George, I have enjoyed your various coffees for about a year now. All outstanding, I hope you can clearly and with integrity answer the following.  Once a bean is picked and air dried, and roasted there and then (or within a day or two), what is the difference in that taste of coffee, versus, you hauling it to the USA, freezing it for a few months or more and then roasting it and selling it to us. Is the difference night and day, is it close in taste? I know varieties are different, and I know your process of attempted freshness is commendable, but I still would like your honest answer. Also, do you ship the beans frozen from the location of growth, or only when you get it here?  Thanks, Jerry

Hi Jerry,

A coffee roasted in country of origin and one roasted here should be similar, assuming the green coffee was well dried, harvested recently, well packaged and stored.  High grown coffee will stay at peak flavor for several months before noticeably aging.  It even requires up to two  months storage, after harvest, to “rest” before roasting.   Roasted coffee is far more fragile than green coffee however; its shelf life is far shorter as well.  Also: the cost to ship individual packets of roasted coffee from countries of origin is far less efficient and therefore more expensive than shipping bulk quantities green and then roasting here.

Green coffee stability can vary a great deal.  Dense hard beans, if they are properly dried, can hold up for several months with very little degradation.  Such a coffee should have been dried immediately at high altitude with moderate temperatures and moderate to low humidity. This is the basis for “seasonal coffees” which many advanced quality roasters promote.  Recent better packaging of green at origin (vacuum sealed and GrainPro bags, instead of just jute) has greatly helped by prolonging shelf life considerably.  Strictly hewing to a seasonal policy only, however, leads to just purchasing approximately a third of what one could buy from a farmer, which is why we freeze estate green coffees that are truly exceptional in their craftsmanship.  Such coffees are more than mere produce.  They deserve the attention-over-time given to estate wines and teas.  We freeze these selected coffees only after they have arrived here at our warehouse. Freezing dramatically slows (if not outright stops) the aging process, as demonstrated by a number of our award winning one to two-year-old coffees in the past.   I do not know of any research on freezing green coffees but I am actively looking!

The invisible enemy of green coffee freshness is water activity: water that remains un-bonded and is thus free to roam around the bean and wreck havoc through oxidation ( a bit poetic – but gets the point across!).  This typically happens during the green drying process when drying is temporarily reversed due to poor weather conditions and insufficient controls; beans reabsorb moisture and the stage is set for more rapid degradation.  Free water also leads to larger ice crystals within frozen green coffees, and poorer stability, while molecularly bonded water produces very little crystallization.

I hope this answers your question satisfactorily!  I really appreciate the feedback and queries!

George

Kiryama is our first foray into Burundi coffee.  Our lot is from the Kiryama  (pronounced Kigama) washing station, built in 1988 and owned by the government. It is in northern Burundi at an altitude of 5,800 feet near the border with Rwanda.

Even though our lot is from last summer’s harvest (2010), the beans still retain bright yet smooth acidity underpinned by the flavor of light molasses tinged with ripe orange and raspberry.   Most coffees acquire generic woody notes after storage this long; nevertheless our lot has lost none of its definition in the long journey to Boston. Getting coffees quickly from land-locked Burundi and Rwanda, its neighbor just to the north, is always very difficult and shipments almost always arrives quite late.

The beans are from the Mibirizi and Jackson cultivars, both variants of the heirloom Bourbon variety.  Mibirizi is the name of a mission in Rwanda where Bourbon trees from Guatemala were first planted in 1905.  I cannot find any information on the Jackson version of Bourbon.  These plants have adapted well to the environments of Rwanda and, later in 1930, Burundi.

Burundi shares much common ground with Rwanda; both are tiny countries with a common border that share a tragic conflict between Tutsi and Hutu; both have high density populations in similar environments.  According to the Office of Burundi Coffee there are 800,000 families living on 60,000 hectares of farmland.  This corresponds to well under a quarter of an acre per family.  Other obstacles shared with Rwanda are access to the sea and a dire need for further development of infrastructure.  80% of Burundi’s export revenues is coffee.

Still another problem for both Rwanda and Burundi is a bacteria which can radically affect the flavor of coffee beans; one infected bean can release a powerful raw potato flavor and aroma which destroys a pot of coffee!  No lot of coffee from these two countries can be said to be 100% free of this problem.  If you get such a cup, the roaster cannot be blamed.  In a high quality lot like this one you can go through hundreds of great cups and then hit one or two like a wall!  Chalk it to the necessary experience of the coffee treasure hunter, just as true wine lovers know what corky means! The number of incidents have steadily diminished over the years as these countries work to eliminate it entirely.

Burundi has made extraordinary leaps towards producing great quality coffees in very few years.  I have been invited to and eagerly accepted to be a cupping juror in a Cup of Excellence practice competition in Burundi this summer in preparation for the real event in 2012.

Although retail and wholesale coffee prices have remained quite stable over the past decade, the price of raw exchange grade  coffee, traded on the commodities market (the “C”) has steadily risen, as can be seen in the graph below (price is shown in cents per pound).  Exchange grade coffee must be within a specified range of bean sizes, be limited to a specified number of defects per 300 grams and have no off-flavors due to contamination, such as mold.  This past spring the C was at $1.35 to $1.50 per lb. The C has climbed sharply since then  and is hovering around $2.00, a 40+% increase over last spring. This C price is the benchmark for  nearly all other coffees, even the coffees we purchase; the exceptions could be counted on the fingers of one hand .

A September CNN Money article, with graph, shows the steep incline of the last few months. Most companies, from commercial to specialty, have raised prices,only partially reflecting the price increases to them.

The price hikes  may have been helped along by speculators and the recent attractiveness of commodity investment, but the coffee increases are based on real events in the coffee world. A far-sighted article in FuturesMag.com, written in February 2010, warned of the coming storm. In a nutshell, world demand has been rising above supply for years and world reserves are dwindling due to long term under-pricing, which has discouraged growers from growing more, particularly in fast growing countries such as China (Starbucks is adding hundreds of cafes there in the coming year) and Brazil.

The shoe is on the other foot now: in the early years of this decade, C prices plummeted well below the cost of production and many farmers went bankrupt. There was little incentive to increase production anywhere under such circumstances. This disaster set up an exodus of farmers and their workers from Latin America into the United States. For many farmers, still deep in debt, the recent price increases are a long-awaited bittersweet godsend; bitter because in places like Kenya and Colombia production is way down, again.

Recent weather patterns have been a major negative contributor. Drought in East Africa and particularly Kenya last year, cut coffee production dramatically, raising Kenya’s prices to historic highs. Continuous rains followed this year and obliterated the traditional dry season.  This led to poor flowering and yet another record low production year.  In Colombia (traditionally second or third in world production), we have seen two terrible years of excess rains, cutting harvests dramatically and leading to much higher prices (differentials above the C) and somewhat lower quality—and little of that available. With a return to drier weather, this past spring, a fungal infestation called Rust (photo on right) set in, making quantity and quality production much harder. And now, in early December, all signs are that Colombia has plunged back into the worst rains in decades.  Central America, from Mexico to Panama, has had excessive rains this fall, extending into the early harvest—which could affect the coming crop. From coffee farmers’ perspective, climate change is here! There is no quick fix. Coffee is an agricultural product and a coffee plant typically takes four to five years to mature, so farmers can’t just plant more this year to increase supply next year.

Farmers supplying the still tiny but growing top-end quality market in the world have done better, for the most part, than those serving the mass market this decade. With the advent of Cup of Excellence (1999), a growing number of craft-driven farmers have found roasters like ourselves who are more than willing to pay substantial premiums above the cost of production or Fair Trade prices as an incentive to produce better qualities. Nevertheless, as common-quality coffee prices rise, the pressure is there to maintain the difference in prices. Otherwise there is little incentive to work harder to receive  an increasingly smaller difference  in price over common grade coffee.  Even more critical, higher prices are only partially compensating for drastically lower production in key quality-producing countries due to adverse weather.  High quality coffees may be in short supply over the next year or two.

With all this said quality coffee prices remain a bargain. For every $20 dollars paid per pound of coffee, a ten-ounce cup made at full strength in the home costs $0.80.  A ten dollar bottle of wine translates to $3.94 for 10 ounces.

I strongly recommend reading Klaus Thomsen’s great report on Daterra.  Klaus is the 2006 Would Champion Barista and is co-owner of The Coffee Collective in Copenhagen, Denmark. Our visits intersected and he is seen in several of my shots.  Klaus was there longer than I and his writing, accompanied by some great photos, gives an excellent description of Daterra and its leader, Luis Pascoal, who does not just run Daterra – a full occupation by itself! His article can be seen by clicking here. It is in three parts.  I think my captioned photo tour is quite complementary to his outstanding blog. I see no reason to repeat in my photo stream what Klaus presents, for the most part.

This was a twenty-four hour speed course over a huge very complex great farm.  There simply was not enough time to see more than basics – with great details nevertheless springing up all over the place, some of which I was lucky to capture on film.  I hope you enjoy the tour and find the captions helpful. Click here to enter.

Enjoy!

Bittersweet Chocolate-Blackberry Tart ~ paired with George Howell Coffee’s Kenyan Mamuto by janet, master baker

Ingredients:

Bittersweet Chocolate Crust

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and softened

½ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 ¾ cups of all-purpose flour

4-5 tablespoons ice water

Chocolate-Blackberry Ganache Filling

2 cups organic whipping cream

¾ cup quality seedless blackberry preserves, no sugar added

½ cup caster or superfine sugar

12 oz. *Valrhona Guanaja 70% chocolate, chopped (about 1 1/4 cups)

2 T. unsalted butter

3 cups fresh Blackberries for topping

* my preference for baking. Any excellent quality 70% cocoa or higher may be used

Prepare the pastry. Combine the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt. Drop butter in and work into flour mixture until crumbs form. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture forms together. Be careful not to over mix, as this will toughen the pastry. Place a piece of plastic wrap on the work surface. Turn out the dough onto the plastic wrap. Use the wrap to help shape the dough into a flat circle and wrap tightly. Chill for one hour.

Lightly oil a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Roll out the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap to an 11-inch round, about 1/4 inch thick. Peel off the top sheet of plastic wrap and invert the dough into the prepared pan. Press the dough lightly into the pan. Remove the plastic wrap. Prick the dough with a fork and chill for 1/2 hour. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake for 10 minutes or until just set and lightly browned. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Prepare the ganache. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream and blackberry preserves and sugar. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until smooth. Finally, stir in the butter until melted. Cool to room temperature.

Assemble the tart. Pour the ganache into the prepared shell. Refrigerate for several hours, or overnight until ganache becomes firm. Add blackberries and a light dusting of powdered sugar.

Click here for the full video: The Craft: Becoming World Champion

The craft from Brendan Inkognito on Vimeo.

A minor look into the Journey of Tim Varney becoming WBC

We teamed up early with Nik – foreseeing what a star he would become in the local coffee scene. Taste has served our drip coffee exclusively since 2008 and frequently offered our espressos in his rotating espresso program. We worked closely with him to develop the signature espresso blend, Cerise, that he competed with in the 2010 United States Barista Competition, in which he took twelfth place! To learn more about Taste Coffee House check out the website - www.tastecoffeehouse.com. We look forward to continuing our creative relationship with Nik as he moves back to his California roots and opens a second café in the near future!

We will take over from where Nik has left off. We will keep with Nik’s rotating espresso program and convert the drip coffee program to the same level of excellence and diversity. In the near future we will start a rotating drip coffee program – serving the full range of George Howell Coffees, similar to The Coffee Connection’s style of small batch brewing. Freshness of brew will be key!  A bit further down the road we will bring in single cup brewing as well.

As a buyer and roaster of the finest coffees on the planet our goal with Taste is to have more face to face interaction with coffee consumers, to learn from their feedback, and to have a venue to educate them about our coffees and the many brew methods available for home use.

Getting our feet wet with Taste is the first of many exciting plans we have in store as we move towards opening a Boston flagship store in 2011. More updates to come on our progress at Taste but in the mean time please stop by and say hello!

There are a couple of remnants from those days; one is Monsoon Malabar.  It has the color of white bones and tastes strongly of wood soaked in gin from long contact with the ocean air.  The other is Aged Sumatra, held for several years, until deep golden brown and, once roasted, tastes of strong sweet pipe tobacco and cedar.  Terroircoffee.com carries the latter sometimes when we can find good quality…..

Unintentionally aged coffee is prevalent even today.  Until very recently coffee blends and origins had some woodiness in them due to being packaged in open laced jute bags for one year long storage times,  (almost all countries harvest only once a year).

I remember how The Coffee Connection would get calls from mystified customers every late spring when new crop coffees were just arriving.  They would ask why the coffee had so dramatically brightened up.  I felt so relieved, but there were those who missed the mellower woody notes…..

The newest generation of quality coffee roasters are moving towards “seasonality,” where better packaged, smaller lots are purchased and held for a far shorter time, to be replaced with coffees harvested more recently.  This narrows the range of coffees a roaster can offer at any one time but offers better consistency.  Nevertheless coffees age month by month and at different rates depending on their physical character.  The best solution these days is to freeze the green coffee immediately upon arrival and defrost only when needed.  Aging is stopped completely.  This is how we store all our Terroir brand coffees.  A small few are beginning to emulate us.

Freezing is no guarantee since green coffees can arrive aged.  Our Sumatra leaves Indonesia with high moisture content but in pristine condition and arrives on our shores substantially aged.  It is by far our most rustic coffee; it is also very popular.  Sumatra’s natural herbal notes harmonize well with the woody flavors of age.

Many consumers in fact prefer some age in their coffee.  It adds a mellowing woody flavor to the cup which is often perceived as fuller body.  I received, for example, a note from a customer preferring a Guatemalan coffee we had some time ago to the one we offer now.  I suspect it was the slight age from poorer packaging during shipment in those days that was being missed.  Terroir’s current Guatemalans are extra refined  in their layered flavor transparencies and have no trace of age   Our GHH Select brand coffees, on the other hand, are stored in our warehouse in GrainPro bags which protect the beans from any fluctuations in humidity, thus prolonging their life while still transforming towards woodier notes.

Coffee in the US has never reached such a low. We specialized more in high-tech spun mediocrity. After World War II dominant coffee companies lowered quality by minute increments, called “salami-slicing,” figuring few would notice. The master machine of illusion, the percolator, arose, spewing magical coffee aromas in the kitchen and serving up bitter over-extracted brew. And then there was instant coffee, first served to World War II vets. I attach an announcement from the thirties showing what Folgers sold, once upon a time. Remind you of another company making the news these days? Two decades later American coffee companies were selling bitter dishwater. Consumption per capita plunged from over 70% in the early 1950’s to just above 50% by the mid 1970s when Specialty was just starting to appear on the horizon (Peet’s 1967, Starbucks 1971, The Coffee Connection 1975). This brings me back to adding milk and sugar. How else drink that stuff?

The Coffee Connection 1975

 The rise of specialty coffee in the 1980s and early ’90s did not stem the sea of milk. On the contrary, the emphasis on extreme dark roasts, with espresso coffee being even darker (a deep misunderstanding of Italian espresso!), seems to me to have lent a hand to the near disappearance of the classic elegant cappuccino in favor of the massive, bitterness-smothering latte. Many specialty cafes transformed into milk-churning enterprises. The Coffee Connection contributed its bit with the introduction of the Frappuccino in the early ’90s, appropriated by Starbucks with the purchase of the company in 1994.

Since the birth of Cup of Excellence (1999), a new generation of coffee entrepreneurs with a revitalizing spirit of idealism and enquiry is taking root, focusing on single-estate coffees, be they farms or cooperatives, served individually. It is time to try tasting the coffee straight again! I have often had the pleasure of suggesting a customer try the coffee black before proceeding to the additives and having him or her exclaim that for the first time the coffee was great just as it was!

Iced Coffee Like You’ve Never had Before

I used to brew hot coffee and then let it cool before adding ice. Never again; it turns out the aromatics and special fruit qualities of fine coffee are long gone. Another way to make iced coffee is becoming increasingly popular: brewing coffee with cold water for up to 24 hours to make an extract.  While this beverage can be quite sweet it also completely misses coffee’s complex flavor notes that require very hot water to produce. Such coffee lacks any sparkle and is, for me at least, quite insipid.

I have learned that the secret to making a great iced coffee is all in the FRESHNESS OF THE BREW. It must be captured then and there. The key is to brew a concentrated coffee beverage of exactly the right strength and extraction directly over ice. Some of you who try this may never go back to hot coffee, even in winter!

We provide instructions below using the Technivorm brewer and the Baratza grinder, available on our website. These are precision machines. At the end of this instruction we provide a formula for 12 oz, increments of coffee beverage ready for the final load of ice cubes for those using different brewers.  The Salter Microtronic scale, photographed here, is also available on our website but currently out of stock until mid to late June.

Items needed (recommended)

1. Drip Brewer, ideally a Technivorm brewer, and filter.
2. Burr Grinder: Setting = medium drip grind = 28 on a Baratza Virtuoso.

3. Kitchen scale to weigh coffee and ice in grams or ounces
4. Fresh roasted coffee
5. Timer to measure in seconds

Preparation for 33 fluid ounces of iced coffee:

1. Weigh, then grind 102 Grams (3.6 oz) of coffee and place in filter basket.

2. Fill Technivorm brewer to 6 “cups” (= ¾ Liters or 25 fl. oz.) on the reservoir scale.

3. Set the filter basket flow control to STOP, if you have the adjustable filter top model, or remove carafe from below filter, shown in step 5, depending on the model Technivorm.

4. Weigh 480 Grams (17.0 oz) of ICE and place in brewer carafe.

5. Place all covers on brewer. Start brewer (with filter basket OFF and/or carafe removed. Filter top should not leak.)

6. When reservoir reaches the 4 “cup” setting (17 fl. oz. or ½ liter) switch brewer OFF and start timer. This provides a pre-wet period for the coffee.

7. At 1:30 minutes restart the brewer and open filter holder to open (top position shown on left) – or – move carafe in place under the filter holder (right; this allows the extracted coffee to flow out of basket). Liquid coffee concentrate begins to enter the ice filled carafe. Allow the brewer to complete normally.

When brewing has finished, stir the contents briefly: just about all the remaining ice will melt. You will have approximately 1.1 liters, a bit over a quart, of fresh ICED coffee concentrate. The total Brew time required for full extraction is about 5 minutes.

Fill your chilled glasses about 2/3 with ICE, and then pour your fresh-brewed concentrate and serve immediately. The cubes will melt very slowly because the coffee concentrate is already iced and cold.

Here is the formula to make units of 12 fluid ounces of iced coffee before final addition of ice cubes ready for serving:

37 grams drip ground coffee + 250 grams water +165 grams ice

The iced coffee flavor profile is completely different than the same coffee served hot. These are naturally sweet, thirst quenching drinks.