CR Learnin's

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...