Specialty Coffee Association Podcast

Hundreds of smallholder coffee farmers in Yepocapa, Guatemala have experienced leaf-rust, drought, volcanic eruptions, and price fluctuations over the last few years. Profitability is the main constraint these farmers face, in maintaining healthy households and addressing price issues and other shocks - much like many other smallholder coffee farmers around the world.

Since 2015, Taya Brown has been conducting a multi-phase evaluation of constraints to technology uptake and profitability as part of a World Coffee Research development project that implemented the Centroamericano hybrid to address leaf-rust and low productivity. During a similar timeframe, Ryan Chipman founded Yepocapa Coffee, a US-based coffee importing enterprise focused on improving quality and transparency by becoming a direct link between US roasters and a cooperative of Yepocapa farmers.

In today’s lecture, Taya shares a profitability analysis for one farmer group. Ryan builds on this to share how his business is learning to identify and address the various factors in profitability. Both present examples of site-specific scientific investigation, focused on participatory and farmer-centric methods, to identify profitability constraints and guide response efforts.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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The UC Davis Coffee Center is engaged in comprehensive sensory research using trained panel descriptive analysis to investigate how different parameters related to coffee brewing impact the flavor, and how these can be manipulated to an individual's desired effect. Of these factors, time can be an important variable—in multiple ways—and this talk will highlight two recent projects. The first investigated the time-evolution of coffee flavor extraction during the brewing process. By dividing a drip brew into eight parts and evaluating the flavor change every 30 seconds, it offers a more detailed picture of observable extraction changes. The second experiment investigated time elapsed post-brew, comparing how quickly perceptible changes occur when coffee is held in a carafe, in order to understand the stability of flavors depending on holding conditions. Both of these studies offer preliminary data that can be immediately useful to the industry in developing and preserving desired flavors in the coffee brewing process.

Today’s lecture is presented by Mackenzie Batali, a second-year graduate student in Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis, focusing her research in coffee sensory analysis. Previously she received a chemistry degree from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and worked as a flavor chemist before transitioning into the coffee world. She has spoken previously about her work on coffee fractionation at ASIC 2018.

If today’s lecture piques your interest, you can also read more about Mackenzie’s fractionation experiment in Issue 11 of 25 Magazine.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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Coffee freshness is one of the core values of specialty coffee. But why is preserving the freshness so important? We might strive to maximize coffee’s potential to keep its vibrancy as fresh as the day when roasted or we keep coffee fresh to ensure quality and consistency. Regardless of why we may want to keep coffee fresh, understanding the fundamentals of freshness and applying them in our daily routine will help to improve our cup of coffee.

In this lecture, Samo Smrke explores the topics of roasted coffee freshness as seen by a scientist’s perspective. Two particular fields will be looked into detail: chemical freshness or loss of coffee aroma during coffee aging, and physical freshness or degassing (also called outgassing) of coffee, a process of gradual gas release after coffee roasting. If you’re already familiar with Samo’s work, you’ll be excited to learn that today’s lecture includes his newest findings that haven’t yet been presented.

Samo Smrke is a scientific associate at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in the group of Professor Chahan Yeretzian. He is involved in research projects in collaboration with industry partners and in fundamental research on various topics of coffee chemistry, research of coffee aroma using mass spectrometry, on-line monitoring coffee roasting processes, linking instrumental analysis of coffee aroma to sensory analysis, studying coffee freshness and degassing of coffee. Samo is actively participating at coffee conferences, is one of the co-authors of the SCA Freshness Handbook and Water Handbook, and has contributed to scientific papers and book chapters about coffee science.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

3:15 The Main Causes for Coffee Losing Freshness

World Coffee Research predicts that within the next 30 years, the demand for coffee will double while viable land in current coffee-growing countries will diminish by half. How can we combat this?  Through an engaging panel discussion, learn about the future of coffee production in emerging origins such as Myanmar and Nepal and the role consumers, roasters, and importers can play in building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships across culture and distance.

Today’s panel is moderated by Craig Holt, founder and CEO of Atlas Coffee Importers, and features Marceline Budza of Rebuild Women’s Hope Cooperative; Su Su Aung, Managing Director of Ywangan Amayar Company Ltd; April Su Yin Nwet, Senior Private Sector Liaison Advisor at Winrock International; Al Liu, Vice President of Coffee at Colectivo Coffee Roasters; and Mario Fernandez, Technical Director at the Coffee Quality Institute.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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World Coffee Research is working to improve the genetic potential of coffee cup quality. To start this task, you first need to define the meaning of “quality.” WCR believes it is a market-driven definition and organized new protocols to assess quality from the perspective of the coffee industry. With experts and partners, WCR produced the coffee lexicon that allows an objective analytic description of coffee quality attributes. In their presentation, Hanna Neuschwander discussed these innovations and shared some lessons learned, including the latest results deriving from these methods and advances on the molecular basis of cup quality. In particular, Hanna highlights the burgeoning importance of some specific volatile compounds like Limonene. These results are not an end but a beginning; an opportunity for further studies to find out the molecular markers or genes related to cup quality in general.

Hanna Neuschwander is the communications director for World Coffee Research, a research nonprofit that works to secure the future of coffee. She writes and speaks globally about coffee science and agriculture. Her writing and commentary has appeared in the Art of Eating, Time Magazine, CNN, BCC, Portland Monthly, and many others. She is the author of Left Coast Roast, a guidebook to coffee roasters on the west coast.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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In today’s lecture, a panel delves into the challenges faced by East African processors of high-quality coffee and shares solutions to these challenges, found by three organizations in Ethiopia, Burundi, and Rwanda. These organizations have been working on the cutting edge of methods to improve both the farmgate price and workers’ pay while increasing cup quality. Representing one cooperative and two private companies, their discussion addresses working with large numbers of smallholders, the impacts of government regulation, and the considerations of certification.

President of Artisan Coffee Imports, Ruth Ann Church, leads the panel, featuring Lauren Rosenberg, Managing Director of Long Miles Coffee in Burundi; Rachel Samuel, Co-Owner and Director of Marketing at Gesha Village Coffee Estate in Ethiopia; and Sara Yirga, Founder and General Manager of YA Coffee Roasters in Rwanda.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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Audience Questions

Skilled farmworkers are necessary to harvest specialty coffees in most parts of the world, but they are too often undervalued and invisible to the industry. A collaborative and innovative project in Colombia is attracting a dwindling labor force to actively participate in coffee production. Its main objective is to meet the needs of farmworkers, producers, and local organizations, while identifying solutions that will make employment within the coffee industry more socially viable. This lecture presents a summary of the best practices captured by this project and will guide producers and organizations to make employment within the coffee industry more attractive and socially viable for farmworkers.

Moderated by Whitney Kakos of Keurig Dr. Pepper’s Sustainable Supply Chain Program, this lecture’s panel features: Colleen Bramhall Popkin, Senior Manager in Sustainability at Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc.; Quinn Kepes, Program Director at Verité; Carlos Hernando Isaza, Coffee Program Manager at Solidaridad Colombia; Cesar Julio Diaz, General Manager of Aguadas Coffee Growers Cooperative; and Angela Paez, Sustainability Manager at RCG Coffee.

We want to let you know half of this episode will be in Spanish. If you’re not a confident Spanish-speaker, you can read a full English translation of this lecture on SCA News. Similarly, if you’re not a confident English-speaker, we also have a full Spanish translation there, too.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

A lot has been written about the workforce -- millennials in particular -- choosing between a career and a passion. That shouldn't be the case. While baristas and other coffee professionals may find it hard to make millions, they should be able to make sustainable wages while also developing as a professional. What are ways that cafes, roasting companies, and other coffee industry organizations can provide this working environment? Two small business owners with a proven track record in employee recruitment, development and retention, offer an in-depth behind-the-scenes look into how it's all possible in today’s lecture.

Brian Helfrich, owner and CEO of Summit Coffee Co. in Davidson, North Carolina, and Ryan Jenson, owner of Peregrine Espresso in Washington D.C., lead a panel featuring Roast Magazine’s Connie Blumhardt, Cafe Import’s Andrew Miller, and Atlas Coffee Importers’ Tymika Nichelle Lawrence.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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With over a decade of experience in specialty coffee, Erika Vonie believes that coffee is for everyone. Like many before her, she started as a barista, and worked her way through management, events coordination, quality control, education, green buying, and importing. Along with being the 2017 Coffee Masters Champion and an Arabica Q Grader, Erika is committed to using her position to further the advancement of marginalized people within specialty coffee, using her unique platform as Director of Coffee at Trade to spotlight these issues in the media.

Using hard data collected on customer feedback and SKU performance at Trade, Erika explores one of the trends they’ve found: Customers want naturally processed coffee roasted with longer development, butting up to second crack. It challenges the programs seen within many specialty roasters. Erika sees this as an opportunity to provide insight into gaining more customers, be more approachable with our coffee, and pump money back into the industry without compromising integrity. Is the next trend a well-developed dark roast? What stops us as an industry from achieving that/providing our customer base with that option? How do we thoughtfully push development in roast profiles? Does this mean we can continue to buy relationship coffees even in hard harvest years, so money goes to the producer AND have avenues to sell these coffees to consumers? Erika argues the answer to all of these is, “yes” - and that being more inclusive with our offerings will help specialty thrive in the face of the climate and socio-economic and political challenges facing the industry today.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

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The process for brewing coffee appears simple: One pours hot water over some coffee grounds, and then drinks the liquid that passes through a filter. This superficial perspective, however, belies a sequence of complicated physical and chemical processes that govern the quality of the resulting beverage.

In today’s lecture, Professor Bill Ristenpart discusses the origins of the "Coffee Brewing Control Chart" widely used to interpret the quality of drip brew coffee and how several implicit assumptions in the derivation of the chart yield questionable interpretations in current practice. Also discussed are several unanswered questions regarding drip coffee brewing that are the subject of ongoing sustained research efforts at the UC Davis Coffee Center.

This episode of the Expo 2019 Lectures podcast is supported by Softengine Coffee One, Powered by SAP.  Built upon SAP's business-leading Enterprise Resource Planning solution, Softengine Coffee One is designed specifically to quickly and easily take your small-to-medium coffee company working at any point along the coffee chain to the next level of success. Learn more about Softengine Coffee One at softengine.com, with special pricing available for SCA Members. Softengine: the most intelligent way to grow your business.

Related Links

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