What’s In a Name?

It would come as no surprise to industry professionals or even your average coffee lover that specialty coffees have become, well, more specialized over the years.  Nowadays, coffees are segmented and differentiated by every conceivable measure: by country of origin, farm, varietal, crop year, processing method, micro-lot, altitude, roast, blend… you name it.

That’s a good thing.  It’s a sign that the coffee industry is evolving and maturing, providing consumers with more choices that can better meet their personal tastes and preferences.  We’ve moved beyond the days of offering consumers breakfast blend, french roast, espresso blend, and decaf.

It stands to reason that coffee names would now require additional information to describe more differentiated coffees.  To test the theory, we compared the names of coffees in our March 1997 tasting report of Straight Coffees from Africa with the names of coffees in March 2015 tasting report of Macro-Lot Coffees. Arguably, macro-lot coffees might even have relatively shorter names, given that they aren’t “micro” in some sense.

In the March 2015 tasting report, the average length of a coffee name was 28.3 letters, not counting the name of the roaster.  All of the coffees carried the country of origin, which accounted for an average of 7.7 letters.  So, roughly 21 letters were needed to describe the coffee beyond its country of origin.

I had to chuckle when I looked at the coffee names from March 1997.  Six of the twelve coffees were named “Kenya AA.”  That’s it.  “Kenya AA.” Two were named “Ethiopia Yirgacheffe” and two others were called “Ethiopia Sidamo.”  One of the coffees – Cafe del Mundo’s Smaldeel Estate – carried the name of the farm where the coffee was grown.  That was quite a novel concept at the time.

In any case, the average length of the coffee name in the March 1997 report was 12.9 letters.  The country of origin, when it was included, was 6.4 letters.  An average, roughly 7 letters were needed to describe the coffee beyond its country of origin.

Some will argue that this is a sign that coffees have become too fussy.  However, I appreciate the extra information and transparency.  It allows interested consumers to identify and purchase more differentiated coffees, arguably better quality coffees.  In many cases, consumers will pay more for these distinguished coffees, which in turn helps reward the growers and roasters who invest time, energy, passion, and money in producing these coffees.

Ron Walters, co-founder of Coffee Review, manages business operations, including CoffeeReview.com, marketing, and social media. He conceived of and helped pioneer the development of 100-point reviews in the specialty coffee industry. For the past twenty years, he has been engaged in strategy, marketing, and management of specialty food and beverage businesses.

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Meet Meredith Taylor, Counter Culture Coffee’s New Sustainability Coordinator

What is sustainable coffee?

As a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America Sustainability Council, Meredith Taylor says this question, as simple as it sounds, is somewhat unanswerable.

“We’ve wondered in the sustainability council if we should define sustainable coffee,” Taylor recently told Daily Coffee News. “But is that our job to do? Is it possible to do? I know it’s going to be difficult for us to know what we’re talking about as an industry if we’re not transparent about this.”

Transparency is among the key charges for Taylor in her new role as sustainability coordinator for Durham, N.C.-based roaster and wholesaler Counter Culture Coffee. CCC has long been one of coffee’s most forward-thinking companies, but its 8-year-old sustainability department has essentially been manned by one person until now, green coffee buyer and sustainability manager Kim Elena Ionescu.

Counter Culture Coffee Sustainability Coordinator Meredith Taylor

While Ionescu’s sustainability efforts have naturally leaned toward supply sustainability and issues at origin, Taylor says she hopes to help the company grow a more well-rounded sustainability approach.

“Think companies like Patagonia, Seventh Generation or New Belgium — when people think of sustainable companies, we want to be on that list,” says Taylor, who got her start in coffee as a barista then manager at Washington D.C.’s Peregrine Espresso. “We’ve done a lot toward sustainability in the coffee world, but not much outside the coffee world.”

To this end, Taylor says the company plans to look deeper inward. “This new position is meant to do a lot of the projects that have been thought of, but that have been put on hold,” she says. “We’re trying to figure out all the sustainability metrics we want to track internally and figure out procedures to measure those.”

For example, under Ionescu’s leadership, CCC has measured seed-to-cup greenhouse gas emissions for several years, but it has not yet tracked internal water usage. The idea is to develop a sustainability approach that reaches every part of the company, from origin to roastery to board room to wholesale delivery.

“We’re also figuring out good ways to report all this stuff,” says Taylor. “We want to be increasingly transparent, and part of that involves getting that raw data and transforming it into something usable, interesting and digestible.”

That digestible data, she says will improve both internal and external communications regarding the company’s sustainability plan. Says Taylor, “I’ve been talking a lot with marketing about how to better communicate the sustainability of our coffees, not necessarily to consumers, but to our employees and our partners.”

This goes back to the problematic question of defining sustainable coffee.

“How do we communicate that sustainability is a spectrum?” Taylor asks. “A lot of times, sustainability is presented as a dichotomy — ‘Is this coffee organic or is it not?’ Well, there are farms that are organic but not socially or environmentally sustainable. There is no clear definition of sustainable coffee, and we need to evolve our collective understanding of the spectrum.”

Taylor is spending some of here existing time simply brushing up on buzzwords and other corporate-speak — the unfortunate result of sustainability increasingly making good business sense. “There is a lot of that corporate-speak and jargon,” she says. “I think it’s important for us to understand how other companies talk about sustainability, even if we don’t want to use that language.”

CCC has launched a new sustainability section on its site, including several new blog posts from Taylor on the company’s sustainability program, as well as coffee sustainability issues, at large.

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

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A Specialty Coffee Guide to Boise, the Gem State Capital

Grant Shealy of Neckar Coffee. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Snugly hunkered up against the arid western foothills of the Rockies is the lush, low-key metropolis of Boise, Idaho. Geographically remote and politically conservative, the walls of this valley tend to resist winds of change, although with each generation comes some progress.

Coffeewise, this was manifested in the 1990s through a handful of early independent shops that staked their claim prior to the Starbucks invasion, and these remain the go-to shops for Gem State capital loyalists. Today, the sprouts of another generation in coffee are unfurling in the light of the high desert sun.

It is an electrifying time for artisan gastronomy in the Treasure Valley. Crafty, Northwest-style breweries are proliferating, the Treefort Music Fest is fast becoming an annual pin on the nation’s indie music roadmap, and in just the past few years Boise has cut ribbons on its first Whole Foods and its first Trader Joe’s — all significant milestones for consumer culture here.

Brian Wight, owner of eight drive-thru Dutch Bros Coffee franchise locations in Boise, has observed “a dramatic upswing in consumerism” over the past five years. “Our volumes are up 30 to 40 percent across our stores,” Wight tells Daily Coffee News. In 23 years the Oregon-based drive-thru company has erupted into 245 locations spread out over seven states, and only four of these stores have seating. Dutch Bros’ fifth-ever — and first in Idaho — seated location is slated to open at the intersection of State and 15th near downtown this coming August — a well-researched indication as an uptick in coffee consumption here.

Boise is a well-established enclave among college football fans, retirees, Mormons, and the NRA, but it also seems like potentially fertile ground for burgeoning micro roasters. Grant Shealy, affable 26-year-old proprietor of Neckar Coffee, is just that. Shealy’s got big plans for a brick-and-mortar Neckar flagship somewhere in the downtown area within the next year or two, and the coffee business is poised to push quality forward for all of Boise.

In the meantime, the city’s solid showing of old-guard indie drink-builders and handful of inspiringly up-to-date go-getters keep the people abuzz and the local industry heading in the right direction.

Here’s a roundup of the Boise coffee scene as it stands today:

Guru Donuts. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Yes, even Boise now enjoys a purveyor of rich, fluffy, yeasted vegan donuts, right alongside the maple-bacons and other inventive offerings in the downtown brick-and-mortar home of Guru Donuts, which opened in January 2015. An imaginative selection of fresh decadent square and circular sweets is available daily with coffee roasted by Hailey, Idaho-based Maps Coffee (not to be confused with the Kansas micro-roaster of the same name). “We decided to partner with Maps Coffee because they do offer a lighter, brighter roast,” manager Darryl Vickers told Daily Coffee News. “We wanted to be unique in the valley with that, and we feel it pairs well with our donuts.” Jens Peterson, son of the owners of longstanding Hailey roaster Grace Organics, is the skateboarder at the helm of Maps. Grace has been roasting for 25 years, but Maps, the boutique-style next generation, has gone from apprentice to primetime independence with Guru as its first commercial client.

Neckar Coffee. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Neckar‘s Diedrich IR2 lives happily behind the scenes in the Woodland Empire Ale Craft brewery space. These two businesses, along with the occasional food trucks that swing by to sling munchies to sudsy Woodland patrons, constitute an exemplary ground zero of Boise’s upward trajectory in creative sips and eats. You can find Shealy and company serving careful pourovers at the new Boise Farmer’s Market most Saturdays, as well as select streets and events around town. Within the coming months, pending requisite approvals from the city, Neckar intends to step up production to break into the metropolitan wholesale market.

The Crux. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

The Crux is a cavernous coffeehouse by day and a venue by night, with gritty local art on every wall and most of the square footage wide open for performances. Local and traveling bands can rock out then return the next morning for some Hair Bender, of the dog. Owner Bob Cooper fell in love with the Stumptown coffee served to him by gifted baristas at the Albina Press in Portland, Ore., the city in which he still runs a hardwood flooring business from afar. Despite all training and scrutiny he, with some dismay, recalls going through in the process of earning Stumptown’s approval, he nevertheless jumped at the opportunity to be Boise’s exclusive brewer of Stumptown, a deal he believes the company would not have made today. Four years later, he’s still pretty sure he serves the best coffee in town, and it’s hard to argue. Bob is surprised that most sales are still just grab and go, but that’s life downtown. The upside is that for those that prefer to take it slow, there’s usually plenty of room on the Crux’s several couches and sunny storefront window tables.

Flying M. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

The Flying M Coffeehouse is kind of like Boise’s Central Perk, only bigger and with less upholstery. Its doors first opened in 1995 and it quickly expanded from a small space into the larger space next door. Their perennial espresso blend and similarly enduring House Blend help maintain the M’s slot among shops most often recommended to visitors as either the best in town or at least better than the nationwide chains with which they would seem to compete. Also on offer is a consistent selection of single-origin coffees in whole bean form, in-house baked goods, and smoothies. Flying M’s zanily colored walls and furnishings, local art, and tchotchkes galore are rounded off with a cheeky novelty gift shop occupying a semi-cordoned corner inside the cafe. Meanwhile, behind the counter, a shiny new Nuova Simonelli Aurelia II rules, and if you squint through the towers of branded merch you may spy a WBC sticker on the back of one of their grinders. Service is speedy and friendly, the atmosphere is bustling, and the clientele is as eclectic as it gets here in Les Bois.

Dawson Taylor downtown

Dawson Taylor is the earthy farm-worker-themed mosaic counterpoint to Flying M’s hypercolor alternative vibe. Both opened in 1995, both have one downtown location and second locations at their roasteries, and both do wholesale, although DT is the company more likely to knock more than once in pursuit of your business should you be setting up shop anywhere around Boise. Artsy, unassuming, and mildly granola, the DT downtown shop is on the northernmost pedestrian block of 8th Street, which is lined with posh eateries, apparel shops, and nightspots. The ample front patio seating is a hub of community chitchat, and their paralysis-inducing selection of coffees includes no fewer than eight decafs, along with single-origins and blends. Brewed behind the counter there’s a daily rotation of three regulars and one decaf, plus all manner of espresso and milk drinks. It’s fascinating to note that, like the set of a Hollywood underdog movie, directly across the narrow pedestrian street is the lone Boise location of the sleek 16-store Washington-based coffee chain Thomas Hammer. It may take a harrowing dodgeball tournament to decide which one will ultimately prevail.

Afro Phil, the man. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Afro Phil is unapologetically Afro Phil. If you meet the man in any food-related context, he will probably introduce himself as Afro Phil, and, really, every town should have an Afro Phil. A West Boise nanoroaster with a driver’s license that actually reads Phil Tegethoff, Afro Phil roasts one kilo at a time on a diminutive Probatino in his home garage, surrounded by his kids’ toys and bikes. He’ll slide up the door and sell coffee right there, though he also sells online, ships through the mail, and will even deliver it locally. Afro Phil has been operating for about two years and maintains a few cafe accounts. He estimates his business is at this point roughly half retail, half wholesale, although he fell a bit behind in the wake of recent equipment snafus for which he found service and support to be painfully unresponsive. Now back in the saddle, Phil continues logging every roast in a spiral notebook and cupping obsessively throughout the day, striving for balance, consistency, and his marque “smoothness.” He also hosts occasional public cuppings in his backyard, in an effort to create a better informed and more zealous Boise coffee culture.

Java Cafe downtown location. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Java’s trademarked tagline reads “Wake Up and Live,” although as head barista and quality control tech Jude Claffey points out, their official coffee slogan is “Coffee That Rocks.” It’s a play on the volcanic coffee island moniker as well as the fact that Java’s owner, Todd Rippo, is a guitarist living in Sun Valley that has jammed with the likes of Bruce Willis. The drink on Java’s menu called the Keith Richards — a quad-shot Mexican mocha — is born from Rippo’s actual experience rockin’ out with Keef. Founded in Ketchum in 1991, Java has six total locations, two of which are fixtures of the Boise coffee scene. The downtown spot opened in the mid 1990s, followed a few year later by a second location in Boise’s quaint Hyde Park neighborhood. Downtown, Java has high ceilings, Warhol on every wall, and is the only Java not nestled in a repurposed house. The Hyde Park location is a freestanding house with a spacious patio and porch, and an interior with couches and a hearth providing living-room coziness. Both offer full breakfast and lunch, with organic, Fair Trade coffee by San Diego roaster Café Moto.

Big City Coffee. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

Big City Coffee and Café is equal parts chow-house and coffeehouse. The tidiness of the shop’s façade and picnic-table sidewalk seating plays against the circus of old-timey signage exploding within, while in-house baked goods and a diner-style, all-day breakfast and lunch menu scores high marks with the locals. Its barn-like exposed wooden rafters and well-worn wooden furnishings are all country, though Big City Coffee is the go-to spot for a hot cup or capp in Boise’s thoroughly urban Linen District, as well as at the Boise Airport, where it recently established a presence. Big City’s coffees are roasted by Doma Coffee Roasting Company, the only Idaho roaster chosen as a finalist in the 2014 Good Food Awards. Doma also garners accolades for its beautiful packaging, part of its private label service for Big City’s retail packages, including Big City’s Joe Cans fundraising line, proceeds of which go to support breast cancer awareness and early detection efforts. Joe Cans include such feistily named offerings as the Big Titty Blend, Bra-zilian Brew, and Double D Decaf.

Janjou Patisserie. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

The interior of Janjou Patisserie is almost defiantly precise and pristine, in Apple Store-like contrast to the rest of the town’s rustic, mountain-sporty aesthetic. Since 2008, the artisan boutique bakery has served delicately crafted pastries alongside traditional espresso drinks, including a faithful 6-ounce cappuccino and 4-ounce macchiato, which are rarities in this town. Their coffee is roasted by Lizzy’s Fresh Coffee, an outfit based in Ketchum, Idaho, a few hours east of Boise. (See the “Firestarters” column of the January/February 2012 issue of Roast Magazine for more on Lizzy’s founder and roaster Liz Roquet.)

The Kahve Coffee sign, made by Boise artist Noel Webber. Photo by Howard Bryman for Daily Coffee News.

The Boise International Market is an exciting recent addition to Boise’s evolving culinary tapestry, with Kahve Coffee situated right up front. A coffee lover’s window to the world, Kahve might also be the closest thing Boise has to a multi-roaster café. Their Turkish comes from Turkey, their Arabic-style is made with coffee from Jordan, and their Cuban is, well, from Miami. For drip and espresso, Kahve serves fresh roasts from Full Circle Exchange, a non-profit social enterprise brand based in the neighboring city of Eagle, that is devoted to empowering women and lifting communities out of poverty through sustainable commerce. The gorgeous and intricately gilded glass “Coffee & Tea” sign hanging over Kahve was hand-made by legendary Boise sign artist Noel Weber over 30 years ago. The piece is so unique that Weber bought it back when its original home café shuttered, and it took a fair amount of convincing by Kahve to get Weber to part with it again. Or so the legend goes as told by Omid, the friendly and knowledgeable Kahve barista. In Persian, Omid’s name means “hope,” which makes him a fine representative of Boise’s budding coffee scene.

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Hario Introduces Wine-Bottle-Shaped Cold Brewer

In summer-fun accoutrements news, Japanese coffee brewing equipment manufacturer Hario has introduced a wine-bottle-shaped version of its cold immersion brewer, Mizudashi.

The brewer is a variation of Hario’s existing Mizudashi cold brewer, which maintains a cylindrical shape. The new model, called Filter-In Coffee Bottle, more closely resembles Hario’s bottle-shaped tea brewer, which was released in 2013.

Made at Hario’s manufactuing headquarters in Koga, Ibaraki, the Filter-In Coffee model includes a 650ml-capacity glass bottle, removable silicone rubber stoppers and spouts, and a polyester mesh filter with a plastic strainer. Hario suggests starting with cold water, and allowing for an eight-hour extraction time in the refrigerator.

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

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We Talk Swedish Coffee Breaks with ‘Fika’ Co-Author Anna Brones

Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. Photo by Luc Revel

In Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, a new book co-authored by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall, coffee in the United States is associated with speed — it is something to be consumed early to engage the senses, or to be used for a quick pick-me-up.

Fika, a word that acts as both a verb and noun in Swedish, represents a contrary approach to coffee consumption. It is simply the pairing of coffee, or tea, and homemade baked goods, and savoring them with the people around you.

“At the end of the day, fika and this book is about taking a break having a coffee, eating something great with it,” Brones told Daily Coffee News shortly after the book’s publication. “Who doesn’t like that?”

For Brones and Kindvall, the book represents something of a Swedish soul connection. Both credit the scratch baking of their Swedish mothers as inspiration. Brones, who is American-born and living in Paris, says family members in Sweden were obsessively sharing links to a Huffington Post piece on the book that was reposted in the native language.

“I think it is hilarious — they wouldn’t need the book in Sweden,” says Brones. “In Sweden, [fika] is just kind of a normal thing that you do.”

The book contains recipes for dozens of traditional Swedish homemade tarts, breads, tortes, cakes, cookies, buns and more. There are also a few modern takes on Swedish baked goods, which are framed in the book by chapters such as “The Outdoor Season” and “Modern-Day Fika.”

A brief history of Swedish coffee and coffee culture lead into the recipe sections. Recipes themselves are put in cultural and culinary context: How might this fruitcake be an improvement over the hard, dry cakes that make Americans shudder? Or, What are the traditional baked goods in a traditional Julaftong (Christmas Eve spread)? There is also some wonderful explication of Swedish language. One could most likely speak fluently in a Swedish home kitchen if her or she were to commit the pages to memory.

Brones and Kindvall pitched a hard manuscript of the book to Berkeley, Calif.-based 10 Speed Press, associated with a division of Random House, three years ago. They got an immediate green light, and Fika was officially released last month. Some glowing reviews from the likes of the New York Times T Magazine, Cool Hunting and Paste Magazine have propelled the book to early success.

“Part of the reason we did the proposal was because, even at that time, Scandinavian food culture was just coming into fashion,” Brones says, citing the growing Fika coffee chain in New York, as well as other independent single shops that borrow the name in Sydney, London and Seoul. “I think there has been a kind of reattachment to the word.”

In the book publishing world, timing is always a gamble. “You’d probably have a hard time pitching a book on kale smoothies and mason jars right now,” says Brones, who maintains Foodie Underground, writes about food for numerous publications, and dove into coffee writing through her work with Sprudge.

Asked whether she’s tired of the word fika after three years of pitching, writing, editing and promoting, Brones says, “No, I love fika. Fika is the best thing ever.”

Brones and Kindvall are currently in the midst of a mini book tour, including upcoming signing events in New York, Seattle, Portland and London. Visit Brones’ Foodie Underground for the latest.

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

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Chinese Roaster DTS8 Relocating Headquarters to Vancouver from Shanghai

DTS8 Coffee Co. Ltd.

Chinese green coffee importer and roaster DTS8 Coffee Company today announced plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Shanghai to Vancouver, British Colombia, citing plans to capitalize on the growing North American specialty coffee market.

DTS8’s Chinese roasting operations, based in Huzhou, and sales operations in Shanghai will be unaffected by the move, and the six-year-old company plans to open its new corporate offices Aug. 1 of this year.

“The relocation will strengthen DTS8 by hedging the country risk associated with doing business exclusively in China,” the publicly traded company said in today’s announcement. “It will allow DTS8 to pursue new revenue opportunities in the North American green bean coffee market.”

DTS8 currently roasts markets and wholesales coffees for numerous private label partners, while its own brands include DTS8 Premium, Single Origin Premium and Don Manuel, an all Colombian blend. The Don Manuel brand represents a licensing agreement for branded Colombian coffee with New York-based Coffee Holding Company.

“This relocation is focused on implementing necessary measures with a view towards improving our operations in China, increasing revenues for the benefit of our shareholders, and to minimize the negative perceptions associated with being a solely China based company,” DTS8 Chairman Alex Liang said in a statement. “DTS8 plans to expand its footprint with a steady flow of roasted and green bean coffee products targeted at the growing North American gourmet coffee market and allowing us to be well-positioned for future growth opportunities in China and North America.”

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

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Lineup for the Barista Guild of Europe’s Inaugural CoLab Event in Prague

The Barista Guild of Europe has announced the speaking lineup for the inaugural CoLab event in Prague, which involves a day of educational content framed by two half days of exploring the city’s coffee scene.

CoLab is being hosted in collaboration with Coffee Embassy from May 21-23. The 22nd, the big education day, will include the following speakers:

The speaking lineup was coordinated in collaboration with Tamper Tantrum, the live and online lecture and discussion coordination and broadcasting project created by Colin Harmon and Steven Leighton. Incidentally, Harmon and Leighton have somewhat formalized Tamper Tantrum this year after five years of informally staging panel discussions, individual interviews, podcasts and speaking engagements on all things coffee. Harmon and Leighton have added World Coffee Events marketing manager Jen Rugolo to the team, and TT now boasts of being “one of the world’s premier platforms for coffee bickering, brainstorming, and live speaking engagements.”

After the Prague event, which costs guests €85, the BGE plans to host an additional 2015 CoLab in Paris, and it is seeking interest for partners for 2016 events in other cities. The group has more on the Prague program here. And if you want a head start, check out our guide to Prague coffee.

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

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