let it ride

just a quick post to say THANK YOU to all the people i know directly who have donated to the carlos and edwin garcia martin memorial fund through brown. so far you have donated close to $750 to help juana and her remaining family move through life without their husband, father, brother, son.

naturally, money does not make the world go round. and it can never keep the bed beside you warm, nor recreate the laugh of a high schooler. but thank the good Lord above that so many of you have given a little bit from your pocketbooks (something relatively easy for us rich nortenos to do) to smooth out some of the rocky roads ahead for this widow and family.

peace be on you.

Memorial Fund for Carlos and Edwin Martin

In the wake of the tragic loss of life of Carlos and his son Edwin (see post below), this blog would ask you to consider making a secure online donation via PayPal over at Edwin Martinez' blog site. Or simply click here.

I would sincerely ask you to consider making a stretch and donating something maybe beyond what you might normally give. If for you that was $5, please consider donating $10. If it was $20, please think of giving $35. Even though some of the Martin children are grown, Carlos' widow Juana still has a lot of mouths to feed and clothe.

Anyway, please consider giving out of the abundance of your heart to help in this time of loss and grief and need.

Sleep. Sleep Tonight.

if you've ever been to my friend edwin's family's coffee farm, you will surely remember the farm's patriarch of a manager, carlos. a wizened and wily veteran of years spent managing a coffee farm, he was as humble a presence at the dinner table as any man could be who had forgotten way more than everyone else around him would ever know about coffee.

father of twelve, he now leaves his wife a widow mother of eleven, for he (age 47) and his second oldest child (age 16) were killed a few days ago by roadside bandits. the two were traveling back up the valley from the city to the coffee farm with supplies for an upcoming church mission trip the farm would be hosting. they also had payroll with them, which in that part of remote guatemala during harvest season means cash and lots of it. a wise manager will stagger pay days randomly during the harvest to help protect the just-paid workers from coordinated attacks by bandits. it is logical to assume that this strategy was being employed by carlos as well, which makes the seeming randomness of the event all the more maddening. in those remote valleys, on those empty, rugged switchback roads the crime of opportunity simply must have been too good to pass up: the two lives that stood in the way but bumps in the road to whatever vices lay ahead for the perpetrators.

and so the lives of these two gentle souls were taken for the passing and corrupting thrill of the love of money, the root of all evil. we are all the poorer for it.








Rest in peace, brothers. Though most reading this may never have met you, and others--myself included--only briefly knew you, your lives connected with ours and we are the worse for your loss. Sleep. Sleep tonight. And may your dreams be realized.

have you seen this place?

i recently was pointed to a new coffee company that is turning a lot of heads by way of the star power they have in their lineup. by that i mean, star power as in people
(see pic, right) and star power as in coffees. so you might imagine i found it a little like seeing one's "stranger twin" in the grocery store looking through their coffee lineup looking eerily similar to mine. for one, it is a smallish lineup. nothing wrong with honing your sights on a few coffees that you know you can do well rather than trying to represent the whole world in a mediocre way. but a closer look reveals that not only are they carrying a focused roster of coffees, one of their five coffees is from the exact cooperative as i carry and another is from the exact farm. coincidence? i don't think so. i think someone over there in denmark has been secretly studying my strategy of finding great coffees to represent to the world and has tried to go public with a page from my very own playbook! no doubt a serious conspiracy is afoot. they have a coffee blog; i have a coffee blog. they like talking coffee with the great minds in coffee and so do i. word is, one klaus thompsen even considered going on that fabled trip to guatemala back in january...the very one i went on....hmmmmm. and now they have a new roaster just like me, too. i must dig deeper to reveal the dastardly layers of nefarious actions these crazed danes are willing to stoop to scoop the story on some fine coffees out from under my feet.

all kidding aside, i'd like to think that what this says is that great minds think alike (if that's what you can call mine!). and i'd also like to give a hat tip to klaus and friends with their new endeavor. i'm sure good things are in store for this crew. i'd say i'd like to get my hands on some of their coffees, but, um, right. at least maybe we'll meet one day in person. Lord knows we seem to have lots in common already. all except for the me not winning the world barista championship thing. oh, and the master's degrees and all that. and also probably the money thing. still, what does that matter between friends?

do check out the website and blog of the coffee collective and show them the love if you find yourself over on that side of the pond.

(photo hat tip: matt riddle via flickr)

has it really been almost a month?

i'm getting pretty bad at blogging. maybe i blogged so much in the early days because i didn't have any real work to do. in any event, i just wanted to highlight an event i participated in a couple weeks ago that ties in with another project i've begun work on.

not long ago i took a trip up the road to austin to be part of the Texas Coffee Think Tank. the name sounds auspicious, but it was really just an informal gathering of texas coffee professionals designed to share experiences and encourage each other around coffee. i was asked to lead a cupping session for our inaugural meeting and afterward we would share lunch, beers and conversation around what we wanted the group to accomplish coffee-wise.

i thought about all the regular cupping sessions i've done in the past (geography as flavor, how roast affects flavor, cupping for defects, pre-ground versus fresh-ground, etc.) but since it was august i realized it was a golden opportunity to undertake a very special cupping.

some of you who have read here for a while know i am participating in a two year study with some colleagues that focuses on packaging and storing greens in ways that can possibly help maintain freshness better than traditional jute/burlap. with my friend jaime acting as catalyst we decided to vacuum pack several samples of fresh greens during our january/february '07 trip to guatemala. the idea was to separate vac-packed samples into room temp green samples and frozen green samples, and then every six months for two years we would open the corresponding samples from each storage method, roast them identically, cup them and capture any notes. jaime and i have both blogged about this before, so i won't rehash it all now. but i did notice in the run up to my meeting in austin that since it was now august (six months after returning from guatemala) it would be a golden opportunity to utilize the unbiased palates of the others at the meeting.

for the meeting's cupping i decided to try something a little different. it just so happens that i have greens from the same lot of the same farm in guatemala from '06 and '07, as well as the frozen samples from '07. so it was the nearly perfect apples to apples comparison i was looking for to determine the affects of time on greens. i say "nearly perfect" because both the '06 and '07 non-frozen have been carefully stored at room temperature, but the '07 non-frozen has actually also been rebagged out of jute and into plastic. and of course, the '07 frozen has been removed from jute, vac-packed and frozen immediately upon my return home at a constant zero degrees fahrenheit. close enough for government work, i guess.

anyways, visually, the greens were easily identifiable. the '06 had a pallid color relative to the solid jade of the '07 non-frozen. but the frozen '07 looked so much richer jade than even the non-frozen '07 that it almost looked as though they were different beans altogether. the roasted aroma of both whole bean and ground was almost a dead giveaway. and finally, of course, the tasting was the real test. no surprises...the frozen sample ran away with it. unbelievably fresh, fruited and sweet with a high degree of jasmine-citrus aromatics and fragrance.

now, typically i'm a big fan of blind cupping; and normally i would have conducted this session blindly as well. but i felt it was more important to make it known which was which for the purposes of level-setting everyone's palate to what fresh tastes like. did i tip the jury? i really don't think so. half the group had to ask me which was which anyways because they were busy talking among themselves as i was explaining. but they were asking which was which because when they got to the frozen sample they were blown away and were only asking to confirm what their tongues were telling them.

the rest of the meeting was productive and fun. john from jp's java (the founder of the group and our host for the day) made lasagna for everyone and supplied the beer. some great ideas were borne from the meeting and everyone looks forward to september's get together at austin java, where we are trying to get a screening of the movie black gold. eventually brown will host a meeting, if and when we get our roasterie built here.

oh and by the way, the purpose of the frozen greens experiment is not to get everyone to freeze their greens (although that was a clear winning argument from our first cupping). the purpose is to open the conversation about moving away from storing in jute/burlap by giving viable alternatives. i do have some '07 crop from that farm that is being purposely kept in jute to run against our frozen samples a little later in the year and into next.

new stuff rules

picked up my 2007 crop of fvh today. very pleased to have that in hand. also, shirts are on their way! pre-order stuff will be up on my main coffee site very shortly. super excited for these. i say pre-order because, as mentioned below, i'll be on vacation and not be roasting/delivering shirts until i get back in july.

we knew you when...

tomorrow will be a good day. it is a big day for my friends at finca vista hermosa as they participate in their first cup of excellence. we are praying for a huge day for them in particular and, of course, for the continued push upward of super-premium coffee into the consciousness of the consuming public from a commodified morning necessity--basically, the coffee-as-fuel ethos--to something truly special, cared about and paid for based on quality, not gimmicks or hype.

we are praying for the advent of quality as the sole qualifier of price. and, guatemala being among the best of the centrals in cup quality year over year, we keep our fingers crossed to see huge gains in prices paid for quality tomorrow at auction.

am i rambling? maybe. i guess i'm mostly just nervously excited for my friends and want them to do well and gain more fans. it's the same way when you discover a great uberunderground band and want everyone to know you knew them way, way before all others by sporting their t-shirt. i feel a little this way about fvh and am insanely proud to have my name associated with fvh, if even on such a tiny scale as brown is able to produce.

whatever. go fvh! we knew you when...

fvh!

for those of you who follow the cup of excellence program, you'll understand what a big deal it is for my friends down at finca vista hermosa to score a number 8 ranking in the upcoming auction. to get chosen alone is a huge distinction. to crack the top ten...well, that's just downright sick. i noticed also that the 2006 winner, el injerto, ranked 6th.

best of luck to the martinez family as they take their farm to the next level. scoring a beautiful 87.53 at an international level is a huge accomplishment for this great farm and group of people i have come to love.

in related news, this crop represents the 50th anniversary harvest and, if the coe auction is any indication, it will be a very special one indeed. to help fvh celebrate, brown has been finalizing some commemorative t-shirts that not only will look cool on your back but will go for a good cause. when our shipment arrives we intend to offer the coffee and t-shirt as a fundraising gift pack to help fvh in their local sustainability efforts. keep your eyes peeled for the finalized details on that.

there are a lot of storylines and strands weaving through this post. i guess the other to toss into the mix here is how edwin and fvh are to be commended not only on their commitment to quality and sustainability, but to innovation and hairbrained innovation. the frozen greens project comes to mind. the gps/gis project with tristan comes to mind. and the sheep, my goodness, the sheep! there are more to come. hats off to a class act in the industry i am proud to be associated with. i'm gushing like a schoolgirl. i should stop. but three cheers to greatness in the cup.