Hello everyone! It has been awhile since we’ve posted information about a coffee origin, as it’s been awhile since we’ve had new information to present to you. Recently we’ve been in talks with a trader from China, who has presented us with an offer to sell specialty Yunnan-grown coffee to North America. 

Below are the notes we got our contact in China. In regards to the price, these are still estimates, as the freight rate used in our calculation can be confirmed only if/when the order gets shipped.  This should help you to get a ballpark figure as to what the final price would be. 

Chinese Coffee Details

Name

Variety

Processing

Flavor Notes

Price List (USD/pound)

Dongka (14-16)

Catimor P3/P4

 Washed 

Nutty, Caramel, Rooibos Tea Like

$    3.534

Dongka (17+)

Catimor P3/P4

 Washed 

Yellow Apricot, Dark Chocolate, Nutty, Caramel

$    3.757

Laga

Catimor

 ASD Natural 

Tropical Fruit Jam, Jackfruit, Rose, Raspberry

$    4.739

Banka (17+)

T8667

 Natural 

Orange, Berries, Brown Sugar

$    4.739

Kagu

T8667

 Washed 

Jasmine Tea, Lemon, Honey, Sugar Cane

$    4.427

Banka

T8667

 Washed 

Orange, Berries, Brown Sugar, Nuts, White Tea

$    3.802

TianKeng

Sarchimor

 Honey 

Purple Flower, Dry Kumquat, Grapefruit, Brown Sugar

$    8.666

QingSong

Catimor 

 Fermented Washed 

White Flower, Brown Sugar, Nutty, Green Tea

$    9.113

 

Our Ask

Please let me know if there were any varieties from this list that you want. As you can imagine, it puts us in a tough position if we get told you’re interested and then when we bring in the coffee, you back out. Since it is our first order of Chinese coffee, we will be placing the order if we get enough interest from customers like you.

If you are interested in placing an order, or curious to learn more, please contact us either using our Contact Us form, or by calling 905-415-0778 x 213 (Muhammed Abbas’s extension). 

If we can get the order set up in the next few weeks, then we can forecast that the shipment to be in our warehouse around the end of November. Of course, this depends on if/when we put an order in for this coffee, and how quick it is to get the container and the coffee on board.

Green Coffee Market Prices
The ICO Composite Indicator Price (I-CIP) averaged 176.41 US cents/lb in January, a 0.4% increase from December 2023.

The I-CIP posted a median value of 173.90 US cents/lb, having fluctuated between 171.08 and 185.54 US cents/lb.

The January 2024 I-CIP is above the January 2023 I-CIP by 12.4%, with the 12-month rolling average at 166.85 US cents/lb.

The I-CIP grew steadily in January 2024, reaching a ten-month high.

Importantly, the Robustas have reached their highest level since November 1994 when they averaged 153.33 US cents/lb.
Read more: https://www.icocoffee.org/documents/cy2023-24/cmr-0124-e.pdf?mc_cid=3acfbd4b69

Green Coffee Price
Robustas reach 25-year high, averaging 135.47 US cents/lb in December 2023. The ICO Composite Indicator Price (I-CIP) averaged 175.73 US cents/lb in December, an 8.8% increase from November 2023. The I-CIP posted a median value of 177.64 US cents/lb, having fluctuated between 163.92 and 186.04 US cents/lb. The December 2023 I-CIP is above the December 2022 I-CIP by 11.8%, with the 12-month rolling average at 165.23 US cents/lb. The I-CIP grew steadily in December 2023, reaching a nine-month high. The rise in tensions in the Red Sea has prompted some shipping lines to re-route their coffee-carrying vessels. Thus, for South-East Asian and East African coffee en route to Europe, unintended consequences include a rise in freight costs as some shipping companies have introduced surcharges to account for the now-extended transit times.
Read more: https://www.icocoffee.org/documents/cy2023-24/cmr-1223-e.pdf?mc_cid=94006c239a

A recent paper published in Matter magazine on December 6, 2023 has caught our and the coffee world’s attention. It describes that adding some water, just a few spritzes for personal use, to your beans before grinding can lead to less coffee grinds being wasted and a more consistent and even flow when pulling espresso shots. The paper is linked here and is not behind a paywall at the time of this blog post.

The paper details how static builds up inside your grinder. One type of static is due to the coffee’s contact with the burrs, and the other type of static is due to the coffee’s contact to the grinder and other beans. The authors argue that the static would lead to some coffee grinds flying away, as well as creating “boulders”. The paper proposes adding some water, which would reduce the amount of charge built up inside the grinder, allowing the coffee grinds to not become charged.

James Hoffmann, a coffee expert and a World Barista Champion, goes through the main highlights in his video. He discusses some of his concerns and questions relating to the paper.

Have you noticed any differences in terms of taste when adding water to your coffee before grinding? We’d love to hear your experiences.  Please let us know what you thought on our Contact Us Form.

July 31, 2014

Third Wave Coffee

Coffee BerriesThird Wave Coffee treats coffee beans as an artisanal ingredient and seeks to convey the flavour in the brewed coffee.
The Third Wave of Coffee refers to a current movement to produce high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity. This involves improvements at all stages of production, from improving coffee plant growing, harvesting, and processing, to stronger relationships between coffee growers, importers, traders, and roasters, to higher quality and fresh roasting, at times called “microroasting” (by analogy with microbrew beer), to skilled brewing.
Third Wave Coffee aspires to the highest form of culinary appreciation of coffee, so that one may appreciate subtleties of flavour, varietal, and growing region – similar to other complex culinary products such as wine, tea, and chocolate. Distinctive features of Third Wave Coffee include direct trade coffee, high-quality beans (see specialty coffee for scale), single-origin coffee (as opposed to blends), lighter roasts, and latte art. It also includes revivals of alternative methods of coffee preparation, such as vacuum coffee and pour-over brewing devices such as the Chemex and Hario V60.
The term “Third Wave” was coined in 2002, and refers chiefly to the American phenomenon, particularly from the 1990s and continuing today, but with some roots in the 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s. Similar movements exist in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and spreading to Asia and South America. More broadly, Third Wave Coffee can be seen as part of the specialty coffee movement.
Trish Rothgeb (formerly Skeie) of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters first wrote about the Third Wave of Coffee in a November 2002 article of The Flamekeeper, a newsletter of the Roaster’s Guild, a trade guild of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Nicholas Cho of Murky Coffee further defined the Third Wave of Coffee in an often-referenced online article. More recently, the third wave of coffee has been chronicled by publications such as The New York Times, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, La Opinión and The Guardian.
In March 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly defined the third wave of coffee by saying:
The first wave of American coffee culture was probably the 19th-century surge that put Folgers on every table, and the second was the proliferation, starting in the 1960s at Peet’s and moving smartly through the Starbucks grande decaf latte, of espresso drinks and regionally labeled coffee. We are now in the third wave of coffee connoisseurship, where beans are sourced from farms instead of countries, roasting is about bringing out rather than incinerating the unique characteristics of each bean, and the flavour is clean and hard and pure.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

July 31, 2014
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