Welcome to the next installment of terroir in coffee.

This one little word contains a whole world of history and has an important role in the economic viability of certain agricultural products.

After the last episode I heard from some of you who wished I had talked about soil minerals and plant nutrition from soil. Others also asked about the wine making regions like Bordeaux where Terroir is regulated by french law. I cover both of these concerns in todays episode before we get to discuss what I really wanted the episode to be about: microbes and morality.

There is an unspoken understanding that products that express terroir are more moral than others.

I wanted to give you an episode that focused on microbiology, that talked about the yeast and bacteria that contribute to a "taste of place" but I couldn't do it without including the human perception that products that express terroir, products that are "transparent" are superior.  

I think we need to be really careful because science doesn't support this view. Any moral component of terroir is a choice to see it through a religious and political lens.

I want to challenge your views on "transparency" and "intrinsic quality".

To pick future podcast topics, get access to the scientific papers, ask questions that I answer on the podcast, and help me continue making episodes: consider supporting the show by Joining Patreon Here

Mentioned on the podcast:

The historical origins are from the book Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing by Mark A Matthews.

How to Use a Pressure Chamber

Demeter Fragrance Library

I'm so excited for you to join me in this discussion about terroir. Terroir comes from latin, for terra - soil. Also translated as land, or “taste of the land”.

Terroir is predominantly a wine concept, so why are we even talking about it in reference to coffee?

If you’ve listened to other episodes, you’ll know that there are certain concepts that the coffee industry likes to borrow from the wine industry. We’ve talked about some of the really bad ones, like using wine or beer tanks to ferment coffee or how a Q grader is not like a sommelier.

From the outside we see the concept used in wine to justify the high prices of a French wine, perhaps we associate it with valuing the land, a sense of place. We know it’s connected to soil, so maybe we assume that terroir also has to do with soil health.

This makes terroir seem like it would be a positive concept to adopt.

I see how tempting it is to think that coffee could benefit from adopting this way of speaking about coffee farms and how it can help sell the coffee beverages at higher prices. Also, it sounds so romantic, and the specialty coffee industry loves romance.

But similar to my argument about “anaerobic fermentation”, terroir faces a similar problem- the word is vaguely understood at best, and then repeated and made familiar by sheer repetition, not by true understanding.

Many of us have a hard time defining this word if we are asked.

I have made this episode to give you a background into the origins of the word so that before we dive head first into regular use in the coffee industry, we have a better understanding of what it means.

While most student of winemaking take terroir for granted, as a given, I was lucky that one of my UC Davis professors challenged the idea. The historical origins are from the book Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing by Mark A Matthews. I highly recommend this book for those wanting to go deeper after today's episode.

To pick future podcast topics, get access to the scientific papers, ask questions that I answer on the podcast and help me continue making episodes: consider supporting the show by Joining Patreon Here

Thanks to Patron Brodie for casting the deciding vote!

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you introduced foreign yeast and bacteria into a coffee farm? Or maybe you're curious if we can speed up a long fermentation by warming it up. How does post harvest processing affect the density of the seed?

In today's podcast episode I’m answering listener questions like these and also sharing how I approach designing a fermentation.

When I was planning this podcast I knew that I wanted it to be a community supported project and that I did not want to rely on advertisements or sponsors that can be annoying or distracting to the information I want to share. 

The Patreon supporters are a group of individuals who care about coffee education and support me and this project. They made a monthly pledge to help keep this information free and available to everyone. With their help I can pay for equipment upgrades like a better microphone, I can pay the subscriptions for the editing software I use and cover the monthly hosting fees. Their contribution also allows me to take some time away from consulting so I can document and record these episodes. As part of their membership, Patrons submit questions—often I answer them privately in the message chats but today I wanted to share and record some of them here on the podcast so we can all learn from each other.

Other resources:
Christopher's Blog

My UCDavis Sensory Science Professor
Dr. Hildegard Heymann

Producers I work with:
Luiz—Fazenda California, Brazil
Ana—Finca Esperanza, Guatemala
Sophia—Mapache, El Salvador
Andres—Cayro, El Salvador
Tommy—Greenwell, Hawaii
Sam—Buff, Rwanda

Importers mentioned:
Balzac Brothers
Crop to Cup

To Support this Podcast and become a Patron CLICK HERE

For those who know, it may not come as a surprise when I share how much I love tea. But professionally, today is the day I come out of the tea closet. I drink logarithmic levels of tea compared to coffee, and the more I confess that, the more other coffee professionals share with me that they too love specialty teas.

Unfortunately I think coffee and tea are often lumped together in similar categories but they have very different histories and I think it’s worth trying to de-couple these beverages.

Today's episode serves as an introduction the basics of specialty tea and will be the first of many episodes exploring the processing and history of this beverage.

Our guide through the world of tea is my friend Aurora Prehn. She is a researcher of people and plants. Her undergraduate work was a double major in Anthropology and environmental studies. She worked at Rishi Tea and Botanicals as a tea educator. In 2018 she then left to do a masters in ethnobotany in Canterbury, England, which she finished last fall.

Support the show on Patreon and get Aurora's curated tea flights.

If you are inspired to learn more about tea check out the following resources:

Tea Reading List 2020 located at worldcat.org, curated by Aurora Prehn

The True History of Tea, Victor H. Mair & Erling Hoh

The Tale of Tea: A Comprehensive History of Tea from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day, George L. Van Driem

The Soul & Spirit of Tea, Phil Cousineau & Scott Chamberlin Hoyt (Editors)

Tea: History, Terroirs, Varieties, Kevin Gascoyne, Francois Marchand, and Jasmin Desharnais

Plants, Health and Healing: On the Interface of Ethnobotany and Medical Anthropology, Elisabeth Hsu & Stephen Harris (Editors)

Rishi Tea & Botanicals’s Lookbook https://journal.rishi-tea.com/catalogs/

How to Store Tea, Tea Epicure https://teaepicure.com/how-to-store-tea/

US Grown Tea, Specialty Tea Alliance https://specialtyteaalliance.org/world-of-tea/us-grown-tea/

In today's Making Coffee Podcast episode, we're taking a deep dive into anaerobic fermentation and how language reflects values.

Specialty coffee is a young industry. In the consumer space we have only recently started to differentiate between processing styles like natural, washed and honey and now we’re jumping off the deep end into the microbiology of these processing styles. 

I wanted to record this episode because many Green Buyers ask me what Coffee Producers mean when they label their coffee like this and Coffee Producers ask me what the Green Buyers mean when they ask them for an anaerobic process. 

Both parties expect the other one has the answers.

Even if the words are poorly understood they are still copied, pasted and repeated so much that they become familiar through sheer repetition.

We see them so much that we can sometimes convince ourselves that we know what everyone is talking about, or we assume that at least they must know what they are talking about.

But in my observations, it seems like at this point everyone has their individual, personal, un-scientific definition. 

And this is a problem because when everyone defines the words differently, we undermine the point of language to communicate.

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Today's Making Coffee Podcast episode is a continuation of the theme of coffee pickers and their role in quality.

In the previous episode I shared my surprisingly difficult experience trying to source red ripe coffee cherry. It was surprisingly difficult to pay the farmers more for a different quality than they were used to picking because of the established system, a system that developed over decades as a response to chronically low coffee prices.

It's important for me to share this with you because I don’t believe enough of us who enjoy drinking coffee realize how fragile our coffee supply is. Coffee is such a staple in our daily lives that I believe we simultaneously revere it for making our mornings more enjoyable and take it for granted.

For example, many businesses offer free coffee, free coffee refills or free coffee with food. If you look around hotels, restaurants and gatherings you can often find more than 1 “FREE Coffee” sign.

We expect that there will always be coffee. It seems so abundant that there is a real disconnect between the effort it takes to get that cup into our hands and what we are willing to pay for that work. Many of us would be turned off by a $5 cup of coffee but have also likely paid $15 to $20 for a glass of wine. Additionally, it's a lot less common to expect free wine.

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Today's episode is part 1 of a 2 part series talking about the people who pick our coffee.

In episode 15 we went deeply into how a molecule of sucrose in the coffee cherry pulp becomes a flavor compound like banana or peach and gets into the coffee seed.

Flavor is an accessible entry point for specialness.

However, I don’t like talking about flavor and coffee too much.  I don’t think coffee flavor is what’s going to help the industry move closer towards long term stability. I think it’s most often a distraction of the larger picture. My concern is the coffee farmers, the people at the source of the value chain. 

I think focusing on flavor distracts us from the larger threats to coffee, like climate change, pests and diseases and—what I want to talk about specifically today—availability of labor.

Sitting down to collect these interactions is possible through the support of Patreon. I’m grateful for the 31 individuals who currently support this podcast and it’s through their generosity that I can make it available to you all. As a thank you, I create additional resources on the Patreon account.

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Today's episode is very special because it was picked by the Making Coffee Podcast Patrons. I sent my patrons a poll on what they wanted to hear about next and the topic most people wanted to hear about was HOW fermentation impacts coffee flavor. 

How can the same yeast that makes bread rise also make my coffee taste like apricot or jasmine?

Maybe you’ve thought that farmers added fruit to the coffee (and while this sometimes happens—it’s not the kind of flavor we are talking about today). Maybe you thought those flavor differences came from the different plant variety or that different countries of origin explains those differences. 

Those are important factors but that’s not the whole story.
In this episode we will go deep into the biochemistry of how a yeast or bacteria can turn the glucose in the coffee fruit into various flavors ranging from lemongrass to mint to raspberries.

There is also a question at the end about how baristas can communicate flavor in a simple way (without having to give a 30 minute science lecture) to their customers.

To pick the next episode, get a copy of the scientific paper that I reference in this episode and ask questions that I answer on the podcast, check out: https://www.patreon.com/makingcoffee

Join me in listening to this conversation with George Howell, where we cover topics such as Cup of Excellence, coffee pricing, processing styles, craftsmanship, additives in processing, kamikaze farmers, and much more.

George was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award from the SCA in 1996, even before he helped found the Cup of Excellence program in 1999. He's accomplished a lot towards improving coffee quality and educating consumers on several fronts. What I admire most is that he continues to be an advocate for quality. He's been in the industry 46 years and I was surprised to learn that he continues to travel to maintain his relationships with coffee producers, and visits Antigua every year.

Even though George has had a longer career in coffee than me, and we approach coffee from different points of view and with different backgrounds, I was surprised to learn how much we have in common regarding coffee processing.

Thanks for listening!

Hello friends,

Today I want to share an interview with Sofia Handtke from Mapache Coffee in El Salvador. I recorded this last November at the end of my time with them. That was my second season working with them and designing fermentation lots at their mill. Over the last 2 harvest seasons we've done about 40 different batches combining 4 strains of yeast, 3 cultivars and various lengths (# of hours in the tank) in an effort to create additional flavor options.

I wanted to interview Sofia and Jan Carlo together but they have a small mill team and a lot of responsibilities so I caught them when I could. In the interview with Jan Carlo we spoke about how Mapache is embracing vertical integration, how he believes this current generation is more open to sharing information, and some of his struggles like disease pressures and how climate change has impacted his farming philosophy. You can catch my conversation with him HERE.

In this conversation I ask Sofia to share her Q Grader experience and talk about her background in coffee. She believes that getting coffee producers and buyers using the same standard language is very important but unfortunately it’s still out of reach for many producers in Central and South America—this is a topic that deserves it’s own episode and it's in the works. 

She shares what it was like growing up in a coffee farm and how she and Jan Carlo are engaging their two teenage children to inspire them to see the coffee industry as a career option, unlike her parent’s generation, many of which had to abandon the industry because it was no longer a viable way to make a living.She shares some fantastic insights about coffee branding and marketing and the coffee gear she takes when she travels.

To Support this Podcast and become a Patron CLICK HERE