Coffee is my morning wine…
Yeast, controlled fermentation, and the creation of flavour.
I am currently sitting in transit at Addis Ababa Airport (Ethiopia)
A solid 2 hours of sleep under my belt and I am on the hunt for caffeine.
My eyes sting and I have a dull ache softly caressing the back of my left eye socket, I am putting this down to one too many glasses of Ethiopian Merlot on the flight, which surprisingly, was a Decent Drop.
My flight to Kigali (Rwanda) is due to board in 6 hours and as I sit here reflecting on a significant career change over the last few months I thought I should explain the objectives of this trip.
Yeast inoculation…
Post-harvest processing has always fascinated me, green coffee is my schtick and the need to understand what is happening and what is possible when it comes to flavour development is where I am focusing a considerable amount of my energy. The specialty coffee industry is currently entering an extremely fascinating development phase in this particular field and long gone are the simple days of washed, natural, and honey process, this is the dawn of a new age and if you are feeling slightly confused by the new fermentation parade then welcome to the club.
Now I am sure there are a few more of these processes lurking in the depths but you will have to forgive me for my amnesia, my cognition is a little fuzzy from the 12 hours in transit and I am still waiting for the coffee to land at my table.
You get the point though, coffee is going through a radical overhaul when it comes to experimentation within post-harvest processing and you have probably come across some of the terminology above, I am also certain you will be asking some of the same questions as the ones currently bouncing around my head.
What do they all mean?
What effect does this have on the coffee?
Where the hell has this come from?
What are the benefits for the producers?
Do they have a positive impact on flavour development?
Can this be scaled to large-volume production?
Now I wish I could give you some solid, factual evidence on this to back up my opinions but unfortunately, I do not currently possess any hands on data on the subject, however, this is all about to change. What I do possess though is a good set of tastebuds and I have a feeling something rather special is bubbling away (in a tub somewhere) under the surface.
You see, fermentation in coffee is nothing new, coffee has been fermented ever since we started removing the cherry to get to the seed. it just so happens that fermentation has never been considered a crucial part of coffee processing, until very recently.
Coffee has been so cheap for so long that fermentation has never really been harnessed for the value-adding flavours we have all come to appreciate.
I think we can all agree that ‘fermentation’ if done well and in a controlled manner leads to some very unique tasting coffee and in my opinion, I think we are on our way to revolutionising the coffee industry.
Back to the objectives of this trip.
I have 10 days in Africa to learn…
I am armed with some commercial yeast which has been specifically selected for coffee processing and together with team Rwamatamu we are going to run some controlled experiments that I will be documenting over the coming days.
I will also be heading over the border to Burundi to run some Quality assurance training and take a look at how the team at Migoti go about creating specialty coffee lots at their production facilities. This work is for Omwani Coffee Co who are building some truly remarkable relationships with incredible producers in East Africa. Please if anything go and check them out.
This is going to be a very intense but extremely valuable trip for all involved and I am hoping to bring back the results in the shape of some very unique and limited Nano Lots.
Daily Tonic paid subscribers will be getting a chance to taste the finished lots as part of their subscription and as they arrive in the UK I will also be running some seminars to detail the experiments and hopefully hosting some cuppings with UK Roasters alongside Omwani Coffee Co.
Also, I would like to thank everyone who has signed up as a paid subscriber, these trips would not be possible without you. I have also set up an Instagram account if you would like to follow along. I will be posting footage over the next 10 days and beyond.
Wish us good luck.
Thanks again for all your support. Keep an eye out for updates this week.
Cheers
Burts X
Morning (possibly afternoon!) David.
Firstly, have a brilliant trip. Sounds fascinating.
I'm a simple soul. Still get excited at the thought of opening a bag of Specialty, from some far flung part of the globe, that I will most probably (sadly) never visit. Indeed, up to these more recent developments in processing, I used known characteristics on a geographical basis, to select my brew. Just the other day, I was given a quite superb Colombian espresso, convinced the source had to be Ethiopian! Therefore, I together with many others, will be embarking on a Land of Confusion expedition into the fermentation jungle. Is it progress? I guess with food and drink, it's our sworn duty to develop, fuse and extract as much flavour and nuance as we can. Doesn't always work. Indeed, on more than a few occasions, we've found ourselves going 'back to basics', as sometimes despite our best efforts, we simply can't improve on natures perfection. My only concern in all of this jiggery pokery, is that we musn't lose that simple perfection, in an ever increasing urge to 'make things better'. Don't know about you, I love coffee as it is. In Specialty I've only ever been slightly underwhelmed by a coffee. Never hated one yet. Counterintuitively, given my comments/fears, I've also been blown away by some alternative processing. I just wouldn't want it to become a foggy norm, at the expense of the things that made me love coffee in the first place...