Those of you who read about us in Mix Magazine may have read about the cupping of our Ethiopia Sidamo (I believe the word they used was "phenomenal" . . .) Unfortunately, for us and you, we ran through the rest of our remaining bags rather quickly after that story came out and now it seems like getting any Ethiopia of comparable quality will be near impossible in the near future.

For those of you interested in reading about the problems with importing coffee from Ethiopia, I would recommend the Royal Coffee blog for a more extensive explanation, but I'll re-post the crux of the issue:

with the start of the 2009 season, a new system known as the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange has been implemented which has completely altered the way in which coffee is bought and sold. Without getting too technical, the new system essentially operates the way the New York “C” Market would if it were the only game in town. By government mandate, all coffee must be sold to the Exchange, at prices negotiated through an electronic bid/ask system (just like the “C”). For example, say an exporter has a contract to ship 300 bags of Grade-2 Yirgacheffe, and he has the coffee in his possession. He must now sell the coffee to the exchange at the daily asking price, and then buy from the exchange at whatever the offered price is. Sounds like the old system, except that when he sells his coffee, it goes into a bonded Exchange warehouse and loses all traceability other than the regional designation and grade (Yirg-2, in this case). That means that when he turns around and buys the 300 bags that he needs to cover his export contract, he has no idea where that coffee is coming from. Take a moment to ponder what this means for quality development: if an exporter cannot possibly know where his coffee is coming from, what incentive is there to undertake quality improvement projects at the farm-level? Or to go the extra mile in processing? Or even to care if the coffee is transported the right way?

Anyway, we're trying to figure out what to do in the mean time, especially since we use Ethiopians in some of our favorite blends, but for now we'll be trying to find some other interesting coffees. Come in a check out our Tanzanian AAA, for some bright, fruity East African goodness. Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon!

In case you haven't been into the shop in the past couple of weeks, let me bring you up to speed on our new roaster. Yes, we are now roasting on our new machine! Woo hoo! It's taken a little longer than we'd hoped, but finally, the gas is on and the flame is lit! (Okay, that's figurative. I'm pretty sure I turned it off when I left.)

I've been working on transferring our profiles to the bigger roaster, with some minor slips. Despite what I'd heard about the larger Diedrich's driving like tankers vs. speedboats, I've actually found that the baby is a bit of a hot rod, but I think control and finesse are well within my grasp. We've still got some work to do to get the whole space ship shape, but we've cleared the largest hurdle so far.

Anyway, I'll post pictures, and possibly video of our new baby soon, but until then, come see us, try the coffee, and I'm sure one of us will give you the exciting tour of the facility. Yes, we are a little excited about this.