MAY SUBSCRIPTIONRuther Quispe, PeruRuther is a farmer that colours outside the lines. His story starts like most, inheriting a farm from his parents, starting with his grandparents moving to the area of Ocobamba, Peru many years ago. They were advised against growing coffee in the region and told it was not viable. This is where this family of coffee growers starts to become more interesting.Against their advice, the family planted coffee and started getting their heads around the detailed aspects of becoming coffee producers. Over the years they kept growing coffee, getting better at it with each harvest. They also kept evolving their processing methods to more rigorous ones, resulting in higher-grade coffees.The final thing that really sets this farm...
APRIL SUBSCRIPTIONGrace Morales, EcuadorGrace Morales comes from a family of coffee producers. She and her brother run the family farm and are very dedicated to their craft. They have won several national awards as a result of the quality procedures and processing methods that they have developed on their farm. One of their names is frequently at the top of the COE (Cup of Excellence), a competition held in various participating countries, aimed to reward and fetch high purchase prices from coffee roasters. One overlooked by-product of this competition is the innovation and information sharing that happens around it. It is also a way for coffee producers to share and give back to their local producers' network.It is an honour...
MARCH SUBSCRIPTIONKibingo, BurundiFor some of you who have been on the subscription a while, you may recall Kibingo was featured last year in June. This is once again a testament to how consistently good coffee from Burundi is. We tasted this lot 'blind' and chose to purchase it again amongst a sea of other samples.We have always been huge fans of coffee from Burundi. There must be something about the air there that makes the coffee a little magical. Burundi and Rwanda are both relatively new to producing coffee and even more so, new to the specialty segment.The coffee is almost always a red bourbon and done in a washed-processed style with a longer than usual dry-fermentation (i.e. the seeds...
FEBRUARY SUBSCRIPTIONEl Mirador, GuatemalaThis coffee came to us in a time of need! We were in-between coffee releases, waiting for several shipments to arrive. Unfortunately, shipments take 4-9 weeks and things can get very complicated to predict!Our importer friends at Caravela recommended a coffee lot from El Mirador that has been tasting great this season, and sent us some samples to assess. We were initially just happy to have a coffee fill a spot, but after the first roasts of it we were genuinely so blown away with the flavour profile that we called Caravela back and ordered double our original order!We had issues with the supply of Guatemalan coffees over the last year due to the aggressive buying strategies...
JANUARY SUBSCRIPTIONMoses Venapoe, Papua New GuineaI had the pleasure of drinking solely this coffee while I was away on a family trip last week. I was using a coffee brewer called a Tricolate (tricolate.com), which is a great no-nonsense brewer that is super hard to mess up a brew. I played around with water temperature and grind but kept everything else the same. I was so happy to see the coffee exhibit different angles of flavour with the various changes I made. Some brews were very big and juicy, while others were more mellow, sweet and herbal (in a delicate way). Most of the time the coffee had great clarity and was really balanced.All these things I am saying about...
