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It’s important to understand that there is a difference between aged coffee and old coffee. Coffee is aged with intention and, when done right, with care. Even 100 years ago, coffees aged under certain conditions were prized over coffee that had just simply been around for a while.

Clear Lake Coffee Roasters are pleased to announce you can now find our four most popular coffee blends and single origins gourmet Arabica coffee for sale at Hy-Vee Des Moines #4 (Fleur).

Possibly equipped with a spyglass on an unusually clear day, Krapf spotted the peaks he would name Mt. Kenya from 100 miles away. Though rare today due to smog, the mountain can still be seen on occasion from Nairobi, 85 miles away. Krapf tried to spot Mt. Kenya again in 1851, travelling 40 miles closer, but the ghost ship did not appear.

Dual drinkers are also more likely than those who drink specialty coffee exclusively to have used a single cup brewer yesterday (35% vs 20%), or used instant coffee (13% vs 5%), or consumed a Ready to Drink coffee beverage (27% vs 10%). Interestingly, 11% of dual drinkers said they uses a Moka stove top brewer yesterday, compared to only 1% of specialty drinkers.

The prices you paid for green coffee last month, last quarter, or even last year are almost entirely irrelevant for planning purposes. If you cast a wider net you can capture more market fluctuation.  For example, the past 10 year average for the C-Market is $1.40. This is a good planning number. Even if we exclude the upward movement in prices over the last eight months, the 10 year average is still $1.38. In any case, the 10 year average can serve as your C-Market budgeting number, your “phantom C,” you might say. This is the number to which you add your differentials for creating a green buying budget for coffees that are bought and sold on a differential basis. From this point, the level of detail is up to you, your temperament, and perhaps to a greater extent, your record keeping.

Other Coffee Retailers In Brief

There are a few additional species we will mention only briefly to round out the field guide.

Foodservice: Food served with a focus on volume and cost efficiency but in environments where quality coffee can sometimes serve as a differentiating factor. These opportunities are almost always cafeteria environments camouflaged within institutional or corporate settings, such as office buildings, hospitals, and college campuses. They take some research to find, and are often complex sales involving both the institution and another service provider, but can be high volume at healthy margins and are often, relatively speaking, low maintenance, one blend and a decaf, accounts.

In 1934, author of All About Coffee, William Ukers, described the wild coffee forests of Ethiopia as so dense that some of them had not even been explored. It was the wildness of these ancient coffee forests and the anticipation of genetic diversity within, perhaps, that caused the British Director of Agriculture in Kenya to collect samples just two years after the last edition of All About Coffee was published. It is said the person sent across the border to collect seeds was a British Army Captain named Richard Whalley.