Seattle Coffee Gear: Blog

How Green is Your Coffee?

As the national obsession with greening our lives grows, examining how the things we love impact the environment has become a common topic of discussion. Up now: How green are different coffee beans?

The folks over at Greenopia devised a Leaf Awards rating system that is used to evaluate a coffee company's overall greenness by gauging its percentage of organic, ethically sourced, naturally decaffeinated, eco-friendly packaged and efficiently produced and transported  beans. They also looked for sustainability and environmental impact reporting. They then assessed 25 different brands from all over the US to determine how they measure up.

We can't help but feel the findings a bit disheartening: Of the brands they evaluated, nearly half of them didn't rank at all! Coffee that we love by the likes of Illy or Lavazza didn't get a single leaf, while large American brands like Starbucks or Stumptown got just a couple of leaves.

One ranking that shined was Bellevue-based Kalani Organica, coming in at 3 leaves! We have a personal connection to this truly lovely coffee: In the mid-to-late '90's, we cut our barista teeth slinging java at the Speakeasy Cafe in Seattle's Belltown district. The cafe was a devout supporter and server of Kalani Organica until the cafe was closed by a fire in 2002 -- despite the fact that we regularly had small competitive roasters try to convince us to switch. We stuck with Kalani because of the founder Karen's commitment to organic, ethically-sourced coffee -- something that is talked about a lot these days but wasn't seen as particularly important 15 years ago. We're thrilled that her work is getting recognized and hope that a rating like this will help expand Kalani's availability around the country.

Curvaceous Coffee

For lovers of eye-catching design and (possibly) great coffee, this concept design for a spherical coffee maker is on the horizon, if not quite yet available in stores.

The brainchild of University of West Bohemia Institute of Art and Design graduate Kamil Kurka, the coffee maker's industrial look is also reminiscent of a sliced apple. The example here is in silver and black, but the other concept renderings are multi-colored -- and we think we're a fan of the red!

Global Coffee Habit

From the creamy depths of a French Cafe au Lait to the sugary tar of a Cuban Coffee, the little brown bean is reinterpreted time and again all over the world. If you've ever wondered what coffee is like beyond your neck of the woods, this cool little synopsis by Sebastian Rotella for the LA Times is a great primer on what you'll find from Buenos Aires to Baghdad.

What's your favorite coffee preparation? We have been digging on a long shot mixed with Monin's incredibly delicious Cinnamon Syrup -- it's an awesome little afternoon pick-me-up that gives us a sense of the exotic.

Beyond Kona: Hawaiian Coffee

The Big Island of Hawaii is the home of the world famous Kona coffee region, which has long been touted as producing some of the tastiest coffee in the world. But it's not the only source of delicious Hawaiian coffee -- as we wrote about last month, Maui is undergoing a renaissance in coffee agriculture, and there is also a pretty serious emergence of another coffee growing region on the Big Island itself: Ka'u.

Big Island Video News has an interview with a Ka'u farmer that is quite interesting and they also show the recent Coffee Festival held in the area to promote the coffees from this region. Also, if you live in the islands or are planning on traveling there sometime soon, this great guide gives you a run down of the expansion of coffee agriculture throughout the islands, as well as some tips for visiting different plantations.

We're hoping to get to the Big Island later this year and look forward to sampling some of these emerging beans. Aloha!

Coffee: The World in Your Cup Lecture Series - Third Lecture Update

This past Tuesday, we headed into the third lecture of the Coffee From the Grounds Up series, being held at the University of Washington in conjunction with the Burke Natural History Museum's exhibit Coffee: The World in Your Cup.

Unfortunately, we had a last minute scheduling conflict, so weren't able to attend last week's lecture on Direct Trade -- very bummed about that. Tuesday night's lecture was from an anthropological perspective and was entitled Why We Love Coffee. The speaker was professor Eugene Anderson and covered the social, cultural and economic factors that make caffeine-based drinks such an essential element of so many societies. Professor Anderson explores the impact of all types of drinks that contain caffeine -- from coffee to tea to yerba mate to even cola -- and it was quite fascinating to hear about the importance these stimulant-based beverages have in different societies.

Some of our notes from the lecture were:

1. Purchasing shade grown coffee is one of the most powerful choices we can make as consumers because they're promoting fabulously diverse nature preserves around the planet
2. Caffeine works by preempting the adenosine receptors in our brain which regulate our sleep cycles and the acclimation process inspires our body to create more adenosine receptors, which is why we need more caffeine over time to experience the same result -- your body will keep producing these receptors because you need to sleep, eventually
3. Chocolate was used historically in a similar method as coffee, but the chocolate houses around the world slowly transitioned to coffee houses because it takes less coffee than chocolate to produce the same result, and coffee has little-to-no calories, whereas chocolate will make you feel full after awhile because of it's high caloric composition
4. The UK and other members of the Commonwealth are so tea-centric due to the coffee rust blight that wiped out the coffee plantations in India and Sri Lanka -- after this happened, the plantations replanted with tea instead, which is why these societies became such renowned tea drinkers
5. Coffee houses were historically notorious hotbeds of rebellion -- the American Revolution was born out of coffee houses, and it's no secret that the Beat generation, which fed into the 60's hippie movement in the US, spent a lot of time fomenting their resolve in coffee houses (Cafe Trieste in San Francisco is one such legendary place where the likes of Alan Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs wrote/read/ranted)
6. Feminist politics were also born from coffee, although more so in private spaces, the coffee klatches of yesteryear were spaces in which women could get together in order to discuss their own version of what many considered subversive politics -- that is, equal rights
7. The rise of what some consider 'yuppie coffees' -- ie. Starbucks gourmet lattes, etc. -- has turned the coffee house from a place of the working classes to the haunts of the leisurely, privileged class
8. There is intense ritualization of coffee and caffeine-based drinks around the world; the highest per capita coffee intake is in Finland, which has an incredibly sacred, detailed and intricate ceremony that developed over hundreds of years and involves the evolution of the bread that was adopted/adapted by several different cultures -- one notable evolution is Jewish challah
9. Many of the aforementioned ceremonies were developed as a method for creating community or celebrating the sacred. For example, the Sufis developed a ceremony that involved coffee simply because it helped them stay awake for the other aspects of the ceremony
10. The explosion of coffee consumerism over the last 300 years can be tracked to an increased adherence to time/alarm clocks (something driven largely by the industrial revolution), work discipline trends and the gourmetship/connoisseurship of the bean
11. Coffee houses were also historical places of business. We're used to seeing folks working on laptops at the local cafe, and this is a natural evolution of what used to be considered the poor man's or working man's office. Establishments such as Lloyds of London began as a coffee house, frequented quite often by members of the maritime industry, which eventually developed into an insurance/bonding firm that is now famous for some of their more unique insurance policies. It was quite typical that community or labor leaders would have their specific hours at a specific table and the locals could find them there during those 'office hours' at the local coffee house
12. Coffee houses -- and all houses that serve caffeine-based drinks -- serve the very vital function of the 3rd place. The 3rd place refers to a non-work, non-home environment that allows for community, society and brings people together -- they are intrinsic locations for humans and the societies in which they live, as they help them to both adapt to and survive the system

Overall, the lecture was very involved and the above notes are just a selection of what we gleaned from Professor Anderson. Wonderful food -- and drink! -- for thought.

Nerdy Birds: Portland's Micro-Roasters

The double-edged sword of many small start-up companies is that growth can often come at a price -- sometimes that price is the culture, sometimes it's the product and, if you're a small company hailing from Portland, OR, it can come at the price of cred. With homegrown independent roasters such as Stumptown expanding into the burgeoning NYC espresso market, what was once considered an alternative to the big boys is slowly becoming a big boy itself.

So how does DIY and indie-heavy PDX keep it real? It becomes a breeding ground for the next wave of small independents that might develop into something larger down the line. Peopled by young couples with toddlers and folks exploring the next chapter in their lives, the growing swell of micro-roasters in the Portland area speaks to that region's history of upstarts, rebels and creatives.

In this fabulously descriptive profile, Kathleen Bauer discusses the trend and poses questions about the Portland roasting scene to five of its stars. One aspect we really loved about this article was the discussion of the volatility of coffee -- that dialing in the scientific elements is not actually a science at all, and that every batch of coffee is different. This extends into the brewing space, as well, and is something we often find ourselves reiterating to new-on-the-scene espresso enthusiasts who are in search of the Ten Steps to Perfect Espresso how-to guide that, honestly, can't possibly exist.

The creativity, artisan craftmanship and just plain nerdy obsession with delicious coffee that these roasters embody is something we love -- and something that makes us love the coffee they produce all the more.

2009 World Barista Champion: Gwilym Davies

The UK National Barista Champion, Gwilym Davies, took the top honor Sunday at the World Barista Championship! Held this year in conjunction with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's exposition in Atlanta, the competition featured four days of trials and eliminations with participants from 52 countries. Throughout the course of the competition, Gwilym created four espressos, four cappuccinos and four signature drinks, coming out ahead of finalists from Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Korea and the US.

In addition to the super-tight title of World Barista Champion and a hefty trophy, Gwilym also walks away with a Victoria Arduino Athena espresso machine and Mahlkonig K30 grinder. He'll reign supreme until next year's competition, scheduled to take place at the June 2010 Specialty Coffee Association of Europe's exposition in London.

Congrats to Gwilym!

Hot Blog on Blog Action: Spronomy

We just ran across this blog, launched in late March by a barista in Pennsylvania, and got lost in the tales and photos of his recent trip to a Guatamalan coffee plantation with which his cafe directly partners in trade.

In addition to a detailed discussion of the coffee process, Spronomy also talks about mod'ing his cafe's Mazzer grinder to work around that annoying left tick the grounds seem to take and examines the success/failure of smaller cafes in the Pittsburgh area. While this blog is just getting started, we will definitely be keeping our bookmark on it and checking in regularly!

Coffee: The World in Your Cup Lecture Series - First Lecture Update

Last night was the kick-off of the Coffee: From the Grounds Up lecture series that is being held in tandem with the Burke Natural History Museum's Coffee: The World in Your Cup exhibit. The series was kicked off by Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds, and was quite enjoyable. He discussed a lot of what is in his book, but here are some bits n' pieces we picked up that we thought were interesting:

• Caffeine is likely a natural pesticide that exists within the cherry to keep it from being decimated by tropical pests. This is similar to how coca leaves have a small amount of the chemical used to produce cocaine.

• There is a resounding myth around the discovery of coffee -- replete with dancing goats and monks -- but there is some evidence that, at some point, nomadic Ethiopian people discovered that grinding up the beans of the cherries, placing them in fat and then ingesting the mixture would help them travel long distances...and this practice is still in existence among nomadic tribes in that African region today.

• Brazil became such a big player because of two primary reasons: They had a lot of land and they were poised to take over the crop when the coffee rust disease nearly wiped out all of the bushes in Indonesia.

• Americans have a very emotional relationship to coffee and kind of act like it's our birthright that we should have access to cheap beans, regardless of market, environmental or political forces. There have been several times that frosts in Brazil resulted in an increase in bean prices -- which then spurred congressional hearings to discuss the cause of the prices and find a way to resolve it! Communism was listed quite often as a cause during much of the cold war, and in 1962 there was an international coffee price agreement that was in affect until 1989, when the cold war ended. It was in our best interests politically to support the large coffee growing regions of the world, lest they fall pray to the evils of communist ideals! :)

• There has always been and always will be a boom/bust cycle in coffee agriculture, due in part to the economic drivers of coffee growing regions as well as the basic growing cycle of the bushes themselves. They take a few years to produce quality cherries, so a time investment can be lost if too many are grown or not enough, etc. Around 2001, there was a huge bust due largely to an overproduction of robusta coming out of Vietnam, which was being grown to the detriment of the native highland peoples there that were being systematically and forcefully removed and persecuted in order to make room for coffee plantations. This is something that hasn't been talked about much that we're going to look into more.

• Haiti was the site of the first and only successful national slave revolt, which included the burning down of coffee plantations and tons of the native trees. There are some theories that posit that the heavily denuded nature of Haiti and the removal of the colonial structures could play a part in the fact that hurricanes ravage it so often and it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere to this day. Another interesting topic for further research.

• Because carbon dioxide is produced during the roasting process, coffee has to be a bit stale to begin with if it's going to be packaged for export; this makes it not an easily manageable product for mass production, because the packaging can explode if the coffee wasn't allowed to sit long enough. With the invention of the one-way release valve that is seen on many high end coffee bean bags these days, however, the coffee can be packaged more freshly and this could mean that roasting could take place in the growing country instead of after it's exported to the consuming country. This could mean that there is room for future economic benefit in the growing countries, who could start roasting the coffee as well and then ship it out in bags with release valves.

Next week's lecture is on direct trade and we'll provide a similar synopsis of our thoughts here then. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or comments on what we shared here.

Coffee: The World in Your Cup Lecture Series

In January, we wrote about the University of Washington Burke Museum of Natural History's exhibition called Coffee: The World in Your Cup. The accompanying lecture series begins next week, kicked off by Mark Pendergrast on Tuesday, April 7th. Mark wrote one of our favorite books on the history of coffee and its impact on the world as we know it, Uncommon Grounds, and we're really looking forward to his lecture -- as well as several others in the series.

We're hoping to make it to all of the lectures and will be writing up a synopsis of each of them here, so folks outside of the Seattle area, or those that can't give up a Tuesday night easily, can also benefit from an excitingly holistic discussion of coffee and its place in the world.

Here's a brief run down of the series -- if you're interested in learning more, you can read full details and sign up for the series here. If you plan on attending one, let us know -- we'd love to meet you!

April 7: Mark Pendergrast
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

April 14: David Robinson
Direct Trade: Bringing the World Community Together Through Coffee

April 21: Eugene Anderson
Why We Love Coffee

April 28: David Browning
A High Quality Cup - Securing Futures by Increasing Coffee Quality

May 5: Paul Rice
Fair Trade - Using Markets to Empower the Poor

May 12: Stacy Philpott
Brewing Biodiversity: Looking at Coffee as an Ecosystem

May 19: Reps from Espresso Vivace, Grounds for Change, Pura Vida & Stumptown
Coffee, Sustainability and Seattle

May 26: Ben Packard & Peter Torrebiarte
Local to Global - Conservation and C.A.F.E. Practices at the World's Largest Coffee Company