Barista Magazine

JUN-JUL 2014

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41 www.baristamagazine.com Because our contract was for 250 sacks, they didn't know what to do and were instructed by our U.S. importer to blend in other Ugandan coffees with the washing station coffees to fill the container, and ship it to Thanksgiving Coffee Company for sale as Peace Kawomera coffee. This presented a problem of certifiable authenticity of the product we present to our customers. The system had broken down, and I was there to see if I could verify that 110 sacks were actually run through the central PKC washing station. I needed to verify that each farmer's delivery was recorded with their name, amount paid, and farm location. This was a serious effort on all our parts to get back on track, because we all knew that transparency is essential maintaining trust in our trading relationship. Our coffee was still in parchment in open sacks at the Peace Kawomera warehouse, and I wondered why they were still there. Parchment has to be milled off before the green coffee is graded for percentage of defects (broken beans, insect-eaten beans, unripe beans, black beans, sticks, pebbles, etc). Gumutindo, the secondary co-op of which PKC is a member, accepts up to 7 per- cent defects. Anything over that needs to be sorted and picked out of the delivery to get the percentage down to 4 percent. Our coffee had been delivered to the mill, tested, and showed 12 percent defects. Therefore, the PKC board decided to bring the sacks back to the PKC warehouse to await my arrival—perhaps the co-op thought I would have some pull at the mill to get the coffee through. At 12 percent defect, there was going to have to be a discussion about qual- ity once again. Willington, the general manager of Gumutindo who has visited me in California, offered to send their truck back to pick up the parchment coffee and retest it in front of the PKC board. That way, he explained, they could see for themselves just what the defect percentage was in the batch of coffee slated for Thanksgiving Coffee Company from their 2013 crop. We arrived at the dry mill that afternoon with the board members of the cooperative to witness the grading process. It's a simple process: First, a long pointed metal tube is thrust into a sack of parchment coffee and withdrawn with a sample from that sack. This is repeated on another 10 sacks, each providing a small sample (about a half pound). The multiple samples are aggre- gated into a single sample from which 250 grams are taken and placed in a moisture meter. The sample must come in under 13 per- cent moisture. Then, 100 grams are put through a hand-crank parchment removal device and the green beans are then win- nowed to remove dust and small pieces of parchment. At this point, the beans are Paul got a kick out of taking this photo of Nick in a tea field, given that Nick is British. He is holding two leaves and a bud, which is the most delicate of the new growth, and the most flavorful. B o o k 1 - 4 6 . i n d d 4 1 Book 1-46.indd 41 5 / 1 5 / 1 4 1 0 : 3 1 P M 5/15/14 10:31 PM

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