Bloggle

Folks from all over are commenting on Green Mountain’s Gombe Reserve, a coffee offered in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute. My own notes were from a pre-production roast and — honestly — were at least as much about the process of producing the coffee and had little to do with the finished product… I haven’t taken the time to capture my own tasting notes of the roasts I have sampled since. But fair’s fair… I’ll present some of the other points of view I’ve seen of late, and then I’ll add my own thoughts to sum things up. (more…)

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When I was growing up I mowed lawns and raked leaves for pocket money, as most Midwestern boys do. I often worked for Mrs. Werkley, a dainty sexagenarian who tended toward the eccentric. When confronted with the seemingly ordinary — a big-eyed bug, a volunteer plant, or even a weed she didn’t recognize — she would clap her hands with delight and exclaim that it was, “Most curious and interesting!” Folks considered her a bit of an odd bird. They had no idea.

In her parlor Mrs. Werkley kept a plaster maquette of Australopithecus Africanus (wearing a whimsical yet decorous, embroidered fig-leaf.) On her mantle, between framed photos of the late Mr. Werkley and Dr. Loren Eiseley, was the skull of a sabre-toothed cat… just the thing to capture the imagination of an eleven-year-old. Loren Eiseley, of course, was a respected naturalist, ecologist and author. The eccentric Mrs. Caroline Werkley had been Dr. Eiseley’s research assistant for some 20 years… which might have explained a lot to the folks in that small-town neighborhood. (more…)

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There’s a mystery in Africa, friends and neighbors… a curious affair involving Tanzania and the peaberry bean. As we’ve covered before - recently, even - peaberry coffees comprise about 5% of a given coffee crop. How can it be, then, that virtually every coffee you and I have ever tasted from Tanzania is a peaberry? How can there be so many peaberries from the origin… and where do all the flatbeans go? (more…)

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