Blog

Like most trips to Africa, our first trip to Kenya and Ethiopia this year started out with almost two days’ worth of flights. Once you land, waves of exotic smells –diesel among them– fuel you past the airport into a large city clearly divided by wealth. Kenya, one of our most difficult origins to manage sustainably, hosts the capital [Nairobi] which sits on a highland plateau starting at around 1,500 masl, or nearly 5,000 feet. This, coupled with the bright red-orange soil inhabited by a myriad of life that seems to coexist with the community (incredible fertility in densely populated...

Welcome to our 7th year buying coffees with the Long Miles Coffee Project in Burundi. I wanted to take a moment to rewind the clock and shed some light on our history with these producers and to share where we plan to grow in the future. So back in 2011, while I was doing a volunteer stint with USAID in Rwanda, I happened into a cupping event in Burundi where I met Long Miles founder, Ben Carlson. Kristy, Carlson kids, Oliver and Ben Ben had been working in Burundi for almost a year as a consultant for a company called Shluter....

Did you hear? Olympia Coffee won the first ever Coffee in Good Spirits Competition held in the United States!

In 2018, we continued our mission to improve quality of life for farmers in each of the origins in which we work. Every coffee we purchased last year continued to meet our groundbreaking Fair For All sourcing criteria, guaranteeing better pay, more transparency, living wages and safe working conditions for farm workers, while supporting continuous improvement to the highest quality coffee. We sourced over 175,000 pounds of green coffee from the seven origins where we work: Colombia, Hawaii, El Salvador, Guatemala, Burundi, Kenya and Ethiopia. We purchased 57 different lots of coffee from these origins, and the average price we...

In Specialty Coffee, we talk a lot about acidity. But what are we referring to and how does this benefit the industry and our customers?   Acidity is a good thing! Acidity is what contributes to the liveliness, brightness, excitement, body, texture and complexity of a coffee. When you take a sip it’s what makes you mouth water and invites you to take another. The absence of acidity flatlines our drinking experience and limits its biological and crafted uniqueness. What is your favorite coffee and why? Chances are you found your match because of the varying levels and balance of...