Roasting Jamaican Coffee (on Video!)

As I mentioned in my last blog post, and as some of you might have seen on our mailing list, we are doing a promotion on Jamaican coffee for Father's Day. As expected, we're selling quite a bit of the coffee, so Joe roasted a couple batches this morning, and began teaching our new intern Ben about the coffee profiling process. I shot the video of the beans coming out of the drum and into the agitator and then panned over to show the roast profile on the roasting control unit. If you ordered Jamaican Moy Hall from us yesterday or through this weekend, this is most likely the batch of coffee you'll be getting.



If you're interested in learning more about Jamaican coffee, and why it is so expensive and hard to find, please check out these posts from last year:

The Price of Excellence, Part I

The Price of Excellence, Part II


Enjoy!
Matt

Long Weekends Rule!

Life in the northeast revolves around weather. The weather becomes good right around May 1st, and stays that way until say November-ish. As the nasty weather fades into "mud season" and then into Spring/Summer, everyone around town becomes a little bit happier. Business picks up, people actually get tan, and that ghost-like "vermonter-ness" fades for a few months, as being outdoors becomes more realistic (and doesn't require 8 layers of clothes).

The many long weekends of the Summer are some of the best times we get up here, and Memorial Day seems to really kick it all off. This weekend, I drove down to the Poconos, in Pennsylvania, and have been working in the garden, and fly-fishing for a couple hours a day. Joe stayed up in Vermont, and my guess is that he's been riding his motorcycle around at 80 MPH, enjoying the amazing weather and causing local police everywhere to wonder what that brown cruise missile driving down the street could be?

So, I don't have much to say about coffee today, other than we have 2 new organic coffees that we just got in. I'll write about them next week, as we roast and cup 'em. I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend, as we are in Pennsylvania and Vermont respectively.

Cheers,
Matt

ps. here's a couple pics: one of Joe mocking my espresso-making ability, and the other of the FCN mascot, Seven, holding court around a barrel of Jamaica Moy Hall!

FCN blasts off @ Outer Space!!

Today we debuted our coffee at Outer Space, the cafe across the street from our office on Flynn Avenue in Burlington. Outer Space is a great little cafe! It is inside a quirky brick building called the Flynn Dog, which also doubles as an art gallery and houses a pilates center, and an engineering firm among other things. Everyone we met was really nice, and seemed excited about getting easier access to "the coffee from across the street." Select Design and Burton both have offices near by, and I know a bunch of people that work at both of those places, so it was nice to run into some of them!

The rest of the week is going to be busy, as we're starting a new online ad campaign on the FCN website. Every two weeks for the next few months we are going to put at least one great coffee or gift pack on sale, and also see if we can get more people to sign up for our Jamaican and Organic coffee clubs!

Julia is doing some demos somewhere this weekend, and as soon as I find out where they are I will post it, so any coffee lovers nearby can come geek out with us.

Matt

Mother's Day Coffee Sales!

It's almost Mother's Day and FCN has unveiled a new Mother's Day gift package. The package includes a pound each of Jamaica Blue Mountain: Moy Hall, Organic Colombia Reserva and Organic Sumatra. Three of our best coffees for Mom! You can check it out here!

We also took 20% off of the El Salvador, another one of our popular premium coffees.

Good news ahead: we have a new website design that will launch in about a week. We've been working on it for the past couple weeks, and it's ALMOST ready to launch. It's pretty exciting for us, and I'm hoping to have a sneak peak posted to the blog at the end of the week.

VII

There is a new addition to the Fresh Coffee Now family! His name is VII (Seven!) and he is an English Bulldog. Joe got him about a week ago, and he has since move into our office, and spends much of his life curled up, sleeping under my desk. My fiance has been trying to convince me to get a puppy, and I've held out until now. VII might just put me over the edge, however, as he is pretty much the cutest and coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

It's looking like it will be a good spring and summer here. We've got a new employee (Julia) and a puppy, and finally it's warm and sunny. I can't complain one bit!



In coffee news: we're looking forward to doing some major advertising on the FCN website starting in May. We might put Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee on sale for a couple weeks, and do some discounts on select gift packages.

Locally, City Market and Hunger Mtn. Coop are both serving our Mexico coffee as their Ice Coffee in their deli section. We will begin selling coffee in bulk bins at Fresh Market on Pine Street this Monday, and Outer Space, across the street from our warehouse, is now serving a couple coffees by the pump pot. I will post more about them next week...

Enjoy the weekend!
Matt

A new season for Fresh Coffee Now!

As time goes on, we take for granted the gifts we have and lose the enthusiasm we once had at the goodness we’re blessed with everyday. I've been listening to the positive messages in my life and have looked at my gifts. Indeed, the darkness of routine masks the excitement we once had when things were new. It's not easy to realize what we live for every day.

When I started working with coffee, I remember how beautiful the aroma was and how to use the shiny espresso machine was a goal for me. As I continued my quest for knowledge through effort and interest, I conquered my goal, became an expert in my craft, and began to make people happy. The gift I have wasn't so I could make myself the most beautiful cappuccino, it was the knowledge I had of my craft that made me able to give people the best I could.
At some point, I got interested in roasting coffee. I took advantage of the opportunity I had to improve my knowledge and had to take gradual steps through time, bit by bit, and eventually I was able to do it myself. I had several teachers over the years and assembled a body of understanding that helped me do the best I can now. I have been blessed with the opportunity to put to work all the knowledge I've amassed and enjoy the rewards. I don't have to search out the best coffee roaster or the most skilled barista around to show the people I love what is available. I can make the work I have done available to people every day. I am thankful for that!

As the seasons change, so do our aspirations, and sometimes it seems we have to move on and start a new chapter. Our roasting company was at home in the basement of a café/restaurant for nearly two years and, with all the focus on the café, it was difficult at times to stay excited. It made me want to so something drastic to change the reality of the situation. I did my best to work through and now have the opportunity to reinvigorate my interest in coffee with a change for the better. I wouldn't want to give up my life's passion for a break from hardship.

Fresh Coffee Now has turned to a new chapter in its development, starting with our move to a more user-friendly venue. Gone are the days of huffing burlap sacks of coffee down stairs. Our commitment to quality is growing stronger daily, and with this our standards are growing also. We will be offering more organic, fair trade coffees then ever before, as well as our Jamaican coffee that stands alone in quality. Delicious standards like Guatemala Antigua, Yemen Mocha, and Indian Malabar, among others, will remain great sellers. I hope our loyal customers will spread the word among friends. Tell them how to get Fresh Coffee Now!

Joe

Leap Year Sale!

Leap Year only happens once every 4 years, and we've decided to do some deep discounts to celebrate the occasion. Visit www.freshcoffeenow.com for the remainder of the month: Jamaican Blue Mountain Moy Hall is on sale, and we are taking 29% off of all our organic coffees.

Enjoy!
Matt

The Move: Part 2

As of yesterday, we are all moved in to the new spot (with the exception of computer and computer desk for the office).

Here are some shots of the uhaul on one of our trips over, us moving about 7000 pounds of coffee in, and the roaster installed in it's new home.

We're hoping to be up and roasting by Thursday night. We'll keep you posted!

Cheers,
Matt

We're Moving!

Happy 2008 to all of our loyal customers! Freshcoffeenow.com is excited to announce that next Monday we are moving our roasting center to Burlington! For those of you from far away places, Burlington is the town that is next door to Winooski, our current location. It is the largest town in our small state, and it will be a great place for us to operate in. For starters, we have about twice as much room to warehouse coffee. We also wont have to walk down 25 steep stairs when getting coffee to and from our roaster.

For the customer, the biggest difference is that we won't run out of coffee as often (although certain Fair Trade co operatives, and Jamaican coffees will still be hard to find). We also won't be bothered with the restaurant that was above the old roasting facility, allowing us to focus more on coffee, our website and the wholesale business. This should make everything a bit smoother, and our jobs a bit more fun.

Here's some "before" pics of the new space. Look for more pictures next week as we install the roaster and bring over some coffee!

The Blog is Back!

Hello fans of Fresh Coffee! I realized last week that neither Joe nor I had made a post to the blog in over a month, so I decided to post an update on what’s been going on here in Vermont. Rest assured we didn’t forget about you, we have just been busy trying to make changes to our website.

I guess the most important (and evident) thing we’ve been working on is the new website, www.freshcoffeenow.com. With the help of our web development team, EpikOne, we’ve built a new website, which we feel looks a lot better, and is easier to use for both our clients, and Joe and I. The site launched about 6 weeks ago, and has been going through a testing phase. We think we have worked out all the glitches, and recommend that everyone tries the site!

Some other things we’ve been working on are holiday gift options. We’ve always sold gift packages, but this year at the request of some of our customers, we are in the process of adding some new features. The gift packages will now come in nice, round wicker trays, and a gift card, making them a better looking present. Also, we will allow the addition of the wicker tray and gift card to any order, not just a gift package. We will have electronic gift certificates, and two coffee clubs (Jamaican, and the regular Fresh Coffee Club) available as well. We expect all three of these changes to take place on 12/1/8, and are really excited to launch them.

Last but not least, the biggest change for us is that we are preparing to move to a new roasting facility shortly after the new year. We’ve finally outgrown our basement hideout in Winooski, and we’re moving back to Burlington! Our new facility is about four times as big, and will allow us to warehouse more coffees, take deliveries easier and ship packages for handily. Most importantly to Joe and I: we won’t be in a windowless basement!! I’ll post some pictures of the new spot as soon as we begin to fit it up.

Speaking of the basement, it’s time to go back and pack some orders. Please let us know what you think about the new website, and have a great Thanksgiving!

Coffee Bag Symbols: What do they mean?

A few weeks ago, I received some nice comments thanking me for the info on Jamaican coffee, and I’ve decided to devote a series of blog posts to other frequently wondered, if not asked, questions regarding coffee, and related subjects.

One question I hear a lot while doing coffee demos in supermarkets is “what do those symbols mean on the coffee bags?” This is an easy one to answer, and might be informative for our readers!

The first and easiest to explain symbol is the “Certified Organic” symbol.

If a coffee has been certified organic, it guarantees that the coffee is grown without chemicals, which poison people and the environment. The land the coffee is grown on, in fact, must be chemical free for at least three years. To gain the right to use this logo, the land and coffee must be inspected by an independent, 3rd party company. The certifying entities have begun to include criteria regarding sustainable farming techniques, making higher and new standards for organic certification.

The next, and in my opinion most important symbol on a coffee bag is “Fair Trade Certified.”



Fair Trade is a trading partnership between coffee purchasers, and producers, which guarantees economic justice for the often impoverished producer by setting a floor price at which coffee is purchased for. The details in this social and economic partnership are complex, and I will devote my entire blog next week to try and explain it. Suffice to say for now that at FCN, we only drink Fair Trade coffee, and are trying to slowly convert our catalog over to Fair Trade as quickly as possible.

The last symbol I will go over today is “Bird Friendly” (also known as “Shade Grown.”)

Simply put, “Bird Friendly” coffee is coffee that comes from farms in Latin America that provide good, forest-like habitat for birds. Rather than being grown on land that has been cleared of all other vegetation, “Bird Friendly” coffees are planted under a canopy of trees. Because of the shaded, forest-like setting created by these canopy trees, coffee produced this way is called shade-grown. Not only are “Bird Friendly” coffees shade-grown, they are also organic.

“Bird Friendly” coffees are the only coffees on the market that are certified as shade-grown and organic by an independent third-party inspector using criteria established by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the National Zoo. These criteria are based on years of scientific research.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to chime in. Look for my next post which will be all about Fairly Traded coffee.

Matt

The Price of Excellence, Part II

Why is Jamaican coffee so rare and expensive?

Jamaican Coffee is often known to be the “rarest, most expensive” coffee in the world. Both the high price and rarity stem from the low-yield farms that are growing beans in the region. In the mid-fifties with the introduction of the Industry Board, farming for quality, not quantity, became the priority. That being said, the thing that hurts Jamaican coffee consumers the most is Japan.

That’s right, the little island that is the same size as California consumes more Jamaican coffee than everywhere in the world - combined. To be specific, Japan buys 90% of all coffee grown in the Blue Mountain region. The US, in comparison, buys 2% of the coffee, with the remaining 8% taken mainly by the UK and Europe. Why does Japan get so much you might ask? Because they are willing to pay for it! In America prices are now between $35 and $50 a pound for Jamaican coffee; in Japan try $60 to $75 per pound!

Another rumor is that in the early 60’s when Jamaica was almost wiped out by a hurricane (perhaps Hurricane Flora on 10/5/63?), Jamaica sold out the futures on a certain percentage of coffee in return for financial aid from Japan. This is total coffee conspiracy theory and I can’t back it up with facts. I have one friend that owns a farm in the Moy Hall co-op, which is how we source our coffee, and he’s never mentioned the hurricane. Until we get some evidence, it will just be something Joe and I talk about at the office, but it seems a likely story to me.

So, the moral of the story here is this: Jamaican coffee is amazing, but it comes in small quantities. If you like it, you’ve got to be willing to pay for it! The prices are going up steadily as word gets out and demand increases, but the farms yield the same amount of coffee (or less if they are damaged by hurricanes like 2 years ago with Hurricane Rita).

How to try Jamaican coffee: We offer Blue Mountain Mavis Bank coffee as of now, and are working hard to get some from the Moy Hall co-op. Give it a try and tell us what you think. I’d love to hear some feedback (hopefully positive) so I can convince Joe to let me post another blog sometime soon.

Cheers,
Matt

The Price of Excellence, Part I

Please excuse this interruption of the usually scheduled blog: Joe has been on vacation in Alaska for a couple weeks, and while I am down here roasting beans in his place I figured I could simultaneously hijack his blog and see what happens. Shhhh! Don’t tell him, and he might not notice…

As you can imagine while selling coffee for living, I field all kinds of questions about coffee every day. If they are technical questions about roasting, making espresso or the specific qualities of any particular bean, I immediately refer the person asking to Joe. He knows a lot more about that stuff than I do! I find that when I try and quote him, much of it gets lost in translation. More and more often though, and especially lately, people want to know about Jamaican coffee. Some questions include, but are not limited to, “is it really the best coffee money can buy?”, “why do you run out so often?” and “why is it so damn expensive?” So while I’m here “borrowing” Joe’s blog, I figured I could give a brief history of Jamaican coffee, and at the same time try and answer some of everyone’s questions.


A Brief History of Jamaican Coffee

Coffee was brought to Jamaica way back in 1728, while it was a British colony. The first governor, Sir Lewis Hawes, brought this addictive little bean over to see if it would take on the newly conquered island. Suffice to say that it did! For the next 200 years, coffee grew on the island and wasn’t considered anything special, although they did import quite a bit of it and it was the favorite of the Queen of England (the current Queen, Elizabeth II, only drinks Blue Mountain coffee).

By the early 1900’s Jamaican coffee was becoming recognized as some of the best coffee you could get into your cup. They started producing more and more coffee, and at some point after World War II the sheer volume they were producing was leading to poor quality as not enough attention was being paid to the important details of growing the crops. This led to the English government forming the “Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica” in 1953.

Jamaica would shortly thereafter become independent of the UK, but adopt the Industry Board into its’ fledgling constitution. From there, the current system quickly developed. The government created five co-operatives that every farmer in the region had to sell their beans to: Moy Hall, Wallenford, Mavis Bank, Langley and Silver Hill. The board started grading the beans on their shape, size and texture, creating 4 categories for the coffees: #1, #2, #3 and triage, from highest to lowest quality. After the farmers sold the beans to the co-ops, the co-ops would then process them, barrel them and sell them.

Why “Blue Mountain?”

The coffee is called “Jamaican Blue Mountain” because it is grown in the Blue Mountain Region of Jamaica. The Blue Mountain range gets its name from its’ low lying cloud cover, which forms a mist that often makes the trees on the mountain look green. Coffee grown in the region is required by law to be grown between 2000 and 5500 feet above sea level. The mountains reach 7500 feet in height, but the area between 5501 and 7500 feet is recognized as “preserved forest” by government law. The growing conditions in the Blue Mountain range are considered ideal by coffee growers world wide. Between the rich soil, heavy rainfall and easy drainage off the sides of the mountains, this coffee is basically perfect.

Why it is so rare, and expensive?
Click here for Part II...

Cheers,
Matt