Ethiopia, November 2011: 1
(First off, photos and video will be uploaded when I get a bit more reliable internets! Second: I might have got many details and spellings wrong here, so if I learn new, contradictory information to what I’m writing now I’ll correct myself as soon as I can.)
SUNDAY
I got about two hours of restless sleep in Addis Ababa before boarding another flight to Dire Dawa, closer to the areas where Harar coffee is grown. Good thing first on the program was cupping at the Moplaco offices, the original headquarters set up by Yanni P. Georgalis in 1972. Admasu, the representative from Moplaco, gave a quick tour of the facility- office administration and bag printing taking place in one building, milling in another. It’s the first time I’ve seen processing machinery built in beautiful solid wood, taking the coffee through destoners, metal magnets, size graders, shaking beds etc to finally be hand sorted on the long tables where 150 women work across three daily 8 hours shifts, preparing the final bags for export.
The cupping room at Moplaco is run by fellow Q grader Mignot, and as the Probat sample roaster cooled down in the background we cupped Harar A, B and C: A representing the Harar Boldgrain from the areas around Harawach’a, Mesela, Jaja, Abaye, Genemi, Mucha Roba and Hirna in East Harar, B representing the Harar Longberry from around Bedesa, Gelemso, Mich’eta, Asbe Teferi and Mechera in the West, and C; the Arusi (not exported as Harar but growing in the geographical region) that grows around Asela, Huruta and Bulala. Feeling slightly more human from the caffeine, a breakfast of malawa pancakes and jam, and playtime with Lily the dog, the drive south-east from Dire Dawa to Harar was a lovely trip through an Ethiopian Sunday; the winding roads through the terraced hills were bustling with people, smiling kids, trucks piled high with goods, donkeys, goats and cattle.
The paved road ended at Dengego and on a dusty gravel road Solomon the driver guided us past beautiful Lake Alem Maya till we finally pulled up to Abdullah Mome’s farm in Hulanjente, Dawe. There are four main types of coffee growing in Ethiopia, the garden type where other food crops are often found, plantation coffee where coffee is the sole crop, and the wilder forest and semi-forest. Abdullah’s farm is of the garden kind, and his approximately 1000 coffee trees, while not heavy with cherry, looked healthy and strong. In some places the Wanza tree was used for shade, a tree that carries a seed very similar to coffee in shape and size- and while considered a defect- it sometimes makes it all the way to the coffee roasters and won’t be detected till it’s high density makes itself known by the noise it makes going through a grinder. The cherries on Abdullah’s coffee trees were still mostly green as harvest won’t take place till December/January, and during that time he employs around 40-50 people to help with the picking. As with all Harar (due to lack of water and scarcity of farms) his coffee is then sun dried before it’s sold on. It’s the first time I’ve seen coffee trees as tall as Abdullah’s, most of the stock around 80-90 years old and easily 2.5-3 meters high.
While surely making harvesting the top branches a little more challenging, the only time he prunes his trees is if they are damaged or affected by the parasite plant Digolo- another first that had me very confused. Somehow, on the same branch coming off coffee rootstock, you get one shoot going off into coffee flowers and cherries and another shoot goes off and is the Digolo plant. We saw some trees that had been affected by this and therefore pruned down to the size coffee trees I’m more used to from other countries. I asked him if he saw a change in the productivity of the trees when he pruned and while he said that it increased, perhaps the risk of upsetting the natural rhythm of the trees prevented him from implementing pruning to increase the yield from the rest of his field.
Leaving Abdullah’s farm and heading back to Harar we stopped for a quick lunch break and I got a snap of our crew (will upload later!): Admasu, Solomon, Mengistu who drove the other car and Tsegaye who helped translate between Amharic and Oromian. And if you’re wondering what this all looked like then I also took a 360 pan of the Harar hillsides from the top of some rocks. (coming soon!)
As we drove past some agriculture and technical universities I started wondering about the work that goes into researching the varietals of coffee in Ethiopia. The seed stock here is often said to have thousands of varietals, unmapped and unexplored. It’s been interesting to follow the popularity of the Ethiopian Geisha when grown and marketed by producers in Latin America, highlighting the untapped potential of Ethiopias natural varietals. I was told that a research centre in Machara has been centered on developing two varietals, one that is coffee borer resistant and one that has higher yield. Only two years into the ground, it’ll be another couple of years till we can see how these two varietals perform and what they taste of.
Back in Harar and starting to think ahead to tomorrow’s visit to the Exchange, a lengthy discussion ensued trying to understand the changes and new structure in how coffee is now traded. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has been confused by this and it was great to finally have a chance to pose all my stupid questions to someone who works on the ground here and could clear up a few things. Not that I now fully get it or have stopped having questions! For Admasu and Moplaco the new system certainly has brought with it some challenges. As far as I understand, the farmers now bring their parchment (another confusing thing I got cleared up: here, parchment refers to what I normally call cherry, while what I call parchment is called husk) to central pulping stations and sell it to people referred to as suppliers. They do also have the option of selling direct for internal consumption if they wish.
The suppliers then divide or consolidate the amount of parchment brought in into precise 30 bag lots of 85kg per bag, rough mill it into 60kg bags of greens, then sell these lots to the ECX. The Q graders at the ECX then take samples from all 30 bags of the lot to compile a 3kg sample, and check that the moisture level is at the acceptable export percentage of 11.5% or under. Using internal and SCAA cupping sheets they score it, and grade it on an internal scale of 1-9 related to the defect count and cup quality (their 1-2 is specialty lots, while 3-9 will be commodity lots.) Anything below 5 can not be exported and is sold for internal consumption only. Based on grading and cupping they then produce a description and price for the coffee which is then offered to the exporters. They then decide on which lots to buy, but unfortunately without having had the chance to taste the coffee first. If, upon having bought and cupped the lots themselves, the exporter decides to complain about the ECX’s decision on grade/price he may do so, and enter into a re-negotiation.
But if all is well, people like Moplaco will then send their purchased lots through their sorting and grading machines, removing leaves, stones, pieces of metal and other foreign matter, producing the export grades of Harar that we know: naturals are 3, 4 &5, and washed coffees are grades 1&2. At Moplaco, the final selections are hand picked before selling them on to importers or roasters around the world. After purchase, the exporters have to ship the lots out within 3 months, and every week they have to report to the Government which coffees they have bought, how much and of what quality. If the records don’t match the submitted data from the ECX of what they have sold, the exporters could be audited. Any coffee that is sorted out by the exporters a they clean coffees up to the highest grades has to be returned to the Exchange for re-sale to the internal market.
It’s more common in Yirgacheffe and Sidamo where farms are bigger and closer together- but if you’re a supplier who is organized as a co-op for those farmers who deliver to you, you can also be an exporter and thus bypass the ECX- achieving a more direct line to importers or roasters internationally. Not all co-ops used to export, but since the ECX many more if not most of them do.
MONDAY
The morning started with a chance to cup some coffee I brought with me, the pulped natural from Aida’s Finca Kilimanjaro. Mignot, Admasu and Maju the Moplaco Stock Manager like many cuppers in producing countries rarely get to try beans from other countries, so I always try to travel with something different from them to try, as well as some of their own country’s coffee to so they get an idea of what we do with them after we purchase. The Kilimanjaro was a hit, and even as a pulped they found the acidity to be a refreshing change from the more mellow natural Harars.
I also learned of a couple of alternative Ethiopian coffee drinks, the Kuti which is a drink made of roasted coffee leaves steeped in water or sometimes milk, and Hoja, roasted pergamino boiled in milk. Hopefully at some point on the trip I’ll get a chance to try these in person!
As we were now back at the warehouse on a workday, the women were in, hand sorting some of the remaining bags left yet to export, and I got some film of this: (to be uploaded)
The flight back to Addis was a bit of a nail biter, the plane having to return to base after 10 minutes flight due to a ‘mechanical problem’… Fire trucks meeting as as we touched down did not help to settle the caffeine fueled nerves, but having declared us fit for flight again after many manuals and computers had been consulted, we made the 40 minute flight without further interruption. Unfortunately this afternoons visit to the exchange has now been rescheduled to Friday, but armed with the info I now have about how the ECX works, I”m just excited to see it in person. Stay tuned for more!
New labels
Having changed the label for our espresso, we also knew we wanted to change the other labels for our coffees.
Like the Seasonal Espresso, there were areas of the label we felt had been successful and others we wanted to improve on. One thing we wanted to do was to standardise the information on the labels a little bit more. We also wanted to give a little more space to the name of the coffee – the most important thing on the bag in our opinion.
We’ve kept the colour scheme from before. Coffees with the red label like this are roasted to be enjoyed as brewed coffee, rather than espresso. For the single estate espressos we’ve tried to make things clearer again, and the switched colours carry over from the previous labels.
Finally there is the decaf espresso label which is still just black and white:
We’ll keep using the blue label for special coffees like Cup of Excellence lots or other unique coffees.
We hope you like the changes and we hope you keep enjoying the coffees!
The new Red Brick label
Labels are difficult things. So much you want to express, and so little room.
With the move away from the individual seasonal names we wanted to look at where we thought we had succeeded with label and where we wanted to improve it.
The core of the idea was to try and increase the transparency behind the creation of the blend. Rather than filling the label with lots of data we wanted to show the breakdown of the components visually, and then explain why we had chosen each component and what it brings to the espresso.
Blending has long been marketed as a dark hidden art, full of proprietary recipes. Our approach has been different but we thought it would be fun and interesting to break down what goes into our espresso a little more.
We’re always open to feedback, and while there is a little less data on the label itself there is still lots available on the full information sheets.
We hope you like the label, and that you love the espresso too!
Introducing Red Brick
For the last three years we’ve changed our Seasonal Espresso four times per year, and named each blend after the seasons. We feel it has been a great success, especially when it comes to generating interest and enjoyment in the diversity of coffee, and breaking away from the idea that a blend has to taste the same all year round. However, as seasonal espresso blends became increasingly common, we felt that the original idea wasn’t as clear as we wanted. Coffee harvesting and arrival seasons do not align with our own weather or seasons, and our intention in changing the name of the blend was always to mark a new time of year coffee-wise, showcasing the freshest, tastiest of the newly arrived coffees we could get a hold of. Now we want to move away from any assumption that we change the name because we’re trying to construct ‘summery’ or ‘wintery’ flavours, or changing to ‘Autumn’ because it happens to be the time of the year when leaves starts falling to the ground. Our true message is to enjoy the coffees as they arrive from growers throughout the year.
In an effort to better reflect the diversity of coffee, and to better match the blend changes to the arrival of newly harvested coffees, we’re dropping the individual season names. The new name is Red Brick, which was chosen to reflect the changes in our own company – we recently moved our location to a red brick building.
The philosophy behind each new blend remains the same, and it is likely those changes will follow a similar time frame to the old Seasonal pattern, but not quite as regimented. We still plan to enjoy the full spectrum of what great Seasonal espresso blends can be throughout the year.
We’ve also changed the labeling to better reflect what is most important to us about the blend – the transparency of the components and to better explain why each is present in the blend and what flavours and qualities it contributes. We look forward to your feedback and we hope you enjoy the first incarnation of Red Brick.
Red Brick Seasonal Espresso – £7.50 per 350g
Launching our Espresso Subscription!
After many requests we’re very excited to finally be offering a subscription for our coffee roasted specifically for espresso! The popularity of our filter roast subscriptions have been very encouraging, and we hope that the convenience of setting up a monthly subscription for espresso will prove just as popular with our webshop customers around the world!
The beans you will receive will either be our current seasonal blend at the time of dispatch, a single origin or single estate espresso of our choice, or something we’ve brought in and roasted just for you, our subscribers. Unlike our filter subscription, which will remain at 350 grams of whole beans, the espresso subscriptions will be of 500 grams of whole beans , giving you more to play with! It will ship on the third Thursday of every month.
It is available for 6 or 12 months, and as UK, Europe and World depending on where you are located according to Royal Mail’s database.
Click here to have a look,
we hope you’ll enjoy!
Flat White’s New 4 Group Synesso
We thought people might enjoy this little video John made of our installation of Flat White’s new 4 group Synesso. The machine was a custom build – thank you Synesso! – and we had the panel’s powder coated too. We think the machine looks stunning!
John Gordon in the WBC Finals
We’re delighted that John has made it through two very tough rounds of competition to the grand final of the World Barista Championship. He is one of the 6 baristas who will compete tomorrow in Bogota.
We hope you’ll be watching it online here, and cheering him along. We will be! There is a schedule of competition here.
All of us at Square Mile are incredibly proud of his hard work, along with Jess’s amazing support and roasting of delicious coffees!
Representing the UK: John Gordon
Every competitor representing their country at the World Barista Championship was asked to make a short video. This one was put together with the generous help of Three Fold.
Webshop and subscription changes/closures May 30th- June 8th
Important changes to upcoming webshop and subscriptions affecting shipments May 30th-Jun 8th, please read & place orders early!
Due to the bank holiday on Mon May 30th, this webshop day will roast/ship Tues May 31st instead. June subscriptions will go out a couple of days earlier than normal, either May 31st or June 1st.
Due to the upcoming WBC in Bogota, webshop will be CLOSED Thurs Jun 2nd and Mon Jun 6th, then resume as normal Thurs Jun 9th.
We apologize for any inconvenience, and wish our John Gordon best of luck at the WBC!
Rwanda Cup of Excellence
In August last year I had the pleasure of serving as a juror in the 2nd Rwanda Cup of Excellence, to help select the best Rwandan coffees out of the 154 submitted lots that the National jury had already evaluated. It’s been a long time but I wanted to wait with this trip report till any coffee we bought was actually here, and now it is, so here we go.
After nearly missing my connection through Nairobi I arrived in Kigali to no bags, but thankfully local Technoserve rep and fellow juror Matt Daks knew how to work the Rwandan lost luggage system and got my bags sent in on the afternoon flight. While waiting for that, I tagged along to a cupping at the Rwanda Trading Company, hoping to find some gems to take home even if I lost out in the COE auction. It was a nice warm up to the week of cupping ahead, it’d been a while since I’d had a great Rwandan table and in spite of the infamous potato defect I have fond memories of the Nyamagabe we used in the WBC 2008. Rwandan coffees in my head were all like that; soft, light and sweet, with some floral notes and a delicate acidity, so I was hoping to have that profile broadened a bit.
Cupping at RTC
Mickey and Mallory at Matt's House
After meeting up with my lost luggage and the rest of the judges, we boarded a bus to Rwamagana where we would be staying for the week, each day making a roundtrip to the cupping lab in Kayonza. The beautiful rolling hills of Rwanda covered in lush greenery, the brick red soil and the trucks carrying loads of vibrant yellow bananas had everyone bring out their cameras snapping away from the bus windows, and I suddenly felt very much like a tourist. However a placement on a COE jury is anything but a leisurely week away from the office, so after a restless night of being kept awake by the mosquitoes buzzing around on the other side of the netting, the first day of coffees saw us straight into calibration.
Cupping lab
Tables at the ready
Lunch tent
Jurors spend their first day cupping test tables of varying qualities to discuss flavours and align scores as much as possible, a great way of warming up and get an overview of what the week will bring. Potato reared its ugly head almost immediately, and I was hoping it’d be the first and last time we encountered it as it’s an immediate grounds for disqualification. During lunch I had a nice chat with Tharcisse and Eliane from Burundi who were observing the competition in preparation for the COE expanding into their country in the next couple of years. I know very little about Burundian coffees so I’m very excited to see how that goes!
That evening we had a cocktail party back at the hotel where the Mayor of Rwamagana, the head of OCIR and my old colleague Grant, now Managing Director for the COE, gave a few speeches that reminded us of the importance of what we were there to do, the notion that behind every cup is a community, families and high stakes should they be cut out of the running or make it to auction. One of the things you can never forget judging these competitions is to be humble and do your very best to score fairly and appropriately. It’s an honour to be there to give a final verdict on the coffees that have already been scrutinized by the National Jury, and we had 45 of the finest coffees in Rwanda to evaluate in the next few days.
Addy, Marilyn, Matt, Andreas and me
The morning alarm clock proved unnecessary as monkeys clambering across the rooftops, cockerels greeting the sun and calls to prayer had me awake, if not widely so, at dawn. This first day of Round 1 presented three tables of eight coffees. Two of the coffees were cut for potato, but a couple of them scored up towards the 90 mark for me and I was pleased about the range of flavours I’d got to see. Apart from being a bit starstruck to be cupping with people like Jason, Tom, Yuko, Addy and Sunalini, I felt able to focus and score sensibly in spite of the heat. The backroom team who do a mountain of work roasting, weighing and grinding were doing a stellar job, and water was being poured with military precision from kettles so big I probably wouldn’t have been able to lift them!
National cuppers and crew
The roasters
Pouring the water
Addy, Marilyn, Susie, Emmertha, Laeticia, Sunalini, Jen, me and Yuko.
Grant and Jon
As exciting as cupping is it’s also exhausting, so we decided to take a quick trip to the Jambo Beach bar & restaurant that evening, and courtesy of Jason we managed to squeeze in a quick game of frizbee before dark.
Tom snapping an image you might have seen in the Dogs of Coffee calendar
I hoped jetlag and exercise would provide me with some good rest before the monkeys kicked off in morning and it must have worked as I woke up rested and early enough for there to still be some hot water left in the shower! A cup of African tea with boiled milk and ginger was just the ticket to set me up for cupping the remaining lots of Round One. There were no outright potatoes on the table on day 2, but fewer outstanding coffees as well, so through to Round 2 (and potentially auction) went 25 coffees out of the initial 45.
After the cupping was over we journeyed to the Rwacof Washing station in the Akagera region of the Eastern Province. Playing bus-tag with the national jurors the trip took us into stunning countryside, people popping up along the road everywhere and kids smiling and waiving to us as we passed. One of the things that struck me about Rwanda was how clean and tidy everything was, even in busy Kigali. People seemed to take a real pride in their surroundings, and besides their genius ban on plastic bags in the country there is also a mandatory 4 hour clean-up session every 4th Saturday, where even the president takes to the streets to spruce up anything in need of a tidy! Brilliant. Try instating that in the UK!
The Rwacof mill overlooks Lake Mugesera and is run by the Rwanda Milled Coffee Cooperative, with 600 farmers averaging 100-1000kg each bringing their cherries there to be processed. Nearly all coffee in Rwanda is of old Bourbon varietal stock from Reunion, the average farm having about 150 trees. Out of season the mill was quiet but still beautiful, and it’s one of those places I’d have loved to see in full operation during harvest time. Coffee in Rwanda has gone through a huge development in the last 10 years, from having only 2 washing stations in the country in 2003/4 they now have 168, and there are some concerns that that is now too many.
Lake Mugesera from Rwacof Mill
Rwacof drying tables
Washing tanks
Day 3 and Round 2 of cupping had us review the 25 coffees that had scored 84+ in the two first days and were potentially making it through to auction. In the end we lost three coffees that day and only 22 were put through, the top 10 of which were to be cupped again and ranked in Round 3 on the following day. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off in Kayonza for a bit of sightseeing, being sightseen (?) as much by Kayonza ourselves as we saw of them!
Kayonza main street
Wheelbarrow
For those in a hurry
Kayonza bike repair
Kayonza style
Kids appeared everywhere
Welding doors
Taxi
The evening had us return to Lake Jambo for dinner, more frizbee and some dancing, our last night in Rwamagana before returning to Kigali once the top 10 had been cupped in the morning.
Bird in sunset at Lake Jambo
The top 10 left me with two favourite coffees who eventually ranked 3rd and 4th overall in the auction. With Paul Songer as your head judge it’s always going to be ‘fun with statistics’-time one it’s all over and done with, and it was interesting to learn how how we all cupped compared to eachother and the average. As usual for me I cupped with a fairly wide range, not being afraid to score low or high as I saw fit. I think a good jury will have a mix of people who score wide and narrow, both experienced and newer cuppers, and cuppers from world wide markets. Turns out I cupped very similar to Addy from Iceland, Jen from Australia and John from the US, which I can’t be anything other than pleased with!
The bus trip back to Kigali was a blur of red dust, but at the hotel a quick dip in the pool had me feeling refreshed enough to indulge in a bit of market retail therapy with Marilyn, picking up some touristy local crafts (in among those imported from Tanzania and Kenya!). It actually felt a bit like being in London, you go to one stall in Spitalfields and they’re selling the exact same things as three stalls elsewhere in the market, and the stall down on Brick Lane, and the stall at Broadway! Nevertheless I’m a sucker for brightly coloured woven baskets (although not as much as Marilyn is! :p)
At the official OCIR dinner that evening we were treated to some fantastic music and dancing from a local troupe, speeches from Alex Kanyankole the Director General of OCIR, and Agnes Kalibata the Minister of Agriculture. She had visited us in Kayonza on one of the cupping days and was grateful and impressed with how focused and dedicated our work was, to the point that she barely dared say hello in case she interrrupted us. She also spoke of how the 100 million Rwandan Francs that the 2008 COE brought in had been used to improve the situation for the farmers, providing them with livestock, better infrastructure and social developments. There was a real pride coming through from the organizers in how they were the only country in Africa to be represented in the COE, and that the country as a whole were able to use coffee as one of the driving forces to progress away from a difficult history and improve the path ahead for their young population. In fact, out of the 16 national cuppers that initially screened the submitted lots, 7 performed well enough to be considered for a place in the International jury, which has never happened before. They were all young and driven and and I was pleased to see that the majority of them were girls too! In the end, Emmertha and Laeticia were the two selected to cup with us, but the others were all part of the backroom crew running the show during the cupping days, and Agnes encouraged the industry at large to really make use of the fact that their national cuppers are among the best in the world. As the award ceremony took place and we had the prizes from 22nd to 1st place handed out, the room full of people had an excited energy about it that I’ve never felt in previous COE’s. As the day came to a close I got to shake hands with the Prime Minister of Rwanda (!), and I couldn’t wait to see how the auction was going to pan out for these coffees that I’d got to know over the past few days.
We’ve now finally taken delivery of our 8 boxes of MIG/Buremera, from the Maraba sector of Huye in the South Province. They wet process the Bourbon cherries and dry the parchment on tables in full sun at 1800 masl, and we shared the 37 box lot with friends from Poland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland! It will launch in the webshop soon and be around for a limited time only.
