The total amount of money we managed to raise for the Tekangu drying table project is USD 4600,-

Hopefully this will be enough to build 5 tables.

Tim Varney and I will be going to Kenya in November to oversee the harvest and also to document the benefits of using these new drying tables.

A huge thank you to all our customers who contributed. It is much appreciated.

It has been 3 years since we first opened our doors here at Tim Wendelboe, and I have to admit that so far, it has been a magical journey. I really did not expect te business to be such a success after only 3 years. I would like to  send out a huge thank you, to all our customers that have supported us over our first 3 years. We have managed to do a lot of great stuff together, and we are planning for a lot more in the future.

A special thanks to all of you who visited us on Saturday and donated money for our “Tekangu drying table project.”

We had some very generous customers that payed over NOK 1.000,- for a cup of coffee (USD 155,-) . I believe that is the most expensive cup of coffee ever sold in Norway and probably the world. I am sure the farmers at the Tekangu co-op are very greatful for your generosity.

Also a huge thanks to Mette Mortensen for the beautiful flowers, to Anders Valde for his contribution and gift and also to Solberg and Hansen for supplying us with sparkling wine for the celebration.

You are probably wondering how much money we were able to raise on Saturday?

We managed to raise NOK 19.000,- (USD 2.920.) All this money will go to the drying table project. Dormans, our exporter in Kenya has donated USD 500,- so that means we are only about USD 1500,- away from our goal of USD 5000,-

We will also be collecting money for the project through our Kenyan coffee sales this week. 50% of what we get in will go to the project. So, if you need coffee, please buy Kenyan coffee this week.

Thank you all again for your fantastic contribution!

Tim W

The menu tomorrow will be the following:

Made on the strada:

The new TW espresso blend
Cielito Lindo espresso
Cappuccino with TW blend

Iced coffees:

The TW Cappuccino al freddo with the TW blend
The TW Re-Constructed Shakerato with Cielito Lindo espresso
Iced Tekangu
Iced Santa Ana

We will be serving the following black coffee in our cupping room brewed on Aeropress and Hario V60:

Tekangu
Mugaga
Santa Ana
Hacienda Esmeralda
Cielito Lindo

All drinks are a minimum 1 kr and the maximum is whatever you want to pay.

All the money we get in on all sales on the 31st of July goes to our drying table project in Kenya where we will fund the building of new drying tables at the Karogoto Factory at the Tekangu coop.

On saturday the 31st of July we will be celebrating our 3 year anniversary. (although it really was on the 30th of june)

Opening hours will be as normal from 11am to 5pm.

We have some exiting new coffees for sale this week.
After a lot of waiting, both the Kenyan coffees we sourced in January are for sale. Also an exciting sweet bourbon from Finca Santa Ana, Guatemala is ready for sale.

There is also a new TW espresso blend that is quite different from the last 3 blends we have had. The new blend is very potent with a lot of fruity flavours and winey acidity.

For more info, go to our resource page and click on “our coffees” in the left menu.

Hope you like it.

We will start roasting and selling our new crop Tekangu from Kenya on Tuesday the 6th of July.
More info on the coffee here.

I am finally back home again after a fantastic week in Kenya.

It looks like we will be buying a lot from the Karogoto factory which is part of the Tekangu coop and a lot from the Kiamabara factory which is part of the Mugaga coop. More info on these coffees will come when the coffees are ready for sale in our store. First it needs to be processed, sorted, packed and shipped to Norway. It will probably take about 2 months before we have it in house.

I have made a slideshow with some comments for every picture. Watch it in full screen and click “show info” to see the comments.
I Hope you like it:

The first day in Kenya I spent in Nairobi at Dorman’s head offices tasting about 400 cups of coffee (Or more. I lost count) I was hoping to find some gems on the table, but unfortunately Kenya has had severe problems with drought that has affected the production both in quantity and quality. Therefore, I was very dissappointed that I did not find any coffees that were as juicy and intense as our last years Tekangu lot.

Bridget, one of the head cuppers and also one of the bosses at Dorman’s was unsure whether the lack of quality was because of the drought or if it was still a bit too early after the harvest and therefore the coffees we tasted were mainly from the first picking (which is normally of inferior quality.)  I was hoping it was the latter one being the reason. Still, after a full day of cupping without any luck I was feeling miserable but Bridet gave me hope when she told me that when the production is low and the trees are stressed and there is less of the big beans (AA+ top quality) she often finds that the peaberries are tasting better (Peaberry is when a coffee cherry only contains 1 bean instead of 2). Maybe because there is more mucilage and energy directed into 1 bean instead of two and when there is less water and therefore less energy the PB becomes more tasty.

Regardless of theories, there is no doubt that because of the lower production this year and inflation, we are going to have to pay a higher price for the Kenyan coffees this year compared to the 2008/2009 crop which was a very good year for Kenya in terms of coffee production.

On Tuesday morning I had breakfat with Mr. Kamau who is the manager of CMS (Coffee managment services) which is an organisation which helps the farmers sell their coffee and also educates the farmers in good agricultural practices. In addition, CMS are the ones monitoring the transaction between the buyers (Tim Wendelboe in this case), the cooperatives and the farmers. They provide documentation to assure full transparency in the money flow, etc. This is essential when trading in a country like Kenya that is struggling with a lot of corruption and it is important for us as a buyer to ensure that the farmers are getting paid according to the price we paid. If the farmers are not getting paid, they stop growing coffee, and the reason why we choose to pay a premium for the coffee it is to honour the quality of the coffee and to motivate the farmers to keep up the good work so that we can have as great or even better coffees for the future. It is simple; to grow quality coffee takes more time and work and therefore the expenses are higher.

After an hour breakfast and interesting conversation, I headed for Nyeri which is located in Kenyas Rift Valley in the Central Highlands.

When I arrived at the Central Kenya Coffee Mill, I was welcomed by one of their agronomists and the cupper Ernest. Ernest had set up 6 coffees for me to taste, three of them coming from the Tekangu cooperative that we allready bought from last year (and won the Nordic Roaster Competition with). The coffees were already a little bit cold, as I was a bit late, but after tasting a couple of fair coffees there was a sudden explosion of flavours in my mouth when I tasted the 3rd cup on the table. It turned out to be a Tekangu coffee and it was by far miles ahead of all the coffees I tasted in Nairobi. The coffee was extremely juicy with tonnes of fruity berry flavours remniscent of rasberries, blackberries, black currants, rose hips and yes, yes, YES! The buttery mouthfeel and the juicy acidity made me think about great white burgundy wines.  I never decide upon which coffee to buy in origin, but this coffee was just too good to take the risk of someone else buying it. Therefore I offered to buy it immediately.

After the cupping we went to visit the Tekangu cooperative society located only 5 minutes away from the mill. I was welcomed by their chairman and his staff and we had a long discussion about prices, coffee quality, the future of coffee and how we could work together in order to build a long term relationship based on sustainability and developing quality together to secure future coffee supplies and to secure future income for the farmers. Afterwards they showed me their 3 faktories; TEgu, KArogoto and NGUnguru (therefore TEKANGU). The managers of the different factories explained to me what their biggest issues were in terms of ensuring the quality of the coffee and they spoke about their 5 year strategic plan and what they were trying to improve before the next harvest. Hopefully we will be able to help them a little bit in their investments by paying a premium price for their coffees this year.

Now I am sitting outside an old colonial style house, enjoying a Tusker Malt overlooking the impressive Mount Kenya lit by a beautiful sunset. I have yet to digest all the impressions and information from today’s excursion, but all in all I am very excited to tell you that once again we will bring great coffee back home from Kenya.

Tomorrow I will be tasting more coffees and visit another cooperative.

Cheers!

TW

I am leaving for Kenya on sunday morning. Hopefully I will have time to report during my trip and hopefully I will bring back some amazing coffees that are at least as good as this years Tekangu and Kiawamururu.

We only have about 200 kg left of both these coffees, so if they are among your favourites,  I recommend getting some before it is all gone. I predict it will sell out by the end of February / beginning of March.

I will try as hard as I can to push our exporter to ship the new crop Kenyas as fast as possible, but first I need to taste some 100 or more lots before I decide which ones to buy.

We are proud to announce that we won the 2009 Nordic Roaster Competition.

For those of you not familiar with the competition, it is a competition for roasteries that normally takes place during the Nordic Barista Cup. This years competition was held in Iceland and there were 10 different roasteries entering from countries such as Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the UK.

The format was the same as previous years. All roasteries were to deliver 2 kg of coffee roasted for filter brewing. The only things we could decide as a competitor, (apart from the coffee we used and the roast profile) was  how many grams to use per litre. All coffees were ground on the same grinder and brewed on BUNN brewers set to a specific brew profile by Mike Khan, the brewmaser representing BUNN.

The coffees were brewed more or less at the same time and poured into numbered cups in order to make the tasting blind. All attendees at this years Nordic Barista Cup got a sample of each coffee and a piece of paper where they wrote down the number of the cup they liked the best.

Votes were collected, and after counting the votes the top 3 coffees came from the following roasteries:

1st: Tim Wendelboe (Norway) – with coffee from Tekangu coop. in Nyeri, Kenya.

2nd: Solberg & Hansen (Norway) – with coffee from Finca Kilimanjaro, El Salvador.

3rd: Kaffitar (Iceland) – with coffee from Rwanda.

The coffee that we entered with was our favourite Kenyan coffee of the year from Tekangu coop. society in Nyeri. It was a production roast (which means we just took 2 kg of a random roast from our production).

Tim V and I normally work a lot with our roast profiles, so we felt confident that we were allready roasting this coffee as we liked it. Although Tim V is doing most of the roasting from a day to day basis, I am the one responsible for developing the profiles because it is my name on the bags and therefore my taste needs to be reflected in the coffees. So we pretty much work as a team. I play around with the coffees and Tim V translates the profiles I have developed on the 1 kg Probatino on to the 15 kg production roaster. We also taste every roast we produce together and discuss the coffees and what we need to do to improve it. This is probably the most enjoyable part of working as a roaster as the green coffee changes all the time and therefore we need to adjust the roast profiles accordingly.

It was only three weeks ago where we noticed that the Tekangu was not tasting as good as it was when we started producing the coffee earlier this summer. We looked in to our roast logs and discovered that Tim V had been slowing down the roast with about 30 seconds over a period of time. We decided to roast 2 different profiles the following day. The 2 roasts came out with the same degree of roast, was dumped on the same end temperature. The only noticeable difference was the total roasting time. One batch was roasted for 10:50 minutes and the other for 11: 05 minutes. When we tasted these 2 cofees next to eachother it was 2 different worlds. The 11:05 minute roast tasted smoky, flat and dull. The 10:50 roast was fruity, clean, crisp and lively and therefore this is the roast profile that we are currently aiming at when we roast Tekangu and this was the profile for our entry in the Nordic Roaster competition.

We know the roast profile is quite fast and we roast the coffee very light. We do this in order to enhance the natural aromas of the coffee without getting any disturbing roast aromas. This makes the coffee quite crisp in acidity, very clean and intensely aromatic with a sweet lingering finish.

If you haven’t tried the Tekangu coffee yet, we really recommend tasting it next to our other Kenyan coffee from the Kiawamururu factory.

I really hope you like it.

Tim W

ps. You can read more about the Tekangu coffee here.