PTs Coffee Roasting Co. and the Gombe Coffee Project, along with travels to Burundi and El Salvador, are featured in the Fall 2009 TKBiz Magazine. Click through the pages and check out the “postcards from coffees origin.”

You are invited to join PT’s Coffee Roasting Co and Gizmo Pictures to celebrate The Gombe Coffee Project Video release!  Gizmo Picture’s David Kitchner traveled with PT’s Jeff Taylor on a coffee sourcing trip to Tanzania, documenting the lives and work of these hardworking farmers.  That night will be the first viewing of this incredible documentary!  Join us at 6:00 pm on Thursday, October 15th at the Blind Tiger Brewery for great food, coffee and discounted Java Porter!

During the peak of new harvest arrivals, it is difficult to choose between so many great new coffees.  We have heard the questions time and time again…  “Which coffee from Los Planes should I try?  Which Panamanian coffee should I try first?  How can I choose?”  To help alleviate this conundrum, we are creating a new Celebration of Harvest Box that will highlight our new harvests and help you choose.  Each of these boxes includes one 12oz bag of two of our new harvests.  This week’s Celebration of Harvest offering hails from the Salvador coffee harvest.

Celebration of Harvest Box - Finca Los Planes

You no longer have to choose between the two wonderful coffees from our Direct Trade partner at Finca Los Planes!  The Finca Los Planes Celebration of Harvest Box gives you the chance to try both coffees, one right after the other or you can have the chance to give them both as the ultimate coffee gift.  In this box we include one 12 oz bag of Finca Los Planes Pacamara variety and one 12 oz bag of Finca Los Planes Lote la Lagunita. Purchase the Finca Los Planes Celebration of Harvest Box here!

Celebration of Harvest Box - Cup of Excellence

With so many spectacular accolades attached to our coffees, such as Finca Kilimanjaro and Finca Las Mercedes’ 1st  Place Cup of Excellence finishes, it can be hard to choose which award winning coffee to purchase.  Therefore, we have bundled two 1st Place Cup of Excellence Award winners for the Cup of Excellence Celebration of Harvest Box.  You will enjoy one 12 oz bag of Finca Las Mercedes’ El Pepinal 1 and one 12 oz bag of Finca Kilimanjaro’s spectacular Kenyan variety coffee.  This is one coffee box that will be too good to give away; so buy two so you can give one to your closest friend!  Purchase the Cup of Excellence Celebration of Harvest Box here!

Beautiful Beloya Box

The naturally processed Ethiopian Beloyas have made a name for themselves in the world of specialty coffee, and you  can now purchase both selections, Beloya Selection 8 and Beloya Selection 1, in one beautiful box.   Both of these coffees are the quintessential representation of naturally processed Ethiopian Yergacheffes.  Selection 8 bursts with strawberry and blueberry goodness, and Selection 1 has a sweet lemony goodness with a hint of blueberry.  Purchase this beautiful Beloya package here!

We have a little confession to make. When we are searching for great coffee at origin, we don’t always just fly to the country, get off the airplane and follow our super-sensitive noses up the mountainside to the best coffee farm in the country. Don’t tell anyone, but oftentimes we have help. One of our best guides in sourcing great coffee is the Cup of Excellence program. If you are not familiar with this program, here is its story.

The Cup of Excellence began in 1999 out of a desire to help reward coffee farmers for producing exceptional coffees. A group of industry professionals decided that one of the best ways to do this was to hold a national competition that would bring in coffee cuppers from across the world to find the best coffees in that particular country. After the competition, the winning coffees would be sold to roasters all over the world at an Internet auction.

After holding the first couple of competitions in Brazil, the coffee world started to catch on to the fact that this competition was doing an incredible amount of good for everyone involved. It was helping impoverished coffee farmers receive a sustainable price for their coffee. It was helping roasters connect with farmers who truly cared about producing exceptional coffee. And it was helping consumers realize the huge potential of this small bean. Now the Cup of Excellence program has been running for 10 years and has spread to 9 different coffee producing countries.

This week we are celebrating the launch of two new 1st Place Cup of Excellence Award Winners from El Salvador. The first of these coffees is El Pepinal 1, a mircrolot from Finca Las Mercedes in El Salvador.

Finca Las Mercedes won 1^st place in the 2006 El Salvador Cup of Excellence with a record-breaking score of 94. Our relationship with the producers of El Pepinal 1, the Oritz family, began back in 2008. From their history with the Cup of Excellence, we knew they had great coffee, but it was not until we tasted it for ourselves that we realized how fortunate we were to roast and sell this spectacular coffee. Finca Las Mercedes is a very complex coffee. It has the distinct aroma of coriander seed and black currant. In the cup, it combines slight floral notes with a bright spiciness. Its effervescent acidity sparkles with notes of peach.

In addition to producing great coffee, Finca Las Mercedes has everything else that we look for in a Direct Trade farm. Obviously, the quality of their coffee is outstanding. They go to great lengths to insure that their coffee is as pure and clean as possible by processing the coffee on their farm. Their dedication to sustainable practices, both environmental and social, aligns well with our own commitment to sustainability. They do this by continually giving back to their community, constructing and supplying a school, providing food for a nursing home and supporting the local soccer team. PT’s Coffee has pitched in with their efforts to help the community by providing medicines for a local clinic and soccer balls for the local team.

The second coffee for this week’s celebration is a rock star in the world of specialty coffee. In 2003, Finca Kilimanjaro astounded the judges at the first El Salvador Cup of Excellence with its complex sweetness and exquisite aftertaste and mouthfeel. Aida Batlle, the producer of Finca Kilimanjaro, is growing a Kenyan variety in the volcanic highlands of El Salvador that is an absolute pleasure to drink.

Finca Kilimanjaro’s quality is a testament to the hard work and attention to detail of Aida Batlle and her workers. On visits to Finca Kilimanjaro, it is clear that she is intimately involved in every aspect of coffee production. She is not one cut corners or to skimp on quality. She also recognizes that imperative to producing quality coffee is paying her workers a sustainable wage. In fact, she pays her workers almost twice the normal wage.

Because of all of this hard work, this coffee knocks your socks off! Its aroma has exquisite floral and fruity notes that balance very well with its supple sweetness. It has a lingering aftertaste that is so clean and so smooth that it leaves you with a sense of wonder. We have a very limited supply of this great coffee, so buy a bag before it runs out! This coffee is in our Passport lineup, so be sure to check on the next roast date before ordering!

In addition to Finca Kilimanjaro, we will also receive a very small lot of Peaberry from Aida named Aida’s Grand Reserve. She sorts out only the best Peaberry from her three coffee farms to create this exquisite coffee. We will launch this coffee closer to the holiday season, so be sure to be on the lookout for it before it sells out!

Gombe Coffee Project: Kanyovu Coop 2009

We were still hours from our destination, Kigoma, Tanzania, when we told our Rwandan driver, Saidi, to keep the Land Rover in the “ruts of the road.”

It appeared to be the safest place to ride. The “road” was really more of a trail left by Chinese contractors creating a new modern highway through the heart of Tanzania. But that dream of a road is three to five years from being finished. There are no caution signs in this part of the world. No orange cones to mark the way or flagmen to tell you which direction to travel that is the safest. This was nothing more than a rain soaked trail of orange clay that was often as slick as an oil spill on a glass plate. Unless we stayed in the ruts of the road, it was nearly impossible to stay on the road.

Moments later the unstoppable Land Rover, in 4-wheel drive, veered from the rut we had hoped to guide us and came  to an abrupt halt in the ditch to the left side of the road. We were stuck; no, we buried the front left side of the vehicle.

When in the middle of Africa, American style tow-trucks are not really an option. We were still hours from our destination, and our vehicle was buried so deep, I didn’t think we had any chance of unearthing it in a short period of time. This was officially the first time in two weeks of traveling through Africa I had a moment of trepidation. It didn’t look good.

A month earlier I was told the story of a group of Europeans who were traveling along this same road.  They hey were robbed of everything, including their clothes, and left naked with nothing but their pride. This was the worst case scenario that was coming to my mind. Hopeless in Tanzania; a long way from Kansas! But since I knew the worst case scenario, it was time to try and improve upon that scenario. We needed to dig out and quick!

Fortunately, a mini-van loaded with locals behind us had come prepared with shovels for just such an occasion. Apparently, this was not the first time this has happened. Our new friends quickly offered up assistance and nearly an hour and $20 later, we were back in our rut and safely on our way.

That $20 bill is close to a months wages in Tanzania but it was worth every penny to us. Kigoma and a warm bed awaited after a 14-hour drive that was easily the longest 4-wheel drive adventure I’ve taken to date. Sleep never came so easily as it did that night. Day one in Tanzania was under our belts and day two would be filled with beautiful coffee trees and new friends. Surely nothing so eventful would happen again.

---

Mubanga Primary Society

As the sun rose over the sleepy town of Kigoma, the rains from the previous day seemed miles away. My friend and colleague Sara Morrocchi, of Sustainable Harvest Kigoma, met me at the hotel ready to lead the way.

Morrocchi, a young Italian woman, is Sustainable Harvest’s Tanzania Office director. She has a master’s degree in Peacekeeping from Universities in Italy and the U.K. and somehow found her way into the African coffee industry. She’s fluent in four languages, including Spanish and Swahili which comes in handy every day in Tanzania. Many locals speak English, but in the more rural parts, English is rarely spoken and Swahili is the standard language.

Her leadership and respect is apparent as she is able to quickly befriend almost everyone she meets. As we get closer to our destination, neighbor children shout her name as we pass by - “Sara, Sara” - the children scream as they run towards the vehicle. It’s very charming even though Sara seems slightly embarrassed by the whole event.

Morrocchi is charged with assisting the Kanyovu Coffee Cooperative.  She represents nearly 5,000 Tanzanian farmers who work in one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems. She is helping them improve coffee quality, decrease pressures on the landscape and achieve a profit for their harvest, creating a sustainable income for the Cooperatives members.

This project started a couple of years ago when members of the coop sought assistance for improving their coffee .  Farmers were not receiving a sustainable price for their coffee. The price the farmers were receiving was directly tied to the quality of the coffee they produced. Unfortunately, they had little knowledge of proper coffee farming techniques and a lack of water complicated the task even more. With the help of Sustainable Harvest and a group of coffee roasters from the United States(including PTs Coffee Roasting Co.) , training is being implemented and quality is improving.

The Kanyovu Coop is an umbrella organization that represents 10 smaller primary societies in the Kigoma region. The washing station that I was visiting, Mubanga Primary Society, is next on the list for upgrades in water conserving processing equipment that simplifies the process for farmers and reduces the loss of this precious natural resource. This area is one of the most remote and impoverished regions in Tanzania. However, it possesses all the essential elements needed for quality coffee: high altitude, fertile soils and heirloom varietals called Bourbon.

Until the new equipment arrives later this summer, the washing station is still processing coffee with a hand operated de-pulper and using the traditional method to ferment the coffee. (see Video) With technical assistance provided by Sara and her staff, quality has improved enough to garner a higher price, and this higher price has already improved living standards of the people in this region.

I arrived just before noon and waited as the producers began to arrive with the day’s harvest. In order to receive a higher price for their coffee, a lot has been required of the coffee producers. They can no longer simply strip the trees of all fruit; selective harvesting and proper sorting techniques are a must. Sustainable Harvest is holding a ripe cherry competition this season where the farmer with the most ripe coffee cherries will collect an additional sum of money.

Producers weigh their harvest using a hanging scale that checks total weight of the coffee. Then the coffee cherry must  be sorted to select only the ripest of red fruit. Under-ripe or over-ripe cherries are not permitted and are rejected if not sorted properly. This system is not perfect, but the coop is a work in progress. And progress is being made on a daily basis.

Specialty Coffee of the nature we purchase requires attention be paid to every detail of the harvest. We don’t purchase coffees where corners are cut, mills are left dirty or selective harvesting is not employed. This may seem harsh, but it is the nature of the specialty coffee industry. One cherry that has mold can ruin an entire day’s harvest for every member of the cooperative.

Since I visited on the first day of harvest, there was indeed a lot of unripe cherry that was harvested. Sara and her staff have their work cut out for them, but they are up for the task and have indeed shown great progress in other regions.

………….

Jeff