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.

International orders are sent once a week. Orders placed by midnight (GMT)+1 on Tuesday will be roasted on Wednesday and ship on Thursday. Shipping will take between one and two business days within Europe and two to four days to the rest of the world.

The whole team can’t wait to share our coffees with friends and new customers around the world. The current staff favorites are Finca Tamana from Huila, Colombia and the newly arrived Tekangu from Nyeri, Kenya that will be released on Tuesday the 7th of May. (You can pre-order the coffee in the web shop this week)

I returned from a trip to Finca Tamana earlier this week and can attest that our partnership with this farm is continuing to produce benefits for both the farmers and our customers. Tekangu flew off the shelves last year and we expect it to do the same in 2013 . Our work with the Tekangu Cooperative Society has also resulted in quality improvements, most notably from the introduction of new drying tables funded by Tim Wendelboe customers in 2010.

There are also other spectacular coffees coming in soon from El Salvador, Ethiopia and Honduras.

We have exciting offerings planned for the webshop, so please check back for new coffees and packages.

You can also follow Tim Wendelboe on Instagram and Twitter.

To order Tim Wendelboe coffee to your door and to learn more about delivery times and pricing, please visit our web shop.

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.

Our opening hours will therefore be:

Monday 25th:  8:30 – 18:00

Tuesday 26th:  8:30 – 18:00

Wednesday 27th – Monday 1st of April : Closed

Tuesday 2nd of April: 8:30 – 18:00

Happy easter holidays!

We have been working closely with the guys at Noma ever since René Redzepi, during his talk at the 2012 Nordic Barista cup, promised that Noma would lead the way in offering the best coffee to their customers. (Which unfortunately is rare in the restaurant world.)

It is a true honor to be able to work with such a great team as the one at Noma. Everyone showed great interest in coffee and were really easy to train.

They are now preparing some of our best coffees on a Hario V60 and will rotate the coffees being served according to season.

Here is a little video i shot at Noma during the first days of the new coffee service.

Coffee service at noma from Tim Wendelboe on Vimeo.

The reason for this is that we firmly believe that our coffees are good enough to be drunk unblended. We want to emphasize the flavours of origin, and therefore it does not make sense to blend coffees from different origins together.

We will be offering 2-3 different coffees roasted for espresso at all times. Like with all our coffees, our offerings will change according to harvest season as we try to always sell the freshest coffee possible.

Right now we have a wonderful coffee from Hunkute, Ethiopia roasted for espresso that has flavours of  flowers, lemon and peach.

If you like a creamy style of the espresso, we recently started roasting a Bourbon from Sitio Canaa in Brazil. This natural processed coffee tastes a lot like milk chocolate, nuts and cane sugar.

I just got some photos from our exporter Angel Arturo Paz at San Vicente showing the finalized construction. It seems Jobneel is already drying his coffee on the beds.

Based on a lot of trials we have done for the past years,  we are certain that this will help prolong the shelf life and improve the quality of the coffee. Can’t wait to taste the results.

Hope you like it.

Los Pirineos from Tim Wendelboe on Vimeo.

Jobneel has not been able to dry his own coffee before and he has been delivering the coffee to the local exporter and dry mill San Vicente in Pena Blanca. (See picture above) Although San Vicente does a greta job drying the coffee, the coffees have been fading fast every year, most likely due to high temperatures of the coffee laying on the patio. The patios are also dirty and people and animals always step on the coffee. That is not how I want our coffees to be treated. So this year I asked Jobneel if he was interested in building drying tables covered with shade, as we have had great success drying coffee this way in other places. (Read more about it here.)

We are therefore contributing with USD 1500,- to get the drying beds constructed. This will not cover everything, but maybe up to 90%. Jobneel is making them with wood and metal so that they last for a long time. They will be big enough to dry all our coffees and a bit more. The plan is to have them ready in a couple of weeks, before the pickings in March and April when most of Jobneel’s best coffees are harvested. Here are some of the first photos Jobneel has sent me from the project. We will give you an update as soon as we get more.