You can really go down the rabbit hole with their project, so seriously, click the link and learn more. As for Dormans, their coffees are enormously respected by a wide variety of specialty coffee green buyers, and you’ll find their coffees roasted and served at some of the best coffee bars around the world. We recently featured a wide selection of Dormans offerings at our massive Kenya Dig It? cupping party in Chicago, including no fewer than 9 coffees from event hosts Intelligentsia.

The post [Video] Kenya’s Dormans – The Coffee Export Experts appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Exciting news out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where our friends and partners at Cafe Imports have announced that Kenya will be the destination for the company’s 2013 USBC Origin Trip. Cafe Imports will host all 6 United States regional barista champs, the USBC champ, and the winner of the 2013 World Barista Championship in Melbourne.

Sprudge.com spoke with Noah Namowicz of Cafe Imports, who passed along some deets to us:

“This is the third year we at Café Imports have been the official origin trip sponsor, and this experience has allowed us to meet some incredibly inspiring baristas, and allowed our producer partners to connect with the front lines of our industry in a way like never before. These trips have been more rewarding than we ever could have imagined.

This year, the 2013 Barista Champions will be accompanying Café Imports to KENYA!!!! The trip is tentatively planned for November 2013. Good luck to all the baristas competing this weekend at the Big Central Barista Competition, and congrats to Lem Butler for already securing the 1^st spot. “

In addition to those fine folks, Cafe Imports will be bringing Your Sprudge Editors along for the ride to Kenya, which is an enormous and humbling opportunity for us and we’re pretty much beside ourselves over it. These origin trips serve as a powerful answer to the question, “Why should I compete in a barista competition?” We think there are lots and lots of reasons why you should compete in a barsita competition – cultural, personal, career – but seriously, if you win your region this year, you get to go to Kenya. That’s powerful stuff.

In the meantime, look for Sprudge.com’s coverage of the 2012 Cafe Imports Origin Trip to post live as it happens this March, when we’ll be joining 2012′s regional and national winners for a week-long origin tour of Costa Rica. Again, we’re humbled and amazed by the whole thing.

The post Cafe Imports 2013 USBC Origin Trip Headed To Kenya! appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Allison Aubrey writes for NPR’s The Salt blog, who today published this feature on four East African coffee producers visiting DC as part of a trip funded by the International Women’s Coffee Alliance and the International Trade Centre’s Women in Coffee Project. The four women are representatives of Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya, and their stories are fascinating.

Mbula Musau of Kenya holds one of the most coveted titles in the coffee industry: certified Q-grader. This means buyers know that she knows her stuff when it comes to grading the quality of a coffee bean. And she’s also served as a sensory judge at the World Barista Championship competition.

She now works on the trade and marketing side of the industry, but as a “sister of coffee,” as she calls herself, she wants to help empower women involved at all levels of coffee production in her country. “The majority of labor is women,” Musua explains. By connecting them with women around the world, “it creates hope.” And, she hopes, opportunities, too.

Read Allison Aubrey’s excellent feature here via NPR.org, and while you’re at it, spend some time with Laetitia Mukandahiro, who hopes to someday become “the Rwandan Katie Carguilo.”

The post “Women’s handprints can be found at every point in coffee…” appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Friends! Romans! Upper Midwesterners! On Thursday, October 25th we’re going to be throwing our sixth in an ongoing series of public cupping parties at the Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea 1871 Coffeebar (222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza Suite 1212). We’ll be cupping a delicious table of coffees from the nation of Kenya – home to some of the most beautiful, delicious, and beguiling coffees on the planet.

This event will be a bit more intimate than previous cupping parties – the table will be capped at 25 coffees total, from a curated selection of invited roasters. We’re doing this because, while exhilarating, the free-for-all cupping party madness of our previous events would be ill-suited to the 1871 Coffeebar space, and we want to try having this event be a bit more controlled, educational, and focused. Each one of our cupping parties is a special little snowflake, and we won’t keep throwing them forever, so if you’re able to make this one, please do it. Who knows if we’ll ever hold one in Chicago again…

The event goes down on Thursday, October 25th, with educational programming beginning at 4pm. Kenya Dig It? is free and open to the public – click here for Facebook event details, and to validate our existence by clicking “join”.

Kenya Dig It? We bet you can.

The post Chicago: Kenya Dig It? Here’s The Deets! appeared first on Sprudge.com.

In Kenya’s coffee growing area of Komothai, record prices at auction have farmers dreaming of a better future and driving to improve their crop.

Record high commodity prices have rattled finance ministeries [sic] in the West, but poor growers see things differently — especially in Kenya where reforms now mean more profits trickle down to them.

“The climate has changed so much that there is no clear season any more when the flowering or the harvesting will take place,” said Muchomba. “Some estates are harvesting all the time.”

In case you missed it, check out Stumptown’s latest video in Kenya and Counter Culture Coffee’s web comic about the coffee market.

The post “Now we can live like humans.” appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Everything depends on coffee here.

Shot in November 2010, the newest Stumptown origin video from Nyeri, Kenya is aesthetically gorgeous, challenging and artful, exactly the sort of short filmmaking we love. Filmed in and around the Ngunguru and Gaturiri washing stations, it gives us a glimpse into the world of Kenyan washed coffees with narration provided by members of the Tekangu and Barichu Cooperatives. The results are captivating.

Learn more on the filmmaker at trevorfife.com

The post You Gaturiri Watch This New Stumptown Origin Video appeared first on Sprudge.com.