Today's episode features Lucas, a Patron and exporter with Unblended who sold a Kombucha coffee. I invited him and the producers he works with, Felipe and Jose to talk about their experience reverse engineering a $5 castillo. They started with the end goal in mind, the picked the price, the flavor profile they wanted and then created a process to hit their target. In this episode you'll hear from 3 passionate coffee professionals about: What a successful relationship looks like between...
Aug 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 38
Today I am joined by Jamie Isetts, Sourcing Consultant. In this episode we cover: What a green buyer does How Jamie became a green buyer How to organize a coffee contract Communication red flags between producers and green buyers Strategies for long lasting relationships Get in touch with Jamie Isetts Support the show on Patreon And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures. Cover Art by...
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 2Ep. 37
In this episode I will cover: the yeast inoculation history of wine to better understand why the natural wine and sour beer movements are rejecting inoculation. the difference between rot, wild fermentations and controlled fermentations. the role of salt in a coffee fermentation. are lactoferments better for low or high elevation farms? to pulp or not to pulp coffee cherries? how lactoferments differ from "anaerobic" fermentations and carbonic maceration. Lastly, I will give you my adv...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Do you drink kombucha? Coming from California, kombucha is about as normal as orange juice. But I imagine it might not be as popular in other parts of the world. Kombucha is probably more popular in North America and Europe (coffee importing countries) and probably very rare in coffee producing countries. I can imagine a near future where buyers are drawn to or supportive of kombucha process without understanding what they may be asking producers to do. Or similarly, producers wanting to be ahea...
May 27, 2021•56 min
Today's episode is another in a series hearing from coffee producers from all parts of the world. I think one of the common traps we can get into is thinking and talking about "The" coffee farmer. Or "The Average Coffee Farmer." As if coffee farmers are a monolith. The average doesn’t exist. The people who grow and produce coffee are a very diverse group who do it for different reasons in very different conditions. It’s our nature, that when we learn something new, to co...
May 06, 2021•56 min•Season 2Ep. 34
Today’s questions all come from Dr. Mack in Bangkok, Thailand. Even though he is asking the question on behalf of coffee producers in Thailand, I wanted to answer them on the podcast because they are relevant to all of the newer coffee producing regions. Thailand didn’t export coffee until 1976! This is very recent and not a lot of time for coffee growers and producers to develop their craft and catch up with older coffee growing regions like Colombia, where I am living. Colombia was already exp...
Mar 23, 2021•36 min
Our sugar journey is almost complete as we round out the third installment in the Brix series. I hope the previous podcast episodes helped open your mind to some of the challenges we face in talking about sugar in the coffee industry. Today's episode focuses on ripeness and how counterintuitively sometimes measuring Brix can lead to lower quality coffee. And to help illustrate this point I'm sharing a lesson from one of my favorite industries: the cork industry. Specifically cork wine ...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 32
I hope the previous podcast episode helped open your mind to some of the challenges we face in talking about sugar in the coffee industry. In today's episode we are adding another element, another piece of the puzzle—the refractometer and the other instruments used to measure sugar. In today's episode we will see how a refractometer can give a high Brix reading even when there is zero sugar in the sample. Or, how it is possible to get negative Brix readings. I think understanding more ...
Jan 19, 2021•39 min
Where does sweetness come from? Can something taste sweet that has no sugar? How can we measure sugar in coffee? This will be a more technical episode where we will talk about the sugar compounds like carbohydrates, sucrose, glucose and fructose and sweetness as a concept. We will also look at how sugar content differs based on processing style: washed, honey or natural. Support the show on Patreon and get access to research papers. Sign up for the newsletter to stay informed. Cover Art by: Nick...
Jan 07, 2021•36 min
Today you get to be a fly on the wall of a consulting session between myself and a coffee producer in Uganda. The Coffee Gardens is a newer project of coffee producers who have partnered with select coffee farmers in Eastern Uganda. They currently work directly with 300 small holder farmers. They have a micro-processing station in the foothills of Mount Elgon. This episode might be most relevant to a coffee producer, so if you know any, please pass this episode along to them. Especially if they ...
Dec 08, 2020•45 min
If you started the season with me in October you’ll remember that I started exploring the topic of what we lose when we take a plant from its native environment. Episode #25: A California Coffee Farm & Native vs. Local Yeasts looked at the relationship between coffee trees and the fermentation. Dr. Aimee Dudley’s research showed that the native microbes do not travel with the plant material and therefore all coffee fermentations outside of Ethiopia are non-native fermentations. Episode #26: ...
Nov 24, 2020•41 min•Season 2Ep. 28
We usually hear about coffee from roasters or even people like me, who work with coffee producers but we are not producers ourselves. One of my podcast goals is to bring you directly to the source. Whether it's scientific research or hearing directly from coffee producers. Often we leave it to coffee professionals and educators to speak about coffee producers but it’s rare to hear directly from coffee producers about their motivations and challenges. And even when we do hear from them on th...
Nov 03, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 27
What is left behind when coffee moves to new locations. What is the trade off for innovation? This episode looks at what else we potentially leave behind when we introduce new plant material to non-native locations. The inspiration for this episode was a beautiful book by Peter Wohlleben called The Hidden Life of Trees. In it, Peter talks about native forests vs planted forests and the differences we (humans) are able to perceive. One of the example trees in Peter's book are oak trees. This...
Oct 20, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 26
This week I want to talk to you about where native coffee yeast come from. If you are concerned about coffee flavor manipulation by yeast, I hope by the end of the episode you have a broader understanding of where "native" yeast originally came from. To help illustrate the point, we start with non traditional coffee growing regions like Southern California. In the episode I will also be sharing research from Dr. Amiee Dudley. I met Dr. Aimee Dudley in 2017 during SCA EXPO in Seattle wh...
Oct 06, 2020•50 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Aurora is back for another tea chat. Unfortunately I think coffee and tea are often lumped together in similar categories but they have very different histories and I think it’s worth trying to de-couple these beverages. Join us as we discuss how: -tea is largely consumed in it's botanical origins and coffee is not. -the different flavors of stress (positive and negative) -over extraction and the role of color -my thoughts on Cascara tea Mentioned in the Podcast: Support the show on Patreon...
Aug 10, 2020•1 hr 4 min
What happens when the best in the world can't tell if a wine comes from the Willamette Valley in Oregon or Burgundy, France? What happens when the experts can't tell if the bubbles are from Champagne or California. Does a place really have a taste? Can we find it in the glass? That is the premise of terroir, tasting the land, localizing the product. But often, when put "terroir" to the test it cannot be found. Today's episode starts with the story of the 1976 Judgement o...
Jul 28, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Welcome to the next installment of terroir in coffee. This one little word contains a whole world of history and has an important role in the economic viability of certain agricultural products. After the last episode I heard from some of you who wished I had talked about soil minerals and plant nutrition from soil. Others also asked about the wine making regions like Bordeaux where Terroir is regulated by french law. I cover both of these concerns in todays episode before we get to discuss what...
Jul 14, 2020•57 min•Season 1Ep. 22
I'm so excited for you to join me in this discussion about terroir. Terroir comes from latin, for terra - soil. Also translated as land, or “taste of the land”. Terroir is predominantly a wine concept, so why are we even talking about it in reference to coffee? If you’ve listened to other episodes, you’ll know that there are certain concepts that the coffee industry likes to borrow from the wine industry. We’ve talked about some of the really bad ones, like using wine or beer tanks to ferme...
Jun 30, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you introduced foreign yeast and bacteria into a coffee farm? Or maybe you're curious if we can speed up a long fermentation by warming it up. How does post harvest processing affect the density of the seed? In today's podcast episode I’m answering listener questions like these and also sharing how I approach designing a fermentation. When I was planning this podcast I knew that I wanted it to be a community supported project and that I did n...
Jun 16, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 20
For those who know, it may not come as a surprise when I share how much I love tea. But professionally, today is the day I come out of the tea closet. I drink logarithmic levels of tea compared to coffee, and the more I confess that, the more other coffee professionals share with me that they too love specialty teas. Unfortunately I think coffee and tea are often lumped together in similar categories but they have very different histories and I think it’s worth trying to de-couple these beverage...
Jun 02, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 19
In today's Making Coffee Podcast episode, we're taking a deep dive into anaerobic fermentation and how language reflects values. Specialty coffee is a young industry. In the consumer space we have only recently started to differentiate between processing styles like natural, washed and honey and now we’re jumping off the deep end into the microbiology of these processing styles. I wanted to record this episode because many Green Buyers ask me what Coffee Producers mean when they label ...
May 19, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Today's Making Coffee Podcast episode is a continuation of the theme of coffee pickers and their role in quality. In the previous episode I shared my surprisingly difficult experience trying to source red ripe coffee cherry. It was surprisingly difficult to pay the farmers more for a different quality than they were used to picking because of the established system, a system that developed over decades as a response to chronically low coffee prices. It's important for me to share this ...
May 05, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Today's episode is part 1 of a 2 part series talking about the people who pick our coffee. In episode 15 we went deeply into how a molecule of sucrose in the coffee cherry pulp becomes a flavor compound like banana or peach and gets into the coffee seed. Flavor is an accessible entry point for specialness. However, I don’t like talking about flavor and coffee too much. I don’t think coffee flavor is what’s going to help the industry move closer towards long term stability. I think it’s most...
Apr 21, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Today's episode is very special because it was picked by the Making Coffee Podcast Patrons. I sent my patrons a poll on what they wanted to hear about next and the topic most people wanted to hear about was HOW fermentation impacts coffee flavor. How can the same yeast that makes bread rise also make my coffee taste like apricot or jasmine? Maybe you’ve thought that farmers added fruit to the coffee (and while this sometimes happens—it’s not the kind of flavor we are talking about today). M...
Apr 06, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Join me in listening to this conversation with George Howell, where we cover topics such as Cup of Excellence, coffee pricing, processing styles, craftsmanship, additives in processing, kamikaze farmers, and much more. George was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award from the SCA in 1996, even before he helped found the Cup of Excellence program in 1999. He's accomplished a lot towards improving coffee quality and educating consumers on several fronts. What I admire most is that he continu...
Mar 11, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Hello friends, Today I want to share an interview with Sofia Handtke from Mapache Coffee in El Salvador. I recorded this last November at the end of my time with them. That was my second season working with them and designing fermentation lots at their mill. Over the last 2 harvest seasons we've done about 40 different batches combining 4 strains of yeast, 3 cultivars and various lengths (# of hours in the tank) in an effort to create additional flavor options. I wanted to interview Sofia a...
Jan 28, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 13
I'm at the halfway mark of this trip and I officially ran out of coffee. I mentioned before that a significant portion of my carry-on space was dedicated to roasted coffee. Bringing coffee from home would mean that towards the end I was drinking coffee that was about 2 months old. Generally, I don’t like to drink coffee that is over 2 months old. I don’t like stale coffee but what I’ve found is that many of us drink stale coffee. Maybe not on purpose but if you’re not actively paying attent...
Jan 21, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Hello friends, In today’s podcast episode I get to do something a little different. Instead of giving you my thoughts on a particular coffee topic, I’m answering questions from 4 different listeners. Ideally I would like to have an episode for each question because they are rich with topics but many listeners have submitted questions through my website. The pile is growing quite large and I think it would be more helpful if I could keep answers brief to address a higher number of questions. Toda...
Dec 31, 2019•21 min•Season 1Ep. 11
When most people hear that I’m going to Central America for work, they often say some variation of “how cool! you’re going to have such great coffee” which is true, but only because I haul most of if myself from The United States back to Central America in my suitcase. Consuming countries pay a higher price for good coffee - so by design the best coffee leaves the countries where it was produced. The coffee that remains is the stuff that wasn’t good enough to export and sell, so by design the lo...
Dec 23, 2019•19 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, I had the chance to speak with Jan-Carlo Handtke of Mapache Coffee. Jan-Carlo shares important perspectives of what it's like to be a 5th generation producer today. When most people are leaving coffee, Jan-Carlo and his wife Sofia are doubling down, buying new farms and making significant investments in education and equipment. In this conversation we talk about the role of social media, selling coffee on the local market, and he also shares some of his struggles. We talk a...
Dec 02, 2019•43 min•Season 1Ep. 9
