Caravela's Coffee Talks

In today’s conversation, you will hear from our former Relationship Builder, Salomé Puentes and Jamie Isetts, Sourcing Consultant and Green Buyer for Square Mile Coffeee. They speak about how Jaime came to become a Green Coffee Consultant, a journey that started somehow working with small-scale farmers in Spain, learning new languages like Spanish and Portuguese. They dive into the role of green buyers, power dynamics, transparency, traceability, standards, and expectations when establishing relationships with producers. The power to change narratives whilst creating a positive impact for all parties in the supply chain.

In today’s conversation, you will hear from our former Relationship Builder, Salomé Puentes and Lisa Lawson, co-founder of Dear Green Coffee Roasters in Glasgow, Scotland and the Glasgow Coffee Fest.  They speak about how the wine industry inspired Lisa to build a coffee company in Glasgow and how the coffee industry in this country has grown and evolved since then to the point that is now a mainstream conversation! She also talks about the power of community building, network, and sustainability-driven companies to make the coffee industry better and more sustainable for everyone.  

Amaris is the Director of Roasting for Joe Coffee Company. She is also the founder of The Women in Coffee Project, a project that sheds light on equity and women in coffee as well as focusing on the complex and challenging world of coffee. Her coffee career and path have been uniquely influenced by her Central American roots and heritage, especially thanks to her direct ties to Nicaragua. She has applied her academic degree in English literature, her training, and years of experience in the science of roasting, quality control, and comprehensive knowledge of sourcing specialty green coffee around the world.

Added yeasts can dramatically affect the taste of coffee, and this all happens during the fermentation step. This step, which once was simply a means to remove the mucilage is now understood as key to flavour development. There are many microbes responsible for this and the types of naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria will have a huge impact on the taste of the coffee. 

If these yeasts and bacteria already exist and can be found everywhere, why would you add a different stain of yeast to the mix? In this episode we speak to Roberto Vazconez, from finca @lugmapata who uses added yeast strains to direct his fermentation, to obtain certain profile results. With the help of Camila Khalifé, Ecuadorian quality analyst and café owner, we interview Roberto about his fermentation experiments. 

Listen to learn more about what is going on in the fermentation tank when yeasts are added and a case study success story on how yeasts can be used with desirable results. 

In this episode we look at the traditional varieties that we most commonly work with at Caravela. The traditional varieties found all over Latin America can all be traced back to either Typica or Bourbon. That is to say that many of the traditional varieties that we see today are either mutations or hybrids of these two original varieties, but what does this really mean? To understand some of the terminology and to help us tell the story, we speak with research technician for World Coffee Research: Julio Alvarado.

In this episode we delve deeper into what makes a good roaster-producer working relationship. Stephen Leighton and Pedro Claros both share their side of the story, telling us what this relationship means for them and how they have arrived at this point.  

Steven is the founder of Hasbean and has been working with producer Pedro (from Pitalito, Huila) since 2011 but their relationship was not always what it is today. Listen to find out how they have made such a success of working together. 

For many roasters, visiting origin is just one important part of the job. However, it is currently a moment when not only is it impossible to travel, but to do so would indeed be irresponsible. This inability to visit the producers one works with has created much discussion regarding the importance of these trips.

What are the potential ramifications of not being present at origin? Would the coffees you want become harder to get? Should producers worry that roasters not visiting them could cause a breakdown in their relationship, and that their coffee will no longer be bought? 

In this episode the Relationship Building team will talk about what we are missing out on and what we can do about this, even if we can only be at origin in spirit!

The logistics of moving coffee is by nature a complicated process, so how is it now in the Covid era?

At origin, just moving coffee from farms to warehouses to ports has become a matter of jumping hurdles, while moving coffee across oceans and then on to the final destination has other very specific difficulties.

In this episode we speak to Grant Tennille, Caravela’s North American logistics coordinator. Grant offers an overview of the steps and pitfalls associated with exporting and importing green coffee, and then goes deeper into the challenges - real and potential -facing the movement of green coffee and logistics in general.

'Minga' is a South American term which means "coming together for the common good", whether to finish a harvest or build a house. This spirit is what we are always striving to cultivate at Caravela: working with producers to help them improve over time, and helping roasters find better coffees, cultivating long-term relationships that will help us all thrive over time.

Since the novel coronavirus drastically changed the world we live in, we have been encouraged and inspired to see a minga mentality emerge all over, from producing countries to roasteries and cafes around the globe. In this episode, Caravela's Relationship Building team discuss the impact of Covid-19 at origin, as well as hearing first hand about the amazing things that are happening in response.

In this episode of Origin Compass, we take a closer look at Peru as a coffee origin. Ana Sofia, Relationship Builder based in Guatemala chats with Peru’s Country Manager Miguel Sanchez, they both talk about their experiences working in coffee in Peru, the culture, the successes, and the challenges.

Listen if you are interested in Peruvian coffees and want to know why with this origin has so much potential, that we will only start to see more of in the coming years.