With about 17,000 islands and some 120 to 130 active volcanoes, Indonesia lies roughly between Australia and the Asian continent. In a lot of ways you could compare "American" Colombia to "Asian" Indonesia: their famous coffees to start with of course, but also their climate, ethnic and bio-diversity. Both Colombia and Indonesia are big specialty Arabica exporting countries as they represent number 1 and 2 worldwide.

„Ukážu ti něco, co není vidět,“ lákal jsem přítelkyni k návštěvě kavárny Potmě, aniž bych ovšem prozradil, kam vlastně půjdeme. Respektive: „Te enseño algo que no se puede ver.“ Ve Španělsku žádný podobný projekt nemají, a tak jsem si byl jist, že neuhodne, co mám v plánu. A navzdory vytrvalému naléhání ze mě vymámila jen jednu malou nápovědu, to když jsme kousek od pražského Náměstí Republiky potkali slečnu se štěnětem, které je ve výcviku na asistenčního psa: „Myslím, že jdou z místa, na které teď jdeme.“ Uznávám, že jako nápověda je tahle informace spíše matoucí.

Yesterday I saw part of a movie with somebody running with a plastic cup of coffee trying to catch a subway, spilling his coffee on the way. The cup had some kind of tap on it but did not do a good job at keeping the coffee in the cup. Why would someone buy such a cup? Why did he not make his own coffee at home and take a thermo-(cup) with him? Questions like that passed my mind.

Australia might not be the first place you think about when looking for a single origin coffee, but coffee is harvested in this country (/continent/island) and there actually are some coffees from the land down under that are worth trying out. However, most people when thinking about Aussie coffee will think about a flat white, a short or long black, or a long macchiato.

V uplynulých týdnech se mezi kavárenskými stolky špitalo o otevření nové pobočky Narcoffee Roasters v samém centru Prahy, v Lazarské ulici. Narcoffe Roasters je původem rumunská pražírna, ale když už jsem minule navštívil ruský podnik Double B coffee & tea, proč se tentokrát nevydat za jinou kávovou exotikou.

Ever heard of Geisha coffee? Geisha's (literally “art persons”) are female Japanese entertainers: art, singing and dancing. What do they have to do with coffee? Well, absolutely nothing. “Geisha” is a homophone of "Gesha". In 2004 the Gesha coffee variety appeared on the Best of Panama specialty coffee auction and since then, the variety has obtained several record prices at auctions and several victories at barista competitions.

Rusové obohatili světovou gastronomii o celou řadu pokrmů a pochutin, není to však národ proslulý svým vztahem ke kávě. Pokud jde o horké nápoje, na Rusi se tradičně pil a pije čaj ze samovaru. I přesto najdete v Praze ruskou kavárnu a pražírnu Double B Coffee & Tea, která je součástí nadnárodní franšízy Double B. A protože se těší mimořádně pozitivnímu hodnocení na prakticky všech sociálních sítích Tripadvisorem počínaje přes Google až po Facebook, překonal jsem svou skepsi, zapudil představu kremelské kávy s dvojitou vodkou a do Anglické ulice, kde pražírna trochu paradoxně sídlí, se vypravil.

In the morning when I wake up the first thing I do is take a cup of coffee I left from the day before. I like my first coffee to be cold. Next thing I do is put on the water kettle to make some more coffee. I use the same coffee ground of the day before and put an extra (normal) dose of fresh coffee on top. The second cup is warm and quite strong and I like it with a little bit of sugar.

When you buy Colombian coffee, you can be quite sure you buy a high-end quality, wet-milled Arabica coffee and nothing else. This fact is closely related to the works of the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) that was founded in 1927 and monitors production to ensure export quality standards are met and the strict enforcement of export rules. Since 1959 the FNC created the fictional figure of “Juan Valdez”, promoting Colombian coffee; a very successful marketing campaign that still goes on.

Tentokrát je dobré začít reportáž trochu netradičně vyjasněním pojmů, aby nedošlo k nedorozumění. Pražírna Just Coffee a její dvorní kavárna Café Dvůr jsou v Berouně, článek věnovaný kavárně a pražírně Just Caffee v Praze Uhříněvsi teprve vyjde. A kavárna Just Cafe v pražských Holešovicích je zase něco úplně jiného.

Colombia, most famous for its coffee and cocaine! But there is so much more about this beautiful country and it would be no exaggeration to state that, if not for its unstable and unsafe general conditions, Colombia would be one of the top tourist’s destinations of South America. There is a lot to see and enjoy in this country of extremes and I would say that there is something for everyone.

Kavárna Místo jako taková není zrovna mým šálkem kávy, ale je jednou z dceřiných kaváren pražírny Doubleshot, která v České republice bezesporu patří k nejlepším. A když chcete v okolí Hradčanské na opravdu dobrou kávu, třebas s sebou, Místo vás nezklame. A nezklame vás ani, pokud patříte k tvrdému hipsterskému jádru. V takovém případě vás určitě potěší také sousední prodejna amerických cukrovinek.

There is a lot to say about coffee and cigar pairing, they match quite nicely, but as a cigar aficionado, I came to think about that a lot of coffee producing countries also produce excellent leaves of tobacco for cigars! Tobacco is grown in rich, well drained (volcanic) soils in warm climates so it’s no big surprise to see that where you can find good coffee, at least at the lower altitudes, you could grow and can find tobacco as well.

And then of course there is the “cafecito” or the Cuban espresso, loved by every Cuban. Most people hearing “Cuban coffee” think of the drink instead of the bean and if you ever go through the airport of Miami you should grab the opportunity to try it out (just don’t count on it having any real Cuban coffee). Essentially the cuban cafecito is an espresso drink, strong dark coffee served in small cups with cream on it. And it’s sweet, quite sweet.

The spot market price is the current sales price and the futures price is a fixed price at a specific date of delivery (and payment) in the future. Establishing these future contracts is a way for producers to hedge, protect themselves, against future price drops and for buyers a hedge against rising prices. However, this opens the door for speculation and greed (or even manipulation).

As we know, the overwhelming majority of coffee producers are small farmers, but you would be surprised to see how many of them can tell you the current price of green coffee on the futures market in New York, especially during the months of harvest time. The future market works like making a promise to sell coffee at a fixed price at a specific date. Bad weather in Brazil will rise that price and an expected huge production, in say Vietnam, will drop it.

That’s what people say: African coffees are exotic, like the whole continent is exotic. Of course there are significant differences between countries and within countries, but generally speaking washed African Arabica coffees are kind of balanced and contain a fruity or floral essence and dry processed coffees feature a good body that’s enhanced with a strong sweetness. But those are of course generalizations at the level of a continent!

I když je Pražírna docela na ráně, jen několik desítek kroků od důležitého uzlu pražské hromadné dopravy, stanice I. P. Pavlova, dlouho jsem se neodhodlal do ní zajít. Snad právě proto, že je na takhle frekventovaném místě, a že zvenku působí poměrně nenápadně. A její logo navíc první pohled připomíná parní lokomotivu, byť jde samozřejmě o stroj na pražení kávy.

Stejně jako kláštery evropské byly i ty na Arabském poloostrově centry kultury a vzdělanosti. Mniši z jednotlivých klášterů spolu komunikovali a korespondovali i s různými náboženskými autoritami, není proto divu, že se káva rychle rozšířila po celém arabském světě. Už na počátku 16. století se pak v Persii etablují první veřejné kavárny, persky nazývané qahveh-khaneh, v nichž hosté kromě konzumace kávy diskutují, poslouchají hudbu, tančí nebo třeba hrají v šach.

Nedlouho po Vídni se kavárny objevují také v Brně a následně v Praze. Historické prameny se opět trochu rozcházejí, pokud jde o přesné letopočty, v Brně se však rozhodl v kavárenství podnikat Turek Ahmed už krátce po roce 1700.

V posledních dekádách potkáváme kávu doslova na každém kroku. Aby taky ne, když jde po ropě o druhou nejobchodovanější komoditu na světě, což se po pádu železné opony může svobodně projevovat v plné síle.

You want to cup, but you don’t have the necessary equipment, you do not roast your own coffee and all you have are some cups and spoons. Most of us will be in this situation. There is no right or wrong way of doing a cupping session, so let’s just keep it simple and take a look at the bare basics to do some cupping ourselves.

Zeptáte-li se v této pražské pražírně na původ jména, dozvíte se, že prvním světem je káva zelená a druhým káva pražená. U kávy se však setkávají dva různé světy i v jiných případech, například svět chudoby, odkud většinou zrna pochází, se světem bohatství, kde se káva stala součástí životního stylu a důležitým obchodním artiklem. Dos Mundos spojuje i dva pražské světy, pravý břeh Vltavy s levým. Konkurence se přitom rozhodně nebojí, a že jí je na Vinohradech i na Letné přehršel.

How to have fun with coffee? I was just thinking these days about all the things I know about coffee, how much I like to drink it, how many ways there are to drink it and about how much fun I have dealing with producers, traders, cuppers and all the rest of the aficionados. I have said so many times before: milling is fun, toasting is fun, cupping is fun … but, are there other ways to have fun with coffee? So I thought about magic.

It’s well into December now, so it’s coffee harvest time. In most coffee-producing countries the coffee harvest is underway and the farmers are quite busy now organizing the harvest of our beloved beans. Let’s see what is happening on the farms and follow a group of coffee pickers, men, women and some children, going up the mountains looking for work.

Některé potraviny se na lidský jídelníček dostaly tak nějak samozřejmě, jejich konzumace byla vždycky nasnadě. U jiných však zůstává rozum stát – od nezpracovaného přírodního stavu až na talíř, nebo v případě kávy do šálku, vede dlouhá cesta, má-li si jejich konzument odnést namísto břichabolu gastronomický požitek. A právě tak je tomu u kávy.

A room with some coffee equipment, coffee cups and beans on a large table, a group of people putting their noses into cups, sniffing, slurping loudly, spitting and taking notes. Little or no conversation, frowning faces, moving spoons … you know you have entered a coffee cupping session! So what is cupping? Cupping is evaluating different characteristics of particular coffee beans, and as tastes change from farm to farm, region to region, country to country and crop to crop, there is a lot to it. But basically cupping is tasting and trying out different coffees.

The coffee debate is an ongoing one and has been around for literally hundreds of years. Coffee is good for you, then it's bad, then it is good again … Coffee has been blamed for a lot —growth problems, heart diseases, cancer, impotence etcetera. And now we see some more recent studies that coffee may protect against melanoma, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, type 2 diabetes, liver disease, prostate cancer, Alzheimer's, computer-related back pain,  Parkinson's disease, and so on. Coffee also appears to improve cognitive function and decrease the risk of depression.

For 35 to 90 US$ a cup (or 500 to 800 US$ a pound) you can buy “real” Kopi Luwak coffee. This probably would be by far the most expensive cup you will ever have. Of course it is rare and scarce (production is probably less than 5,000 pounds per year), but its most remarkable feature is that it is found in the poop of the Asian palm civet. Yes, the coffee beans are found in the droppings of that animal, cleaned, processed and sold.

Jamaica Blue Mountain, the most famous of all single origin coffees and according to quite a lot of people, the best coffee there is. I for myself, I’m not an expert or cupper enough to be able to declare it’s the best coffee, but it sure is number 1 in a lot of people’s books. So it is interesting enough to take a closer look at.

At temperatures around 205°C things get interesting when you are watching and listening to your roasting because the water inside the bean vaporizes, the bean gets visibly bigger and cracks (you can hear this). The coffee will audibly pop or crack like popcorn and puff up. This one of the most important marks during the process and recognizing the first pop is of vital importance because it marks the beginning of when we can consume coffee. Here is where the light roasts begin.

So finally you could lay your hands on a batch of green coffee (I hope it wasn’t too expensive) and now you are up to it: roast your own coffee at home! Now you could of course buy a real professional roasting equipment, but let’s start with something more basic and accessible: an ordinary frying pan (you would be surprised of the amount of people worldwide that still roasts their coffee that way) and let’s be honest: this is fun and you should enjoy yourself!

If Maragogype is the elephant, peaberry is the ant (or pea). Peaberry, as the name implies, looks more like a pea than like normal coffee bean. In Spanish speaking countries (Latin America) these beans are known as caracolillo (from caracol – snail house or shell), again because of their shape.

It goes against the peasant’s mindset to join a production cooperative – a cooperative where the members pool land and work. They will always ask themselves: Will others work as hard on my land as on their own? Will they take care of it the way I would? And, what to do with “lazy” members: will they earn the same? That is why most successful cooperatives are suppliers of services and those that have been able to get a bigger piece of the value chain.

A real coffee aficionado roasts his own coffee. Or should. But, anyway, you should at least know a few things about roasting if you are interested in coffees. It all starts of course with green beans. Remember that what we call coffee beans actually is the inside of the 2 seeds of the coffee cherrie that have been roasted. Green coffee beans are soft, almost without taste and smell like hay. Nowadays you can buy them easily online.

Did you know that when you grind your coffee beans, the surface area of the coffee can increase by over 10,000 times? Most people buy and use ground coffee, mainly because that is the easiest way and you can find it on the shelves of every supermarket. Easy and convenient, but even cans of coffee that have been vacuum-packed are going to be a lot less fresh than coffee you grind yourself.

If you see a very big coffee bean, two or three times the normal size with a kind of oblong shape, it is likely to be Maragogype, commonly known as “The Elephant Beans”. I like to put a medium toast Maragogype bean in my Sambuca (Italian liquor), put my lighter to it so it starts flaming and serve it to my guests. I enjoy the look on their face when I do that.

When buying your coffee, you most likely have encountered some certification labels. Certification and verification systems of coffee are increasingly popular as a means for producers to obtain better and fairer prices and for consumers to help little farmers. You help to raise sustainability in the coffee value chain and to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of coffee production.

Selling coffee below cost price for years and still go on producing? How and why do they do it, taking into account that some 80 or 90 percent of the producers are micro or small farmers? If you come to think about it, it is nothing short of a miracle we still can drink and enjoy our favorite morning beverage each day!

No, I am not going to write about worms, coffee plants and insecticides; I’ll leave that for another time. Let’s talk about how beneficial worms can be in a coffee farm. First of all, you need them in the soil of course, but farmers that do wet-milling have another big advantage; they can use the pulp as a free fertilizer and use worms as their working force!

Some time ago, in June 1018, the World of Coffee Event was held in the Netherlands and highlighted that although the demand for coffee is expected to double by 2050, the global coffee sector is in danger. This is mainly due to 2 factors: the financial structure of the market and environmental issues ("Due to climate change, if no additional measures are taken, up to 50% of the current coffee producing area will no longer be suitable for coffee production by 2050."), but for today, let’s focus on the financial side.

Travelling through Nicaragua, on a 20 km stretch (from Sébaco to Matagalpa) I counted over 45 big coffee dry milling facilities by the side of the road. Together they cover over 50% of the capacity needed to process all Nicaraguan coffee. Nicaragua is known for its washed, sun-dried, high altitude quality coffees and between December and May you encounter a lot of places where you can see coffee being dried in the sun on concrete floors (patios) by the dry milling companies.

Last week I was on the beach with my family and as it was extremely hot at the moment, for the first time in my life I decided to take a Frappuccino. There are a lot of ways to make a Frappuccino but this one was made with espresso coffee and a lot of ice so I gulped it down and took another one. It was while taking the second one that I realized I actually liked it a lot and that made me think about coffee beverages and more specifically espresso drinks. There are so many coffee drinks, but for now let’s keep it down to espresso drinks.

What really is an espresso? Essentially, espresso coffee is made by expressing 1.5 fluid ounces (44 ml) of nearly boiling water under pressure through 7 grams of finely ground coffee beans in a timeframe of about 15-20 seconds. So espresso is both a coffee beverage and a brewing method (a way to make coffee).

When you read all those cool and informative labels and descriptions you can find on coffee packaging and websites, it can get quite confusing trying to understand them. In another article we’ll take a look at all kinds of certifying labels, but now we are going to take a closer look at varieties. It’s hard enough to get a sense of the differences between Arabica and Robusta, or between African, Colombian, Indonesian, Central American and other coffees, but what about words like “pacarmara” and “maragogype”, varietals, cultivars and … and so on!

We have talked about the coffee chain. If roasting coffee is the most interesting and scientific part of the chain after leaving the farm, wet milling is definitely the most interesting and difficult part on the farm. Seed selection, maintenance, water supply, fertilizing etcetera are very difficult processes when talking about coffee in the field but I personally am really intrigued with the process of wet milling, it is one of the key processes of producing quality coffee.

Previous part: Coffee and chain (1)

Value chain is a business management concept that describes all the value adding processes of a product from producer to the final consumer. I’ll start with a few remarks about the value chain and then switch rapidly to the more interesting parts of the chain itself.

We have been looking into tastes and flavors, and the relation with varieties and altitude, but there still are a lot of other factors involved when talking about quality and taste. We know that coffee is grown in tropical zones all over the world at different altitudes and using different varieties, all with their special and typical flavors. All the places that are known for having great coffees are mountainous, wet, and located in the tropical or sub-tropical regions with past or current volcanic activity. Coffee can be grown on lots of soils but the ideal types are fertile volcanic red earth or deep sandy soils. However, these soils only cover around 1% of the ice-free surface area of the earth.

If you are a bit into the coffee scene, you will probably have heard about good coffee and its relation with elevation or altitude. Let’s take a closer look at this and find out what it is all about and why higher up the mountain means better coffee.

As we have seen in the other articles, coffee cupping consists of six steps which evaluate a coffee’s fragrance, aroma, taste, nose, aftertaste, and body. We will now take a closer look at the last three.

As we have seen in the other article, coffee cupping consists of six steps which evaluate a coffee’s fragrance, aroma, taste, nose, aftertaste, and body. Without getting into technical details of how cupping is done or what you need for equipment, I would like to describe these steps a little more. We’ll start with the first three.

Nicaragua, a country between Costa Rica and Honduras in Central America, produces one of the best coffees of the world. One of these days I had the pleasure to meet with Don Carlos Alberto Bendaña Albir, for over 25 years a proud coffee producer and the manager/owner of Café Premium Segovia. This coffee is sold in all of Nicaraguan supermarkets and some supermarkets in Miami and Los Angeles USA.

You don’t need to be a cupper or “barista” to make and serve a good cup of coffee. Today we will look into the process of making a good cup of coffee (later we will see how to choose the beans). I will provide you with some tips that should be easy to follow and could potentially improve the quality of the cup of coffee you make quite a lot.

A nice cup of coffee, that’s what I need right now, but … How does my coffee actually taste? Trying to describe the kind of coffee you like normally does not go beyond warm, strong and dark. Do you actually think about how your coffee tastes? Or did you ever try to describe it? Tasting coffee (or cupping) is a lot like tasting wine and there is a lot to say about it. Let’s start today with taste.

So now we know that the two main varieties, Robusta and Arabica differ in taste, growing conditions and price. Let’s talk a bit more about taste. Arabica beans tend to have a sweeter, softer taste, with tones of sugar, fruit, and berries. Their acidity is higher, with that winey taste that characterizes coffee with excellent acidity. Robusta, however, has a stronger, harsher taste, with a grain-like overtone and peanutty aftertaste. Some robustas, however, are of high quality and valued especially in espressos for their deep flavor and good crema. It’s a fact that all the best tasting coffee is made from Arabica beans which are naturally mild and aromatic, with a rich round pallet and imbued with subtle and varied flavors.

Let’s start with varieties. There are 124 known coffee species and once roasted, pretty much all coffee beans look the same. When it comes to your daily cup though, there are really only two species that matter: Arabica and Robusta. We will start with a description of these two types or main varieties of coffee. Much like wine, coffee flavor is affected by soil, altitude and other climatic factors so what's the difference between Arabica and Robusta? Firstly let’s see how and where they are grown.