Tag: All Things Coffee

  • What’s in your cup?

    Whats in your cup?

    My parents blast through freshly ground coffee in their Bunn Automatic.  12 cups in just over a minute.  While some snobbier coffee specialists may scoff at such heresy, I find myself every second year or so happily slurping down my second cup before registering that I’m fully awake and in the strange land of Wisconsin.

    That said, I can’t rightly remember the last “drip” coffee I’ve had.  I’m more your slow brewed Chemex, or double macchiato kinda guy.  Forever  the zealous apostle of the French Press for all home coffee drinkers.  Ideally speaking, we’d all have a home ceramic burr grinder and a La Marzocco or Clover.  The reality, however, is the before mentioned freshly ground espresso or pour-over devices are, well, maybe not in the budget or interest of most.  So most people will probably stick to the good ol’ Bunn or God forgive you if you do, instant coffee.

    Regardless of method, I wonder how many people know what they are drinking?  Coffee.  Yes, uh huh.  Any idea of the washing station? From what country?  What continent even?

    Now I know we aren’t all coffee zealots.  But the worth of the cup is in the people.

    A stretch you say?

    I think not.  The reason we’re in Burundi is a complex yet simple one.  We love coffee, individuals, God, family, and potential (not always in that order… in fact in no particular order, or if that offends, you could assume your favorite was written first) I think they are all combined, linked and fully integrated.  That is why we are here.  That is why it matters that you know what is in your cup.

    Perhaps if you knew that you were drinking a cup of fully washed AA Burundi Musema washing station coffee and that it  supplied 800 families with their only means of income.  Or that by drinking that coffee you not only made their life livable, but sustainable.  Don’t stop there.  Because of they premium they received for selling their coffee as specialty they are now interacting and learning from  key individuals that are influencing their whole way of thinking, crop growing, child raising and exposure to the Gospel… yeah that’s right, to Jesus. Because that’s important to us. Would that make the cup taste better?  Motivate you to drink more?  Or perhaps inspire you to dream of the important things in your life and dare you to face your fears and journey toward them?

    It took us a while.  We’re still working on them.  OK, we’ll probably never really get there.  Wherever “there” is.

    Integrating these passions.  Loving each.  Frustrated by them all.  Attempting to live them authentically in Burundi.

    Thats why we’re here and why I care whats in your cup.

    Coffee Guy

     

     

  • In The Burundi Coffee Hills

    Let me begin by saying…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    I have been feeling as if I owe you, big time. I feel like I owe you lots of images like this one. Images that allow you to see for yourself what the families who grow coffee in Burundi look like.

    Here’s your coffee, freshly picked and still in the cherry. This coffee is honey processed, which means it is picked, left unwashed to preserve every bit of flavor, and then sun dried on these tables.

    Here specialty coffee is being hand sorted. Which means it is being picked through to remove any defects. This coffee will be hand sorted five times. When picked, before being washed, after being fermented, after drying, and after dry milling (which removes the parchment).

    This scale is where a farmer’s lot is determined. Their ripe red cherries are weighed and a price is determined. The price for red cherries? About $.50 a kilo, or $.50 for 2.2 pounds. How can we get the farmers more money? If Ben finds during cupping that the quality of a certian lot is superior enough to be sold as speciality coffee, the farmer who grew it will get a bonus at the end of the season of double or triple per kilo and the coffee will be sold to the likes of Stumptown and Bean There.

    What if Ben wasn’t cupping to find these lots? More and more of the coffee would be sold as commodity lots to big coffee exporters who would turn around and sell it to the likes of Folgers and Maxwell House. They would then mix it with other commodity coffees and the people who drink it would never even know that they were drinking a Burundi coffee, or that the farmer only got $.50 a kilo.

    Of course, the kids are the heart breaking part. Without education, electricity, running water and proper nutrition what hope of a better life than their parent’s can they have?

    If their parents get more for their crop that is a good start to a better life, if the extra funds are managed correctly. But, as we all know, money does not solve everything.

    All that said, I have to tell you… the coffee hills are not a hopeless place. In fact, they are just the opposite. They seem filled with hope. The hope of the harvest and the strength that community living can bring.

    Being in the hills is an amazing experience. As an mzungu (white person) it is not easy to blend and we do become the village entertainment, but I suppose it’s the least we can do!

    I love this moment, this little kiddo in the oversized t-shirt was so scared of the white people and of our cameras, but once our good friend Wesley from Cooked In Africa Films showed him his picture he was all smiles. I do love film, but God bless digital!

    The hills reminded my why we made this leap and what it is all for…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    That’s all for now,
    Kristy

  • Coffee Cupping

    Yesterday Myles and Neo and I followed Ben to his coffee lab. We did our best to destroy his lab and his coffee cupping notes, but we also managed to shoot a little. If you ever wondered what coffee cupping looks like… well, lets be real, you probably never have. But, we made a video for you anyways!

    Cupping is done to assess the quality of the coffee. The more good lots Ben finds, the better the price he can get for the farmers who produced it.

    Here are the steps to a proper cupping….

    a. husk
    b. roast
    c. grind
    d. smell
    e. brew
    f. break the crust
    g. smell
    h. slurp
    i. spit
    j. take notes

    Do that for 21 lots of coffee (five cups for each lot) a day and you might be able to keep up with our Coffee Guy.

    Untitled from longmilescoffee on Vimeo.

  • How not to Loose One’s Mind Crossing African Borders, and Other Useful Things to Know Before Driving to the Center of Africa

     

    I tried to come up with a nice succinct title for my thoughts about the journey from Durban, South Africa to Bujumbura, Burundi. But like the roads I took, it may look like an inch on the map before you but the reality is it’s going to be long, hard and nearly inaccessible by the average driver (reader). Both previous thoughts frustrate Kristy to no end. The drive to Burundi with little to no clue of where I was to stay along the way (or direction I was heading, in all reality) and the writing style that meanders between sentences as long as a Tanzanian highway and ever changing tenses.

    My journey of 5700 km (3,541 miles for you Americans) started as a fun tandem with friend and fellow Hope Church-ite, and French speaking Burundian, Alain.  The journey ended in a sort of race against darkness and a battle of nerves with drunk soldiers at the edge of Bujumbura.

    The start was 2 weeks late.  The reason being that newly purchased used vehicles need their log-book to get through borders.  My log book was doing African time wadding through the red tape of South African banks and Currier services.  The “I’ll make a plan” attitude of the shoot from the hip good-ol’ boy I bought my 2000 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado from didn’t exactly speed the process.  By the time it arrived my heart was already in the hills of Burundi, my mind on coffee, and my wife about ready to have an anxiety attack with the  sure mountain of details my optimistic and adventure ready self failed to attend to.  She mentioned food would be good thing to bring. Yes, and that I should actually should buy a map.  She also suggested plates and silverware/cutlery might be useful.  I could continue, but for my sake lets just say I’m thankful that my wife made me bring along a roll of toilet paper just in case.

    Morning 1. Tuesday.

    4:30 am start.  Shelly the creative director/videographer is at the gate to video me pulling off into the pre-dawn to fetch Alain.  The night before we were meant to leave but a very unpleasant phone-call about the sure death of Ella if we fly her to Burundi made it less then ideal to hit the road.  I made  a great call, a morning start was much better.  My good friend Cyril and I had spent the better part of Saturday loading the 4X4 with more house hold and coffee lab supplies then you can imagine.  No really.  Imagine….. your wrong, it’s more.  A couple more hours rest, family time and what I didn’t realize was to be my last good meal in a week took place.

    Alain loaded.  One small bag, still too big for the 10 inch of luxury (read luggage) space I allocated each of us.  Oh, and the nearly 150 lbs welding machine we squeezed on top of the already loaded roof rack.  Open road.  Full Land Cruiser.  No coffee.  Yet.

    West coast to northern South African border never was reached so quickly.  We two men… no, road warriors. A dynamic partnership meant to be.  What could stop us?  Botswana by dusk was our war cry.  We might make Burundi in 5-6 days!  This sunset banter was tossed around as we dodged flipped burning petrol trucks, police wielding speed cameras and finding the black elixir (coffee) half way in the coldest place in South Africa, Harrismith, Free State.

    Then the border. 7pm.  Dark.  Ominous in the glow of  flickering florescent bulbs.

    The first border.

    The easy border.

    The border that beat us and nearly sent me home.

    Alain was denied entry to Botswana.

     

    Coffee Guy

     

  • These Old Coffee Trees

    I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest.  I’m not going to let you get it!  If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee.  That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.

    I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still.  So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks.  Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks.  The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.

    It was another week in the heart of Central Africa.  I got another taste of what I’m diving into.  I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many.  Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.

    Coffee Guy

  • early morning brewing

     

    I miss early morning’s that look like this. Ben making coffee while teaching the four year old proper brewing methods, you know… normal stuff. As Ben is away and the house hunt in Burundi continues, it is beginning to sink in that this is our last breath before the plunge. Our life in South Africa is rapidly coming to a close. It’s weeks now instead of months.

    We have spent a third of our lives here and the community that surrounds us is voluminous. There are people here that it breaks our hearts to leave. Ten years ago, when we left our families and moved to this new place with just four suitcases to our names, we put down roots.  We reached out and built relationships with abandon, and we found a new family. They in no way replace our family in the States, instead they are a whole different family… but no easier to leave behind.

    Luv,

    Kristy

     

  • Riding Burundi Roads at My Peril

    With internet spotty at best up in the highlands of Burundi this post will undoubtably be short.  I just can’t help but share in what is taking place though.  By far the most productive trip yet to Burundi I’m in a celebratory mood.  Except that my sore back, hurting bum and broken ribs (long story about why you shouldn’t play rugby in Burundi with American Marines could be inserted here!) will let my celebrations be limited to a beverage of choice and early to bed.

    The Beauty of Burundi is that I can sit in a “hotel’s” restaurant high in the hills of Burundi and listen to a Jordin Sparks (ya, I didn’t know until I googled her either) song on repeat being beat into my head.  So if I type “just one step at a time….” it’s not my fault.

    The past four days have been filled with incredible scenes of vibrant rolling hills, lush coffee trees pregnant with ripe cherries and aromas ranging from fresh sweet coffee smells to burnt roasting goat.

    I want to tempt your senses to try and imagine fresh(ish) goat being roasted on an open fire with green bananas that taste like potatoes to accompany.  How about hundreds of pounds of freshly harvested coffee cherries piled up ready to be washed clean of their pulp.  Or my favorite aroma of sweaty stinking people piled on top of each other and me as we wind our way up the mountains in a mini bus.

    Where do you drink coffee?  Intelligentsia? Counter Culture?  Stumptown?  Dunn Brothers? Bean There? I’m visiting the very farmers that are producing their best coffee.  It’s a good day in Burundi.  It would be great if Kristy and my adventurer boys were here too.  Just four weeks until we are all here!

    I may never feel or smell the same again.  But my discovery of this black gold is seductive and the hands that are processing it are the poorest and knurliest I have ever laid eyes on.  The adventure has begun.

  • The Beginning

    Ben began his journey in to help the farmers of Burundi produce better coffee this week. He’s also on the hunt for the best beans Burundi has to offer, so that he can get them into the hands of coffee shops who want to buy directly from farmers.

    Ben’s trip to Burundi this week did not yield a house, but the beginnings of his work with the farmers was a great success.

    What do you think of those roads? Egh? Pretty intense!

    Long Miles Coffee Project from longmilescoffee on Vimeo.

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  • Why Go.

    This little ditty was made because we want you to travel on this adventure with us. We need all the moral support and prayers we can get, we really truly do. And we want you to know why we are making this risk, why we believe it’s worth it.

    Long Miles Coffee Project from Cooked in Africa on Vimeo.

    The guys over at Cooked reworked this little vid for us and we think that’s just great. It was great before, but whew… now it’s a stunner. Shelly of Make My Day Pictures shot all the footage (except the Burundi bits) and became our friend in the process.

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