Finally the new coffees from the 2013 crop is starting to arrive. Apart from the delicious Tekangu that arrived a month ago, we are now starting to sell some shade dried coffees from the farm Los Pirineos in El Salvador. There are 3 lots that were specially prepared and processed after our specifications for sale from this week.

The two light roasted coffees are of two different varieties, Pacamara and Bourbon Elite. We also have a Bourbon Elite roasted for espresso.

I am also very excited to launch the second harvest from Finca Tamana. The June harvest from 2012 was somewhat a slightly muted coffee. The November / December harvest is now for sale and fortunately it has a lot more character, intensity and fruity flavors. Simply put; it is a much better coffee,  and for that I am extyremely excited as we have put so much effort in to improving this coffee together with Elias.

You can order all the new coffees  in our web shop, and yes, we do finally ship international orders as well.

Hope you like the new coffees.

Los Pirineos from Tim Wendelboe on Vimeo.

I have just spent a week in Colombia together with Don Elias at Finca Tamana. He is now starting his main harvest, and in a couple of weeks we will be starting to sell the recently arrived November 2012 harvest in our store.

My reason for visiting was to follow up on all the projects we have started at Finca Tamana. You can view a short summary of all the work here, or watch my lecture from the 2102 Nordic barista cup. I have also been blogging a lot from the farm in the past year.

Don Elias has been working really hard in order to improve the farm since November. In fact, he was so determined to finish building new dryers, that he could not afford to fertilize his coffee plants 3 times like he wanted to. Although he got some funds from our 5 year anniversary to build more infrastructure on the farm, he had spent a bit too much on the infrastructure and therefore could only fertilize the coffee fields 2 times for this harvest. Regardless of this,  the shrubs looked really healthy and were producing well, so I am not concerned about this.

When I first came to the farm, I was met by the sight of a new huge cement patio on which Elias had set up sorting tables for the prickers to sort the coffee cherries before it is delivered for processing. In the past, the pickers have been sitting on a dirty ground sorting the cherries, which is  very bad both in terms of ergonomics and also because the cherries gets a bit dirty before processing.

With the new sorting tables, the workers are standing up sorting the cherries, and the tables have a hole in one corner in order to make it easier and more efficient to empty the cherries in to buckets and carry them to the receiving tank.

A new drying patio (bamboo structure covered with a surface of nylon) was also under construction. This will be covered with a plastic roof constructed so that it lets the hot and humid air out and ensures good air circulation. It will also be shaded  with a nylon net, in order to prevent the coffee from over heating. After some experiments the past year, Don Elias and I agreed that for the future he will shift to building tradidional raised beds as they have better air circulation and is more ergonomical for the workers. These will of course be placed under shade.

Elias had finally got hold of a high pressure washer too. (one that worked with his variable water pressure)  This was used to clean the wet mill, de-pulping machine, the sorting tables, buckets, patios and pretty much everything on the farm that could be cleaned with water. The farm now looks cleaner than ever.

The food was also better this time as Don Elias’ wife, Bella (right in picture below), had returned to the farm after being seriously ill for some months. I was very happy to see her in good form again, and Don Elias seemed a little less stressed during my visit. Maybe because not only is Bella cooking great food, she also takes care of the accounting among a lot of other tasks on the farm.

After spending a day at the farm discussing with Don Elias how we could improve the process even further, we sat down and wrote a plan for the rest of the week in order to make sure we got to execute all the ideas we had in mind.

First day we simplified the wet process a bit. Although it is just a detail, we decided to give the de-mucilaged parchment coffee a rinse with clean water before the fermentation.  The reason being to slow down the fermentation process slightly to prevent over fermentation on hot days and to clean off dirt from the actual cherry as they are quite dirty when they are being de-pulped.

The pickers had also implemented a flotation step of the cherries prior to sorting, to make the job a bit easier as a lot of the over ripe cherries float. This was done in a wheelbarrow, but Don Elias will get a better solution for this for the next harvest. This not only makes it easier to sort the cherries, but it also cleans the cherries a bit before de-pulping.

The result of our improved process at Finca Tamana is not only showing results in the cup, but also visually it makes a big difference. Just look at the picture below. The coffee to the left is processed by using the traditional dry fermentation and drying for 6 to 9 days in the sun like most farmers in Huila are doing. The coffee in the middle is produced by our technique, which implements more rinsing and a post fermentation and washing soak. (the parchment is soaked in clean water for 20 hours after washing) Then the coffee is dried carefully in the shade.
The coffee to the right is the pasillas, meaning the overripe and half ripe cherries that are removed from the middle coffee before processing and then being processed separately. This coffee is sold for a low price for local consumption in Colombia and is not suited for export.

We also tried to improve the drying process. In November, Don Elias was drying his coffee for up to 60 days as the climate in the area is humid and shifting between rain and sun every day. In order to try to speed it up, we moved the african beds he made last year, out from the shade and in in to the sun. The idea is to replicate the skin drying step they use in Kenya. The parchment is dried for the first day on these beds in the sun in order to get rid of the excess water and moisture from the washing process. This makes the risk of mould and fungus formation on the coffee a lot lower. The coffee needs to be stirred every 15 to 30 minutes the whole day. This seemed to work well on sunny days, but I am more worried about the rainy days. Therefore Don Elias will build some plastic cover in order to protect the coffee from rain yet still ensure good airflow.

After the first day of drying, the coffee is moved in to the shade where it is dried slowly for up to 30 to 40 days until the moisture content reaches 10-12%. In order to prevent the coffee from gaining moisture during the humid nights we are now piling up the coffee and covering it before it gets dark.

The coffee also needs to be stirred continuously throughout the whole drying process in order to ensure even drying. Don Elias hired one of the workers to do this all day, and this will of course add an extra cost to the production.

In addition, Don Elias is paying the pickers a much better salary than the average in the area. Also since the coffee is dried for more than 20 to 30 days longer than what is normal, he is struggling with his cash flow in order to finance the workers.
I therefore offered to pre-finance the coffee for him so that he does not have to worry about how to get money to pay his workers. We also discussed the price for the coffee and I promised that I will make sure the extra costs are covered in the final price of the coffee. Although our USD 4 per lb (453g) FOB price seems like a great price for coffee in Colombia, it is not necessarily a fantastic price for Don Elias, as the way he produces his coffee now is a lot more expensive than what is normal in Colombia. I have therefore decided we need to review the price with him and make sure we pay a price that is more sustainable. In other words, since we demand better quality, we better pay for it as well.

The last thing we did before I left the farm was to plant 4 new varieties. Hopefully some of them will taste great and be more resistant to leaf rust than the traditional Caturra variety he is growing. Since leaf rust is a huge problem in Colombia and Central-America, Don Elias planted some Castillo variety on the farm, 3 years ago. The Castillo will have it’s first production this harvest and I can’t wait to taste it as I have had a lot of good experience cupping this new variety in the past. The Castillo is an improved development of Variedad de Colombia which Don Elias is already growing with great results at Finca Tamana.

On the last afternoon, Don Elias threw a surprise birthday party for me. He had hired some mariachis from La Plata which were truly awesome. In the late afternoon we had organized a game of football (soccer) with the pickers and a team from another farm. Although team Real TW-ER Tamana lost 0-4, we had a good celebration in the evening with all the workers on the farm. I can’t wait to get back in July and November to see the further developments of this project.

I would like to follow up on the previous post where I wrote that coffee is too cheap. As stated, I think the reason why people still think coffee is too expensive is because of a lack of knowledge. Therefore I will try to give a small insight to how the trade works for us in Colombia.

The coffee trade is extremely complex, and it is traded in very different models not only from roaster to roaster, but also in the different origin countries. I truly believe that a transparent model is the best solution to making the consumers more aware and conscious of what they are buying and paying for. Lazy solutions like certifications and labeling as a trade model for roasters, is not something we do at Tim Wendelboe. The reason is that I think as long as the product is good, the price is fair and the trade model is transparent, there is no need for selling the product as a “fair trade” or as a “direct trade” product. We are in the coffee business, coffee is something we drink, hence we sell coffee for it’s taste.

Some have commented from the last post that the problem is not the coffee price itself, but the lack of transparency and the “greedy” middle men. To that I have to say that without middle men, we would not be able to sell coffee in Norway or any other non-coffee producing countries.

The coffee price to the farmer is too low; there is absolutely no doubt about that. Yes, there are a lot of companies that pay a very good price for coffee, but not all farmers have regular customers who are willing to pay top dollar for the coffee. The reality is that the majority of farmers don’t.

To get coffee to Norway we need to pay for a lot of services. These services are in many cases described as the “middle men” but are all a crucial part of getting the coffee to Norway. Let’s take a look at the price we payed for the coffee at Finca Tamana in June:

We payed USD 3.76 per lb of green coffee F.O.B. (Free on board, which means the coffee is delivered to the ship in Colombia for USD 3.76 per lb)

Out of this price, Elias (the farmer) ended up with a total of USD 2.73 per lb.

The $1,03 difference covered the following costs:

• 45 cents went to the exporter, in this case Mr. Alejandro Renjifo and Fairfield Trading. In Colombia, due to certain problems with other produce in Colombia, the exporter of the coffee needs to have an export license. Farmers do not have this, so they can use any exporter they prefer, but normally it is chosen by the buyer.  Out of the 45 cents, Alejandro has to pay for shipping of samples, export documentation, transport of coffee to the dry mill, transport from the mill to the ship, interest on the pre-financing of the coffee, etc. In addition, Alejandro needs to make a living, pay employees, pay rent on his offices, etc.
• Coocentral (the cooperative Elias has chosen to work with in Huila) charged 7 cents for pre-financing his coffee (paying Elias the market price for the coffee upon delivery) storage, and quality control. They also provide agronomic assistance, sample preparation, and help Elias with issues he might have.
• The dry-milling costs 40 cents per lb. The parchment, sticks and stones need to be removed from the coffee. Then, the coffee is sorted on screen size, density and all physical defects are removed by electronic sorting machines. The coffee is then packed in Grain-pro and jute bags to be ready for export.
• We also had to pay an additional 11 cents for grain-pro bags as this is not standard. Grain-pro bags are an inner plastic bag layer, which further protects the coffee in shipment and storage.

I am not claiming that this is a fantastic price for the coffee. I would like to pay more, but we also need to be able to sell the coffee, and we are already pushing the boundaries of what our customers are willing to pay for coffee. Especially our whole sale clients. Still, it is a much better price compared to the market price which today is about USD 1.70 per. lb. F.O.B. for Colombian coffee. The milling cost and export costs are about the same, so Elias ends up with a lot more money, even if he has to pay more to the pickers, etc.

At our end, we need to pay for the shipping of the container, insurance, transport on land to our warehouse, off-loading of the container, rent of warehousing, roasting, testing, rent for our space, salaries for the employees, electricity, gas, packaging, equipment, travel to origin, etc, etc.

I believe everyone in the trade is entitled to a decent pay and, at the very least, covering the costs and making a fair profit. Historically, and also today, most of the companies that handle the coffee after it leaves the hands of the farmer are making money, and I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that. After all that is what business is about.

What I do have a problem with is that the most important part of the chain, the farmer, has the highest risk (no control over coffee prices, exchange rates and the weather) and is the only one who is not making a healthy profit.

We need to change that!

We believe the best way to do so, is to demand transparency and pay more for quality coffee!

Friday Morning I had a meeting with Elias about the future plans of Finca Tamana.

We agreed that for now he needs to focus on building more drying space, build tables for cherry sorting in order to make the work environment better for the pickers. He will also be planting 3 more hectars of coffee in order to increase production.

As a long term goal we agreed that he will be implementing the following at the farm:

1. Start making compost with the coffee pulp and cow and chicken manure on the farm. As for now Elias is only using chemical fertilizer yet he has a lot of organic fertilizer available at the farm. We decided he is going to start implementing organic fertilizer in certain lots on the farm to see how it performs.

2. Implement water filtration for the processing water. Washing coffee consumes a lot of the spring water at the farm. This pollutes the drinking water and also the soil at the farm. With a simple 3 tank filter system the water can easily be filtrated in order to decrease the environmental impact of processing. We will also be looking at new processing equipment in the future in order to reduce water waste from 8 – 10 liters per kg to 1 liter per kg.

3. Start producing more food at the farm. The farm has a lot of available land and Marta, the cook at the farm, was very excited about the idea that she could grow her own herbs, vegetables and fruits at the farm. Now they are driving 1,5 hours to Garzon to buy vegetables, yet they could be growing it for a much lower cost at the farm. This will not only save costs but also help improve the work environment for the workers at the farm.

4. Set up more bee hives and start producing honey. At this moment there are two bee hives at the farm producing great honey from coffee flowers and the surrounding fauna. Yet noone is harvesting the honey as nobody knows how to do it and they don’t have proper protective clothes. I suggested getting 4 more hives and to start harvesting the honey in order to sell it to us. If you havent tried honey made of coffee flowers yet, you are in for a treat. Not only is it important to contribute to  increase the bee population in the world but the bees will hopefully  help pollinate the coffee flowers and help increase the coffee production. (Although this will probably have a small, almost unnoticeable effect as coffee flowers are self pollinating.)

5. Stop using round up and chemical weed killers. I really don’t believe in killing weeds with chemicals. The soil is depending on microorganisms and organic material to stay healthy. Chemicals are made to kill not to bring the soil to life. Elias agreed to stop using chemical weed removers and to only remove weeds by machines and machetes.

6. Get more cows and chicken. Start producing more eggs, milk and cheese for the workers to eat. The manure can be used for fertilizers.

7. Start keeping accounts. Elias has very little control over his spendings and cash flow. In order to know how much he can invest and spend and in order to prevent the necessity of expensive liquidity loans during harvest, I suggested that he should learn how to keep accounts. Most likely his wife will take control over this part of the business as she seems to be better with numbers and also has the discipline to stick to a budget.

There are of course more things we need to implement, but everything cost money and during harvest times, Elias has his hands full with the pickers, processing, etc. Hopefully within 5 years all these and more changes have been made in order to make the farm more sustainable and self sufficient.

Yesterday I spent the whole day at Coocentral in Garzon to cup coffees. Coocentral is the co-operative that Elias is working with and where he is delivering his coffee. They have been a big support of our project and are currently providing Elias with pre-financing of his coffee (they buy it from him for market price and keep it in the warehouse until they sell it to me) as well as agronomical assistance, logistics, and quality control of the dried coffee.
Although I am a very small customer to Coocentral, they have been very supportive of my work for 5 years and that is one of the biggest reasons why I am working in this area in Colombia. Emel, who people refer to as no 2 in the organization, says that they are very happy to support my project together with Elias as they see that other farmers are being motivated by what we do and are now trying to do a better job. There is nothing I want more that being able to contribute to better quality coffee and a better quality of living for Colombian coffee farmers.

So, to the point. We spent the whole day yesterday, sample roasting and cupping 31 samples of coffee, whereas 15 were from Finca Tamana and the rest were random samples from the regions of Suaza, Garzon, Guadalupe and Acevedo. We cupped the coffees blind of course and revealed the results after each cupping session. There were some controversial boarderline coffees on the table that were very close to being over fermented, but the general quality seemed to be higher than from my visit in June. A lot of coffees had good intensity with a lot of fruit character and citric acidity with a big juicy mouthfeel. My scores ranged from 80 points to 87 points. The lots from Finca Tamana performed better than expected. Elias has had difficulties with drying times for up to 50 days and I was very concerned the coffee would have off tastes because of the prolonged drying. To our big relief all coffees scored between 84 and 87 points and Elias had the 3 best lots of the day. To my surprise it was the 3 lots with the longest drying time. I am very eager to see how these coffees will hold up in the coming months.

The quality from Tamana seems to be higher than the harvest in June which I am very pleased with. As the Mitaka is a difficult harvest, with almost no coffee on the trees, Elias has been paying the pickers more to make sure they do an extra thorough job while picking. Because of the higher quality and higher expenses, I offered him a better price for his coffees for this harvest. We will also be putting a premium on top of the price of the coffee from June in order to be able to finance some infrastructure on the farm that will improve the quality for next harvest.

Another interesting thing worth mentioning is that we cupped several lots of the Castillo variety. We even cupped a Castillo vs a Caturra that came from the same farm, picked and processed under the same conditions. In this case I gave the Castillo 86 points and the Caturra 83 points(cupped blind.) We also had other Castillos scoring from 84 to 86 points. They seem to have a character with malic acidity and a lot of red fruits and apple / papaya flavours in this region (probably too early to make a conclusion of that.) A lot of people in the coffee industry seems to be very sceptic about new varieties, but when they are performing well in the cup and also are resistant to leaf rust so that the farmer can spray less chemicals in the field and still have a good production, I can only see positive things about the Castillo. Yes, there are Caturras that are scoring much higher, but the Castillo is very new and not a lot of farmers are cultivating it yet. I am certain we will see some really nice Castillos in the market in the future. If you are still a sceptic, then all I have to say is that the famous Kenyan SL 28 also was a new and “improved” variety made by Scott Laboratories in the past century.

(Castillo to the left, Caturra to the right. These trees were fertilized and sprayed a lot. Still the Caturra did not perform at all.)

You might know that we started working with Don Elias at Finca Tamana this June. The coffees from our first harvest working together have already arrived Norway and will be for sale in early December.

In June I radically changed the way Elias picks, processes and dries his coffee in order to make sure the quality is maintained throughout the whole process. Our goal is to be able to consistently produce one of the very best coffees in Colombia, and to do so the process must be fine tuned. This involves paying pickers more, training the pickers in better cherry selection, implementing thorough routines with the wet process and drying as well as logistics, etc.

I will summarise all the extra costs in the next blog post to explain why it is important and also necessary to pay more for coffee if you want to drink great coffee.

I was pretty excited for my return to Finca Tamana for the Mitaka (small harvest in November / December ) and especially to see what Elias had decided to spend the contribution we made via our 5 year anniversary.
I am traveling together with my dear friend, exporter Alejandro Renjifo from Fairfield trading who was also very curious to see the development we had achieved together with Elias.

One of the most obvious changes at the farm was the beautiful sight of the new drying tables and patios Elias had built. All coffee is now dried in shade, which really helps improve the shelf life of the coffee. However, I am a bit concerned about this being the ideal drying facility as Elias has had drying times for up to 50 days this harvest due to a lot of rain and cloudy and humid weather. I guess today’s cupping will give me the answers to whether these drying times are way off or not, as I will be cupping all the lots Elias has produced so far this harvest. Regardless of the cupping scores, I am determined to try to look at solutions to help speed up the drying process a bit without compromising the quality. 50 days is way too long for drying as it steals capacity on the drying tables and it is risky in terms of theft, fungus attacks, etc.

I was also very happy to see that a lot of the seasonal pickers I met in June were still working with Elias. The cherry selection was a lot better than in June and the pickers seemed to have gotten the hang of how to pick efficiently, yet be very thorough while picking. I talked with some of the pickers I recognised and they told me they had been picking at other farms, but did not like it as other pickers there were very sloppy and picked a lot of unripes. They enjoyed picking ripe coffee more and felt more proud of their work while doing so. That is why they had returned to Finca Tamana for the small harvest, although there is a lot less coffee in Tamana at the moment compared to other farms in different regions where they have the main harvest now.

Elias had also bought a high pressure washer for  cleaning the wet mill. Unfortunately, when we tried to use it it did not work due to a lack of electricity supply at the farm. A typical unforeseen problem, but we will be able to get a generator to fix the problem. Despite the problems with the high pressure washer, the wet mill looked cleaner than ever.  Maybe because Elias had hired a new farm manager, Luciano (picture below) who is a very shy and quiet man, but is obsessed with making sure the mill and the patios are clean as well as checking that the pickers are picking correctly. Hopefully he will be working with us for a long time.

In the field, Elias had planted 3 hectares of the new Castillo Variety that will be in full production from 2014. I am very excited about this as I have cupped a lot of Castillos during the past year that have performed really well in the cup. The Castillo variety is a crossing between Hybrido de Timor and Caturra and has been developed by Cenicafe in Colombia. It is a leaf rust and Coffee Berry Disease resistant variety that produces well and in my experience tastes good too. It is an improved version of the Colombia variety that in some cases has actually cupped better at Finca Tamana than the Caturra variety. Hopefully the Castillo will produce great tasting coffee at Finca Tamana too.

Now I am off to go to Coocentral to cup the 15 different lots from Tamana which has been produced during the Mitaka so far. I will be writing more about the Mitaka and quality / pricing in the next posts. I am also running some experiments with fermentation at the farm, but they won’t be ready for tasting for another 30 days, so that will come later.

I am spending the week at Finca Tamana to help improve the quality of the coffee with Don Elias Roa.

We just recieved the coffee from the June harvest and that will be for sale in early December.

In Colombia, the farmers are harvesting coffee twice a year, and now is the mitaka which is a small crop in this region this year, meaning they harvest about 20% of the total yearly production at this moment.

For now I will be tweeting a lot from the farm visit, so if you want to follow the progress, follow me on Twitter @timwndelboe

I will try to make some blog posts during the week, but for now, the internet connection at the farm is via GPRS on my cellphone so I am not able to write a lot on the blog.

If you haven’t heard about our project at Finca Tamana, please see my lecture from this years Nordic Barista Cup

For those of you who missed out on the fantastic Nordic Barista Cup in Compenhagen this year, you can see all the lectures here. The name of the event is a bit misleading. Although there is a team barista competition between the 5 nordic countries, most people attend for the many  informative lectures and the social interaction.

I did a lecture on improving coffee quality at farm level. It touches on improving the shelf life of green coffee by improving the drying of the coffee. I also talk a lot about my 4 days at Finca Tamana in Colombia where I changed the farm practices completely in 4 days in order to improve the quality of the coffee there.

You can see my lecture below.