Coffee Illuminati

More space, more time

2010-10-09T17:39:00.001-07:00

So, we've expanded. You probably know that.

Along with the needed space, it's given me a bit more time- mostly, I think, because I've given away some more of my bar hours to Garth and Michael in exchange for a bit more sleep, roasting during the daytime, and getting things done that seem to be neglected.

Including the Coffee Illuminati.

I want to have a coffee tasting soon. But, of course, there are things coming up we need to steer clear of. I'm hoping to go on vacation to Sedona next week. Hoping.

Garth and I are headed to Rio Negro in Costa Rica in November.

And much more.

For now, I wanted to post links to some stuff I've been reading that is interesting:

http://www.coffeeclubnetwork.com/redes/form/post?pub_id=2131

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=40774&t=Flooding+causes+evacuation+of+refugees+in+Guatemala

http://sprudge.com/aguagate-questioning-castillo-at-the-2010-colombia-cup-of-excellence.html

I asked Cristina about this last article and here's what she said:

"My opinion is divided on this matter.

I was very sad when I found out many growers from Concordia are changing to
Variedad Castillo, you know obviously my reasons, but when I heard everyones
story, I agree that unfortunately that is the reality these days and they
have to make their living. Coffee rust has been so dramatic in the last 2
years, that people who had Caturra lost their crop. There was nothing that
could stopped it, besides pesticides are very expensive and some people used
them 6 to 8 times a year and did not work either.
Coffee rust make the folliage to fall, so the beans do not mature and the
tree finally takes 2 years to recover.
I understand the FNC wants to increase production and protect the grower but
what I do not like and disagree is that they lie about the variety. We all
understand and the growers as well, that the variedad castillo is more
resistant and more productive but lower quality. That is the reality.

P.d. Lets hope nature gives us back the good weather to be able to keep
Caturra in our farms."

Change change change

2010-05-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a while. Sorry about that.
I may have mentioned before that we're working on re-structuring the Coffee Illuminati, and I may need your help.
And patience.

Part of what is taking up so much time is the impending expansion into the space next door, where Chrome was. That new space will be our main counter and seating area, with some seating still in the old space. There is a door between the two, which has been hidden behind the lockers. You may have seen us walking behind the lockers and disappearing lately. Not Narnia.

The story about us and El Boton Natural finally came out in Wine Specator. It's in the current issue, which may or may not yet be on the shelves, but subscribers are receiving the issue now. This is exciting for us. For one, it's a huge magazine- it has the biggest readership in the world. It's well-respected and read by people who, theoretically, can appreciate what we do. And hopefully it will mean a large, sustained increase in online sales. So far so good.
I'm trying to remind myself that, even if we didn't get a jump in sales, it's still a big deal.

Last night I roasted 20 new samples. Some are from Cafe Imports and some are from a new broker I haven't used before, called Mercanta. I'll be tasting them over the next couple days. Hopefully we'll find some gems.

I also have been working hard to try and make new contacts in various countries for coffees. I met a girl named Rouki at SCAA who lives in Guatemala City and has a lot of contacts with producers around the world. She has been connecting me with people in Guatemala (she says there are farmers producing some Geisha), Honduras, Nicaragua, and Kenya. I'm also trying to work out trips to these places if the contacts play out and I am able to acquire some unique and delicious coffees.

Kari and I have been trying to find time to plan for the DoubleShot Duathlon this year. It's going to be October 2 at Osage Hills State Park. Just one race this year. The proceeds from the races we put on go to help out various projects for coffee producing families. Check out the (very minimal) webpage: www.DoubleShotDuathlon.com

We've been talking about having a tasting of all our coffees, but time keeps getting away. We may wait and do it in the new space. That should be cool.

One last thing. I did buy another coffee from Ninety Plus, the people who brought us the Aricha and Beloya. It's called Nekisse. I think it's even better than the coffees from them before. Which is saying a lot. I suspect it won't be long until I roast it. Burning a hole in my pocket.

If you come to the DS, today there are two coffees sitting out on the cupping table. They are supposed to be the same coffee. The one on your right is the high-quality coffee we're used to seeing in this coffee and the one on the left is what we were sent this time. What a problem. You can see that there can be extreme variations in quality, and if I'm not careful and attentive, we can end up drinking crappy coffee. I guess I'm going to have to probe each bag that comes in and make sure it is what it's supposed to be. One more thing to add to the list.

Guatemala

2010-02-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've been contemplating another trip soon and Guatemala keeps coming to mind, despite the trouble I had last time and the events of the past year or two.

If you haven't been keeping up, you should read these stories. It's a sad situation.

http://www.dhauckphoto.com/blog/?p=170

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14guatemala.html

http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Never-ending?lang=es

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25810892@N04/3541262537/

Probably a bad time to go. Also a bad time to turn our backs on Guatemalan coffee farmers.

Legesse Sherefa

2010-02-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

Just received a few new coffees: Natural Yirgacheffe, Burundi Kirimiro from the Mwurire washing station, Yemen Harazi, also the El Boton Natural, Colombia La Alondra, and more Kenya French Mission and Tanzania Peaberry.

While I was looking for info about the Nat Yirg, I googled the exporter's name and found this story: http://www.ethiopianreview.com/articles/9426

Amazing what is happening in Ethiopia. Good coffees have been few and far between from there this year.

Haiti

2010-01-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you've all been following the disaster in Haiti. It's terrible, and every time I hear about it, I wish I could do something to help.

A long time ago, before I opened the DoubleShot, I was in really good physical condition. I could run, ride, paddle, or whatever all day long. And all night. And all day again. I could literally go and go and go without wearing out. I realized at some point that I had an unusual ability, probably partly natural and partly because I worked at it so hard. But once I understood that I could do things other normal people couldn't do, I started to feel that I should use the ability for good. And I racked my brain trying to figure out how I could get a few more people like myself together and find an organization that would allow us to go at a moment's notice to places like Haiti, to deliver supplies and help people and to go where vehicles and other people couldn't get to very easily. I really could've been a force back then, had I known how to use it. As the years have worn on, I'm now just an average person. I've worked so much in this business that I've let my physical abilities falter. That bothers me, and I wish I were still in shape enough to help in Haiti. And I wish I had the time, resources, and know-how to get there and help. But I don't. So I sit here behind my computer trying to think of another way to help. Donating money? Ugh. I know they need stuff, but blindly giving money makes me queasy.

If you have a source to give money to help Haitians, do let us know.

So I've been thinking about Haiti's history. They were a French colony a long time ago and were producing half of the worlds coffee at the time. Which is an amazing because it's a small... half of an island. The other half is the Dominican Republic.

The coffee and sugar industry in Haiti was run by plantation owners and worked by slaves. In 1791 the slaves began the only successful slave rebellion in known world history. As a result, their economy was wrecked and has never recovered. The plantation owners were killed and coffee crops were destroyed or neglected. Their coffee production plummeted by 45 percent.

In recent years, a French organization called FACN with the help of USAID have developed a blend called Haitian Bleu, which is supposed to compete in the specialty market. Unfortunately I've never really heard of it and don't know anything about the coffee. So I'm thinking their efforts might not be that effective.

I started thinking. After this horrible disaster, there is going to have to be rebuilding. In my opinion, rebuilding the same thing they had before the earthquake is not going to make their lives better. I'm wondering if there could be an opportunity for the Specialty coffee industry to step in and try to guide and help them retool their coffee industry. Maybe Tim Schilling, who directed the programs in Rwanda that have bee incredibly successful, could lend his expertise to Haiti's coffee growers. Maybe changing just a few things and educating Haitians about the state of Specialty coffee today could have a huge impact on their economy.

Is it possible that Haiti could become a big player in the coffee industry again?

I don't know.

What are your thoughts? How can we help?

Happy Day Off Day

2009-12-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a rough season, work-wise, around here. Isaiah, Garth, and I have been working way too much, and on top of it, they are preparing to compete in the South Central Regional Barista Competition in Austin January 7-10. We're all tired, and for sure enjoyed the day off yesterday.

But we haven't lost our zeal for coffee. I hope you all got the chance to try the Panama Gesha La Esmeralda. That was our special coffee this year. I thought it was really good. I also roasted the El Boton Natural that I hauled back from Colombia in my suitcase. We'll have more of that (a lot of it) probably mid-January.

I just read a blog entry written by a guy I've never heard of, but I really enjoyed it and I agree with what he wrote. I thought the comments below it were interesting too. Many of the big players in the industry seemed to try and defend their positions. Here it is:

http://theotherblackstuff.ie/thoughts/challenging-flavours/

Here's something too about new botanical discoveries this year, including varietals of coffee: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8424817.stm

I am speaking at Philbrook Museum on January 14 (Thursday) at 530p for a group called Tulsa Green Drinks. Generally they get together for drinks and listen to someone speak about something related to sustainability. They're giving me 20 minutes, which you know isn't much if you've ever come to listen to me speak in the past. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to talk about yet, but it will most likely skim the issues with buying coffee and the responsibility I feel regarding coffee producers. You should come. I'd like to fill the house and see a lot of familiar faces there. And hopefully I'll discuss some things, in a different format, than you've been exposed to. You can pick up passes to attend at the DoubleShot if you want to come. Read about it here: http://tulsagreendrinks.blogspot.com/2009/12/january-green-drinks-at-philbrook.html

Colombian Coffees

2009-12-17T04:33:00.000-08:00

More news about our coffees in Colombia.

The El Boton Natural is in a shipping container in port in Colombia, waiting to get loaded onto a ship. Before they can, every coffee in a container must be cupped by the Coffee Quality arm of the FNC (The Federation). Yesterday they cupped the El Boton and rejected it, which means it could not be exported. Cristina asked me to write a letter to the head of the Coffee Quality institute, stating my intention to buy the El Boton based on its unique cup profile. I did that, and he accepted my letter, allowing for the export of our coffee. Whew.

It will ship out on the 22nd and arrive in Oakland on the 10th of January. We will get it on a truck at that time and it should be here by the 18th, if there are no holdups in customs or whatever.

Remember, also in this container is a coffee from a farmer named Octavio Restrepo whose farm is called La Alondra. You can see pictures of La Alondra here. This coffee will be good- chocolate, raisins, cinnamon, and a big, silky body.

I haven't mentioned the story of another coffee we'll hopefully be buying soon. Because I don't want to spread this around. I don't want to set a precedent for every situation like this, and I don't want to focus so much on a story as I do the coffee that results from it. That's my job, to worry about who gets what and how and where we get coffee. But I'm going to tell you this story anyway. While I was in Medellin, Cristina told me about an old couple named Gabriel and Orfilia Escobar. They own a very small farm called Las Animas (around 2 acres) outside Concordia. They work this farm by themselves, and Cristina told me they produce delicious coffee, but in very small quantities. Apparently Gabriel has been ill and his vision has been deteriorating until he finally fell completely blind. Orfilia has been tending to him, afraid to leave him in the house alone. So their coffee is not being harvested. Orfilia called Cristina to tell her the story and ask if Cristina could buy their farm so they could move into town and be able to support themselves. This story really bothered me and I couldn't stop thinking about it. What can I do? So one day I called Cristina and asked her if I could hire people to pick the coffee for Las Animas. She said she would find out. My one stipulation was this. I wanted them to dry-process the coffee, like Ariel is doing at El Boton. I promised her I would buy it even if it wasn't good. Cristina told me they have a marquesina, like the one Ariel built (a raised drying bed). Cristina called and talked to Orfilia about it, explaining the process over and over. Because it sounds stupid to them. But Orfilia let us pay for pickers and she laid the coffee out on the marquesina. Las Animas is planted all in Caturra, so it is a different varietal from the Maragogipe planted at El Boton. Orfilia dry-processed some coffee and sent it to Cristina. It is only a small amount, but when Cristina cupped it she said it was delicious. She seemed very excited about it. So hopefully we will have some of this coffee to buy soon.

The other thing I need to find out about is another small experiment Ariel is doing at El Boton. While we were there, he seemed distressed that all the coffee cherries weren't completely red. He talked to the farm manager, Luis, and they discussed why and what for. Luis said they have to pick coffee that is at least half-ripe because they will not be back to that area for another week, and by then those cherries would be overripe. In spanish they call the ones that are half-ripe and half green, PINTON. Ariel argued that Luis wouldn't eat an avocado if it were pinton; he would buy one that is maduro (ripe). Because when an avocado or a mango or any other fruit is ripe, it is sweet and delicious, but when it is pinton (or unripe), it is sour and bitter. Ariel argued that coffee is probably the same way. In general, coffee producers do not drink their own coffee. They export all the good coffee and drink the worst coffee or instant coffee. So they don't know. And Luis doesn't drink coffee at all. So Ariel told Luis to separate one square foot on the marquesina for ONLY pinton cherries and another square foot for ONLY maduro cherries. Cristina will cup them side-by-side and we will see the results. What effect does ripeness of cherry have on the cup?

Colombia Chat

2009-12-07T13:20:00.001-08:00

This Thursday 12/10 at 7p we'll meet up down here at the DoubleShot to chat about Colombia. I won't have any pictures to show and don't have an agenda to talk about, so bring your questions. And whatever you want to drink. I'll brew some coffee, but if you want beer, whiskey, or whatever, feel free to bring it with you. We'll just hang out and celebrate Colombian coffee.

See you then.

Colombia Report

2009-11-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

I posted pictures from this last trip here: http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/Origin/Colombia_09-2.html

I am thinking maybe about doing a discussion of the trip, but a little different than usual. Let me know what you think of this idea.

Thinking about having a time where we just have an informal chit-chat about it. Maybe BYOB or whatever. Sit down, talk about Colombia and coffee in general, and just enjoy each other's company. Thoughts? Times y'all might be available? Do tell.

Concordia

2009-11-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

Indeed I am in Colombia again. It has been a good trip so far. I'm getting to know people here and that makes things easier. I met a couple farmers today, one we sold a year ago and one I'm buying in December. It's good.
Wanted you to know two things.
I donated $1000 to the community center project. $250 of that was proceeds from the races Kari and I put on this year. I hope we can think of another fund raiser to give a little more to the cause. They were very happy for the donation.
Second, I'm speaking at the Philbrook on Jan 14 at 530p. It's an event called Green Drinks and everyone is invited. Please put it on your calender.
Third, I'm going to try to smuggle 30 pounds of El Boton natural on the plane. Well, smuggle might be a bit of a strong word...

Magazines

2009-11-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

A couple of really exciting things for us here at the DoubleShot.

Fresh Cup Magazine asked me to write a story for their Roasters Realm column about the El Boton Natural. I wrote the first draft today. It needs work.

More importantly (and you should keep this on the DL), Mark Pendergrast is going to write a story about the El Boton Natural for Wine Spectator Magazine! THE Mark Pendergrast, author of UNCOMMON GROUNDS. Wow. Wine Spectator Magazine. Hittin' the bigtime!

Let's keep that between me and y'all. Should come out in March, so we have plenty of time to forget about it. (Not Me!)

I'm headed to Colombia Nov 18-25. Let's try to come up with some sort of a fund raiser before then (I know that's soon) so I can deliver some money to them to help with their project.

What a Wonderful World...

2009-10-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

So...I've been reading again :) Today's recommended reading list contains three books, none of which are [directly] about coffee. But my English teacher in ninth grade had a quote by Chief Seattle painted on his wall: "All things are connected like the blood that unites us all." I haven't read the quote in context, so don't know exactly what Chief Seattle was talking about at that point--however, the more I learn about foods, flavors/aromas, etc, the more this quote seems to be true! Hopefully the following will explain:
Book 1 is Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." This is a book to read with a dictionary--but even if you don't have one at hand, it's completely fascinating! It's a chronicle of one year in which Annie Dillard lived by Tinker Creek in Virginia. Every day she went out to observe nature--bringning home praying mantis egg sacs, learning to stalk muskrats, etc. The book is as much about the beauty of nature as it is about its horrors. She spends alot of time on parasites--because they make up the majority of the world's organisms! And she reflects on what it means to live in a world that is both so wonderful and so painful. I learned so much about nature reading this book, I came away wondering how it's so easy to be 'an adult'--to see things mundanely. When in reality, it should be possible to live an entire life with "a child's curiousity" because things are so complex we'll never know it all! Here is a quote from my favorite paragraph in the book, and this is the most obvious way the book connects with coffee :) Annie talks about finding a wounded butterfly in a gas-station parking lot. She coaxes it onto her finger. "The closing of his wings fanned an almost imperceptible redolence at my face, and I leaned closer. I could barely scent a sweetness, I could almost name it...fireflies, sparklers--honey-suckle. He smelled like honeysuckle; I couldn't believe it. I knew that many male butterflies exuded distinctive odors from special scent glands, but I thought that only laboratory instruments could detect those odors compounded of many, many butterflies. I had read a list of the improbable scents of butterflies: sandalwood, chocolate, heliotrope, sweet pea...."
So, maybe you start out thinking, "I want to be able to smell the different aromas in my coffee. To move beyond thinking coffee smells like coffee, tastes like coffee, end of story." And as you start developing your ability to smell and taste subtleties in coffee, you're developing skills that can be used to make your chocolate-consuming, wine-tasting, cigar-smoking...and even your butterfly-holding experiences more rich and complete!
The next two books are about chocolate, but they might have to be kept for a later post. But here is a quote from one, "The Chocolate Connoisseur" by Chloe Doutre-Roussel. This is a woman who has spent admirable amounts of time and money--ever since she was just 13 years old!!--learning to taste chocolate scientifically, recording her observations, etc. Chloe writes, about learning how to smell aromas in chocolate: "Experience the scents of wet weather. If you're in the woods, smell the soil and the leaves. Breathe in the odor of a tree trunk. When you go to the market, take a sniff of each basket of mushrooms, herbs, fruit, and flowers. Do all this and you will rediscover the potential of your sense of smell. We all have the ability, but many of us have forgotten it." See? all those things--the mushrooms, the herbs, the weather, coffee <3 --all help us to enjoy each other! But they're all so different. even a chocolate that tastes like mushrooms...is nothing like eating a mushroom!
Okay, very quickly, the third book is Mort Rosenblum's "Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light." But more on that, and chocolate itself, later. :) Hope you all have a wonderful day! Oh, final question: What are some of your favorite chocolates?

El Boton Natural

2009-10-12T14:00:00.001-07:00

If you're following me on twitter, you probably already know that the small bag (45 pounds) of coffee from El Boton came in today via FedEx. It is the dry-processed coffee we've been waiting for. Isaiah and Garth were planning to use this coffee in their competition in Austin at the end of this month. But we just found out that the competition isn't until January, so we have this to play with. The samples we've had were really difficult to roast, but they tasted so good anyway. We tasted the sweetest, fruitiest coffee in the world. It was every bit as good as the best Ethiopian we've had. I'm roasting it tonight for the first time. That's a tough roast because I don't know what's going to happen during the roast cycle. But we'll have one batch for sale tomorrow. When it's gone, it's gone.

Because of the demanding processing, ridiculous shipping method, and limited availability, I have to charge $30 per pound for it. But you should try it. Even if it's just a press or a pourover here at the DSCC.

As far as I know, this is the only Colombian natural in the U.S. Maybe the only one to reach our shores in the past 50 years. Hey hey!

Oh, it's available online here: http://doubleshotcoffee.com/store/index.php?productID=83

Happy Birthday Tara Bowen!

2009-10-05T17:01:00.001-07:00

Just found out it's Tara's Bday.

Hope you're having a good one!

New Coffees

2009-09-24T15:15:00.001-07:00

I ordered a few new coffees. Here are the notes about some of them from Cafe Imports.

Kenya Chania French Mission Varietal, new crop Tanzania Songea Peaberry, and Ethiopia Harrar East Haraghe Highlands. I also ordered a Brazil Ipanema Yellow Icatu from Beccor, which will be a good coffee.

Kenya

2009-09-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

I got up early this morning and sample roasted four Kenyans from Cafe Imports. The guys from Hanson are coming in this afternoon to taste them and potentially sell one of them on their website. I hope.

I'm doing a little research, so I don't sound so ignorant if they ask questions. Thought I'd share with you.

As far as I can tell, there are 8 grades of coffee coming out of Kenya.

AA is the highest grade, but all it really means is th

at it is a 18 or 17 screen (18/64 or 17/64 inch).

AB is a 16 screen.

PB - Peaberries are sorted out and make up about 10% of the crop.

C grade is smaller than AB.

TT is the size of AA and AB, but are less dense, and separated via air pressure.

T grade are very light and broken pieces.

It appears there are two other grades of coffee, but I'm not certain what they are. I'm sure at least one of them is a designation of domestic consumption coffee.

Most coffee produced in Kenya is Arabica. But there are many, many different varietals grown there. The French Mission Varietal is one of the oldest types of coffee in Kenya. It is a Bourbon strand brought over from Reunion Island by French missionaries in the late 1800s. Bourbon coffee developed (sort-of) naturally. The British East India Company sold seeds from Aden, Yemen to the French, who planted them on the island of Bourbon (which is now called Reunion). After a few generations on the island it took on unique characteristics. It is generally more "robust" than Typica and tends to have a higher production. The trees and cherries have a distinctive look, as well.

Some hybrid varietals are grown in Kenya. SL-28 was created by Scott Labs from Bourbon and Ethiopian Mokka varietals. (From Sweet Maria's site:) "It supposedly is selected from Tanganyika DR cultivar, found by A.D Trench on a trip through Tanzania, and has similar drought resistant properties. DR is of French Mission Bourbon origin. Many prefer SL-28 to the other successful... cultivar SL-34." I don't know who A.D. Trench is and I can't seem to find anything on the internet about him.

SL-34 is another hybrid produced by Scott Labs. (Again from Sweet Maria's:) "It supposedly is selected from French Mission Bourbon trees at Loresho Estate in Kabete Kenya. SL types are responsible for 90% of Kenya coffees. SL-34 has better yields than SL-28, and is grown at lower altitudes than SL-28." Generally, a higher-yielding varietal that produces well at lower elevations doesn't taste as good, so that's my assumption.

RUIRU 11: "is named for the station at Ruiru, Kenya where it was developed in the '70s and released in 1986. The initial tests were with Hibrido de Timor (a cross between Arabica and Robusta, resistant to Coffee Leaf Rust) and Rume Sudan, an original coffee strain resistant to Coffee Berry Disease. Later they added SL-28 and SL-34 inputs due to poor cup character of the early tests. The Robusta content of Ruiru 11 is still an issue, and the cup does not match the quality of the SL types."

Here is a map of Kenya with the growing regions highlighted.

Follow-up to The Perfect Cappuccino

2009-09-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon! Thanks to everyone who came to watch The Perfect Cappuccino! If you were unable to make it, I think you can still purchase it at Doubleshot, or online at www.cappuccinomovie.com. It's wonderful!
Watching it reminded me of a book I read awhile ago (actually, long enough ago that I no longer remember it vividly, so this is going to be a 'book review' in a very superficial sense...): Starbucked by Taylor Clark. It's at the Central Library. If you watched the movie and are curious to learn more about this omnipresent company for whatever reason (I read it to fuel an anti-Starbucks bias, although it is a fairly balanced book), you should check it out! Since I don't remember anything, here is a trivia quote from the back of the book: "Americans now drink so much coffee that scientists have detected caffeine in many of the nation's rivers, lakes, and bays--and even in treated drinking water." Interesting--
Secondly, if you watched the movie you'll remember when Amy showed clips from old coffee commercials. Here are some Blues lyrics written by Mississippi John Hurt, copyrighted in 1963...back in the days where prepackaged coffee was the only option. *Shudder* They're in the same vein as those old commercials: "This is the 'Coffee Blues,' I likes a certain brand--Maxwell's House--it's good till the last drop, just like it says on the can. I used to have a girl cookin' a good Maxwell House. She moved away. Some said to Memphis and some said to Leland, but I found her. I wanted her to cook me some good Maxwell's House. You understand, if I can get me just a spoonful of Maxwell's House, do me much good as two or three cups this other coffee..."
Don't know if that was originally written as a commerical for Maxwell's House, or if the songwriter really did love Maxwell's enough to include it in a song, but...there you have it. :)

Finally, an interaction-question: A personal "goal" is to learn how to say "I like Coffee" in as many languages as possible. If you are able to say/write "I like coffee" in a foreign tongue, please share! I think in German it's "Der Kaffee schmeckt mir gut"--literally, the coffee tastes good to me.
Thanks, and I hope you all have a great day!

The Perfect Cappuccino

2009-09-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

I hope you all will do your best to make it to the screening of The Perfect Cappuccino here tomorrow night at 7p. I got the projector and a big screen. We're going to have a live video web chat with Amy Ferraris afterward. Should be a fun time. Please come and bring people. We'll open the doors at 6p, so come early to socialize and drink coffee.

Colombian Coffee Children

2009-09-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

This is something that has slid onto the back burner over the past few weeks. It's on my mind again now though.

I'm referring to the community center they are proposing to build in Concordia for the poorer coffee workers' children. We talked about finding a way to raise money to help.

Obviously we could do anything. We could have a bake sale and send them $200 and feel good about ourselves that we did something to help. But that's not much help. Nothing we do will be A LOT of help, but I feel that we can do something.

One thing that we already do is put on the DoubleShot races. This is the fourth year for it. And this year, we decided to do three duathlons and one six hour mountain bike race. The second duathlon is this weekend at Osage Hills State Park. We've always donated proceeds from the races to a charity (Coffee Kids). This year we decided to set up our own 501(3)c not-for-profit organization so we could do more than just give to an overall cause. This way we can donate directly to the project in Concordia. Or do other things I've thought about doing, such as building swing sets or taking soccer balls for the kids. If we don't do it this way, our all-consuming government will tax the hell out of me. It's not easy to give to charitable causes.

You can see the website for the DoubleShot Duathlon series here: www.DoubleshotDuathlon.com

If you'd like to come volunteer (hang out, help a little, drink coffee and beer, and eat hotdogs), please send an email to Kari: Kari@DoubleShotDuathlon.com

Anyway, let's try to get back on track and thinking about what we could do to raise money for this project. I think we should help. If you have ideas, post them in the comments of this blog or email me.

Colombia and Cappuccino

2009-08-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

First, I've decided that we should push back the showing of the film The Perfect Cappuccino to the evening of Thursday, September 10 at 7p. It lasts 90 minutes and then we'll (hopefully) have a live video chat with Amy Ferraris, the filmmaker. Stay tuned for details.

The coffee experiments are going really good. I skyped with Cristina a couple days ago and we talked about all that is happening with these developments. She told me the first sample was with red Maragogipe dried on concrete, and it was really great. The second sample Ariel used yellow Maragogipe (they ripen yellow instead of red), dried on raised beds and covered with a cloth. She said it wasn't as good- cooled more astringent and green. She thinks it's because it's harder to tell if the yellows are ripe or not, so more unripe could've gotten in. Also the cloth he used to cover the coffee wasn't porous enough and the coffee may have gotten too hot. So he did another sample with red Maragogipe dried on raised beds and covered with a more porous cloth. She hadn't tasted it yet when I talked to her.

The first two samples Ariel milled at his mill on the farm. The sample I got still had silverskin on the outside of the beans and on that was a lot of sugars, so when I roasted it, it suddenly looked like it was burning. This third sample, Ariel brought to Cristina's father's dry mill in Medellin. They have better equipment and she's hoping they can polish the silverskin off the coffee, so it looks more like a washed coffee and roasts better. She was hoping to get that lot of coffee in two days ago, after I talked to her. Then she was going to roast and cup it hopefully today. This could be the one. If it works out, there's a possibility she can get us a few bags. And THAT would be awesome. Right now, we're the only people in the world who are even talking about natural coffee from Colombia. The FNC (Colombian Coffee Federation) is not going to let this coffee out of the country if they find out about it, so the key is to mix the bags in with a container of other coffee and try to sneak it through.

She told me that she had the same experiment done at one of her father's farms in Concordia, and the coffee was a Caturrra variety. She said it was sweet, a lot brighter (higher acidity) and not as complex as the Maragogipe. Could be interesting though.

I asked her about having Alfredo do this with his coffee. She said she asked him to and he had been too busy with the beginning of their harvest. But she asked him again and she was hoping that he had done it. This could actually change the face of Colombian coffee forever. And we're involved. Exciting.

I can't wait to taste the next samples.

Most Exciting

2009-08-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most exciting events of my coffee career. I've learned so much (yet so little) in my few years on the industry, and the more I learn, the more it enables me to ask questions. Those questions sometimes have answers and sometimes they don't. Usually one answer brings more questions than I had before.

So the last time I was in Colombia, we were asking lots of questions as usual. What makes the coffee taste the way it does? What if we did things differently? What if we planted a different varietal of tree? What if we fermented the coffee instead of running it through a desmucilaginadora? What happens if we ferment it for 12 hours or 24 hours or 36 hours? How does it change the flavor? What if we put it in refrigerated tanks and introduced lager yeast? Or what if we fermented it with Trappist yeast? Yum. How much different does it taste if we dry the parchment in the sun as opposed to using a static dryer? And what if we process the coffee using pulped natural method or dry processing instead of wet? Interesting.

Finally, at Ariel's farm, El Boton, we found a place where we could experiment with a couple of these questions. We asked Ariel a lot of these questions. I told him what I have learned in my travels to other origins and I described coffee from other countries. The people in Colombia only get to drink Colombian coffee, so they don't know what it's like to taste coffees from exotic locales around the world. We are fortunate in this way. Ariel is a curious guy with the means to play, so he agreed to do these experiments with small lots. He divided a lot into four batches. One he fermented 24 hours. One he fermented 36 hours. Cristina said these two were not very good, and we didn't get samples of them. The third part he processed using the pulped natural method. That means he stripped the skins off the cherries and dried the beans with the parchment and mucilage still intact. The fourth he dried the cherries whole. Ariel built raised beds to dry the coffee on for these last two methods. These are the two samples I received from Cristina last week.

I roasted them yesterday (along with 20 other samples). I waited until I really had the sample roaster as dialed in as I was going to get it, and then I roasted these Colombians. There was only enough for one roast, so one shot and I had to get it right. I was more than slightly concerned because everything was going fine with all the other coffees, but when I was roasting the Natural it suddenly seemed to be burning. For no reason. It hadn't even hit second crack. But I could see (by drawing samples) that the outsides were beginning to get shiny. Not good. So I dropped it. I thought I had ruined it, for sure. The Honey (pulped natural) roasted just fine.

Today I cupped them on a table with 6 other coffees, including Ariel's regular coffee (which is run through a desmucilaginadora). By the way, all of the coffees from El Boton are maragogipe, which means they are larger beans. Usually these coffees are a bit flatter than other types, but I had cupped Ariel's maragogipe a couple weeks ago and found it to be very interesting. It had a nice acidity, chocolate and nut flavors, and some dark fruits or grape in the nose.

As soon as I ground the Boton Natural, my nose lit up. The fruits were jumping off that coffee like crazy. I started to get excited. When I took my first sip... well, it was an amazing experience. It was like a great natural Harrar or a really complex natural Sidamo. Just freaking amazing coffee. The pulped natural was pretty good, but nothing like the natural.

Now I have more questions. The processing method dramatically changed the taste of that ONE LOT of coffee. Is it repeatable? We'll see. Cristina is cupping another batch tomorrow in her office in Medellin and is going to call me on skype afterward. Would coffee of a different varietal (besides maragogipe) taste the same, just as good, not as good? How much does terroir actually affect the taste of coffee? The soil, climate, elevation, and agricultural methods affect the taste, but compared to processing, how much?

This thing has big, juicy fruit fragrances and a bit of vanilla in the aroma. Very fruity taste that was a lot like artificial, intense cherry you find in flavored gum or soda. Lots of other tastes muddied the waters and added insane amounts of complexity, but I haven't even gotten that far yet. I'm still reeling from the sweetness on my palate.

I know Cristina is amazed and excited. Ariel is very excited as well. We have no idea how we could get these coffees exported to the US because the Federation has such a tight grip on exports, there's no way they would let this go through if they sampled it.

My thoughts run much deeper. What if...

What if this is the thing that makes Concordia famous? Could it be that we've discovered something about Colombian coffee that could make it a highly sought-after coffee destination? Could this replace Ethiopian coffees on the market, since that origin is so wrought with problems? I'm sure Cristina is thinking the same thing. This could be huge. I'm wondering what Alfredo's coffee (San Rafael) would taste like if we processed it exactly the same way. What if, somehow, Cristina were to find a way to change the rules of the Federation, so that they would let her export this coffee? Or maybe she could find a different way to send it to the US. I'm telling you, this is the beginning of something REALLY BIG.

When you taste it, you'll understand.

Baby Coffee Tree

2009-08-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Wichita, KS!
I'm visiting home for a couple weeks--which means, among other things, over-indulgence in the area of baked goods (i'm convinced my father could open a hugely successful bakery in any city he chose, including NYC) and under-indulgence in good coffee. But it's getting better! When i left five years ago for Tulsa, there were basically No coffee shops here (starbucks-excepting)--since then, several have opened, all with a gelato component, which is interesting. At my dad's neighborhood coffeeshop, cafe posto, they offer a "turkish roast" flavored gelato. I don't know exactly what that means, but am intrigued. Coffee...cardammon...cinnamon?
Anyway: the prospect of two whole weeks devoid of doubleshot coffee was not the most difficult thing about making this particular journey home. It was leaving behind my baby coffee tree! It sprouted 4 days before i left--a tiny, spindly green stem with a bean on the top (the bean will turn into the first leaves). I bought a packet of coffee seeds in Italy (they were in a seed packet, just like you'd buy tomato or squash seeds...how bizarre!), and planted them on returning to tulsa. The thing about growing coffee is that it takes 2 to 3 months for anything to happen above the surface, so you have to be patient! you have to keep the soil moist but not soaking--but after months of watering a pot of dirt, up came this adorable plant! if all goes well, in approximately 2 to 3 years, there will be flowers and cherries! Here are two web pages that give some more info on growing your own coffee. The sweetmaria's one is especially fascinating because there are some beautiful pictures towards the bottom of trees growing in their greenhouse--several different varietals. i'm still trying to get a grasp on coffee varietals, so will hopefully be able to blog more about that in the future. the plant i have is coffea arabica var. typica which, according to coffeeresearch.org, is considered to be one of the two original varietals, along with bourbon. http://www.sweetmarias.com/growingcoffee/Growing_Coffee_at_Home.html
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/homegrowing.htm

oh, and if you want to see a coffee tree "in the flesh" there is one growing in the greenhouse at woodward park! no flowers or fruit last time i checked (a couple weeks ago), but it's still fun to see the leaf/tree shape, and just to know it's there...well, here are the pictures--drink a great cup of coffee for me :)

Samples

2009-07-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

Pretty exciting for us. The experiments I told you about in Colombia have come through. This morning we received a package from Cristina containing the samples of coffee from El Boton. One is a pulped natural and the other is a dry process. They look interesting. I also have a sample of Ariel's regular coffee, which he processed using a desmucilaginadora. So we should be able to taste the differences processing has on a coffee.

They also did a couple different washed coffees fermented for 36 hours, but Cristina said they weren't good and didn't send samples.

Also on the cupping table recently are a few Brazils from a company called Beccor. We've been running into Bruno, Beccor's... cupper? Salesman? Representative, at least. We see him at all the industry events and he is a character. The samples we have received from Beccor have been very interesting and a couple of them are delicious. So new Brazils could be on our horizon. The current Brazil (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza...) is going fast. We only have a half bag left.

An El Salvadoran Pacamara from Tim Castle cupped out pretty good. This could be the first coffee we've had from El Salvador. I also cupped the coffees I brought back from Colombia. The El Boton (mentioned above) was good. I was surprised. A coffee from La Eternidad also cupped out really nicely.

We're still struggling to find a good Ethiopian this year. The situation is grim.

I just opened a box of samples from Cafe Imports. There is a Harrar on the top of the list. Along with 5 Kenyans, an El Salvador, 3 Costa Rican micro lots, a Guat, and two Brazils. Should be a fun table to cup.

I also just ordered a bag of coffee from Hacienda Rio Negro- the farm I visited in the south of Costa Rica last time I was there.

Exciting stuff coming up.

Thoughts, Hopefully Relevant

2009-07-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

[Here is all you need to know, if you would like to skip out on the following, emotionally-driven post. No feelings will be hurt :)
1) jimseven blog
2) anne lamott (author, not related to coffee, but life in general)
3) david schomer (author of espresso coffee: professional techniques)
4) brian's previous post on the concordia children's center]

First, a warning: this post may be more emotional than factual, more ego-centric than coffee-centric--and I promise to try not to do that too often. But the truth is, coffee has become what I do, what I spend time thinking about, dreaming about, reading about...and I guess for this reason, it has become one of my major avenues of self-revelation. That is, through working with coffee, I often am jolted into realizing how selfish and insecure I can be.
Here is a recent example: Yesterday, I tried reading the jimseven blog--the blog of James Hoffman, 2007 World Barista Champion. It is very interesting, and you should check it out! Anyway, back when I'd first heard of it, my illogical assumption was that the name "James Hoffman" would belong to someone much older, someone whom I could cheerfully allow to have a very popular and informative coffee blog...someone whom I would not feel threatened by, because I'm young and still learning, etc etc. Ok, I don't know how old he is, but he is fairly young. And incredibly enthusiastic/passionate, innovative, and curious. And has an entire bookshelf full of coffeebooks--which makes the maybe 6 books I own seem, all of a sudden, nearly pathetic.
I'm trying to be honest, not depressing. This morning was spent reading Anne Lammot's book Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anne is a writer who admits to "my emotional drag-queeny self." She candidly admits to failure, and at the same time, speaks of what she learns from it--while being very clear that she is still emotional, still failing, still learning every day. So maybe I'm trying too hard right now to be like her, but she's incredible. The point with all of this is: I don't even know how much I don't know about coffee...and the temptation is to get discouraged because I'm proud and Want to think I know everything. Or, similarly, I want to believe that I'm the kind of person who is going to do incredibly beautiful things for the coffee industry, fighting injustice and all that...when I am rarely compassionate to the people right in front of me because I wrap my insecurity in snobbery.
I love coffee, and what I understand of the coffee industry--it's encounters like this, like reading jimseven and jealously freaking out, or narrowing my eyes at every person for whom i have to make a brr-latte (frozen blended drink), that threaten to paralyze everything--that make me afraid that all my love is selfish and therefore i can't do anything. But I don't think that's true.
Now I'm at the point where I want to wrap this up, but don't know how because it's a process and I'm still living in doubt and fighting mis-motives. Does this resonate with any of you? Do you look at what needs to be done, at what you love, and think "How can I possibly do any of that?" And if so, what then? What do you do about it? Again, I apologize for so much emotional venting...but it's important to me. It's what I want to do with my life, but haven't "figured out" yet. Which is okay.
To end on a positive note, here is my very favorite quote ever from a coffee-book. From David Schomer's Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques. "Ideally, espresso should taste like the freshly ground coffee smells. Texture is featured always, and should feel like a pair of velvet pajamas wrapped around your tongue." That image of velvet pajamas makes me smile every time. :)

Concordia Kids' Community Center

2009-07-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came to the Colombia event last night. I hope you were entertained and learned something. I never know if we're saying anything interesting or informative.

We talked briefly about the project that the Coffee Children group is working on in Concordia to build a community center for youngsters to hang out, study, play, and eat while their parents are working in the coffee fields. I really want to support this project because I think it's the right thing to do and because it helps the people on the lowest rung of the coffee chain. And this time it's OUR coffee chain. These aren't just anonymous coffee people, they are the people (potentially) who pick the coffee cherries that make up our San Rafael, the La Aurora, La Estrella, and anything else we buy from Concordia.

Like I was saying last night, I want to do something bigger than just us. I feel like if each of us pitches in a few bucks, it's not going to go very far in building this project, so I'm trying to think of a way for us to pool our resources and raise more funds. I have a couple ideas, but I'm looking to you for a better idea.

Below are the pictures of the proposed new project.

And here is a link to a video they put together in Colombia: http://www.cafemontesycolinas.com/downloads/video06.wmv

On Silence and Acids

2009-07-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Before diving into a discussion that stirs up memories of agony (high school science classes), I’m going to start with a quote from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth, by the way, is an excellent book—my Dad first read it to us many years ago, and I remember learning, among others, the words “lethargic,” “dodecahedron,” and “unabridged.” It is about a boy, Milo, who is always bored, until one day a mysterious box appears in his room: the Phantom Tollbooth. He drives through it, and adventure—and a growing love for learning—follow. The quote comes from the time Milo visits the Valley of Sound, which is completely silent because the Soundkeeper took away all sound as it became evident that the Valley’s population had quit caring about sound, and only were interested in the ugly noises of economy, destruction, etc. He visits the Soundkeeper, and finds her sitting in front of a radio. She says: “Isn’t that lovely?...It’s my favorite program—fifteen minutes of silence—and after that there’s a half hour of quiet and then an interlude of lull. Why, did you know that there are almost as many kinds of stillness as there are sounds? But, sadly enough, no one pays any attention to them these days. Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?...Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night…or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.”

Lovely. And now for the chemistry part. Did you know that there are a ridiculous number of acids, and that the taste of coffee is quite dependent on them? And that these same acids are found in other natural edibles—such as apples or citrus—which explains why, when you sip your coffee, you may detect the flavor of lemons or berries--? I may be completely out of my depth here, but am going to try to make sense out of the “Coffee Acidity” section of Ted Lingle’s The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook.

Here are the first two points: 1) Coffee is actually less acidic than most alcoholic beverages (gin and vodka are exceptions), juices, and sodas—really, anything you’d typically drink other than water, milk, or tea (though tea is close to coffee in acid content). Which is interesting, because I think coffee’s reputation suggests otherwise.
2) “Acidy” and “Acidity” are not the same things. “Acidy” refers to a sweet taste sensation, and relates to how sugars in the coffee combine with certain acids. Other acids, however, interact with other components and may produce sour, salty, or bitter taste sensations. (Sweet, sour, salt, and bitter are the four basic tastes).

Here is the outline version of Coffee Acids:

I. Amino Acids—influence sweet sensations

II. Phenolic Acids—influence bitter sensations, includes caffeic acids
*Chlorogenic Acids—it is the decomposition of these acids that results in the
unpleasant (overly bitter/sour) taste of coffee that has been sitting around
too long. So, when you enjoy a cup of fresh-brewed coffee, thank the
chlorogenic acids.

III. Aliphatic Acids—influence sour sensations—and others
*Tartaric
*Citric--citrusy
*Malic—apple-like
*Lactic--buttery
*Acetic—fruity—also, too much acetic acid results in a fermented taste. (Acetic
acid is not inherent to the bean, but is formed when the beans for a wet-
processed coffee are fermented. Fermentation is one step in the process
of separating the coffee bean from the fruit of the coffee cherry.)

Again, the word “Chemistry” is one that I typically think of with horror or disinterest. The words “chlorogenic” and “aliphatic” have no meaning for me—yet—but, thanks to coffee, it has become a personal goal to be able to drink a cup and identify, “oh, an apple sensation—malic acid” or “this coffee must have more citric acid, and reminds me of grapefruit.”

Why? Think of all the citrus fruits, the different varieties of apples, different butters, berries, etc—and how each time you taste one of these, you’ll have a flavor memory that a future cup of coffee may bring to mind! And these are just tastes that came up because we were talking about acids! If we talked about sugars, think of all the different kinds of chocolates or caramels—or aromas, flowers like jasmine and lavender, spices—cinnamon, vanilla, cloves—it is incredible how all these organisms relate to one another, and I must grudgingly owe a debt of gratitude to chemistry and things like chlorogenic acids. And happily go to the grocery store to buy a pineapple, so as not to miss a potential pineapple note in my next cup of coffee :) Hooray for flavor!

So that’s acids--I know I left some holes in the explanation, so if you have any questions…or corrections…let me know, and I’ll see what I can find out!

Colombia Stories

2009-06-26T15:02:00.001-07:00

Isaiah and I had a great, productive, educational trip to Colombia. We returned Tuesday night, excited to be out of the cool mountain air and back to this fantastic heat.

We will be discussing the trip, showing our pictures, and divulging what we learned on Thursday, July 9 at 7p here at the DoubleShot. Of course, we'll be brewing the San Rafael, Alfredo's coffee. Please plan to come and invite friends you think might be interested.

Some Answered Questions, and a Coffee Book Review!

2009-06-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who came to the Illuminati event on Thursday! I emailed Mary at La Marzocco with the unanswered questions: How many machines does La Marzocco produce per year? and How long does it take to produce a single machine? She replied:

“Lead time varies according to the type of machine, eventual special colored panels etc. But excluding lead time issues, if we begin a machine on Monday, it will be ready by Friday.

We produce 2800 machines a year. Indeed, La Marzocco is a very small factory in comparison to other Italian brands.”

So…approximately 5 days/machine, 2800 machines/year. Maybe I’ll try to find out the numbers for other Italian brands…

On another note, starting with some biographical information: I have a degree in literature. No, I do not want to teach. I want to work in the coffee industry. However, I love to read and one of the best ways to satisfy both a love for reading and a love for coffee is to read books about coffee…obviously accompanied by a cup of Doubleshot coffee.

It’s time for a book review.

Today’s book is The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee, written by Stewart Lee Allen around 1999. It is a fabulously entertaining and informative read. Basically, the book chronicles Allen’s travels from Ethiopia to the United States—his route is determined by the route that coffee took in its spread from Africa to the rest of the world. You will learn about coffee’s role in ancient religious ceremonies, key figures in coffee’s expansion—like DeClieu, who risked death-by-dehydration in order to smuggle a coffee seedling to South America (his ship was becalmed, but he shared his scant water ration with the seedling)—other ways of consuming the coffee plant, etc. Oh, and how the introduction of coffee into a culture often coincides with periods of enlightenment (!). Allen is adventurous and has a good sense of humor—so this really is a fun book to read. It ends with a quest through the United States via Route 66 (go Oklahoma!) to find the worst cup of percolated diner coffee possible. Gross. The Devil’s Cup can be bought on amazon for about $11.00. I think Tulsa’s Central Library has a copy, and I believe it’s on the shelves at Doubleshot.

That’s all for now…feel free to comment, share reading recommendations, ask questions, etc!

Colombia

2009-06-14T17:18:00.001-07:00

Isaiah and I are headed to Colombia on Tuesday. We'll leave that morning and arrive back here the following Tuesday night. So one week.

We'll be flying into Medellin and visiting Concordia again. Cristina Garces is helping us so much. It should be a really great trip- Isaiah's first trip to origin. There isn't much coffee being harvested right now, but Alfredo (Finca San Rafael) is holding off on some of his harvesting so we can see his mill working while we're there. I think we'll stay with Guillermo again at his farmhouse, which is an amazing place. Hopefully we'll go on a horseback ride through the coffee fields. Probably get some pictures of coffee flowers blooming. I hope we learn a lot and are able to bring that back to share with you.

I also hope we find more amazing coffee. I'm really enjoying the San Rafael from the last trip, and I hope you are too.

Cristina told me about a project going on in Concordia right now that we might be able to help with. They're building a school and playroom for the kids while their mothers work in the coffee fields. It's being built in the poorest part of Concordia. We'll see it while we are there, and I'll bring back as much info as I can attain.

I'm also hoping to meet up with a girl I met before who works for The Federation, overseeing the building of houses for poor coffee pickers.

I'm pretty excited. We'll have another Illuminati meeting when Isaiah and I return, and we'll tell you all about the trip.

Espresso Machines!

2009-06-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hello!--this is Tara. This Thursday at Doubleshot, at 7 pm, we're going to have an event focusing on espresso machines--the La Marzocco company in particular. I returned from a trip to Italy a couple weeks ago, and the best thing about the trip was getting to visit the La Marzocco factory outside of Florence. So we are going to be talking about that, hopefully seeing some pictures of espresso machines-in-progress, and finally (!) Ely, who is a wonderful machine technician and has taken La Marzocco's class on machine maintenance, is going to open up the Doubleshot machine so we can all get an insider's view on what, from an electrical-technical perspective, is happening in order to produce your perfect espresso, latte, etc.

OK, here's a preview on why it's so important to have a great espresso machine. This passage comes from David Schomer's book "Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques." His book is very helpful in that it breaks down the factors that affect the quality of the espresso, explaining how each factor may go wrong, and what to do about it. His broad categories are: 1)Environmental Factors (like the weather) 2)Equipment Factors (the machine!, etc) 3) Ingredient Factors (not just the espresso blend but water quality, etc) and 4) Barista Techniques. Under each of these categories come many sub-categories, so it is obvious that pulling a perfect shot of espresso is a very precise process, and never as simple as just pushing a button. In chapter 7 of his book, Brewing Water Temperature, Schomer writes:

"The better you become at making espresso, the more that the factor of brewing water temperature will emerge as the final vexing problem. Brewing water temperature is a very difficult factor to control. But its control is essential to quality espresso making, because water temperature plays such an integral role in the preservation of coffee's volatile flavor compounds. Water temperature is responsible for the quality and quantity of flavors in the espresso coffee."

Reading Schomer's book is fairly daunting, because there are so many things that can go wrong...that is just one example of what your espresso machine needs to do--maintain a stable, optimal water temperature. If the temperature is off but just a couple degrees, the espresso will start to taste sour, flat, or burnt...gross. All that to say, the espresso machine is important! So, come to Doubleshot Thursday, June 11 at 7 pm to learn more about them! Hope to see you there!

Tara Bowen

2009-06-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Or whoever reads this blog, anyway. I know I've been a slacker lately, but I'm just so busy with this and that, I haven't made appropriate time to work the Illuminati group. So. I have asked Tara Bowen if she will help and she has accepted. She's going to help plan events, get the word out, expand our coffee knowledge, and make sure you know about it all. I've put her on the write-list for this blog, so she can post info about events and stuff we should know about coffee. So thank you Tara for picking up the ball I dropped.

The first event under Tara's new tutelage will be next Thursday June 11. It'll be an informative session about espresso machines. I'll let her tell you the details.

Another Trip to Colombia

2009-05-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

I just bought tickets for Isaiah and I to fly to Colombia on June 16. We'll come home the 23rd. I originally planned to see Narino on this trip, but that doesn't seem so cut and dried. So I decided to take Cristina Garces up on her generosity and kindness and go back to Medellin and Concordia. I'm hoping we can take a short one-day trip to Jardin, where La Minita was building the mill. It should be completed and it would be nice to see it in operation.

This will be Isaiah's first trip to origin, so that's pretty exciting. I think it will change the way he thinks about coffee. I know it did for me. And hopefully we'll both learn a lot during the trip.

I'll keep you posted.

New Coffees

2009-04-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you've been able to taste Alfredo's San Rafael by now. I roasted it twice last week. Two different roast profiles. Both results were good, but I think I can do better. The coffee is outstanding. I took some with me to a mountain bike race in Ardmore over the weekend and drank leftovers cold Sunday before the race. Really complex coffee- subtle fruit, big body, some vegetal tastes round it out, and I think every time I've drunk it more flavors have come to me.

I'm drinking a cup of Yemen right now. It tastes more nutty today than I remember. The Yemen we have right now (half a bin full) is the end of the Mocca Sanani. A lot of you have really enjoyed this coffee for its uniqueness, wildness, and sweetness. So if you want to taste it again, you might give it a go right away.

On a brighter note, I just bought coffees from the many, many samples we have cupped recently. In that order, I bought another Yemen. This Yemen is from Anesi. I've had trouble finding out much info about Anesi and this coffee in particular, but I'm hoping my broker (Anna from Cafe Imports) tells me more about it soon. But I think Anesi is a small region within the Sanani region. Regardless, the coffee cupped out beautifully. The most dominating feature of the Anesi, to me, was a sweet (and sour) strawberry flavor. Unfortunately this is a really expensive coffee. From what I understand, Yemen doesn't produce that much coffee and their coffees are in high demand, especially in places that drink Turkish-style coffee. Supposedly Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of Yemen coffee and they are willing to pay big bucks for it. A lot of people in the Specialty industry in the U.S. consider Yemens to be too wild, fermented... basically defective coffee. So that just goes to show you that different people like different stuff. I think I'm going to sell the new Yemen for the same price as I sold the old Yemen ($17/lb). I'll absorb the difference. I keep doing that, and someday it's going to hurt us too bad to continue to do that. The problem is, we keep tasting fantastic coffees and then find out they're expensive. Oh well. Just know you're getting a GREAT value at $17 on this coffee.

Other coffees I ordered from Cafe Imports include a Tanzania Peaberry Songea. I know, I know. You love it already. Also a Brazil, "Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza Lot 11 Pulped Natural Hamilton and Celso Families." Ask for it by name. This coffee is from the Mococa region in Sao Paulo. Pulped natural is the processing method, like the Panama Hartmann Honey, where they take the skins off the cherries and dry the seeds with the mucilage still intact. One reason this coffee is better than most Brazilians is the picking. The farmers triple pick the farm, being careful to harvest ripe cherries only. This is probably the most crucial step in producing great coffee. The varietals in this coffee are Yellow Bourbon, Red Catuai, and Mundo Novo. I've only had a Yellow Bourbon once, in another Brazil. Catuai is a tricky varietal, the reds are better than the yellows, but it's a plant that La Minita is trying to cull out of their coffee at Rio Negro. Mundo Novo is a varietal I don't know much about, but it's some sort of hybrid.

Another coffee I bought is a Kenya AA. Not a lot of info about this coffee yet either. It's a small lot that came out of the auction in Kenya. Scored really high in cuppings at Cafe Imports. Here are their cupping notes: "Floral, red currant, clean acidity, grapefruit, coconut, caramel, creamy body, long sweet aftertaste." Sometimes these coffees come and go so fast that I don't have the opportunity to get samples, roast, cup, and decide before they are gone. So this time I took a chance on the professionals' advice.

Anyway, we're looking forward to new variety in coffees around here. It's tough, when I'm looking for something superb, to weed through a lot of sub-par coffees. Hopefully we've done a satisfactory job.

By the way, I've started using twitter, so some info I want to share that's too short for a blog, I'm going to put up there. If you want to follow that stream, you can find my page here: http://twitter.com/thedoubleshot

San Rafael

2009-04-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

This is the day we've been waiting for since early December. Yesterday we got the shipment of coffee from Colombia. It's San Rafael- the coffee that Alfredo Correa produced. Every time we've cupped this coffee, it has blown away everything on the table. I roasted it for the first time last night. And I just drank a press of it. It's really good. I think you're really going to like it.

I'm hoping to dial this in on the roaster and I think it will be one of the best coffees we get this year.

It's for sale today, so if you want a pound come get it. It's selling for (a very reasonable) $16 per pound. That's $14 on $2 Tuesday.
This is really exciting for me because it's the culmination of the first time we've been able to travel to origin, cup coffee, meet the farmer of the best, and buy that coffee. Alfredo is awesome, and I was lucky to stumble upon him. You're lucky too.

Roasting and Cupping

2009-03-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

Dang there's a lot going on around these parts.

The new sample roaster (1925 Jabez Burns) is up and running. Jason and I have been practicing and learning and it's not easy. The roaster works like our big roaster (1953 Vittoria) with a perforated drum tumbling the beans as a gas flame roasts the coffee. On the Vittoria the flame is constant. The variables we change are the amount of coffee in the drum and a vent and damper. With the Jabez Burns, we can change the amount of coffee in the drums and the amount of flame. It's a different way of roasting so we're having to learn to control these different variables to achieve the desired roast. And it's easy to mess it up.

We've been getting more samples than usual, because we're working with different brokers. With the new sample roasting setup it's easier to get samples roasted and ready for cupping. So we're refining our cupping protocol. We've found it's easiest to cup 4-6 samples at a time. And we usually try the coffees in a presspot the following day. We have a sample of La Magnolia from Costa Rica- I know that was a favorite of some of you, so if it cups out good maybe we'll offer it again. We're waiting on a sample of the Rio Negro coffee- from the farm I visited on my last trip to Costa Rica. We have several samples from a broker called Cafe Imports. Specifically we're going to try a couple different Yemens, some coffees from Burundi, more Ethiopians, and a couple other origins. An importer called Zephyr sent us a few Ethiopians, a Brazil and a Panama. We also have the coffee from San Rafael- Alfredo Correa's farm in Concordia, Colombia. Lots to look forward to if things pan out.

Ethiopia

2009-03-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

Ethiopia has become even more of a strange and mysterious place from which to get coffee. A lot has occurred in the past couple years. As you probably know, I think the Ethiopian government is taking missteps if they think they're going to improve their coffee economy. The regional trademarking of Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and Harrar... how will this affect us? Will it limit the coffees we can get?

Here is some more news out of Ethiopia:

Ethiopia Update - Aricha and Beloya to Take Final Flights to Roasters around the World
Posted on 04. Mar, 2009 by Joseph Brodsky
The last chance to buy Aricha and Beloya is upon us. Due to an unexpected development in Ethiopia in recent days, all coffee will be sold within a week.
On Monday, The Ethiopian government issued a mandate for all coffee exporters to liquidate all coffee stocks. Within a week…
The country is starved for foreign currency. The exchange rate for the Ethiopian Birr against the dollar was bumped up to 12 Birr/$ in recent weeks from around 9 this time last year to encourage an influx of cash. The dollar goes a long way in Ethiopia these days. In a worsening global credit environment, borrowing foreign currency becomes increasingly difficult for nations dependent on it to run their operations. An excess of coffee inventory is much more valuable as cash in the bank from a national perspective.
So all 2008 coffees must go, quickly.
It is amazing how this has jump-started shippers into action. Some are obviously longer on positions than others, and this creates quite a problem for them.
What this means for Ninety Plus Coffee is that coffees it handles from 2008 - including all remaining Aricha and Beloya Macro and Micro Selections will ship next week.
The current situation with a lack of much specially prepared coffees this year due to the new ECX regulations, remaining Aricha and Beloya coffees are in high demand.
Please contact Steven Holt: +1.303.884.2380 or steven@ninetypluscoffee.com to find out how you can receive these coffees for shipment by air and sea next week.
We have around 60 bags of Micro Selection coffee remaining at the time of this entry. The coffees have been cupped in Addis several times this week and will be cupped again by Ninety Plus guests Tim Wendelboe and Paul Geshos.
There will be no time to sample Micro Selection coffees prior to purchase. Buyers will have to go on the cupping reports.
Say goodbye to Aricha and Beloya with us in style.

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Coffee exports plummet below target
SATURDAY, 14 MARCH 2009
By Hayal Alemayehu

Coffee exports are sharply falling below the target set for the year with falling world prices exacerbating the situation, it was learnt.
The government set a target of over 101,000 tonnes of coffee to be exported during the first seven months of the current fiscal year while the actual export stood at 66,000 tonnes, thereby decreasing the forecast in coffee export earnings by over 46 percent.

The world coffee price per pound has plunged by some 67 cents over the last several months following the global financial turmoil-one of the major culprit for the country’s sharply falling coffee exports-operators in the sector noted.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had last week warned coffee exporters against hoarding which it believed has a major contribution to the sharp drop in coffee exports, according to observers.

Major operators in the sector, however, say that the drop in coffee exports is directly linked to the global economic crises, bringing down world coffee prices to one of their lowest level in decades.

“Major coffee buyers such as Star Bucks, which had to layoff tens of thousands of employees months ago, are finding it hard to access loans from banks to buy coffee in bulks,” a mojor coffee operator told The Reporter on condition of anonymity. “This has led [coffee] prices to tumble down which, in turn, makes us unable to export as much as we could.”

Despite government urging for more coffee exports, the situation has yet to improve, government export figures indicate.

Only 7.4 thousand tonnes of coffee were exported in January 2009 against a 22,000 tonnes export forecast for the month, according to the latest export figure. Likewise, earnings from coffee dropped by a sheer 400 percent against the target for the same month.

However, earnings from coffee exports during the first seven months are slightly higher than that of the same period of last year.

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Starbucks Delays Ethiopian Coffee Research Center, Capital Says
By Jason McLure

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp. put on hold plans to build a coffee research center in Ethiopia because of the slowing global economy, Capital said, citing Vivek Varma, a spokesman for the company, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Starbucks’ then chairman and current Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz said during a visit to Ethiopia in November 2007 that the company would open a research center to improve the quality of Ethiopian coffee, the Addis Ababa-based newspaper said. A similar facility in Rwanda has also been put on ice, Capital said.

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Ethiopian Government Urges Japan to Lift Ban on Coffee Imports
By Jason McLure and Ichiro Suzuki

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia urged Japan to lift a ban on imports of its coffee, saying the Horn of Africa country has taken measures to prevent pesticide contamination that led Japan to halt purchases last year.

“It’s time to put the Japanese market back and this has already been communicated to them,” Ethiopian Trade Minister Girma Birru said in an interview in the capital, Addis Ababa, on Feb. 17. “I think this is a problem we can leave behind us.”

Japan halted deliveries of coffee from Ethiopia in May after finding “abnormally high” pesticide residues in a shipment of the beans. Japanese officials demanded that Ethiopia find the source of the chemical and prevent future contamination.

Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest coffee producer. Japan had previously purchased about 20 percent of the country’s exports, said Girma, making it the nation’s third-largest market after Germany and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia exported $525.2 million of coffee in the fiscal year ending July 7, according to the Trade Ministry.

Girma said the coffee shipment that led Japan to halt imports probably was contaminated by growers using sacks that previously contained insecticides or other chemicals. Most Ethiopian coffee is produced by smallholders who grow the beans without chemical sprays, he said.

Mocha beans from Ethiopia are highly regarded in Japan for their distinctive flavor and last year’s ban forced coffee shop owners to seek new blends.

No Beans

“We haven’t been able to offer Mocha coffee since last November because the supplier said they have no supplies of Ethiopian coffee beans,” said Takayasu Ito, a coffee shop manager in Tokyo’s Jimbocho neighborhood.

Japan will lift the ban once it receives assurances from Ethiopia’s government that there are no “reappearance risks,” Hiroyuki Uchimi, chief of the inspection planning section at Japan’s Health Ministry, said in a phone interview on Feb. 18.

Measures taken by Ethiopia to prevent a recurrence of contamination include establishing a laboratory to check for impurities in export coffee.

“We are now going to make clean all the coffee from smallholders or from state farms,” Girma said. “We have everything ready.”

CR Learnin's

2009-02-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

Just a few notes from my trip last week.

Hacienda Rio Negro is a farm that La Minita's parent company bought three years ago. It's Rainforest Alliance Certified. Normally that wouldn't mean jack to me, but it was cool to actually be in a rainforest where coffee is growing amongst big trees. Shade-grown, for real.

When I was in Guatemala last year an agronomist told me that the varietal Yellow Catuai has a lot more pulp in the cherry, so the farmers like it but the mills do not like it (because the farmers sell their coffee to the mill by weight). In Costa Rica I learned that Yellow Catuai also don't taste very good. Sergio (Master Cupper at La Minita) told me he was able to separate the different varieties of coffee at La Minita and cup each one separately. He said the Yellow Catuai are flat and not good. That's great info. He also told me the variety Catimor is a high-yield coffee but tastes terrible.

The coffee from Rio Negro was good. It had a really big body and huge dark chocolate taste. It didn't have the sweetness that the La Minita brings. I tasted more stuff like cinnamon and whatnot in the Rio Negro, but I guess the most interesting thing was that it lacked sweetness.

When I was riding around with Sergio in his car, I asked him how coffee had changed over the course of his 15- or 20-year career as a cupper. He said the cupping ritual has remained the same but coffee is changing. He said consumer demand has caused the producers to make changes in their processing. Apparently during the years of high production and low quality, a lot of mills took out their washing channels and put in aquapulpers. The aquapulper spins rapidly and takes the mucilage off the beans. The traditional way of getting the mucilage off in wet-processed coffee is to put the coffee in a fermentation tank overnight and then run it down a washing channel to get the mucilage off. Sergio told me the result of using an aquapulper is that the coffee doesn't have the sweetness of a traditionally fermented coffee.

Then it hit me. Rio Negro has aquapulpers. It's partially cleaned in the aquapulper and then fermented in tanks for 8 hours to finish the cleaning process. THAT's why it's not as sweet.

Much interesting information.

Just wanted to drop that in while it's fresh on my mind.

One other thing. I noticed that the kids down there didn't really have much to play with or things to play on. I was thinking maybe it would be nice if we (The DoubleShot) could ask the farm to put in swingsets if we would pay for them. I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not- or how much it would cost. But while I was talking to Paul and Janette McEntire today, they mentioned that they take soccer balls to give to the kids. I think that's a great idea. So I'm thinking about (selfishly) getting some soccer balls printed with the DoubleShot logo and taking several on my next origin trip to give to the kids. I don't know if this is something any of you have interest in helping with or not. But I thought I'd let you know what I'm thinking...

Pulped Natural

2009-02-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

The new Panamanian coffee (Hartmann Honey - micro-lot #7) is unique. In fact, in our five years of business we've never had a coffee like this. Part of its uniqueness is due to the processing of the coffee at origin. We've talked extensively about washed coffees (wet-processed) and naturals (dry-processed), but there are other methods that lie somewhere in between. This coffee is processed using the "pulped natural" method.

The processing of coffee that I'm referring to is necessary to get the coffee from cherry to seed. Coffee beans are the seeds of coffee cherries. These cherries grow on trees and for the most part, people pick them by hand when they are ripe. The cherries consist of skin (which is a bit fibrous), a fairly thin layer of pulp (or mucilage), a shell around the seed (called parchment skin), silverskin (a very thin layer around the seed, like the skin on a peanut), and finally the seed (or bean) itself. All these layers must be removed at some point in order to get to the coffee beans I buy and sell to you.

In the pulped natural method, the skins are removed from the cherries as soon as they get to the mill. This is usually done with a machine called a pulper, which is the common method used in wet processing. It squeezes the cherries between two metal, pebbled rollers, popping the slimy seeds out of the tough skins. At this point, in wet processing, the seeds with mucilage on them would usually go into a fermentation tank or a desmucilaginadora (demucilager). But in pulped natural, they are laid out to dry. I suppose many places (e.g. Brazil) lay the slimy seeds out on patios, but at the Hartmann estate they put them on raised beds to dry. This method requires a lot of attention and turning of the beans to avoid mold. Drying them on raised beds allows for air-flow above and below the coffee, and produces a much higher-quality coffee.

After the mucilage is fully dry, it is run through a huller, which takes off the dried mucilage and parchment. Then the coffee is bagged and shipped to us for roasting.

The Hartmann Honey has a darker, uneven color to the beans. This is caused by the processing. The pulped natural method generally exudes a sweeter, slightly fruitier taste to the coffee, and this is the case with the Hartmann. They tend to have some characteristics of a natural coffee, but cleaner. The coloration of the beans tells me that the coffee has been "over-fermented." It must have more of the sugars from the fruit on the bean. And when I roast it, the beans turn a much darker color early in the roast, even though they're not fully roasted on the inside. I wonder if this is from sugar browning on the outside of the beans. Another interesting characteristic of the coffee is that it has a lot of honeyed flavors; and if I light-roast it, even though it doesn't taste green, the grounds sink straight to the bottom of a cup. From what I understand, these are characteristics of a coffee that is "under-fermented." Hmm. What a contradiction. Could this coffee be over- and under-fermented at the same time? I'm sure, according to the specialty coffee industry, it could.

I've roasted the coffee twice now, and I think I could still tweak the roast next time. But the coffee is great this week. It's a pulped natural.

Coffee Tasting Event

2009-01-19T16:19:00.000-08:00

NEXT Thursday 1/29 (not this Thursday), we're having a coffee tasting at the DoubleShot. This won't be a formal cupping, though at some point in the future we will do that with you guys. This will simply be an event in which you can come and taste several of our coffees side-by-side. Sip one, sip the next, sip another... It's a good way to taste the subtle flavor variations, differences in body and acidity. I'll describe each of the coffees you'll be tasting to the best of my ability and you can form your own opinions. Figure out why you like (or don't like) Ethiopians so much. Finally distinguish the Costa Rica from the Guatemala. Ask questions. And I'll try to answer.

The coffee tasting event will be from 7-8p NEXT Thursday.

I'm roasting the first batch (of 3) of the Finca La Estrella tonight- Rafael Herrera's coffee from La Concordia Colombia. Remember I only have 54 pounds green. That's only about 46 pounds roasted. So you'll want to try it soon. It will be for sale by the pound for $25 ($23 on Tuesday). And I'm sure we'll brew it sometime this week. Or get a jump-start by ordering a presspot.

February is going to be a busy month for us. I've been invited to go to Costa Rica, and I've accepted. So I'll be flying down there on Saturday, Feb 7 and will return on the 14th. Not only will I be visiting Hacienda La Minita, but I'm also very much looking forward to seeing a recent acquisition of La Minita, called Finca Rio Negro. Rio Negro is in the south part of Costa Rica, near the Panama border. The coffee they produce is called La Sonrisa (which means "The Smile"), and I'm really excited to try it. I'll bring some back for you to try.

Upon my return on the 14th, I'll only be home for a couple days - long enough to roast. And then I'll be taking a trip I've been wanting to take for a long time. I'm planning to drive to Kansas City and catch the train to my hometown, Galesburg Illinois. I haven't been there in years. Since before the DoubleShot opened, so at least 5 years. I'll spend a couple days there, hopefully running into a bunch of people I grew up with. Then I'll hop back on the train to Chicago. Feb 20-22 is CoffeeFest Chicago. Remember CoffeeFest Seattle? It's just like that, except cooler. Isaiah will once again compete in the latte art competition. And I'm sure we'll come home with some ridiculous stories (and hopefully a first place trophy).

Tulsa Opera has an art show up on the walls of the DoubleShot right now. We are having a party for them here on Friday, Feb 6 from 6-730p. The opera singers will perform and we'll have coffee, wine, and snacks for your enjoyment. Make sure you come for this. It's a short period of time on a Friday night and I really want to show support for the Tulsa Opera. If you haven't been to an opera here, you should go. It's amazing. I love it. Sitting in the audience, I am amazed at the talent these people have and the amount of practice and dedication that has gone into the production- from the sets to the costumes to the orchestra to the performance itself (not to mention the amount of money it takes to put on one three-day performance). The next Tulsa Opera production is "Hansel & Gretel" February 21, 27, and March 1. You should go.

Recap:

Coffee Tasting 1/29 @ 7p

Colombia La Estrella available TOMORROW

Tulsa Opera party at DoubleShot 2/6 @ 630p

Hansel & Gretel 2/21, 27 and 3/1

Me in Costa Rica (presentation to follow)

Isaiah competing in Chicago (he'll be the best, but will they declare him the winner?)

Three New Coffees

2009-01-07T07:10:00.000-08:00

I just bought three new coffees. I bought two of them through Ninety Plus, which is the company that brought us the Aricha and Beloya coffees.

One of them is a Colombian from Finca La Aurora. La Aurora is one of the Garces' farms in La Concordia. Cristina (Garces) is taking the coffee from this farm and milling it in her new specialty mill. We visited this mill while we were in Concordia. It is immaculately clean and they boast the only mechanical drier in the country, which creates a cleaner, more consistent coffee (than the other drying methods being used in Colombia). La Aurora is planted with Caturra, Catuai, and Colombian Variety. It's obviously a wet-processed coffee, like virtually all coffee from Colombia, and the fruit flavors are very subdued. Also, like all coffees from the Concordia region of Colombia, this coffee is very high-grown. At 6,400 feet elevation, the coffee beans develop more slowly, creating a better-tasting coffee and very dense beans. The coffee is stored in parchment for a few months before it is dry-milled and exported. I'm not positive of the effects this rest has on the coffee, but I've been told storing coffee in parchment preserves the coffee better than storing it green, and the acidity of the coffee will lessen some over that resting period. That rest and resulting drop in acidity can be good with a coffee that is so acidic that it tastes sharp, which is entirely possible with a coffee that is grown at such high elevations and wet processed. I thought the La Aurora had a nice nutty, chocolaty flavor with some soft, melon fruitiness lingering in the background. Cristina describes the coffee as such: "The cup is very balanced and rich of flavor. The chocolate, the spices, the tropical fruits and vanilla notes are present from hot to cold. The citric acidity and the lemon finish is very atractive." I think you're really going to like this coffee.

Another coffee I just bought is from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala. The farm is called Finca Villaure. It is in a neighboring area to Finca Vista Hermosa, which you might remember from almost a year ago when their manager and his son were shot and killed. After that incident, I began corresponding with Edwin Martinez, whose father owns Vista Hermosa. He has been sending me coffee samples and we have been discussing details. He is representing Finca Villaure in the United States, and that is how I came to buy this outstanding coffee. Here you can read an article from Roast Magazine about Edwin's experiences with bringing coffee to the U.S.

Finca Villaure was started in 1986 by the Villatoro family. They are entering their 3rd generation as premium coffee producers in the Hoja Blanca region of Cuilco in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The growing operation is headed by Aurelio Villatoro, one of eight brothers, who together with their parents, spouses and children (more than 70 in all) cultivate approximately 40 acres of rugged, shade covered mountain slopes.

The Hoja Blanca region is one of the last to harvest each year in Guatemala due its high elevation and heavily shaded slopes. These two factors combine to slow the development of the coffee cherries resulting in an extremely dense and more chemically complex bean. In 2002 Finca Villaure was selected in the Cup of Excellence competition as one of the top 33 coffees in Guatemala. The farm was also selected by Illycafe as the best producer of coffee in Guatemala in 2003.

Edwin describes the Villaure as having "Candied grapefruit taste with jasmine fragrance and a sweet, crisp finish." In my cupping of the coffee, I definitely found it to be pleasantly acidic, with very clean, sweet, grapefruit-type flavors and a super-clean, delicious finish. I bought two different lots of this coffee. One has spent a few months resting in parchment form, like the La Aurora. The other lot is the more recent harvest, and will have more cinnamon in the aroma and a bigger acidity. It will be interesting to compare these two lots of the "same" coffee. It is supposed to be delivered TODAY, so needless to say I'm pretty damned excited.

The third coffee is the other one I bought from Ninety Plus. It's a coffee from Panama. The last Panama we had was from the Boquete region. This one is from another region called Volcan. The coffee is from Finca Hartmann, which was founded in 1940 by a man named Ratibor Hartmann Troetsch. He and his family (5 children) work on the farm, producing some excellent coffees. I looked back at the results from the "Best of Panama" competition from the last two years. In 2006 Hartmann had two coffees in the top 16 and last year they had one.

Some info from Ninety Plus: "Some of the hardest-working and most environmentally committed coffee producers in the world, the three generations currently represented at Finca Hartmann all have a hand in daily operations. Much of the family’s land is primary forest and rests contiguous with the enormous Parque Nacional La Amistad, Central America’s largest national park. Despite uncountable offers to cut the forest for large monetary gain over decades, the Hartmanns remain committed to a future of coffee in balance with nature. The Hartmanns have a cupping lab on site and are leaders in coffee production for quality. Their expertise has been enjoyed beyond their own farm as they act as consultants for many Panamanian and other Latin American coffee producers."

In fact, our friend Cristina Garces (who produced the La Aurora) is friends with Ratibor Jr, who worked for the Garces family as a consultant for 6 years in Colombia. It's a small world after all.

This is a really interesting coffee. It's called Hartmann Honey - micro-lot #7. I picked it out of a few different lots as the most interesting of their offerings. The "honey" refers to the processing method used with the coffee. Instead of depulping the coffee, fermenting, washing off the mucilage, and drying the parchment, the Hartmann family used a "pulp natural" method. The coffee is run through a depulper to take the skins off the cherries, but instead of sitting in a fermentation tank to loosen up the mucilage so it can be washed, the coffee was laid out on raised drying beds where it was dried with the mucilage still intact. The picture at the top of this blog is the Hartmann Honey drying on raised beds. After drying, the coffee was cleaned and the parchment removed. This unusual processing method creates an unusual coffee. It seems that there are sugars on the outside of the coffee bean, so they roast a bit weird, deceiving. The outside of the bean isn't necessarily indicative of what's happening on the inside of the bean during roasting. The farm is located around 5,500 feet elevation, which is still pretty high for coffee, so the beans are dense and flavorful. The Ninety Plus cupping notes say "This cup has intense grapefruit acidity, dried black-currant aroma, and gentle fresh coffee berry notes. Honey processing can also add fruit characteristics that remind of Ethiopia naturals but are usually more restrained. They are also commonly laden with a refined nuttiness in the aftertaste which grows stronger as the cup cools." I thought the coffee was a lighter cup with some sour melon and yeasty smells in the aroma and maybe a bit of tea, then a lot going on in the flavor- fruits, malt, sweet honey, chocolate, and nuttiness. It's striking really. Not what you'd expect in a coffee.

More from Ninety Plus: "Finca Hartmann, our coffee development partners in Panama, have a history of strong relationships with the workers on their farm, largely seasonal employees of the indigenous Gnobe tribe of Panama. Workers are well-compensated and enjoy some of the most beautiful housing in Panama, some of which is nestled right in the heart of the cloud forests at Ojo de Agua. As coffee prices are improved for Finca Hartmann, additional monies will be available to further improve facilities and pay for seasonal workers.

With hundreds of species of birds, mammals, and reptiles co-existing with coffee at Finca Hartmann, this farm is truly one of the finest examples in the world of healthy integration of coffee and nature. The subject of studies by the Smithsonian Institute and other wildlife organizations, Finca Hartmann has been embracing and protecting biodiversity on its land for many decades."

Three new coffees. Each one is unique and delicious. I'm excited, and I think you're going to like all of them.

I feel like I've read volumes about these coffees and where they came from, and I still know very little and can express even less in this blog. So I hope, when you drink them, there is enough info here for you to understand a little about and appreciate the coffees and to appreciate the people who have worked hard bringing these coffees to your cup.

Colombian Harvest

2008-12-27T06:57:00.000-08:00

Good news. Good news indeed. Yesterday the FedEx man delivered a big, beat-up box. I asked him what it was (because I was concerned that whatever was inside had been pulverized), and he told me it is from Colombia.

The first coffee from the trip to Colombia has arrived!

It's the micro-lot (so small it might even be considered a nano-lot) from Rafael Herrera. When we cupped this coffee in Medellin, it was sweet, fruity and delicious. The entire lot, which is much different than his usual coffee, is only 54 pounds. 54 pounds total for the entire lot of coffee. That's 3 roasts for us. This is very exciting.

Soon I'll post more info about Rafael. We didn't visit him while we were in Concordia, but I'm sure we will next time.

So why is the coffee from this very small lot so much different? And how does the farmer know?

These farmers know what coffee looks like. They are beginning to understand what Cristina is looking for, and thus what we are looking for. She is teaching them the things that usually are considered defects or problems in coffee production (according to the standardization of The Federation) may actually be differences that people in the specialty coffee industry love and will pay more for.

The farmers know when one day's coffee is better than usual. When the cherries look especially ripe, there were no problems in their little wet mill, the depulper did a good job, fermentation seemed to go just right, and the coffee looked clean and beautiful in parchment. It's sort of like when I roast, I usually get excited about one or two roasts that seemed to be perfect. That's based on the way the coffee reacted in the drum, how fast the temp rose, how strong it moved into first crack, what the end of the roast looked like, and a general feeling that it was good. I guess it just comes from experience, paying attention, and caring about it. And you can imagine these farmers spend so much time with their trees, they know what side of their farm usually produces better coffee. They know what weather is ideal during fermentation and drying. They know what coffee should look like when it is finished in parchment. And like I was saying at our presentation, they can look at green coffee and tell you whether it has 9% or 12% moisture content (very accurately). That's amazing.

So I guess Rafael knew this small amount of coffee was different and special, so he chose to keep it separate from his main crop. And now we have it.

Like I said, Cristina pays the farmers a differential when the coffee is sold. And I've asked to double that differential. Because we really, really want these farmers to succeed in producing great coffee (by our standards) so they don't have to go back to producing great coffee by the standards of the Federation.

I'll be roasting this coffee soon. But I'll let you know before I do. You'll for sure want to have some.

Colombian Adventures

2008-12-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

We're back.

Jason and I had a great time in Colombia. Uh... I mean... we were working the entire time and it was laborious.

No, we really enjoyed the trip and I feel like we accomplished our goals. Which is an amazing feat. And we definitely wouldn't have had nearly as much fun or success without the help of several people.

Fernando and Russ from Distant Lands (La Minita) were so kind. We at the DoubleShot are barely even a blip on the radar. We're not even a rounding error for these people. Yet they care enough and are generous enough to invite us down to Colombia to see the new mill they are building; to put us up in hotels, feed us, entertain us, and show us a beautiful place. I was really impressed with their generosity, not just toward us, but to the community and the kids of Jardin. And one of the things I love most about coffee is how much there is to learn; how much is unknown. Fernando and Russ teach me so much and I wish I could spend more days listening to them and asking questions.

A couple of people we met for the first time were also very gracious hosts in Jardin. Kike (that's kee-kay) and Vivian Vasquez were so fun to hang out with and they were our local source of information (and interpretation). Their family is part owner of the new mill in Jardin and they also own the mill that produces a coffee we've been roasting since we opened- Reserva del Patron (from the Nariño region of Colombia). Just GREAT people.

The second half of our trip was a success mainly because of Cristina Garces. Not only is she successful and beautiful, she also has a heart for the small farmers. She's trying to make a difference in the quality of Colombian coffee and in the quality of the lives of the farmers who produce it. When she talked, many things she said were an echo of my own thoughts. She made me feel excited about coffee and excited about being a part of something so important (if even a very small part). Cristina introduced us to a farmer in La Concordia named Guillermo, who invited us to stay at his house, which was beautiful and overlooked coffee fields leading down the mountain to the Cauca River. Guillermo was so nice to let us stay, and for feeding us and making sure we were well taken care of. Guillermo's daughter, Carolina, really took us under her wing. She spent virtually every minute while we were there making sure we understood what people were saying (she spoke very good English), taking us to all the places we wanted to see, introducing us to people all around town (most of whom were her relatives), and keeping us out of harm's way. Carolina was so kind, and I felt bad for teasing her about her Colombian-British accent.

Anyway, to say the least, we learned a lot about the way coffee is produced in Colombia. And we found some coffees that we are definitely going to buy. Some from Jardin and some from Concordia.

We are excited to tell you about it and to show you our pictures. So come to the DoubleShot on Thursday, December 18th at 7p. I think the story is a great one and between Jason and me, I think we got some pictures you will enjoy. Coffee and snacks will be provided.

Thursday, December 18 at 7p at the DoubleShot

Colombia

2008-11-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

Jason and I are going to Colombia. We fly out of here on December 1. We'll arrive in Medellin that evening and meet up the next day with Drew from Hacienda La Minita. He'll take us to Jardin, where La Minita has built a new mill to process coffee. It's the grand opening of the new mill and they've invited us down to see it. We'll stay in Jardin until Friday, when we'll return to Medellin and meet up with a girl named Cristina Garces. I found Cristina a while back when looking for people who could help me source and buy coffee more directly. Her family owns an estate called Montes y Colinas near the town of La Concordia- not far from Medellin. Cristina's boyfriend owns a farm close to Jardin, so we'll see his farm too. We'll be there until the 10th, and hopefully we'll get a chance to taste a lot of great coffees. And then bring them back to you.

We plan to have some adventures down there and to take a lot of pictures. And I want to share our experiences with you guys. So I'm going to schedule a time to get together and see pictures and hear stories of this latest coffee foray.

Thursday, December 18 at 7p.

Put it on your calendar. I know it's a week before Christmas, but take a couple hours to come drink coffee and relax.

Huehuetenango Guatemala

2008-11-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

I've been talking to a guy named Edwin who owns a farm in Guatemala (Finca Vista Hermosa) for a bit and he said he's brought a few groups down to do a coffee tour. I think it would be cool to get a group together to go down there, but I'm not sure how much interest there is in it. So I thought I'd drop a line out there to you guys and see.

Here are the details as told to me by Edwin:

It would happen sometime between February and April. The trip would last 8 days. Tour of Antigua and Huehuetenango, some culture and history, all focused on coffee. We would visit drymills and a few coffee farms. Will hike through the coffee to the ridges to see over the mountain range into Mexico. And will get our hands dirty picking, depulping, fermenting, washing, drying, and bagging the coffee. The trip would cost about $1100 per person plus airfare and any incidentals (souvenirs, etc.). Everything else would be covered.

He says it's pretty safe. It's safer being in a group and these guys know areas to stay away from. So it should be fine, but it is a tough country so anything is possible.

It would be a beautiful trip and very educational. Getting to participate in so much of the coffee processing and experiencing the feel of it all, the unique smells, and sights would be a pretty amazing trip, even for me.

I just wanted to throw that out there and see if anyone is interested at all. We'd need 12-15 people to go in order to make it worthwhile. Let me know what you think. And feel free to email me or post here with any questions.

Isaiah's Signature Drink

2008-11-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

Most of you insiders probably know that Isaiah and I went to Austin for the weekend so he could compete in the South Central Regional Barista Competition (SCRBC). I blogged about what the competition entails in a DoubleShot blogpost. The only thing I didn't disclose was the makeup of his signature beverage.

Well, he made it from a pool of 20 competitors to the final round of 6. And then he placed fourth overall.

It was his first competition and we're just learning how to play the game, so I think we're probably going to Portland in March for the US Barista Competition, where he'll be more polished and compromising more of our standards for theirs. I know that sounds weird, but it's the only way to do well.

Several people have asked me (and Isaiah) what his signature drink is. He'll be using the same one at the USBC, so we don't want to spill the beans here on the internet for everyone to read. But since you guys are our core group of coffee-lovers, we want to offer a special opportunity for you to see and taste it first-hand.

Next Thursday, November 13, at 7p Isaiah will be making his signature drink for you. He'll talk a little about the competition, how it works and how it went, and unveil the mysteries of The Longfellow. It doesn't take long to make the drink, but time obviously will stack up with more people. He asks that you bring your own drinking vessel, if possible. It should be ceramic and hold 3-4 fluid ounces.

Please let me know if you are coming to this event so we can plan to have the right amount of ingredients. The sooner you can let me know, the better. There is no cost, but as usual with Coffee Illuminati events, donations will be accepted.

Remember that's Thursday November 13 at 7p here at the DoubleShot.

Costa Rica El Indio

2008-10-16T05:49:00.000-07:00

In my last coffee shipment I ordered a single bag of "El Indio" from Costa Rica. It's the first time we've ever had this coffee, and so far I've only roasted it once.

It is a coffee that is sourced by Hacienda La Minita. The coffee comes from the Tarrazu region, just like La Minita, but instead of being produced and milled on their farm, it is grown by a variety of farmers in the region and milled at the Beneficio Tarrazu in San Marcos.

The first time I went to Costa Rica I took my bike and rode from La Minita around to different areas, and one of those days I rode to San Marcos. It is a beautiful town with two mills, lots of uniformed school children playing soccer, pretty little houses, and of course an old church.

I have cupped El Indio a few times with Sergio (the head cupper at La Minita) and it has always been good, but I've preferred La Magnolia (also sourced by La Minita, but from Tres Rios region). I have purchased it now, instead of La Magnolia, for variety and exploration. I never really know what a coffee will taste like when I roast it in the Vittoria.

It is good. It's another classic Central American washed coffee. In our efforts to seek out the best naturals in the world, we've sort of neglected the washed coffees and I began to feel that we were leaving out a significant portion of great coffees. The first time I roasted the El Indio, I probably didn't take it as far into the roast as I will next time. It's pretty light, clean, nutty, chocolatey, with a hint of wineyness. It has a fine acidity and a clean finish. Taking the coffee a little further into the roast will polish some of the front-end nuttiness and bring out a little more of the chocolate and fruit that I'm looking for.

This coffee is so clean because the defects have been sorted out by hand. For many years this coffee was only exported to Europe because the extra processing demanded a higher price and in America we're all about cutting costs and widening our margins.

Basically if you like Costa Rican coffees, you'll like the El Indio. It's an alternative to the flagship La Minita we always roast. But I only bought one bag, so you should try it when you see it. I probably have 8 more roasts of it before it's gone.

Here are the cupping notes (not this year's crop) from Tom at Sweet Maria's on the El Indio:

Notes: El Indio is the mark of CoopTarrazu located in San Marcos de Tarrazu. This is the geographical and cultural center of the Tarrazu coffee area, which coincidentally describes the cup character of the El Indio perfectly - classic Tarrazu cup profile! Why do we carry so many coffees from Tarrazu? Good question, and I am kicking myself right now because it is SO much work to offer you all so many choices. But the fact is, I can't help myself when I get a great sample, and Tarrazu coffees are the preeminent Costa Rican coffees. Now, there is a lot of bad coffee that comes from Tarrazu, and there are fine coffees from elsewhere (specifically, Tres Rios region). But Tarrazu has the climate, the altitude, the "cafecultura" (coffee culture; the people, the expertise, the history). El Indio is a profoundly balanced cup, with a slightly winey character that typifies Tarrazu from the central Tarrazu Valley area. The brightness has a ripe, mature lemon quality, not what I would normally call a citrus acidity (such as some Kenyas). (Have you ever had a lemon that ripens on the tree to the point it becomes quite sweet?) It has moderate milk chocolate and hazelnut in the cup, offset with a modicum of sweetness that intensifies in the finish - what a great finish this cup has! The body is medium, and has a silky mouthfeel. The aftertaste is chocolate-caramel, clean and mild. It is a very balanced and very refined cup (+1 cuppers correction for this intangible quality), which (having a decent amount of cupping experience at international competitions) leads me to wonder ... why aren't my Japanese counterparts buying all of this? Kentaro? Shinji? Yoshi? Hiroshi? Are you reading this???

On another note, below is a link to a story that I think was written by Tim Castle in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal in 1992 about Bill McAlpin and Hacienda La Minita. It mentions some of the coffees we've roasted from La Minita and it addresses issues that are still very pertinent today in the coffee industry. In fact, the things Bill was talking about in 1992 are just now happening on any type of noticeable scale in the industry- the man is way ahead of his time. While reading this I also thought about how this relates to our economy. You can read how coffee farmers survived when the "value" of their product decreased.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/13218548.html

For more information about La Minita, google search "La Minita." Or go to their website.

Ethiopian Coffees

2008-09-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

The Ethiopians are kicking ass this year. Some of the coffees we've tasted have been just mind blowing. I'll tell you about a few of them.

The Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Misty Valley is one of our current offerings. In fact, we're brewing it today. This is a fantastic dry-processed coffee from the Idido mill. All of the Yirgacheffe coffees we've had in the past have been washed (wet-processed), and the best of them have had a nice citrus acidity and Earl Grey tea aromas and flavors. This Misty Valley has those same characteristics, but it is more complex. Still very bright with that crisp citric acidity, there is a fruity tone that confuses my palate a little. It's probably berry, but it intermingles with the other classic Yirg tastes such that it's hard to distinguish. The coffee is delicious; one of the best we've had to offer.

The other Ethiopian we're touting right now is a natural Sidamo from the Dara region. It's another dry-processed coffee with deliciously sweet berry flavors. Blueberry, caramel, sweet sweet sweet. It's really, really smooth. Easy drinking, probably in part because its acidity isn't as high as the Yirgacheffe and it isn't as complex. It's just plain good.

If you've been around much, you've surely had both of those coffees. But I just bought three new Ethiopians that you haven't tasted.

A company called Ninety Plus sent me samples out of the blue. They were beautifully presented in white mylar bags and marked only with the company name and indications that they are micro-lots from "Aricha" and "Beloya." I'd never heard of these places, so I honestly had no idea where they were from. Which is fine because I like to blind-cup coffees; easier to get a true taste without preconceptions about what they should taste like. The first time I cupped them (have you seen my new cupping lab?) they were on a table of 24 coffees- most samples from brokers and a few my own coffees. In the end, 5 of the 6 coffees from Ninety Plus scored higher than almost every coffee on the table. A couple of them stood out more than others for me.

So I cupped them again. The second time, the same two coffees scored highest, but with different flavor profiles.

So I cupped them again. Fantastic. I think I'm getting a grip on what these coffees generally taste like, and they are beautiful. It's really hard to cup with these coffees on the table. The last round they were in a group of 15. The aroma, body and fruitiness of these coffees is so big that anything sitting next to them seems thin and unimpressive. Which isn't fair because coffee flavors can be subtle and still amazing. That's just not the case with these coffees.

Let me tell you about the coffees I bought.

The company is Ninety Plus. It's owned by Joseph Brodsky, who also owns Novo Coffee in Denver. He spent 8 months in Ethiopia last year learning about their coffees and sourcing some absolutely amazing stuff. He has the coffees air-freighted out of Ethiopia, so they don't sit in a shipping container for months before we get them. This is much more expensive, but it preserves the flavors of the coffees and drastically reduces the lead-time. I paid for the Sidamo and Yirg we have now about 5 months before they actually arrived. That's tough. Anyway, here is an article from Fresh Cup Magazine describing the improvements of dry-processed coffees and how Ninety Plus is involved: www.doubleshotcoffee.com/washedVnaturals.pdf

The coffees I decided to buy from my cuppings are two micro-selections from two different areas and mills in the Yirgacheffe region in Ethiopia. Joseph works with the exporter Abdellah Bagersh to get these small lots of very distinctive coffees, flies them to Denver, re-packages them in mylar and sells them to us. These lots are differentiated by number and the coffees we are getting are the Aricha 10, Aricha 14, and Beloya 12.

Below I will insert the documents Ninety Plus sent me describing the two different regions.

In case you can't tell, this is very exciting for me. To have someone like Joseph Brodsky source coffees that I can and you can drink is sort of a big deal. The market for very high-end specialty coffee is pretty tight. The mega-specialty roasters (Inteligentsia, Counter Culture, Stumptown, etc.) have the capital to buy up great coffees before most of us even know they exist. The prospect of having someone with such resources and high quality standards basically "shopping" producers, looking for the best coffees, not just for his own roastery, but to sell wholesale- that's huge. Back to the coffees...

The Aricha 10 was a bit tangy with some tea flavors, a great aroma- lightly apricot with some possibly curried notes. The second time I cupped it, the aroma was more floral and earthy and the flavors were lemony, tea, traditional washed Yirg flavors. And the last time I cupped it, the aroma was cherry or strawberry, and definitely a citrus, strawberry flavor that was absolutely delicious. My sample roasting situation isn't very good yet, so some of that variation can come from inconsistent roasts. Part of it too is that these coffees are complex and different flavors can come out of them at different times. The tasting notes Ninety Plus sent me are honey, tamarind, and apricot in the aroma with a balanced, light apricot flavor.

The Beloya 12 to me was a bigger, more fruity, striking coffee. Every time I tasted it, I was enraptured by these experiences that seemed to go straight into my chest and tie my heart-strings into bows. Aromas of berry muffins and a bit of tea (perfect for an English afternoon), great fruit flavors, and some maltiness, huge body, and it cooled into a very sweet nutty taste (probably walnuts or almond). The second cupping it still had a big, fragrant, fruity aroma, possibly redcurrant with sweet berry, caramel, and possibly amaretto flavors. And the third cupping I got sweet but tangy melon flavors and lots of berry. Ninety Plus' cupping notes included aromas of carob, butter, and light berry with flavors of ginger, maple, raspberry, and spiced apple.

The Aricha 14 is the third coffee I bought from them. I haven't gotten a clear cupping result from this coffee, but they are sending me another sample this week. Their cupping notes are as follows: Aromas of peach, strawberry lemonade, raspberry jam, spiced apple cider, and flavors of raspberry and grapefruit.

Obviously, considering all the work that goes into these coffees, they aren't going to be cheap. The farmers are paid twice the "fair trade" price for the coffees, then the processing is time-intensive, air freight is expensive, and packaging in mylar to retain freshness adds more cost. But it will be worth it. The great thing about coffees like this is that they are fleeting. The Aricha 14 will be here in a couple weeks and the others will be here probably in 5 weeks. I could only afford one 60 kilo bag of each. After roasting, it will only leave us with around 112 pounds of each coffee. That's not very much so when you get a chance, enjoy them. They will sell for $34 per pound (including tax). And I'm planning to brew these special coffees, but not sure yet how much they'll cost per cup. ABSOLUTELY NO CREAM OR SUGAR WILL BE ALLOWED IN THESE COFFEES.

I may have a special event to taste the coffees after they all arrive, so stay tuned.

Leadville Jogcast

2008-09-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

I've finally finished editing the audio from the race. You can listen to it (if you're a glutton for punishment) on the AA Cafe lineup. The audio is a tad hard to understand, but if you listen real hard, I think you can make out the misery in my voice.

Thanks

2008-08-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to pen a quick note to say thank you to everyone who has asked about the race and who pledged money to support Coffee Kids. People have been so nice and I appreciate it, as the race was a hard pill to swallow.

Altogether, the pledges amounted to $714.41, and I know a lot of people who pledged have given more. I know Coffee Kids appreciates it, and though we'll never see it, the people they help are the most grateful- and it's the fruits of their labor that we enjoy every day at the DoubleShot.

I'll continue to update this blog with current Coffee Illuminati info (about coffees and whatnot) and will post upcoming events.

The next event will be a coffee/cigar night, in which there won't be as much "tasting" the coffee as there will be socializing, hanging out, enjoying a nice evening, and a little discussion about coffee. I'll let you know.

Wrap-up

2008-08-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

Wow. My thoughts are duplicitous about the race. I'm still trying to sort out what happened. Sometimes it's hard to know.
The Leadville 100 is a very difficult race. Generally only around 45% of the starters finish. This year, 186 out of 561 entrants finished the race. That's only 33%.
I'm sure the weather had a lot to do with it. It honestly was miserable. I recorded some audio during the (short) race, and will put it together as a "jogcast" on the AA Cafe podcast, and I'm sure you'll hear it in my voice. There just wasn't anything fun about it. Lightning, snow, rain, sleet, muddy trails, cold wind...
But all that feels like an excuse to me. I know that slowed me down a bit from my usual pace. But I wasn't really able to eat much during the first part of the race. I couldn't seem to swallow food- no appetite. And eventually that was going to come back to bite me.
We discussed it afterward- what caused me to crash around mile 30? I've never crashed that early in a race. It's possible I got hyponatremia. I know I was well-hydrated, even though Brad kept telling me I wasn't drinking very much. But maybe I was over-hydrated and it washed too many of the electrolytes out of my system. That can cause brain swelling and other problems. Seems very possible that's what was going on. Because at one point I thought, maybe I have cerebral edema. Then I decided the fact that I considered that means I don't have it. But definitely I had some problem where anytime I would exert any effort I would instantly blow up. And that lasted at least 30 minutes. 30 minutes that I didn't have to spare.
It's common to go through tough times during a long race like that. Even the best runners go through it. Sometimes it takes an hour to come out of that tunnel. But unfortunately for me, this time I didn't have that time in the bank. By the time I recovered and felt good again, I was pushing the time cut-offs so tight that it was virtually impossible for me to stay in front of them.

I feel bad because I didn't get very far. And my legs aren't really sore.
But so be it.

For now, I'm saying that was my last 100. I enjoy running 50 mile ultras a lot more because I can finish in the daylight, drink a beer and go to sleep at night. For some people, running a 100 miles is in them. For me, it's a struggle. So, at least for now, I plan to get back in the gym, start running fast again (anything over 9 miles is for suckers!), and get on my mountain bike. I want to be strong and fast. Besides, isn't 50 miles far enough? (The obvious answer is no, but let's pretend it is for now.)

Thank you all for the support. A lot of people have given me physical help, encouragement, and motivation, and I truly appreciate all of you.

I also appreciate everyone who pledged money on the race for Coffee Kids. I'll contact each of you in the next couple days and let you know how you can donate your pledge money. Even though I wasn't pleased with my performance, some good still came of it.
Thanks for that. Stay tuned and I'll report how much money we raised for Coffee Kids.

The End

2008-08-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a tough day. Storms blew in every time I climbed a pass. And I think aside from that, I just had an off day. Was running some behind because I couldn't climb as fast as usual and the weather was ridiculous. I'm sure I'll elaborate more later.
But around mile 30 I blew up. Had to sit down a couple times because I was light-headed and whatnot. I came out of it, but a half hour had passed and I was pushing cutoff times too closely. Climbed pretty strong off Half Moon road over the pass toward Twin Lakes. Started looking like I was going to miss the cutoff there-- and the recurring lightning, rain, hail, and sleet were not helping.
Then at the top of the pass, I ran into my friend Robin Saens. She had altitude sickness and had been vomiting all day. So I walked down into Twin Lakes with her, and we definitely missed the cutoff.
I felt really bad because of all the good work my crew has done. But I can't control the weather. And sometimes I have an off day.
Thanks a ton to Matt for updating the blog.
And especially to my team:
Jason Westenburg the crew chief
Jason Goodnight my first pacer that didn't get to run (but helped immensely)
Brad Messner my second pacer (see above note)
Brad's dad Jerry (moral support)
Marvin Lee (out running now because he was so excited to run the course)
I'm sorry to let you all down. Thanks for all your help.

Brian, signing off.

Fish Hatchery

2008-08-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Brian is through the next checkpoint, with a time of 2 hours, 52 minutes. He arrived at the Fish Hatchery at 9:31 AM. He said that he is about 20 minutes behind where he would like to be.

The weather has improved greatly, although there's still plenty of snow on the peaks, where the temperature is around 20 degrees. Brian is in a fantastic mood, smiling and responsive. He ate a whole meatloaf sandwich and some chips.

The next real checkpoint is Half Moon at 30.5 miles, but there's no crew access there. Jason and the others are waiting to meet him at a semi check point called Tree Line right now. The next real checkpoint after that is Twin Lakes, which is right before he'll start climbing Hope Pass for the first time.

That's all for now, keep cheering.

May Queen

2008-08-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

Brian has successfully made it to the first, 13.5 mile checkpoint, named May Queen. His traveling time was 2 hours, 38 minutes and he arrived at 6:39 AM.

According to Jason, the weather is wretched. Freezing rain coming down and more ahead along the path. Brian was completely soaked coming into the checkpoint and they did a full change of clothes. Despite the weather, he was still in good spirits, although still trying to get into a rhythm. This is pretty normal for him, up until 15 miles or so.

He's heading to the first elevation spike of the race, Sugarloaf Pass, which is about 1,000 feet higher than the starting elevation. I'll check back in when they're at the next checkpoint, at 23.5 miles.

They're off!

2008-08-16T03:07:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,

Just talked to Jason and they have started the race. Jason said that Brian got a good night's sleep and was in good shape, but a little nervous.

Weather is currently about 38 degrees where they are, with spotty rain. There's rain and snow in the forecast, so keep your fingers crossed that it stays clear. Jason said the precipitation is very sporadic.

That's all I know for now, I'll update as soon as I get the next call.

-Matt

Weather

2008-08-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Forecast for Leadville on Saturday:
High 55
Low 31
Scattered Thunderstorms

4.5 Days to Leadville

2008-08-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

It's getting close. I'm a little nervous. More nervous about my health going into the race than anything right now.
I played my little visualization game and put myself into the race for about an hour a couple days ago. It's all too easy to see myself in pain again. I hope I can overcome.

I'm currently in Crested Butte. I'm supposed to be resting and acclimating. Instead I climbed Mt. Gothic today (12,589 feet). It's a mountain that has always loomed over my campsite here and I've always wanted to climb it, so today I did. It was partly an accident-- "I'll just go up to that next ridge"... "I'll just see what it looks like on that saddle." Next thing I knew I was on the summit push. I didn't actually summit because I shouldn't have gone as far as I did (not enough water, no food, no rain gear, no fleece), but I hit a false summit, maybe 200 feet below the summit and across a knife ridge. I'm pretty tired and I can definitely feel the altitude, but I promise to rest the next couple days and hopefully this will help me acclimate faster and not hurt on Saturday.

Good news for all of you who couldn't come to Leadville for the race. Our good friend (and Coffee Illuminati member) Matt is going to update this blog throughout the race. My crew chief, Jason, will call Matt whenever I go through an aid station and Matt will blog what time I made it, my condition, and whatever other miscellaneous details arise. Thanks to Matt for doing this. Hopefully it will be a restless night for him.

Leadville 100 starts Saturday August 16 at 4am (that's 5am in Tulsa) and the finish line cutoff time is Sunday the 17th at 10am. There is a cutoff time for each aid station during the race, so the pressure is on the whole time.

So check in whenever you get a chance on Saturday and Sunday to see how I'm doing.

Acclimatization

2008-08-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

I've decided to go to Colorado early. I'm flying there on Sunday. This will be the first time I will have gotten there more than one day before the 100, so I hope I acclimate some and hope it makes the whole thing just slightly less difficult (to breathe) than it would be otherwise. Every little bit helps.

How am I feeling? I've been battling pain that's working it's way up my back, into my neck and into my jaw. But April over at Glo Salon across the street from the DoubleShot has been working on it, and I think it's getting better. Other than that, I don't know. I feel ok. Someone asked me yesterday if I can finish the 100. That's the question. Can I finish? If I knew that, there might be no reason to go do it. I think I can, but it depends on a lot of different factors. Our bodies really weren't made to do this sort of thing. Some of the factors are physiological and I have very little control over them- how will I feel that day and how will my body respond to the effort? A lot of the other factors are managing an ultimately losing battle; prolonging the inevitable. How long can I hold off a complete system breakdown? It's impossible to eat enough food during the race, and it's very difficult to digest food while running. All I can hope for is to take in enough calories and protein that my body doesn't break down too much of its own fat and muscle fiber for energy- putting me in a state of ketosis and taking away parts of my engine. Lots of other factors like hydration, electrolytes, NSAIDs, caffeine, and taking care of my feet and other parts of my body that will be rubbing together constantly... Most of it is an educated guess. And then there is my mind. Keeping my mind in the race, confident, and going forward is another thing altogether, without which I can't go another step.

I'm planning to record my thoughts periodically throughout the race and edit them down into a Leadville 100 "jogcast" on the AA Cafe podcast when I get back. Finish or not, you'll hear the ups and downs, highs and lows, crazy thoughts, rational concerns, and general thoughts that occupy my mind throughout a 100 mile foot race in the Rocky Mountains.

Can I do it? There's only one way to find out.

Thanks again for all the pledges. There's still time to pledge, if you haven't yet. Tell your friends and their parents.

I appreciate all the support.

Leadville Course Profiles

2008-08-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post this illustration. It's a little hard to make out, but I think you'll get the drift. I stacked the course profiles on top of each other from the Silver Rush 50, which I just completed, and the Leadville 100, which is August 16. The black line, which is considerably higher for most of the race, is the 50. It goes up to 12,000 feet a few times. The red line, which is lower except for the huge climb up Hope Pass (12,600 feet), is the first 50 miles of the LT100. At the end of it, I turn around and re-trace my path.

Hopefully this illustration tells me that the first half of the hundred will be considerably easier than the Silver Rush, and since the elevations are a lot lower, maybe I won't get altitude sickness.

Also, I'm planning to go out a few days early to try and acclimatize.

Haven't seen any new pledges recently, so tell your friends. I want to feel compelled to keep going, and raising more money for Coffee Kids is the thing that will do it.

Tulsa World Story

2008-07-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Mike Averill of the Tulsa World wrote a story about the Coffee Illuminati and it ran in last Sunday's paper. I was out of town, but read it online. If you missed it, you can do the same:

Check it out here.

Silver Rush

2008-07-21T09:55:00.001-07:00

Boy am I dumb. Running 50 miles in Leadville is a piece of cake? Hardly.
I finished. But it hurt like hell.
Had a couple of learning opportunities during the race, which caused a great deal of pain. The course went up to 12,000+ feet at least 6 times. At that elevation I felt light-headed, disoriented, and extremely tired. Then I would feel better after descending. Then I would feel pretty bad again at the top. I haven't had the occasion to train on big mountains, so the descents really tore up my legs. At 25 miles I felt a bit haggard. Then I ate a meatloaf sandwich that my mom made. Took a couple hours to get into my system, but for a while after that I was a new man. Could've been any number of things, but I prefer to think it was the meatloaf. Yum. Then with about 2 miles to go, I started to feel really sick. Had to fight back the urge to puke. And running was out of the question, so I walked the rest of the way in. Turns out I had a touch of pulmonary edema. When I got back to the condo I got extreme chills, fever, fluid in my lungs. All the good stuff that comes with altitude sickness. I've had it before, on more than one occasion. So I spent a restless night trying to sleep it off.
Today I feel better, but my legs are in the midst of responding from extreme training stimulus. Know what I mean? Probably not, but it's hard to walk.

Hopefully the rest of the week will include some productive training time.
Oh, final time was somewhere around 13:20.

Hell of a Week

2008-07-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a coffeeshop in Leadville, Colorado.

If you would've been a participant in my week, you'd be surprised to hear that.
I think this is one of those FTO coffeeshops... and they told me the Sumatra and the Colombia were "pretty similar," they land the plane in their 36-ounce steaming pitchers, they fill the doser, and they need to clean their equipment. All the usual stuff that bugs me.

Anyway, tough week for me. Sunday afternoon my girlfriend left for LA, where she's training to work as a tour guide for the next few months. Monday night, while we were roasting, the roaster got a fire in the cyclone and Thursday I had to clean the chimneys, vacuum the char out of the chaff collector, and hope to god that was it for now. Sunday night we installed a PID on the espresso machine and Tuesday it went out and the espresso machine went down. We reinstalled the original thermostat on Tuesday night. Wednesday after closing, the floor drains became clogged and backed up, so I had to call a plumber. Friday I left in my Land Rover for Colorado. It broke down before I got to Wichita, Kansas. Turns out the power steering pump imploded. Power steering went out, engine smoked and died, etc. Couple hours later I managed to get it on a tow truck. They were nice enough to call around and find someone who works on Land Rovers in Wichita. Then I found out for sure it was the power steering pump, but the mechanic didn't have one and wouldn't be able to work on it until Monday. And then the owner of the shop said, why don't we just take one off a Rover in their lot and put it on mine? He was probably just being a creative capitalist, but it was a nice gesture and it got me back on the road.

After that 7 hour delay, I drove into the night and stopped in Flagler, Colorado. Slept in my car (fitfully), then finished the drive to Leadville this morning.

I've checked in with the race and am ready to roll. It starts tomorrow morning at 6a, when hopefully the temps will be in the mid-50s. It got hot this afternoon, so I'm not sure what to expect tomorrow. Rain?
It feels good here. Always feels different in the mountains. Maybe it's just the stress rolling out of my brain. But it seems like the air is more healthy, my vision more vibrant, and I feel... lighter.

I want to keep this on your mind. This is a 50-mile training run for me. Hopefully my time out here will help me get to the finish line of the Leadville 100 on August 16. Pledges are trickling in, and every one of them means a lot to me. Because when the time comes, I'll know that just one more mile will raise more money for Coffee Kids. And that's more important than any race.

One good thing that has come of my tribulations in racing and in business is the ability to take negative sitations and isolate them. It seems overwhelming, but you have to stay positive, even if it's deep down. Fix the problem. Or learn how to live with it. Or, as I had to do with the Rover, take in as much information as you can, try to make good decisions, and hope things play themselves out in your favor. And then re-adjust your schedule and expectations. This race isn't going to go as smoothly as I visualize it going. And the 100 is going to be even worse. At some point I'm going to encounter real problems. I'm going to go into "the tunnel," as I call it, which is a place beyond where most marathon runners talk about "hitting the wall." But I need to figure it out and get through it. And keep running. (Crap is going to happen. It's how you deal with it that is important.)

So anyway, I'm here. And the coffees taste similar because they're both stale, but the Colombia is definitely brighter and a little bit fruity, compared to the earthiness of the Sumatra.

Preparing for 50

2008-07-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the pledges. Our numbers keep creeping up, and so far we have pledges for $13.75 per mile. All the money goes to Coffee Kids, so on their behalf I thank you.

I'm leaving in the morning for Leadville. Things went a little haywire these last few weeks, so my plan to fly fell apart and now I'll be driving the 12- or so hours. I'm ready to breath mountain air and fill my eyes with mountain vistas. Have been gathering my gear the last couple days and I hope to get packed today. I used to have to somehow get packed before nightfall, but now that I have electricity in my apartment it makes everything easier. Don't have to sort gear with a headlamp.

My friend Kari hooked me up with a friend's condo in Leadville, so I won't be sleeping on the ground. I'm such a softy. The race doesn't start until 6a on Sunday and I'll be done before dark that evening. That's the beauty of 50-mile races: no night running.

I emailed the race directors to see what the trail conditions are, because I've heard there is still snow above 10,000 feet, and apparently Schofield Pass above Crested Butte is blocked. Here's the email I received back from Merilee:

Brian-Trail conditions should be great. No conditions present that should slow your pace considerably (other than the elevation). There will be a short section of snow on the course and there is a small creek crossing and I would expect some (but probably very little) mud. Thanks, Merilee

So that's good.

I'm actually not sure how I'll do in this race. My (not enough) training fell off pretty hard these last few weeks. But I think I'll be good.

I was doing a little reading in the Hammer Nutrition newsletter today and, according to Steve Born's recommendations, I think I'm going to double up on the amount of electrolyte replacement caps I usually take. We'll see if that helps with cramping, dizziness, and the feeling that my lungs are blowing up when they shouldn't be. Hammer has been really good to me over the years, so I definitely recommend their products. I take the Endurolytes and eat (espresso-flavor) Hammer Gels.

Wish me luck.

After the race I'm going to stay in Colorado until Friday to relax a little on some 14ers or my mountain bike.

Making Progress

2008-07-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's only been up for one day and already we have $10.50 per mile pledged to Coffee Kids. I sure do appreciate your support of the cause, and I hope pledges continue to come in. I remember hearing the founder of Coffee Kids speak at the SCAA Convention in May. He said he used to be a coffee retailer and then he traveled to origin and saw the families that were producing the coffees he was selling. And he came home and said, I can't sell another pound of coffee knowing that the people who produce it are paid so inequitably. This is the same feeling that brought me to start the Coffee Illuminati. And when I heard him say it, it really hit home.

This weekend I will drive to Colorado and run in a 50 mile race in Leadville. It's on a different course than the 100 mile race, but it will be great training for the real thing. I have been running, strength training, and jumping up and down in preparation for this leg-busting run - up and down the mountain trails first used for silver mining.

This weekend's race is called the Silver Rush 50. Don't worry, 50 miles is a piece of cake (sort of).

Running for Coffee Kids

2008-07-11T08:13:00.000-07:00

On August 16 I'm running in the Leadville 100. It's a 100-mile foot race that starts in Leadville Colorado (at 10,000 feet elevation), crosses three mountain passes (Hope Pass is the highest at 12,600 feet) to the 50 mile point, then turns around and re-traces along the same path. Leadville is one of the toughest races in the world, with only around 40% of competitors even finishing the race.

This will be my fourth attempt to finish. Though I've run numerous ultramarathons and finished 100 miles twice, the furthest I've run at Leadville is 70 miles (where I missed a time cutoff).

To be honest, I often lack motivation in racing. Trying to win a race (or in this case, just to finish) is not terribly important to me. Racing for the sake of racing doesn't interest me. Sure, I want to accomplish this task and make myself physically stronger and mentally more confident. But I've been looking for more meaning in my physical pursuits.

So I've decided to team up with Coffee Kids. When I run in the Leadville 100, every mile will raise money to support the coffee farming families who work so hard for so little and produce coffee that we enjoy so much every day. I've set up a pledge form so you can give per mile I run. The race is 100 miles long, and I hope to finish this year - I've assembled a very capable team to organize my gear, give me support, and pace me the last 50. But even if I don't finish the race, we'll still be doing good for coffee families. Every dollar that you give will go directly to Coffee Kids for their various projects.

I plan to update this blog on a regular basis to tell you about my training leading up to race day and my thoughts and feelings about it all.

As I've done in the past, I'll also carry a digital recorder during the race and make a "jogcast" so you can hear (and feel) what it's like to run in the Leadville 100. You'll be able to find that after the race on the AA Cafe Podcast.

And if all goes according to plan, we'll have a page set up that will allow you to check in on August 16 (starting at 4a) and 17 (race ends at 10a) to see how I'm doing. If I can get a couple people to help with the continuous updates...

What is coffee Illuminati?