The Challenge: Coffee buyers for roasting companies should be doing much less travel and much more cupping, quality control and customer education.

Kevin Knox writes:

I’d put this another way. The most important tools for buying great coffee are a well-trained palate, a well-equipped cupping room, relationships with the best importers and – last not least – sufficient capital to afford to buy top coffees in season and keep them in inventory for extended periods.

I think it’s great that people in the trade want to know where coffee comes from, but I do see many small roasting companies allocating large sums of money, relative to their size and volume of coffee bought and roasted, to extensive origin travel that is clearly in lieu of – or at least at the expense of – much-needed attention to things at home.

Wanting to have, or claiming to have, a personal relationship with every farm you buy coffee from makes for great marketing but it isn’t good business, nor is it actually possible unless one limits one’s buying to a handful of farms in a couple of countries.

More important, if the goal is having the best coffee from each origin, the way to get there is to cup samples extensively and intensively in season from as broad a cross-section of farms as one can access, rather than limiting purchases to farms you bought from in previous years. In other words, “relationship” coffee or multi-year exclusives and having the best coffee are antithetical ideals. A more open approach also delivers much better value, allowing one to reward new and unknown farms doing a great job rather than over-paying for “name” coffees from farms bent on using the roaster as a vehicle to build their own brand with consumers.

Cupping, QC and customer education are the responsibilities of roaster-retailers, while producing high quality coffee at origin is the domain of farmers and agronomists. From the point of view of delivering coffee of high quality and value as well as that of being environmentally responsible and minimizing one’s carbon footprint, I would suggest that buyers for all but the largest companies would indeed be much better off spending much more time doing their jobs while letting their partners at origin do theirs.

For another perspective on this challenge, click here to see how Kenneth Davids responds

The Challenge: Coffee buyers for roasting companies should be doing much less travel and much more cupping, quality control and customer education.

Kenneth Davids writes:

I guess my reservation with the challenge statement is the repetition of the “much” word. If the thrust of the challenge statement is to argue that coffee buyers should focus first and foremost on the actual character of the coffee they buy and sell and less on travel stories glamorizing a quest for perfect coffees, etc. then I would agree. This critique applies as well to the traditional, older-fashioned marketing apparatus for fine single-origin coffees, wherein imagery of samba dancers and giraffes seemed to figure more prominently in promotional materials than attempts to describe the character of the coffees and what made them taste that way.

One of the reasons I like the latest trend in promotion of high-end coffee is that it tends to focus on what made the coffee taste the way it does – botanical variety, growing elevation, processing method, etc. – rather than on tourist hype or giraffes. True, the affectionate accounts of growers and their families one runs across on websites and packages may come off as a little irrelevant to how the coffee tastes, but I’ll go with it in the spirit of fairness, because if the media can turn hysterical cooks and pretentious winemakers into heroes I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to do the same for our own friends and collaborators in producing countries. True too, the tendency to brand coffee farms or coops and for roasters to buy green coffee by these brands rather than by the actual character of the coffee offered for sale in a given crop year is a little distressing from the point of view of coffee quality and authenticity, but again, if executives in soft-drink company board rooms can try to brand their stuff I can’t see why coffee growers can’t make the same attempt.

Although that does take us back to the argument made in the challenge statement, which is that coffee buyers should focus on the cup in front of them in this time and space and crop year and not on hype, safari glamour, or even on genuine friendship and how great the ron Zacapa was that night in Huehuetenango.

But finally, I think a certain kind of serious coffee travel undertaken over the long run is probably essential for coffee buyers. This is the kind that happens during harvest, and is slow, thorough in its observation, and ultimately focused on a better understanding of the cup itself and the almost infinite number of variables, both natural and deliberate, that go into determining its character. It is not the kind of touring in which a group hits three farms or coops per day and its all “we pick only ripe cherries and they go in here and come out there and our coffee is the greatest in the world, and we treat our workers well, and now let’s have a great lunch up at the house.” It’s a process of observing what actually happens during processing and drying, and talking a lot with the people who actually make it happen, and then following up with systematically cupping the results. And if at all possible continuing to cup the results through subsequent years and the changes those years bring. To me, newer roasters should have such an education, and as the money and time come available should spend time witnessing all of the major variations on processing method and drying. In other words, rather than four trips to Central America it might be better to make one trip to witness wet-hulling in Sumatra and another to some large hi-tech farm in Brazil where they do three different processing methods and another to some farm or coop that does both traditional wet process and small-scale dry process; in Ethiopia, for example.

We in the fine coffee industry need to make these investigations ourselves with an open mind, because the traditional lore of the traditional coffee industry is out-of-date and useless and the empirical work of the scientists is necessarily narrow in focus and, it would seem, oblivious to subtle sensory variation in coffee, which is precisely where we, as students and teachers of fine coffee, need to focus our attention.

For another perspective on this challenge, click here to see how Kevin Knox responds

I first heard of USDA 762 from the newly formed Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia in 2007 or 2008. On their website they discussed coffee varieties being grown in Indonesia and had a section discussing Ethiopian lines.

Mentioned are 3 varieties: Abbysinia, Rambung and USDA. The former two I have done plenty of research on but that is another story. The USDA one I have found most interesting as it is being grown by a number of farmers in Bali and likely other areas as well whereas the former I have yet to hear of any large group of farmers who is growing in Indonesia though I suspect they do exist.

I had scoured the internet for references to this varietal on several occasions in the past couple years. The name USDA 762 was mentioned several times in reference to an Ethiopian line introduced by Americans in the 1950’s or early 1960’s. But for a long time that was all the info I could find on this variety. Early 2011 I found another piece of info that held the key to unraveling the origins of this cultivar. I can’t remember the source anymore but I found out that 762 was a shortened form of a longer number – 230762. I had no idea what this number meant but searching that number and the right key words in Google Scholar led to a reference to it. A match was found in a paper published by the USDA July 1960 – ‘Coffee Germplasm Collection and Distribution’

I wasn’t able to read this paper online or order it but I called my friend Dr. Shawn Steiman of Coffea Consulting to see if he might be able to track down this paper for me. I had mostly forgotten about it the past couple months, but then Shawn was visiting the Big Island for the Ka’u Coffee Festival over the weekend and he told me he had the paper I had asked for. Most of the time when looking through loads of information in these papers I don’t find what I’m looking for. But this time I was lucky. A little more information and another clue into finding the exact origins of this variety.

Plant Introduction No: 230762

Name under which seeds or plants were Rec’d: C. arabica Lejeune’s #8 Line 108

Year Received: 1955

CRRC (Coffee Rust Research Center, now CIFC in Portugal) No: 536

Type Resistance (referring to rust): E and C

Finally knowing what the number 230762 was (the USDA plant Introduction #) it only took a couple of late nights searching through information to find out more about this introduction.

Plant Material Introduced January 1 to Dec 31 1955. USDA June 1964

230729 to 230780. COFFEA ARABICA L. Rubiaceae. Arabian coffee.

From Ethiopia. Seeds collected by Jean B. H. Lejeune, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Addis Ababa. Received Dec. 20, 1955.

Collected in the forest region of Kaffa Province, about 16 miles from Mizan Tafari.

October, 1955.

230759 to 230778. From Mizan Tafari. Elevation 4,700 feet.

230759. Line 0105. 230765. Line 0111.

230760. Line 0106. 230766. Line 0112.

230761. Population 0107. 230767. Line 0113.

230762. Line 0108. 230768. Line 0114.

From 1954 -1956 JBH Lejeune a French researcher was sent by the FAO to collection specimens of wild coffee. Until receiving the paper from the USDA I was unaware of this but the USDA received the seeds from many of these expeditions and then distributed them to the various coffee research gardens/germplasm collections around the world and to the coffee rust research center in Portugal.

I finally found the documentation showing that USDA 762 was an Ethiopian line and where it was collected from. And where it was collected from is quite interesting. Mizan Tafari. To most, that likely means nothing… unless you have spent way too much time researching the history of the Geisha cultivar. (Here is good starting point on Hacienda Esmeralda’s website.) The area in Ethiopia known as Geisha/Gesha gave birth to the varietal Panama is now famous for is very near Mizan Taferi. At first this sounded surprising, but also in the context of what was going on in coffee breeding at the time it makes perfect sense. In the 1950’s breeding programs were underway in Kenya and Tanzania as well as Central America utilizing Geisha for its leaf rust resistance. Geisha was known for having poor yields so it was crossed with other higher yielding varieties. By the late 1950s the USDA already had several introductions of Geisha/Caturra hybrids. That an expedition was sent to look for other wild varieties that might offer similar resistance and other desirable agronomic traits isn’t a surprise. The Kaffa province is also one of the areas of greatest genetic diversity in coffee and larger scale expeditions were launched in the 1960’s by FAO and ORSTROM that also made collections near Mizan Tafari and attempted to reach the site the original Geisha plants were collected from. Rust resistance was in important part of coffee breeding at the time and wild arabica coffee is where people were looking to find it. This was before the Timor hybrid became the main plant material used for rust resistance breeding. Sure enough USDA 230762 is listed as showing the same type of rust resistance as the Geisha. Given rust is a major problem in Indonesia and much of Asia it makes sense that this variety would be introduced to Indonesia. I don’t know yet but I suspect that 230762 was not the only introduction to Indonesia, but that this selection had some other desirable agronomic traits and good field performance there and was introduced to farmers there for that reason. It must have decent yields as it is even recently being recommended for planting.

Like the Geisha and many other Ethiopian lines rust resistance has largely been overcome and these plants never had the kind of resistance the Robusta hybrids exhibit. So it is only recommended now for higher elevations where rust isn’t as big of a problem. This is good news. An Ethiopian cultivar being grown in the highest elevations available at a latitude and altitude similar to its native environment. I haven’t had a chance to cup yet but some others have and I have heard the cup quality is better than other cultivars being grown. I have stumbled onto a Japanese site that suggests it maybe similar (in morphology at least) to the S4 Agaro varietal which I have cupped and can say is quite excellent and exhibits the citrus and floral qualities one generally associates with Ethiopian coffee and the Geisha. Being from very near where the Geisha was collected doesn’t mean it is genetically similar to Geisha. Quite the opposite is likely as this is a center of most of the genetic diversity in arabica.

I still have some unanswered questions. What is the morphology of this plant like? (If anyone who has been to Bali has some good pictures I would love to see them.) Was there any reason why this plant was originally collected in Ethiopia and what traits does it have that led to it being recommended for planting? Many Ethiopian lines have been experimented with around the world but few have ever been distributed to farmers. Some of the answers might be found in this report “Lejeune, J.B.H. 1958. Rapport au Gouvernement Impérial d’Ethiopie sur la production caféière. FAO, Rome, Italy.” … Another paper to try and track down.

Most people don’t think of Indonesia when they think of Ethiopian cultivars but the earliest Ethiopian coffee researched perhaps anywhere occurred there. In 1928 coffee researcher PJS Cramer in Java brought back coffee plants from Ethiopia. (see ‘A Review of Liturature of Coffee research in Indonesia’ page 103 &104)

Simply called Abyssinia (as Ethiopia was then called) Cramer had been looking to other species that might be cross bred with Arabica to produce disease resistant cultivars at the time and happily discovered resistance to rust in the Arabica plant he brought back from Ethiopia. I don’t know where to find this plant in Indonesia, though it is apparently still being recommended for planting in some areas. But it does exist in other parts of the world under a different name. That from which was distributed… Java.

On the Island of Maui a unique cultivar called Mokka is commercially cultivated. I first heard of it perhaps a decade ago and over the years I have heard things like it is a varietal brought from Yemen or Ethiopia; always an air of mystique around its origins. While it’s a wonderfully romantic notion that it is some unknown cultivar from who knows where, the reality is that there is nothing mysterious about it at all. The Mokka tree produces very small seeds that look more like split peas than coffee beans. Very tiny. The tree itself is very bushy compared to other cultivars with tiny cherries and narrow leaves. It is one of four cultivars planted on Maui. The Mokka planted there all originates from one tree at the CTAHR research station in Kainaliu on the big island of Hawaii, about 10 miles from the town of Kailua-Kona. It, like most of the cultivars at that research station, came from Brazil in the 1950’s or 60’s. When it was sent to Hawaii it was simply labeled Mokka. Mokka is a mutant of Bourbon that was documented long ago. It was well known by the time Uker’s book ‘All About Coffee’ was published in 1935 and written about by coffee researcher PJS Cramer earlier than that. It is a dwarf mutant, very bushy, looking more like a hedge than a coffee tree growing to only 4-6 feet tall, whereas Bourbon which it mutated from grows 20+ feet if left unpruned. Its appearance is very very close to that of the Laurina varietal discovered on the island of La Reunion in the 19th century. The distinguishing difference between the two is that Mokka has round beans. Laurina produces seeds that are sharply pointed on one end and often is referred to as ‘Bourbon pointu’ because of its shape. In fact both forms result from mutations of the same gene. Both are pleiotropic mutations (one gene causing several morphological changes, whereas most mutations cause only one small change, like the color of the cherry.)

The Bourbon mutant Mokka exists in the collections of many research stations around the world. But this varietal is low yielding and extremely difficult to harvest by hand so, to my knowledge, it hasn’t been commercially cultivated anywhere, at least on any scale. What is grown on Maui isn’t this mutant. It is something called ‘tall Mokka.’ At some point, intentionally or accidentally, the Mokka mutant hybridized with Typica, a tall variety genetically distinct from Bourbon. The resulting plant retains the small cherries, leaves and beans of the Mokka mutation but is a tall tree like Typica, but much bushier. It is this hybrid that is planted on Maui and nowhere else that I know of.

Interestingly both the Laurina and Mokka mutations produce seeds with half the caffeine of most other Arabica cultivars. Whether or not the Maui Mokka retains this characteristic I’m not certain, but it may be less than others.

Even with some of the mystery removed it is still quite an interesting varietal and I have become quite fond of it. In my experience, it seems to make a heavy bodied coffee that is very chocolaty and often with notes of dried fruit or spices. And as a natural processed coffee it can have a rose-like floral quality. Because of the small size of the cherry it seems ideal for the natural process, but unfortunately, except on farms that mechanically harvest like they do in Maui, it is quite unpractical to plant as it is very difficult and time-consuming to pick by hand.

Jamaica has long grown coffee, at one time, for a short while, it was one of the world’s largest producers of the crop. Much of the coffee comes from Jamaica’s famed Blue Mountains. Despite its reputation for quality I, like many coffee professionals, cannot remember a time in which it actually was great. I traveled to Jamaica recently to better understand the industry there and why the coffee is perhaps not as good as it should be. On paper it seems the coffee should be great or at least have the potential to be. Mostly of the Typica variety (although I discovered more than that is grown there) and much at high altitude (3500-5000 feet) at a northerly latitude.

I spent my time in Jamaica mostly high in the Blue Mountains at an estate around the 4000 foot altitude. Certainly felt like coffee country there and in an area at the upper limits of possible coffee cultivation. The terrain is quite steep and the view very majestic. Most of the day the coffee was shrouded in clouds; the area receives immense rainfall. In this wet tropical environment grasses and foliage grow incredibly rapidly, growing two feet within a month and needing to be constantly kept in check by machete. The area has experienced several hurricanes in the past decade, severely damaging the coffee fields. I honestly can’t imagine a much more formidable land in which to try and farm coffee.

I expected to see all Typica. (Jamaica has its own strain of Typica called, conveniently enough, Jamaica Blue Mountain which has be planted in many other parts of the world.) While the Jamaica Coffee Board prefers everyone plant Typica, and most of the coffee I saw was Typica, at various times they have recommended planting Caturra, a local dwarf hybrid called 5159 and Geisha. I saw varying amounts of each driving though the coffee country. I expected to see poor harvesting and all mechanical demucilaging and mechanical drying. While it sounds like that may be the case with the bulk of the coffee, I was quite pleased to see artisan production still exists. Excellent picking, traditional fermentation and careful patio and screen sun-drying.

One problem that may be a limiting factor on quality, if not watched carefully, is that coffee is pulped in the mountains and dried down near sea-level in Kingston. If the coffee has not had all of its fruit removed and is quickly transported down to where it will be dried problems can easily arise. Storage in hot port towns like Kingston also can cause coffee to fade prematurely. So while great coffee may be coming out of Jamaica that doesn’t mean it necessarily is making it in that condition to its intended market. This is certainly a concern in many more places than just Jamaica.

How was the coffee I tasted there? When I tasted coffee that was fresh and very well handled it was quite excellent. Not a powerhouse of acidity, not bursting with fruit or flowers, but not a simple coffee either. It was a coffee of great balance, full body, good acidity and wonderful sweetness and with rather interesting hazelnut and savory qualities to the flavor. While much Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee may not be worth the hype, from my experience there, certainly some of it is. If carefully tended to, from harvest to export, I believe a lot more of it could be.

Coffee has never been successful on TV. We keep trying, but thus far, I think it’s fair to say that the beverage coffee just doesn’t translate well to the screen. Why I’m not sure, having a foot in both subjects, as a producer for much of my adult life, and a coffee lover and writer. I’ve been to all the major cable TV networks and heard the same responses when I brought them coffee concepts. The Food Network told me flat out that “liquids don’t do well at Food” – they always call it Food. When coffee is featured, it seems to get short shrift from the so-called celebrity chefs. I’ve never seen Rachel Ray do coffee. Emeril looked sheepish using a press pot, with none of his usual aplomb. Even Alton Brown, who I honestly expected to apply his OCD-style, seemed positively casual in his segment – and it was a segment, not a show. That says a lot to a producer.

Just so you’re not thinking I’m calling out my colleagues and leaving myself out, my own Coffee Brewing Secrets DVD, features editor Ken Davids, George Howell, Oren Bloostein, Christy Thorns, Donald Schoenholt and Erna Knutsen both doing hands-on tutorials demonstrating their favorite methods and interviewed about the various other aspects such as storage, grinding, freshness. Any coffee magazine that featured an equivalent cast list and that scope of information would be a sell-out issue. Imagine having this “A” list of coffee icons at your house telling you step-by-step how to brew with each brewer. It sells a couple of copies a month on Amazon. It’s a coffee success, but to date, a market failure. My backers are still asking when they’ll start seeing a return. Hopefully, they won’t call after reading this article.

I’m perplexed.

Just over a year ago, my son told me of a project his college club, Students in Free Enterprise or SIFE, was involved in, where they were in a business competition. They were going to Guatemala to visit a coffee cooperative that supposedly offered growers the best of everything. He’s mentioned my name and my interest in coffee to his professors. Meanwhile, a second mention from a local coffee roaster sealed the deal for the professors, who wanted to see me and brainstorm if I could help with their project. The project was of interest, but it wasn’t until my wife Patricia suggested I produce a video that my enthusiasm rose.

Well, the series is completed. It’s running at www.missioncoffeecan.com and we’ve been uploading a ten minute episode per week. There are currently 14 episodes. The show has several aspects of it that I think are uniquely applied to make the coffee subject hopefully finally achieve viewer success.

First, it is a reality show, a true documentary. The students are real, we didn’t even cast them, although we did get lucky, as they are charming. While a coffee obsessive will find much to see and learn about coffee, it’s wrapped around a personal interest plot of the students competing in a national (worldwide really) event. It’s as much about business as coffee, and as much about the emerging third world where it’s grown as about the culture where it is consumed.

There are the first-choice episodes to attract the coffee connoisseur. While, as a producer, my favorite episode is “all of ‘em”, there are some standout moments if you just want to sample highlights and go back for the story and watch it full, which of course is out intention for the general viewer.

But, before I list episodes and their coffee-centered blurbs, let me say there are certain historic moments in art, where products have achieved their rightful place. Sideways is a cinematic success about wine. MTV, after years of Hollywood’s misunderstanding (and outright dislike) finally made rock music work on television.

Maybe www.missioncoffeecan.com will be a move towards coffee’s success as a web series.

Here’s a rundown, with a quick guide to the best coffee-related scenes, like dog earing a magazine to mark the articles you want to read first.

• Episode 1 – Intros of the students. No coffee, but couple of references. Start elsewhere, if coffee’s the thing.
• Episode 2 – Here we go, after a couple of minutes waking up in Guatemala, and the usual paradise shots to warm up wintry US Midwesterners, we get an initial tour of the co-op, where we’re told a few unusual factoids, including one explaining the need for reforestation to prevent mudslides – I thought is was for shade. A couple of nice coffee shots. The first time to farmer smiles, I’m ready to just buy Guatemalan coffee.
• Episode 3 – Reforestation – a whole episode on digging and planting. Once, you like the students, and you will, it’s a great episode and highlights social work the co-op does. More about environmental concerns than coffee.
• Episode 4 – This episode has a nice visit to a Mayan shrine and climaxes at a small planting of coffee at the top of the mountain. Even I knew enough Spanish to understand when the farmer tells us he uses no herbicides or pesticides (we learn they don’t need them this high up, later in the show).
• Episode 5 – Cruising by boat to various towns features just about the most beautiful footage we’ve ever shot, intercut with an interview with one of the farmers, who explains coffee botany from his perspective. Coffee lovers won’t want to miss.
• Episode 6 – Now we’re picking coffee and it’s upfront and personal. Just seeing the ruby red coffee cherries makes it for me. You’ll get to see one of our students pulling branches down so children and others (Mayans customarily reach 5 feet tall at adulthood) can reach the top branches – we didn’t see a single ladder. Then we get to see a coffee processing, part of coffee lore that most consumers never get to see.
• Episode 7 – Kristina is a beautiful Mexican-American princess who was one of the students. She is also extremely smart and ambitious – high energy all the way. She talked the farmers into giving us a special visit to one of their model farms. I call it Kristina’s Coffee Tour. This one will be a standout for many coffee hobbyists.
• Episode 10 – Three students visit the Specialty Coffee Association (SCAA) conference in Atlanta. This episode is full of coffee obsessive beauty shots and coffee celebs. Ken Davids makes a cameo appearance and if you ever wanted to meet the Technivorm’s inventor, he’s here too.
• Episode 12 – The students go to Bunn-O-Matic headquarters in Springfield. Bunn became the sponsor, but their proximity and the fact they are perhaps the only major US manufacturer might also have been a factor. Bunn was totally hands-off (not typical for sponsors) on every episode but this one. They kept saying, “people aren’t interested in all this coffee stuff”. I kept more than they wanted, but it’s interesting to hear Bunn’s resident coffee guy (Randy Pope) suggest the students “lighted up their roast”. The sales and marketing tips from Bunn execs to the students may or may not thrill you, but I found the fact that a roomful of six-figure-paid executives at a major coffee maker company would spend an afternoon with some college students – kind of touching, actually.

Like many people in coffee, the Geisha cultivar in Panama fascinates me. I’ve done as much research into its history, as well as other Ethiopian cultivars, as anyone. While I have a lot to say on it here I want to focus on some aspects of its history that were unknown to me until a few days ago and relate a period of its history I haven’t heard before.

Most people who know of the Geisha know of it because of Hacienda La Esmeralda. And the re-discovery of this cultivar by the Peterson family. In 2004 they entered into the best of Panama cupping competition a small lot of coffee selected from this varietal and the rest as they say is history. The Esmeralda Geisha dominated that competition and virtually every cupping competition it has been entered into since. At its best the Geisha cultivar is a truly astounding coffee.  It’s also widely known that this cultivar has its origins in Ethiopia. And was brought to Central America decades ago.

I know a fair amount of why it was collected and likely why it was distributed to research stations around the world. What I didn’t know was WHY it was brought to Panama to be planted. A few days ago in Boquete Panama I was with Fransisco Serracin, cupping coffees from his Family’s Don Pachi estate and visiting his farm to see their Geisha cultivar up close. (It is a very strange varietal with inconsistent characteristics and behaves much more like a hybrid than an established cultivar.) He asked me if I would like to go meet his father Don Pachi. And I happily accepted that opportunity. Don Pachi is the man who brought the Geisha to Panama, and all the mature Geisha trees at Esmeralda and other farms can trace their lineage back to trees he brought from Costa Rica in the 1960’s

We arrived at another of the family’s farms and Don Pachi was out in his fields pruning his trees. This lively 70 year old man with machete at his side has an obviously love of his land, his farm and coffee and it was a great honor to meet with him and ask him some questions.

Around 1960 many farms in Panama and much of Central America began planting the shorter, higher yielding cultivars Caturra and Catuai. But Don Pachi preferred the taller trees like Typica and Bourbon. In addition to his contribution for bringing the Geisha to Panama Don Pachi has also spent his life selectively breeding the Bourbon varietal.

Why did Don Pachi bring the Geisha to Panama? The major motivation was its resistance to rust, an aggressive fungal disease that has ravaged coffee regions around the world. But at the time Don Pachi brought the Geisha to Panama rust hadn’t arrived there yet, and to this day although it has been found in Panama it hasn’t become a large problem. He brought the Geisha from CATIE in neighboring Costa Rica, an agricultural research station which maintains one of the largest coffee species and varietal collections in the world. At CATIE at the time they would have had at least a dozen and likely many more Ethiopian cultivars to choose from, many exhibiting some resistance to rust. So I asked him why did he select the Geisha cultivar in particular? The answer was simple enough. The Geisha had resistance to two strains of rust, which happened to be the two that were currently in other parts of Central America at the time. So when rust reached Panama inevitably, this cultivar would provide some insurance in case of an outbreak. A lot of forethought there. He raised thousands of trees from the Geisha at CATIE and planted at his farm as well as provided to other farms including the Jaramillo plot at Hacienda La Esmeralda. It’s also interesting to note he was a very young man at the time when he brought the Geisha to Panama 22 or 23, either recently graduated or still in college at the time. I didn’t ask. To anyone who has tasted some of the outstanding coffees this varietal can produce its Don Pachi you can thank for this varietal being around today and not just one of many curiosities at a research station. Geisha wasn’t the only Ethiopian varietal he brought from CATIE. He brought half a dozen others as well but none of them he planted widely like he did the Geisha. The names and accession numbers of these plants are forgotten and the trees are now long gone. Why he brought those as well I didn’t ask. Could any have proved the taste sensation that Geisha has become? I can only wonder.

I’ve spent the last week with Graciano Cruz in El Salvador, cupping lots of coffees, many of which are honey coffees he is working on. Honeys are a style recently being experimented with quite a lot in Central America, also called pulped natural and pulped sundried coffees elsewhere. In traditional wet-processing coffee cherries have the skin pulped off and then the fruit layer, called mucilage, is fermented and rinsed away. Then the coffee in parchment layer is dried. In the honey style the skin is removed but the fruit layer left on to dry. Often this is done on raised screens rather than patios or mechanical dryers. Because the fruit is sticky the coffee needs to be raked frequently so that it doesn’t clump up, dry unevenly and present opportunity for fermentation and mold.

There are some very good reasons Graciano and others around the world are pursuing this style. Traditional wet processing uses a lot of water and produces a lot of contaminated water. On the order of billions of gallons in just some small areas per year. Water is a precious commodity in most parts of the world and conservation is of great importance in coffee producing regions. Other modern coffee processing equipment like mechanical demucilagers, developed in Colombia, seek to minimize water usage as well. Also at many larger mills around the world coffee is mechanically dried, using very large amounts of fuel to provide heat to dry the coffee. Even if only a small percentage of a mill’s production drying of specialty coffees is in the sun, it saves energy. Luckily in El Salvador and many growing regions the harvest time for coffee is a time of warm sunny weather and drying in the sun is quite easy to do. But this isn’t so everywhere.

How do honeys taste in the cup? It varies a bit. Almost always there is an elevated perception of sweetness and enhanced aroma. Aroma may be a slightly sweeter, more intense version of the aromas in a washed version of the same coffee or may display very different berry, grape and grapefruit-like citrus notes. Acidity can be higher or lower depending on how the drying was carried out. More sweetness, better aroma, water and energy savings all sound like a win/win scenario right? Almost. Unfortunately this process doesn’t always produce simply a more distinctive coffee. It carries with it a lot of risk and it’s far easier to create a vastly inferior coffee than a better one and hard to create superior ones as consistently as one would with washed processing. Sugars and hot tropical weather or humid conditions as exist in many coffee regions don’t play so well together. Difficulty drying in less than ideal weather or from poor raking or too deep of coffee in the drying bed can easily result in mold, resulting in a flattened, dirty tasting cup. Fermentation of the fruit can also create a sour quality to the acidity, bitterness in the finish and over-ripe/off tasting fruit flavors. Sometimes these coffees also pick up vegetal, garlic and onion tastes which I at least generally find undesirable in most coffees. In El Salvador the climate is very well suited to doing this style and most of the coffees we cupped were clean and free of the tastes I described above. But in wetter more humid environments like Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Indonesia, and Hawaii (where I reside) doing this style and natural processed coffees is more risky. But good results can be accomplished.

I always encourage farmers to experiment, but to proceed with caution. I have tasted many samples from farmers who were experimenting with the styles but really didn’t know much about doing them or the risks associated with them. Often the coffees where very flawed and vastly inferior to washed coffees from same producer, in some cases almost undrinkable and not sellable. Of course poor care of washed coffees can yield terrible coffees as well. Honeys are a new emerging style, and quality and consistency should improve as more people experiment with them, share information and refine the process. Consumers looking to try these coffees should be able to find examples from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil and India if they search. When they are executed well honeys can be a sweet deal for both producer and consumer.

In most places around the world coffee is harvested by hands. Quite often in marketing for coffee from various regions and farms they extol the virtues of selective hand harvesting. Everyone claims to only pick ripe red cherry. But how ripe? And how evenly ripe? The reality is most coffee is not harvested as ripe as it could be despite marketing claims.

Does the ripeness of the cherry matter? I think I and most coffee professionals would overwhelmingly say yes. Having done several experiments personally I have come to the conclusion it is unfortunately a very important prerequisite for excellent coffee. I say unfortunate because in most cases picking coffee at its peak of ripeness is no easy or cheap task.

The coffee bean is the seed of a fruit often called a cherry or berry. While this fruit is maturing the color is green until a few weeks before it is completely ripe. Then the color begins to change to yellow and gradually to a deep red almost purple color once the fruit is ripe (in most cultivars, there are some cultivars that are yellow and even orange when ripe) as the fruit becomes red it becomes very sweet and sweeter the riper it gets. The resulting coffee from the riper cherry seems to get sweeter as well. At some point as with all fruits it becomes over ripe begins to turn brown and the fruit begins to ferment. Tasting brown coffee cherries is a rather unpleasant experience. Very sour and vinegar-like and they have a rather unpleasant aroma. Not to surprisingly coffee produced from such cherry tends to be sour and sometimes unpleasant over-ripe/rotten in its flavor. Eventually the cherry will dry out looking almost black in color. Often these cherries have taken on mold in most climates and there is a high percentage of defective beans within them.

Obviously to produce the best coffee possible you want to pick the coffee while its red. Sounds easy enough right? If coffee all ripened at the same time it probably would be. Rarely though does that actually happen. Coffee tends to ripen in waves over a period of 2 or more months. Coffee pickers around the world are paid by weight of cherry NOT quality of cherry generally. Being selective and carefully inspecting each cherry you pick to be certain it is as ripe as it could be is time consuming. Which will result in less coffee being harvested and less money in a pickers pocket at the end of the day. It can also be difficult sometimes while picking to tell just how ripe the coffee cherry is especially in low light conditions. Sometimes the bottom half of a cherry is red but near the stem it is still green. The coffee will still ripen more but while picking it can be difficult to tell if the cherry is completely ripe without slowing down to inspect it. Also complicating things is the frequency of the picking. Every tree is not picked every day during the duration of the harvest season. Maybe once a week, once a month or even just once in a season some places. Quite often if coffee is partially ripe and not picked by the time that tree is picked again that fruit will already be over-ripe. And likely there is some cherry that was missed the previous round and is now brown or black. These can be hard not to pick as they are very loose on the tree and tend to fall of easily especially if they are in a cluster with ripe cherries being picked. At the very beginning of the season and the very end of the season the coffee is apt to be fairly inconsistently ripe in the field. Not surprisingly then the best quality coffees tend to come from the heart of the harvest when the coffee tends to be more evenly ripe on the trees.

Now exactly how much effort and expense is put into picking cherry as ripe as possible varies a lot around the world. Many places make virtually no attempt but rely on equipment after harvesting to try and remove undesirable coffee. In coffee that is being wet processed as occurs in most regions there is equipment available that is very good at removing completely green and very under-ripe and also completely black dried cherry pods. But there is a range from half-ripe to mostly brown cherry that equipment does not seem able to remove.

Not all processing facilities have equipment that will do this kind of sorting. Another option is sorting by hand before processing the coffee. Of course this is laborious but quite effective. It would seem for at least large scale operations it would be possible to develop some sort of laser color sorter for incoming coffee cherry. Such technology is certainly used for different fruit crops but to my knowledge no one has yet applied this to coffee.

The simple reality is most coffee is not completely ripe picked. This does not mean that most coffee is not good. Sorting equipment is very effective at removing the worst of the coffee and what may have been pretty scary looking cherry of all shades and colors once well sorted may be a quite nice coffee. Although almost all truly excellent coffees I have had were undoubtedly very very ripe picked. Whether through laborious attention in harvesting, through hand sorting and perhaps with some just the luck of having a great round of picking where almost all the cherry was evenly ripe. When coffee is truly ripe-picked (and very well processed, stored and roasted) it tends to manifest itself in the cup with a clean tea-like clarity and mild sweetness that is reminiscent of brown sugar, honey or raw sugar cane juice. All flavors I would think most people would greatly enjoy.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya (if you follow @coffeereview on Twitter you already know that.) Although the purpose of the trip was to attend the African Fine Coffee Conference and Exposition in Mombasa, I was able to spend a few days exploring coffee farms and processing facilities north of Nairobi. Whenever I travel to coffee producing countries I am always struck by the depth of expertise of the people involved in the business of coffee at origin. Not to say that those of us in coffee consuming countries are ignorant of the coffee production process but the level of detail is often misunderstood or simplified in an effort to make sense of a complex, multilayered system.

This “coffee safari” consisted of visits to several farms varying in size from the small plots of the 1500 member Iria-ini Framers Cooperative to an estate owned and managed by Sasini Limited, a business that is publicly traded on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Each facility maintained their own wet mill, often processing coffee cherries from surrounding area farms in addition to their own. Raised tables for drying parchment and natural cherry ruled the day, a powerful visual statement that quality is taken seriously in this region. No matter the size, these farms go about their daily business in much the same way — growing, harvesting and processing coffee — but, as any student of coffee knows, the production process is complicated, and when we drilled down to the details interesting differences in philosophy revealed themselves. What varieties should be planted, how should coffee tress be pruned, how and what kind of fertilizers and mulch should be applied, how long should fermentation last, should it be wet or dry and what about water use practices? Every action has a reaction and each one has the potential to yield a unique result in the cup.

On the final day of the trip we transitioned from the wet mills to the dry, in this case the Thika Coffee Mill. Most small and medium sized growers do not undertake the task dry milling at the farm level because of the investment required for the specialized machinery needed to clean the coffee, remove the parchment from the beans and sort by size, density and color. The Thika Mill serves as a vital link that moves coffee from farmers in the foothills of Mt. Kenya down the chain to roasters throughout the world.

Our last stop, another link in the chain, was the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. Now managed by the Kenya Coffee Producers’ and Traders’ Association, the exchange remains the primary means of trading coffee in Kenya. Every Tuesday the exchange auctions hundreds of lots of coffees from all over Kenya, with set reserve prices so the growers are assured a base price that is acceptable to them. The sample room is a sight to behold, bag after bag after bag of green coffee, marked with identifying names, lot numbers, grades and amounts available. Each dealer who participates in the auction is allowed a 250 gram sample of the coffees. They are provided about two weeks to evaluate the coffees, ship samples to potential customers and determine a ceiling price they are willing to pay.

Once I had made my way to the port town of Mombasa, I joined a group to visit the warehousing, grading and cupping facilities of exporters Rashid Moledina & Company. This third generation coffee export company takes the extra step of grading coffee after purchasing it from the exchange, in an effort to refine lots of coffee for their customers. Through this web of millers, dealers, marketing agents, exporters and shippers coffee is traded from grower to roaster. This part of the supply chain is perhaps most misunderstood but without the individuals and organizations involved in this process the right coffee might not ever find the right buyer.