Do you love coffee or know someone that does? Are they constantly opening up their Yelp app to find the closest “third-wave” coffee shop? Give them these premium essentials to make great coffee at home. Here’s what it boils down to.
Category: Single Origin
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What is “single origin”?
It’s pretty simple, really, when you think about it. Single Origin coffee is coffee coming from a single place, whether that be a single farmer or a group of farms from a single country. All of my coffee is single origin, meaning I don’t mix or “blend” my coffee beans.
Pictured here you see a farmer tossing coffee cherries. Inside the cherries is a seed. Coffee beans are actually seeds that are roasted for consumption.
Legend has it that coffee was created so monks could stay awake for long hours of prayer. A goat herder named Kaldi had his flock of goats grazing. He noticed that after his goats ate berries from a coffee tree they became energized and did not want to sleep at night. There you have it. Goats love coffee and the rest is history.
All of my coffee is either Fair Trade or better. Farm Gate is better because it is “direct trade coffee”. Farm Gate means that a price was negotiated with the farmer directly “at the farm gate,” that is, without any of the confusing export and import fees. The prices I pay for these coffees are above Fair Trade minimums. My supplier can easily verify that the price I pay makes it to the people who do the work, and are responsible for the great quality of my coffee. Farm Gate is a simple principle that allows coffee producers to make premium prices in reward for coffee quality, and to reinvest to improve quality even more in the future.My Farm Gate supplier guarantees that Farm Gate prices are 50% over Fair Trade (FT) pricing, but often they are 100%+ more that FT minimums. Fair Trade is a farm cooperative certification – that is, it does not allow certification for small independent farms. I do support coffee cooperatives, but they are often not what consumers might think. There are many excellent cooperatives, and many that are large, powerful, corrupt, and mired in bureaucracy. My Farm Gate supplier avoids the bureaucracy of cooperatives that sometimes do not share premium prices with their farmer members. Fair Trade certifies that the cooperative received the FT price, but it does not guarantee that the men and women who produce your coffee were paid the FT price.
