mie

one of my favorite things about being in coffee – working in “specialty coffee” - is that i always, at every season, every year, over and over again have this excited feeling about being at the beginning of the beginning. something is about to happen. friday night text message from friend out traveling ticked in with a question about what coffee to choose after a magnificent, outstanding dining experience. the choice was between "india mysore" or "kona coffee". um. well. at least it was a choice, and again i was thinking "something is about to happen".

let me go back a few weeks when husband and i visited nyc. we had delicious cappuccinos at gimme!. coffee brewed a la minute on clovers at café grumpy and el beit. and brown water at pretty much every restaurant visited. i started sympathize with all those people i’ve encountered over the years that claim they simply “don’t like coffee”. so there i am, in the world’s best city, paying hundreds of dollars for delicious food and 10$ for a cup of coffee – turns out it’s dish water. don’t think i’m trying to label nyc, this is also status quo in oslo and everywhere else in norway. the second largest coffee consuming country per capita after our eastern neighbors finland. seriously, i’ve never met anyone working in food or wine around the cupping table that couldn’t taste the difference. KAFFA is hosting public cuppings every morning during the week. i know i’m sort of lame on showing up on things myself, but if there was a regular wine tasting every day i’m sure people would show up even if they didn’t “care for the style” (yes, i once had someone working in wine entering one of our public cuppings, claiming he only liked “good coffee” and therefore refused to cup our coffees, but that’s a completely different story. at least he had a stand point in this matter).

so, i’m sure people notice the difference, and they are not forced into buying the (good) stuff, but still, most cuppings are done with baristas and only baristas. people working in food / wine obviously have the palate to detect the difference between a cup of any industrial blend and a specialty coffee. defining specialty coffee like erna knutsen coined the term in 1974: "to describe beans of outstanding flavor produced by special microclimates".

let’s leave the training required for making espresso out of the discussion this time. i would be satisfied with no choice for espresso / espresso based drinks available, just a clean, delicious cup of chemex, french press or filter brewed coffee. restaurants quite frequently uses french press, for example, why do they put horrible coffee in it? i’m not talking about coffee that was roasted into something I don’t care particularly much about, or processed in a way i’m not fond of for that specific coffee. i’m talking about coffee they bought from where they buy their candles, napkins or whatever. i know that a restaurateur can be quite price sensitive, but i’m sure the difference of a few dollars per cup of coffee is something customers aren’t that reluctant to spend after spending hundreds on food and wine. especially if they are served that coffee with the same knowledge about the differences between minas gerais and bahia as their sommelier showed when explaining the differences in burgundy terroir between côte de beaune from côte de nuits. specialty roasters seems to care a lot about sourcing coffees, so there is a lot of information available regarding where the coffee came from, what’s special about that region etc.

of course, there are many exceptions. and lots of things can also be said about pairing coffees with desserts. a sweet dessert with lots of fat will bring out the brighter notes in a coffee that you thought of as dark and savory. paired with extreme sweetness, you will have to think about that coffee in another way. a long discussion for another time. so for now, that excited feeling of being at the beginning of the beginning is still there.

most mornings, all my life, i've chosen earl grey tea for breakfast. it has probably something to do with my upbringing. i was raised served tea at the most awkward times. i previously wrote about my dad's (and he's the one making all the food in the family) obsession about spaghetti to pretty much any dish. in addition to potatoes. well. he has the same idea about tea. it all comes from his family: serving earl grey tea for breakfast. ok, makes sense. serving earl grey tea for lunch. normal as well. serving earl grey tea for different dinner dishes: traditional norwegian meat balls, shrimps and any dish including eggs. only for true enthusiasts. therefore, i've always preferred tea for my breakfast. and until recently, instead of white wine accompanying sea food. but now, i can never trade a good riesling for earl grey. i do them both.

i'm not one of those people who can skip breakfast and rush into the nearest coffee shop (that being JAVA) to have my morning coffee and no food. not most mornings, at least. instead, i have fresh bread, candles and newspapers by our kitchen table. and, now i can surprise my husband with a freshly brewed cup of java bedside. ahwwww. because his moka pot is my new fling!

actually, he was the one starting it, this whole moka pot thing. he's been the grind - and brewmaster in our home for all these years. and we most often only had coffee at night, except saturdays and sundays where i have chocolate after breakfast and need some good coffee. but lately, our daily routine has changed dramatically, because of the moka pot. robert has for as long as i can remember always been advocating coarser grinds. and universal grinds. sort of developed our own house brewing style with a universal grind for all brewing methods, except french press which we never use anyways. methods frequently used for brewing are: melitta, chemex, aero press and now proudly introducing the moka pot. so simple and fast even your impatient wife can make it:

grind your small amount of coffee. use a grind a littlebit coarser than what you normally would consider a filter grind, like raw sugar or similar to what you would use for cuppings. grounds should not clamp or form too well when squeezed. boil water in a kettle. use the boiled water in your moka pot, and turn on the gas. wa-wa-woom: less than two minutes after putting on the water boiler, i have a freshly brewed cuppa!

"gjør fremtidens merkesak til en vanesak" in norwegian can be translated to something similar to "making the future's labeling issue into a choice of habit"...or something. doesn't rhyme in english, but...this is what norwegians can see on giant posters and in magazine ads all over the country right now, it's a governmental supported campaign that will go on for about a month. celebrities are advocating the importance of making the right choice, advocating the importance of certifications.

so, friday morning after viewing the campaign on several posters walking over to MOCCA and KAFFAbutikk from JAVA, i tried to get a little bit deeper in the shit, googling fair trade (FT) in norway. i even met a political advisor for the government (supporting the campaign) at bar JAVA last night who i got to discuss this fascinating subject with briefly. respect & thank you to my new friend jørund. what i found of particular interest googling the subject, was that fair trade is something businesses mention quite frequently, and consumers seems to be obsessing about right now. the discussion board of the campaign’s web site is full of questions about where these fine commodities can be bought. oh my, what did i get myself started with and why don't i like it particularly much?

over the years, many, many customers have asked me about fair trade. why we don’t do FT coffees. working on the slow food event in the us, i became aware of the fact that there is some kind of “atlantic gap” here, but also in norway, consumers are more and more aware of and willing to discuss the issue of fair trade certifications. the fact is, that for instance some of the ethiopia / kenya coffees we’ve been buying are fair trade certified. organic hooray. you name it. but KAFFA never label the coffees with certifications – and we don’t say direct trade either. this is certainly not something only caused by the atlantic gap i mentioned ealier, there are enough roasteries doing this kind of labeling here.

in fact, i think i've concluded my part so far. most often my problem (read about my husband describing me "stubborn as a goat" in a previous post). fair trade isn’t good enough. it’s not good enough for the farmers, and it’s not good enough for businesses or consumers. i know i’m stepping on people’s toes here, but so be it. isn’t the only fair thing to pay farmers the right price to do an amazing job with what they grow? i'm in coffee solely for the sake of coffee. doing healthy business is just what it takes.

so, what is the right price? i used to study economy – and one of my favorite part was microeconomics and game theory. pricing, while not rocket science, is pretty important and deserves a lot more attention than many people give it, especially in an industry based on a commodity most often known for being extremely fragile for the market's response for pricing.

for those who didn't hear about that, world trade organization (WTO)'s important doha round was a lot about farm subsidies. as far as i am concerned, FT doesn't diverse too much from subsidies. paying a tiny bit of money (i don't know the current premium, but it's a matter of cents per pound / ca 450g) above the market price, doesn't allow for anything but even more overproduction. current producers are producing more coffee from higher yielding varietals - like the colombiana case in colombia, of lower cup quality - and new producers enters the market on these premises. again, leading to over production and lower prices in the marketplace. and a tiny premium to the producers joining cooperatives who are FT certified.

my last point is a bit vague, although i'm working on it. it is my firm belief after meeting many coffee producers, that joining cooperatives will only limit their opportunities since they will never be able to reach a niche in the marketplace. in coffee, FT is based on political assumptions about how to organize labour. since this certification is only available not to a single farm, but only to coops, coffee that most specialty coffee roasters are buying from i.e. central america won't be FT certified. from the producers perspective, one can be forced into putting your coffee into a coop instead of trying to hit a market niche of roasters.

a niche where it's all about traceability and transparency. where even a commodity like coffee has it's history. this is our (KAFFA's) first season where our labeling of the coffees highlight the varietal. instead of being tricked into believing you, as a consumer, are doing FAIR TRADE, you can actually make a difference. know your roaster. buy your coffee from someone that's doing real business. when i see a FT coffee in the shelves in the supermarket, and i know that the price difference between that coffee (green) and the other coffees displayed are just a few cents, it's strange that they are sold for such a high price from the (industrialized) roaster. take those few cents, times 10 or there about to find what norwegian consumers think the premium they are paying is. fair trade isn’t good enough. so easy to say, so hard to change consumer's minds.

picture: (morenitos, thanks to my friend chris davidson for this awesome pic)

the first time i visited nyc back in 2002 nothing much was going on in coffee in the city. i mean, we spent a lot of time trying to find the mud truck - a nyc classic. found it, and didn't care so much for it. really, doing coffee out of a truck you need to be on your toes as a barista. java was for three months just a cart out in the park back in 2004 when java was rebuilt and doubled in size, so we've tried the cart life. since 2002 i've been able to come back to nyc a few times, and it's such a different (coffee) world now.

i met lots of coffee friends and had nice coffee times. it seems a bit extreme for me to squeeze in as much as 21 grams of espresso in a filter and serve it as a "triple ristretto" - but then again, what is espresso really?

from the hard core coffee nerds at gimme! coffee, cafe grumpy and 9th street espresso a few newcomers has also made their way into nyc and are doing a very good job with coffee. i especially liked the el beit in williamsburg. we also did a training at fika - a swedish espresso bar just about to open its 2nd location at park av and 28th after running its first for a few years already. that's more like what i think about coffee in nyc in general - fika is using coffee roasted by löfberg's back in sweden and it's shipped there about once or twice a month. so, it's swedish all right. remember, löfberg is the coffee you can bring home from ikea, so you are welcome to check it out. robert always insists on doing cupping sessions with trainings, which makes a lot of sense. on the table was their "brewing coffee" (a löfberg designed blend of guatemala, brasil and kenya), stumptown roasted sumastra mandheling and kaffa roasted panama hacienda esmeralda 'special' lot # 8. it's always very interesting to cup with people who's never cupped before. they liked the löfberg blend best. ooops.

nyc in general was serving me a lot of really nice shots, with milk and without milk. a lot of people seems to be thinking about roasting there in the near future. yes, you've heard it before. stumptown is setting up a roastery in red hook to serve their accounts as well as their café in the ace hotel - soon to be opened. grumpy will roast their own coffee. i bumped into andrew barnett of ecco a few times and he's definitely looking for a retail / roasting space. etc. etc. thinking about it, gimme! is actually the only place roasting their own coffees right now.

yesterday, i celebrated potato day! early morning, a text message ticked in from food writer and friend andreas, who invited us for potato tastings and all kinds of potato fun at the potato day celebration that supposedly was taking place in oslo that day.

walking around oslo sunday morning, i was resembled with a goat by my dear better half. robert explained to me how it "really makes a lot of sense" to do so - i eat everything, i am mostly happy but incredibly stubborn. all of this, because i was trying my hardest to focus on finding our way to a potato tasting in time. and i was nowhere near convinced he actually knew the way better than myself. who never went to that particular place before. but robert knows his way around oslo, and we actually made it.

the other part of the context is that the UN has named 2008 for international year of the potato. oh yes. potato events are organized all over the world, and this weekend it was oslo's turn to celebrate and be educated about this product. the fact is, that every year for generations has been the year of the potato in norway. in my family, for instance, it is eaten pretty much 365 days a year. to be noted: not instead of, but along with spaghetti. it has been like that since the spaghetti was cooked by my great grandmother along with cloudberry jam, potato and pretty much any kind of game. also for preserved fish dishes, as fish pudding. yum. but who knew that this event would showcase more than 100 potato varietals? we could also cheer in the semi finals before the norwegian potato peeling championship next weekend or attend potato tastings. a selection of potato varietals made up a flight with about 20 different to taste - boiled to perfection and served with salt. from the sweet and mellom "beate" to the almost acidic and stringent "blue congolese". most varietals had too difficult names to remember, there were princesses ("cinderella", "anastacia") and other nobleness ("lady claire", "lady felicia") and old classics ("kerrs pink") and many more.

we also got to discuss potato farming with simen volden who along with his wife grows around 200 different varietals of potatoes. unfortunately, as far as i could understand, there is no market for these varietals here - and they are therefore not sold outside the farm. celebrating or not.

this year, we have so much coffee from panama, or should i say boquete, that we really need to have a panama festival. boquete is situated up north in the tiny country. panama is pretty much right on the equator, and boquete is nestled into a craggy mountain valley a short hour drive north from david - the nearest airport. kaffa bought coffees from different farms, different varietals (three geisha lots from two different farms...) and different processing methods used on these coffees.

the mountain range that is right by boquete, is separating the atlantic ocean climate from the pacific. since boquete is situated on the pacific side, but right under these mountains, all the cool climate comes in and is creating unique micro climates from farm to farm. from a coffee buyers' perspective, it makes sense then to have different farms and different processing methods for different varietals represented.

kaffa is currently buying:
PANAMA hacienda Esmeralda, geisha special lot # 8 + # 9 (aqua pulped)
PANAMA estate Don Pepe, caturra (aqua pulped)
PANAMA estate Don Pepe, caturra (honey)
PANAMA estate Mama Cata, caturra (aqua pulped)
PANAMA estate Mama Cata, geisha (honey)

i'm really hoping for us to sometime in the future be real "boquetenos", but that's a different discussion. for now, i still live on price peterson calling me a princess (without me telling him to do so...).

so, almost everyone's newest fling in coffee seems to be the operation cherry red project in ethiopia. the project in itself is pretty self explaining - picking only the ripe cherries makes cleaner, riper and more complete cups of coffee in the end. KAFFA has these days our first new crop arrivals directly from ethiopia in stores - and all of them are labeled OCR - washed and sun dried ("natural"). cupping the first production roast this morning really convinced me that the cleanliness of these coffees must be referred to as exceptional.

the project was started with 1 million euro funded by the dutch government and the eu and the project was initiated by dutch coffee trader and ethiopia specialist menno sims and his trading company trabocca in cooperation with their customers. the money has been invested in various parts of the coffee processing and trading operations in the coffee growing regions yirgacheffe, sidamo and limu. robert and i cupped with menno in amsterdam in april, and he explained back then that there are several goals about these project. over all, it is all aiming at improving the cup quality, but it's also about developing an understanding for what this means amongst the people in coffee. if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. if you teach him how to fish, he will have food for life. um. still with me?

firstly, it's about investing in new, environmentally friendly machinery - pulping machines, dry-hullers, graders, drying tables etc. secondly, it's hiring acknowledged experts like agronomists and cupping trainers. this is to pass on and develop the local expertise amongst the growers and in that way also be sustainable. trabocca is also working on the packaging of greens (as most exporters are these days) - vacuum or similar and in addition they are supporting local administration - management, banking and documentation is all done from origin.

and as always - it makes a lot of sense to pay more money for more carefully picked and sustainable processed coffee when this comes through so clean and complete at the cupping table.