I arrived in Nairobi for the KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East... ...more leg of my trip … the longest coffee trip I have taken actually, at 20 days. It’s nice to have a travel day, some hotel time here in Nairobi, and a chance to reflect on 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. Having gone to both the West (Dire Dawa, Harar) and the South (Sidama, Yirga Cheffe) was interesting. They are so different! One thing is clear, that the crop is small in all areas, and that the new Coffee Exchange that replaces the Auctions, called the ECX, has everyone confused. (http://www.ecx.com.et/) I am not even going to try to explain it here, but the consequence is that the entire coffee supply chain is constipated. Nothing is moving; cooperatives and private mills aren’t delivering coffee, the Addis Ababa dry mills are not running, and nothing is shipping. That’s not good for the coffee either, to sit in parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying... ...more when it ready for hullingHulling is the step at the dry mill where the green coffee bean is removed from the parchment shell. (See Wet Hulled for the Indonesia method). ...more, sortingCoffee is sorted by size, density, and color in its preparation for export.: Sorting refers to several steps performed in the preparation of coffee for export. Coffee is... ...more, and export. So we’ll see how it plays out in the next couple weeks, which are critical. I was able to do a fair amount of 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 of 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 lots, alongside some of my compadres, and am happy with the quality of both the wet-process and dry-process coffees. Koratie is cupping really well, and the raised-bed Harar project lots were ranging from really good to fantastic! While I have been to Ethiopia several times, it was my first real trip to the south and that leg was so rewarding. I have uploaded a few preliminary pictures to flickr and am still sorting through a bazillion more.
