Direct Trade Coffee from Finca El Injerto

Stumptown pursues these relationships with the long term in mind.  In some instances, Stumptown’s green coffee buyers may find a coffee that is a diamond in the rough. Their in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of growing, harvesting and processing coffee helps them guide up-and-coming coffee producers to fine tune their practices to ultimately yield an outstanding coffee — and to command a premium price! This does not happen over night, but over the course of multiple visits throughout the year, year after year.

The folks at Stumptown wrote an detailed article describing how the producers of Guatemala Finca el Injerto, Bourbon Varietal, Direct Trade go to great lengths to produce an exceptional coffee. This article illuminates a passion for quality, meticulous detail and innovation. Read this article, and as you sip the fruits of their labor, raise your cup in their honor!

Click here for Guatemala Finca el Injerto PDF

If you’d like to learn more about what goes into establishing and nurturing a Direct Trade relationship between Stumptown and coffee producers around the world, please check out this page.

You might think we’re talking about the cool, rainy season that we just can’t seem to shake around here, as being “coffee season.” Well, of course it is! But it’s also worth mentioning that coffees around the world have specific growing and harvesting seasons.  Like many agricultural products, arabica coffee trees yield coffee beans only once a year, when the growing conditions are just right for that part of the world. That means market availability is continually changing as different growing regions finish their harvests at different times of the year.  For us at thump, we are experiencing a cornucopia of new Latin American coffees as this growing region has recently finished its harvest for the year. Bring on the Guatemalan and Costa Rican coffees!

Coffee’s seasonality also explains why our coffee offerings are always changing. Stumptown buys small quantities of exceptional coffees just after they have been harvested. To insure freshness Stumptown purchases only as much green coffee beans as they anticipate using over a few months, not an entire year. When stored properly, green, unroasted coffee stays fresh for several months. Beyond this point the beans begin to stale and lose vibrant an complex flavors that are unique to that particular coffee. (Some roasters deal with their aging stockpile of green beans by roasting away both favorable and unfavorable flavors and replacing them with flavors of a dark roast. Come to our Public Coffee Tasting, Sunday, June 20th at 1:30pm to learn more
about all of this!)

As we welcome in our recently harvested Latin American coffees, we are most excited for the return of Guatemala Finca el Injerto, Stumptown’s first Direct Trade coffee. A wonderful story, and a fabulous coffee! We anticipate its return in the next couple of weeks, and we plan to dedicate a week in its honor in July!

Our May Public Coffee Tasting is Sunday 5/23, 1:30pm-2:30pm at thump.

Hario Pourover

Previously, we described in depth the press pot (aka, French Press) brewing method, its ease of use resulting in a great cup of coffee. This exploration prompted us to change our format for a few upcoming public coffee tastings, instead of our usual cuppings. Instead of comparing different coffees from around the world, in April we will compare the same bean, using different brewing methods. Each brewing method brings out different characteristics in the coffee. We will examine a handful of brewing methods, such as drip coffee, press pot, Hario pour over method and siphon brewer. Join us for this mad scientist’s experimentation and discover your favorite brewing method. Feel free to ask questions that will help you improve how you brew coffee at home!

Our April Public Coffee Tasting is Sunday 4/25, 1:30pm-2:30pm at thump.

Siphon Brewing

Last month, we described in depth the press pot (aka, French Press) brewing method, its ease of use resulting in a great cup of coffee. This exploration prompted us to change our format for a few upcoming public coffee tastings, or cuppings, (usually the third Sunday of each month). Instead of comparing different coffees from around the world, in March we will compare the same bean, using different brewing methods. Each brewing method brings out different characteristics in the coffee. We will examine a handful of brewing methods, such as drip coffee, press pot, Hario pour over method and siphon brewer.

Join us for this mad scientist’s experimentation and discover your favorite brewing method. Feel free to ask questions that will help you improve how you brew coffee at home!

Our March Cupping is Sunday, March 21, 1:30pm-2:30pm at thump.

Many home drip coffee brewers, regardless of their cost or bells and whistles, brew a disappointing cup of coffee because they are unable to maintain proper water temperature throughout the brewing cycle. They simply don’t get hot – and stay hot – enough for a proper extraction of enjoyable coffee flavors!

One of the easiest ways to brew a delicious cup of coffee at home is to use a press pot, aka, French Press. A pressed cup of coffee has a heavier body and mouth feel than drip coffee, allowing you to taste and feel in your mouth coffee characteristics that aren’t as apparent as when using a drip coffee brewer. We press new coffees all the time at thump to familiarize ourselves with them and to determine if their flavor profiles suit us. Kent and I don’t even own a drip brewer at home – we use a press pot almost exclusively.

Equipment Needed:
Tablespoon
Press Pot
Grinder
Water Kettle
Timer – set to 4 minutes

Quantity of Coffee Needed:
12 oz. Press Pot: 3 tablespoons of coffee
32 oz. Press Pot: 8 tablespoons of coffee
(Or, 1 tablespoon of coffee for every 4oz. of liquid your press pot holds. We use slightly more coffee at thump, but the 1:4 ratio of coffee-to-water, is a good starting point to help you determine your personal preference.)

How To Use a Press Pot:
•    As water is heating, coarsely grind the suggested amount of coffee and place it into a clean, dry, press pot.
•    About 20 seconds after the water has boiled, start your timer (set to 4 minutes). Evenly and quickly pour the water into the press pot, wetting all of the grounds. Once the water hits the grounds, they will look frothy (also called “blooming”) as they release CO2. Anticipate that the blooming action will take up as much as 1/2 of the space in the press pot, so don’t pour in too much water! (If you don’t see blooming, your beans are stale!)
•    Stir the bloom and grounds about 1 minute into the brewing cycle.
•    Add more hot water to right below the pour spout and gently place the lid on top of the press pot to help retain heat.
•    At 4 minutes, gently plunge the press and enjoy!

Using the right amount of beans for the size of the press pot, the proper grind, stirring the coffee mid-brew, and using a timer, are all key aspects to brewing a great cup of coffee with a press pot.

Other Pointers:
•    Pre-heat your coffee cup (hopefully ceramic or porcelain) with hot water, to prevent the coffee from rapidly cooling when being poured into the cup. Maintaining the coffee’s temperature helps preserve its flavor.
•    The coffee will extract harsh, bitter flavors if left in the press pot after 4 minutes. To avoid this, decant all of your coffee immediately into a preheated carafe or directly into preheated cups.
•    Hand wash your press pot with a fragrance free dish soap, as no one likes to drink a cup of coffee that hints of lemony fresh or grease cutting blue!
•    If you’re interested in learning more about the impact that coffee bean freshness and proper grind have on the quality of your sipping experience, please read previous Thumpology articles at the Thumpology Catagory.

Last month Kent, Hazel & Finley attended a Stumptown organized panel discussion with coffee producers from Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Kenya. We took away a handful of learnings that will stay with us and shape how we work with their coffee once it reaches our shop.

One of the producers from Colombia described how most of the coffee in his area is grown on small family farms. Families work the farm year round to only be able to pick a half burlap bag of coffee per day once harvest season starts. From hand picking, hand sorting, to manually de-pulping, a tremendous amount of manual labor results in a small amount of coffee. This is a reminder to us just how precious each bean is.

Some of the discussion focused on changes in how coffee is bought and sold. In Kenya, traditionally coffee has been bought through government-controlled auctions. Recently, their government has created a “Second Window” that allows around 8% of their coffee (of the highest quality), to be sold through the Direct Trade model that Stumptown has been so instrumental in creating. Giving coffee roasters the opportunity to buy coffee directly from farmers allows both parties to negotiate the price, rewarding farmers with a higher price for producing higher quality coffee (always at least the price of Fair Trade Certified coffees and usually much higher). Our featured coffee this month, Kenya Gaturiri Direct Trade is a perfect example of how the new Kenyan Second Window buying model benefits everyone.

Stumptown can now directly pay the coffee producer generously for a beautiful, high quality coffee. As Gaturiri’s producer finished speaking at the discussion in Portland, the audience exploded with applause, acknowledging his work toward developing a tremendous coffee — and how appreciative we all are to buy it directly from him.

Listening to these farmers talk about their work, their successes and their challenges, reinforced why we work with Stumptown, why we serve premium coffee, and how what we do at Thump is connected to the lives of many people around the world.

The political, economic, sociological, cultural and ecological forces that play out long before the coffee beans reach American shores are huge and complex! Coffee, the second most traded commodity (close behind petroleum), affects the lives of countless people around the globe, from grower to consumer.

October 8 at Leftbank Café in Portland, Stumptown Coffee Roasters will help fuel our desire to learn by facilitating a panel discussion with four of their coffee producers from the countries of Kenya, Colombia, Costa Rica and El Salvador (the producers of thump’s October featured cup, El Salvador Kilimanjaro). We plan to be there and report back to you next month with what we learned.

Here’s the event description:
Stumptown is proud to be hosting some of its finest producers and supply chain partners from four different countries right here in the Northwest as part of a unique Producers Panel. Designed to cover some of the industry’s most pressing issues and to showcase farmers who are defining progress in the broader coffee world, the panel will touch on topics such as:
– Breaking traditional/cultural processing molds
– Organic and sustainable farming vs. conventional production
– Innovations in trade channels
– The coffee world from an on-the-ground perspective
Read more….