Coffee: It’s Farmed & Seasonal

I am a creature of habit. Every other week I headed over to Zeke’s to pick up a pound of my favorite coffee, an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from the Banko Cooperative. About this time last year I found myself in the same predicament—they were out of those particular beans. The harvest was taking place which meant that it would be at least another month until this season’s batch would arrive in port.Like the market’s teas and olive oils I’ve written about, coffee is also something that is farmed—yes, seasonally—yet we often fail to recognize this as we rarely, if ever, get a chance to see it growing or to meet the producers. While procuring a pound of my favorite coffee, I was handed three bags instead of one. “This is the very last of the Banko. There won’t be anymore,” said Brian Bovard, our market barista. I’ve trusted his judgement on my daily dose of caffeine for several years. He knows my preference for naturally processed darker roasts with citrus notes and volcanic soil overtones, picking me the perfect beans more often than not.Wanting to know more about where my Banko beans went and to delve more into coffee, I spoke with Brian for this week’s installment of Dishing the Dirt.I grew up in a non-coffee-drinking household and didn’t come to the brown brew until a weekend with my in-law grandparents who sucked down pots of Maxwell House while playing dominos. It was as if someone had flipped a switch turning me into a bona fide caffeine fiend. My addiction thoroughly set in after a trip to Hawai’i with their famed Kona coffee. I lugged home several pounds of beans, hoping they would last until my next trip.When Starbuck’s hit the big time, I had a standing order that arrived monthly via UPS. By now I was grinding my own pea berries having graduated from the Mr. Coffee drip machine to a Farberware perc pot. This was my standard for many years until I experienced a prolonged power outage and became a fan of French press. There was a stint of an espresso addiction during my time in the technology industry as each employer had a room devoted to stainless-steel gadgets and assortments of garnishes from cinnamon to soya milk.But in all those years not once did I really consider that my morning ritual was grown by another farmer.So where did my Banko go? This was the first topic of conversation. “The cooperative went broke or dissolved,” he told me and immediately I got it. Farmers are farmers, independent and fraught with risk. As much of the coffee cultivation in Ethiopia is done on a very small scale, farmers form cooperatives in order to get product to markets they may not be able to reach on their own.Cooperatives, be they a loose association or a formal one, are like any business—they either succeed or cease to exist. The reasons why are infinite. However, Brian steered me to a similar variety, Shakiso, out of the thirty plus assortment of beans and roasts that Zeke’s offers. How was it similar? Easy, the naturally processed beans had come from a coffee farmer who is a former member of the Banko cooperative.I knew little about coffee production, so Brian filled in the gaps to my questions.What did he mean by naturally processed? Turns out that the characteristics and flavor profile of the final product is dependent not only where it is grown, but by how the beans are processed when raw and how the raw beans are then roasted—much like tea. Beans can also be washed and wet held which both influence the characteristics of the final product.Also likely to determine the flavors of coffee beans are at what altitude the beans are grown. There are hundreds of species of coffee beans, but the two most common are Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora (Robusta), Arabica being the predominantly farmed species due to it’s sweet, floral favors as opposed to the burnt tire bitterness of Robusta beans which is tolerated for the hefty jolt of caffeine Robusta contains.The coffee belt runs across the center of the world catching North and South America, Africa, Asia and even parts of Australia. People in Ethiopia began cultivating coffee for drinking as early as the 11^th century. Immigrants and refugees have been carrying cultivars, production and roasting knowledge across the globe for centuries.However, like all aspects of agriculture, not only do similar products differ depending upon where and how they are grown, they are also likely to differ from year to year. Think about it. How many times have you imbibed in a delicious bottle of wine of a certain vintage only to find previous or following vintages fitting only for coq-au-vin?I thought about why this same dynamic in agricultural raw goods is not equally viewed until it dawned on me that Zeke’s weeds out the unfavorable flavors not only through the purchase of raw goods, but by the roasting process.“When we get in beans we roast them in various styles then cup {taste} them to see what flavors we can coax out of the bean,” explained Brian.As much as I get the questions about my own production practices, I had to ask about all the various certifications and designations one encounters with coffee. Fair Trade simply means that the farmers and their workers were paid a living wage to produce the raw products. This is the big one I look for when purchasing products from parts of the world where poverty, slave and child labor are rampant.Another lesser-known, but important designations are Shade Grown and Bird Friendly, both designed to promote diversified environments that support biodiversity—not large-scale monocrops dependent on chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides.The most noted designation continues to be Certified Organic, which both Zeke’s DC and Baltimore brick & mortar locations now carry.The Ethiopian coffee harvest season is currently underway. In a few months I’m looking forward to what new naturally processed, dark roasted Yirgacheffe variety Zeke’s will offer for the coming year and wonder about the farmers who grew it.