Making Coffee with Lucia Solis

In this episode we talk about:

• How Ana decided to join the family business after pursuing a career in art.
• The advantages and drawback of growing coffee in a "Full Sun" system.
• The future of coffee picking and the role of Mechanical Harvesters.
• Brazil's 6 different biomes.
• How technology helped Brazil  jump from 6 coffee bags/hectare in 1960 to 29 bags/hectare in 2023
• How climate change has affected the crop
• How Precision Agriculture is helping the farm use resources efficiently
• Tattoos!

Resources
Ana's Precision Agriculture Presentation on Coffee Knowledge Hub (you will need to make an account but it's free!)

Anacafe Presentation on Price Volatility (by Albert Scalla in Spanish)

Picture of Mechanical Harvester

Instagram

I was going to create a new episode about Infused vs Inoculated Coffees, but much of what we established back in Episode #39 is still relevant. So I am pulling a Taylor Swift and going to re-release a new version of episode 39, keeping what still works and adding some new perspectives from the last 3 years.

In this episode I talk about:

• The sugar and acid additions that French and California winemakers use
• How adding mango to a fermentation tank is completely different from adding passion fruit or citrus
• How to tell when a coffee is infused with a flavor
• Cinnamon flavor in a coffee
• Inoculation vs Infusion vs Co-Fermentation
• The role of enzymes in removing mucilage
• Gravity!

Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

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Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

On today's episode I will be updating you on the coffee we made this harvest season and speaking of the importance of blends.

If you’ve listened to even 1 other episode of this podcast, you’ll know that I'm usually trying to discourage the coffee industry from blindly adopting wine culture. Usually I share my thoughts that adopting a wine model benefits consumers more than producers and further accentuates inequality between the coffee buyers and coffee producers. Usually I believe the wine mode does more harm than good.

But here is a rare occasion where I think coffee could truly benefit from the wine model.

In this episode I talk about:

• Identity shift from a wine person to a coffee person
• Why coffee could benefit from adopting the wine vintage model
• How I approach blending coffee lots in the season
• Is Coffee Hunter an outdated term?
• My risky coffee sales strategy

Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

This episode also comes on the heels of our recent trip to London. 

Our very first stop was the Nagare coffee shop in Shoreditch in North London. Nick and I do what we usually do when we step into a coffee shop and order the pour overs. They had 2 different coffees on the menu for a pour over so we got one of each and sat back at our cute little table in a cozy cafe, and it was only when we looked down at our empty Kinto ceramic cups that we finally realized we had paid 18£ ($23 dollars!) for 2 small cups of black coffee.

I experienced sticker shock because we have been living on farms in Colombia and Guatemala for the last 4 years and we are very out of touch with big city prices. I knew London was going to be expensive but I was not emotionally prepared to spend $11/cup on our daily coffee.

Nick and I needed more coffee that morning but if we got 2 more cups at Nagare, we would be close to $50 and we hadn’t even had breakfast yet. 

In my head, a voice was saying, dang $11 is an expensive cup of coffee. And then immediately another voice said, hold on.... 

"don’t we want the price of a cup of coffee to rise?"

Aren't low coffee prices a big part of the problem with our supply chain?

The conversation about the price of a cup of coffee is one I have often. What should coffee cost? Who gets to set the price? How does price reflect value?

The conversation about price and value is often at the forefront of my mind because there is such a disparity between what a coffee producer gets paid for growing and processing the coffee and what a consumer pays for a cup of coffee made from their raw material.

Resources:
https://www.macrotrends.net/2535/coffee-prices-historical-chart-data

https://ourcountrygarden.co.uk/british-gardening-statistics/

https://www.carelink24.org/doctors-prescribe-gardening/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-carbon-climate-change.html

Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

Today I bring you a third installment with Pranoy from Kerehaklu. 

In this new episode we talk about:

• The pros and cons of commercial strains vs wild microbes
• The over-complication of fermentations
• The drawback of high altitude farming
• The drawback of honey process
• An alternative to adding fruit to your tank 
• Terroir vs Ecological niche
• Pranoy's approach to cultivating his local microbes

And much more... 

RESOURCES

#56: Finding Work/Life Balance as a Coffee Producer w/ Pranoy Thipaiah from Kerehaklu in India

#34: Robusta, Tropical Fruits and Mechanical Drying. Visiting India w/ Pranoy of Kerehaklu

Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

To connect with Pranoy:
Pranoy's Instagram
Kerehaklu Instagram
Website

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

• RESOURCES
  Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Boss Barista Substack

Boss Barista Podcast

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

 In this listener Q&A episode we talk about:

• How to use Thermoshock
• Does drying pull sugar out of the seed?
• What labels are important on a coffee bag?
• How do I prepare my coffee?
• How to know if you've hit "The One" on a fermentation trial
• How do citrus flavors get into coffee?
• How did a coffee from Panama fool a listener into thinking it came from Ethiopia?
  
  RESOURCES
  Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

• https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/11/13/1920 for
  Effect of Six Lactic Acid Bacteria Strains on Physicochemical Characteristics, Antioxidant Activities and Sensory Properties of Fermented Orange Juices
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002021000538 for Production of volatile compounds by wild-type yeasts in a natural olive-derived culture medium
  
  Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.
  
  And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal
  
  Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.
  
  Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
  Into song: Elijah Bisbee

In this new episode I talk about:

• A review of how dry process and wet process are different
• how microbes get into our fermentations
• What I look for in a coffee label, 4 key elements
• how I’ve changed my mind about descriptive processing labels
• studies showing contradictory results when they look at altitude in different countries.
  
  

RESOURCES
Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

In this new episode with Natali we talk about:

• Growing up in a coffee producing country, but finding coffee later in life
• Falling into the specialty coffee rabbit hole
• The challenges of running a small business while keeping full time jobs
• Direct trade, fair trade and single origin
• How Natali chooses what information to put on her roasted coffee bags
• Why Decaf is important for night owls & coffee lovers
• Educating new markets

RESOURCES
Inquiries about coffee samples or future Fermentation Training Camps: [email protected]

Support the show on Patreon  to join our live Discord hangouts, and get access to research papers, transcripts and videos.

And if you don't want to commit, show your support here with a one time contribution: PayPal

Sign up for the newsletter for behind the scenes pictures.

To connect with Natali:
Instagram
Website

Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee