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February 25, 2014
We’ve all seen those “Gone For The Season” signs tacked up in windows of small mountain town shops sprinkled all over Colorado’s back country. Reminding passerby’s and locals of the several months of visitors and memories gone in a flash and never to be forgotten.
Here at Corvus, we experience similar seasonal changes as we go through coffees at the Roast Works. We have been moving through some coffees recently here at the shop so quickly that they may only be on the shelf for a month or two. And in order for you, our valued patron, to understand why we go through coffees so rapidly, I’d like to let you in on couple of our secrets about how we select our coffees and why some are here and gone in what seems to be the blink of an eye.
First, I will share a question one of our employees posed to me the other day. He asked, “Is it just me, are we getting better coffees in, am I starting to appreciate coffee more, or are you doing something different in Roast Works which is improving the quality and taste?”
The simplest answer I could give to this question is we are finding better coffees into our shop. As we get samples in from around the world we find that the more we search, experiment and broaden our horizons, the more often we hone in on better coffees. The reality is, as long as you have exceptional coffees and you seek an understanding of a specific bean, you are going to get an amazing roast.
As a roaster, my goal is to constantly improve at what I do and to offer a better product than I did the day before. To do that, I keep my ear to the ground and broaden our supply chain to extend to find extraordinary coffees which exist out there somewhere. Phil and I are constantly talking about what is needed to find the best coffees and improve the quality of our stewardship of the bean. What we keep circling back to is the basics of bringing in new samples, roasting, and blind cupping as much as possible.
Last month alone we sampled over a hundred coffees before selecting only one. We didn’t look at the region, the price, the importer or a number of other factors in advance; beyond asking for cleanly processed coffees which are fresh crops. We weed through our coffees based on traceability and quality of the cup.
It is comforting to know that there are importers which are seeking, as we are, continual improvement, and it is proved in the samples we are receiving. As we look back at the past few months, we’re pretty amazed to see that without purposely doing so, we’ve ended up purchasing coffees from only a select few importers and farmers.
And the reason these coffees are flying off the shelves? Well, quality and taste is the biggest factor here, but the second reason is some of these coffees we select are from such small farms that only five bags may be available. So, I may only have seven hundred pounds of a particular coffee which, inherently, results in it only lasting about a month or two.
Many roasters are (to some extent rightfully so) wary of such limited supplies. People are sometimes upset or sad that a coffee will be “Gone For The Season,” within a few short weeks of it becoming a new favorite for them. However, this is what gets me up every morning. The most exciting part of the job isn’t extending the duration of different coffees, but the arrival of new ones. With each coffee comes a story and with each story comes an experience.
We are going to be going through many seasons here at Corvus and we are excited to enjoy each moment of every season.
Now… I have a pallet of two new coffees arriving any moment… So I must bid farewell.
January 14, 2014
This morning I’m drinking our Volkopi Lintong coffee, planning the day, and doing some research on a new Rwandan lot which just dropped in the Roast Works. This is the first Rwandan coffee that I have personally roasted, and the green coffee on from this lot is a beauty; low defect count, even screen size, and uniform color.
This coffee comes from the Nyamasheke district of the Western Province in Rwanda. We’re calling it Kivu Kanzu, Kanzu being the washing station and Kivu from Lake Kivu which is near the washing station. Kivu is also in reference to the Kivu Arabica Coffee Company, which has a huge hand in producing this coffee. Farmers in this area began to struggle to afford milling and processing around 2010. Farms in this area are very small often have only 1000-8000 coffee plants. Each plant on average produces about a pound to a pound and a half of green coffee in a production year, and farms of this size have a significant difficulty financing operations outside of the harvest season. The Kivu Arabica Coffee Company provided this financing, which let the farmers stop worrying and get back to farming. And it shows in the fact these farmers are now producing award winning coffees.
As a roaster it's easy to have this romantic idea of being able to go to a little farm to make a big difference, fly back with a pallet of coffee, and roast it while telling stories of how I helped mill the beans and eat a cherry off a tree. While I am looking forward to knocking that off my bucket list someday, I’m equally excited to work with importers and mills which contribute to a larger framework of sustainable practices around growing quality coffee and find coffees that are more beautiful that you can imagine.
Now back to the warmth the roaster.
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