We will be closed from Thursday 9th April until Monday 13th April. We will reopen on Tuesday at 8:30am ready for action…

Nyt påskefjellet!

Our webshop is finally up and running.

We currently only ship within Norway, but we are working on international freight rates as we speak, so hopefully we can ship worldwide within April / May.

Click the menu button “webshop” on top of this site to have a look. (Obviously)

We will be roasting and selling some new coffees from Thursday the 26th of March:

Amor de Dios from Bolivia

Australian Mountain Top (espresso roast)

We also roast Aricha #28 both light for Aeropress, french press and filter brewing and a darker roast for moka pots and espresso brewing.

We hope you like the new coffees.

Next week we will start selling some newly arrived coffees from Brazil.

Here is a nice review written by Jason, a barista from Calgary, tasting our Cielito Lindo coffee after a tour in Europe.

It is nice to have someone remind us of how good this coffee really is. It is very easy to get used to luxury lots once you have limited amounts of it in house.

I will for sure make myself a cup or 2 of this Honduras cup of excellence coffee to enjoy in the sunny weather here in Oslo.

Have a nice sunday.

I will arrange a cup tasting on Saturday the 21st of may at 13.00. We will taste samples that I collected on my trip to Ethiopia and there might be some other surprise coffees on the table as well…

The cupping is free and is open for all who would like to taste, but we have a limit of 8 people in the cupping room. First come first serve basis.

Here are some pictures from my Ethiopia trip:

Thursday the 19th of March we hosted a taste evening focusing on Kenyan coffees. Tim had a presentation of Kenya as a producing country and shared his thoughts and experiences from his recent trip to Kenya.
9 coffees were tasted, 8 Kenyans and a new Australian coffee that tasted fantastic. (More info on this coffee next week) The 8 Kenyan coffees were samples and we will buy the best lots based on this tasting and 5 rounds of previous tastings.

Kenya has had a fantastic year in terms of producing excellent coffees. Therefore the price for the coffees is slightly higher than previous years. We are looking forward to getting the new lots probably in June. Until then we are glad to announce some great new coffees to be launched within next week.

Below are some pictures from the taste evening. See more pictures from Kenya on our Flickr stream.

We managed to get our hands on some of the last of the Aricha coffees from last year, Aricha #28. Since it was vacuum packed as green coffee it still displays a lot of nice fruity aromas.

The best part is that we pushed the price on it, since it was from last years crop, so the price pr. 250g. is only Kr. 115,- as opposed to 160,- on the previous Aricha lots.

We will roast a light roast and a darker roast for espresso brewing on Tuesday the 24th of March.

There is only about 360 kilos, so we believe we will have enough aricha for the next month or two.

You can see a short film from Tim Wendelboe’s trip to Kenya in March 2009 here.

After spending a week in Ethiopia trying to get a better understanding of what is going on with their new trade model, I will try to explain what my impression is of their new trade situation. Let’s start with the beginning:

Ethiopian Government has changed their trading system for coffee from being traded at an auction as a lot based trade to an exchange trade based on categorized commodity bulk coffees. The reactions from the specialty roasters around the world was immediately negative because a bulk based commodity exchange made it impossible to buy small specialty lots direct from private mills. Some private mills have recently developed special coffees like Aricha micro lots, Beloya, Misty Valley etc. After the new legislations these coffees have no category in the exchange since they are natural processed coffee from Yirga Cheffe. The new rules state that all coffee from Yirga Cheffe is to be sold as washed Yirgacheffe coffee in line with Ethiopias newly branded and trademarked categories. Most specialty roasters will say that this is a tragedy as we are more concerned about our own business and these wonderful coffees than anything else. But before we react with anger it might be a good idea to listen to what the people who have engineered the new system have to say about the situation.

The New legislation is implemented by politicians who believe in the benefits of this new system in long term. After neglecting coffee as the most important income for Ethiopia for many years, the government is now taking action in order for Ethiopia to make more money and add value to their exported wealth.
The Ethiopian government is trying to stop black market sellers and Exporters that did not pay their farmers. They also believe that the new system will be adding value to their coffee in long term by selling it as a trademarked coffee and by owning the rights to these trademarks.

One of the new actions taken is implementing a new punishment in terms of a fine for getting caught smuggling coffee from one region to another. The fine is so severe  that it is not worth taking the risk for most coffee farmers and exporters. This law is put to life to try to protect Ethiopias branded coffees such as  Yirgacheffe and Sidamo from being blended with other less unique tasting coffees. Black market sales has been a huge problem for Ethiopia and a lot of foreign trade has been lost because exportable qualities have been sold on the black market within Ethiopia.
The new system will be tracking all coffee that is produced and sold to be able to control what exporters are doing with Ethiopia’s black gold.

So, will we get more natural processed coffee from Yirga Cheffe in the future?
Well, it is still possible to buy coffee direct from farms that are more than 200 hectars or from unions and cooperatives.
Although this still does not cover the Aricha coffees as these are milled at a private mill, I am quite optimistic for these coffees in the future, especially after talking to government officials and several exporters. It seems like everyone is open to do whatever is necessary to make dollars for Ethiopia. They are thinking about the benefit of all Ethiopians and not just one single farmer or exporter.
The new system has just been put to life and since Ethiopia was desperate to change their way of trading coffee, the rules so far only concerns the bulk coffees (where after all Ethiopia is getting most of their income from foreign currency trade.)
Since specialty lots has not been a huge export for Ethiopia, these coffees have been put in 2nd place so far and will probably be handeled and promoted when the new system is running smoothly.
Therefore it looks like we can buy coffees such as sun dried Yirgacheffe direct from private mills in future years. We only need to be a bit patient. After all this change is made to protect Ethiopias most precious trade and the farmers who are making some of the very best coffees in the world.

We are running out of coffee from Finca La Lomita and the Aricha #32 is now sold out. Fortunately, we can assure you that some great new lots will arrive shortly. In the meanwhile we have a new espresso blend being roasted from Tuesday the 10th of March.

For more information, visit the TW espresso page in our resource section.