Who, What, Where, When, Why?

I guess I have had slightly more to say lately (the past few days) than in the past few months.  Maybe it is my lack of other things to do, or maybe the clouds have cleared from my mind and I am dealing with the clear open skies of my minds 'spring.'

So, I have been roasting more and more lately, usually doing anywhere from 10 to 20 roasts a day for at least 2-3 days out of the week.  I have been spending more and more time getting specifically where our coffees are coming from finding what varietals, elevations, processing types, so as to not only pass the information on to our loving customers but so that we can potentially modify our roasting techniques to better suit the coffees.  We have many different roasting profiles, but not necessarily for varietal or elevation specifics, and as we are still a micro-roaster not ever roasting more than 20lbs per batch, I am thinking that we could really start to hone in on a more specific line of roast profiles taking into account more aspects of the coffee.  This would be done with the intention of education for the general public that coffee is a seasonal crop and that there is no one coffee out there that can just grow anywhere in any condition.  There are different varietals that are used for a variety of reasons ranging from disease resistance to production and crop increases.  The varietal I am sure, ultimately has an effect in the cup and it should be addressed sooner than in the brewing method, but at the roasting step.  This also follows for the elevation, which equates roughly to increased bean density with higher elevations, and passed on potential flavor density and roast differences from a lower elevation grown coffee.

I must be clear that we do take these things into account with our roasting profiles. Unfortunately it is usually not known how much a roaster, like myself or papa Steve, does to really effect the final product. The coffee that may make its way successfully into your cup, and hopefully fully representing to the best of its ability, all the hard work and craftsmanship that was put into it at the farm and cooperative, in whatever country it was grown in.   How would knowing about what varietal and how it is roasted because of the varietal help you enjoy your cup more? How would knowing what farm your coffee comes from help you enjoy your coffee more? How does all the information we can potentially provide you, the drinking public, help you enjoy the experience more? 

When you know the who, what, where, when, and why of your coffee, you can essentially vote with your wallet and become an investor in that farm, family, processing method, varietal, and way of life of the people who grow that coffee.  It may seem strange that it is that way, but it is true.  If you were to find a great coffee that we at Anodyne are roasting and you continue to buy it, then we will get more.  This is basic economics, but what you do is directly effecting how we operate the business.  If you know most of the factors that go into your coffee and find that you enjoy a specific taste that comes from the pacamara varietal you can go back to or shelf or our wholesale accounts in the future and say, 'I know specifically that I enjoyed this type of coffee, perhaps I should get it again or not necessarily the same country but the same varietal from a different country or region.'  And the same goes for bourbon varietals, or perhaps higher or lower elevation coffees. 

It is not often in any circumstance that the general public can see the effects of their purchases, unless it is with a small business like a local farmers market.  You see and meet the people who are doing the work that ultimately gets eaten, made or passed on at your home.  Our world food supply has become a production line and coffee is no exception with the majority of coffee in the world grown by multinational corporations without a focus on the people or quality, just profit. Coffee is a strange industry in that coffee can only be quality grown between the tropics of cancer and capricorn on the globe.  Beyond that, specialty coffee is for the most part grown in far off, hard to reach locations in jungles, picked by small farmers and families that never get the chance to ever leave their country or let alone get to try their coffees the way we do here in America.  We as consumers, and as the general public, never get to meet the people who grow, pick, process, and for the most part roast our coffee.  It is easy to grab a bag of Colombia coffee off the shelf, have it ground, and drunk within the week, never thinking twice about any of this.  But to all the hands along the line that it took to bring you this coffee, it does mean a lot.  This is what I meant at the beginning of this rant when I was trying to underscore the idea of information provided on the coffees, the who, what, where, and why.  The specialty coffee industry represents just a small fraction of the coffee produced in the world. 

I say it is fortunate that there is a 'buy local' movement going on all around the country and world both for environmental and economic reasons.  And although coffee is literally grown on the opposite side of the world from us in some cases, your impact on that area of coffee growing may be more direct than how you effect your next door neighbor.  Even if you cant buy from Anodyne specifically, find your local roaster and get all of the information you can from them to improve the quality of life, not just for you and your coffee loving senses, but for the farmers around the world that put so much into growing you the best coffee that they can.