Coffee Day Part One

June 19, 2009

Today was such an amazing day. I got to do and see so much behind the scenes stuff in the coffee business that it completely blew my mind and way exceeded my expectations.

Ok, so we had already planned and paid for what this coffee shop called 1000 Cups. Our expectations were just to have a really touristy day of staged processes and really hoaky jokes and anecdotes about coffee and mostly a kind of promotion of their coffee shop. We had to be there at 7 am so we both got up at 5 to get ready and give ourselves on hour for transit. It was still pretty dark when we headed out and since we were going to be drinking a lot of coffee over the course of the day, I passed on my first cup of the day which left me rather grumpy. The over-packed taxi (I am talking people on laps here) provided for a ride that seemed to take forever yet in reality only took 30 minutes compared to our usual 45 minutes. Therefore we arrived 30 minutes early. The shop hadn’t even opened yet. We bought a paper from one of the street vendor kids and waited for people to arrive. They did invite us in to sit in the foyer while they got everything ready which was nice. I tried to pass the time reading the paper, but without my coffee and with little sleep I was fading fast. They were also running behind which is the norm. After me nodding off for a bit and watching the store next door get set up, they brought us our menus and we got to make our breakfast choices (included). Everything was extremely fresh and much of it made in house or grown near by. I chose fresh fruit (watermelon, papaya, mango, orange, pineapple, banana, and raisins) as my first course. Second course was fresh muesli (like granola) with fresh vanilla yogurt and a glass of fresh squeezed melon and mango juice. Then was whole wheat toast with local honey and a cup of the house brew coffee. I was stuffed and ready to go.
We grabbed our stuff and went into the shop to meet the managers/owners. He gave us a little history of the shop like the fact that it was a relatively old establishment given that they had made it here for 10 years, that they ship their coffee internationally, and that they buy form individual small scale farmers. They are also the only full service coffee bar as he explained as being able to pick one’s own coffee type (or mix) and preparation method. We talked for a good while as they realized that we were from the home of Elvis and the home state of country music which is particularly popular here. Also, we found out that they really strive to help the community through training people in all aspects of the coffee industry to help them gain employment, donating a good amount of their profits, and taking in gently used items for donation to local charities in exchange for coffee. How awesome is that. We were introduced to the fact that coffee is the number one export of Uganda and a lot of steps are taken to ensure quality and quantity in the country. That there are no “commercial” farms but hundreds of privately owned farms that produce the countries revenues. That also made me happy to learn.
Joan was to be our tour guide for the day complete with khaki safari hat, khaki safari outfit (complete with safari capris) and hiking boots. We were guided outside and I tried to find our tourist clad bus, but to our surprise we had a top of the line Land Cruiser complete with driver to take us around for the day. I knew from this point that it wasn’t going to be what I expected.
We got in the car and headed across to the Uganda Coffee Authority. We found out that Uganda produces two types of coffee: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica has a softer taste but is more acidic, has a larger oval shaped bean, and grows in the highlands. Robusta, on the other hand, is a bolder tasting bean with a small round shape, and grown in the low lands of Uganda. Many people prefer a blend of the two (the 1000 Cups house blend) as to get the best of both worlds. The Uganda coffee board was responsible for certifying all exports before leaving the country. Their process including the quality and color of the bean, an imperfections, any bean hulls, any extra material such as twigs, the aroma, roasted aroma, cup aroma, and taste. Coffee is often shipped in 60 kilo bags, so the board goes to the processing plant everyday to take a sample from every bag marked for export. That coffee is then brought to this center for tasting.
The board was housed in a very nice building in the back corner of a high security compound. The landscaping was of these gorgeous, lush plants that , come to find out, were coffee. The plants were rather tall trees with read and green berries that resembled a cross between a holly berry and a cherry. They are termed cherries as a matter of fact. They are actually really pretty. Anyway, once we got their we were taken to the tasting floor and instructed to wait for tasting to begin. As we waited, staff prepared 7 cups of each individual sample for the day. Exactly the same amount in every coffee cup. They always used an odd number to determine the quality through probability. Either good or bad, the most wins…simple enough. We got to got through the different categories of coffee from washed v.s natural, green vs. roasted, Arabica v.s Robusta, light, medium, and dark roasts. Washed is when the cherries have been boiled and then soaked before the hulls are removed. Natural is allowing the cherry to dry naturally before the hull is removed. Green is the bean in it’s natural form after drying, be that natural or washed first. Washed is recognizable through characteristic signs of a while center line and a shinny appearance. Roasting is the bean going through the firing process. This allows the aromas to come out and smooth out the flavoring. The darker the roast the less the aromas and taste. A light roast is also not usually preferred in that the earthiness and imperfections can be observed easily. Medium roast is most common for these types of coffee even though a medium-dark roast is often very popular. I learned all this before we even started “cupping” – checking the aromas and tasting.
Ok, so each of the 7 cups was filled to the top with hot water and left to stand for 3-5 minutes. An additional cup of hot water was placed between samples to wash your spoon between samples. To assess the aroma, you inserted the spoon and pushed the grinds away while inhaling. Amazingly the two coffee types smelled really different and there were even different smells within the same sample. I was astonished. The grounds were then removed with a double spoon skimming technique that required some practice. Huge spittoons were brought in and the tasting commenced. Tasting consisted of filling a spoon with coffee from a particular cup, slurping it, swishing it around, and spitting it out, rinsing your spoon in hot water, and then the next cup. Here again, the two coffee types, roasting, and etc. all tasted different and cups of the same sample even tasted different. Since most of these were lightly roasted to maximize aromas and tasting of imperfections they all had an earthy taste to them that I really liked to be honest. Come to find out, bad coffee is really bad. You can taste not only bad quality but also a bad batch. One type of bad batch is what they called potato. When you taste it there is a taste of French fries. Really!! I was amazed. Now, the good cup quality tastes amazing and very distinct and smooth. We tasted probably around 70 cups of coffee all of which tasted a little different. It was so much fun and looked hilarious. We got to talk to the head authority lady as well, and she gave us a run down of the process again affirming our guides knowledge on the subject. We said our thanks, tried to review the newly acquired knowledge in our minds as not to forget it, and headed out to our next destination.
We headed a couple of miles down the road and pulled up to a high walled compound with a huge black gate. We were welcomed in and immediately impressed by what we saw. Either side of the driving path were tarps covered with coffee drying naturally in the sun. Women were tearing new bags open to spread around, and an adjacent covered area housed hundreds of women gathered together hulling coffee beans by hand. Joan explained that there is a lot of controversy surrounding the women working there. At the moment they are not officially employed by the processing plant, but there is a debate as to whether the process should be stopped all together or if the women should be hired as employees rather than informal payment. The plant has machinery that can do the hulling, but as was the case when we where there, the machine breaks down often and in those cases the women are a much needed asset. We got to see tons of coffee being brought in by farmers and unloaded as we waited the arrival of our host for this leg of the trip. His name was Robert and he was actually one of the higher-ups in the company. I was impressed that he would take so much time out of his day to show us around, yet he enthusiastically took to the task and very thoroughly. We headed to the other side of the compound to witness the processing of the beans after being hulled by the women.
As we walked onto the processing floor the noise of the machines made talking difficult and the dust from the beans and hulls. He took us to the different parts of the process pointing out different sorting mechanisms and the elevators that transported the materials to their next destination. There don’t seem to be any regulations on letting visitors too close to the machinery so we climbed all over the place to get up close and personal with the process. At one point even being on the cat walk. Separation was through the use of sieves, or mesh of different diameters that keep one size and lets the rest fall through. They employee 12, 15, and 18 gauge sieves. The larger the size the better the taste and the less amount of caffeine per cup. So, each bag brought in is poured onto the first sieve, shaken, the ones on top go into a bag while everything else falls through, goes into a rudimentary elevator system back to the top, then through the next sieve. After being sieved, the remaining material is separated into hulls and other extraneous material. The bean are then passed through the only computerized piece of machinery. The machine separates the defective beans (those that are broken or have bug spots/wholes) from the good ones. The machine uses high frequency cameras to focus on each individual bean as it falls through the machine. Compressed air is then used to either allow the bean to fall or pushes it to the bad bin. It was really sophisticated and the man who’s name I have forgotten was really eager to talk about it. What we found out next kind of disturbed me. All the husks and bean not good enough for coffee are sold off to Europe and the U.S. for instant coffee. This makes sense as to why instant coffee tastes so bad. It was just weird/interesting that Uganda won’t use this material but we will buy it to turn it into instant coffee. This guy talked to us for a long time over the different types of coffee, strengths, etc. It was the repetition of the day that allowed all this information to sink in. So, in just this one part of the trip we got to see the process from the beans being brought in from the farmers to their bagging for export. We had already seen the tasting and quality control process, so we were off to the roaster.