Cooper & Co

As a certified coffee nerd I can’t help but watch anything that has the word coffee in its title. The Coffee Trail by Simon Reeve whilst not new was a worthwhile watch on BBC4 last night (28/1/18).

On the 4th of February 2018 I along with other colleagues in the speciality coffee industry will be visiting Myanmar and it's fledgling coffee producing areas. I will ultimately self publish a book on my visit, but in the mean time here is some background on a country which many have heard of but which few could even locate on a map.

Monsooned Malabar coffee doesn’t have the “sex appeal” of the fully traceable, single estate / farm coffees that are so millennial but it does have longevity, and in many ways is probably a coffee classic. Never really in or out of fashion.

As you sip your cup of coffee it's almost impossible to comprehend the amount of work that has gone into processing every bean. In this blog I'm focusing on just one of the vital processes that are necessary to ensure that only the ripest and healthiest beans reach your cup. In November 2016 I visited Northern Sumatra and for a week toured the regions coffee farms and factories. Big factories are amazing to look at. Tons of coffee can been seen at a variety of stages in the processing journey, however on many occasions things are happening so fast that it is difficult to comprehend exactly what is going on.

In December 2013 I had the privilege of visiting Peru and Bolivia. 

We’ve all read about the health benefits of Green tea. Its cleansing properties, full of anti-oxidants etc. etc. The only problem is its taste profile. Anything that tastes “grassy”, smells a bit like seaweed and if overly extracted could cut you in two with its astringency doesn’t potentially have much of a future with the mainstream consumer. It reminds me of “cod-liver oil” from my youth. Something to be endured rather than enjoyed!

The explosion in everything coffee has been extraordinary to behold over the last decade or so. New ways of making coffee at home seem to appear every week. Capsules, Pods, Aeropress, Hario and Chemex are products that have gone from having a niche audience to mainstream in an incredibly short period of time. One coffee maker though that has stood the test of time is the Bialetti stove-top coffee maker.

The title of this blog came from one of our food service customers. The call went something like this……”The ground coffee in our group handle is always wet and soggy and the resultant drink has little to no crema, can you sort it out?”

As coffee roasters we have I believe an enormous responsibility to our producers to deliver the distinctive flavours of every origin that crosses our path. We can take a view as to the style of roast that we think is most appropriate, light, medium or dark. That though tends to reflect the preferences of the consumer our customer rather than the desires of the origin.

Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is a classification of coffee grown in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. The best lots of Blue Mountain coffee are noted for their mild flavour and lack of bitterness. Over the past few decades, this coffee has developed a reputation that has made it one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world.

In my misspent youth many moons ago I collected stamps. It’s a hobby that in the age of the Internet and email seems to have been forgotten. Although I didn’t know it at the time it provided an amazing education in geography and politics. Learning without knowing you are learning.

In all the years that I’ve been in the coffee business rarely has an origin thrown up such a moral dilemma as that of Myanmar. Currently there isn’...