Recently, my friend Julie visited Australia and came back with a half-pound of local coffee.  I love when friends lay these kinds of gifts on me and am all too happy to try them out.

The coffee comes from the Byron Bay Coffee Company of Newrybar, New South Wales, Australia.  At first, I was skeptical, we just don’t see that much Australian coffee in North America and there’s usually a reason for that.  As it turns out, there isn’t large-scale roasting in Australia and it’s restricted to northern Queensland and northern NSW.


If you pull out your atlas, you’ll see that this corresponds to neither a tropical part of the world nor high elevations, the two characteristics of quality coffee.  And yet, virtually all coffee grown in Australia is of the high-quality Arabica species of coffee.  Having said that, total production out of Australia is not even high enough to be listed in the International Coffee Organization’s ranking of coffee producers, and half of what is grown never leaves the continent.

I was treated to Byron Bay’s Nero Espresso, blended of different international coffees, likely for a greater acidity or pop of coffee flavor, mellowed out with the Australian coffee grown locally, together for a nice espresso blend.  It was already ground for me (too bad) and was ground to suit espresso brewing, so very fine versus the regular grind I would brew in my drip brewer or the coarse grind I would brew in my french press.  If your grind is too fine for the brewing method, you overextract flavor from the coffee and will not enjoy the taste in your cup.  I didn’t feel like dusting off the espresso maker so I took my chances with this grind style in the drip brewer.  If I had have used the french press, I would have overextracted for sure.

The result was definitely a full-bodied coffee, which I like and a semi-rich flavor that was much bolder than what I was expecting of Australian coffee.  I liked it as a rich and full coffee, and something different than what I’m getting used to from the three or so roasters I keep going to.  Before this half-pound is done, I will make at least a couple shots of espresso with it and expect even more from that since the coffee was ground for this brewing method.  Where the coffee lacked aroma and an even richer flavor, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and blame myself for not brewing it sooner, as my friend has been back from Australia for at least a few weeks now.  That means the coffee is not as fresh as it was when she got back.

This coffee has won the Byron Bay Coffee Company a gold, a silver, and three bronzes in the Australia Fine Foods Competitions as recently as the silver in 2007.  Proceeds from the coffee go to supporting Organic and Rainforest Alliance Certifications on coffee, so you make a small donation to the cause just by buying this coffee.

Family owned and operated since 1989, the Ivancich creed: “After all, isn’t a great cup of coffee at the heart of life”.

Check out the website for the Byron Bay Coffee Company.

I am a member of the Peetniks Coffee Club.  This is a recurring coffee delivery program where I get a pound of coffee delivered to me in intervals of my choosing – in my case one pound every four weeks.  The coffees I get are also up to me, or I can leave it to the experts to decide what I get.  Each pound arrives with the date that the coffee was roasted by Peet’s so I know I’m getting it fresh.

The Peetniks Club is offered by Peet’s Coffee and Tea.  I have my favorite coffees but leave the selection up to one of their Coffee Tours.  This week, I received a pound of their Ethiopian Fancy.  I have yet to receive a coffee from Peet’s I didn’t like and this one is no exception.


As far back as we can trace, all coffee originates from Ethiopia, exported from the Arab world to the rest of the world through ports in neighboring Yemen.  For many, Ethiopian coffee is still the finest coffee in the world and certainly there’s the intrigue of drinking coffee from its origin.  For a time, internal strife in Ethiopia had an effect on the consistency and quality of coffee out of that region but that has changed greatly over time.

Ethiopian coffee has a medium body, so neither too thick nor too thin.  It’s fully of very “bright” flavor, with high tones and sometimes described as the world’s most distinct.  The beans used by Peet’s in this coffee are meant to deliver a floral almost perfumed aroma common to coffees from this region.

While not formally certified, Peet’s Ethiopian Fancy coffee is also organically grown.

Click here to learn more about Ethiopian coffees.

From tree to cup…how coffee is grown and roasted!

The Ueshima Coffee Corporation (UCC) in Kona, Hawaii.

First thing’s first.  Why is Hawaii Kona coffee so revered by coffee lovers from around the world?  First, the climate for optimal growing conditions.  The mountainous nature of Hawaii’s Big Island means high peaks and the cloud cover means a natural shade and consistent rain.  Second, you’re in the United States.  You can expect the same quality control and respect for reputation from Hawaii’s government as you would from any developed country in the world.

We were excited to take a personalized tour of the UCC, a tour of the plantation and lesson in how coffee is roasted before you buy it.

Our guide was Peggy Stevens, Assistant Manager of UCC's Sales and Production.

Here, Peggy is walking us through the plantation to show us how the “coffee cherry” grows.  After the coffee cherry is harvested, there is little the farmer can do to improve quality.  This means timing of when the cherries are picked is paramount.  The branch in the picture above shows a good example of cherries at different stages.  The only example missing is if the cherry is overripe and a brown color.  The cherries you see here range in color and ripeness from yellow (underripe) to dark red (fully ripe).  Before that, the cherries ripen from yellow to green to a light red.

Inside each coffee cherry is a seed, what we call the coffee bean. The seed is in two parts, or two coffee beans. One coffee cherry = two coffee beans.

Coffee cherries are picked en masse and processed so that the coffee cherry is “washed” off of the coffee beans inside.  The cherry skins are not wasted, but rather reworked into a natural fertilizer.  The dried seeds, green coffee beans, are sorted for inspection by Hawaii’s coffee 5-0 and those that make the grade are moved to be roasted.

Peggy drives us through rows and rows of coffee trees en route to the roasting station.

These old-fashioned roasters are not the UCC's official coffee roasters. These only roast up to a couple pounds at a time.

But innovation in coffee roasting is to suit volume, not quality of the roast.  The technology is actually very simple: keep the beans moving while over heat.  The wheel inside each of these maintains a steady turn.

This isn't the UCC's official way of measuring roast style, but I loved the poster. It shows ten different intensities of roast and their standardized names.

For our purposes in this small-batch roasting, this is a more realistic roast guide in that there are actual beans divided by roast style. I still love that poster though!

For a more thorough explanation of roast style and how it affects the flavor in your cup, visit our page on Roast Style and Flavor.  Obviously very familiar with their own bean, the UCC has profiled it as best between a High and a City style roast.  Alot of Kona coffee is roasted to Medium.  I personally favor a darker roast but I didn’t want to leave the UCC’s own recommendations for their coffee, so I chose to roast mine at City, the dark end of their range.

Back to the coffee. I have a dish of unroasted green coffee beans, harvested from the plantation and dried out prior to roasting. The beans are emptied into a roaster.

As David Cook explained to me at the Fire Roasted Coffee Company, Peggy reiterated it.  For those “efficient” coffee roasters that profile a bean and then roast it automatically without supervision, there are cues for all five senses that go unobserved.  The bean itself and the environment in which it’s roasted can change and only the human senses can judge when a bean is optimally roasted.

In the above picture, we’ve heard the “first crack”, that point where gas trapped inside the bean has escaped in a snapping sound, expanding the size of the bean.  At that point, you can be sure of a Medium style roast or you can leave the beans to roast further.  Imagine the sound of popcorn starting to pop after it’s been exposed to heat.  Once you hear the “second crack”, you are now burning the coffee’s natural oil to the surface of the bean for the darker roasts from Full City to Italian.  Somewhere in between, I stop mine at City.

Once the bean is removed from the heat, it needs to be immediately cooled as heat on the interior of the bean will continue to roast it from the inside. Here for this small batch, we use a fan and stir the beans until sense of touch indicates that they are fully cooled and no longer roasting themselves. Hard to tell here, but house rules dictate that you must hula-dance while stirring the beans.

Not a bad City roast. By sense of taste, we chewed a bean from the batch to get a sense of how it will taste in the cup.

There you have it, it's official! I've graduated into the ranks of Peggy's roastmasters.

As an amateur home roaster and all-around coffee enthusiast, I had lots of questions and Peggy did a great job answering them. This picture is taken in their retail store, overlooking one of UCC's three plantations.

The tour was very informative.  If you’re in Kona, I recommend contacting the Ueshima Coffee Corporation.  Check out their website to order a pound of their coffee, and I recommend their Island Select Estate Reserve – what I’m sampling in the picture above.  For a coffee lover, it was great education.

Peets Coffee and Tea has announced that it will introduce a new coffee blend called Uzuri African Blend. The launch is the result of hundreds of hours of hands-on farmer training by Peet’s coffee buyers.  This blend promises to offer coffee drinkers with an exceptional cup while at the same time generating income for 6,000 small-scale farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.

This region of Africa is known for coffee with floral and aromatic flavors, and a flavor in the cup that is smooth, bold, and with dark berry overtones.  It represents the opportunity for a unique coffee experience while encouraging economic development in the area that gives it to us.  Uzuri (pronounced oo-ZUR-ee) will be available on Peets website for $13.95/lb.  It will be a new permanent coffee blend for Peets, their first new blend in eight years.

The name Uzuri means ”excellent” and ”beautiful” in Swahili and was chosen by the newly trained African farmers who will grow the coffee beans.  To make this effort a reality, Peet’s collaborated with the not-for-profit TechnoServe to bring the distinct flavors to North American coffee enthusiasts while creating a sustainable business model for thousands of farmers and their communities.

In my opinion, this is truly a win-win situation and I commend Peets for the undertaking.  Not only do we get to enjoy a new blend with confidence that it will meet Peets’ harsh standard for quality in coffee…but we also help out the otherwise poor community that produces it for us.  I will be getting a pound on order.

There’s a popular quote I can’t find about how you only feel guilty the first time you do it.  Well, this is the third straight month that I steal a pound of coffee from the Peets’ Coffee Tour that I bought for my parents.  The first time was to “help them” with their personal overstock of coffee.  The second time was because I’d be hosting them over the holidays so I could make them their own coffee.  This time…uh…this time, I just took it!

If Guatemalan coffee is my favorite coffee in the world, second place is a close tie between Kenyan coffee and Yemeni Mocha coffee.  As long as the word “mocha” comes up, we want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.

Mocha has become associated with chocolate over time, particularly in the famous Cafe Mocha drink that combines chocolate and coffee in any number of ways.  But, the original actual use of “Mocha” is derived from the name of the Yemeni port from which coffee was first exported to the world from the growing regions of Yemen and neighboring Ethiopia.  Coffee grown in that area to this day still bears the name Mocha, or Arabian Mocha to differentiate it from chocolate.  Since all coffee originates from this area, the Arabian Mocha along with Ethiopian coffee is for many the oldest and most authentic coffee there is.

A true Mocha is grown in Yemen.  For a vendor that goes to the expense of sourcing a true Mocha, they will usually put the name of the growing region on its label, either Mattari, or in Peets’ case, Sanani.  Either region provides a full-bodied coffee.  While a Mocha can ironically carry chocolate tones, it is also VERY aromatic and in that way helps you appreciate just how much the sense of smell can contribute to the flavor of a coffee.

If you’ve heard of the Mocha Java blend of coffee, it is meant to be one of the most balanced blends, combining the bold Mocha coffee with the mellow Indonesian Java coffee.  A Mocha Java is a nice coffee, but if you LIKE coffee, try Arabian Mocha coffee on its own.

For the third straight month, I’ve brewed some as quickly as it arrived.  The beans went straight from the Peets packaging that is stamped to tell me that it was fresh-roasted less than a week ago and into an airtight container to maintain freshness.  And the empty bag?  There’s no way it goes in the garbage yet.  It’s sitting next to this computer as I type this, lined with oil from the coffee beans that is filling this room with an amazing coffee scent as I enjoy a cup of it.  I have a feeling I’ll be up late tonight.