Our Blog
Adventures in Coffee Growing – by Martin Diedrich
Sunday morning coffee harvest today. I picked coffee from just one specific tree, a Garnica Arabica variety. We have about 14 different Arabica varieties growing on our small Costa Mesa coffee farm. The Garnica tree was full of ripe, sweet fruit, of which the seed is the bean one makes coffee from. The Garnica variety is a hybrid that was developed in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in the 1960’s. That region is now the only place it grows commercially. We are told it is a hybrid of Arabica varieties, Mundo Novo, and Caturra. Its fruit is particularly sweet, which inspired me …
TED’S ADVENTURES IN AFRICA
Our head roaster Ted Vautrinot represented Kean Coffee in Rwanda this summer as a judge for the Rwanda Cup of Excellence competition. Below is a preview of his travel blog, which will be published in it’s entirety very soon. I stepped off the plane onto the rolling aluminum stairway straight out of 1969 and was enveloped by the close, wet heat of Central Africa. It was 7pm and it still felt like we’d walked into a hot, damp, wool blanket. I was grateful for the conversation of my friends and fellow cuppers Thomas and Anika as we waited in the …
2012 Trips to Origin: Mike’s adventures in Costa Rica – a first person account
Mike Richardson has been with Kean Coffee since our doors first opened in late 2005, first as a barista, then becoming a manager and barista trainer. Mike is passionate about coffee and about what he does, and has participated in several barista competitions- three times competing in the Western Regional Barista Competition and the Ultimate Barista Competition, and once judging the WRBC. Below is his fascinating account of the trip to Costa Rica he went on this past April along with our roaster Ted Vautrinot, who was invited to judge for Costa Rica Cup of Excellence. Enjoy! Everyone has been …
Judging Guatemala Cup of Excellence 2011 – by Ted Vautrinot, Kean Coffee roaster
There is a special magic wafting through a room filled with passionate coffee professionals intent on finding the absolute best coffee from Guatemala’s crop this year. Every sniff, every slurp is carefully evaluated and scored- descriptions of honey, cherry, chocolate, caramel fill the margins as each coffee gets a meticulous assessment before moving on to the next possibility. I was fortunate to return to Central America to be a judge for Cup of Excellence Guatemala. Our 22 member international panel hailed from Japan, Germany, England, Australia, Russia, Korea, Canada, Morocco, Norway, and the U.S. Our purpose was to identify the …
Yemen Haraazi Supreme – a coffee pictorial from Martin Diedrich
The steep, rugged Haraaz Mountains of Northwestern Yemen are a world apart from the rest of the country. The terrain is dramatic, wild, rocky, and often inaccessible.The area has resisted the modern world and in the hinterlands one can still feel the pulse of medieval times. Ancient fortified hilltop villages of stone houses cling to the steep slopes, creating a near bibilical panorama. Rocky mountain slopes are carved with ingenious centuries-old stone terraces to preserve the scarce soil and precious rain in this dry region, in order to grow coffee. Approximately 500 families, living throughout the region, continue an unchanged tradition …