OK…I know, there is no shortage of hype about the latest sine qua non for the home espresso enthusiast, but once in a while, there is something that comes out to truly impress even the most jaded hipster.  I admit, I might not wear my sister’s jeans, but I do drink espresso every day at the plant, and I know lots of big words.  Consider me impressed, though.

This morning, we recieved a box full of mypressi TWIST espresso makers.  This new handheld device (about the size and shape of a portafilter, but with a bulby round head) is purported to make a great shot of espresso without a boiler, or electricity.  Nicely packaged, it comes with everything you need to get started on a great espresso journey.  You get real 14g. portafilters, a tamper, nitrous oxide cartridges, extra o-rings and seals (i already washed one down the drain), a special portafilter to be used with coarse ground coffee, a pod adapter, and a couple of other things that I haven’t really checked out yet.

We pulled several shots of Vito’s this morning using the Anfim at its normal setting, and everyone was impressed (even Terry and Greg)!  The shots came out thick and syrupy and tasted great.  There was enough N2O gas in one cylinder to pull four double shots (or 3 doubles plus one for the barista if you know what I mean).  Easy to clean, too.

Just put coffee in the portafilter, tamp, screw the top on, add boiling water, seal and press the trigger.  You get a great extraction, that beats any home machine I have seen.  I think that most people would be hard pressed to discern the difference between the mypressi shots and shots from a commercial machine.

We have them online, or come by the plant and do a taste test…see if you can tell the difference!

I’m way behind on this but check it out. If you don’t catch it tonight, there is always always another Tuesday night. Green drinks Coeur d’Alene meets the second Tuesday of every month from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. in the deli area of Pilgrim’s Market, 1316 N. Fourth St., Coeur d’Alene. For more information email greendrinkscda@gmail.com. No topic is off topic for the group as long as it pertains to the environment. And that can’t be a bad thing.

We were fortunate to have Craig Goodwin come out for a visit last friday. For those of you that don’t know Craig, I highly recommend checking out his site at www.yearofplenty.org. I’d put it into my words, but Craig does a much a better job. Needless to say, Rebecca and I are really exploring the possibilities of doing our year of plenty and Year of Plenty will be a great resource.

Thanks go out to David and Ben who showed up around the same time, had coffee and nary a f-bomb was dropped.

This is a picture of our pal Ben’s garage. You might look at this picture and think to yourself, “somethings missing”. and you’d be right. They could use another 29′er, a couple cross bikes and maybe but probably not a fixie. Of course others may look at the garage and notice its absence of cars. Which in my book, is cool. Check out more of Ben’s work at www.bentography.com.

Have you tried the can yet?  If not, what are you waiting for?

Pangoa. What a ride. Our scheduled 12 hour trip turned into 17. Heavy rains the previous few days had altered the dirt road. And by altered, I mean washed out. It was crazy, but our host Esperanza kept assuring us it was only another 15 minutes. Of course 15 minutes was repeated 20 times! We finally arrived at our hotel, checked into our rooms and headed to the Pangoa Coop. Although we were quite late, our welcoming committee had laid out some great food and there seemed to be plenty of beer. Our hosts were kind and accommodating, making sure everyone had what they needed. After dinner, it was back to the hotel where everyone crashed hard except the mosquitoes.

We were up early the next morning and off to our first coffee farm. Riding in the back of a small 4 wheel drive pick-up at what seemed like warp speed was a total blast. After about an hour of driving (or hanging on), we had arrived at the farm. Our morning started off with a breakfast of fresh mango, papaya, avocado, pineapple and omelettes. Crazy fresh, as in just pulled off the trees and squeezed from the chickens. It will be hard to duplicate this back home. Our hosts were Don Gregorio and his wife, Olinda and their three lovely children -Louisa, Hido, and Mika – a family that is half indigenous and half Colonas (Peruvians of Spanish descent, some of whom migrated from the Sierra Madre to the Pangoa region). CAC Pangoa has made it a point to facilitate bringing these two groups closer together as both are represented in their coop. After some negotiation, it was decided that perhaps next year Dominic and Marco could spend a few months learning the language a bit better and picking coffee. I failed to tell Don Gregorio how much the boys eat!

Everybody piled in the back of a pick-up and a Peruvian 15 minutes later we found ourselves at CAC Pangoa member and coffee farmer Don Jesus to learn about his solar drying system and organic practices. His solar drying facility is one of several that are being constructed as part of a CAC Pangoa initiative that is being funded in part with some of the Coop’s Fair Trade premium funds. Don Jesus has a great set up and the solar drying beds will have a positive impact on the coffee. As a side note, his wife had given birth to a beautiful baby 2 weeks before.

Back in the trucks and we’re off. 15 minutes later we found ourselves with another member of the coop who showed us his extremely large solar drying facility, which was in mid-construction. This was a relatively new farm we were visiting and the soil was incredibly rich. Most of us had not seen coffee plants so heavy with berries before. After a good hike around the property, it was time for lunch. A variety of potatoes were served (purple potatoes, yucca and a unidentifiable spud that was pretty tasty). The highlight of the meal of course was guinea pig. Looked like chicken, tasted like rabbit. Yes, most of us ate it. I mentioned that we were from Idaho, and it is known as the potato state. Yup, 1 variety of russet. When the laughter died, we were reminded that Peru produces over 200 different varieties of potatoes. Moving on.

Mere words, certainly none that I can print here, could describe our next journey. Long, dirty, bumpy, wet. The trucks had difficulty making it up the last pitch. After the 4^th or 5^th try, we were all on top. Of what, I wasn’t sure, but we were soon to find out. This is a description written by my good friend Tripp from Café Campesino about our trip to the Valderama’s farm..

The farm is located atop a very steep hill near the top of a mountain. Let me rephrase: it wasn’t just steep, it was vertical… and muddy. Our driver heroically took us up in our 4wheel drive Toyota pickup, delivering us against all odds in fine shape. My good friend, Terry Patano of Doma Coffee, and I celebrated our newfound ability to hold onto things with our bottoms… a skill one can only acquire trying to stay in a truck bed while the earth spins around you!

On a personal note, Tripp really helped us out while in Peru. He speaks fluent Spanish and he is a very patient man, enduring my questions, translating, and then giving me the answers for a minimum of 12 hours per day for a week straight. I asked a lot of very direct questions and Tripp and the farmers were very gracious and honest with their answers. I know Rebecca and the boys had a great time with him, and I look forward to our next trip together.

Senor Guaringa was going to teach us about his bio fertilizer and bokashi (compost) production techniques and the huge impact they’re having on organic coffee yields… actually bringing yields to a financially sustainable level for farmers – about 3000 pounds per hectare – whereas too many organic coffee producers are struggling to reach half that yield. It was amazing listening to Senor G. talk with such power and passion about the bokashi. He also had an attentive audience, as we were all standing ankle deep in the compost. Kudos to Pangoa and their active collaboration with other pioneers in the organic coffee movement from Nicaragua… through shared information and innovation, they are leading the way for small scale farmers. Incredible. For those of you that haven’t checked out the composting that Heine Brothers is doing, I suggest going to www.youtube.com/watch?v=5na5jYppfL8&feature=player_embedded.

This is a really great thing they have put together and I would love to see something like that happen around here. Or maybe where you live.

It was time to head back to town. To summarize our trip down; mud, bumps, low branches, more dirt less road, more mud, stuck to the tire tops in water. Oh yeah, big flying bugs. Time for dinner and some rest. Our week in Pangoa was off to an excellent start.

Bear in mind I tend to get excited about things. Or fired up. Then I write letters. Spread the news to my friends and hopefully get them fired up. This little story started in Peru. There we were, on our way to Pangoa. Passed through this quaint little mining town, wrote the name of the company down and did some research when we got back. Here’s a little story I’d like to share.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2006/10/lead-astray

This article in mother jones is dated 2006. I’ve done some follow up and the situation has not gotten any better. Right now, I’m truly at a loss for words, especially after having seen this town first hand. And yes, as a matter of fact, I did grow up in a mining town.

Well,here I was in Pangoa, Peru. Ma and Pa out meeting with farmers at the co-op building and I’m scared to use the bathroom in the hotel(Hotel Casa de Blanca).

Reason #1 I’m scared to use the bathroom: The hole in the wall. I was terrified that a big cockroach would come out and slowly eat me. #2: The sink moved last time I touched it. Not a little, it jumped at me, I think. And #3: there was no toilet seat. Now that had me a little confused. I’m radioing in to my sphincter (I had  some bad food and was slowly dying) ” Hey sphincter ,can we take another hit?” “Nope” it replies, ” The shields are failing”, and I’m scared of going to the bathroom. In the end, I went to the bathroom. (After the the shields went down I submitted to my bowels and overcame my fear, NOT REALLY), did not get attacked by bloodthirsty cockroaches, jumped by the sink, and managed to not fall into the toilet.

The Hotel Senorial, where we stayed in Lima, was a great place.We had great food, and the hotel had a big  outside area where we played with Sasha, Michael’s son, from Bean North. Walking on the streets of Lima was pretty cool. I saw lots of street stands and bought lots of Chiclet gum from them. It seems to be the  the only gum they have in Peru to the best of my knowledge, and it had a really cool taste, mint and a not good after taste and then a little bit of grape. We also had guinea pig to eat. They are like the size of my face, and they taste somewhat like chicken or rabbit. When going up over the pass to get to Pangoa, we all drank an immense amount of  coca tea which has no taste whatsoever.

When we stopped at the top to take a picture, Sasha fainted, and everybody else felt really light headed, so it was really weird. This was the first time I had been at over 15,000 ft. On the first night we got into Pangoa there was a big meal prepared by the people of the coop but I felt really bad. The ride coming in was supposed to take around 12 hours but it took

the bus an extra 5 hrs. to get over this really bumpy part of the road. After dinner we all crashed at the hotel. In the morning we all got up and got into the back of pickup trucks and drove out to a farm where we had a breakfast of eggs, fruit, avocado and the best rolls in the world. Then we checked out more farms, met with the farmers, had lunch (yes, more guinea pig) and went back to the Co-0p for dinner.

We did this for the next few days but the most memorable day for me was when we went up this extremely steep hill to check out this farmer’s compost system and plantation. By the time he was done explaining the compost system it had gotten pretty dark, and then we went and checked out the bean plants and stuff. We get down and it’s pitch black out. When we were going to leave it was kind of scary. 2 of the 3 trucks had gotten stuck coming up the hill and if you slid off the side of the road you pretty much tumble for about a mile through the jungle. After we had all hopped into the trucks, I was in the back with my dad, Keith from Peace Coffee, and Tripp from Cafe Campesino (who knows what planet he’s really from). We start to go down and the car starts sliding a little bit and by now everyone in the back of the truck is swearing and laughing and Tripp starts telling us about how he’s using his butt-cheek muscles to hold onto the back latch of the truck where he’s sitting and we all start cracking up. By now we’ve gotten past the scary steep part and we’re flying along the bumpy road again dodging the tree branches that hang low enough to hit and laughing and overall having a really great time.

When it was time to leave we all said our goodbyes. It was an awesome trip and everyone was really nice. My brother Marco and I had our picture taken quite a few times as I don’t think they had seen many white kids before. On the ride back we took taxis over the bumpy road and instead of taking 5 hrs. it took around 45 minutes to get to the bus station. When we got into the town – I have no idea what the town was called – we went and got some cool things from this fair trade/indigenous market. I got a blowgun and some cool bracelets, and I didn’t mention this but in Pangoa I got a machete. After our miniature shopping spree we went and got some dinner.

The bus ride back to Lima was pretty awesome. We had big leather seats and this bus was about 70000000000 times bigger than the other one. It was a double decker, which was pretty cool. On our trip back  I got really cold and we didn’t drink any coca tea so when we went over the pass and came down on the other side our ears popped and cracked and it hurt really bad.

When we got back to the Hotel Senorial, which was at like 6 in the morning we all tried to sleep a little bit. Then at around sometime the whole group had another meeting. I failed to mention there were meetings the day before we left for Pangoa. After the last meeting most of the people I had met left. It was great meeting other people from Coop Coffees  and meeting coffee producers from other countries. Everyone was really nice. The next day we said bye to Bill and our Canadian friends – they were off to Machu Picchu. We would be meeting back up in about a week because we were flying up to Mancora, Peru, while they were flying to Cuzco.

The time at the beach

was a lot of fun. We met some people at a restaurant from Kicking Horse Coffee and met the restaurant owner  Kiki and her husband.They were really nice. The first 2 nights we stayed at a hotel that was not nice and then we moved down the beach a ways to another hotel called Casa de Playa. That hotel was a lot nicer and they had a pool and the service was pretty amazing. The rooms were also clean, which is more than I can say for Casa Dump we had stayed in. I ordered a pancake that was the best in the world and had some really good teriyaki fish. After spending a few pretty amazing days here, we  heard that Bill and our Canadian friends had gotten caught in the whole thing at Machu Picchu(that’s the right spelling to the best of my knowledge). So we left to return to Lima and and met up with two of the three Canadians – the father and son, who had gotten airlifted out. Mom and Bill  were still stuck there. The only reason Michael and Sasha got out was because they were doing children and sick people first. We caught our flight the next day after having dinner with our friends and flew to Houston and then to Denver and back to Spokane. I’m glad we had a short drive home as we were all pretty tired. All in all this trip was pretty amazing. I learned a lot of new things and met a lot of new people and now realize how important it is to be multi-lingual. Thanks for reading my little blog post thingy!!!!

-Dominic

We landed in Lima at midnight after leaving Spokane around 5am. Seems like a long day flying. Crossed over the equator somewhere over Equador and magically went from winter to summer. Caught a taxi to our hotel and crashed for the night.

We had a day to check out Lima before the Coop Coffee meetings started so we hit the streets early with hopes of finding a decent cup of coffee and a fresh croissant. Within a few blocks of our hotel we found a great little café and got to practice finger pointing at the menu and our few words of Spanish. Note to travelers, learn the language before you go and use it. Especially if you’re from the United States. After a quick bite and some much needed coffee and fresh juice, we hit the streets. There is a lot of traffic in a city with over 8 million inhabitants and it comes at you in all directions. Add a unhealthy dose of noise and it makes for a pretty crazy scene. We cruised around for a few hours and decided it was siesta time so we headed back to the hotel. After some much needed rest, we took off walking again. We didn’t expect to find a shopping mall built on a cliff over looking the Pacific Ocean with a few hundred stores and restaurants, but we were new in town. What we did find was a good restaurant with a great view. Who knew Peruvian food was influenced by both the Italians and Asians? What we didn’t know was how different our food would change once we left the big city.

By the next morning most of the Coop members had arrived and our meetings were getting ready to start. It was great to see everyone and I’m proud we’re  part of this group. As a bonus, a number of our producer partners from Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Nicaragua joined us. The kind folks from Peru were our hosts. We were in for a great trip.

The primary focus of our meetings turned out to be how well fair trade is working for the farmers. I’m going to write a separate article addressing this subject, but lets just say that it isn’t working that well. I’m glad to say that as a rule, Doma Coffee pays at least 30% higher than fair trade prices (check out www.fairtradeproof.com).

The other part of the meeting was to elect new board members for Coop Sol, which is our Canadian version of Coop Coffees. Yours truly was elected to the board and  I am really excited about it. I was hoping it might include dual citizenship and health care, but no such luck. Jim and I both participate in various groups within the Coop (green bean group and now board of directors where one of our current projects is building a cupping lab in Montreal).

After the meeting, voting and eating, it was time to turn in. 5 am was going to come quick as we were heading to Pangoa. By 6 am we were all loaded on the bus and headed out of Lima towards the Andes and the Amazon. I could hardly wait.

The line forms here. Hopefully no other explanation is necessary.

Dominic using a new monetary system.

Coca tea. Yes please.

Top of the mountain, almost 16,500. In the old days, these were snow-capped.

No, this isn’t a shot of the Silver Valley. It’s worse. U S owned mines operating without any environmental restrictions.

That’s todays report. Next stop, Pangoa.

We had a great day sampling coffee at the Good Food Store in Missoula.  This place is worth a trip to Missoula if you haven’t been there before.  Among our other coffees, they feature our blend called “the Chronic” which was created for our friends at Le Petit Outre.