Xmas Extras!

The last two batches of La Esmeralda Special have sold out faster than anticipated.

So for those seeking a really special coffee experience over the holidays we'll be doing an extra roast of the Esmeralda tomorrow. Webshop orders will be sent out straight after roasting, but cannot be guaranteed to be delivered before Christmas. It will of course as usual also be available in our coffee shop.

The Esmeralda is now also included in our special offer the Taster Package containing 6 of our coffees.

The only coffee not included is the limited edition Cypresal Espresso, which we're also roasting again tomorrow. We've had amazing feedback on this espresso, and are happy to see how often we've been roasting it. Read more about it here.

Lastly, for those looking for last minute Christmas gifts, we've put up an extra Barista Course on the webshop. January and February are already sold out, but there's still room in March and April.

Opening hours Christmas/ New Year

We are approaching Christmas, this is how we are open the nearest weeks:

Saturday 18 dec: 9-17
Sunday 19 dec: 10-18
Monday 20 dec: 7.30-20
Tuesday 21 dec: 7.30-20
Wednesday 22 dec: 7.30-20
Thursday 23 dec: 7.30-18
Friday 24 dec: Closed
Saturday 25 dec: Closed
Sunday 26 dec: Closed
Monday 27 dec: 10-18
Tuesday 28 dec: 10-18
Wednesday 29 dec: 10-18
Thursday 30 dec: 10-18
Friday 31 dec: Closed
Saturday 1 jan: Closed
Sunday 2 jan: 10-18

New Crop Daterra

The 2010 harvest of Daterra is here!

The harvest at Daterra came a bit early this year and thus we've already received our container of this year's crop. Usually it takes a few months longer before the coffee is processed, dried, rested and shipped, but we're happy to have the new lot in before Christmas.

You can read about the visit to Daterra back in August here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I also finally got around to putting the video clips I took together into a small video. Sorry for my lack of editing skills, but I just wanted to show some of the stuff that's going on at the farm during harvest.

Daterra 2010 from Klaus Thomsen on Vimeo.

The new crop Daterra Sweet Collection will be on our second espresso grinder in the coffee shop for at least the next week. We hope you'll enjoy it!

Cypresal Espresso

Available from today is our single microlot espresso from Finca Vista Hermosa:

Cypresal Espresso

Chocolate, roasted almonds, caramel, toffee and fully ripe oranges are some of the flavours that come to mind. It's totally right for Christmas. A beautifully balanced, sweet and delicious espresso.

This is a limited microlot and we're planning to roast this the year out.

It's available in our coffee shop and webshop from today.

Esmeralda Roasting

For Christmas and due to high demand at the moment we've scheduled an extra roasting of Esmeralda the coming month.

So we'll be roasting a batch tomorrow November 30th and again on December 14th.

Orders through the webshop will be sent same day as roasting:

http://www.coffeecollectiveshop.dk/shop/la-esmeralda-special-210p.html

[KÅ] Kaffebar

In Holbæk, about an hour west of Copenhagen, Henrik Roloff last year opened a small coffee shop with the intent to bring quality coffee to his home town. He's worked really hard on making the most of the small location, and did pretty much everything himself. The result is one of the nicest looking coffee shops I've ever seen in Denmark.

He's uploaded some pictures to his Flickr, that I just had to share with our readers.





You can see a few more here.

What you can't see (unfortunately) is his kick-ass Robur E and La Marzocco Linea. Good equipment for a coffee shop of that size. He's also serving french press and sells bags of whole beans. If you happen to be in Holbæk visit him at Smedelundsgade 2

Home Barista Courses

More TCC Home Barista Courses are now available. And you know it's the perfect Christmas present for your coffee-loving loved ones.

Dates are:

• December 8th 2010
• January 12th 2011
• February 23rd 2011
• March 30th 2011

All days from 17:30 till 20:30

You reserve your spot and pay via our webshop: http://www.coffeecollectiveshop.dk/shop/kurser-6c1.html

LatteArtThrowdown 17 nov kl. 19-21

We will host another LAT very soon- a Latte Art Throwdown.

Wednesday 17th November kl. 19-21

Don´t miss out. If you never tried it before, it is now you have the chance to try. And if you already tried- well then you know how much more there is to this somewhat silly competition.

So pop in to have a chat and just meet people around coffee- we do know that you will be pouring milk no matter what.

La Marzocco Strada

For the past two and a half months we've been so fortunate to do field testing of the new prototype La Marzocco espresso machine Strada MP.

There's two versions of the Strada coming out. The MP is the Manual and the EP is the Electronical programmable version. The other prototype has been installed at our good friend Tim Wendelboe's place in Oslo and he did a great write-up on his blog here: http://timwendelboe.no/2010/08/la-marzocco-strada-first-thoughts/

The big thing that everyone's been talking about with the Strada is Pressure Profiling. Not just the manual pre-infusion that you can do on other machines, but actual control over the pressure during the whole extraction. So, for instance, you can ramp the pressure slowly up to 9 bars over 8 seconds and then decrease the pressure again towards the end. Or anything you can imagine.

Many have asked us "Do we really need another variable when it comes to espresso??" and I'm sort of inclined to agree. If you are still struggling to get your shots consistent than perhaps this isn't the machine for you. But if you are looking to get the last few percentages out of that particular single mill Kenyan, then I think you'd want to consider the Strada. And boy can it make some tasty shots!

But I don't want to make this post all about pressure profiling. I actually think that even if this machine came without it, I'd still buy it!

We absolutely love the openness of the machine, especially the exposed groups. It’s a machine that really puts the barista back in touch with the espresso and makes you feel so much more engaged in the whole process.

There's a lot of nice details on this machine; like the hot water mixing valve being accessible from the front so you can adjust the temperature of the hot water very easily. And the botton for the hot water is cool just on it's own. It’s also a really cool feature that the pressure gauges on top of the group heads move up when you increase the pressure.

The large drip tray is really nice. It’s super easy to clean with a cloth and you have great working space. The drip tray can be put in two different heights, depending on how tall cups or glasses you use in your shop. I still dream of a system that's adjustable on-the-go with a small hydraulic lever, but I digress..

Each group has it's own boiler, so you can adjust them separatly to 0,1 degree Celcius accuracy. The water entering the boiler has already passed through a heat exchanger, so it's basically a the same accuracy as most older HX-type espresso machines, before the PID takes over. This way you can have one or two groups set for your espressoblend and leave one optimized for a single origin if you want.


The pressure is adjusted on the paddle on top of each group. The feel is really nice, although the adjustment is a bit tricky. Very little movement can be a big change in pressure. Sort of like adjusting the grind size on a Mazzer... But once you get the hang of it, it becomes really really fun and engages you in the brewing process more than any other espresso machine I've tried. Honestly I think for a coffee shop the EP version makes more sense, as you can then save your profiles and repeat them by the push of a button. And you can transfer them into a computer software where you can manipulate them further. We felt that on busy days, or when there is just one barista working it was impossible to do pressure profiling. You just can't be moving the paddle accurately while you are steaming milk for a cappuccino.

We've played around with different profiles, mostly for our espressoblend. In the beginning we settled on four basic profiles, that were quite different to see what the results were. I have to admit it's been very difficult to gather exact results. It seemed to vary from time to time, what we preferred. We quickly found out that different profiles requires different doses, and thus different grind adjustments to perform well. And then you need to be extremely consistent to get the profile right again and again.

What we did get was a very broad range of flavours from our blend, ranging from clear marzipan sweetness to wild berry juice. We found that too long (+10 seconds) build up of pressure in general didn't deliver very aromatic or sweet shots. We set the maximum pressure to 9 bars, where we usually set our machines to 8,5 bars. I had very varying results from ramping the pressure down towards the end. Sometimes it worked really well and other times it brought out more bitterness. Not sure what to think of it. On one hand it makes sense to have lower pressure towards the end so you extract less at that stage, but then again it also means you might have longer contact time between water and coffee at exactly that stage, so I dunno...

Now it's time for La Marzocco to get the machine back. First it will be going to an Out of the box event and later back to the factory so they can see what wear and tear we've put on the machine. As with any prototype there has been a few "children diseases" and we've sent the team at La Marzocco a 4 page summary of our experiences with the machine. We still don't know when the machine will be available for purchase, but contact your local La Marzocco distributor if you want to know more.

This afternoon we'll be tasting the last few shots from some different pressure profiles and then we'll just have to wait till La Marzocco are ready to roll them off the production line.

New Roaster

The new roaster is up and running.

It's a Probatone 12 - the new version.

We decided to get a new roaster mainly because the old, Probat L12, cannot roast and cool at the same time. You have to take the air flow either through the roasting drum or the cooling bin. With the new one, even though it's the same size, we can roast more in the same time.

The new roaster also has a larger burner giving us more room to play with different roast profiles. There's also the opportunity to log roast electronically on a computer. Plus the cooling time is quicker. All in all it's a bunch of small improvements that together became significant enough that we thought now was a good time to change.

A few months back Peter tested 4 different roasters from Diedricht, Giesen and two from Probat. When we decided on this new Probatone, it's not to say the others weren't great roasters and for other roasteries and different styles of roasting those machines might be a better fit. But both in terms of taste (we blind cupped the roasts from the different roasters) and in terms of possibilities with roast profiles this was the right choice for us.

We've been doing tests all week on it now and been cupping the results. Today's cupping showed great results and we already have managed to dial in to the same taste profiles that we had before. Now we can - as we always do - try to optimize the roast profiles even more and see what can be improved further. We still need to get the roast log software to work but that should also be a big help.

Oh, and we also painted the whole shop and got some maintenance done while we were closed, so come on down to a sparkling clean coffee shop!

Intelligentsia Chicago, IL

After spending 4 amazing days in Panama, we headed back up north to Chicago, where Intelligentsia Coffee has their HQ’s.

The 2010 World Champion Barista, the wonderful Michael Phillips who works at Intelligentsia, treated us with two amazing days filled with visits to the three different Intelli Coffee Shops around the city of Chicago as well as getting the big tour of the Roasting Works.

Day one started out with Peter and myself (AnneStine) biking up in beautiful sunshine to the Intelligentsia Shop on North Broadway, where the Original coffeeshop opened back in 1995. Back then the coffee shop also housed the Roastery, using a 12 kilo Probat roaster, which is the same brand and size we at the Coffee Collective currently are using.

Being the oldest bar out of the three shops, it has a very special atmosphere, where people from the neighborhood sit down with their laptops, and regulars pop in for their morning coffees.

Michael gave us a good tour of how the bar was set up, also with the change to a coffee menu that does not state the brewing method, Only presenting the selection of black brewed coffees of that day. This is to let the main focus stay on how a certain coffee is best tasting, rather then brewing method. 

Next stop was the Monadnock coffee shop downtown Chicago. This building creates a great frame for the style of this particular coffee shop, with 6 feet thick exterior brick walls and nice, clean lines through out the space.  

The look of the bar takes you back in time, thinking of old espresso bars in Italy, with marble tabletops, dark wood and tiled floors. Baristas in the bar also wore either vests and tie or suspenders, really underlining the atmosphere. 

This shop is so different from the Broadway shop, adapting to its neighborhood, made out of business buildings and a more fast- paced environment.

Third but not least, we visited the Millennium Park location. This shop has a more open, streamlined and contemporary feel to it with high ceilings and big windows, really picking up the area with Millennium Park (filled with new architecture and art installations) just around the corner. 

At Millennium Park You can either sit at the bar, getting a good chance to talk to the baristas working, or sit around the big wooden table, creating a space for people to interact more easily, an idea I personally really love. A great space indeed!

All three Locations really has its own thing going on, presenting how to make a coffee shop work in very different neighborhoods, without being over the top or a cliché. 

The Roasting Works was our location on day 2, located just outside the city center.

We started with a cupping set up by Jesse Crouse, sample roaster at Intelligentsia. We got to taste a selection of Tanzanian Sample roasts, which to me was very interesting, as I never have tasted coffees from Tanzania.

 We also did a cupping with a few of our own coffees; Kieni (Kenya), Gatina (Kenya) and Finca Vista Hermosa (Guatemala) on a table with some of their sample roasts, This time Doug Zell and Kyle Glanville joined in. Lets be honest guys- Sitting at a cupping with some of the biggest names in the industry… Well, it was intimidating.

Michael showed us the whole Roastery and training lab. The roastery itself stores 3 impressive roasters, varying in size up to 90 kg each. Great fun to see the same process from green beans to roasted beans, being produced in a mush bigger scale then what we are used to at the Coffee Collective. 

Walking around with Mr. Phillips, you sensed that the main focus at Intelligentsia these days are really optimizing their own staff to the fullest, by taking a step back and having a good look on what can be done to becoming even more solid. Part of this was the new Barista Training program that Michael and Stephen Morrissey are implementing in all Intelligentsia Coffee shops these days.

Made up of different levels, the barista in training are guided thru a specific course, with tests and follow-ups from the barista trainer at the end of each level. When passed, the barista move on to a different level and can be ended with a big final exam, becoming a Certified Barista.

The program is basically designed to educate and giving the barista the best tools possible to present a truly great coffee experience, in this ever-changing industry. Staying ahead of the game and always being with it.

With all the different aspects of the speciality coffee industry, it can be difficult for new baristas to even know where to start. 

To share that great cup of coffee, you as a barista need to have the knowledge understanding and of all the different aspects of the process- starting at the soil, to what ends up in the cup. A structured way of learning would absolutely be a great way of approaching all this information.

The Barista Program used at Intelligentsia is the closest thing I have seen resembling a so-called Barista Education to this extent, and I am really looking forward to follow its process.

As I am talking about becoming skilled baristas, I have to say, hands down- my impression of the baristas working at the Intelligentsia coffee shops, were excellent. Their knowledge and dedication of the craft really shined thru, all in their very own personal ways. Lovely!

Thank you, everyone at Intelligentsia, and an especially Thanks to Michael Phillips, you took more then good care of us. We hope to see you in Copenhagen sooner!

Closed from Sunday!

We'll be closed from this Sunday until Wednesday morning to install our NEW ROASTER!

Yes, we're getting a new roaster. We'll get a blog post up on it later.

Meanwhile go visit our friends at Kaffebar (Elmegade) or Harbo Bar or Cafe N (both on Blågårdsgade) who are all just 5 minutes away for your coffee needs.

And we'll (if nothing goes wrong) be open again at 7:30 on Wednesday morning.

Hacienda La Esmeralda 2010

The coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda inspired the title for the recent coffee book "God in a Cup". For sure the coffee Hacienda La Esmeralda Special is extraodinary. Especially the intense elegant toparomas like bergamot in the coffee makes it very unique.

As great fans of this coffee Anne Stine and I had looked very much forward to visiting the Hacienda and try to get an idea of why their coffee is so fantastic.



Its not easy to find out why the coffee is that special but I will try to share some impressions I got during the visit.

This time of year is actually rainy season and the good coffees cherrys are still green not ready to be harvested yet.



On the picture is the long "Geisha" cherries. This variety is definetly part of the explanation of why the coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda is so good, but alone it is not the explanation because it is possible to get "geisha" from other producers which does not have the same intense toparomas and some even doesn't have these toparomas at all.



Another interesting thing about the geisha is the lower yield it has. The ”geisha” tree would only produce around half the cherries of the Caturra. To me this is interesting because from my experience in general trees in Ethiopia and Kenya carry much less fruits than often seen in Central America. Would there be a relation between the sparser number of fruits on each tree and the more floral og berry-like aromas often found in Ethiopian and Kenyan coffees. From a biolgical perspective one could make the hypothesis that a lower number of fruits, everything else equal (which of course seldom is the case), would allow the tree to give more nutrients and energy to each individual cherry and in this way potentally making the aroma more complex in the direction of floral and berrynotes!?



In any case we had the chance to blind cup a ”Geisha” lot that the Petersons did not find good enough for the auction against their ”Diamond mountain” which consists of ”ordinary” varieties including caturra and catuaí. The Diamond Moutain is a really nice clean, sweet and balanced coffee grown at hights around 1400 msl. Which is the lower limit of where the Petersons grow their ”Geisha”. Actually the Colgá lot which we bought is situated at this height as well. Already in the dry fragrance there was no doubt which was the geisha and which was the Diamond. The diamond had a deep sweet pleasent aroma whereas the ”geisha” had a wonderfull bergamot like aroma (to me very typical for their unique ”geisha”). This of course is no proof of the hypothesis but merely showing the different chareteristics of the different varieties.





Thursday we got the chance to walk through the Colgá lot. It seemed alomst like walking through rainforest. There were a lot of indigeniuos shade trees, it was really humid and moss was growing on the trees. The soil was also rich, dark and very soft as in a good wet forest.




When we walked through the fields we were passing along the neibourghs field as well. It was striking to see how different the trees at Hacienda La Esmeralda (on the left) looked from the neibourghs trees (on the right below). The trees at La Esmeralda looked very healthy, green and fertile whereas the neibouring trees really looked like the were missing something – probably at least nutrients. The leafs were sparse and yellowish in color.







We had the pleasure of having lunch at Price and Susan Petersons residence. They served us a wonderfull and very tasty lunch and this was accompanied by some very interesting talks about coffee quality. Price shared with us how much he appreciated the work of the Gnobe Indians who came to the Hacienda in the harvest to pick. They were extremely carefull in their picking and as such were extremely skilled at only picking fully ripe cherries (the foundation of all good coffees but sometimes a struggle for the miller to achieve). Since we visited before real harvest time unfortunately we did not get to meet any of the Gnobe Indians this time.



Back at the mill the very first coffee was coming in. This was from some lower lots that also belongs to the Hacienda but has nothing to do with the Hacienda La Esmeralda Special. The cherries was picked not because they were fully ripe but because their skin was breaking up - maybe because of a overpressure of water in the pulp of the cherry.



This is the first time they go to the field to pick, what they call "the first cut" . It was not a Geisha lot they picked here but they will do the same thing with these lots later in the season. Actually they will do up to 10 cuts on each of the "geisha" lots. They will cup each of the cuts and decide if it will end up in the Special or not. Normally the first two cuts and the last one will not qualify.



After the reciving tanks the coffee cherries are transported to the depulper but on the way they had installed a cyclone. The Cyclon basically seperates out not fully ripe cherries, leafs and sticks since they all float on top. The fully ripe cherries will sink to the bottom and from there they continue to the depulper.



At the mill at Hacienda La Esmeralda they have a mechanical demucilator.
They have compared the coffee from the mechanical demucilator with the fermented and washed coffee. In their cuppings the aromas of the mechanically demucilated ”geisha” was as good as in a fermented and washed ”geisha”. Since the mechanical demucilator reduces the risks of poorly fermentation affecting taste they have choosen this method. I must admit that I am a bit suprised that it is possible to produce a coffee with such intense toparomas without the fermentation. In my mind this really is questioning some of what I thought was basic advantages of the washed method!



Another thing that stroke me was that at Hacienda La Esmeralda they have their own (small) dry mill. This gives them control over the entire quality developing process in the producing country.



It was clear that Hacienda La Esmeralda is driven by people who are both very good at their job and very curious to find out how they eventually could improve. They had their own little test field with different varities, they had ongoing test where they made comparative cuppings of how quality is effected by forinstance altitude or by the age of the tree. This ongoing research is very impressing and for sure must be part of the explanation why the coffee Hacienda La Esmeralda Special is so very special!




Its not easy to sum up what they are doing so well at Hacienda La Esmeralda, but if I should try to point out one thing to be crusial for the quality it must be the cupping of Rachel and Daniel Peterson. They seem to be very skilled cuppers who work very dedicated on developing and selecting the highest quality for Hacienda La Esmeralda Special. Actually the whole "geisha" story would never had been started if it wasn't for Daniel noticing that the coffee from some fields of the farm was tasting very different from others and afterwards breaking down lots to later discover that the very special taste came from a particular variety - the Geisha....



Photos by Anne-Stine

The Craft

While Linus and I (Klaus) try to wrap up our thoughts and organize our pictures from this year's Nordic Barista Cup please enjoy what must have been the (comedic) highlight of the 2010 NBC: The Craft - How To Become World Barista Champion featuring Tim Varney.

The craft from Brendan Inkognito on Vimeo.

I think they would have had a hard time cramming any more total clichés in there (how many lattes did they pour for that?) and there's obviously a lost acting career in both of the Tims.

Many cheers from that total babe!

New Barista Courses

Due to popular demand we've now put three more Home-Barista Courses up on the webshop now for the coming months:

Get your ticket here!

Dates are:
Wednesday October 6th. 17.30 - 20.30
Wednesday November 10th. 17.30 - 20.30
Wednesday December 8th. 17.30 - 20.30

Ekstreamely limitid BFF Cups will be sold in our shop starting friday at 07:30.

The Bicycle Film Festival premiers for the first time in Copenhagen 17.-19.
September 2010.

We love bikes and we love coffee. Thus we have teamed up with the BFF on a very limited run of 6 espresso cups and 12 cappuccino cups designed by one of Copenhagen's finest ceramic artists Pi Bjørg.

Theese will only be sold in the shop so swing by and grap a piese while they last.

L.A. Times writes about the Gatronomy of Copenhagen

And we are very proud to be mentioned along with danish gastronomical flagships as Noma, Claus Meyer, Bo Bech and Løgismose as well as our great friends at Relæ and Mikkeler.

You can read the full article here

or the danish newspaper politikens resumé here.

Google Map of The Coffee Collective

We've made a Google Map of the places that serve and/or sell our coffees.
With this and the links in the right column of this blog it should make your search for some TCC coffee an easier task.


Vis The Coffee Collective på et større kort

Copenhagen Cooking

This week the Nordic food festival Copenhagen Cooking is taking place here in our fair city.
We'll be part of it trying to expand people's horizon on what coffee can be.

At Taste The World 25 top restaurants will be showcasing their cuisine, amongst them Michelin star Vietnamese restaurant Kiin Kiin. We will be there serving single cup Hario V60 filter drip of three of our selected coffees.

You can find us on Nørrebrogade between Sortedams Dosseringen and Fælledvej. It's an outdoor event, so admittance is free.

We are also going to be present at the first Danish Food Blogger Symposium held at Nordatlantens Brygge. 84 of the country's most serious food bloggers will meet for a full day of lectures covering subject ranging from web journalism over photography to gastronomic trends. We're happy to sponsor the event and look forward to serve some great coffee. Claus Meyer, Anders Selmer and Katrine Klinken are some of the people, who will be there, so we look forward to some interesting talks.

Daterra 2010 visit part 3

See part 1 here or 2 here

After harvest the coffee cherries arrives at the Wet Mill receiving station where it undergoes several sortings already.



The over-ripe Raisins are separated from the unripe green and fully ripe red or yellow cherries in a floater – the overripe stays on top of the water and the others fall to the bottom. From there they are each processed differently. The Naturals will go through a size sorting and then straight to the patio for sun-drying.

The green and ripe cherries go to a series of de-pulpers. Here’s an important selection already happening. The first machine only applies a very low pressure thus depulping only the ripest cherries. This coffee will go to a lot like the Sweet Collection. The next machines adds a little more pressure and that will be for another class of coffee. The last applies a lot of pressure depulping green cherries too, and that coffee will not even be sold as a Daterra coffee.

Freshly pulped coffee


The pulp is then removed and used for compost, which is a very rich fertilizer. The coffee goes through a series of water tanks (water is used in most of these machines for transporting the beans around) where very lightweight beans are sorted out. After that they are put to the drying patio.

In all this Daterra keeps strict control of each lot and can trace it back the whole way through the system, even when it’s been divided into several qualities. At each wet mill there’s a Lab where each lot is cupped and logged.



Drying is essential in getting the right quality. Daterra begins with sun drying on huge patios and then finish with a mechanical drying. This year however, the weather has been extremely dry and warm, so a lot of the Naturals have dried so quickly on the patio that no machine drying was needed. The drying machines are basically like big tumble driers, made to run on steam. But Daterra just use hot water and dries at a much lower temperature than most. They find that a faster drying damages the beans resulting in a duller, flatter flavour in the end.

Some Naturals drying


After drying to a moisture content of 11,5% the beans, still inside their parchment, needs to rest for at least 30 days for the moisture to settle throughout the bean and throughout the entire lot. I had some talks with Daterra about whether or not this is really necessary as the beans will rest in the month it almost takes for the container to make it from the farm to us in Copenhagen. But they stressed that they need to rest in the parchment to develop correctly and that without the resting you might see big variances within the same lot from bag to bag.



After the Reposo, as the resting period is called, the coffee goes to the Dry Mill. Usually a farm doesn’t have their own dry mill. Finca Vista Hermosa in Guatemala gets the dry milling done at whatever dry mill Edwin thinks is the best that year and in Kenya the wet mills are usually part of a coop that owns a dry mill. But since Daterra is not your usual farm, or your usual size, they have their own dry mill. And it is state-of-the-art.



First foreign material such as twigs and stones are removed. Then the parchment or husk is hulled and removed. Next is the screen sorting, where the coffee is sorted by bean size. Each bean size will be a different quality and now we again have several selections of the same lot. The each of those sizes are put through a density separator, so that a given sized bean also has a given weight.



The last part is perhaps where Daterra sets itself apart from others. Electronic sorting machines are seen in more and more dry mills. They work by “looking” at the color of the beans and rejecting beans that fall out of a set range. They are amazingly effective and can sort up between 5.000 and 10.000 beans pr second! That’s not a typo.

But Daterra found out some years ago that beans that are not fully ripe will reflect differently in Ultraviolet light. They have then developed an electronic sorting machine, based on a machine made for blueberries, that sort with this. It’s extremely funny to watch a portion of green coffee that looks completely uniform, and then watch it again under UV light.



After passing through three different electronic sorting machines the coffee is finally ready to be packed and shipped. Daterra has a special temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouse to store the coffee in before and after packaging.



And then of course there’s the Penta boxes. Daterra was the first farm in the world to start with nitrogen-flushing and vacuum packing their green coffee. By now lots of other farms are following suit and many of the best specialty roasters refuse to store coffee in jute sacks.

The last part is then cupping.
The most important part for me.



I had a tremendous time cupping with Carlinhos at the Daterra Coffee Quality Lab. They even had a 2-group La Marzocco FB80 there, so I could make espressos for everyone and feel a bit like home. We also cupped some of The Coffee Collective’s roasts, our Daterra Sweet Collection from last year and our two new Kenyans.

Andreza and Carlinhos discussing which they like better; Gatina or Kieni. But of course that yellow one in the front won.



On my last day at the farm I was joined by Luís, the owner of Daterra, and George Howell of Terroir Coffees in Boston MA. If you don’t know who he is then you probably don’t work in coffee. The man’s a legend. I was fortunate to spend a few days with him after the farm visit and it was truly inspiring. My colleague Mads from Estate Coffee also came with them and it was fun to be more visitors to the farm.

Luís introducing a cupping session


We also visited the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas with Leo. His friend and fellow agronomist and researcher Guerreiro showed us around. They do a lot of crossing of plants and research into varieties. There’s a lot just outside with many differenct species and varieties of coffee trees. It was very impressive! Some didn’t look like coffee trees at all but had fruit you could tell was coffee. Others had fruit that looked totally different, but sure enough, inside was coffee beans.

And then there's the Robusta which demonstrates why it's so much easier and cheaper to grow:


I must admit I didn’t know of other species besides Coffea Arabica, Canephora (Robusta) and Liberica, but I think they showed me 4 or 5 others. And then a whole bunch of arabica varieties and cultivars too. Very enlightening and I thank Guerreiro for the tour and for explaining me how crossing is done (I’ll save that for another time though).

George Howell and agronomist Guerreiro


On the last day with Daterra we held an event for Brazilian media and coffee people at Ateliê do Café. It was a very cozy yet professional event and I had great fun pulling shots for people. We also go to taste George’s Terroir North Italian roast of Daterra, next to Ateliê do Café’s and our Daterra Sweet Collection Espresso.

Now the coffee is still getting the final reposo at the farm. Then it’ll be dry milled and packaged. So it’s still several months till this coffee is good to be shipped to us. We’re looking forward already. The samples we got back home shows lots of promise and we’re already looking forward to going again next year. Probably it’s Linus’ turn to go then.



Thanks to everyone at Daterra for showing such amazing hospitality and sharing every aspect of your work. I am deeply impressed in the openness and honesty that everyone at the farm showed. We really appreciate buying directly from Daterra and being able to visit every year. See you soon again!