Post Vacation Thoughts...

Just got back from vacation--Lake Chelan. Not a bad place, though I didn't find any good coffee. Only went to one place, I think is was called "Verve." My capuccino looked and tasted like it came out of a coin operated coffee machine (if you've ever seen one of those...). Well, at least it had caffeine!

The Guatemala Cup of Excellence auction finished this last week with the winner selling for over $50 a bag--a record by $30 or so. This is a good direction. Not that our roastery could carry a coffee of that expense, but it's good for the farmers to see that there is a payback for putting extra effort into their coffee. For years, the big coffee buyers have been low-balling the farmers. Green coffee usually sells for less than a dollar per pound in the country of origin, with exceptional coffees sometimes fetching a price of $2. If I were a farmer, I wouldn't put extra effort into my coffee for that price; But for $50 (or even $5) a pound--yeah, a farmer can easily justify putting extra effort into their coffee.

There's a lot more that I would like to say about this, but to simplify: Amazing coffee is going to be more and more available. Yes, we'll be paying a bit more for it--but who cares. If you want cheap, medium-good coffee, it will always be available, just like cheap, medium-good beer (e.g. Weinhard's). But if you want amazing coffee, that's going to be readily available, too, just like amazing beer is more readily available these days (e.g. Chimay or other Belgians).