Don’t Drink Very Hot Coffee
Coffee has lots of health benefits but don’t drink very hot coffee. According to the Chicago Tribune the World Health Organization just jumped on the coffee band wagon. They confirm that coffee does not cause cancer and has positive effects on liver and uterine cancers. Of course we know that coffee reduces your risk of type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and many more diseases. The one warning from WHO is that very hot beverages are associated with a higher incidence of esophageal cancer. It’s not what you drink but how hot it is served that increases the risk of cancer of the esophagus.
In reviewing the most recent scientific evidence over the past 25 years since its last analysis on the matter, the WHO concluded that coffee should no longer be considered a carcinogen and that it may actually have positive effects for your body when it comes to two types of cancers – liver and uterine cancers.
There was another significant finding: “Very hot” beverages “probably” cause cancer. This is mostly based on studies related to the consumption of a traditional drink called mate or cimarrón in South America where the tea can be taken at temperatures around 158 degrees Fahrenheit (or 70 degrees Celsius). That’s significantly hotter than people in North America or Europe usually consume their drinks.
So, if you are used to drinking your boiling hot coffee before it cools think again.
Very Hot McDonald’s Coffee
In 1994 there was a famous lawsuit against McDonald’s brought by a 79-year-old woman who suffered 3rd degree burns when coffee she had just purchased at a McDonald’s drive through. She asked McDonald’s to pay her $20,000 which was the amount for medical expenses which included hospitalization and skin grafting as well as other expenses related to the injury. McDonald’s offered $800. When the woman engaged an attorney and sued her lawyer asked for $300,000 in damages and McDonald’s offered $90,000. Settlement not reached and the case went to trial where the jury awarded the woman $160,000 for medical expenses and $2,700,000 in punitive damages. The trial judge reduced the final verdict to $640,000 and the parties settled out of court.
There were two reasons why the jury came back with a large punitive damages award. First is that McDonald’s made its franchises serve their coffee at 180-190 degrees which medical evidence shows would cause a 3rd degree burn within 7 seconds of contact with the skin. Second, McDonalds had prior knowledge of this issue and had always settled previous claims for a few hundred dollars.
Despite losing lawsuits McDonald’s still serves its coffee hot and has had a least one more burn lawsuit according to Huffington Post. A California woman ordered two cups of coffee at a McDonald’s drive through.
When the cups were handed to Fino, she alleges, one of the lids wasn’t safely secured.
The coffee spilled, causing “severe burning to her genitalia,” said her lawyer, Nicholas “Butch” Wagner, in an interview Friday. And it’s “still burning.”
“Despite over 1,000 complaints from customers about being burned by the coffee, McDonald’s still continues to brew the coffee at such an exceptionally high temperature,” Wagner said. “They are saving more in production costs in brewing coffee and serving at such high temperature than it costs them to settle the cases with these people who have been injured.”
So, don’t drink very hot coffee. If you spill it you get 3rd degree burns and there appears to be an association between beverages consumed at 170 degrees Fahrenheit or above and esophageal cancer!
How Do You Know when Coffee Is Old?
Did that last cup of coffee from the vending machine taste more than a little stale? Maybe that is because the beans the coffee came from were 9 years old! For that matter how do you know when coffee is old? The Wall Street Journal reported that coffee that is nine years old is coming out of storage and being sold.
Before you take that next sip of coffee, consider this: Some of the beans in your cup of joe might have been picked during the Bush administration.
Arabica coffee that had been stored away as markets cratered in 2013 is now pouring out of warehouses, flooding the market with beans as old as nine years.
Those beans, which are considered higher quality than the more bitter robusta type typically found in instant coffee, are coming out now because they get cheaper the longer they sit. Prices for better varieties have come down enough to tempt buyers who would usually be in the market for lesser grades.
Coffee farmers often store their coffee beans when prices are low and then sell them later. The problem is that stored beans lose their flavor and aroma. They also cost less so buyers pick up allegedly high quality coffee at a discount.
Coffee prices hit a bottom in 2013 and rebounded in 2014. Stored coffee peaked in 2014 and is tapering off. When coffee sits for 121 days before being certified by the New York futures exchange it loses half a cent per pound in value. When it sits for three years the value drops by 35 cents. And nine year old coffee sells at a $1.55 discount which essentially makes it free as basic coffee for June delivery is going for $1.35 a pound!
Who Is Buying 9 Year Old Coffee?
You will not taste any 9 year old coffee at your favorite coffee shop but the sort of institutional coffees found in vending machines, schools and motels may include really old coffee. Arabica coffee is the top of the line but many buyers consider it too expensive. Unfortunately when the buyer waits too long to purchase this coffee it has lost much of its flavor and aroma. In general green coffee beans are good for two years.
How Do You Know When Coffee Is Old?
Remember our article about coffee bloom?
The coffee bloom is the release of carbon dioxide gas when hot water is poured over ground coffee beans. Carbon dioxide gas is trapped inside coffee beans when they are roasted. Darker roasts contain more carbon dioxide and lighter roasts contain less. Roasted whole beans retain the carbon dioxide longer than roasted and ground coffee and storing in a cool environment keeps the carbon dioxide longer. The antioxidant compounds that give coffee its health benefits and flavor are trapped in the carbon dioxide as well.
A good coffee bloom means you have fresh coffee that has been stored correctly. If you want to be assured of fresh Arabica coffee, especially from Colombia contact us at Buy Organic Coffee.
Do Coffee Beans Go Bad?
If you want to buy healthy organic coffee beans, green or roasted, to make coffee at home you don’t want them to go bad. Do coffee beans go bad? There are two issues with bad coffee beans. One is poorly sorted beans after picking and the other is improper storage in transit or in your home.
Stinkers and Other Beans Gone Bad
There is an excellent article at TCC about defective coffee beans. There are black beans and earthy beans, moldy beans and peasy beans. You want to avoid rioy beans, sour beans, stinker beans and whitish beans as well.
Black Beans
Black beans, where the interior of the bean is also more or less completely black depending on the severity of the attack, are beans having undergone a yeast fermentation starting at the epidermis; the surface of the bean is covered with minute holes surrounded by mineral micro crystals, left after enzymatic degradation of cellulose. The more serious the damage, the blacker is the interior of the bean.
Earthy Beans
The presence of 2-methylisoborneol, a secondary metabolite of Actinomycetes, Cyanobacteria and molds, has been associated with the earthy flavor of robusta coffee.
The levels present in robusta coffee are at least three times as high as in arabica (Vitzthum et al., 1990). These data indicate that robusta taste results, at least partially, from contamination by microorganisms rather than from specific aroma components.
Moldy Beans
A mould/yeast level above 105/g is always associated with mustiness in flavor. Geosmin, identified in a heavily rioy and musty tasting sample of Portorican coffee, is probably the substance responsible for moldiness in beans (Spadone et al., 1990).
Peasy Beans
This defect, encountered only in Central African arabica coffees, is due to a contamination of the cherry by a bacterium of the entherobacteriaceae.
Rioy Beans
These beans have a flavor described as medicinal and iodine-like. Rio-tainted beans are heavily infested with moulds (Aspergilli, Fusaria, Penicillia, Rhizopus), and bacteria (Lactobacilli, Streptococci).
Sour Beans
Sour (ardido) beans are deteriorated by excess fermentation, with a sour taste.
Stinker Beans
Stinkers are over-fermented beans, usually with normal appearance but a rotten smell and flavour.
Whitish Beans
The surface discoloration of whitish beans is due to fermentation by Streptococcus bacteria.The attack can occur if storage is too long or in conditions of excessive humidity.
All of these sorts of beans should have been sorted out on the coffee plantation, avoided by proper storage or removed when discovered along the supply chain. But do good coffee beans go bad once you have purchased them?
Old and Perhaps Moldy Coffee Beans
Mold is always an issue when foodstuffs are stored in damp areas. Coffee beans, green or roasted or ground coffee should be stored in a cool and dry place. And coffee is best when made and consume in a timely manner. Green coffee beans properly stored are good for two years. Roasted coffee beans properly stored are OK for up to six months. Ground coffee where the inside of the bean is now exposed to the air started to get stale on the spot. You best bet to avoid bad beans is to purchase from a reliable supplier and store appropriately. Roast only what you are going to use that day and grin only what you are going to use to make the next batch of coffee.
For more useful info, take a look at our article, Store Coffee and Preserve Freshness.
How Much Caffeine Does Colombian Coffee Have?
Colombia produces the best Arabica coffee in large quantities in the world. Arabica coffee is where gourmet coffee comes from. Flavor and aroma of this coffee are prized by coffee lovers throughout the world. Robusta coffee, on the other hand, is the workhorse for producing the caffeine found in caffeinated beverage everywhere. Because Colombia produces Arabica coffee it leads in flavor and aroma and is less likely to leave you with an unpleasant buzz from too much caffeine. So, just how much caffeine does Colombian coffee have versus coffee from Vietnam, for example, which is primarily Robusta?
Caffeine Content of Coffee Beans
Livestrong.com looks at how much caffeine is in a coffee bean. Caffeine levels in coffee can vary dramatically by the type of bean and how much it’s roasted. Even different beans taken from the same bush can have different amounts of caffeine. The way coffee is prepared will also affect how much of the bean’s caffeine winds up in your cup.
A typical Arabica bean contains 1.2 percent to 1.8 percent caffeine. Canephora, also called robusta, contains as much 50 percent more caffeine than Arabica beans, reaching as much as 2.4 percent.
With either variety a dark roast process will reduce caffeine content by ten to fifteen percent. And preparation makes a difference. A single serving Arabica espresso will have 30 to 50 milligrams of caffeine and an eight ounce cup of Arabica via the drip method can have as much as 200 milligrams of caffeine, less concentrated but more volume. Espresso or drip coffee using Robusta will give your about fifty percent more caffeine.
Coffee Chemistry reports on the caffeine in coffee as well.
In Arabica coffee, caffeine content averages at 1.2% while Robusta at 2.2%. It is believed that this larger level of caffeine allows for robusta plants to thrive in more hostile environments as caffeine acts as a chemosterilant for insects.
They also report that among sub-varieties Arabica ranges from a low for Laurina and a high for Catuai while for Robusta the Laurenti variety has about 60% of the caffeine in the Robusta sub-variety.
Great Coffee with Less Caffeine
If you like your coffee but hate the jitters, drink high quality coffee from Colombia. You will need to drink less coffee to get your coffee flavor and aroma and will get about half as much caffeine per cup than if you drink robusta which is commonly included in high end European coffee blends. And some espresso blends include Robusta because it holds the crema head better. In general if you want Arabica coffee you can be assured if you buy coffee or origin from Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Tanzania or Kenya as none of these regions grow Robusta coffee. You certainly want to avoid Death Wish Coffee if lots of caffeine gives you the shakes.
So, how much caffeine does Colombian coffee have? High quality Colombian Arabica coffee contains 30-50 milligrams per single espresso serving and up to 200 milligrams in an 8 ounce cup depending on sub-variety and degree of roasting.
What Does Gourmet Coffee Mean?
Be aware that there is no international standard for gourmet coffee. Nevertheless many companies present their brand as a gourmet coffee. In general gourmet coffee is characterized by high quality beans and skillful preparation. In the world of coffee many consider Jamaican Blue Mountain, Kona from Hawaii, select organic coffees from Panama and Arabic coffee from Colombia as being of high gourmet quality. But there is more to the story.
Retaining Freshness
Ideally you want to be waiting at the bottom of the mountain for the picked, processed and dried coffee to arrive. Then you want to take it to the roaster where they will remove the remaining husk and roast to your specifications. And then you will immediately grind your gourmet coffee and brew a cup. In this way you will not lose any of the flavor, aroma and healthy antioxidants that guarantee gourmet quality. Unfortunately if you do not live in the Hawaiian Islands, Jamaica or along the road from Manizales to Cali in the Colombian Cafetero you have to rely on expedited transport of your gourmet quality coffee to retain quality. Your best bet for getting high quality coffee of absolute freshness is to buy wholesale coffee. If you are interested in this approach contact us today.
How Long Does Stored Coffee Last?
Properly stored green coffee beans retain freshness for up to two years. If you roast coffee beans and store them in a cool and dry location, ideally vacuum packed they retain freshness for up to six months. But once you grind your gourmet coffee beans you had better make the coffee because the shelf life of coffee freshness for ground coffee is measured in hours or minutes! If you really want gourmet coffee and not waste the money you spent for high quality beans buy green and roast the beans yourself immediately before making coffee. This, by the way, it the approach used for most coffee house coffee.
Getting the Most for Your Money
In our article, How Much Does Colombian Coffee Cost, we did a brief cost breakdown for the cup of coffee you buy at the coffee shop. There is a baseline cost for each step of producing, processing, storing, shipping, roasting, distributing and selling coffee no matter how high the quality or how ordinary the beans. A high quality Colombian coffee, single origin and organic may be considered fifty times as good as ordinary coffee but the price is probably just two or three times a much because the shipping and handling costs are about the same. However, if you really want your gourmet quality coffee as fast and fresh as possible, consider air freight of a small quantity (10 kg for example). Again if you need help contact us today.
High Quality
If you want gourmet coffee you need to get fresh coffee beans and not store ground coffee. But all that goes for naught if you do not buy high quality coffee to start with and have it shipped promptly to you by a reliable supplier.
How Do Green Coffee Beans Work?
We have written about green coffee beans, how one might lose weight with green coffee beans, how to get wholesale green coffee beans and organic green coffee extract. And later we reported on a bogus green coffee extract claim. Unroasted green coffee beans have a higher level of chlorogenic acid and that is what is believed to be the benefit of green coffee. Chlorogenic acid is believed to help reduce high blood pressure and people take it for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease and bacterial infections. It is the extract of green coffee beans that people take for medicinal purposes.
For Weight Loss
There is evidence in human testing that chlorogenic acid can reduce the absorption of carbohydrates from the intestinal tract which in turn lowers blood sugar levels and the insulin spikes associated with rapid intake of sugars. In essence to the degree that this works out it is like going on a diet by fooling your body into absorbing fewer calories.
Lower Cholesterol
Chlorogenic acid dramatically reduces cholesterol and triglyceride levels but this evidence comes from studies on rats.
Weight Loss
There is evidence that taking green coffee extract can result in moderate weight loss over a short period of time. However, the study on people only lasted for three months and resulted in a six pound greater weight loss in folks taking green coffee extract versus placebo. There is no evidence that this effect lasts and no research into long term use of green coffee beans or extract for weight loss.
Effect on Diabetes
We know that coffee consumption reduces the incidence of type II diabetes. But is also seems that chlorogenic acid may also have a protective effect as well. In rat studies chlorogenic acid supplements reduce glucose absorption.
Blood Pressure
There is evidence that chlorogenic acid taken daily lowers high blood pressure. Researchers compared chlorogenic acid with placebo in patients with mild high blood pressure and found that both systolic and diastolic blood pressures decreased significantly so long as the patient continued the regime.
What Green Coffee Does Not Do
As we noted in our bogus green coffee extract claim article, manufactures cannot claim long term success in promoting this product for weight loss.
The Federal Trade Commission has levied a fine of $3.5 million on Applied Food Sciences, the company that sponsored the study claiming that green coffee extract resulted in weight loss. Here is a quote from the FTC
…the study’s lead investigator repeatedly altered the weights and other key measurements of the subjects, changed the length of the trial, and misstated which subjects were taking the placebo or GCA during the trial. When the lead investigator was unable to get the study published, the FTC says that AFS hired researchers Joe Vinson and Bryan Burnham at the University of Scranton to rewrite it. Despite receiving conflicting data, Vinson, Burnham, and AFS never verified the authenticity of the information used in the study, according to the complaint.
Despite the study’s flaws, AFS used it to falsely claim that GCA caused consumers to lose 17.7 pounds, 10.5 percent of body weight, and 16 percent of body fat with or without diet and exercise, in 22 weeks, the complaint alleges.
The point of all this is that researchers in India fudged the results of their study and no one followed up. This was a bogus green coffee extract claim and should be ignored. If you purchased any green coffee extract for the purpose of losing weight you may want to ask for, or demand, your money back.
How Much Is Organic Coffee?
If you want the best coffee you want to drink organic Arabica coffee from Colombia. How much is organic coffee compared to non-organic? And how much is high quality Arabica coffee from the mountains of Colombia compared to less aromatic and flavorful types of coffee.
The Price of Basic Coffee
We were recently in a coffee farmer’s cooperative in a small town in the heart of the Colombian coffee growing district, the Eje Cafetero. On one wall was a wide screen TV showing up-to-the-minute coffee futures prices quoted from New York. This updated coffee trading price is what the coffee farmer gets for basic coffee picked, with the fruit removed and dried when delivered down the mountain. The CME/NYMEX base price of coffee futures deliverable as of this writing for July 2016 is $1.3270 a pound. Futures for later delivery are progressively higher with March 2018 at $1.4665 a pound. If you are trading coffee, by the way, contract units are 37,500 pounds and quoted in dollars. Consider this the basis on which organic coffee is priced. But how does this price compare with what you pay for a cup of coffee and why?
Green Coffee Beans
Coffee and Hidden Costs
Serious Eats published an interesting article about the hidden costs of coffee.
The price of unroasted green coffee depends on multiple complicated factors. For example, to start: Is the coffee Arabica or Robusta? Arabica is a higher-altitude-grown, lower-yielding species of the coffee plant that is considered the “gourmet” bean type. Robusta is just what the name implies: highly productive and robust even in the face of disease, drought, and infestation (largely because it’s higher in caffeine, which is a natural pesticide), but not typically as delicious or delicate as its cousin Arabica.
As a general rule, 100% Arabica coffees cost more all-around-to the farmer, the roaster, and the consumer-than Robustas. Furthermore, if the coffee is organically grown, or Fair Trade-certified, it might command additional premiums.
So, organic Colombian Arabica beans are going to sell for more than your average coffee bean, especially more than Robusta beans.
Then, there’s the quality to consider: coffee buyers usually grade every coffee on a quality scale (say, 1 to 100), and choose selections that score well (an 80 at least), paying more per pound of green beans as the score creeps higher.
So, high quality coffee beans are more expensive than low quality beans. Then there is the process of exporting, importing and getting the coffee to the roaster which adds to the cost. Roasting, packaging and delivering to retailers commonly adds around $6 a pound to the cost of the coffee.
Roasted Organic Coffee Beans
A coffee house will use about 2 grams of coffee beans per 10 ounce cup. That works out to about 30 cups of coffee per pound. If the roaster paid only $3 a pound for imported green beans and added $6 a pound to roast and distribute their base cost of just the coffee would be $9 divided by 30 which equals 30 cents a cup. However, you need to factor in the total cost of running a coffee shop and the need to make a profit and then you get your $3 or more cup of coffee.
Best Brewed Coffee
How Much Is Organic Coffee?
At the coffee shop organic coffee is not that much more because the only increase in cost is the coffee while every other step in the supply chain is the same. But what if you want to buy wholesale? A couple of years ago we wrote about the cost of wholesale organic coffee using prices from our roaster in Bogota.
The cost of high quality roasted whole bean organic coffee from Colombia is lowest when purchased in bulk. A recent price quote that we have from one of our suppliers is as follows: $18,861.70 for 1,980 pounds of roasted whole bean organic coffee with USDA and other organic coffee certifications.
For this quote the coffee would be roasted and put in 2.5 kilo bags (5.5 pounds). This quantity requires 360 bags:
Cost for 360 bags = $18,861.70
Cost per bag = $52.39
Cost per kilo = $20.96
Cost per pound = $9.53
Prices change but just in this example you can see that by purchasing green roasted coffee in bulk and having it sent air freight to the USA allows you to get high quality Colombian Arabica organic coffee from the price that a roaster in the USA would charge for roasted coffee or average quality. For prices on green coffee, organic green coffee, coffees of origin from Colombia please contact us at Buy Organic Coffee for a quote. Depending on quantity we can arrange air freight delivery or shipment by shipping container from either Buenaventura or Cartagena, Colombia.
Best Organic Coffee Grows in the Cafetero of Colombia
What Does Organic Coffee Mean?
You may have heard that organic coffee is better than regular coffee. What just what does organic coffee mean? Organic.org tells us what organic means.
Simply stated, organic produce and other ingredients are grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. Animals that produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products do not take antibiotics or growth hormones.
As we noted in our article, Organic Coffee Certification,
The soil in which organic coffee is grown must have been verified as free from prohibited substances for at least three years. In addition there must be distinct boundaries between land on which organic coffee is grown and land where pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers are used. This guarantees that drift of substances sprayed or otherwise applied on adjacent land will not contaminate the organic plot of land. Organic coffee certification includes the adherence to a specific and verifiable plan for all practices and procedures from planting to crop maintenance, to harvest, de-husking, bagging, transport, roasting, packaging, and final transport. Along the way procedures must be in place at every step to insure that there is no contamination of the healthy organic coffee produced in pristine soil with regular coffee produced on soil exposed to herbicides, pesticides, and organic fertilizers.
Years ago in Australia health authorities tested regular coffee and found more than 130 impurities including residues of herbicides and pesticides and many other unwelcome ingredients. Drinking organic coffee means that you skip having all of those bad things in your cup. Coffee is good for you as it helps reduce the incidence of diabetes and various forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other conditions. Organic coffee does the same and you also get the skip the impurities that are all too often found in regular coffee. And besides being good for you organic coffee is good for the environment.
Organic Coffee and the Environment
The process of growing organic coffee as well as other organic produce is called sustainable agriculture. Organic coffee growing is sustainable coffee production.
Although organic coffee grown and certified by the USDA is the result of sustainable coffee production so is coffee that is UTZ certified or Rainforest Alliance certified.
Rainforest Alliance is an NGOP that works to conserve biodiversity. They seek to convince buyers to purchase what is good for the environment and good for small farmers. Their certified coffees are produced using good land use practices. Certified coffee farms meet a strict set of environmental standards including ecosystem preservation and minimal use of synthetic chemicals.
The UTZ Certified label tells you that the coffee came from a farm that employed sustainable agricultural practices, good environmental practices and efficient farm management. UTZ Certified label is that UTZ Certified coffee is traced from grower to roaster.
Before farmers learned to use crop rotation it was common for land to be “farmed out.” In the American Great Plains farmers rotate corn, soybeans and alfalfa on the same land. Because coffee is a perennial and not an annual crop farmers don’t change plants every year. But what they do is use mulch from dead plants and other organic natural fertilizers when needed to avoid polluting the water table with chemicals. In addition they commonly plant coffee among trees in a forest environment where the habitat is natural and self-sustaining.
What Is Single Origin Coffee?
Colombia produces the finest Arabica coffee in the world. But, many Colombians would be surprised to know that the coffee they commonly buy at the grocery store probably was grown in Ecuador! If you want to be assured that your coffee is 100% Colombian look for Juan Valdez on the label. This fictional character was dreamed up half a century ago by the Colombian Coffee Growers Association as we noted in our article, Juan Valdez Organic Coffee. We wrote that article more than five years ago and noted the lack of organic coffee at Juan Valdez coffee shops. Since that time you can find bags of single origin Juan Valdez coffees at their shops. What is single origin coffee? It is coffee that is entirely and specifically from a single location. That could be a country or even a single farm although typically it is an area such as around Manizales, Armenia, Cali, Medellin, Pereira or Huila.
Single Origin Coffee From Colombia
There is a lot of coffee in Colombia and the vast majority goes for regular coffee, roasted, ground and sold in the grocery store. This is where a few extra beans from Ecuador might find their way into the mix. But what if you want single origin organic coffee from the heart of the Colombian Cafetero?
Wholesale Coffee versus Retail Quantities
Coffee just off the mountain is quoted on the NYMEX and runs about $2 a pound. When that coffee is processed, sorted and the husk removed the price goes up but not much. The largest bump up in price is in roasting. This assumes that you deal in shipping container quantities of coffee. But what if you want single origin organic or at least export quality coffee from the heart of Colombia but in ten to twenty pound range? It turns out that BuyOrganicCoffee.org can help you in both cases. We deal with suppliers who ship via Buenaventura on the Pacific or Cartagena on the Atlantic and can fill a shipping container with your favorite whole bean green or roasted coffee. And we deal with suppliers who can send you ten or twenty pounds of your favorite, green or roasted, via Fed Ex or UPS. Roasted coffee will be freshly roasted just before sending and green coffee has a two year “shelf life” when properly stored.
Why Single Origin?
Coffee lovers know that coffee is much like wine in that the flavor and aroma are affected by the soil in which it grown and the climate as much as by the type of bean and the quality of care given to the coffee plant. Coffee grown around Huila differs from coffee grown West of Medellin and that coffee differs from the coffee from the Valle de Cauca near Cali. Roasters who are interested in single origin organic coffees from the Colombian Cafetero or simply high quality 100 Colombian coffees please contact us at BuyOrganicCoffee.org.
Who Makes Organic Coffee?
We know that coffee is good for your and organic coffee is better. But, who makes organic coffee? The only organic coffee producers in the USA are in Hawaii. But coffee is produced throughout the tropical regions of the world and virtually every country that grows coffee grows a little healthy organic coffee as well.
Coffee Growing Countries
Here are the top coffee growing countries ranked by production by 60 kg bags in 2014.
- Brazil, 45,342,000
- Vietnam, 27,500,000
- Colombia, 11,600,000
- Indonesia, 6,850,000
- Ethiopia, 6,500,000
- India, 5,005,000
- Mexico, 4,500,000
- Guatemala, 4,000,000
- Peru, 3,500,000
- Honduras, 2,700,000
But not all of these countries produce a lot of organic coffee. For example, Vietnam produces mostly robusta coffee which is used for the caffeine in soft drinks. They produce very little Arabia coffee which is where organic coffee typically comes from. The top producers of Arabica coffee are Brazil and Colombia followed by Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and Honduras. Other Central American Arabica coffee producers are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama. Both Colombia and Panama are widely known for the quality of their organic coffee.
Organic Coffee from the Mountains of Panama
Panama is a small country and a small producer of organic coffee but what they lack in size they make up in quality. Panama Mountain Grown Organic coffee wins awards.
A prime example of Panama mountain grown organic coffee is Duncan Estate organic coffee produced by Kotowa Coffee in the Chiriquí Highlands of Panama. This Arabica coffee grown by sustainable practices received honors as the best organic coffee in Panama in 2005 and the best organic coffee in the world in 2006. Duncan Estate organic coffee by Kotowa is certified by Bio Latina. Other Panama mountain grown organic coffee certified producers receiving Bio Latina organic coffee certification include the following:
- Los Lajones Estate Coffee S.A.
- Leap Of Faith Farms, Inc
- Hacienda La Esperanza
- Hacienda Barbara Jaramillo
- Finca Señor Ramón Arauz
- Finca San Miguel de La Montaña
- Finca Ramon Arauz
- Finca El Remedio – Ama de Casa
- Finca Dos Jefes
- Asociación de Caficultores Orgánicos Ngöbe Ascon
Coffee growing in Panama centers on the towns of Boquete and Volcan. This area is the Northeastern end of the arco seco, Spanish for dry arch, which is the agricultural breadbasket of Panama.
The Eje Cafetero of Colombia
Colombia is a country about the size of Texas or California. Mountainous region in the West of the country is cloudy with rich volcanic soil ideal for growing coffee. There are a good number of great coffees from Colombia. The region roughly bounded by the cities of Medellin, Cali and Manizales is the Colombian coffee growing axis, the Eje Cafetero. Virtually all coffee grown in Colombia is high quality Arabica coffee and there are many organic producers both for local sales and high volume exports.
As there are many Colombian organic coffee brands and Spanish speaking producers, feel free to contact us today at https://buyorganiccoffee.org/contact-us/ for help finding the organic coffee that you need.