I posted a 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 Mill travelogue to the new/temporary Sweet Maria’s image gallery site. I went on a whirlwind tour of Costa Rica small mills, basically a big shopping trip, looking for new contacts and outstanding coffees. I felt like it was a 8 day trip, but it was only 4 … filled with 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, farm and mill tours, hand shaking, back slapping, flim-flamming. Okay, not much of the latter, but I can say for sure that the bar for quality has been raised, and there’s a whole new approach to coffee in Costa Rica that should give hope to those jaded by neutral cup quality from giant container load “Specialty CoffeeSpecialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average "industrial coffee" or "commercial coffee". At this point, the term is of... ...more.” The picture above is new coffee flower buds emerging for next years crop at Las Lajas, an 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 farm in Alajuela/Poas area. -Tom
our first stop, cupping a few rounds at cafecoop outside san jose. here are town cuppers from the lovely west oakland Jeri (royal coffees top sales associate) and myself, and we both looked stumped. why? i will explain later. 
the trees nearby were just about to open their flowers, maybe the next day. in dota much of the coffee flower had bloomed a few days before. blossoms last just 3 days in dota. you can see the browning edges here these are the “candellas”, flowers about to open. these trees were caturra a bunch of losers from the US. okay, not really. but there’s a certain moody and dejected look in this picture. here is coopedota’s innovation: their new micro coffee mill or micro-beneficio, to process small lots of coffee from individual coop members. this is why i came down. my favorite bag design from the coop. Caracol means snail, but it is also the name for peaberry since it has a rounded, snail-like appearance.
