincinnati’s Collective Espresso. Butterworth is a barista and trainer at Louisville’s Quills Coffee and a founding editor of the Coffee Compass, a website covering craft coffee culture around the world.

ELIZABETH CHAI Rather than asking farmers to follow more rules, the Coffee Collective established green purchasing guidelines for roasters.

Elizabeth Chai takes us “In the Roastery” with the founders of Copenhagen’s Coffee Collective, showing how they developed a direct trade model seeking more from roasters (page 28). Chai built her graphic design career as a coffee shop dweller and coffee consumer. Now based in Portland, she focuses her design, branding, illustration, and photography skills exclusively within the specialty coffee industry.

ELIZABETH HOTSON A country in financial turmoil and social upheaval couldn’t keep Sotos Michael from pursuing his dream of building a coffee empire in the ancient Greek island of Crete. His determination led to rise of Kross Coffee Works onto the global coffee scene. Elizabeth Hotson tells Michael’s story in a café spotlight on page 40. Hotson is a Londonbased journalist. A fan of a good cortado, she also loves discovering a great flat white where she least expects to find one.

MICHAEL KAISER Over the past seven years, Michael Kaiser has managed quality and trade on every level of the coffee supply chain, from quality control and commercial relationships at Cuatro M’s Finca and Beneficio El Manzano in El Salvador, to working as a production roaster at Stumptown Coffee–LA. He currently trades coffee for Bodhi Leaf Coffee Traders in Orange, California. In our special “#Trending” section, Kaiser looks at how green coffee sourcing is changing for a new era of roasters (page 26).

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

RACHEL NORTHROP The fall calendar of coffee events wrapped up with a slew of conferences and shows around the globe. In the Filter, Rachel Northrop recounts the flurry of activities at the MANE coffee conference, a gathering of coffee professionals in Providence, Rhode Island (page 21). Rachel Northrop is a sales rep with Ally Coffee’s specialty importing division and the author of When Coffee Speaks: Stories from and of Latin American Coffeepeople.

NATHANAEL MAY Nestled among coffee-producing titans Burundi and Rwanda, Tanzania has struggled to stand out on the map of African growing regions. On page 72, Nathanael May shares how organized efforts from local groups are successfully elevating the quality of coffee produced in the country. May is director of coffee and green coffee buyer for Portland Roasting Coffee.

TIM HEINZE Tim Heinze is the general manager and owner of Hani Coffee Co and Yunnan Coffee Traders. These companies are committed to seeing the expansion of the specialty coffee industry from seed to cup in China. In “Yunnan Coffee,” Heinze details the rise of coffee production in China through the story of Hu XiXiang, one of the region’s farmers (page 56). Heinze and his family reside in Puer, Yunnan.

AUSTIN WRIGHT Austin Wright is a photographer, writer, and veteran barista based in Salt Lake City.

Born and raised in Texas, Wright moved to higher altitudes to study English Literature at the University of Utah. This month, Wright shares the story of Three Pines Coffee in a café spotlight on page 42. The cart-turned-café is tucked in the heart of downtown Salt Lake.

KETTI WILHELM Costa Rica has long been known for coffee exported from its eight growing regions, but the quality of coffee consumed by Costa Ricans has typically been low quality. In “Home-Grown Coffee,” Ketti Wilhelm examines Costa Rica’s transforming coffee culture (page 64). Wilhelm is a freelance journalist; after two year’s traveling the world, she’s now based in Milan, Italy.

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THE FILTER A F ine Blend of News and Notes

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n Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 250 coffee professionals from twenty countries gathered together to discuss “Prospering in a New Reality,” the theme of Let’s Talk Coffee Mexico.

Designed to unite both sides of the supply chain, the event played host

Let’s Talk Coffee is organized by Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers. The first LTC event took place in Mexico more than a decade ago.

Sustainable Harvest founder and CEO Dave Griswold reflected on how the industry has changed in that time.

SUSTAINABLE HARVEST FOUNDER AND CEO DAVID GRISWOLD WAS PLEASED WITH THE OUTCOME OF THE EVENT, WHICH INCLUDED LECTURES FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS ON TOPICS LIKE CROP DIVERSIFICATION, GLOBAL MARKET INSIGHTS, AND BUILDING SPECIALTY COFFEE MARKETS IN PRODUCING COUNTRIES.

to producers, roasters, baristas, café owners, and other industry members from around the world. Over 60 percent of attendees were from origin, with producer leaders making up 40 percent of participants.

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“There has been a massive loss of production due to coffee rust disease, as well as challenges from rural migration and a lack of government and private sector investment in the rural coffee sector,” Griswold said in

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

a statement following the event. “As a company that has had an in-country presence for more than two decades, we felt that given the recent struggles of Mexico’s coffee industry it was important to bring the Let’s Talk Coffee event back to Mexico.”

Griswold was pleased with the outcome of the event, which included lectures from industry leaders on topics like crop diversification, global market insights, and building specialty coffee markets in producing countries.

“Most powerful was to see how the event catalyzed conversations of real action—among the coffee-producing organizations, government, and the specialty coffee industry leaders to explore how all of those involved in specialty coffee can prosper in the new reality,” he said.

Following the conclusion of the conference, a group of attendees headed south to the state of Chiapas to visit farms that belong to a cooperative based in the city of San Fernando.

Farmers and cooperative members shared strategies they’ve been using to replant and combat coffee leaf rust.

P HOTOS BY BRYAN C LIFTO N

LET’S TALK COFFEE MEXICO

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THE FILTER A Fine Blend of News and Notes

ERNESTO ILLY INTERNATIONAL COFFEE AWARD

ANDREA ILLY

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n a crisp November morning in New York, coffee producers from nine countries gathered to celebrate the Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award.

The award seeks to recognize coffee growers’ commitment to quality and sustainability, emphasizing Illycaffè’s commitment to working hand-inhand with producers to pursue the best quality of coffee. A symposium took place in the morning, followed by a formal gala at the United Nations that evening.

Illycaffè chairman Andrea Illy spoke at the morning seminar, along with Illycaffè CEO Massimiliano and Pogliani Albert Scalla of INTL FCStone. The three speakers discussed the outlook of coffee through the lenses of chang-

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ing climate and market volatility, outlining steps for protecting the future of arabica coffee.

Illy said it was the first time by design the company was able to gather so many growers together in one place. “Growers dream to be in direct contact with consumers,” he said, “and consumers dream to know growers because of the narrative and the discovery. So, let’s make it happen.”

Illy described New York as the ideal place for the event to take place—in addition to being a hub of consumer attention, it also is the home of the stock exchange for coffee and the United Nations.

Competing countries were Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, and Nicaragua. Prior to the

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

event, three finalists were selected from each country by the Illy Quality Lab, then a representative from each country was chosen by an internal jury. The day of the awards gala, an international independent jury tasted different preparations made by each of the nine country winners to choose the “best of the best” coffee of the 2015-2016 season’s crops.

After the jury tastings, Ethiopia’s Ahmed Legesse was awarded with the Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award. The jury described the coffee as having an intense, yet delicate flavor. Its unique, high-intensity floral and jasmine notes, mixed with a slight hint of citrus and fresh fruit, set it apart from the competitors. An honorable special mention went to Juan Angel Milla of Honduras.

P HOTO S C OURTESY OF ILLYCA FFÈ

WINNER AHMED LEGESSE

MANE

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arly last month, several hundred industry professionals convened at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, for the sixth annual MANE Coffee Conference. The assembled baristas, retailers, roasters, and importers of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast devoted two and a half days to training, education, exploration, and networking.

MANE has evolved from a group of just shy of fifty attendees and made up primarily of baristas, to hundreds of attendees, including many producers, putting into practice the interconnectivity and seed-tocup relationship that specialty coffee preaches.

Rik Kleinfeldt of Providence roaster New Harvest Coffee is one of the event’s founders and lead organizers. “We say it’s better every year, but I feel like we mean it even more this year,” Kleinfeldt says.

“Baristas are interacting with farmers, which is the ultimate goal of an industry event like this—to bring both ends of the supply chain together.”

For importer Samuel Demisse of Keffa Coffee, an expert in Ethiopian coffee, “the comparative Peru and Colombia varietal tasting was the most interesting.”

Organizers also agreed that the hands-on sessions were the most favored by participants.

MANE is also known for its panels, which tackle difficult issues. The Effective Community Action session addressed cafés’ struggles to contribute locally and support projects at origin, while keeping business viable. Emeran Langmaid, green buyer and co-owner of A&E Coffee in Amherst, New Hampshire, challenged coffee professionals to dedicate as much energy to sharing their skills as to learning new ones. “We are so driven to understand more about coffee that it can become overwhelmingly about what we take in and not what we’re giving back,” she said in her presentation. “What are your strengths and passions, and how can you volunteer to share them?”

In his keynote speech, competitive barista and café owner Charles Babinski also issued a call to action, arguing that cafés and baristas have a responsibility to leverage their position in the fabric of a community by providing exceptional service to every single customer, regardless of coffee knowledge or drink preference.

Coffee is always a chance for positive connection, and MANE was a reminder that coffee professionals have an obligation to ensure that such valuable opportunities never go to waste.

—Rachel Northrop

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#TRENDING Marketplace

COFFEE MARKS THE SPOT Coffee’s global connection is just one of its many compelling characteristics. In one afternoon, you could cup your way around the globe, sampling from a mill in Kenya, a family farm in Panama, and a cooperative in China. Around the World in 40 Cups of Coffee allows you to bring a visual component to your coffee tasting explorations, mapping each cup and preparation method.

The large-format wall mat was developed by Dave Selden, designer of the popular 33 Cups of Coffee tasting journals.

“When I was researching 33 Cups, one of the things that really captured my imagination was thinking of the far-flung places and people responsible for the coffee in my cup,” Selden says.

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

The map is printed on 100-percent-recycled paper (coffee-colored, of course) and lists forty producing countries. Each country is highlighted with eyecatching metallic ink and paired with the same flavor wheel found in Selden’s tasting notebooks. The goal is for coffee drinkers to try to taste and log coffee from each country, noting the origin, roaster, and variety directly on the map. A space is also provided to note brewing methods used in each tasting, helping users note patterns in their preparations.

Around the World is a great addition for cupping rooms and kitchens alike. Rolled in gift-ready tubes, the maps are available online and will appear soon at specialty shops carrying 33 Cups. A complete list of brickand-mortar retailers can be found at 33books.com.

WHAT THE PUQ Imagine that every time you loaded your portafilter with grounds, you could guarantee a level tamp, constant pressure, and easy cleaning. Though it sounds like a dream, the Puqpress team sought to make these features a reality in the design of the their Puqpress precision coffee tamper.

Espresso is set apart from other brewing methods because of the pressure used to force water through the grounds. Uniform tamping is essential in espresso preparation; when grounds are uneven, water finds the path of least resistance through the coffee, leading to uneven extraction and unbalanced flavors.

Puqpress controls the variables of tamping through mechanized action. A sensor recognizes when the portafilter is placed in the cradle of the tamper and automatically activates. Thanks to the patented clamping mechanism, the Puqpress can be used with all sizes of portafilters. Pressure can be set between ten and thirty kilograms, giving a consistent tamp pressure each time, regardless of which barista is using the machine.

A special cleaning mode whisks away excess grounds, ensuring a clean start each time.

Puqpress is the result of two Dutch brothers putting their heads together—one with a background in coffee, the other a mechanical engineer. After considering how much the quality of espresso relied on precision and control, they questioned why tamping was

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#TRENDING Marketplace still done by hand. Figuring this was a problem they could solve, they set to work with lots of ideas, coffee, drawings and test settings until they produced the first beta version of the precision coffee tamper. The Puqpress now sells in fifteen countries. puqpress.com

DO YOUR OWN BREW Many coffee enthusiasts enjoy their daily cup (or two), but rely on the expertise of their neighborhood barista to prepare quality coffee. For those who have yet to attempt or perfect making café-quality coffee at home, Brew: Better Coffee at Home offers a solution.

Author Brian W. Jones leads readers through the process of home coffee brewing, demystifying coffee’s complexities, discussing how to buy the best beans and brewing equipment, and offering in-depth primers for mastering various slow-coffee techniques. Jones also supplies a collection of recipes for creative coffee-based beverages and cocktails.

Brew is designed to be an indispensable and accessible guide for any specialty coffee lover who wants to elevate the in-home coffee experience. The hardcover, 160-page book was launched as the first of three debut titles from Dovetail, a new publishing company that pairs impactful books with original products. Brew can be purchased with a pourover press, pour-over dripper, and set of stoneware mugs from manufacturing partner W&P Design. The book and brewing equipment are available online at wandpdesign.com.

OCD In the busy morning rush at a café, distributing grounds in a portafilter is often accomplished with the quick sweep of the barista’s index finger.

This method is problematic because each barista will sweep with a different motion, leaving a slight mound or divot in the coffee, resulting in an espresso puck with inconsistent density.

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

The desire for a better distribution tool led to the development of the ONA Coffee Distributor (OCD). First conceived by World Barista Champion Sasa Sestic in 2001, the OCD has evolved into a valuable tool for baristas looking to improve the quality and consistency of espresso.

The OCD has four angled slopes that consistently, efficiently, and evenly glide the coffee grounds around in a circle, resulting in a puck with even density throughout. The tool eliminates the need for collapsing grinds after dosing, meaning that baristas have one less step to worry about.

The OCD features spacers that allow depth adjustment to account for different doses, roasts, and densities of coffee. The adjustment controls allow the tool to be used with very low doses or larger baskets. The distributor was tested at different cafés and training rooms with various espresso machine models to better gauge the tool’s efficacy. Blind taste testing found a clear trend that OCD-distributed shots had rounder acidity, lower astringency, clear finish, and a smoother transition of elements over the palate. The OCD is available to order through onacoffee.com.au.

MORE THAN DECENT In addition to the creation of a home espresso machine that facilitates world-class coffeehouse espresso at home, Decent Espresso has created an arsenal of barista tools designed to achieve a perfect, repeatable result. The Decent Tamper is calibrated to twentyfive pounds of pressure and perfectly fitted to the inside of a fifty-eight-millimeter portafilter basket.

The twenty-five-pound tamp fully compresses coffee grounds while reducing the potential for muscle or joint strain and the risk of repetitive stress injury.

The perfect fit of the tamper to the portafilter basket keeps tamps perfectly vertical and won’t leave an untamped ring, helping baristas achieve a perfect puck, shot after shot. The Decent Tamper comes with the added bonus of a lifetime guarantee; if any component breaks it will be replaced for free. Options for the tamper include a handle designed for smaller hands and a thirty-pound spring for baristas who prefer the SCAA standard. decentespresso.com

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#TRENDING Green coffee sourcing for the new era of coffee roasters

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or specialty coffee roasters, the supply of highquality green coffee is perhaps the most important element of their business. Securing this supply comes down to two important aspects: quality and logistics. How well a coffee roaster can balance these two aspects will ultimately determine their ability to keep up with a rapidly developing industry.

Micro-roasters face a number of challenges in the process of sourcing coffee.

In the midst of running a business, it’s difficult to allocate time and finances to sourcing the best coffee or traveling to origin. As a smaller roaster (roasting less than a container of coffee each year) the lack of sufficient volumes, as well as poor proximity to a green coffee supplier, can also mean higher coffee shipping costs per pound than those paid by larger operations.

More recently, ideas have been developing at the import and export level of the coffee supply chain to even the playing field for these smaller, emerging coffee roasters. These developments target the spirit of micro-roasters, who value quality, but also information and the relationships that connect them directly to the origin. This spirit also

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celebrates a new kind of efficiency in coffee sourcing, where buying smaller can actually mean getting much more.

Carmo Coffees is an exporting company in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil.

They’ve worked for many years to supply coffee importers and roasters all around the world with some of Brazil’s finest specialty coffee. Their coffees have been roasted by established companies such as Intelligentsia Coffee, and smaller local favorites like the Aussie Bean in Old Town Orange, California.

Over the past few years, Carmo has been working alongside the likes of Professor Flavio Borém of Lavras Federal University to study the influences of coffee packaging on coffee quality.

The result of their research has culminated into the development of a new and smaller type of coffee packaging, consisting of multiple layers of paper and high-barrier plastic, and holding just thirty kilograms of green coffee.

“These packages offer good resistance to mechanical forces and avoids the interaction with air or humidity,” says João Carvalho, director of marketing for Carmo Coffees. “The research also shows that it allows the beans to keep almost 100 percent of their attributes for up to eighteen months of storage.”

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

Carmo Coffees ships these thirty kilogram bags in container-sized quantities, but they’re also taking advantage of the opportunity to offer them in small quantities, directly to coffee roasters, packaging them two at a time into palletized wooden crates, and shipping them via air freight service.

“Our goal is to reach our traditional importers as well as coffee roasters themselves—particularly in the case of small roasteries that cannot afford to buy full containers, but want to receive exclusive micro-lots,” Carvalho says. “We chose to work with thirty kilogram bags, to keep up with the global tendencies of shipping and storing fewer quantities inside each bag.”

Carmo Coffees’ new packaging will allow roasters to secure small quantities of micro-lot coffees and ship directly from origin to their roasting facilities. Though more expensive than traditional container shipments, the delivery is much faster. To a small roaster considering coffees to roast for a competition, or simply desiring a specific origin sooner than his competitors, the extra couple dollars per pound for a highly specialized coffee with faster delivery plays to their competitive advantage, and significantly

PH OTO BY M ICHA EL K AISER

BY MICHAEL KAISER

reduces the distance between the origin and the roaster.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specialty coffee importer Cafe Imports, has been developing an idea of their own.

Working with a wide range of coffee roasters, Cafe Imports noticed a number of added challenges and inefficiencies faced by new and emerging coffee roasters who want to source highquality coffee, but may not have the financial means to purchase full pallets or even full bags of coffee.

They made it their goal to offer the same quality of coffee and service to these emerging roasters, supporting growth of a new era.

The result was La Bodega, small bag specialty green coffee available in fifty-pound quantities, featuring select offerings of unique coffee origins, shipped for free to anywhere in the United States.

“The coffee buying process can seem daunting, and inaccessible,” said Omar Herrera, director of La Bodega. “Our goal was to get ahead of those challenges, and allow this new type of emerging roaster to feel confident to dive in.”

La Bodega allows roasters to access their complete list of offerings online, supplying information on the coffee, producer, cupping scores, taste profile, and pricing—-as well as access to various certifications for individual coffees. With these tools, roasters can ultimately order and manage their weekly or monthly green coffee needs from a smartphone.

“We want to allow roasters to work within their means,” Herrera says. “We wanted a product that provided ease, convenience, accessibility, and that was conclusive.”

GrainPro for every coffee, transparent pricing, free shipping, and no lift gate costs all simplify the number of questions a roaster must consider before purchasing a coffee, reducing the added costs that might otherwise persuade them to purchase excess coffee in order to

balance shipping costs. In an industry that continues to grow, La Bodega distinguishes itself by offering free shipping.

“More and more people are seeing coffee as this thing that they want to be a part of,” says Herrera. “We want to lower the barriers of entry, and open up quality coffee for new types of roasters to be a part of the experience of what Cafe Imports is at origin.”

For La Bodega and Carmo Coffees, their impact on the world of specialty coffee is something they both humbly leave for time to tell. For me, however, there’s no question about their potential, not only to find success, but to offer a path from origin to roaster with the fewest roadblocks, and guarantee this new and emerging segment of coffee roasters the absolute most from every purchasing decision they make.

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IN THE ROASTERY The Coffee Collective, Copenhagen Story and photos BY ELIZABETH CHAI

T

KLAUS THOMSEN

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

he Coffee Collective is a roaster quite unlike the rest. Though it started as simply a warehouse roasting space—founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Peter Dupont, Klaus Thomsen, Casper Rasmussen, and Linus Törsäter—the Coffee Collective has since grown to three cafés, plus a full roasting and production facility that receives worldwide recognition.

At their inception, the founders could have boasted their trove of National and World Barista and Cup Tasters Championship titles, but thought they could offer more in the coffee world by focusing on the collective values that form the bedrock of their company.

“A lot of people think the ‘Collective’ is our four founders,” Jakob Dupont explained at a recent tour of the Godthåbsvej roastery. “We are actually a collective between farmer, roaster, and barista.

This is even represented in the three points of the Coffee Collective’s [triangular] logo.”

While I sipped a pour-over of their Kenya Kieni, Klaus Thomsen sat with me and explained why the Coffee Collective’s commitment to direct trade sets them apart.

“We wanted to build a business that would focus on more transparency, paying farmers better, and working with a higher quality of coffee, seeing it through all the way to the consumer,” he said. “When we first set out, it was with a set of ideas based on our previous experience buying green coffee. We could tell the market was broken, and there was a paradox in that people in consuming countries were paying high prices for coffee, yet producers were getting less than their actual cost of production.”

The group sought after a paradigm shift in the roaster-farmer relationship. Thomsen explained they figured if consumers were willing to pay high prices for coffee, surely there must be money in the value chain that could be delivered to farmers, as long as the roasters were committed to seeing this through.

Rather than asking farmers to follow rules, as other certifications do, their idea was to first set rules for roasters purchasing green coffee. They

AS THE COFFEE COLLECTIVE LOOKS FORWARD, THEY PLAN TO FURTHER DEVELOP CURRENT FARM RELATIONSHIPS BY BUYING MORE COFFEE FROM EACH OF THE FARMERS—RATHER THAN BUYING VERY LITTLE FROM A GREAT NUMBER OF FARMERS.

trademarked the term direct trade, protecting it from misuse. Thomsen says that while they’ve trademarked the name, they have also invited other roasters to join them, “providing they will live up to the same principles of transparency.”

As the Coffee Collective looks forward, they plan to further develop current farm relationships by buying more coffee from each of the farmers— rather than buying very little from a great number of farmers. “[This] provides more stability and a higher income for the farmers,” Thomsen said, “which in turn means better quality for us.”

When in Copenhagen, visit any of the three retail locations: Jægersborggade, the original—a small, friendly space designed so baristas serve drinks as if from their own kitchen; Torvehallerne, an expansive open bar inside the popular, centrallylocated Nørrebro market and food hall; or God-

thåbsvej, the tranquil neighborhood cafe where The Coffee Collective houses their offices, roasting, and production.

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INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPHE MONTAGNON (World Coffee Research)

CHRISTOPHE shows off the SCAA’s Sustainability Award received by World Coffee Research.

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hristophe Montagnon is the scientific director for World Coffee Research. He chatted with us about some of the projects World Coffee Research has been working on over the last year and what’s upcoming for 2017.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

TELL ME ABOUT SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS FOR WCR IN 2016? ANY PROJECTS OR DEVELOPMENTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF? There are so many things! We published the first-ever catalog of coffee varieties for Mezoamerica and the Caribbean (one for Africa is on the way in 2017); we also published a technical manual for controlling coffee leaf rust. We launched a global coffee monitoring program that will grow to have hundreds of sites across the world; we added three new countries to our International Multilocation Variety Trial (IMLVT), which also won the SCAA’s Sustainability Award this year. We also produced the first baby coffee plants in our global F1 hybrid coffee breeding program.

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THE SENSORY LEXICON WAS RELEASED AT THE BEGINNING OF 2016. HOW HAS THAT INFORMED THE WORK OF WCR OVER THE COURSE OF THE YEAR? We are actively using the Lexicon to evaluate coffee in our research programs. For example, one of the PhD students working with us, Fabian Echavarria, is looking at the complex interactions between coffee leaf rust, plant yield, and quality, using the Lexicon to evaluate whether yield and rust infections impact flavor and whether those impacts can be tied back to molecular and genetic-level changes in the plant. We will use the Lexicon for similar evaluations in our breeding work and in the IMLVT over time.

WCR WORKS ON A MULTITUDE OF INITIATIVES. WERE THERE ANY PROJECTS OR FOCUS AREAS THAT GAINED NOTABLE TRACTION IN 2016?

I think people are really beginning to understand that climate change is a threat to the very future of coffee. Scientists have been discussing this for four or five years. But this was the year that the industry really began discussing it and taking it seriously.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE WAYS COFFEE PROFESSIONALS CAN SUPPORT WCR? The biggest way, I hate to say it because it’s what everyone says, but the biggest way is to support us financially.

The work we do, because it’s research, has to be done in labs or other carefully controlled environments—it’s not so easy to just go out and do the work we are doing. So, we need the coffee industry to support the work.

Through our Check-Off program, roasters can contribute half a penny per pound of green coffee bought through participating importers. Or, anyone can donate any amount through our website.

LOOKING TO 2017, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE GOALS FOR WCR—IN THE LAB, IN THE FIELD, AND IN THE CUP? We will be doing a lot more work in the field, and many of the projects we have spent the last four years building will be giving us results. For example, we have spent four years implementing our IMLVT in twenty-two countries—it’s the largest global collaborative trial in coffee ever—and in 2017 we will start to see results of how coffee varieties are performing differently in different locations.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE TIMELINE OF THE IMLVT PROJECT AND HOPE FOR ITS OUTCOMES. From 2012 to 2014, we were building the infrastructure of the program, getting agreement from countries to participate and to share their coffee varieties. Beginning in 2014, seeds of the thirty-five varieties were shipped from donor countries to an in vitro tissue culture lab in Florida, so that disease-free in vitro plantlets could be safely sent to participating countries. In 2016, over 50,000 plantlets had been shipped to sixteen of the twenty-two participating countries and grown in nurseries; now, nearly all of the countries have transferred the plants from the nursery to the field.

From here, the trial will run in perpetuity, as long as national institutions are able to maintain funding to support their experimental sites. We will look at the results over many years to come to try to unlock some of the mysteries of how coffee grows and thrives.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER AREAS WCR HOPES TO IMPACT IN THE COMING YEAR? We will also be installing dozens or even hundreds of small trial sites on working coffee farms across the world for our Global Coffee Monitoring Platform, which will evaluate how different coffee varieties and soil nutrition approaches impact farmer profitability. With Crop Trust, we will launch our strategy for protecting coffee genetic resources around the world, which are essential for the future of coffee

breeding. And we will continue to work to get better information about coffee varieties to farmers by expanding our coffee catalog to include Africa, and to expand access to healthy and genetically pure coffee plants through the expansion of our Verified program. Our breeding work will continue and accelerate as we begin working on “arabusta” coffees—new (non-GMO) varieties that combine traits from arabica and robusta plants.

ALONG THAT SAME LINE OF THOUGHT, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE CHALLENGES COFFEE FACES IN THE SHORT-TERM AND THE LONG-TERM? In the short term, the problems are familiar: in any given season in any given place, farmers routinely face lack of profitability due to price volatility, diseases and pests, droughts or other extreme weather, difficulty finding labor to pick the coffee, and the list goes on. Long term the challenges are similar, but they stretch out and magnify— extreme weather becomes more common, overall temperatures rise leading to loss of quality/quantity of coffee, diseases and pests become more problematic, chronic lack of profitability forces farmers out of farming. I think we are looking at a dire situation for coffee. In a few decades, or even less, there will be less land suitable for growing coffee, and fewer people willing to do the work unless we can change the dynamic.

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PHOTO BY BRYAN CLIFTO N

INTERVIEW: DAN SIBOMANA (Barista and roaster at Question Coffee Café in Rwanda)

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hen Dan Sibomana got the e-mail that he’d been invited to Let’s Talk Coffee as a guest of Sustainable Harvest, Equator Coffees, and Boot Coffee, he says it was like a dream come true. Sibomana had never been on a plane—he’d never even traveled out of his home country of Rwanda. Sibomana attended the Let’s Talk Coffee conference in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in October, followed by a couple weeks in the Bay Area training in both retail and roasting, including an SCAA Roasting Level 1 course.

Sibomana manages the Kigali outpost of Question Coffee, owned by Sustainable Harvest. Dan first came into coffee working as a cleaner for Bourbon Coffee, where he eventually learned to roast. He’s now educating a new generation of coffee professionals in Rwanda, helping bridge the gap between farm and café.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

HOW DID YOU COME TO WORK IN COFFEE? I had the dream of going to school to study business—I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was my dream, but it didn’t work, so I started working in the roasting room at Bourbon Coffee. My first job was as a cleaner. I eventually got to work in the roasting room, keeping track of numbers, how much had been roasted and how much had been delivered to stores.

SO THAT’S WHERE YOU LEARNED TO ROAST? Yes, I met a guy named Jeff. He told me, ‘Dan, this work is very important and can change your life.’ So he trained me. He had me watch him roast so I could learn what to do.

After he left I became the head roaster.

HOW LONG WERE YOU WITH BOURBON? Four years. I was really interested in what the baristas were doing. When I was roasting, I wasn’t able to meet customers; I was really interested in meeting customers, to figure out what they liked. I had some skills on the espresso machine, so I got a job at a hotel in Kigali where I was a barista.

I wouldn’t say I was the best barista, but I could talk coffee and everyone was amazed on how I was able to explain coffee and the value chain, so that’s how I was able to pass the interview.

TELL ME HOW YOU GOT CONNECTED WITH SUSTAINABLE HARVEST. I worked at the hotel for about a year, then went to work in a more rural area where I was giving coffee tours and 95 percent of the guests were foreigners. I would brew coffee using the french press. This is where I met Marcus [Young]. He really liked me, he asked me to make coffee. I did my best, I didn’t have equipment to make good coffee, but through the french press I brewed a coffee that he liked and he asked me

if I could join Sustainable Harvest. By that time, I wanted to go back to the city where I could meet people. I was really interested in getting involved with how coffee was being consumed in the city, how companies were roasting. I said to him ‘yes I can work in Kigali.’

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WHEN YOU CAME TO SUSTAINABLE HARVEST? Marcus trained me. I had no idea how strict espresso was.

He trained me how to make a delicious cup of coffee, how to taste flavors in coffee—the acidity, body, sweetness—he trained me on the taste of good espresso. Through his training, it was also my job to make sure the wholesale customers were doing the same as I was learning.

WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE WHEN YOU FIRST CAME TO QUESTION COFFEE IN KIGALI? I had the responsibility of taking care of retail customers, making their drinks, making sure they get the story about our coffee, who brews our coffee, why our coffee is good, what makes our coffee taste delicious. I tell the story of how we are trying to support women coffee cooperatives. I changed from the role of barista trainer and now I focus on retail customers and managing the café. Currently we have a new wholesale trainer. She’s an amazing woman, she’s doing a great job.

NOW THAT YOU’RE MANAGING THE CAFÉ, WHAT ARE THINGS YOU’RE TRYING TO DO TO TEACH THE LOCAL COMMUNITY ABOUT COFFEE? I have three main things I’m trying do. First, I want my fellow baristas to get the basic knowledge in coffee, to know the quality, to know how to serve, to get the story about the beans they are serving. Another thing I’m trying to do is make sure at least in the local market, people have knowledge on what the best coffee tastes like. I want to make sure at least Rwandese who walk in our café walk out with a new experience of coffee. I will do that through training, asking questions. If I hear how he feels or understands coffee, that will give me guidance on how I can help. Another thing is cupping. It’s hard to tell someone a coffee smells like chocolate or berries, or tastes like caramel, or has a high acidity, or is well-balanced. I saw something this week at Let’s Talk Coffee that was really helpful for me—the triangulation tasting. It’s fun, but you learn a lot. I will talk to my director to see how this kind of cupping can motivate people to get interested in cupping.

WHAT OTHER THINGS HAVE YOU TAKEN AWAY FROM YOUR TIME AT LET’S TALK COFFEE? There are people here who I only knew on social media that I finally got to meet face to face. We took photos, we shared tequila, we danced. It was such a pleasure.

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INTERVIEW: JULIETA VÁZQUEZ RIVERA (Café owner and two-time Mexico barista champion) Expo Café—she was the first woman to win Mexico’s national barista competition. When I saw her, I didn’t have any idea what she was doing. But she was passionate. I saw her very, very happy and that’s the moment when I told my fiancé, ‘I don’t know what she’s doing, but I want to do that.’

That’s where my bug for coffee started to grow. I started training for my first regional competition.

SO YOU WENT FROM KNOWING NOTHING ABOUT COFFEE TO COMPETING IN A MATTER OF MONTHS?

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WHEN YOU SAY YOU NOTICED A CHANGED IN YOURSELF AS A BARISTA, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU NOTICED? Confidence. I’m very shy. And I started to believe in myself, which is a difficult thing to accept, just being a human being.

I started to trust myself more and make decisions, not only in my business, but in my social life, too. As a professional, I have more questions. That’s why I decided to compete again.

I figured out that you never know enough about coffee. Not only preparing to brew it or roast it, but the farm, the process—everything. That’s what keeps me here.

YOU GOT INTO COFFEE THROUGH YOUR FAMILY’S BUSINESS. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THAT.

AND YOU DIDN’T COMPETE THIS YEAR, YOU JUDGED? WHAT WAS THAT EXPERIENCE LIKE FOR YOU?

My family has bakeries, so I grew up tasting and smelling bread. My mom was looking to grow her business, so she decided to open a coffee shop inside her bakery. I was studying marketing when she invited me to come and help her. I accepted and then I went to Expo Café where the Mexican barista competitions are. That was my first contact with coffee—not specialty coffee—coffee. Then I started to learn about chains, about training baristas. We bought our first espresso machine and a barista gave us our first training.

When I met him, he was a barista competitor, so that inspired me because I’d seen Aleli Moreno in my first visit to

The Mexican Coffee Association (AMECE) invited me. I felt it was the next step in my professional coffee life. So I was in workshop for a few days before competition and I think that my experience as a competitor helped me to be on the other side. I understood the rules in a different way. But I was a little bit more nervous because I didn’t want to affect anyone in a bad way, or give benefit to a competitor without it being deserved. If I made a mistake as a competitor, it was my own responsibility and it goes in my numbers. But if I write 2.5 when a competitor deserves 3, that could be a change between second and third place.

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PH OTO C OURTESY O F J ULIETA VASQ UEZ

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hen Julieta Vázquez Rivera attended her first coffee conference, it was her first experience with coffee. Period. Having grown up in a family that ran bakeries, Vázquez was accustomed to being around the hospitality business, but had never seen the capabilities of coffee. The opportunity to open a coffee branch in her family’s business changed everything— especially when Vázquez saw competitive baristas in action.

Vázquez was Mexico’s barista champion in 2014 and 2015, and served as a judge for this year’s national competition. She and her fiancé, Manuel Vázquez, now run Arandela Barra de Café in San Luis Potosí, the capital city of Mexico’s north-central state by the same name.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

We had about three months of experience. The coffee shop wasn’t open yet, we had only been training and learning.

When I got to Guadalajara, I was scared. A lot of people had roasted their own coffee, so I was scared that I’d be disqualified since I hadn’t roasted my own coffee. But I did my best.

I was very nervous. I took sixth place, then seventh at nationals. In 2013 I was second at nationals. That was my first time in finals with a very good place. Next year was 2014 and I took first place, and then I went to Seattle for the WBC where I met amazing people. I definitely saw a change in myself as a barista before and after Seattle. And then I won nationals again in 2015, so there were two years for a girl to be champion in Mexico. I am very lucky because I got a lot of support from other baristas and from the coffee community in Mexico. I learned and I grew as a coffee professional.

Today I feel a responsibility to now give back to the coffee community, making myself available to share everything I received from the community.

TWO YEARS AGO, YOU SEPARATED YOUR BUSINESS FROM THE BAKERY, CHANGED THE NAME, AND ESTABLISHED A NEW CAFÉ.

It used to have the bakery’s name. A lot of people in Mexico still think my coffee has the name of the bakery: Café Julie. It started when I was born. I was born in January and my parents opened the bakery in March.

SO WHEN YOU CHANGED OVER TO THE NEW CAFE, YOU CHANGED NAMES, CHANGED LOCATIONS—IT WAS YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO START A NEW BUSINESS. And establish myself independently of my family.

My hometown is not a very touristic place. I wish it was—it’s a really beautiful place. I moved the café to a place where people ask for more. They’re picky. But the place I moved, my new market was people who travel a lot, people who have a little bit more money to spend on a cup of coffee. I tried to put my best as a team because it was not only me, it was also Manuel —we are also partners in business and share our responsibilities—it was a big task as a team. But I think that we’ve been doing a really good job. Our menu is very complete. We have a cold-brew, which is new in San Luis Potosí, nobody has it in the whole state. It also has a brew bar with an Aeropress and Chemex and Clever Dripper. No coffee-and-milk variation goes out without good latte art. It has to be pretty.

And we also have milkshakes, we have hot chocolate, we have lemonades. Our goal is to improve the local coffee consumption and to share. Sharing the story behind the bean can sound silly or romanticized, but it’s true. The customer becomes a judge. They start to identify their own likes and preferences, which is my big prize. I have someone who is going to keep asking for more, and that’s a challenge.

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PH OTO C OURTESY O F J ULIETA VASQ UEZ

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE THINGS THAT YOU DID TO DISTINGUISH IT FROM THE BAKERY CAFE?

WHAT HAVE PEOPLE’S RESPONSES BEEN TO A NEW COFFEE SCENE IN SAN LUIS POTOSÍ?

A lot of different responses. From the positive, asking when we’ll have a new coffee, or saying we roasted a coffee differently, or that yesterday the espresso was better. Which says that people have been listening. But there’s also the less good news that some customers really don’t care and they just want coffee.

YOU HAVE LOTS OF EXCITING THINGS COMING UP, LIKE GETTING MARRIED AND CONTINUING TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS. WHAT OTHER GOALS DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUR CAFÉ OR YOUR COFFEE JOURNEY? DO YOU HAVE THOUGHTS OF THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO EXPLORE IN COFFEE? I just want to make my coffee shop a good place for people. I’m a person who thinks and truly believes in family, so I want to create a place where a couple or friends or family can go to have a good cup of coffee, and to be able to share the story behind the cup. But also, as any business, I want to grow. I’m thinking about opening new shops. I’m not really looking for franchises, I think you lose connection with people.

THE COFFEE THAT YOU SERVE IN YOUR CAFÉ, IS IT ALL FROM MEXICO? It’s always Mexican coffee, but we are always changing. I mean, today my business is small so I can change as many times as I want. We don’t want to change habits or likes, we just want them to try something new and then they can decide. We just want to give our customers a chance to try something else.

WERE YOU ABLE TO APPLY ANY LESSONS FROM WBC TO RUNNING YOUR CAFÉ OR TRAINING STAFF? We changed the training a little bit for new people.

They were all inspired by my winning the Mexican competition, so I believe one day they can win as well if they want to. We changed the training a little bit for two things: one is to have better results. And the second is to make it more fun. And learn more. We have small competitions between us. So sometimes I’m a competitor and sometimes I’m a judge. We do blind tastings to make it fair. A lot of times I lose and that’s so exciting because another barista has all the confidence to express himself or herself about the cup. It’s a challenge for me because part of me, aside from being the leader, part of me wants to win. So we do fun things like the espresso at the bottom is buying the tacos tonight or paying for beer. We’re a small team of six or so and we’ve become a family.

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great coffee is available beyond security checkpoints, much to the delight of bleary eyed travelers.

As part of an agreement with the Port of Portland, the airport’s governing body, Portland Roasting Coffee recently opened two locations in the terminals of PDX. The arrangement is part of an ongoing effort by the Port to invite more local businesses to operate at the airport. The roaster-retailer debuted their third location late last month, situated in the wings of the passenger pick-up area outside security.

One café stands just beyond security lines, greeting travelers heading to the D and E terminals. This location tends to see a rushed crowd as passengers hurry to re-loop their belts, organize luggage, and grab a quick cup a coffee as they race to their gate.

The second café sees a much different crowd. Situated near the far end

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of the C terminal (currently hosting gates for Southwest Airlines), the general traffic flow is much slower. “People are hanging around waiting for flights, so there’s a lot more time to interact,” says Nathanael May, Portland Roasting’s director of coffee. Customers may want to chat about coffee, or just make small talk to help pass idle time.

Both cafés operate on a barista-first model, running one or two production lines, depending on hour-of-day and customer flow. The shops are situated so the bars run in a modified “V” formation; customers can approach from either side, placing their order with the barista, then collecting their drink where the two bars join.

“We knew barista-first had the capability to provide great customer service,” says Maggie Davis, training and education manager. While the baristafirst model takes a little more training up-front, an experienced team can eas-

P HOTO S BY CYNTHIA MEA DOR S

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ravelers enter airports toting predetermined angst, expecting the typical airport experience— one spent wrestling security lines, funneling into terminals filled with sub-par, overpriced snacks.

Airports have also been a barren wasteland when it comes to finding good coffee. But Portland International Airport (PDX) quashed this idea, thanks to the recent addition of local coffee roasters like Portland Roasting Coffee.

Portlanders are quick to brag about the relaxing environment of PDX. They’ll likely mention the beloved tealpatterned carpet, soothing live music played at all hours, and prices set to match retailers outside the airport.

(Full disclosure: I am one such proud Portland native.) These are just a few of the amenities that helped PDX secure the title of Nation’s Best Airport for four years running. Now the city’s

ily handle long airport lines. Customers place their order directly with the barista who will make their drink, minimizing chances of error and providing a more direct service connection.

Each side of the bar features a two-group La Marzocco Linea and a set of Mahlkönig K30 Twin grinders. Taps hold Portland Roasting’s nitro cold-brew and a sparkling teaon-tap from Steven Smith Teamaker.

More local flavors come in the form of baked goods. Portland-based Marsee Baking keeps the cafés stocked with an assortment of pastries, muffins, scones, and cookies—all easy for travelers to take to-go.

Operating a specialty coffee shop in the airport certainly has its challenges. “If something breaks or goes wrong, it’s very different than at headquarters, where everyone is next door in the office,” says Davis. The requirement of security escorts adds

time and red-tape to repairing any damaged equipment.

Deliveries also present a challenge.

Drivers have to obtain a special badge allowing them to drive on the tarmac; all deliveries must adhere to a schedule, and are inspected upon arrival.

Any emergencies that would require a non-badged driver to make a delivery must be accompanied by an escort— and be scheduled twenty-four hours in advance.

But the benefits are plentiful. “It’s a total community here,” Davis says of the other local businesses operating tarmac-adjacent. When Portland Roasting opened their first airport locations in July, customers kept asking for sugar packets, but they only had spouted dispensers. Port concessions managers jumped into action, and a basket of sugar packets appeared on the bars of each location shortly after.

Another benefit is the steady flow of passengers through the airport’s five terminals, providing plenty of business for each café.

The bustle of foot traffic through the terminals of PDX was just one motivation for opening the new locations. May explains that another incentive was creating brand awareness for locations outside the airport. “It’s two-fold,” he says. “We have a captive audience and access to volume, then the opportunity to introduce people from Portland to the brand.”

According to May, many customers come to visit Portland Roasting’s headquarters after first learning about them at the airport. With a third location now launched outside security, even more Portlanders will have the opportunity to discover the brand as they wait to greet friends and family. They’ll also have one more reason to brag about having the best airport in the country.

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otos Michael dreamed of constructing a coffee empire on the ancient Greek island of Crete. The notion that hot coffee is an odd pairing with 100-degree temperatures couldn’t deter Michael. Nor would he be slowed by the adversity of building a business in the midst of financial tumult and social upheaval.

We’re sitting at the communal table of the pared-down but cozy Kross Coffee Works, stationed in a small square in old-town Chaniá, Crete’s second largest city. The shop is a blend of old world and new. The pre–World War I structure houses a slew of cutting-edge coffee equipment, including a custom three-group La Marzocco FB80. Kross serves selection of coffee from Londonbased Ozone Coffee Roasters, aided by a fleet of Mahlkönig EK 43, Mahlkönig K30, and Mazzer Robur grinders.

It’s the third shop of what Michael hopes will be many more. Talking to

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him now, his confidence seems justifiable; his outlets are busy and he’s making a name for himself not just in Greece but internationally. Yet in 2005 when Sotos and his brother Stavros started in the coffee trade, his aspirations were laughably unrealistic. Back then he was selling beans and equipment and, by law, that’s where it had to stop.

could have stopped there but the very suggestion induces a look of amused incredulity in Michael.

“The idea was never to open one shop and leave it there,” he says. “From the start we wanted to make a difference on the island and make an impact on Greek culture as a whole.”

Michael explains that though there were some great coffee places in Greece,

WE DIDN’T WANT TO GO TO THE MAIN STREETS, WE WANTED TO REVIVE OLDER, FORGOTTEN PARTS OF TOWN. “There was a law in Greece that you couldn’t sell beans and coffee in the same place,” he says. “That changed in 2009 and the year after, we started serving coffee.”

Bespoke, the brothers’ first space built to sell beans and serve coffee, followed in 2011. Sotos and Stavros

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they were concentrated in Athens. Born in London, Michael relocated to Crete in 2001. He kept his eye on trends in the UK, watching as the coffee scene exploded in London.

“A lot of this was down to Australians and New Zealanders moving there and setting up shop,” says Michael of

London’s coffee scene. “It has this amazing multicultural, outward-looking vibe and that’s something we wanted to recreate in Greece.”

The brothers’ revolution was a subtle one, starting with the coffee—particularly the cold offerings.

“We wanted to keep it simple,” Michael says. “Cold coffee has always been popular in Greece but the quality wasn’t there. It was all about cold instant coffee.”

Michael was unwilling to sell cold, instant coffee, so he focused his energy on developing a cold-brew to offer to customers. They’ve been serving their version of cold-brew for five years, adapting it along the way to suit local tastes. “I’d normally go for a dilution of equal amounts of coffee to water in the initial brew, then add the same volume of water again before serving,” Michael explains. “At the start customers found it too thin; because of the temperatures here the

ice melts really quickly and by the end of the drink it would be really watery. We’ve now changed the dilution ratio to incorporate the weight of ice in the glass.”

Sotos and Stavros have also innovated with filter coffee, dripping it directly onto the ice below, which Sotos explains is based in solid logic.

“As soon as the coffee hits the ice, the aromas are trapped so you’re not losing the aromatics. The other benefit is the speed; you can serve it pretty soon after it’s ordered,” he says.

The various presentations of coffee are central to the brothers’ pioneering spirit but the premises are also integral to their philosophy. A combination of restricted finances and a desire to do things differently led them to choose locations for their shops that Michael refers to as “B locations.”

“We didn’t want to go to the main streets, we wanted to revive older, forgotten parts of town,” he says.

Kross is the epitome of this vision.

Narrow but surprisingly light and airy, it’s nestled on the edge of the city center. It’s all clean lines, quirky alcoves, and sun-kissed outdoor seating; a transformation from the state of disrepair in which the brothers discovered it.

“It dates back to before the first world war and it was a complete mess,” Michael says. “We couldn’t even tell what it had been used for, maybe a shop, maybe a house. But it has these lovely high walls and ceilings and loads of nooks and crannies.”

A painstaking renovation has turned Kross Coffee into a chic venue of which Michael is understandably proud. But Sotos, Stavros, and their crew of talented baristas continue to look beyond Crete, both to the national stage— where several Kross baristas have reached the finals of the barista championship—and to the international scene, where the brothers ponder just how far their coffee empire can reach.

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MEG & NICK photo by Billy Yang

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ick Price and Meg Frampton are Salt Lake City natives, but after moving to Los Angeles and working for the now-defunct Handsome Coffee, they began to see a change in temperature in the coffee community back home. The Rose Establishment and Blue Copper Coffee Roasters were among the early movers in prioritizing a high-quality coffee experience, a change in which Nick and Meg were keen to play a role.

In 2015, they decided to give a no-frills, honest coffee cart a shot, and moved back to Utah with little more than a deep well of knowledge and skill, and a lot of positive whispers. They built their own handsome wooden cart and began serving espresso selections from Portland’s Heart Coffee Roasters. These were the early days of Three Pines.

Not long after they began, a buzz traveled through the growing Salt Lake coffee scene about a nomadic pair out 42

on the streets serving euphoric espresso. They serve Heart? Are you sure?

That’s amazing! (I remember visiting on an early morning once; I ordered an espresso and thoroughly geeked out.)

In late summer of 2015, the wandering coffee cart began serving at its first anchored location outside a niche grocer in a neighborhood near the city center. Having already grown

“When I feel like something makes sense, I want to jump on it and go. I don’t like to overthink it, I don’t want to over analyze,” Nick says. “I expected the cart business to go on for at least two years before we even opened a shop.”

Just six months after they opened, Three Pines made the next jump and moved into their current space in downtown Salt Lake City.

A STEADY STREAM OF TRAFFIC WANDERS IN AND OUT OF THE CAFÉ, A DELIGHTFUL MIX OF CUSTOMERS OLD AND YOUNG, OF COFFEE ENTHUSIASTS AND FIRST-TIME EXPLORERS.

faster than planned, Nick and Meg soon faced another opportunity to settle their business in a downtown brick-and-mortar starting in January of 2016. It was a risk, but if anything is clear, it’s that Nick and Meg are risktakers to the core.

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Nestled within the city’s urban center, Three Pines’ current location sits on a small side street bordering Gallivan Plaza, a city square dotted with memorabilia from the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. A sign hangs over the shop, beckoning customers with

a string of white neon letters shining the word “COFFEE.” A steady stream of traffic wanders in and out of the café, a delightful mix of customers old and young, of coffee enthusiasts and first-time explorers.

Customers are welcomed at the walkup counter of the 100-square-foot café where they order from a selection of Heart coffee and, refreshingly, not much more.

Varying shades of light wood make up the counter, a product shelf, and a four-seat bar. Powerful, isolated pops of color come from a matte teal La Marzocco GB5 two-group and the sharp color-blocked packaging of Heart’s retail bags. Behind the bar is a Fetco XTS Brewer with Mahlkönig EK 43, K30 Vario, and Nuova Simonelli Mythos One Clima Pro grinders. Various tools and customizations—most notably the Levy tamp and a nifty dose distribution tool called the Shot Collar—are supplied by St. Anthony industries, another pioneer of coffee

technology based in the mountains of Utah. A few small streetside tables allow for more seating outside.

In a city where high-end coffee is relatively new and cafés struggle to sustain business after six in the evening, coffee programs are often buoyed with substantial food offerings and specialty drinks. However, Three Pines’ menu clearly establishes coffee as their focus. From the start, their offerings have been oriented toward simplicity and education, departing from foggy words like cortado or cappuccino, instead listing each espresso-and-milk beverage by its ounce size.

Townshend’s matcha, Bhakti chai, and Red Blossom iced teas are available in addition to cold-brew and espresso classics. Customers choose between Heart’s Stereo Blend and rotating single-origin espresso options.

Even more exciting news: consistent regulars and increased popularity have opened another growth oppor-

tunity for Three Pines. This month, they’ll relocate to a larger storefront just around the corner on the muchmore-trafficked Main Street. Nick and Meg hope to expand their offerings in both beverages and food options, and to provide seating for up to eighteen customers in their new space.

As I sat with Nick in Gallivan Plaza beneath a left-behind piece of the Olympic décor, we discussed Nick’s feelings about the shop, his customers, and where it was going.

“We’ve gone from cart, to small shop, to now bigger shop in less than two years,” Nick relays. When asked what he hopes to gain from the new location, he responds, “I want to see people meet up on a date, or for meetings. . . I want to have a space where community is able to happen, and the vibe is good.”

No doubt, Three Pines’ future holds a long list of risks well-taken and plenty of good vibes for the Utah coffee community.

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shaped bar. Whether it’s the steady drip of the Japanese cold-brew tower or the copious brewing devices neatly arrayed on the counter, everything is in full view from the stools that line both sides—even the dishwashing station. With the exception of the pointof-sale and the three-group La Marzocco Strada, most of the bar is shared by the baristas and patrons. This layout was designed to maximize transparency, but was also born out of necessity.

The single-room space on a largely vacant side street was all Hart and Miller could afford when they opened their doors in the winter of 2012.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” says Miller.

“In any facet,” says Hart.

Collective Espresso was a long time in the making for Hart and Miller.

The duo has been collaborating since the eighth grade, when they were assigned to the same science fair project.

“We built a solar hot water tower,” says Hart. “We got second place.”

After high school Hart and Miller both left their small Ohio town for other states. Hart attended Oregon

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Culinary Institute in Portland and Miller studied at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Virginia. But the two friends stayed in touch and often would dream about opening a restaurant together.

“I always had it in my head that eventually I would give Ohio one more try,” says Hart. When Miller mentioned he was thinking about moving to Cincinnati, Hart was open to moving as well, but with one caveat. “I remember saying I couldn’t live here if I couldn’t get good coffee.”

Hart had developed a taste for specialty coffee while working as a line cook in Seattle. “The restaurant I worked in shared a space with Herkimer’s roastery,” says Hart. “In the restaurant industry the only way to take breaks is a smoke break. I was trying to quit smoking so when everyone else was smoking I would take an espresso break.”

But a café crawl around Cincinnati yielded less-than-promising results.

“We went all around trying espresso and didn’t find anything I loved,” says Hart. The two relocated anyway and took jobs at the local Whole Foods,

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alk around Cincinnati’s Over-theRhine neighborhood (colloquially known as “OTR”) and you might think you’re in Greenwich Village. The buildings are predominately nineteenth-century Italianate architecture, clad with exterior fire escapes and often decorated by murals. The neighborhood is dense, diverse, and best appreciated as a pedestrian.

“It’s a small community. People support each other,” says Dustin Miller.

“Our tattoo guy is right over there,” he says, pointing over one of his shoulders.

“Our T-shirt guy is right over there.”

I’m sitting in a courtyard—an alley, really—sharing a Chemex of Ritual’s El Angel, Costa Rica, with Miller and his business partner Dave Hart. Hart and Miller own Collective Espresso, a small coffee shop that’s made a big impact on Cincinnati’s coffee scene.

Calling Collective Espresso “small” is generous. Except for a pair of tables tucked in the front two corners, seating space is limited to the horseshoe-

OWNERS DUSTIN MILLER (left) AND DAVE HART

where Hart quickly became the coffee buyer for the store. Through this role Hart came into to contact with regional roasters, like Cincinnati’s Deeper Roots and Louisville’s Quills Coffee.

“If I had a day off I would drive to Louisville and have three or four shots of espresso,” says Hart.

As the idea for a café began to percolate, an architect friend showed them the space in OTR, though they were unsure if it was large enough.

In the end, a weekend trip to Toronto, Canada, helped clarify the concept.

“We walked into Sam James Coffee Bar,” says Miller. “It was tiny. There weren’t a lot of frills and I had the best capp of my life and I got it. We came home and rented the space.”

Hoping to highlight a spectrum of specialty coffee, Hart and Miller chose to work with a combination of roasters. Deeper Roots and Quills represented coffee from the region, while roasters like Four Barrel and Madcap introduced Collective’s clientele to more nationally known companies.

The concept is unapologetically coffee-focused. Initially, pour-overs

were the only filter option, drinks only came in one size, and flavored drinks were kept to a minimum. For milk drinks, Collective uses Hartzler’s Dairy, a local, independent producer that low temperature pasteurizes grass-grazed milk. “We were introducing this larger coffee culture to Cincinnati,” says Miller.

Collective still holds on to many of those core values, but over time Hart and Miller found it necessary to adapt. Due to popular demand they added autodrip and a sixteen-ounce to-go cup. They also had to learn to stop micro-managing.

“We had one employee for the first year. It was just us,” says Miller. “We worked six days a week.”

“We were so nervous about letting anything out of our hands,” says Hart.

But as the business grew they began to relinquish control to their employees. “We slowly built up a small army of great baristas,” says Miller.

“The proudest I’ve been, we went up to Columbus for a throwdown and our baristas got first and second,” says Miller. “They had surpassed us.”

Today, there are two other Collective Espresso locations around Cincinnati and the plans for a stand-alone bakery are in the works, too.

“We don’t have any plans to take over the world,” says Hart. Instead, expansion has been driven by Hart and Miller’s desire to have a positive impact on the city of Cincinnati.

“It’s part of our mission,” says Miller. “‘Curate spaces that enrich their community.’” For the OTR neighborhood, this entails keeping coffee prices affordable and offering healthy lunch options.

Time has seen the OTR location of Collective shift from being a destination coffee shop with a largely barista clientele to a neighborhood institution supported by the people that live and work in the area.

“We still want to be on the cutting edge,” says Miller, “but we’re a neighborhood cafe.”

What hasn’t changed, however, is Hart and Miller’s commitment to quality. “Our clientele demands better coffee,” says Miller. “They continue to push us.”

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COFFEE & CRUISE: Devolve Moto in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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MOTORCYCLE AND COFFEE CULTURES HAVE EACH FOUGHT THE REPUTATION OF BEING EXCLUSIVE GROUPS, UNWELCOMING TO CURIOUS OUTSIDERS. BUT AT THE JUNCTION OF ROARING ENGINES AND HAND-POURED LATTE ART IS AN INVITING SPACE FOR EXPLORATION, COMMUNITY, AND LEARNING.

BY ELLIE BRADLEY

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here’s something strangely comforting about walking into a café, hearing by the clunking of espresso grounds being settled into portafilters, the gurgles of milk steaming in pitchers—and the subtle aroma of gasoline wafting over the aroma of fresh-brewed filter coffee? It may sound like an odd pairing, but it’s a coupling that’s yielded positive results for cafés successfully curating the improbable partnership between motorcycles and coffee.

The motorcycle community has a long-rooted history with coffee. Café racers (lightweight, light-powered bikes) take their names from motorcycle enthusiasts who would take the bikes out on short, quick rides between cafés, a tradition dating back to the early parts of the twentieth century. Cafés are a desirable destination for riders who want to stay alert on the road, and coffee is a much more practical (and safe) alternative than hopping between bars.

Even with an established history of café racers, the jump to join riders to the specialty coffee community didn’t happen until recently. But the artistry behind specialty coffee has strong parallels with the mindset behind motorcycles—just like each bike is unique and has countless options for customization, each shot of espresso has the capacity to convey unique flavors and aroma, translated through brew methods, cultivation, and presentation.

While you can pull a shot of espresso much more quickly than you can rebuild a bike, enthusiasts in both communities can find common ground in the dedicated study of crafts founded on mechanics, science, artistry, and people.

Combination motorcycle and coffee shops have cropped up in all corners of the world. Some shops have found a niche in retail, others as body shops and parts suppliers, while others focus primarily on coffee. Each balances the two cultures with aspects of business in a way that reflects the unique expertise and interests of the proprietors. More importantly, each café has curated a blend of motorcycles and coffee to reflect the needs of the surrounding community, providing a welcoming space for beginners and experts alike.

“For an everyday customer, to make the product more approachable you kind of have to take that seriousness away to make it more of something that everybody can enjoy,” says Jeremy Brooks, director of coffee at Flat Track Coffee in Austin, Texas. Having spaces not solely focused on motorcycle gear or pour-over bars reduces the intimidation factor of engaging with these cultures, welcoming new customers who might not have wandered in otherwise.

We’ll tour six motorcycle cafés around the country, seeing how each stop uniquely positions elements of coffee and bike culture through retail, repairs, refurbishing, and—perhaps most importantly—through community.

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TWO STROKE COFFEE Portland, Oregon

SETH & STEPHANIE

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ur tour begins at Two Stroke Coffee, situated on a corner of the cozy St. John’s neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. The neighborhood is a few miles north of the city center, set along a bend in the Willamette River and the picturesque St. John’s Bridge. “Some of the best motorcycle-friendly roads are right over the St. John’s Bridge,” says co-owner Seth Ciferri. “We make a really good stopping point or landing point, or both.”

Ciferri says the location was a major motivation in the decision to open Two Stroke, which has become a rallying point for motorcycle enthusiasts. Ciferri and his partner, Stephanie Tommasello, run the coffee side of the shared business space.

“We both saw this as a creative outlet for us to make something that speaks to our personality and our aesthetic,” Ciferri says.

Second Gear runs out of the back half of the space, selling new and secondhand motorcycle gear, refurbished bikes, and new parts. Operating as two separate businesses allows Ciferri and Tommasello to focus on coffee, while Second Gear’s owners can devote their attention to the bike side.

Customers are drawn to the space by both businesses, increasing exposure for both the retail shop and the café.

“There are a lot of people who come here for the bikes and end up coming back for the coffee,” says Ciferri. “They like hanging out with all the other motorcycle people, and they like checking out everyone’s bikes, but at the same time, we make it a point to serve top-notch coffee.”

Tommasello says the reverse has been true of people who come in for coffee.

Some customers have never touched a bike, and are now riding regularly. Having secondhand gear lowers the cost of entry for new riders, eliminating barriers to becoming a part of the motorcycle community.

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SEE SEE MOTOR COFFEE CO. Portland, Oregon

PH OTO S BY CYNT HIA MEADO RS

ust a short ride away, on a small lot in southeast Portland, See See is packed with gear, apparel, and swag. Nineties pop art covers the walls, along with polaroids and shelves of helmets. There’s no question you’re in a motorcycle shop, but the café aspect is also clear. A U-shaped bar dominates the main space of the café, providing ample space for customers to sit at the bar, or at one of a number of tables scattered throughout the shop. A La Marzocco Linea features a whimsical painting of a neon-colored wizard, a wink to the attitude See See takes when it comes to specialty coffee.

“It’s about not taking yourself too seriously,” says Tori George, who manages marketing and events for See See. She says that co-founders Thor Drake and George Kassapakis wanted See See to be a relaxed and inclusive environment.

“We’ll take anyone,” George says. “If you’re on two wheels, we’re excited about it.”

She explains the decision to make the space an even split between café space and retail was very intentional—they didn’t want one element to dominate the other. They also wanted to the space to be inclusive.

See See has groups that meet at the space regularly, from Bikers for Christ to book clubs. They also host monthly art shows featuring local artists, motorcycle photographers, and brands carried in-store. Riding events bring riders together from around the globe; See See is well known for their involvement with events like Dirt Quake, the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, and the One Show.

“It’s not just a retail and coffee shop that’s selling stuff to people, we actually create experiences,” says George.

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SPOKEN MOTO Bend, Oregon

eading east out of the city, through the mountain pass and into the drier climate of Bend, Oregon, Spoken Moto is an ideal destination for riders and coffee enthusiasts alike. The story of Spoken Moto is a fairly logical one in the eyes of partner and creative director Brent Van Auken: friends who were into refurbishing bikes came into a warehouse space, played with the idea of serving coffee, then posed the question, “What if we have this space and we’re able to serve the best coffee we possibly can?” Thus, Spoken Moto was born.

“The space is more like a gallery and an interactive workspace,” says Van Auken. “We’ll actually start a motorcycle while people are waiting to get their coffee. We enjoy that it’s a real shop that people can come and bring their bikes into, and where we’re working on our personal projects as well.”

Spoken Moto roasts coffee under the label Megaphone Coffee Co. Right now they roast enough to supply the shop, but they hope to expand to offer their coffee to wholesale partners. In addition to coffee, customers can also order a beer, or pick up food from one of four food carts in a neighboring lot.

Having the draw of food and beer—in addition to the motorcycle shop— brings in a crowd that might not be familiar with coffee. “We get to share what a cortado is with somebody for the first time and it’s like, ‘Woah!’ Now they come in every day and get one,” says Van Aucken.

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S PO KEN M OTO PHOTO S BY BRENT VAN AUKE N; FLAT TRAC K PHOTO S C OUR TE SY OF FLAT T RACK C OFFE E

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FLAT TRACK COFFEE Austin, Texas

he next leg of our journey is a long one, as we make the trek south to Austin, Texas. Here, Flat Track Coffee occupies a shared space with Cycleast, a bicycle repair and restoration shop.

“Any way you can collaborate with other business owners to accomplish the same goal and reduce costs is something Flat Track has always been interested in,” says Jeremy Brooks, Flat Track’s director of coffee.

Partnering with a bicycle shop was a natural choice for Flat Track cofounders Sterling Roberts and Matthew Bullock, who came up in the BMX circuit before making the switch to motorcycles.

Brooks says the unique combination of coffee and bikes draws in lots of new customers. “Most of them are coming in because they want to check out what it’s all about,” says Brooks. He values that Flat Track has a strong coffee program, but also prioritizes interests beyond the cup. “It’s something that’s not as standard as something you might see in cities in the United States where 100 percent of their focus is coffee.”

Flat Track hopes to be a catalyst for growth in both the motorcycle and specialty coffee communities, in part by acting as a bridge between the two.

Brooks says part of their appeal is simply good customer service, as is their ability to cater to a niche group of customers for whom coffee and motorcycles fit into a particular lifestyle. Social media and retail offerings help cultivate the lifestyle aspect of Flat Track, while Brooks’ extensive experience in coffee raises the quality standards of the café.

“We’ve tapped into more of a niche group of people who are more interested in a particular kind of lifestyle, and coffee kind of pairs with that lifestyle, rather than it being the reverse, where coffee is the lifestyle and there’s nothing outside of that.”

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BLIP COFFEE ROASTERS Kansas City, Missouri

IAN DAVIS

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M ERC HANDISE WA LL PHOTO BY DAV ID K . P UG H, A LL OTHER P HOTO S BY CALEB SOM MERV ILLE

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inding our way north to Kansas City, we set our sights on Blip Coffee Roasters. Originally a wholesale roaster closed to the public, Blip built out a retail space after a fire wiped out their roastery in January.

“The fire totally shut us down,” says owner Ian Davis. “We were able to get some stuff out, but we lost all of our beans, packaging, any type of inventory we had. You name it, we lost it.”

In April, Blip re-opened as a retail shop in the West Bottoms neighborhood, an industrial area of Kansas City.

The decision to open a retail space was fueled in part by the community built through motorcycles during the time the wholesale operation was running. “I’d always park my motorcycle outside,” Davis says of the days he worked in the roastery. “You would just have curious people kind of see a sign and poke their heads in and see what’s going on. You’d see a few bikes show up and we’d make pour-overs for people who wanted to come in.”

Though Blip was by no means running a retail operation, the interest sparked the Blip Sunday Meet-up—more commonly known as Blip Sunday Church. Davis says a few people would meet at the roastery, drink some coffee and chat, then head out for a ride. What started with just a few people has evolved into weekly gatherings of sixty or seventy motorcycles converging on the shop.

Davis says the popularity of their new retail space is a reflection of today’s motorcycle riders. “It’s an amazingly diverse demographic,” he says.

“You get lawyers, you get business people, you have motorcycle builders— basically any profession.” Davis says part of the beauty of the community is its ability to transcend wealth, race, gender, and any other divisions that might normally separate communities of people.

Blip’s location in an industrial area also means they see a lot of customers who are new to specialty coffee; they might be rolling in from driving a semi-truck or operating a BNSF railcar. To keep specialty coffee accessible to all customers, they keep a simple menu and always have a two-dollar cup of drip coffee as an option.

“When the specialty coffee consumer comes in and wants to have that conversation, I’m all about it,” Davis says, alluding to opportunities to educate customers about details on processing methods and cultivars. “But it’s just as important to realize that not everybody wants to.”

Davis says the community that’s been able to grow in Kansas City through motorcycles has been amazing, citing their roastery fire as a prime example, when he had a number of people rush to help him rescue equipment and bikes from the building.

“None of these people I knew prior to going into business and every single one of these people were running into this burning building with me trying to help me cover up the roaster, pull motorcycles out of the back,” Davis says. “Kind of a surreal experience to look back and realize I didn’t know these people sixteen months ago and here they are literally running into a burning building to help me out.”

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DEVOLVE MOTO Raleigh, North Carolina

e make our way to Raleigh, North Carolina, for our final stop, where Devolve Moto stands as one of the few motorcycle cafés east of the Mississippi. Co-founder Greig Hochreiter was working in TV and film when two incidents changed his trajectory and pave the way for Devolve. First, the state took away tax incentives for filming in North Carolina, dramatically reducing available work. Then Hochreiter was hit on his motorcycle by a drunk driver and hospitalized for about a week. During his time in the hospital, he discovered the website of Sydney’s Deist Ex Machina.

“I thought it was the coolest, best idea in the entire world,” says Hochreiter.

“I thought, ‘if we had one of these in North Carolina, it would be killer—it would be the only place I’d be hanging out.’”

That was all it took for Hochreiter to start developing plans for Devolve. He took aspects of stores he likes and tried to tailor all the details to fit North Carolina. “The coffee part was just a no-brainer,” he says.

Hochreiter partnered with Torch Coffee and had the team at Devolve schooled on coffee, from sourcing to prep methods. Devolve seeks to build a community, which isn’t hard to do when you can appeal to an array of hobbies and provide great coffee. Apparel and gear offerings include wares for camping, motorcycling, and hiking.

“The café allows you to have people come hang out at your store without feeling pressure to buy a high-ticket item,” Hochreiter says. The store is a great place for people to hang out and meet people with similar interests. “People are making new friends, hanging out, and seeing what bike’s gonna roll up next.”

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PH OTO S C OURTESY O F DEVO LV E MOTO

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On the lush mountainsides of Southern Yunnan, vegetation flourishes throughout the hills and valleys, giving each mountain the look of a unique patchwork quilt. Tucked among the seams are villages full of hard-working families, cultivating the land in hopes of reaping a fruitful harvest. Over the centuries, many different crops have dotted the mountains. Coffee shares in this rich history together with the people who farm it.

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he typical layout of a coffee farm in southwest Yunnan consists of 5,000 coffee trees per hectare, grown in full sun, plantation style. Catimor is the variety of choice for farmers in this area, selected for its low susceptibility to disease and higher, quicker yield. Farmers use a washed method of harvesting that has come to include mechanical mucilage

and evaluator, he provided technical support on tree maintenance, soil balance, and basic plantation operations.

Eventually his role as a technician brought him to work with a company who was a part of the early initiatives for coffee growing in the region.

After receiving seeds from the local government in 1996, he planted his first coffee. Though these coffee plants were decimated by the massive

ties and in doing so, he has come to play an important role in China’s development as a major coffee producer.

Hu’s experiences mirror those of many farmers in Yunnan: they are susceptible to vast fluctuations in market prices, plus they lack access to diverse markets. But the newness of coffee growing presents additional challenges for Chinese farmers. Many still struggle with minimal experience and

I AM THE SON OF A FARMER. EVER SINCE MIDDLE SCHOOL, I KNEW I WANTED TO DEVOTE MY LIFE TO FARMING. MY LIFE IS INDEBTED TO THE LAND, AND I WANTED TO SPEND MY LIFE GIVING BACK TO IT. —Hu XiXiang

removers in recent years. Hu XiXiang stands out among these farmers— his neatly manicured land shows the care of an expert agronomist, as do the shade trees he’s planted to help fend off harsh frost that’s decimated past crop years.

PATH TO COFFEE A certified agricultural technician, Hu’s path to coffee began through his work on rubber and tea plantations. In addition to being a tea taster

frost of 1999–2000* that plagued the entire region, Hu powered on. Armed with fierce curiosity and a nevergive-up mindset, he started over with about 165 acres of land. In 2003, he saw the first fruits of his labor.

Not only did he face the challenges of unstable market prices and uncertainty with weather, the greatest obstacle was inexperience with coffee production and processing. He has continued to invest profits back into the farm and other coffee opportuni-

knowledge of coffee production across the entire process—from seed to farm gate. Long-term planning and management present a challenge even more daunting. Farmers like Hu are working to mitigate these challenges for Chinese farmers and continue expanding the country’s coffee production.

A YOUNG HISTORY Coffee has a relatively young history in China. French missionaries first planted coffee in the late nineteenth

*When speaking of coffee volumes, we always use a combination of two years. This is due to the fact that in most regions coffee begins harvesting at the end of one year and continues on into the beginning of the next,. e.g. October through January.

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century, but production didn’t take off for nearly 100 years, despite a government initiative in the sixties. It wasn’t until 1988 that coffee began to be commercially developed on a large scale, as part of another governmentled project, assisted by the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank.

Coffee predominantly grows in three regions of China: Yunnan, Fujian, and Hainan Island. Fujian and Hainan Island are known for growing robusta, and only account for about 5 percent of the country’s total production. Yunnan dominates the rest of the market, producing mostly arabica plants. Yunnan province shares a border with Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, adding to its diversity. With an average altitude of 2,000 meters, catimor (a caturra-Timor hybrid) is the varietal of choice for most farmers, thanks to its high yield, heartiness, and resistance to leaf rust.

The vast majority of coffee produced here is commercial grade; prices over the last ten years have been affected by market volatility as well as frost and other environmental factors. Though production rate is growing and coffee consumption is becoming increasingly popular, a significant amount of coffee is still imported into China. Instant coffee still accounts for the largest coffee segment in China, for which robusta coffee is heavily used. Vietnam is one of the largest producers of robusta coffee in Asia and accounts for more than 50 percent of total coffee imports into China.

As production levels have continued to grow, the export levels have grown as well. The Chinese government has been increasingly encouraging to companies who will export coffee, providing great incentives to do so and thus fueling remarkable export growth. In merely twenty

years, China has gone from exporting 3.48 million kilograms of coffee (1994–1995) to 72 million kilograms (2013–2014). According to the ICO, the vast majority of China’s exports are unprocessed, green coffee, with only 4 percent being roasted or soluble products.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS Reaching current export numbers has taken considerable time and effort. The average Chinese farmer utilizes his fields for growing whatever is doing well in the market.

When sugar cane prices soar, fields are stripped and sugar cane goes in the ground. This process has gone on for years. Because of this, having sufficient sustenance, providing education expenses for children, and even investing in farm operations becomes a challenge as the fluidity of income can be as vast as the market for certain crops.

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AUTHOR TIM HEINZE cupping coffees in Yunnan.

Though villagers and farmers began to express an interest in growing coffee, it was essential to have crops that could provide a stable livelihood. With this concern in mind, Hu began working with several villages to organize them into cooperatives. He would rent a portion of their land from them to grow coffee, set up wet mills at their villages, provide them with seedlings, make fertilizer available, and train them in all areas of coffee production and processing.

Some of the cooperatives go back as early as 2003 while others are newer, formed around 2008. Hu works with the village leader to place a manager at the village to run the wet mill and provide technical assistance and quality control for the farmers. The farmers have open access to deal with any and all problems they face, and at the end of the season, they have a guaranteed buyer for the cherries they pick. Under the cooperative structure, farmers no longer have to wonder who will buy their crop and whether it will provide enough for their families.

Around 2011, the local government and agricultural bureaus began discussing specialty coffee. Rumors of the ability to obtain hundreds of dollars per kilogram of green coffee made the specialty market attractive, but there were few who could advise on how to grow, or evaluate the quality of such coffee.

This is where my story intersects with Hu. We met through my work to help establish and operate Hani Coffee Co. and Yunnan Coffee Traders. Both companies are committed to seeing specialty coffee in Yunnan introduced to the world, while at the same time investing into communities where coffee is grown through research and sustainable community development.

As we ventured into coffee in this region, it was a mutual friend who first connected us with Hu. Initially, it was his love of the land, desire to invest into communities, and unhindered passion to produce the best coffee possible that provided

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Hu XiXiang (right) and his wife, Li Guang Qiong.

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a bridge that has now grown into a great friendship and partnership.

Our work with Hu goes back to 2006, when we first started helping him understand quality, improve agricultural practices, and better navigate the international market.

With the help of organizations like the Coffee Quality Institute and the Specialty Coffee Associations of America and Europe, as well as certified schools throughout the country, best practices are slowly being established, such as at the farm level and in wet and dry mill processing, to enable better quality coffee.

Today, Hu oversees nearly 700 metric tons of coffee produced annually. Seven different cooperatives contribute to this volume, growing plants on roughly 520 hectares of land. In addition, with the help of our companies, Hu will be opening a training center in the midst of the coffee fields before the spring of 2017. He believes this is the future of coffee in Yunnan. His passion is to see a new generation of young people trained in coffee and equipped to not only know the value of their product but also lead the next wave of coffee farmers into the future.

Together with Hu, we at Hani Coffee Co. and Yunnan Coffee Traders are committed to seeing the expansion and growth of specialty coffee in this region. For us, there are two main focus areas: new cultivars and new processing methods. Over the last few years, we have begun cultivating pacamara, typica, bourbon,

and a few other specialty cultivars.

We have also begun producing natural-processed coffees on raised beds as well as pulped natural coffees. We have identified that increasing the quality of the coffee leads to higher revenues for farmers producing the

too low—the list goes on. But Hu says one thing is clear, “Regardless of what I do or where I go, there will always be challenges. We can’t just give up because something is hard.

So we must persist onwards.”

The future of coffee in Yunnan has

REGARDLESS OF WHAT I DO OR WHERE I GO, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CHALLENGES. WE CAN’T JUST GIVE UP BECAUSE SOMETHING IS HARD. SO WE MUST PERSIST ONWARDS.

coffee. It is our plan to tie the price of the coffee not to fluctuating market prices but to their cost of production plus an added quality incentive.

By doing this, we are creating a more stable situation for farmers and enhancing long-term farm operation and management. In the 2015 Best of Yunnan (hosted by CQI and the Yunnan Coffee Exchange) twentyfive international judges cupped the region’s best scoring coffee at 84+.

UNYIELDING DETERMINATION As with any successful entrepreneur, there have been times when Hu has considered giving up. Frost has decimated his crops and there have been plenty of concerns of drought, market changes in price, market entry for products, prices that are

endless potential because of determined, hard-working, and dedicated men and women like Hu. In twenty years, people will look back and see the great impact they have made within the region, within the industry, and within individual lives.

Coffee is the story of lives intersecting from one side of the world with the other. Hu might live as one indebted to the land, but we coffee lovers and coffee company owners live indebted to those like Hu who relentlessly pursue the highest quality of coffee as well as invest into communities. What a pleasure and honor it is to stand alongside him working within an industry we have all grown to love!

Here’s to the future of coffee in Yunnan and the many more like Hu that will lead China forward.

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fter two centuries as a top producer, the quality of coffee consumed in Costa Rica is catching up to the diverse, flavorful coffees the country is known for exporting. Brewing methods, cafÊ culture, and perhaps even the beans themselves are changing, while local traditions and people’s reliance on the industry are as strong as ever.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KETTI WILHELM

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Coffee Almanac

SAN JOSÉ’S Plaza de la Democracia.

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A TRADITIONAL CHORREADOR in the coastal town of Puerto Viejo.

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osta Rica is famous for its eight distinct coffee growing regions—each yielding beans with unique characteristics, brewed in kitchens and coffee shops all around the world—but unknown outside its borders for having a robust coffee culture.

At the very beginning of Costa Rica’s independence from Spain, the first president decided to incentivize coffee the way the US incentivized clear-cutting forests in the American West: anyone who cultivated a plot of land as a coffee farm for five years became owner of the land.

But Costa Rican coffee, as the

MOST GROWERS EXPORT EVERYTHING THEY GROW AND ARE RELUCTANT TO SELL BEANS LOCALLY, BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY CAN GET A BETTER PRICE ABROAD. Almost since the first coffee plants were planted in Costa Rican soil in 1808, the nation has been an exporter.

By 1830, coffee was the country’s number one export.

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world knows it, was never intended for Costa Rican use. Though coffee has long been popular among Costa Ricans, many people drink beverages brewed from lower-quality beans.

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

FIGHTING FOR GOOD COFFEE “We’ve had to fight a lot to buy good coffee,” says Manuel Dinarte, explaining that most growers export everything they grow and are reluctant to sell beans locally, knowing they can get a better price abroad.

Dinarte is the country’s 2008 national barista champion, and the fast-talking owner of Café Del Barista in San José. It’s easy to imagine him putting up a fight to get the beans he wants. Dinarte’s competitive tenacity is clear to see. Francella Rodriguez Zeledón, one of the shop’s baristas, explained her boss’s standards, “Manuel says that a barista who doesn’t compete isn’t a barista.”

Dinarte’s meticulous methods reflected in the quality of the cup. Café Del Barista served an impressive cappuccino with a rich blanket of smoothas-silk foam and a complex, fresh flavor.

CAFÉ DEL BARISTA: Owner Manual Dinarte (right) is also Costa Rica’s 2008 national barista champion.

The café is casual, airy, and comfortable—not so big it feels like a warehouse, not so small it feels cramped. The two-group La Marzocco espresso machine was manned by baristas with obvious skill as well as passion for the drink.

For another of Dinarte’s baristas, Jonathan Ramirez Bravo, the small country’s coffee regions can be mapped out not by what they produce, but what they drink. In Guanacasta, Bravo says they brew the coffee too strong. The people of Cartago serve it too hot. And anywhere you go, a café chorreado has too much sugar. Connections to coffee run deep in the shop, as do opinions.

As to Dinarte’s opinions, he considers Costa Rica’s Western Valley to be one of the world’s best coffee-growing regions, and he buys his coffee from two Herbazú micro-producers there.

According to Dinarte, Costa Rica has

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more than 3,000 micro-producers— small, often family-owned coffee farms that sell their product only to small exporters or directly to cafés.

“Here, everyone has family members that are producers,” Dinarte said.

“That’s how this generation gets involved; many baristas are the children of coffee families.”

OLD TRADITIONS, NEW LOCALES Leda Sanchez comes from one such coffee family, as Dinarte calls them.

Sanchez is the third generation in her family to make a living in the coffee industry, but she’s the first to bring the product full-circle, back to the Costa Rican consumer. Three years ago, Sanchez started Viva Café, in an up-market neighborhood called La California. All the coffee she and her baristas prepare is roasted by her father in Cartago, a few miles east of San José.

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

In the past few years, Sanchez says she’s seen a transformation in San José. Neighborhoods are dotted with trendy cafés, movie theaters, and bars selling craft beer—none of which are part of the typical scene of a Central American city.

Though the cafés may be new, some traditions are not. Pre-ground robusta beans are often served using a chorreador, a thoroughly Costa Rican brewing method composed of a fine cloth filter that hangs from a sort of wooden gallows. It’s simple, functional, and perfectly capable of producing a fine cup of coffee. Café chorreado is often found in sodas, the Costa Rican version of a no-frills diner.

Some new third-wave cafés in the capital list the chorreador on their menu along with the V60 and the Chemex. At Cafeoteca, a café in San José’s Barrio Escalante neighborhood, customers can order an individually

POUR ATTENTION: Jonathan Ramirez Bravo prepares a pour-over at Café Del Barista.

brewed cup of local-style café chorreado from any of the eight Costa Rican coffee region. At $3.60 a cup, the price is uncommonly high, but Cafeoteca’s

North American diners. Most sodas even have the same utilitarian feel of the roadside diners in the US. The chorreador is to the Costa Rican

SOME NEW THIRD-WAVE CAFÉS IN THE CAPITAL LIST THE CHORREADOR ON THEIR MENU ALONG WITH THE V60 AND THE CHEMEX.

barista also curates the café experience, explaining aspects of the coffee including the method, the process, and the varietal.

Contrast that price with a seventy-five-cent cup from a soda, where the café chorreado is usually prepared in bulk in the morning and stored in a plastic thermos—much like the infamous drip coffee in

soda what the drip dispenser is to the American diner: plenty of people drink it, but plenty are now looking for something new.

That search for something new, something beyond the soda, has been reflected in Tico, or Costa Rican, customers’ attitudes during the three years since Cafeoteca opened, according its manager, Evelyn León.

“They’re getting more demanding,” she says. Customers now ask more questions, such as the roast date of the beans and which micro-region and farm grew them. Cafeoteca stocks twenty-three different varieties—all Costa Rican—representing all eight growing regions.

For Costa Ricans who have long known coffee to be a livelihood, Cafeoteca may be a jarring contrast.

It’s a chic café with sacred few tables and prices comparable to those in the US—and the air of exclusivity is particular to the neighborhood, Barrio Escalante, a posh, low-rise, mostly residential area with a faded, tropical look, foodie restaurants, and lots of law firms.

“People are learning what coffee really is, not just, ‘I drink it and I wake up,’” says Rodrigo Muñoz, a Cafeoteca barista in a crisp button-down shirt and floor-length, black apron.

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ABOVE: Viva Café owner Leda Sanchez (far left) with two of her baristas. The shop is in the La California neighborhood of San José (right).

BELOW: Cafeoteca is in the wealthy neighborhood of Barrio Escalante.

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

VANDOLA: A COSTA RICAN INVENTION Another way that Costa Rica is evolving its café culture is through brewing. All three cafés—Café Del Barista, Viva Café, and Cafeoteca— offer the vandola, a device invented

by Costa Rican Minor Alfaro, as a brewing method.

“We took the Chemex and changed everything we didn’t like,” Alfaro says of his creation. The changes included adding a large spout and handle to make the device more suited to professional service.

Handmade from Costa Rican clay, the vandola imparts a slightly earthy taste to the smooth feel of the brew.

It’s a drip-filter method, of which Alfaro says at least 420 designs exist in the world.

The vandola’s sturdy walls and narrow top opening, which stays covered by the filter during service, keep the batch warm. A small air hole next to the handle allows ventilation. Alfaro uses a paper Chemex filter with the vandola, but he says metal and cloth filters also work. He began production early in 2016 and after selling about 350 pieces, mostly in Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina, he hopes to soon be able to sell his product online in the US.

ABOVE: Minor Alfaro, owner of Kaffe café, demonstrates his invention, the vandola.

BELOW: Alfaro at his one-acre coffee farm in Coronado.

COSTA RICANS DRINKING COSTA RICAN COFFEE Alfaro wants Costa Ricans to drink coffee that’s as good as what they grow. But he has little interest in adopting service styles from abroad.

In addition to inventing the vandola, Alfaro owns Kaffa Café in the town of Coronado, just outside San José. Kaffa feels nothing like the bare-bones, oldfashioned sodas, nor like the bright, modern shops in the city center. The feeling is all simple, homey charm.

Colorful glass lamps hang over tightly packed tables, where families meet for big lunches and strong, local coffee.

At Kaffa, cappuccinos are served the old-fashioned way—in short-

stemmed, clear, tulip glasses, topped with a layer of light and fluffy bubblebath-like foam and a heart-shaped dusting of cinnamon. Alfaro modernizes by blending tradition and innovation, without letting either take center stage.

Alfaro opened his shop in 2003, and the next year switched to buying only single-origin beans. He now buys most of his beans from the same region as Dinarte, of Café del Barista, from a farm called Finca Herbazu in the Western Valley. A budding coffee grower, he also tends his own one-acre

coffee farm on a small plot of land on a hillside in town, with the goal of supplying Kaffa exclusively with his own beans. “I want people to have to come to Kaffa for our unique flavor,” he says.

“Since the first day we opened, the idea was to sell export quality coffee,” Alfaro said. “Our interest is in Costa Ricans trying Costa Rican coffee.”

Alfaro sees the lack of consumer coffee knowledge among locals and hopes to inspire change.

Perhaps it’s a look into the future of Costa Rican coffee, as a leader not only in production but also in culture.

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PHOTO BY JACOB IBARRA

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

ACACIA HILLS ESTATE sits atop the lip of the Ngorongoro Crater.

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here is an enormous photo on one wall of Portland Roasting’s cupping lab that depicts a block of coffee shrubs growing under the bright Tanzanian sun, surrounded by towering trees intended to block the wind. Every tour of our facility that I give, someone asks where that picture was taken.

“Oh, that’s a farm in Tanzania that Portland Roasting’s owner, Mark Stell, owns and operates.”

There is invariably one follow-up question: “Have you been there?”

Until September, the answer had always been the same: “No.”

SELFIE: (clockwise from top left) Author Nathanael May, Jon Allen of Onyx Coffee Lab, and Jess Steffy of Square One Coffee.

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

P HOTOS O N OP PO SITE PAG E BY NATHANAE L M AY; P HOTO THIS PAGE JAC OB IBA RRA

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erched atop the crater lip bordering the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area in Northern Tanzania, a small group of international coffee buyers and tasters gathered in September to sample the latest harvest from the four distinct farms that comprise the burgeoning Ngorongoro Coffee Group.

Dubbed “The Cupping at the Crater,” it’s the signature event of the coffee trade association seeking to bolster the reputation of Tanzania’s northern coffee-growing region, which has long been overshadowed by its better-funded and well-marketed peers in Rwanda and Burundi. By pooling resources, sharing information, and expanding market opportunities, the Ngorongoro Coffee Group hopes to highlight Tanzania’s place on the world coffee map.

This year, I was invited to join the Cupping at the Crater. I was excited by the opportunity, but thrilled that I would be joined by my colleagues Jess Steffy, the owner of Square One Coffee in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Jon Allen, the owner of Onyx Coffee Lab in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Along with Portland Roasting Coffee owner Mark Stell, we flew to Kilimanjaro, where we were met by Jacob Ibarra, the director of coffee at Five Senses in

Australia, and a consortium of friends and coffee purveyors from Denmark, including Niels Hestbech, the owner of Kaffe Mekka in Hasselager.

The compelling setting is another draw of the annual event, which is located just a rough (and quite bumpy) jeep ride away from the breathtaking Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area. Home to thousands of large animals (like elephants and lions), the crater floor is also a migratory path for animals

of the Tanzanian coffee industry as it moves intentionally toward high quality coffee crops informed by scientific farming methods and influenced by buyers from around the world.

“A single farm can’t move anything,” he says. “No buyer is going to travel to a single farm—that’s not fun. We need to gather together as a group, demonstrate what the area produces and show off the stunning wildlife that lives in and around the Ngorongoro Crater National Park.”

BY POOLING RESOURCES, SHARING INFORMATION, AND EXPANDING MARKET OPPORTUNITIES, THE NGORONGORO COFFEE GROUP HOPES TO HIGHLIGHT TANZANIA’S PLACE ON THE WORLD COFFEE MAP. making their way to the Serengeti plains that lie to the northwest.

The wildlife, though mesmerizing, is second to the coffee. Our first stop upon landing at the Kilimanjaro Airport was the Shangri La Estate, owned by Christian Jebsen, who hails from Copenhagen, Denmark. Christian put down coffee-growing roots in Tanzania more than twenty-five years ago. He has observed the evolution

What the area produces, it turns out, is genuinely exciting for coffee professionals and enthusiasts.

The Shangri La Estate is remarkably beautiful. Like other farmers in the area, though, Christian has been forced to modify his property to account for animals’ needs and travel schedules. Modifications have included corridors that guide wildlife on their migratory paths as

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well as water sources—like ponds and troughs—that deter them from valuable irrigation systems.

“Our selling point is also one of our biggest challenges,” he said. “We get to watch grand elephants parade through our farms, yet we suffer the collateral damage when plants are trampled or irrigation systems upended.”

Our first day tasting the non-elephant trampled coffee was eye-opening, as we experienced coffee from two different farms, Shangri La Estate and Ngila Estate, and tasted the range of potential on the table. Bourbons 76

and kents—two of the staple varieties of the country—sat alongside both natural and washed-process offerings.

What surprised me was the uniqueness of the flavor profiles. There wasn’t the lemon and black tea we associate with Ethiopia, or the berries and cream we typically expect from Kenya. This was something different.

Something Tanzanian.

Historically, Northern Tanzania has mainly been the home of those bourbon and kent varieties, which have been the backbone of exports here since the 1900s. As Mark and Christian considered how to develop

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

their own farms in Tanzania, they looked out at the coffee industries in other growing countries, seeing an embrace of a wider range of varieties.

They wondered what those varieties would taste like coming from the soil around the crater. Would they be viable? Would they sell?

Tanzania is the second largest economy in East Africa, yet its reliance on agricultural exports (like coffee) contributes to its economic instability.

For the last thirty years, the Tanzanian coffee industry lagged as other regions surged ahead with more marketing dollars and efforts to promote their

P HOTO O F SIGN BY NATHA NAEL M AY; OTHER P HOTO S ON THIS PAGE BY JAC OB IBARRA

SHANGRI LA’S Christian Jebsen.

P HOTOS O F ANIM ALS BY JAC O B IBAR RA; TRA MP LE D C OFFEE P HOTO BY NATHANAE L M AY

ELEPHANT trampled coffee plant.

coffees—Rwanda and Burundi benefited from a boost by outside marketing dollars from PEARL (Partnerships for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages), a project of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) that helped promote the development of coffee in these areas. Tanzania, unfortunately, did not have those same opportunities.

As a result, Tanzania has not seen the surge in excitement and growth in export that Rwanda and Burundi have enjoyed in the last decade.

Mark sees a real opportunity for the Ngorongoro Coffee Group to

energize Tanzania’s coffee industry and show people what “that other country in Africa” can do. But how do you actually do that?

“Nothing has changed—coffee growers simply kept producing the same coffee despite a changing climate and a shifting market,” he says.

“You have to adapt and respond to the market. We aren’t where we need to be and to get there, we need to experiment with varieties.”

With a vision for expanding the varietals available from Tanzania, in 2013 a block of gesha seeds was planted on Mark’s farm, Acacia Hills.

One year later, he planted a block of pacamara. A few days into our trip, we arrived at Mark’s farm and had the opportunity to cup those coffees.

For years, people in specialty coffee have been trying to convince the broader world that coffee is a lot like wine. There are different varieties!

Those varieties impact the flavor of the cup! You can taste the difference!

On the cupping table at Acacia Hills’ lab was a pure and brilliant example of that message.

We cupped a kent, a pacamara, and a geisha right next to each other. All three coffees were grown Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

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nutrients—the soil where the coffee takes root. Cupping at the Crater participant farms test their soil pre-season, feed their trees based on results, and closely monitor their growth, then test again post-season. The results are shared at the annual event, where farmers gather to cup micro-lots and

ALL THIS SHARING MAKES FOR STIFFER COMPETITION INTERNALLY, BUT ALSO MAKES FOR BETTER SALES WORLDWIDE, AND MORE AWARENESS OF TANZANIA IN SPECIALTY COFFEE.

eydew, while the pacamara came in so bright and sweet that we questioned whether it was actually a pacamara.

The success of these varieties resulted from a commitment to the coffee plant itself, and the source of its

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farm managers share best practices and processes. The testing process is a key part of the event’s program and is a new approach to coffee farming for Tanzania, where farmers’ historical focus has been volume.

Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

I was consistently impressed with the lack of secrecy between the members of the Ngorongoro Coffee group. Sure, they were competing to see who could grow the most delicious coffee (a competition I highly encourage!), but they were also helping each other grow more delicious coffee.

Those high-scoring geshas and pacamaras from Acacia Hills will be growing on the slopes of Shangri La Estate sooner rather than later. The sweet bourbons of Shangri La will find their way to other farms in the group as well. All this sharing makes for stiffer competition internally, but also makes for better sales worldwide, and more awareness of Tanzania in specialty coffee.

In addition to sharing scientific methodology with farmer members, the coffee association provides marketing and sales support, and helps farmers network with international coffee buyers—plus membership

P HOTOS BY NATHA NA EL M AY

within a few hundred meters of each other, and all three could not have tasted more different.

The gesha had the distinct notes we’ve come to expect in the industry: lime, floral characteristics, and bright, sweet fruit. The kent had surprising notes of almond, chocolate, and hon-

includes access to global trade shows like the SCAA Expo.

Farmers want volume and buyers want quality, and the Ngorongoro Coffee Group wants to help Tanzania achieve both goals. At four farm members now, but with about thirty-five farms in the Northern Tanzania coffee area, the Ngorongoro Coffee Group has the potential to build a robust membership and make a legitimate difference for Tanzania.

The Nairobi-based Foreign Agriculture Service forecasts Tanzania’s coffee production will increase to a record 1.2 million sixty-kilogram bags this year because of improved husbandry practices and favorable weather. They foresee coffee exports increasing by about twenty percent over the next season. And the Tanzanian government is executing its coffee sector strategic plan with a key objective to double production by 2021.

Mark and Christian will—along with the members of their group—ride this momentum and hopefully increase awareness for a higher quality of coffee for years to come. Then, maybe, “that other country” in Africa will be higher on the list of places we love to drink coffee from.

It’s incredible. We just have to taste it.

Additional reporting by Kathleen Finn

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Trade Show & Events CALENDAR DECEMBER

FEBRUARY

DECEMBER 20-23 INTERNATIONAL COFFEE & CHOCOLATE EXHIBITION Riyadh, Saudi Arabia coffeechoco-expo.com

FEBRUARY 15-17 AFRICAN FINE COFFEE CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION Addis Ababa, Ethiopia eafca.org

JANUARY

MARCH

JANUARY 12-14 CAFÉ MALAYSIA Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia cafe-malaysia.com

MARCH 2-4 RUSSIAN COFFEE & TEA INDUSTRY EVENT (RUCTIE) Moscow unitedcoffeetea.ru/en

JANUARY 22-24 WINTER FANCY FOOD SHOW San Francisco specialtyfood.com

MARCH 2-4 CAFE ASIA & ICY INDUSTRY EXPO Marina Bay, Singapore www.cafeasia.com.sg

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY 9-11 THE NAFEM SHOW Orlando, Florida thenafemshow.org

MARCH 3-5 INDIA INTERNATIONAL TEA & COFFEE EXPO Kolkata, India teacoffeeexpo.in

MARCH 5-7 INTERNATIONAL RESTAURANT & FOODSERVICE SHOW New York City internationalrestaurantny.com

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Coffee Almanac » December 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

» 2016-17 COFFEE & TEA TRADE SHOWS, CLASSES & COMPETITIONS «

MARCH

MARCH

MARCH 10-12 AMSTERDAM COFFEE FESTIVAL Amsterdam amsterdamcoffeefestival.com

MARCH 30-APRIL 1 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL COFFEE EXPO (MICE) Melbourne, Australia internationalcoffeeexpo.com.au

APRIL MARCH 17-19 COFFEE FEST Nashville, Tennessee coffeefest.com

MARCH 18-19 COFFEE & TEA FESTIVAL NYC Brooklyn, New York coffeeandteafestival.com

MARCH 23-25 NCA ANNUAL CONVENTION Austin, Texas ncausa.org

MARCH 25-26 SOUTHWEST COFFEE & CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL Albuquerque, New Mexico chocolateandcoffeefest.com

APRIL 6-9 LONDON COFFEE FESTIVAL London londoncoffeefestival.com

APRIL 6-9 COFFEE EXPO SEOUL Seoul coffeeexposeoul.com

APRIL 19-20 RE;CO/SPECIALTY COFFEE SYMPOSIUM Seattle recosymposium.org

APRIL 20-23 SCAA EXPO Seattle scaa.org

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ADVERTISER INDEX Go to freshcup.com/resources and click on “Fresh Cup Advertisers” to view the Advertiser Index and the websites listed below.

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ADVERTISER

CONTACT

ONLINE

ASHE

844.722.4968

ashellc.com

PAGE 22

Barista Pro Shop

866.PRO.LATTE (776.5288)

baristaproshop.com/ad/fresh

21

Califia Farms

844.237.4779

califiafarms.com

5

Cappuccine

800.511.3127

cappuccine.net

7

Caravan Coffee

503.538.7365

caravancoffee.com

55

Chocolate Fish Coffee Roasters

916.451.5181

chocolatefishcoffee.com

37

Coffee Fest

800.232.0083

coffeefest.com

Coffee Holding Co.

800.458.2233

coffeeholding.com

Coffee Shop Manager

800.750.3947

coffeeshopmanager.com

36

Earnest Eats

888.264.4599

earnesteats.com

24

ecotop

855.ECO.TOPS (326.8677)

ecotopusa.com

79

Finum by Riensch & Held

49.4073424

finum.com

23

Fresh Cup Magazine

503.236.2587

freshcup.com

67

Gosh That’s Good! Brand

888.848.GOSH (4674)

goshthatsgood.com

84

Holy Kakow

503.484.8316

holykakow.com

9

Java Jacket

800.208.4128

javajacket.com

11

15, 17 6

KitchenAid 800.541.6390

kitchenaid.com/countertop- appliances/coffee-products/ 4

Klean Kanteen

800.767.3173

kleankanteen.com

24

Malabar Gold Espresso

650.366.5453

malabargoldespresso.com

27

Monin Gourmet Flavorings

855.FLAVOR1 (352.8671)

monin.com

Mr. Espresso

510.287.5200

mrespresso.com

25

Oregon Chai

888.874.CHAI (2424)

mydrinkworks.com/oregonchai

83

Organic Products Trading Co

888.881.4433

optco.com

17

Pacific Foods

503.692.9666

pacificfoods.com/foodservice

Routin 1883

800.467.7142

1883.com

SelbySoft

800.454.4434

selbysoft.com

Service Ideas

800.328.4493

serviceideas.com

53

StixToGo

800.666.6655

royalpaper.com

36

TeaSource

855.320.4832

teasource.com

11

Theta Ridge Coffee

800.745.8738

thetaridgecoffee.com

79

Toddy

888.863.3974

toddycafe.com

21

Vessel Drinkware

855.883.7735

vesseldrinkware.com

37

Vio by WinCup

800.292.2877

wincup.com/vio

35

Whip-it!

800.500.0583

whipitbrand.com

79

Your Brand Café

866.566.0390

yourbrandcafe.com

14

Zojirushi America

800.264.6270

zojirushi.com

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2 51 9

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