Tzoumerka Mountains

Coffee, Water and Pope Francis’ Revolutionary Take on the Environment

In May, Pope Francis published Laudato Si (Praised Be), his encyclical on the environment. This treatise is the continuation of a body of teachings on critical social, political and economic themes by Popes that form Catholic Social Teaching. The first encyclical (Rerum Novarum) was published in 1891, and dealt with capital and labor. Laudato Si is brilliant and practical — 150 pages, 250 paragraphs.
Here I’m pasting sections from the chapter called Integral Ecology.
What’s this have to do with coffee and water? Everything. Coffee and water are part of an integrated social and natural system, where the interaction of people with their environment directly affects the “ecosystem services” that flow from coffeelands, including both coffee and water.
As I share parts of the letter, many people — Catholics and non-Catholics alike — are surprised that this was written by a Pope. But while Francis’ letter is revolutionary, it is not actually a departure from Catholic Social Teaching. In fact, it explicitly builds on the writings and speeches of John Paul II (e.g. paragraphs 5, 64, and 85), Benedict XVI (e.g. paragraphs 6, 109, and 206) and the Catholic Catechism (e.g. paragraphs 92, 50, and 69). That said, the letter is radical in that it calls for fundamental and urgent shifts in our lifestyles, economics, and politics.

Integral Ecology

Laudato Si – Chapter Four

Part I. Environmental, Economic and Social Ecology

Paragraph 137

• Since everything is closely interrelated, and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis, I suggest that we now consider some elements of an integral ecology, one which clearly respects its human and social dimensions.

Paragraph 138.

• Ecology studies the relationship between living organisms and the environment in which they develop…

• It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation…

• Just as the different aspects of the planet – physical, chemical and biological – are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network which we will never fully explore and understand…

Paragraph 139.

• When we speak of the “environment”, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it…

Paragraph 140.

• Due to the number and variety of factors to be taken into account when determining the environmental impact of a concrete undertaking, it is essential to give researchers their due role, to facilitate their interaction, and to ensure broad academic freedom… Ongoing research should also give us a better understanding of how different creatures relate to one another in making up the larger units which today we term “ecosystems”.

• Each organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself; the same is true of the harmonious ensemble of organisms existing in a defined space and functioning as a system. Although we are often not aware of it, we depend on these larger systems for our own existence. We need only recall how ecosystems interact in dispersing carbon dioxide, purifying water, controlling illnesses and epidemics, forming soil, breaking down waste, and in many other ways which we overlook or simply ignore.

• Once they become conscious of this, many people realize that we live and act on the basis of a reality which has previously been given to us, which precedes our existence and our abilities. So, when we speak of “sustainable use”, consideration must always be given to each ecosystem’s regenerative ability in its different areas and aspects.

Ethiopia Commodity Exchange Launches $4.5 Million Traceability System

Photo by the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange.

The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) has officially launched its IBM-enabled national traceability system, known as eATTS. With numerous industry partners in the large-volume green coffee trading and buying segment, as well as collaboration with USAID, the $4.5 million (USD) program is rolling out in pilot format with this year’s harvest season.
The ECX, formed in 2008 to help centralize the country’s coffee trade to mixed results, says the traceability system will “soon cover all of Ethiopia’s coffee growing regions, which encompass over 5 million smallholder farmers.”
Through cloud-based IBM technology, coffees tracked in the system for trade through the ECX will be tagged with geo-referencing to more than 2,500 washing, hulling and cleaning stations in the country’s main coffee regions. The tags will include embedded information such as photos of the individual stations, and names and contact information for station managers.
Casting so wide a net, time will have to tell whether the system actually does strengthen value throughout the production chain as the ECX and its partners hope. If so, it could prove a model for other countries in essentially de-commoditizing coffees for larger buyers seeking differentiation through origin, certifications and/or quality in exceedingly crowded consumer markets.
“True traceability goes beyond the commodity’s type or origin to tracing where the commodity has been,” said ECX CEO Ermias Eshetu “We wish to track the footprint of our coffee and where and when it was washed, stored, who sampled and graded it, and when it was shipped. All of these facts will help improve our ability to move commodities traded within the exchange and create premium value for all stakeholders in the value chain.”
The ECX said the tech-based system is a response to the demand among commodity buyers. Said ECX:

Buyers of commodities have become more discerning and willing to pay for quality, environmentally-friendly and origin-specific commodities. Additionally, international buyers demand transparency and accountability within supply chains, so as to ensure the quality, consistency and safety of their products. To meet these demands, ECX and partners are implementing a wide array of activities, including electronic tracking of bags, innovations in washing and processing, and streamlined storage and transportation processes.

ECX’s private industry partners in the product include some of the world’s largest buying and trading organizations. Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Mother Parker’s Coffee & Tea and The Sustainable Trade Initiative jointly contributed $1.3 million through the Sustainable Coffee Program, a public/private consortium supported by numerous multinational corporations invested in the coffee trade.

Florence and the Machine - Drumming Song (Live on KEXP)

Brazil to resume auctions of government coffee stocks in coming weeks

SAO PAULO - Brazil crop supply agency Conab said on Friday it plans to auction off 300,000 to 400,000 bags of arabica coffee by the end of the year in biweekly auctions.

Brazil holds 1.56 million 60-kg bags (94,000 tons) of arabica coffee in government-controlled warehouses, which it acquired in past years to support domestic prices during harvest.
Conab had been selling lots of 9,000 to 40,000 bags in periodic auctions earlier in 2015 but stopped in recent months. Demand in the auctions was checkered due to the pricing of the coffee on auction. Traders said they considered prices high at the time for the quality of coffee on offer.
Dates, prices and exact volumes of coffee to be auctioned later this year have yet to be defined by the Agriculture Ministry.
Current-crop good cup arabicas are quoted as low as 465 reais a bag ($0.93/lb) at hinterland warehouses.
In September, Brazil finished a disappointing harvest of 43 million to 50 million bags, depending on the forecast, and privately held stocks for the commodity are expected to fall to extremely low levels in the second quarter of 2016.
Drought in early 2015 in Espirito Santo, Brazil's main robusta growing state, slashed output by 20 percent to 30 percent to roughly 11 million bags and has caused prices for the bean on the local market to rise, hurting margins for local roasters.
Brazil's smaller robusta crop is almost entirely consumed on the domestic market and the auctions of old crop arabica beans are expected to help ease prices for local roasters, which have reported using more of the milder bean in their blends.
Conab did not say whether the auctions would continue into 2016.

Meet the American Press: Immersion and Pressure Combined

All images courtesy of American Press.

When water and coffee are combined for an active method of brewing, it’s usually the water that’s moved through the coffee and not the other way around. Yet with a novel new brewing system called the American Press, the opposite is true: grounds contained in a sealed filter basket are manually pushed through the water, which presents an intriguing new set of variables to consider.
Factors such as water temp and input ratio are familiar, while the relationship of dose and grind with brewing duration and water pressure as manipulated in real time by the user’s manual pressing technique — the pushing of the coffee basket down through the water — constitutes a new and unexplored interplay in the brewing process. So while the American Press looks very much like a French press, it actually has more in common with Aeropress and espresso in terms of fundamental brewing principles.
The production process for the brewer is only just approaching its pre-manufacturing fundraising stage, having achieved certain social media goals prior to a scheduled Nov. 9 soft-launch of a formal IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign that kicks off in earnest the following day. Yet the device itself and the product rollout plan have been in steadfast development for more than four years.

The American Press has gone through several rounds of prototyping and already appears in several polished-looking promotional videos. Its inventor, Alex Albanese, has taken it to various roasteries and cafes in the Detroit area for taste and experience testing among professionals and consumers alike. He believes that the American Press will hit a sweet spot between usability and innovation, having an Aeropress-caliber impact on the connoisseur demographic while also appealing to coffee novices with its familiar form, simple process and easy clean-up.
The brewing carafe is a double-wall insulated Tritan, which is the same clear, resilient, BPA-free and dishwasher-safe co-polyester resin used in Vitamix pitchers, CamelBak bottles and other popular vessels. The top cap, handle, plunger and filters are all solid stainless steel, including a pouring spout designed to be drip-free. The structure of the filter basket is also Tritan. The seals around the filters are silicone, which fit tightly enough to direct positive water pressure but are smooth enough for easy operation.
The lower filter is wider gauged for better water flow into the coffee, while the steel mesh upper filter is spec’d to a filtration fineness of 150 microns, which is finer than the Able Disc Fine though not as fine as the 60-micron wire-mesh Kaffeologie S Filter. Albanese has stated that if demand is there, an optional super-fine filter can be designed and included later, as the filters are easy to install and remove from the device.

Albanese, also the founder and CEO of the American Press company, is a self-described “washed-up physicist” with a background in applied physics and human-centered design, which is the approach to design from an anthropological perspective, studying closely how people interact with products and looking for unmet needs. As a longtime coffee-lover, Albanese was naturally drawn towards coffee-related products, and found himself studying the way people interact with French presses.
“It’s not that hard to clean out a French press, but people just don’t like doing it,” Albanese observed. So initially the goal was to make a French-press-like brewer that was simply easier to clean, although soon after making his first few prototypes, Albanese realized there was much more to his idea than easy clean-up.
“I try to avoid overstating the ‘easier to clean’ part,” said Albanese, noting that the hands-on nature of the brewing method coupled with its spectacular display of the brewing event are the aspects more central to its appeal. “To see the column of clear water just kind of disappearing and turning into a column of coffee is one of the most interesting things about it. It really is this sort of magical water-to-coffee moment, it’s very visual, it’s very engaging.”
The name came about not in an effort to wave any flags, but as a means to differentiate his design from the French press — which is itself actually Italian — as well as simply due to a distaste for the portmanteaus and made-up words that dominate consumer goods these days. Meanwhile, prior to pursuing the American Press dream, Albanese had put his research skills to work for other heavy hitters in the consumer products industry. This included some consulting work for Dyson, the makers of vacuum cleaners and bladeless fans.
“They’re all about prototyping,” said Albanese of the Dyson company, which imparted in him the importance of investing in pre-manufacturing fine-tuning as he set out to make the earliest American Press prototypes himself. Said Albanese, “I spent four months in a machine shop, walking in initially and not even knowing how to use a drill press. I didn’t know how to use a tool to save my life.”

Albanese considers prototyping to be a form of insurance against problems down the line. “It doesn’t matter who you are, it could be Dyson, it could be Bodum, it could be anybody,” he said. “You don’t know for sure that your first run at tooling is going to work.” Yet while bigger companies have the finances to cover additional runs of tooling if the first run is faulty, the fledgling American Press company does not, which makes the greatest possible extent of certainty an even more important asset.
“What I’ve done with this, in addition to all the other homework, is put a lot of work into prototyping to make as sure as possible that we can just cut a check for tooling and it’s going to come out right the first time around,” said Albanese, “which is also to the point of not just getting the product to crowdfunding backers, but getting it to them as fast as possible.”
The business plan depends on the crowdfunding campaign that Albanese and his team of marketers and consultants have been preparing for months. Albanese’s strategy of Facebook and other social media benchmarks, combining market research with valuable pre-campaign word-of-mouth publicity, calls to mind another recently successful coffee-related project: the Precision Coffee Grinder by Handground, which made concerted social media and publicity efforts prior to launching a campaign that set a goal of $35,000 and netted over $300,000.
Albanese says that after all these years and so much invested in expensive prototyping and other preparations, the friends-and-family money tap has been tightened off, but if the campaign is wildly successful right off the bat, he thinks he might be able to wring out a few more behind-the-scenes loans to cut a check for tooling before the campaign is even over. “I can honestly say that if the campaign blew up the first week, and I could get the folks that have gotten me this far to just cut the check I need for tooling, and everything went really smoothly, then I could potentially get these to people about three to five months after the campaign closes.”
While the likelihood of a first-timer’s manufacturing endeavor going “really smoothly” may seem slim, Albanese is optimistic even there, having pursued factories he learned about through industry connections. Unable to find a manufacturing plant on American soil that could do all that needed to be done, Albanese settled on a factory overseas that has “made stuff for the big boys,” including some well-known and well-reputed brand-name products. “They know what they’re doing, they probably make half the stuff that’s in Bed Bath and Beyond,” said Albanese. “It’s a pretty hardcore, high-end factory.”
“If I were to plan for delays, what I would be telling people is still probably above average,” added Albanese, who believes the worst case scenario would be six months after cutting a check for tooling.
The American Press designer envisions a scenario in which the product is introduced to patrons in service environments rather than to shoppers in retail stores, in hopes that people get to see and experience the brewing process while also learning about coffee in general. “I think it would make a great experience for people at a restaurant or café, and they would walk away with a much more in-depth understanding of the product than if it were just sitting on a store shelf,” said Albanese, who reported having already engaged in extensive discussions with one national department store chain.

Yet he’s averse to going the department store route for reasons beyond the non-interactive nature of a static shelf display. For one thing, cafés see the novelty as exciting and attractive, whereas department stores tend to view innovation as problematic in terms of product recognition and categorization. Moreover, Albanese is reluctant at this point to sign any contracts with retailers whose primary objective seems to be to drive the retail price of a new product down as far as possible, without considering its effect on the quality of the product. Said Albanese, “I really care about this product, I’ve invested a lot of time in it. I have no interest in making a product that I don’t believe in.”
Albanese said that future products and accessories in the American Press line may include additional filters for other applications such as steeping tea, or a glass carafe once there’s money in the budget for further R&D. Before going higher-end, though, he intends to introduce a lighter-weight model that is more geared towards camping and travel, that would also have the benefit of a lower price point. As the current model is essentially a single-serving brewer, he also intends to develop a larger model for multiple servings at once. For now, though, Albanese believes that the ease of use and the enjoyment of the spectacle of the American Press will inspire users to take pleasure in making multiple brews in a row, taking turns watching a magical “water to coffee” moment unfold again and again.

In Duluth, City Girl Coffee is All About Buying From and Giving Back to Women

At 25 years old, Duluth, Minn.-based Alakef Coffee Roasters has not been resting on its laurels in 2015. In fact, the year has seen major changes for the company, including a new owner in Alyza Bohbot, who took over the family business in January after coming over from the beer industry with Samuel Adams maker the Boston Beer Company.
Now Bohbot is overseeing the opening of Alakef’s first branded retail outpost, a small kiosk inside the Super One Foods location at the Kenwood Shopping Center. While that move is sure to raise the profile of the Alakef brand locally after roasting for wholesale, grocery and direct online sales since 1990, the Alakef team is in the process of launching a sister brand, City Girl Coffee.
Already a member of the International Womens Coffee Alliance, which works on numerous fronts to support and empower women throughout the coffee supply chain, and a supporter of the nonprofit Café Femenino Foundation, which provides grants to female producers, City Girl Coffee aims to source coffees from women producers whenever possible, while giving back a portion of the proceeds of its sales to organizations that support women locally, domestically and at origin.

Alyza Bohbot. Photo courtesy of City Girl Coffee.

“As a successful woman business owner in a predominately male-driven industry, I am in an incredible position to do something to make a difference, and with City Girl Coffee, that is what I intend to do,” Bohbot said in an announcement anticipating the City Girl Coffee launch party, taking place Thursday, Nov. 12, at the Muse Center in Minneapolis. Proceeds from the $45-per-ticket event will benefit Chicago-based breast cancer and ovarian cancer detection and awareness group Bright Pink.
Part of the inspiration for the women-forward coffee brand came from Bohbot’s own shock related to statistics from groups like the IWCA and the World Bank related to the quality of life struggles faced by huge numbers of female farmers, particularly in the coffee sector. Said, Bohbot, “On top of the hardships most coffee farmers face, women growers consistently face additional struggles in their fight to maintain a respectable standard of living.”

Synesso Launches Variable, Programmable MVP Espresso Machines

The MVP in stainless steel. Images courtesy of Synesso.

Mavam may have stolen the show at the recent Portland Coffee Fest event, although they weren’t the only Seattle-based machine-maker with something new to share. Synesso, makers of the advanced and popular Cyncra and Hydra paddle-actuated espresso machines, is ready to ship a new line of upgraded machines with its latest technological offering called MVP.
MVP stands for Manual or Volumetric Program. At the core of this advancement are several key new features related to controlling espresso brewing parameters and then repeating an ideal extraction profile. Up to six different shot profiles can be programmed into the system for each individual group, each with extraction time split up into 4 programmable phases.
Users can designate the pressure and volume of water delivered during these four stages of a shot, ramping up to full pressure and then down in however quickly or delicately a curve best suits a given coffee. With each click of adjustment to Synesso’s flow meters representing a fraction of a milliliter difference, extraction profiles can be dialed in with extreme precision. On the MVP Hydra, each grouphead also operates autonomously, with its own pump and motor.

Meanwhile, in Manual mode, a barista can vary the pressure and flow in real time by adjusting settings on the wired controller while advancing the paddle through brew stages in order to experiment during the dialing-in process. “The original premise was to mimic a lever machine,” Synesso Marketing and Dealer Support Representative Katy Kelly told Daily Coffee News, regarding the Hydra and the four-stage pressure-ramping design.
Kelly described a system a based on bypasses that allow or restrict the amount of water being delivered by each pump, from line pressure up to maximum pump pressure. Maximum pump pressures are variable as well, although those must be configured manually on the pumps directly.
All MVP machines can switch back forth from manual to pre-profiled volumetric mode at any time, on any group, with a simple adjustment on the top of the group head. LCD screens display the shot timer, temperature, and a four-bar graph indicating what programmed phase of the extraction is occurring. Synesso’s foundational Cyncra machine will still be available in its original format, as a point of entry to the line. From there the product hierarchy steps up to the new MVP machine — essentially a Cyncra with the MVP upgrade — then the top-of-the-line MVP Hydra.
Early MVP concept machines were on display at the 2015 SCAA Event this past April in Seattle. Production and shipment schedules actually had the finished MVP machines on the ground in Australia for an official global launch of the product in mid October, just a couple weeks before the first official production-line MVP Hydra landed in its first North American café, on the bar at Portland, Ore.’s Case Study Coffee. That one arrived at just about the same time as the Portland Coffee Fest event unfolded, where an MVP machine also quietly debuted before the North American public.

The MVP Hydra in blue.

“We were sort of guest-starring at a booth. We didn’t have our own booth there,” said Kelly. The MVP machine was at the booth shared by Colorado’s Ozo Coffee Company and a new liquid cacao beverage called Cholaca. Baristas and anyone else interested can catch a hands-on glimpse of the new machines in the very space where they’re built this coming November 19, when the Synesso Factory will host a Thursday Night Throwdown latte art competition for the first time.