So we are packing up for the 2nd Annual ECW in El Salvador. What does that mean? Well, we have a whole lot of coffee and coffee gear to bring with us for all of the brewing and tasting. About 20 of us will be hauling some part of these 1000 lbs of stuff. Customs is always interesting to navigate in this regard, but we seem to have greater success bringing everything in suitcases and boxes as opposed to shipping it on a pallet that inevitably gets stuck in customs if there is no one to usher it through. Some of the coolest stuff is what we are bringing for our grower-partners. We’d like to give a big thank you to the generosity of Chemex and Mypressi for providing one of their coffee making devices for every grower in attendance. We will be leading classes in El Salvador to demonstrate how to best brew on these devices. Last year the home brewing classes were among the best received. What could be better than a great cup of coffee or espresso in the coziness of your own kitchen?

More to follow. Stay tuned.

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

-Mark Twain

So there’s been a bit of controversy lately and I guess it’s fine. I am up for dusting off and moving on to what is next. Conflict ultimately brings progress as history frequently shows. Good works do seem to triumph time and time again.

I wanted to address what has been asked as it relates to where folks are and the size of companies and what is possible. I am intimately aware of what it is like to be resourced challenged. It really wasn’t that long ago, 14 years actually, when we were a fledgling roasting company with a 12 kilo Probat inside of our one and only coffeebar on the north side of Chicago. We (my wife and I) borrowed money from anybody that would lend it to us and tapped every bit of our tiny savings to start our company. We’ve gone through the typical gut wrenching challenges of growing a business and we’ve landed where we have through hard work, tenacity, and of course a good measure of luck. In fact, we finally retire the last piece of original debt this summer. So regardless of what you have heard or believe, the wolf has only recently backed away from the door, and believe me when I say, he still has a habit of knocking occasionally and almost always unannounced.

So, when I say the industry should push for delicious, meticulously prepared and carefully roasted Direct Trade, In Season coffees, I know it will cause a lot of folks to stretch. I realize that it will definitely take some time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push for it. It will probably take another 15 years to get the public to where we want them, so we should get started sooner than later. I know not everybody can move to complete adoption of these buying models. So I simply ask that we are honest with ourselves and our customers about what we are doing and take them along for the ride, pushing them to be part of the solution.

I remember when I was in college (I’m 43 now) a domestic beer cost $1.25 and Anchor Steam was $1.75. Now those same items are now $3.75-$4.25 and $5.50-$6.00 respectively. The cost of a great cup of coffee has remained more static over the years than it should. We need to move to by the cup and by-the carafe models where different coffees are offered at different price points and keep pushing the customer to value a great cup and abandon the free refills that occupied the past. There are no free refills on wine, beer, or cocktails, so let’s put to death forever these practices in coffee. If we can get our customers to pay $5 a cup and up and it is worth it, then the economics along the entire supply chain change. We need to dig in and figure out how to make this kind of transformation a reality, not a distant dream. The time to start is now. I don’t care if you are an industry giant or someone that just turned your roaster on for the first time. Anyway, it does seem like the smaller dogs have an awful lot of fight. I think that will prove to be very useful.

I must ask, how far off harvest is too far to be selling and serving a coffee? Is it 12 months, 15 months? I know some folks will step in here and say that vacuum packing can prolong this, but should coffee be presented as fresh produce or as a science experiment with a mountain of excessive packaging? Our own experiments have found that the re-useable Grain Pro works very well at maintaining green coffee integrity.

I cannot see how selling faded coffees from Central America or past crop coffees from parts of East Africa serve the purpose of impressing or developing the customer base that we are hoping to attract. The culinary world is moving decisively toward seasonal products and developing their menus around that principle. Why aren’t more folks in Specialty Coffee following suit? It amazes me that many roasters (including some of great notoriety) currently have menus that rest heavily on opaque blend formulations and single origin coffees that were harvested over a year ago. Often these coffees are dead in the cup, a shadow of their freshly-picked former selves. I challenge all of the industry to move from just listing roast dates somewhere on your bags (you are doing this, right?) to including the harvest month(s) and year for all of your single origin offerings. We will begin to do so companywide for coffee roasted Monday, February 8th, 2010 and thereafter. It’s high time we tighten the deadline from harvest into our customer’s cup. Are you in or out?