Blog

  Los Alpes In September, Oliver, Becky and Patrick traveled to Colombia to visit a number of our producers and spend time with our green coffee importers/exporters at Caravela. It’s important for us to visit our producers throughout the year to maintain and grow our relationships as well as cup coffees with the Caravela team. This builds trust with our coffee farmers and gives us the necessary opportunity to stay in calibration with our importing partners. We need to be sure that when Caravela cups and scores a coffee an 88, Olympia Coffee scores that same coffee an 88 at...

As you may have heard, the C-Market price for coffee has fallen to a fifteen year low in the last month. As of writing this post, the C-Market price for a pound of coffee is $.98 USD. This is below the cost of production for many of the types of producers that we work with. The C-Market is a complex system of seemingly arbitrary inputs of supply, demand, and speculation that drives the price that the majority of coffee growers receive for their coffee. I think it is important to remember that this has not always been the case. While...

This month we'd like to give a little bit of information about some great varietals and cultivars you may see on our tags this month. What is the difference between a varietal and a cultivar you ask? Simply put, a variety is a naturally occurring genetic variation within a species while a cultivar is developed by a human to express desirable traits.  Pacas: According to worldcoffeeresearch.org, pacas was discovered in 1949 by the Pacas family in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. It is a genetic mutation of another popular varietal, Bourbon. One of the most appealing aspects of this variety...

In every location we work in around the world we have a big impact on the lives of the farmers we work with.One year ago we began sourcing our coffees under our Fair For All standards. Each and every coffee we source and roast meets these standards. • We pay more than double the Fair Trade rate for all of our coffees. Our minimum price (FOB) will remain at $3.50 per pound. • We will set coffee prices directly with the farmer, to ensure transparency. • We will now guarantee a sustainable minimum wage to all laborers involved the production...

Olympia Coffee Roasting Company in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Olympia Coffee Roasting Company opens its fifth location today in the historic Proctor neighborhood in the north end of Tacoma, Washington. This is the company’s first retail location in co-owner Oliver Stormshak’s hometown and their second outside of Olympia (their shop in West Seattle opened earlier this year). Stormshak recalls visiting Tacoma cafes growing up in the 90s. “Tacoma cafes played a huge role in shaping me as a coffee professional. Temple of the Bean was my personal favorite while I was in high school,” Stormshak tells us (Temple of the Bean...