The Coffee Sourcing Process

Hi Everyone,

I am back from the road, and the roasting schedule returns to normal. I’ll roast this weekend on Sunday (March 29), and deliver and ship on Monday the 30th. We’ll have some extras over the weekend from last week’s roasting if anyone needs coffee.

Please check the website (www.freeportcoffee.com) before you order, as we’ve run out of a few coffees. One that is out this week is the Sumatra, but happily, I found a source for some of the Lintong Triple Pick we had a few months ago, and this should be in stock for the following week.

It’s an interesting time of the year in the coffee world. Many of the “new crop” coffees will be arriving in the next month, and I feel a bit like a little kid standing on the curb on a summer’s day waiting for the soundtrack of the ice cream truck to come wafting through the neighborhood. Anticipation.

When these arrive, we’ll have lots of new coffees, and I’ll be announcing some tasting events so you all can check these out.

A big announcement this week is that our coffee is now available at Bow Street Market in Freeport. We’ve had requests from people living out that way and in Brunswick, so its great to now give you a convenient way of buying our coffee.

When we show people the roastery, a question that often comes up is “where do you get all this coffee?” I’d like to devote this week’s missive to explaining the process.

In the origin countries (Brazil, Sumatra, Ethiopia, etc.), specialty coffee is packaged in jute bags typically containing 60K (132 pounds) or 70K (154 pounds), depending on the country. The coffee shipped from major ports in increments of full shipping containers, each containing 40,000 pounds of coffee (260-300 bags). (As an aside, for really low grade coffees, they skip the bags and just dump the green coffee into the shipping containers.)

The coffee travels by ship, with the journey taking between 2-4 weeks, depending on the source, and the coffee arrives in the major US ports of New Orleans, New Jersey, Long Beach, Oakland or Seattle. Some of the coffee is warehoused in these locations in either private or importer warehouses, while other containers travel by train to importers located in the central part of the country.

As a roaster, I learn about the coffees available from the three importers I work with via “offer lists” that are published daily or weekly. These lists are organized by country, and they indicate the full pipeline of coffees being offered by a specific importer. I say “pipeline” because there are coffees on the list that have been purchased but that are still en route to the US, along with those warehoused in different parts of the country and committed to by roasters but not yet shipped.

Roasters purchase coffees from importers in increments of the 60K or 70K bags described above. By the way, I usually have plenty of these bags here, and they look great on the wall. If you are interested in one, stop by to see the selection, and I will sell you a bag of your choice in return for a $5 contribution to Bikes to Rwanda.

As of the morning I write this, the largest importer I use has 467 coffees on their offer list – and many of these are now en route from Africa and Central America (corresponding with the cycle of growing, picking and processing in these countries).

The link below shows theses crop cycles, if you are interested:

http://www.hollandcoffee.com/schedule.htm

I select coffees from the lists I’d like to consider for purchase, and the importers send small samples of these (thus contributing to the growing pile of baggies in the corner of our dining room). We roast these on a little sample roaster, “cup” them (usually with the discriminating palate of Jim from the Royal Bean) and then make decisions of which to buy.

I order typically from a single warehouse location, and there up to ten (60-70K) bags are loaded on shipping pallets, and several days later, a large truck maneuvers its way into our neighborhood and the coffee is ours.

The high point of the winter was the subsequent transport of individual bags of coffee to the roastery by sled through a long, luge-like trough running down the hill to the roastery. The life of a New England microroaster in a hard winter.

Enjoy the nice spring weather this weekend (edited now to say “Saturday” as the forecast has changed).

Kent

Supporting the Growing of Higher Quality Coffees

Hi Everyone,

How are you all?

I’ll roast this weekend on Sunday the 15th and deliver and ship Monday. Please send your orders by Sunday morning, though we’ll have some extras available if you don’t get this until later in the weekend.

I’d like to ask a favor of you. Attached is a new flyer we’ve developed to explain our fundraising coffee program. If you know of a school group or non-profit organization that may be looking for a fun and easy way to raise some money, I would be grateful if you would forward this flyer to them and ask them to give me a call. Thanks in advance for your help with this.

This week, I carefully, carefully raise the lid of the Pandora’s Box of social issues in coffee. This is a broad area that encompasses every side of the human condition, to include economics, health, human rights, markets, education, weather, kindness, misery and every emotion and effect in between. And necessarily I’ll take this in small pieces in the coming weeks and months, because every side of these issues deserves to be told and understood if you drink coffee.

Today, I’d like to share some thoughts on the farmers in the world who are working to elevate the quality of coffee to its highest potential.

The best analogy to coffee quality I can think of is that of wine, perhaps now more so than ever. We know there are gradations of wine quality, starting with the stuff in the really big bottles on the bottom shelf at the store that taste just OK but get the job done, moving up into smaller bottles with marginal improvements in quality that might be in the $5 range, and upward to the $8 - $10 bottles, where we’ll stop for a moment.

These wines, often marketed under a name something like Green/Red/Blue/Orange Turtle/Bicycle/Frog/Frisbee, now seem to have achieved some level of mainstream drinkability, so they have become the “new black” of wine. You see lot of variations of these for sale now in our stores.

Then we journey on to the better wines, bearing the names of wineries and better growing regions and specific vineyards and vintages.

Coffee falls into similar categories. On the bottom shelf (with the big bottles), we have instant coffee and the lowest grades of pre-ground supermarket coffee. Alongside the $5 wine, we might find pre-ground coffee with the name of an origin country (most often Brazil or Colombia) or sometimes a roast level (dark or light). And with the Blue Duck wines are the better grades of mainstream coffees, sold ground or in whole bean form, from fancier roasters or brands and usually with a better pedigree (an origin country, of maybe even a region).

Then on the top shelf in most stores, you’ll find an empty spot next to the best wines – the best coffees out there aren’t found in mainstream stores. And honestly, most of the country hasn’t seen the best the coffee world has to offer because it is slow to arrive in the hinterland. Here, I am talking about coffees traceable back to a single grower or very small groups of growers. These are coffees that have been held apart and processed outside of the large processing plants that dominate every major growing region in the world. And most importantly for this discussion, they are coffees being grown by farmers who are very consciously working to make their coffees taste better.

These are farmers who know what their coffee tastes like (most don’t), and how to evaluate it on a scale of quality that gives them a reference point for moving their quality higher and then ideally garnering the higher prices that come with improved quality.

But here’s where the risk lies.

I have massive respect for anyone who farms for a living and does it well. Weather and bugs and hard work and the vagaries of soil conditions and unforeseen climate changes make the lives of those who grow foods for a living a challenge. Coffee farmers then layer on the gyrations of the global coffee market, where bumper crops in the major producer countries can send prices screaming downward, and in confronting these challenges, there are a number of avenues they can take to elevate the net income of their farms.

This includes steps that can be taken by any food farmer, increasing crop yields, making the farm more efficient, recycling materials from the farm to cut costs and being more careful with labor costs and supplies.

For coffee farmers, the route to a better bottom line can include certifications that translate into higher prices from buyers. You know about these, and they include organics, fair trade, shade grown, bird friendly and a new form of private certification schemes practiced by more socially conscious large roasting companies. I’ll dig into all of these in future articles.

And then there is the quest to elevate the quality of the coffee itself.

Here, I am talking about quality from the standpoint of the farmer and the inherent taste of the coffee. This is not about the quality of the roasting or the freshness of the roasted coffee or the way it is ground or the water that was used for brewing or the amount of the coffee or the brewing method. It’s about the beans.

At the farm level, there are fundamental aspects of quality, like picking the beans at the right time, processing the coffee before it ferments and properly drying the coffee, but then there is another level related to the cultivar (the variety of coffee plant), the terroir in which the coffee is grown (the special combination of geography, weather and soil related to a particular growing site) and the isolation of very special lots of coffee from other coffees grown on the farm.

When a farmer achieves the correct balance of these factors, the result is magical, a beverage on par with the finest foods and wines in the world.

And now with the new “third wave of coffee” (the first two being coffee’s beginnings as a commodity beverage and the second, the surge of awareness and quality that started in the sixties and seventies), growers and roasters are pushing coffee quality higher and higher. At the farm level, the more progressive growers have learned to taste (or “cup”) coffee with an eye to improving the quality in the cup. Small micromills (like those Tanji and I saw in Costa Rica) enable farmers to isolate individual lots of very special coffees that steer clear of the pooling of coffee by the large processors. Roasters have stopped over-roasting coffee and are working at lighter roast levels to bring out the underlying tastes of the coffee. And grinding and brewing to order (as they do at the Royal Bean) avoids the off tastes that come with pre-grinding coffee and using invasive brewing and storing methods.

So, this is a chain of respect, of the growing of the beans, the processing, the transport, the roasting and the serving.

In 2007, a microlot from the Hacienda Esmerelda farm in Panama won the “Best of Panama” competition and in the auction that followed, captured a high bid of $132 a pound (green) from a consortium of three boutique roasters from North America. This is the highest price ever paid for any coffee, but its an example of how far the quest for quality can take a farmer.

Today, nine countries reward their best coffees through “Cup of Excellence” (CoE) competitions that celebrate the very best coffees from those countries in a given year. The competitions entail both cupping (tasting) scores and auctions, and green coffee prices for the winners have ranged in recent years from just under $20 to $50 and beyond (these process go to farmers accustomed to receiving a dollar or less a pound for coffee sold into the pool system).

And perhaps most important of all, these competitions garner a lot of publicity, and raise awareness of coffee quality all over the world.

We often think of coffee in terms of a price per pound, but in actuality these very high end coffees often end up sold by the cup at prices in the $4-$6 range. This is not affordable for one’s daily cup, but I think this is a very reasonable price to pay for a cup of the very best coffee available in the entire world. Splurging on one of these great cups of coffee once a week or so would not be too much of a stretch.

But where this all starts is on the farm, and the farmers do this as their life’s work and need to get paid – and without premium payments for their investments in extra labor and micromills and sample roasting equipment and smaller batches, the whole system breaks down. The motivation goes away and growers return the relatively easier existence of growing commodity coffee.

Somewhere in the marketplace, these extraordinary coffees need to command a higher price. These higher prices empower the roaster to pay more for green coffee purchased from his or her importer, for the importer to pay more to the exporter in the origin country and for the exporter to pay more to the farmer or mill.

In densely populated urban areas and college towns where there is a lot of great coffee available, the awareness of the many facets of coffee is high and it is comparatively easy to sell whole bean coffee for $15-$20/pound and cups for $4 and more. It wasn’t always this way, and we can thank the pioneers like Alfred Peet (Peet’s Coffee) and George Howell (founder of the Coffee Connection chain that thrived in the Boston area before being bought out by Starbucks) for starting the progression of great coffee, education and availability that made this possible.

But get past these major markets, and the tastes of even the most aware of coffee consumers are still evolving.

Without the critical mass of foodie-oriented shopping streets and high population densities, higher grade coffee does not so easily sell itself. Education efforts like my newsletter and similar outreach by thousands of other small and midsized roasters are dedicated to raising awareness of great coffee – and with that, raising demand. And that demand then motivates the farmers in origin countries to try harder still.

And then the coffee gets better and better and we all benefit . . . all the way up the chain.

Starting next month, I will start to receive the new crop coffees for this year, and I’ll have some opportunities to bring you some amazing new flavors. Stay tuned.

And thanks for your support.

Enjoy the sun this weekend. We sure have earned it this winter.

Kent

Musings on the Economy and Coffee

Good morning, Friends,

We’ll be roasting coffee next on Sunday, March 8, and then delivering and shipping on Monday the 9th. Please send your orders by 8:00 Sunday morning.

Wow. Its quite a ride this country is going through right now, isn’t it? I use the New York Times as my homepage, and its an amazing progression of news I see each day. I know that we as a country are all waiting for something good to happen.

So, since our leaders aren’t coming up with anything in the good category (though I think many of these programs will bear fruit), I wanted to share a trend I am seeing – really in the hope that you will see it too and then spread the word.

My daily travels put me in touch with a lot of people, including the scientists all over the world I ask to help me with my conferences, and the universe of people I connect with at the café and around town in the world of coffee.

And I have noticed something cool of late. People are getting kinder and kinder by the day. When I ask people to help with my research or to speak at a conference, they respond with open arms and a graciousness I have never seen before. And when I meet strangers for the first time at The Royal Bean or around town, I see generosity and compassion and an honest desire to want to know others and to help them.

And yeah, these connections don’t put food on our tables and pay the rent, but there is a way that they are worth much more than money. Are you seeing this too?

You were waiting for me to tie this to coffee somehow, weren’t you?

Last week, I was watching “Lost” on the Internet with Galen, and the show had as its single sponsor the Discover Card. They showed just one ad (over and over), featuring a friendly sort of guy asking the question “Do you know how much you spent on coffee last month?”

Boo hiss, I say to that company. There’s been a lot in the press lately about how fru-fru coffee drinks are the first thing many people cut out in a down economy, but please! Sure, cutting out the ice and the sugar and the flavorings (which can run the price of a drink up to $6 in a downtown chain store) makes sense, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

Good coffee made at home will cost you about a dime a cup. A great hand brewed cup at your local café is less than $2, and a handmade cappuccino made with high quality fresh roasted beans is under $3. Maybe you won’t indulge every day, but I submit that great coffee is still a good deal.

Another thing I have been reading about lately is that a certain large national coffee chain is now quietly removing the big comfortable chairs and couches from their stores. The message (and the intent) is that they don’t WANT you to stay there. They don’t want you to get to know other people or read a book or work on your computer. At our local version of this chain, I endeavored during one of our recent power outages to go there and use my computer. No WIFI. I bought my son a fru-fru drink for five bucks and asked if I could use the “free” WIFI. Answer, no. I was told that I needed to go online, sign up for an account, get a special card, then bring it back, buy something and THEN I could have “free” WIFI.

Um . . . go online, where, exactly?

So the message here is not one of compassion and community. The message is come in, spend a lot of money, sit until you are uncomfortable, then leave in a short time so we can do the same thing to someone else.

Your local café will serve you better than this. Way better.

We’ve had a long, hard winter here in Maine, and our house has been without power for eight days of it (three separate power outages). When this happens, most people in our town and the town next door bear the same fate, and many people (like me) who work from home end up in the more generous of local cafes as a place to work for the day.

And I am very grateful we have a place like that to go.

In closing, I’d like to throw out a reminder of the things we are trying to do at Freeport Coffee Roasting to make it possible for all of you to enjoy freshly roasted amazing coffee from around the world during these hard times:

- Want to try a coffee? Samples are free – let me know what you’d like to try. (Shipping for these is not free, however, so this works better for locals)
- Shipping IS free on all orders over $40
- Check out the CuppaJoe Recession Buster Coffee, just $9.99 for a pound

And in general, our coffee is less expensive than the whole bean coffee you buy at the store. In the manner of yogurt, ice cream and tunafish, the once sacred one pound bag of coffee is shrinking. You’ll see that what is offered at the store is typically $9.99 or $10.49 for a 12 ounce bag (the metric pound?). This equates to $13.32/$13.98 a pound, and most of ours are just $12/pound (and ours are absolutely fresher).

Thanks for listening to all this. I guess in general, the message I would like to convey is that I hope you’ll support local businesses through these times. This includes coffee roasters, cafes, local farmers, fishermen, those who make cheeses and keep chickens and the stores that sell these things. Let’s not come out of the recession into a world of chain stores and mass-market foods!

Enjoy the weekend, everyone, and thanks for your continued support.

Kent

Reply

Forward

The Strange Tale of Kopi Luwak

Good morning, everyone,

Since we have a long weekend ahead, I'll be roasting on Monday the 16th and then delivering and shipping on Tuesday the 17th. Please have your direct and wholesale orders in by the end of Sunday night.

I'll run some extras and have them here next week - and there are also a few bags here if anyone needs coffee over the weekend.

This week, I'd like to share what is perhaps the strangest story in all of coffee, that of Kopi Luwak, a coffee roasted from green beans that have (politely speaking) passed through the digestive tract of a cat-like creature living in Indonesia.

I won't take credit for writing what is shown below, and I have attributed the articles and reviews as listed. Also, I have included some links at the very bottom you can use to order your own "poop coffee." Go on, I dare you. In fact, I double dare you. (and if you buy some, can I taste just a teaspoon full so I can say I have tried it?)

If this is not enough adventure for you, I invite you to seek out Kopi Muntjak, coffee extracted from the feces of a "barking deer."

Yuck.

Enjoy your weekend.

Kent

From Wikipedia

Kopi Luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈluwak]) or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid) and in East Timor (locally called kafé-laku). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee, which is made from coffee berries which have been regurgitated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

Origin and production

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it has been proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated, still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. Some sources claim that the beans may be regurgitated instead of defecated.

In early days, the beans would be collected in the wild from a "latrine," or a specific place where the civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory, and these latrines would be a predictable place for local gatherers to find the beans. More commonly today, captured civets are fed raw berries, the feces produced are then processed and the coffee beans offered for sale.[citation needed]

Economics

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States. It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year.[1] One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia, has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 (=US$48.00) per cup, selling approximately four cups a week, which has gained nationwide Australian press.[2] In April 2008, the brasserie of Peter Jones department store in London's Sloane Square started selling a blend of Kopi Luwak and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00) a cup.[3] It has also recently become available at Selfridges, London, as part of their "Edible" range of exotic foods.

A 2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare led to the extermination of thousands of these civets in China,[4][5] but the demand for the coffee was not affected.

Research

A popular and intuitive hypothesis to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested.[citation needed] At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or overripe, while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly brewed cup. As this may be true for the beans derived from wild-collected civet feces, farm-raised civets are likely fed beans of varying quality and ripeness, so one would expect the taste of farm-raised beans to be less.

Further research by Dr. Massimo Marcone at the University of Guelph (CA) has shown that the digestive juices of the civet actually penetrate the beans and change the proteins, resulting in their unique flavor.

Similar Coffees

Kopi Muncak (also Kopi Muntjak) is a similar type of coffee produced from the feces of several species of barking deer, or Muntjac, that are found throughout Southeast Asia. Unlike civet or "weasel" coffee, this type is usually not produced from captive deer and most commonly collected in the wild, especially in Malaysia and in the Indonesian Archipelago.

Further information is available online by doing a Google search on "cat poop coffee."

Winter Reading List

Hi Friends!

Brrrrrr . . . it is FOUR outside as I write this today.

We are roasting coffee this weekend on Sunday, February 8 and then delivering locally and shipping on Monday the 9th. Please send in your orders by Sunday morning at 8:00 (though we will roast extras of some coffees and have them available through the week).

I'd like to ask all of you a favor. Tanji and I are always striving to improve this business and to offer coffees and service that are are what you all need. Could you please take just a few minutes and respond to the survey below? This would help us know more about what is going on in your world of coffee, and your input would help us a lot. The survey is complete anonymous, and if you have other coffee lovers you would like to pass this along to, we'd love their feedback too.

Just click this link and the survey should open in a new window.

Special offer! If you live in the Freeport or Yarmouth areas, and you have never purchased coffee from us, we're offering you a single pound of any of our coffees for just $5.00. The small print is that you will need to stop by here at the roastery and pick it up, and this may subject you to my entheusiasm about coffee and a free cuppa or two. Email me back if you'd like to do this (and tell your friends too!).

Giddy Goats Espresso! The alchemists in our espresso lab have emerged with the very amazing Giddy Goats Espresso Blend, and we will be doing our first production run of this one on Sunday if you would like to order some. It is now in the online store and if you are ordering direct, it's $12.50 a pound.

I have a new email address - please change your records to this one. God in a Cup

Since we are now in the depths of winter and are settling in before the fire for another few months, I'd like to share some suggestions with you of some great coffee books. Shown below are some of my favorites, and I have shamelessly borrowed the descriptions here from Amazon. Many of these can be ordered used from them if you'd like to save a few quid (with the couple of exceptions shown).

Enjoy the weekend, everyone! Thanks as always for all your support.

Kent

Books

Uncommon Grounds The History Of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast: Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast (For God, Country and Coca-Cola) approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discoveryAthe most appealing of which, Pendergast writes, concerns an Ethiopian goatherd who wonders why his goats are dancing on their hind legs and butting one anotherAto the corporatization of the specialty cafe. Pendergrast focuses on the influence of the American coffee trade on the world's economies and cultures, further zeroing in on the political and economic history of Latin America. Coffee advertising, he shows, played a major role in expanding the American market. In 1952, a campaign by the Pan American Coffee Bureau helped institutionalize the coffee break in America. And the invention of the still ubiquitous Juan Valdez in a 1960 ad campaign caused name recognition for Colombian coffee to skyrocket within months of its introduction. The Valdez character romanticizes a very real phenomenonAthe painstaking process of tending and harvesting a coffee crop. Yet the price of a tall latte in America, Pendergrast notes, is a day's wage for many of the people who harvest it on South American hillsides. Pendergrast does not shy away from exploring such issues in his cogent histories of Starbucks and other firms. Throughout the book, asides like the coffee jones of health-food tycoon C.W. PostAwho raged against the evils of coffee and developed Postum as a substitute for regular brewAprovide welcome diversions. Pendergrast's broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup. 76 duotones.

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee by Michaele Weissman: From Ethiopia to Panama to Portland, journalist Weissman shadows today's vanguard coffee guys in their pursuit of the perfect, caffeinated beverage. With increased demand for specialty roasts superior to the mass-marketed offerings at Starbucks, Weissman illustrates how the origin, flavor compounds and socioeconomic impact of a cup of coffee are relevant now more than ever. Alongside industry leaders from some of the U.S.'s top roasters—Counter Culture, Intelligentsia and Stumptown—Weismann treks to the birthplace of coffee, remote plantations, and international competitions where the best coffees in the world are cupped (or tasted), scored and where winners like Panamanian grower Hacienda La Esmeralda's revered Geisha coffee earn $130 per pound. Visiting both ends of the producer-consumer spectrum, she sheds light on the partnership between those who sell premium coffee and the impoverished who farm it—examining how specialty standards enable improved production, exceptional beans, fair prices and fatter pockets across the board. On the imbibing end, Weissman penetrates today's amped-up coffee culture: its sleek coffee bars, tattooed coffee-geeks behind the counters, fiercely competitive roasters working alongside champion baristas. Tagging along behind the main characters in today's specialty coffee scene, Weissman travels from the exotic to the expected to artfully deconstruct the connoisseur's cup of coffee.

Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon: This surprisingly gripping travelogue is filled with tales from the "coffeelands," barely-on-the-map locales in Africa, the Americas, and Asia where coffee farmers struggle to survive. Written with knowledge and good cheer by the founder of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, the book reads more like a trippy adventure than a business trip, though the issues Cycon raises are vital, prescient and little known ("99 percent of the people involved in coffee... have never been to a coffee village"). While learning first-hand about the hardships involved in growing and selling coffee beans-the world's second most valuable commodity, after oil-the author finds himself in Guatemala praying to an effigy in a Mickey Mouse tie and cowboy boots; eating armadillo leg in Colombia; working to heal landmine victims in Nicaragua and war widows in Sumatra; and meeting with all manner of farmers, bureaucrats and dignitaries. His dispatches are highly enlightening, demonstrating how few national governments provide coffee growers with water, education, health care or even protection from harmful pesticides; further, coffee growers' income is subject to the whims of financial speculators half a world away. Reading this eye-opening book, it's impossible not to reconsider-and feel grateful for-the myriad people behind your morning cup.

The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying - Revised and Updated by Corby Kummer: With coffee bars springing up on every urban corner, this engrossing guide couldn't arrive at a better moment. Kummer writes on food for the Atlantic very well, thanks, because he injects his own physical experience with his subjects into the exposition. Here, he takes us through the coffee bean's progress from tree to tummy, eyewitness-style. He tells us what it's like to pick coffee because he went and picked it, what it's like to cup coffee (the method by which roasted beans are qualitatively sorted) because he cupped with the pros, what it's like roasting coffee because he tried it at home as well as scrutinized it being done as a business, etc. He analyzes and advises on grinding and brewing methods; he appreciates espresso and its appurtenances; he describes the coffees of different growing countries; he discusses caffeine and its health effects; and then, he wraps the book up with coffee-complementary dessert recipes and a resource section. Kummer's Baedeker of the exquisitely bitter brew is, as the old slogan says, good to the last drop.

The Professional Barista's Handbook: An Expert Guide to Preparing Espresso, Coffee, and Tea by Scott Rao: FROM THE AUTHOR: When I began in the coffee business fourteen years ago, I read every book I could find about coffee. After reading all of those books, however, I felt as if I hadn t learned much about how to make great coffee. My coffee library was chock-full of colorful descriptions of brewing styles, growing regions, and recipes, with a few almost-unreadable scientific books mixed in. I would have traded in all of those books for one serious, practical book with relevant information about making great coffee in a café. Fourteen years later, I still haven t found that book. I know many other professionals as well as some obsessive nonprofessionals would like to find that same book I ve been looking for. This book is my attempt to give it to them.

Espresso Coffee, Second Edition: The Science of Quality by Rinantonio Viani and Andrea Illy: "Overall this book serves as a complete overview not only of espresso coffee but also of coffee in general. With its comprehensive overview of the parameters important to coffee quality and coffee consumption on human health it becomes a good reference book for both food scientists and nutritionists in the field." - Massimo Marcone, University of Guelph, Canada for FOOD RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL (2005) "A vital resource for anyone wishing to deepen their knowledge of coffee and its production, this book, with its industrial and historical perspectives, manages to combine the delivery of complex scientific data with pure enthusiasm for the product." - CAFE CULTURE (July 2005) ".the book's precision with the details of coffee science is unparalleled. It balances scientific prowess and readability without overwhelming the reader, whether new to the coffee world or a veteran." - FRESH CUP (June 2005) NOTE: This is a very, very scientific book. I feel like there is no more comprehensive tome on coffee anywhere, but it is not for the faint-hearted. It is also priced more like a textbook, so if you are curious about it, I'd recommend trying to get it first on an inter-library loan rather than buying it sight unseen.

Home Coffee Roasting, Revised, Updated Edition: Romance and Revival by Kenneth Davids: In the past decade, coffee roasting has gone from a fringe trend of true believers to an increasingly mainstream audience. Long considered the bible of the home-roasting movement, Home Coffee Roasting has been completely revised throughout with new, up-to-date sections on the latest developments in home-roasting equipment and provides step-by-step guidelines to the coffee-roasting process. The new edition also features: -A much expanded resources section for green beans and home-roasting equipment -The best techniques for storing green coffee beans -The new home roasters: how to evaluate and use them -Tips on perfecting a roast -Information on how to create your own blend. With over a dozen home-roasting machines newly on the market, and an ever-expanding number of stores and internet sites catering to the home coffee-roasting market, now more than ever Home Coffee Roasting is the essential book for every true coffee lover.

Espresso: Ultimate Coffee, Second Edition by Kenneth Davids: "Kenneth Davids writes with authority and panache. There's no one I'd rather read and learn from. He'll turn your kitchen into the espresso bar of your dreams-and the more aspiring baristas who read this book, the safer the country will be for the new world of lattes sweeping the nation." --Corby Kummer, The Atlantic Monthly "Kenneth Davids's new book blends the myths and history with the technology and culture that create this nouveau art form we call 'espresso.' It's the perfect companion while enjoying the pleasures of this magnificent beverage." NOTE: If you buy this one, make sure you are getting the second edition, as the first is quite outdated.

The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop, Revised and Updated Edition by Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger: A freshly updated edition of the best introduction to one of the world's most popular products, The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary covering coffee from its first use in Ethiopia in the sixth century to the rise of Starbucks and the emergence of Fair Trade coffee in the twenty-first. The book explores the process of cultivation, harvesting, and roasting from bean to cup; surveys the social history of café society from the first coffeehouses in Constantinople to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village; and tells the dramatic tale of high-stakes international trade and speculation for a product that can make or break entire national economies. It also examines the industry's major players, revealing how they have systematically reduced the quality of the bean and turned a much-loved product into a commodity and lifestyle accoutrement, ruining the lives of millions of farmers around the world in the process. Finally, The Coffee Book, hailed as a Best Business Book by Library Journal when it was first published, considers the exploitation of labor and damage to the environment that mass cultivation causes, and explores the growing "conscious coffee" market and Fair Trade movement.

And then, here are some links (from our website) of some great online resources and forums:

Coffee Review: This site is the online presence of the wonderful Ken Davids, whose great books gave many people their first look at the depth of the coffee scene. In addition to reviews of the most outstanding coffees available, the site is an extraordinary resource into the growing regions, preparation methods and nomenclature of the industry.

CoffeeGeek: The CoffeeGeek website, now boasting in excess of five million readers a month, is a portal into community-based features including a user-fed library of consumer brewing equipment reviews (the very best place to start if you are considering a purchase) and a seemingly endless online forum with discussions of every topic you can imagine. Use the search feature to drill down and get answers to your questions.

Espresso My Espresso: This is fun site, with the main attraction a 97-chapter personal journal that charts author Randy Glass' journey from newbie to home roaster to espresso aficionado and beyond.

Home Barista: If espresso has seized you and made you want to know more, this is a great place to start. The equipment reviews go well beyond performance characteristics of machines and grinders and help you really understand why good espresso is worth the investment of time and money. This is also a great resource for learning about the techniques you need to master to produce great espresso at home.

SCAA: The Specialty Coffee Association of America. This important trade group represents the growing sector of the coffee industry that roasts, serves and trades the highest quality coffees. The site has some great resource material and outlines the services and events provided by the association.

ICO: The International Coffee Organization (ICO) was originally started by the United Nations as a vehicle for linking coffee producer and consumer countries. Today, the ICO has a membership of 77 member countries (45 coffee exporting and 32 importing), and their site is a nice source of high level statistics and information about the global industry.

Bikes to Rwanda: The website of an amazing program launched by the owner of Portland, Oregon's famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters that spawned a custom-designed affordable bicycle that enables Rwandan coffee growers to dramatically improve their ability to move their coffees from farm to market.

Starbucks Gossip: Imagine an online forum where Starbucks employees from far and wide share their candid thoughts (good and bad) about the company. Its kind of like spying, but there's some fun stuff here to read.