an introduction

getting under the skin of the coffee world. 

caffe vita has been sourcing and roasting remarkable coffee in seattle washington for thirteen years. one year ago vita decided to revolutionize the way they buy coffee and instead of buying via importers, distributers, exporters, coyotes, and other middlemen - vita made a pledge to begin buying as much coffee as possible directly from specific farms around the globe. the result: farm direct coffee for their cafes and the hundreds of acclaimed restaurants, hotels, and coffee houses that serve vita. 

under the skin? 

this is where i come in - i started a little project called ONE POT (long story) and have spent the past ten years creating guerilla dining events and ill-fated mini-restaurant-empires (longer story) and along the way have used the table to provoke as much conversation and heated opinion as possible. and now i am using that knack in this collaboration with vita. 

wtf? i travel with vita on all of their sourcing trips (ethiopia, brazil, guatemala, sulawesi) and do my best to find out what the hell is going on in these often war torn pockets of the world. if you follow the coffee world you know that coffee is immensely political, often violent, and millions of lives hang in the balance. the bean can be poetic, harsh, painfully discouraging, and often inspiring (bordering on spiritual for some), but more than anything it seems to be a world of hushed secrets and deep veils. those that buy the majority of the worlds production prefer to keep the stories behind coffee (the second most traded commodity on the planet) in dim shadow. this blog - and the writings and videos and dinners i am pushing into the world are meant to shine a bit of light. 

please comment and be in touch - i am new to the blog world and just beginning to follow other posts - i would love to hear about others doing similar work in this field. 

just back from ethiopia

we spent the last two weeks in the hills of sidamo and yirgacheffe - and many days in the whirling city of addis ababa - videos, stories, and pics coming very soon. 

highlights:

dinner with 25 tribal coffee farmers among the coffee trees, morning swim in haile selassie's summer palace hot springs (not as glamorous as it sounds), in depth conversation with tadesse meskela (star of the movie black gold) about the future of ethiopian coffee while observing the first night of lent. 

khat vs. coffee

khat is a leafy green shrub that grows extremely well in east africa. the fresh leaves have been chewed for countless generations in ethiopia and somalia - khat is a semi-powerful stimulant, certainly more potent than coffee but not nearly as intoxicating as its narcotic siblings. until recently khat has been an accepted part of ethiopian culture - it is the type of thing that must make a day of picking or sorting coffee beans a hell-of-a-lot-more-tolerable. but in the past decade khat usage and production has grown exponentially and seems to only beginning its ascent to the top of the east african crop pyramid.

khat farmers make about three times what coffee farmers make - you know you are on a khat farm when the common dirt hut has been replaced by a concrete abode - and if the sound of international television can be heard you can be assured it is not arabica in the fields.

the question is - how do you feel about this growing issue?

it is not an easy argument to pounce on - if you have seen the living conditions of the coffee farmers it would be nothing short of complete arrogance to denounce this crop in a full throated invective. if you have worked a day picking coffee cherries - or rather three months (something i have not done) - then again you might find khat less offensive - and if you are the struggling ethiopian government khat is about the best source of funds to improve the living quality of your constituents - and if you are a north american that thinks that $4 is already way too much for a cup of coffee than you might have a hard time imagining that cup hiked to $10 to solve the problem.

i want to know what people out there think - i am not pro-khat in the least - i just think it is a fascinating topic....

khat ceremony - captured on video

to accompany the conversation about khat vs. coffee here is a clip we caught of a traditional khat circle in yirgacheffe ethiopia - we sat down with the farmers and politely chewed a couple leaves...


khat ceremony (also spelled chat, quat, etc) from hebberoy on Vimeo.

first batch of pics from ethiopia

a quick peek at the hundreds of photos we captured while in ethiopia.

these photos were taken by brian wells the talented proprietor of the tougo coffeehouse in seattle who vita brought along to experience coffee at the source.

gratitude

obviously there are many folks that have been going to the source and buying coffee as directly as possible for many years. 

for all the shit talking about starbucks it seems that they are in many ways the pioneers of this method - the method of shortening the supply chain - but like most things with starbucks it seems that they have gotten way too massive to follow through in this area and the farmers i have talked to on the ground seem to have a lot of respect for the "old starbucks" but feel like they have been reduced to a number and have lost the personal contact they used to enjoy.  

dean cycon has been at it for years - and his new book Javatrekker is definitely hugely inspiring. 

and it seems doug zell at intelligentsia has set the gold standard in the world of direct trade. clearly there are too many folks around the globe doing the noble work of revolutionizing the coffee trade to mention them all - but here is a quick shout out of gratitude for those folks that have made paths in what was a veritable desert. 

why "one pot" - why a "table"

ONE POT is a project to use the table and a common pot of food to provoke dialogue and create culture. 

we have stopped using the common table - and the basic human act of sharing food is a fading ritual. 

the table has always been the perfect place to share our stories, our opinions - a perfect place to investigate the world. 

food, specific dishes, and recipes old and new are like little time capsules of culture - they tell us about the people who created them - their climate, their ingenuity - food and coffee are inextricably linked - this study uses the table and the food we share as the lens by which to look at coffee. 

in each source trip i will sit down with 20-30 farmers - cook with them and share a common table - we have already cooked feijoada in brazil, suban-ick in the hills of guatemala, and a freshly slaughtered sheep in the koke river valley (ethiopia) - what will we eat in sulawesi? papua new guinea? yemen? when we share the table i ask question after question - the goal is to collect stories and perspectives from around the globe - and then share them here in these pages. 

brazil video number one

the first in a series of four videos taken while in brazil - sourcing coffee and cooking, eating, and talking at length with dozens of coffee farmers. for the long(ish) brazil essay and photos click here. in this video watch as the award winning coffee of carmo de minas is picked and sorted prior to processing. and as preparations for the feijoada one pot feast begin. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: brazil I from hebberoy on Vimeo.

brazil video number two

watch as beans are delivered from the surrounding hills, processed through the washing station and dried on the expansive drying porches. the darker beans are what the brazilians call "naturals" and the golden beans are referred to as "washed" - see coffee glossary for more info. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: brazil II from hebberoy on Vimeo.

brazil video number three

this video shows the different cuts of meat and sausage used in the traditional brazilian dish feijoada - a one pot preparation that is now considered the national dish of brazil but was first prepared on the coffee plantations of brazil - a humble dish prepared by the slaves with whatever scraps of meat that could be found. click here for a recipe. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: brazil III from hebberoy on Vimeo.

brazil video number four

the feijoada feast. as soon as we hit the table the conversation began - we learned much about the farmers, their lives, and the hopeful/tragic drama that underlines coffee in brazil. click here to read the essay brazil: dark shadows in paradise. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: brazil IIII from hebberoy on Vimeo.

the guatemala video

our time in guatemala was intense, disorienting, and beautiful - a bit like the place itself. here is a video montage of our time in this coffee-rich war-torn land. for further reading and evocative images - guatemala: ak-47s and bitter water. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: guatemala from hebberoy on Vimeo.

the dinners

after we return from each adventure vita and one pot organize a series of dinners in seattle that mash together all our experiences - the coffee, the food we learned to prepare, the video we captured, the stories we heard, and the politics we began to grasp. the evenings are spirited, convivial, sometime intense and ultimately memorable. here is a clip from one of the brazilian dinners held on capitol hill in vita's roasting room. 

caffe vita + one pot on location: capitol hill from hebberoy on Vimeo.

the essays

after each one of these relatively insane coffee trips i write a relatively in-depth essay about our experiences - of course it is nearly impossible to create a summation of what we saw and learned about these places - and made more difficult when you add the complicated through-line of a complex crop and way of life called "coffee" - but nonetheless i hope these writings, videos, and street level photographs help to expand the ever-important dialogue about the beverage we have come to rely on.

an excerpt from: guatemala. ak-47's and bitter water

but there was a rush of fresh air in those pockets of coffee, obviously coming from the sprawling limbs of of wide crowned cedar, cuernavaca, inga, and thick-trunked oak. i think they have bars in downtown tokyo that sell shots of air - it was like that. (for more click here)

an excerpt from: brazil. dark shadows in paradise

so i decided to head to the city and see what the coffee crash had caused - most of us have seen the gut wrenching movie city of god - was the imagery that scratched itself onto our dreams genuine? was it really that dark in sunny brazil? (for more click here)

an excerpt from: ethiopia. a tale of khat vs. coffee

what is khat? or chat? or quat? (pronounced chaat) - quickly, it is a mid-strength stimulant - sometimes described as being similar to cocaine - but a bit more mild - it has been chewed in east africa in leaf form since god-knows-when but of late the usage has surged and coffee farms are quickly being replaced by growths of khat - the farmers make triple the return and the government seems to make a lovely amount of money taxing the exporters of the green leaf. (for more click here)

an excerpt from: why an unprofessional study

and as we share the feast and the booze I fire away - question after question - people twist and turn in their seats, some mutter under their breath, arguments occasionally break out, elegant eulogies arise, but in the end a conversation happens - a small part of a global conversation occurs... (for more click here)

an excerpt from: you can't cover the sun with just one finger

he was referring to the vicissitudes of the free trade movement - but i think it applies to so many things. especially in a world as bright, sometimes painfully bright, and immense as the world of coffee... (for more click here)

brazil pics

here are some pics from our second source expedition - we saw a slice of sao paolo and then headed up to the lush hills of carmo de minas - the coffee was stunning and the everything seemed at peace - so we headed to rio to spend time in the favelas...

guatemala - maiden voyage - the images.

our maiden voyage together - one pot and vita - we found guatemala to be lush, stunningly beautiful, and incredibly tense - the violence in that country seems to hang around in the air.

coffee glossary

this will grow as the blog grows. remember this is an unprofessional study - so expect simple unprofessional definitions.

cherry. the coffee fruit when it is ripe. depending upon the variety the fruit will be bright red or deep to pale yellow. the taste is similar to a cherry - but less complex - more like a simple burst of sugar and sweet flesh. the bean inside the fruit is what gets thrown in the roaster. each cherry includes two regular beans or one peaberry.

washed coffee. coffee that is run through a wet mill, removing the fruit and leaving just the bean and a thin skin of parchment. washed coffees generally sell for more money - and offer up cleaner sometimes less interesting flavors - however the wet process generally increases desired acidity.

natural coffee. the traditional method - no wet mill - the fruit is left on the tree until it dries around the bean - the result is a black orb the size of a plump raisin - these coffees take longer to dry - and often yield more exotic flavors, but if processed incorrectly can lead to harsh off-tastes. 

drying porch. an expanse of cement or dirt or... where both natural and washed coffees are dried. the beans need to be constantly raked to ensure proper drying.

the process. simple but also complex. coffee is picked - wet processed or dry processed (natural) - both types of coffee then require 1 -4 days of porch or mechanical drying - beans are then milled once again removing the parchment that surrounds the bean - the coffee is then sorted and graded - then exported (or distributed in country) - and finally roasted, ground and consumed.