FVH Honey makes it to Cape Town and Milan via Göteborg!

If you aren’t visiting Renato Correia at the Espresso Lab in Cape Town, South Africa in the next few days there are only two places in the world where you can get it.  da Matteo in Göteborg, Sweden and Barefoot in Santa Clara, California USA. Above picture stolen with permission from Renato’s flickr, check it out  to see a beautiful roastery that is all white – leaving coffee to be the natural focal point.  If you do happen to be in SA, Tribeca is currently carrying some fvh as well as El Paternal.

Upon searching through the daMatteo blog I found a photo of Soren Stiller 2008 Danish Barista Champion in Milan last week who seems to be pouring fvh honey whole bean into a cup on a skinny version of the uber boiler’s scale.  I don’t know how he finds the time to do this between holding a full time job in Copenhagen, etching Barak Obama in the UK and his Growers Cup side project.

While I love experimenting and am willing to take risks, I also hate to mess up a good thing.  Andy Newbom requested we do a honey lot, and so we did.  Only because it was Andy.  And maybe it is because he has a chef’s personality.  Chef in french means BOSS, but in the culinary trade, chef’s tend to be known for being obsessive and sometimes perfectionists.  Not sure if Andy is a perfectionist, but he certainly is obsessive about trying something every which way imaginable until discovering something beautiful and perfect.  He will be coming back to Guatemala this harvest for the 4th time.  My conclusions on our honey is that it yields everything I expected.  The acidity is tapered down a bit and their is more body and incredible molasses sweetness.  My problem with this is that I think this is attainable with many other coffees around us and giving our coffee a honey process means loosing some of what I like most in our coffee.  The sparkling super clean and sweet juicy acidity.  While our coffee is mild bodied it is actually refreshing to where you don’t crave something else in between sips, you just want to chug it.  Yes, chug it.  I must give credit for this descriptor to Ben Kaminsky who on rare occasion is known to refer to a coffee as “chuggable”.  While fvh honey is not chuggable, it is a great fit for those with a sweet tooth.  Pair this with a nice dry unsweetened buttery pastry.  Yes, this is a Guatemalan coffee with enough body to stand up to butter.

Despite adamantly requesting the entire lot, thank you for sharing Andy.

Naturals in Guatemala at FVH!

Yes, it is true.  After years of hearing roasters say, “I wonder what a natural from your farm would taste like” we finally caved in.  Linus Törsäter from The Coffee Collective, Chad from Evo and Madcap along with the crew from BFCT agreed to do some of the work for a very small batch.  So they will reap the rewards of their work and if you want to taste this, you’ll have to track one of them down in the coming months because we are only doing about 600 lbs of cherry.  This means each of the above will only have enough to do ONE small batch roast to play with.  I will have to personally drive the dried natural cherry to a micro mill that has a SCOTTISH or IRISH dry mill to then clean and sort by hand.  Dry milling naturals is actually much more work in the the dry mill stage… and of course, potentially much less in the preceding stages.

Jake put together a wonderful video of kids interacting with his beard, some soccer and some coffee.

Photo and video by Jake Liefer.  Click on here to see video

2008 Harvest at FVH

Usually when one is busy time passes quickly. The last 2 months have seemed an eternity. Carlos and Edwin Garcia Martin continue to be missed tremendously. In their absence many relationships have grown stronger.

I have learned much about how we all process differently. And different is not wrong. Grieving takes many forms. With out means to preserve a body, funerals take place with in 24 hrs. There were a few hundred at the funeral that mourned loudly for a few days. Sometimes it is most difficult to deal with the present reality, and anything outside of denial seems impossible.

At such a time everything else seems so unimportant, yet distractions seem to be so comforting. Two months ago we were right in the middle of harvest with full patios and Diego, Carlos’ oldest stepped forward and chose to take his fathers responsibilities. Juana and most of her kids have since been in San Juan their home town to be close to their extended families despite not having lived there for 20 years. Diego spends half his time at FVH and chooses to sleep in the bodega alone with the coffee rather than in his home, the managers home. Life is different for many of us.

Early March on a layover in LA I went to visit John Gozbekian at LAMILL where the food is unreal and their culinary approach is mind blowing. Then before leaving I had to pay a visit to TONX as well. Soon after arrival I met up with Ryan Brown from Ritual along with Ben and Jaime from Barismo to embark on a new venture. We cupped at 7 of the largest exporters in Guatemala along side many CoE judges. I will post more on this later… possibly on a different blog. Since then Jaime has written a piece that is thought provoking and hopefully inspiring any reader to get back to the basics. The post is dated March 31, 2008.

And we picked up a few more friends along the way…

Klaus, Aaron, Mark and Ben have also posted pics on flickr.

To read more detail on the latter part of this trip please check out:

Klaus Thomsen (TCC) PART1, PART2 AND PART3

Victrola PART1, PART2 and PART

The home of CoE coffees in Guatemala

DSCF0026, originally uploaded by edwinfvh.

I thought I would comment a little more on some of the details people often enquire about. This place seems quite secure and has a fenced area the size of an indoor soccer field that is locked internally to keep the CoE coffees separate from the general “run of the mill”…. literally.

There is no signage on the main road, and you have to drive into a gated yard to weigh in, then exit and re-enter on the back side off a narrow gravel road to unload. I asked the plant manager about this, and it will change soon as it makes sense for accountability reasons to weigh immediately before and after a load or unload. Regardless the facility seems quite secure and very UN marked. You just about need GPS coordinates and exact milemarkers to find this as the only place I saw a sign is this scratch on the back door 2 blocks back from the main road. Otherwise you’d never know that this plant can process over $200,000 of coffee a day.

March/April Diary of a grower “COFFEE IS HUMBLING”

This is the next to the last article I’m writting for now. The May/June titled “Identity Crisis” just came out as well in time for SCAA. Click on the title below for March/April article.

coffee is humbling

This explains alot!

My cousin Chino in Guatemala just sent this to me, and I couldn’t resist posting it.  Don’t criticize me for being unprofessional.  It’s just a blog!  Follow these directions and click on link below.

1. PUT THE COIN IN THE VENDING MACHINE
2. CHOOSE YOUR DRINK
3. CLICK ON THE CUP WHEN IT IS READY
4. CLICK ON “APRI”

http://www.cartoline.it/pics/_zoom_flash.htm?immagine=scherzi_150404_01.swf

You’ve officially got 30 days to secure a booth!

A few have asked me lately where they can go for more info, is there a website for more on SCAJ 2007.  Anyone can become a member of SCAJ for about $250 bucks.  If you don’t see value in SCAA, I doubt you’ll be prompted to become a SCAJ member.  But it’s worth considering if you plan to do busn in Japan.

SPECIALTY COFFEE ASSOCIATION OF JAPAN SITE

WBC AND SCAJ 2007 SITE – july 31, 2007 -august 2, 2007

more later

You Better Make Way!

Inexperienced. That is the best word that I can think of to start this blog. First, this is my first post on any blog anywhere. Second, this is the only blog that I have ever seen. I think those two things are a pretty good example of inexperienced. But lets take it one step further and apply the word inexperienced to coffee. That is the reason your reading this blog anyway, right?

I went with Edwin to Long Beach last week to take the CQI coffee cupping course and Q grader tests with him. Now to give you an idea of my status in the coffee community I’ll tell you what my friends and family said when I told them I was going on this trip…number one answer, “WHY?” proceeded by a few chuckles. This is where the word inexperienced comes in handy. I don’t drink coffee, I haven’t cupped much coffee, I don’t know that much about coffee and the worst of it is (don’t read this part if you are prone to nausea or light headedness) I don’t even like coffee. I drink peppermint mochas with soy milk and I often get them at Starbucks. There, I said it. Think what you want about it, but try to refrain from sending us any nasty-grams.

Why did I tell you all of this? Edwin thought that you might be interested to know my opinion of the CQI course and tests. After all, I am now an SCAA Certified Cupping Judge. No, seriously. If you don’t believe me I’ll send you a copy of my certificate!

The course started out on Monday and there was not much course to it. I quickly learned that one should know two important things to get through the week, Coffee and Spanish, neither of which I knew very well. We had a one hour and fifteen minute intro, one practice cupping and then went straight to the first tests and continued testing and re-testing for the rest of the week.

What were we tested on?

We had 5 Triangulations, where you had 6 groups of 3 cups on the table. Each group had two identical coffees and one slightly different coffee. The object there is to identify the one that is different.

We had 5 Cupping Tests. Each test featured a specific growing region like Colombia or Central America and had 6 different coffees from that region on the table. The object was to grade them according to the Q grader judging form.

We had 4 Olfactory tests. Each test had 9 different vials of oil that smelled similar and the object was to identify each vial by its smell. For example, in one group there was Walnut, Hazelnut, Peanut, Almond, Vanilla, Chocolate, Caramel, Butter and toast.

We had one three part sensory skills test. This tests your ability to recognize salt, sugar and sour. In parts one and two we just had to identify the intensity. We new it was sugar but had to say whether it was intensity one two or three. In part three they were all mixed at different levels and we had to say what was in each cup. For example, this cup has intensity one sour, intensity 2 sugar and intensity 1 salt!

We had one matching pairs test where there were 6 groups of 4 cups of coffee on the table, two control and two with a small amount of one of the acids that makes up coffee. The object was to identify the pairs.

We also had to grade green coffee, I.D roasted coffee and take a 100 question general coffee knowledge exam.

How did I feel about the tests? Well, that’s complicated. I liked the olfactory, the triangulations, the general knowledge and the matching pairs tests. I felt like they were fair tests with calculable results. You either got it right or you didn’t. I passed all of the olfactory tests with flying colors. When it comes to the sense of smell I am gifted! I passed the general knowledge test probably becasue it was just that, general. I think I’ve gained more of an understanding of coffee than I thought just from listening to Edwin talk all of the time! I had to retake two of the triangulations, but in the end had a pass on all of those as well.

As for the other tests, I think that CQI has a lot of refining to do. For example, the cuppings were graded on a curve. What that meant was the class set the standard and as long as you fell in the middle somewhere you passed. Now, I am a good test taker. I came out of college with great grades. Did I learn anything? Probably not too much. But I can take a test. I felt like, in these cuppings if you figured out how to be in the middle on everything you could pass and still not really know what you were doing. I have to be honest. I thought that most of the coffees smelled the same and tasted the same…just like dirt. When people started talking about the coffee having a hint of the smell of an orange peel, or like a cucumber or dry toast, I thought, “you’ve got to be kidding me”. Even at the end of all of that cupping I was not getting any floral notes, or sensing that the coffee was old or that it had good body (which I still don’t think I totally understand). But I was passing those tests and some people that have been cupping for years and years were not!

The course over all was a little unorganized and the standards not very clear. I could sense that a lot of people were feeling frustrated. I went into the whole experience expecting to just bomb, and even I was frustrated with how some of the testing was being handeled. But I will say that all of the instructors were first class. They were very nice and clearly doing their best.

So what was my overall opinion? I’ll sum it up by saying that the fact that I, me, the peppermint mocha drinker, am now an SCAA certified Cupping Judge, and other people that have been cupping for years didn’t pass, doesn’t give me much faith in the test. It’s either that or the coffee community better make way, because I am comming in!

El chucho.

Chucho in spanish is slang for dog, not to be confused with chuchito whichyou would think is a little dog. It’s actually a small tasty tamale that is prepared in it’s own corn husk. We have many wild dogs in the neighborhood. Every once in a while we get one that is persistent enough to claim his stake and call Finca Vista Hermosa Home. This nameless dog actually has many names which I can’t keep track of. He follows Carlos around to help make sure things get done. He thinks he owns the place.

The truth about our family and coffee.

I wish I could say our whole family drinks excellent coffee and enjoys it in its purest form.

However…. although my wife is truly an Ace when it comes to blind cupping and identifying defects, she has probably never consumed a pound of coffee in her life. In her words “it all tastes like dirt”. No comment on my part.  She is a better cupper than I am.  Nonetheless she has been tremendously supportive and is a vital part of getting the bean from our farm to your door. If I could only get her to read this blog every once in a while my hits on this site would instantly double. The MASTER TASTER (i believe it was) for Jack Daniels last year stated that he never consumed any hard alcohol outside of his job in order to preserve his taste buds, to do his job well. I’m sure this is also Nina’s alibi.

Evie, my mom is eager to learn all she can about coffee but has to have milk and sugar and my father Edwin Martinez – doesn’t drink coffee. He prefers tea. My grandfather grew up drinking a roasted mix of corn, defective coffee and other un-knowns as consuming just coffee was a luxury they couldn’t afford. This was common in Guate for his generation. But I’m confident if the coffee culture can be changed in New York, than the same can happen in Guatemala.