One day I would love to make a comment as definative as:

A coffee grown at (x) altitude on the sunny aspect of  mountain/region/plot during a high/low good rainfall season that is picked and subjected to a certain type of post harvest method will produce a green bean that if roasted against profile (y) and extracted under conditions (z) will produce a flavour of (insert description)

For me, being able to do this would infact be the Holy Grail of coffee.

As difficult as this may be to achieve I think that we can certainly get close if we focus our attention on specific regions, ensure that there is traceability in the coffee that we buy and we have all the stakeholders (I really hate that word) involved in contributing to the body of knowledge that lies beneath each coffee that passes though each of our hands that ends up in the mouths of the consumer.

We as roasters are trying our best to get our heads around all the factors at origin that influence the cup. We’ve been to Bali, PNG and Sumatra in recent months to spend time with growers but feel that we also have a role to play in making “our worlds” accessible to those at origin.

It is for this reason that we have had Nigel here. Nigel is Jerry Kapka’s son. (from Kongo Coffee). Nigel has spent the last 2 weeks doing Barista training, cupping training and roasting training. Our hope is that some of these knowledge and skills will be passed through to those at origin. Jerry is pretty serious about getting it right - we’ve shipped him a 2 group multi-boiler machine and grinder so that, in combination with the knowledge of how we roast and cup and extract, he will be able to monitor the quality of coffee he is producing though our eyes.

Hopefully this will provide a great platform on which to build more knowledge and get us just that little bit closer to finding the Holy Grail.

Practice. Practice. Practice

Pressure!

Cupping

Going through roasting profiles with Jay

The trick for us is to retain a level of continuity in the flavour profiles and intensity between harvest to harvest but also to choose coffees that, while being fairly representative of an origin, also have elements of its character that make it stand out from the crowd.

The ensuing discussions have been quite rigorous, resulting in what we believe are great outcomes. Keep your eyes on our offerings in the Single Origin section of our site over the next couple of months for descriptions of the new harvests and our comments on them.

It wouldn't be Seattle without good coffee and the space "needle"

Jenny has just got back from the North West Coffee Fest in Seattle where she hung out in the Synesso booth and also spent time sussing out the coffee culture in general.

Jeremy, Mark and Elizabeth holding the pink version of the Synesso shirt

The Hydra - more about this later

She even had a crack at the Millrock Latte Art competition.

5 Senses shirt - Very nice Jen!

Jen’s heading down to LA soon to catch up with Deaton from Intelligensia and hopefully get a gig behind their machine. No doubt we’ll hear about it and you’ll have a chance to read about it in her blog.

The Baby Renegade

It arrived yesterday afternoon. It isn’t plugged in so I can’t rave about how it transforms a humble green bean into a thing of beauty - but given its pedigree, we’re expecting amazing results. I’m not 100% sure, but I think that this little sample roaster is the only sample roaster in the world that can profile roast 500g of coffee.

The control panel

It’s brilliant because it gives us the opportunity to roast samples through a roast cycle that mimics what the larger roasting machines are doing. Now that totally rocks!

I’ll post our thoughts on the first roasts as soon as we have it commissioned. We’re pretty excited.

Nothing should be considered sold until the deal is settled, money safely in bank and the vendors are on the plane to the Bahamas for a well deserved rest.

Let’s see where Nolan, Nathan and Diamond are hanging in a couple of weeks.

If you can’t wait to find out - ask them directly - rather than paying too much attention to the rumour mill. I’m sure they’d give you an honest straight up answer - if they thought it was any of your business

The specialty coffee movement has gained so much momentum over the last couple of years. The Australian consumer has started to demand coffee of much higher quality through supply chains that have a high level social consciousness. As a craft roaster in Australia, we have been looking at ways that we can access better coffees while at the same time input practically into the lives of the people we are buying from. We feel that we have an opportunity here in the Pacific to work with growers to achieve this end. This visit to Kongo Coffee has gone a very long way to helping us get this result.

In terms of quality, I’m convinced that the biggest gains in cup quality can be made at the point of harvesting. Just like we did in Bali, I spoke at length with Jerry about spread of ripeness of the cherries being picked. Just like we did in Bali, we sat down with a bag of cherries and sorted through them and picked out a sample of cherries that represented the type of cherries we believe they now need to pick to stay ahead of the pack of “also ran” coffee.

Sorting the cherries

Perfect ripeness

One of the most important keys to our success here will be having the farmers on board and understanding exactly what harvesting habits they need to change. Jerry has engaged two full time guys to help with this process. Elimbari coffee only comes from a few selected family groups. Jerry will be calling meetings with all these growers over the next few weeks and start the process of re-educating them about escalation of quality he is expecting from them. It isn’t going to be easy - trees are scattered across mountains and valleys and separated by rivers and forests. I headed up to the foot of the Mt Elimbari to meet with Mark - one of the Elimbari farmers. It was great because many of his family were around and I was able to meet them. Mark’s village also happens to be Jerry’s Grandma’s “ass place”.

Mark and family - growers at the base of Mt Elimbari

Kongo staff and Mark

Jerry overlooking coffee growing country - rugged as heck!

Coffee trees and cliffs

Coffee trees under the trees

Once coffee is ripe, it’s harvested, pulped, washed and then sundried. It then goes into the mill to get the parchment removed - resulting in piles and piles of green beans. But the effort to get better quality doesn’t stop here. Green beans range vastly in size and there is always an assortment of defected beans in the mix. The number of defects in a Lot of green beans affects the coffees grading and its classification. At 5 Senses we’ve adopted the SCAA specialty coffee grading system. One of my jobs this trip was to go through this grading system with Jerry and leave them with the resources to help them understand the system and to have a better idea of how good the quality of the coffee needs to be to be able to be classified as true Specialty Coffee. We spent a good length of time on classification and on cupping in their Kongo Coffee quality lab.

Our next shipment!

Looking for defects with SCAA reference materials

Cupping export samples

Kongo Coffee also roasts coffee for the local market. Helen works pretty hard on getting the colour right but I was able to give them some of the information about roasting time and ramp rates. It’s a great little roastery. Jerry is talking about sending some of his people over to us for some roasting training.

Introducing Helen the roaster

Burners giving them grief but nothing gets them down

Kongo Coffee is an incredible place to be. Jerry has assembled a team with incredible experience and skill. It is no coincidence that the coffee that hails from the base of this mountain and passes though Jerry’s infrastructure is so good.

The team at the foot of Mt Elimbari

TEAM KONGO COFFEE LIMITED

From Left to Right

Front row:

Tekepo Kumuno – Assistant Project Officer, five years with Kongo Coffee Limited.

Kilson Liripu - Elimbari Specialty Coffee Project Officer, 18 years Post Harvest experience with CIC.

David Rumba Rumba – Operations Manager, 14 years CIC experience in Quality Control & Management.

Jerry Kapka – Managing Director, 20 years in coffee buying, processing, exporting.

Back Row:

Philip Bai – Driver & Trained Elimbari Specialty Coffee Producer.

Ricky Laki – Quality Control Manager, 10 years with CIC & Kongo Coffee Limited.

Me

TEAM PARTNERSHIP

Looking older than when we met in 1997

Kongo Coffee is a company that owns a few small plots of coffee trees, runs a wet mill, a hulling plant, an export arm, a coffee transportation company and a roastery.

I’m full of praise for Kongo Coffee. It is an excellent example of a business that has grown despite the odds (really bad communications infrastructure, bad roads etc). It has grown because it is a business by the people, for the people. Jerry understands how important he has become to the local community and, in many ways, has become more important to the local people in providing services than the inept government administration.

He’s been able to do this by finding a market for coffee that he and his people grow. He knows the coffee is good, he knows he can help his people make it better.

Kongo Coffee

He pays a premium over the standard factory door price being offered by other coffee buyers - on the proviso that they make an effort to meet and maintain a standard. This coffee is called “Elimbari” coffee.

Prices for the pickers

Jerry supervises the post harvest and production really closely. He has employed both an Elimbari Project Officer and an Elimbari Post Harvest Support Officer. He has his own pulping/wet mill and drying racks to get the best possible results in the cup. Interestingly, fermentation times are much longer up here in Chuave (up to 40 hours). At 1,735m above sea level it gets pretty cold, which means that the active bacteria that breaks down the mucilage on the parchment only starts to become active after about 16 hours.

Once washed, the Elimbari coffee is rack dried.

Drying Racks

Jerry stores all the Elimbari parchment coffee and Elimbari green separately to all the other coffee that comes that will, after processing, be sold as Nambayufa A, X and Y Grades.

The same dry mill is used to process all the coffees. This mill is in the middle of a massive expansion program so that Kongo doesn’t have to shut down production to do a major clean every time they want to change from milling Nambayufa to Elimbari. I love the mill. They even use the parchment to fuel the burners that create the hot air that they use to bring all the parchment coffee down to 11% moisture content before they hull.

Once the parchment coffee is dried and hulled, the beans are hand sorted by what feels like a cast of thousands.

Hand sorting the beans

More updates to come.

I’m off to visit some of the growers today and will end up staying Mt Wilhelm Hotel in Kundiawa. I’m going to do a bit of roasting training with Jerry’s guys and also teach them how to use the espresso machine that they have just purchased. It’s going to be really interesting - many photos to come.

I’ve got to be thankful. The Bird of Paradise Hotel has had enough experience in PNG to know that back up generators are an essential part of their infrastructure - last night it had a real work out.

I’ve probably down played the drama’s when I hit Sydney - those who have travelled will know the feeling when a tight connection is made even tighter by delays. It’s a sprint off the plane to catch the transfer between domestic and international. Then it’s a sprint to the check in counter only to find it’s vacated. Then it’s a sprint to the ticketing counter who hop on to phone to the rep who’s standing at the gate … and it goes on. In the end, knowing that you’ve missed the flight after having done everything in your power to get on is a relief in itself.

Well, it’s eight days later. I’m making another attempt to get into PNG. I’ve had the itinerary tweaked to give me the best possible chance of getting there incident free. Today I fly to Brisbane and tomorrow into Port Moresby and then into Goroka.

It feels wierd heading back to the old stomping ground. It almost feels like a bit of a pilgrimage to the hallowed turf of my coffee birthplace.

I’m really excited about getting back on the ground and catching up with old friends. I know so much more about coffee now than I did nine years ago and because of this I know I’ll see things through completely new eyes.