The Centrals: It’s June 30 and the Centrals are starting to come in en masse. You have already seen the Costa RicaCosta Rican coffee is typically very clean, sweet, with lots of floral accents. hey are prized for their high notes: bright citrus or berry-like flavors in the acidity,... ...more micro-millSmall independent mills that produced finished coffee, ready for export, usually right on the farm. A Micromill is a tiny low-volume, farm-specific coffee producer who their lots separate,... ...more lots arriving, kicked off with the AMAZING wet-process Cafetalera Herbazu. Small lots of La Guaca BourbonA coffee cultivar; a cross between Typica and Bourbon, originally grown in Brazil: Mundo Novo is a commercial coffee cultivar; a natural hybrid between "Sumatra" and Red Bourbon,... ...more, La Yunta OrganicGrown without the use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, etc.: Organic coffee has been grown according to organic farming techniques, typically without the use of artificial fertilizers. Some farms... ...more and the award-winning Sin Limites have made for a full list of offerings right now. And more are on their tail, including the CoE winning Genesis. We have had the GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to... ...more Agua Tibia for several weeks and now comes quite a few new arrivals in the next week or so, including the spectacular Guatemala GeshaGesha is a long-bean Ethiopia selection with unique cup character. Gesha is the name of the town in Western Ethiopia where the original samples were collected. Spelling it... ...more we have stocked the last 4 years, as well as Huehuetenango La Maravilla (we had it in ’05 and I have been trying to get it ever since) and a really interesting JBMJBM is short for Jamaica Blue Mountain, which is both a trade name for certain Jamaica coffee, and a Typica cultivar. As a cultivar, it is one of... ...more cultivarCultivar is a term used interchangeably with Varietal in the coffee trade to indicate plant material, although there are distinctions.: The naming of a cultivar should conform to... ...more lot from El Progresso state, FincaSpanish 101: Finca is the Spanish word for farm. Sometimes the term Hacienda is used to imply an Estate, which would mean the farm has its own wet-mill.... ...more La Bella. El SalvadorEl Salvador coffee had an undeservingly poor reputation for years, marred mostly by the inability to deliver coffee of high quality in an unstable political climate. Unfortunately, agriculture... ...more new crops are 10-14 days out, Matalapa EstateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... ...more, and later we will have some micro-lots from Matalapa as well. HondurasHonduran coffee was absent from the top ranks of the Specialty market, but that has changed. It has all the environmental factors on its side: soil, altitude, climate.... ...more new cropRefers to fresh shipments of green coffee within the first month or two of the earliest arrivals ... not quite the same as Current Crop, which means the... ...more we have had for a while, and we have one more lot in the works as well as our CoE lot we split with Ritual coffee roasters. PanamaPanama coffee ranges from medium quality lower altitude farms to those at 1600 - 1800 meters centered in the area of Boquete in the Chirqui district near the... ...more La Berlina Organic has been in stock a week, and gosh, where is our vacuum packed Esmeralda Gesha from the auction. In transit, but arrival date unknown. Anyway, that’s a short rundown of where we are at today!
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EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie, was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... ...more: It’s June 30th and usually we would have incoming Ethiopia coffees arriving around now. In fact Harars have typically been arriving in March or so, much earlier than others. Sadly, the whole Ethiopia ECX boondoggle has turned an already chaotic system on it’s head, and hopefully it will be straightened out for next years crop. As for this year, I have finally been cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... ...more some very nice DP coffees from Sidamo and Yirga Cheffe as well as Guji lately, and some from the West. We have some very promising lots “on the water” that had very nice samples in the pre-ship as well. So it’s not like there won’t be great Ethiopia coffees. They are just late, a little harder to find, and a few, if they went through the exchange, may not have the exact producer name attached, although they are identified by region and in some case subregions. One victim of all this seems to be Harars. I have only cupped 2 or 3 that made it to the US and they were, well, not the kind we buy, even when desperate. There was one with very nice bodyAssociated with and sensed by mouthfeel, body is sense of weight and thickness of the brew, caused by the percentage of soluble solids in the cup, including all... ...more and good chocolateA general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of chocolate. But what type? Usually described with more specifics.: Chocolate is a broad, general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of... ...more and positive earthyEarthy is a flavor term with some ambivalence, used positively in some cases, negatively in others.: Sumatra coffees can have a positive earthy flavor, sometimes described as "wet... ...more and herbalA flavor descriptor in coffee reminiscent of herbs, usually meaning aromatic, savory, leafy dried herbs. Usually, more specific descriptions are given, whether is is a floral herb, or... ...more notes, but around 25% of the cups were mustyOff aroma and flavor that reminds one of a dank, moldy closet. This flavor can hint at a dangerous coffee mold and should not be consumed.: Off aroma... ...more; unacceptable! Musty goes beyond just a bad taste, I consider it a possible danger since it must originate in a mold or fungus … even if it is roasted at 450f and brewed at 195f, I wouldn’t trust it and I would sell it to anyone… so Harar is in Limbo. I will be a little surprised at this point if a good one materializes, because late shipments from the East are never good due to the storageGreen coffee can be stored much longer than roasted coffee: Roasted coffee starts to lose its aromatics in 10 days after roasting. Green coffee can be stored months... ...more conditions in Dire Dawa and shipping from Djibouti. 2009 might be the “Year of No Harar”. Too bad because we had this beautiful coffee all lined up from the Choma subregion, the raised bed project there, the one I went and photographed in February. We have some nice wet-process Yirga Cheffe lots on the water too, so no worries there, And in fact this late current cropRefers to any coffee that has not been replaced by new crop shipments, even if it was shipped from origin many months before. See Past Crop and New... ...more Bonko wet processWet-processing starts by removing the outer skin of the coffee cherry with a machine called a pulper, then fermenting the remaining fruit (with green bean inside) in water... ...more we have now has been a lifesaver. We also keep our secret stash of wet process Kochere that helps make a couple of our new EspressoA small coffee beverage, about 20 ml, prepared on an espresso machine where pressurized hot water extracted through compressed coffee.: In its most stripped-down, basic form, this is... ...more Workshop blends so aromatic and sweet. And Misty Valley, ay, finally running out of stock. Farewell my friend, I have some fears that we might not see you in ’09 due to quality issues with that project (mainly linked to too-rapid expansion I think — havent you seen IMV offered all over, and has it been good? Not all of it. (We squirreled away our separated lot, but I cupped others that were, yawn… not what they should be…)
-Tom
