For the first time in its five year run, all of the Symposium talks will be released online, in an effort to make the event more interactive for the wider public. Part of that interactivity is our own Symposium Colloquium series, bite-sized interview morsels with each of the speakers at Symp2013 that will run alongside Symposium content all year long. In the second installment of Symposium Colloquium, we ask Peter about his new role, his visions for the future, and why Symp 2013 was a resounding success.

This episode, like the new Symposium, is shorter, buzzier, and enhances interactivity. Watch our video before watching Mr. Giuliano’s 2013 Symposium welcome address, “The Coffee Symposium”, which was released today over at the SCAA Symposium website. Here’s more from that video’s release:

Continue the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #Symp2013.

The post Symposium Colloquium: Peter Giuliano, SCAA Symposium Director appeared first on Sprudge.com.

SCAA Symposium Director Peter Giuliano, as featured on (his own personal) Facebook:

I was annoyed this morning that a measuring cup is 8 ounces, and so are many coffee cups, but most people use 12 ounce mugs as “cups” and most coffeemakers use 6 ounces as a “cup”. Then I did some research:

Finally! Mr. Giuliano, you’ve done the world a great service. This hand-dandy conversion guide is officially indispensable, and might be the best thing we’ve read on Facebook all day..because Facebook in the USA right now is mostly just one big political rant. Tedious!

Want more with Mr. Giuliano? Check out this lovely interview feature on him from Birds of Unusual Vitality.

The post Peter Giuliano Cracks The Global Cup Volume Code appeared first on Sprudge.com.

We’ve been closely following the debate spurred by Has Bean founder Stephen Leighton’s recent firebrand blog post, “Direct Trade Sucks.” There are several fascinating comments attached to feature on Has Bean, from some of the brightest minds in the business. To whit, Erin Meister writes:

Several years ago, I started hearing new and young and very small roasters who would puff up describing how they flew to Peru or Guatemala and shook hands with a farmer and isn’t that authentic and isn’t that Direct — and frankly, it made me nervous. Negotiating these kinds of relationships must be (I qualify it because I am in no way a green-bean buyer or a member of the coffee department) immensely complex and often rather delicate, and it certainly can’t be appropriate or doable for everyone. At least not yet.

We must consider where the failures of Fair Trade — a movement with regulated standards, and global certifying committees behind it! — fall, along with its successes, and remember that Direct Trade doesn’t have that kind of structure to support it. Still, this many years on, everyone is kind of winging this Direct thing, and it makes it a much, much harder system to work under.

And check out this comment, from SCAA Symposium Director Peter Giuliano (a man who knows a thing or two about DT from his days at Counter Culture Coffee):

I congratulate you for such an honest and forthright blog post. Sharing your experiences will, I hope, be helpful to those who are just exploring the idea of working directly with farmers!

I can’t help but wonder, though. How does your “new policy” differ from your Direct Trade policy? Not to be glib, but reading through your 7 point policy sounds exactly like a Direct Trade system to me. Do you object to the words?

There’s more commentary on Has Bean’s blog, and we highly recommend you spend some time with those comments, as they’re every bit as fascinating as the parent post itself. But relating specifically to Mr. Giuliano’s commentary, excerpted above, Mr. Leighton has today published an addendum to his original post. From Mr. Leighton’s new post, titled “Clarification”:

So the past post made a bit of a splash (more so than I ever expected) thank you so much for the kind words and support. But I think it’s important to add some clarification

Has Bean will continue to buy the way it always has done; there are no changes or ramifications from the way we have always sourced, apart from that we won’t try and make our own in-house certification. Also, it’s important to remember that relationships are difficult, complicated, and impossible to capture in one book, let alone two words.

Last but certainly not least, our open-ended feature on Mr. Leighton’s blog post has inspired some expert commentary of its own. Geoff Watts, green buyer for Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea and one of the architects of the Direct Trade model, has written a lengthy commentary on Sprudge that is well worth your time. Here’s a brief excerpt:

I like this blog post a lot, despite the unfortunate title. Stephen is always one to wear his heart on the sleeve of his football jersey, and I’m sure many readers (myself included) can empathize with the predicaments he describes. They kind of cut to the core of what makes Direct Trade so meaningful when it does work; knowing how fragile relationships can be and how many unforeseen obstacles can crop up to complicate what was intended to be a somewhat straight-forward pursuit is important to understanding why DT is not for everyone. Stephen’s frustrating experiences with operating a Direct Trade model in his business are not unique to him—I would wager that most coffee buyers who attempt to implement an extremely hands-on, relationship-based approach to working with coffee farmers have run into similar obstacles at some point. The thing is, to build a reliable and consistent DT program requires a great many things, among them:

1. A lot of time (many years, I’d throw out 3 years as a basic starting point)
2. A ton of effort (extensive travel, year-round communication)
3. Substantial investment
4. A great deal of patience
5. A little bit of luck.

What we are talking about here is, after all, a relationship. And everyone knows how challenging those are.

Mr. Watts’ learned commentary is supplemented by the words of Steve Mierisch, formerly of Intelligentsia, whose family owns a small network of fincas in Nicaragua. Mr. Mierisch is intimately acquainted with Direct Trade:

Direct Trade is not perfect. It means different things to different people. Is it meant to help farmers monetarily? Make them more socially or environmentally responsible? Improve quality?

If you want to help and support producers, do you not want them to get the most for their efforts even if that might mean another roaster outbids you? Wouldn’t you consider yourself successful if you have elevated someone to that level? Wouldn’t this encourage other farmers to up their quality efforts to be able to reach the prices they see their farmer friends getting? After all, this is what has fueled the return of “exotic” cultivars or the different processing methods – we are seeing farmers taking on these risks and sometimes (not always) getting awesome results.

If you do nothing else today, ye curious coffee reader, spend some time reading the commentary that attends Mr. Leighton’s original blog post. The Has Bean blog is a great place to start, and the commentary on Sprudge is fascinating as well. We owe our readers on Sprudge a debt of gratitude for their insightful contributions to this ongoing discussion.

Blog comments can be a source of trolling, hideous evil, anonymous nonsense, and pointless rancor. But they don’t have to be. Not always. At their very best, open and active comments threads – like the two we’ve linked to above – greatly amplify the thoughts any single blog post or magazine article can provoke. Keep the discussion going, so we can all keep reading and learning.

The post “Direct Trade Sucks” – Clarification & Commentary appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Peter Giuliano is one of the truly fascinating interview subjects in specialty coffee, something we’ve come to learn time and time again while writing Sprudge. But for this piece, we’re going to get out of the way and let Mr. Giuliano speak. We sent him a series of questions upon learning of his departure from Counter Culture Coffee; here are his answers, in all their contextual glory.

1. What’s next for you, Peter?

Well, the universe has a way of keeping us guessing…. I won’t know what is truly next until it is already happening. However, I’m looking forward to becoming Director of the SCAA’s Symposium this year!

2. Can you tell us more about your whole Counter Culture experience? How long have you worked there? How has it grown and changed in your time there?

I came to Counter Culture in May of 2000, after getting a call from Counter Culture co-founder Fred Houk a few months before. I picked up the phone one day, and a voice on the other end said “Do you believe in fate?” So I came to North Carolina, and there was this coffee roasting company in a little industrial park. I walked in, and Fred had forgotten I was coming, but co-founder Brett Smith was there, playing an electric guitar for some reason. Cindy Chang (future World Barista Championship Executive Director) was running the office in front, and Daryn Berlin (future SERBC champion) was running the roasting and bagging in back. In a few years, we moved from that place to a larger place, with room for a proper training and cupping room. Now, we have six training centers and two more being built, within which we teach a comprehensive, amazing coffee education program. We’ve built a network of coffee relationships that we cherish, some of which have lasted a decade. We’ve created a system that truly documents and requires sustainable agriculture, transparency, and quality. And we’ve roasted and sold coffees that I didn’t even think were possible in 2000- the kind of coffees I fantasized about when I fell in love with coffee as a barista. We have a culture of experimentation, discovery, and relentless quality. We now have dozens of coffee people, who amaze me with their intelligence, passion, and drive. Kind of amazing to think of, actually.

3. Can you share with us an all-time favorite (or one or two top favorite) moments from your time at Counter Culture?

Funny, I keep thinking of the roaster fires! THOSE ARE NOT MY FAVORITE. Asking me to name my favorite anything is useless, because it makes me feel guilty about hurting the other ones’ feelings.

4. Talk to us more about your new role at Symposium, and how you envision that format growing in the years to come.

I’ve agreed to direct the SCAA’s Symposium, a conference which I helped envision and launch 5 years ago. The goal was to create a space to bring coffee dialogue and understanding to a new level- to be a sort of incubator for great coffee ideas. I’m so proud of what Symposium has achieved so far, but we have the opportunity to make it more accessible and even more powerful. We’re shooting for something that raises the bar yet again- that helps coffee people achieve even greater things through better information and understanding.

5. We recently heard that you just had a baby – congratulations! How’s life with a newborn treating you! Getting much sleep? Best moments so far? Cute photo you’d like to share?

Thank you! My daughter Suzan Yiulan was born 3 weeks ago. So far, we’ve been doing great and I’m in awe of what a good mother my wife is. The best moment was my first eye contact with the little human being, which I am thrilled was captured in a photograph (below). Next best happened this very afternoon, when I helped her take her first swim in the bathtub. I supported her back and she kicked in the water and it made me so happy my heart broke all over the place.

6. Will there be much more travel to origin for you in your future? Where would you like to return to next?

That’s a great question! I treasure the friends I have in the places where coffee is grown, and like most coffee buyers I yearn for the air of the coffee lands. That said, real coffee travel is hard work, and demands a true objective. I reckon I’ll see some of my friends at coffee farms soon, and I look forward to my next trip with other coffee people, sharing experiences and knowledge.

7. If you had one piece of advice for yourself back when you first started at Counter Culture, what would it be?

You can’t tell a young coffee person this, but I always try: take it easy, and focus. It’s so much better to do one thing right than to try to do too much. You’ll have lots of opportunities, you don’t have to take all of them.

8. If you had one piece of advice for someone starting a new coffee roastery, what would it be?

This is an extension of the above. I always tell people, don’t do too much. Start with one coffee, and do it right. It’s so much better to focus on one source, or one relationship, or one coffee and do it absolutely right before moving on to the next one. So many roasters lose their focus by trying to do too much. So choose one coffee, and make it great. And by great, I don’t just mean cup quality- make the relationship great, make the transparency perfect, make a difference in the impact this coffee has on the world. Don’t fake it. Get your roasting right, then roast it right again and again and again. Once you’ve figured out how to do great coffee once, soup to nuts, then you can move on to a second one. Jumping around, traveling too much, spreading yourself too thin is a sure path to mediocrity. Also, don’t let anyone tell you that “what’s in the cup is all that matters.” Agriculture matters. Integrity matters. Craft matters. We are lucky to work with great tasting coffee, and because of this we have to take responsibility for it, and all the implications of our crazy pursuit of deliciousness.

The post Peter Giuliano Leaves Counter Culture: The First Interview appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Breaking for public consumption today, Peter Giuliano has officially stepped down from his position as Director of Coffee at Counter Culture Coffee. Mr. Giuliano has worked with the Durham, North Carolina specialty coffee roaster and wholesaler since 2000, during which time he’s helped build a transparent supply chain of delicious coffees and educated countless coffee types, your Sprudge.com editors included. He’s a legendary green buyer, an immensely gifted teacher, and most of all, our friend, which makes this news feel both difficult and joyous.

As perhaps could be expected, Mr. Giuliano’s departure from Counter Culture does not mean he’s disappearing or taking a break; he’ll be moving immediately into a new role, as Director of the SCAA Symposium, stepping in for one of the Symposium’s main advocates and architects, Tracy Ging.

Sprudge.com reached out to Counter Culture Coffee co-founder Brett Smith, who offered us a few kind words on Mr. Giuliano:

“Working with Peter over the past 12 years has been amazing. We were fortunate to have him as a member of the Counter Culture team and now the coffee industry is fortunate to have Peter working with the Symposium. On a personal note, working closely with Peter over the last has decade has been extraordinary. He pushed me to be a better leader and a better coffee person. Peter is, and will always be a personal friend and part of the Counter Culture family.”

There are so many wonderful Peter G. stories, and while this is most definitely not a eulogy, it feels natural to use this time to look back on your favorite moments with Peter over the years. As has become cultural custom, please tweet your messages to @petergiuliano – we’ll be following along on Twitter. Also keep an eye on Mr. Giuliano’s blog, Dymaxion.

In preparing this feature, we had a chance to sit down with Peter G. and ask him a half-dozen or so questions on his legacy, his future, and his memories at Counter Culture. That interview is available at length here.

We’ll take a moment to say personally: Thank you, Peter, and good luck with your next step.

The post Peter Giuliano Steps Down From Counter Culture Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.com.

From our ever-expanding MSM “bad coffee pun headline” department, a pretty-darn-not-bad feature out of NPR NYC, authored by “All Things Condisered” host Amy Eddings and featuring an interview with Dallis Bros. gal-about-town Teresa von Fuchs:

Teresa von Fuchs, the coffee and espresso consultant for Dallis Bros. Coffee, thinks cold-brew is unfairly getting a cold shoulder: “When you taste them side by side, I think both ways are equally good. Just different.”

She met me at Root Hill Café in Gowanus, in Brooklyn to demonstrate. We sampled a Colombian coffee, Cerro del Reyes, made two ways — cold-brewed, and hot-to-ice brewed. We sampled them at two temperatures, room temp and with ice, the way you’d get it if you ordered an iced coffee.

…My view? I prefer the hot-to-ice brewed coffee better. But I can see von Fuch’s point. Both methods made a solid glass of iced coffee, expressing something different about the bean in the same way that different hot brewing processes — pour over, percolator, espresso — do.

The article, unfortunately titled “A Hot Debate over Cold-Brewed Coffee”, also includes this intensely popular Japanese Iced Coffee Method video from Peter Giuliano and Temsy Chen, which has been blogged and reblogged around the world, with views ranging well past the 30,000 mark:

30,000 views and counting, as it’s now been included in Oliver Strand’s latest feature for the T Magazine blog, ominously entitled “I Know What You Did Last Summer“.

The post NPR Thinks Iced Coffee’s Cool, And Other Bad Headlines appeared first on Sprudge.com.

You can check out the website for “Save Our Soil” by clicking here, but here’s the campaign at its essence:

Our soils are in crisis. Conventional, chemical-based farming is destroying soil health, leaving farms with increasingly barren earth. Extraordinary coffee – that which we are dedicated to – needs rich, thriving soil, since healthy soil leads to healthy coffee trees, prosperous farms, and delicious coffee.

Of particular interest on that webpage is the FAQ, linked via .pdf at the bottom, which provides 6 pages of in-depth detail on Counter Culture’s vision. This FAQ is a must-read for those who want to learn more.

Having had a chance to learn about Save Our Soil over the last few weeks, we were struck by the fact that there is, in all reality, no product or line of products behind this campaign. One cannot go to Counter Culture’s web store and purchase a “Save Our Soil” blend. It instead appears to be a program designed for genuine, heartfelt advocacy towards a cause that could mean a great deal to the future of the specialty coffee industry.

Counter Culture admits that they themselves have much to learn and miles to go in improving their own program of organic offerings, but they truly believe that there is a great deal of good in demanding a renewed focus on organics. “Save Our Soil” seems to be primarily oriented towards getting people on our side of the chain – in this part of the world – talking about the realities, challenges, and benefits organic agriculture. It’s a fascinating and thought-provoking gambit, one that asks for action in the here and now, but could wind up being tremendously influential in the months and years to come.

We had a chance to sit down with Counter Culture’s Director of Coffee and co-owner, Peter Giuliano, who graciously let his pick at his brains about “Save Our Soil”. Here’s some highlights from our chat with Mr. Giuliano. [Bold emphasis added by editors.]

Sprudge: Tell us more about Save Our Soil, give us a place to start.

Peter Giuliano: “This is our first awareness-raising campaign. it starts at this thing where, because of the way that we work in coffee we are immersed in agriculture. In our experience in the world, the thing we feel like has kind of presented itself to us over and over again is that conventional chemical agriculture is creating a huge problem for specialty coffee. The thing that drives us is coffee quality and flavor…and we as an industry know where that comes from. All of us in coffee are aware of this basic truth: great coffee is a reflection of a natural miracle, coffee being this amazing expression of nature. We know where that comes from, but what we’re seeing is that, in specialty coffee right now, the places that are not caring for their specific natural environment are in crisis. And that is getting worse.”

Sprudge: Can you tell us a little more about which places are, in your view, most in crisis?

Peter Giuliano: “People who are tracking soil loss in the world, the experts, see that East Africa and Central America have the highest rate of soil loss. In Kenya specifically, many places are dealing with soils that are depleted, and you’ve got farmers who are trying their damndest to grow coffee and make a livelihood off of soils that are struggling. It is pretty universal though; I don’t want to create the impression that Kenya is a particular wasteland for soil, because it happens everywhere. Every place that is practicing chemical agriculture extensively has this problem. So it’s every place in the world.”

Sprudge: There’s no product or line of products branded as “Save Our Soil”; talk us about the goals for this campaign.

Peter Giuliano: “We want to raise awareness so that coffees who are being farmed in that way will be acknowledged. I think everyone in coffee understands the connection between soil quality and good coffee. But what people don’t know is that conventional chemical agriculture is destroying coffee soil right now, and that process is happening right under our noses. There is a sort of lack of awareness about how important organic soil building is for coffee, and there’s a lack of awareness for us to think not just about coffee quality but that what we’re doing is supporting great quality coffee in the longer term. For us, everything we’ve learned points to organic farming as being the answer to that. Everybody who is doing coffee seriously understands how important it is to work with farmers, and how important traceability is. What we want to do is raise the same sort of consciousness about farmers who are farming organically.”

Sprudge: Give us some examples of organic farms you’d point to as exemplary.

Peter Giuliano: “Aida Battle is a great example – she was NOT farming organically, but was interested in it because of long term benefits, and we committed to her to remain strong partners and buy her coffee during lower yield transition years. She has been phenomenally successful. Finca El Puente in Honduras is another, along with Finca El Roble in Colombia, Finca Nueva Armenia in Guatemala, plus so many organic farmer co-ops, like the ones in southern Mexico. Most of the organic coffee in the world actually comes from small organic co-ops.”

Sprudge: So to close, say we’ve been inspired by Save Our Soil; where do we start? How can we help?

Peter Giuliano: “The first thing for anybody do – coffee people, anybody who consumes coffee – is to advocate buying organic coffee. That can look like, if you’re a barista, paying attention to whether your coffee is organic or not. Buying organic coffee is step one, and that’s the first thing we want to say to people. We need to support organic coffee growers – we need to buy organic coffee. Step 2 is to say, “I want my coffee to be organic”: if you’re a barista, let your roaster know; if you’re a roaster, let your farmer know; tell everyone that you’d prefer your coffee to be organic, and be willing to put your money where your mouth is. That’s the most powerful thing we can do.

The second thing is, support organic everything else. Milk is the first thing, because it’s so tied to coffee, and that’s economic activity and voting with your wallet. The first part of our campaign is going to be talking about that. The next stage is talking about how to be organic in your own back yard – taking all the organic matter we waste in coffee and turning that back into soil, instead of putting that into a landfill, where it will never become soil. Composting is what we want to be working on and providing education for.

And the last thing is, as we’re getting towards the end of this 18 month campaign, we want to support agricultural training and infrastructure for coffee farmers. There’s lots of coffee farmers out there who, if the demand for organic coffee farming increases (as we want it to), well… okay, here’s a hypothetical: Say I’m a coffee farmer, but I don’t have the resources, I don’t compost, I’ve been farming with synthetic chemicals for the last 20 years, and I just don’t have the resources to switch over. The big thing we’re missing in coffee is support for the farmers who want to switch over. There are people like Aida Battle who had to figure out how to be an organic farmer by herself, and she did that by going outside of El Salvador. This kind of journey is just not available for more farmers. Right now we’re searching for partners, so if somebody wants to write a check to help farmers become organic, we want to put something together so that people can do that, and enact real change. Right now that doesn’t exist – we don’t know of that existing in coffee right now, and one outcome we’d love from “Save Our Soil” would be for that kind of advocacy to be facilitated, to be able to make it happen. For there to be a link between coffee companies, shops, roasters, baristas, whatever, and a way for us to support a farmer to become an organic farmer…that’s our dream. But the first thing we need to do is create demand, and we can do that right now.”

The post Counter Culture Launches “Save Our Soil” Campaign appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Socrates: My pupils, pretend for a moment that there’s a coffee cupping and education session you wish to attend, but alas, the event is being staged in a far-flung province. How does one still experience the knowledge?

Unnamed pupil: Maybe the company putting on that cupping is cool enough to livestream the event and make the whole thing interactive, Socrates. Then you could attend all around the country.

Socrates: Very good, but what’s a livestream?

*end scene*

Coming your way March 5th, 2012 is an interactive cupping and Q&A session happening in 6 places at once, brought to you by the folks at Counter Culture Coffee. Not since Devo played live on Pay-Per-View have we been this excited for a simulcast! The focus of this event will be coffee varieties, their differences, and how they impact the cup:

There are thousands of arabica coffee varieties growing in the world, but the vast majority of coffee cultivation and consumption centers around a select few. In the same way that different grape cultivars affect wine flavor, coffee variety influences cup characteristics. To explore this fascinating topic further, we’ve created a short film and an accompanying cupping, comparing 12 + varieties – and we want to share it all with YOU!

The event will be hosted by Counter Culture’s own personal Socrates, Peter Giuliano, who will be offering expertise and insight to viewers at all 6 Counter Culture training labs across the USA. Think of it as a kind of free intro to the Counter Culture Pro Series, except this time the education is absolutely free, and completely open to the public (though a bit of cupping experience would probably help). Gather together in one of Counter Culture’s 6 training centers, cup along with Peter on the flat screen simulcast, and see if you can get him to tell you some amazing stories once the coursework is finished. (Seriously, the man is full of amazing stories.)

You can learn more by checking out the Facebook event here, and here’s a list of CCC Training Centers to aid in your planning:

D.C. – 1840 Columbia Road NW, Suite 202
New York – 37 W. 26th St., Suite 400
Durham – 4911 South Alston Avenue
Chicago – 177 North Ada, Unit 106
Atlanta – King Plow Arts Center, 887 West Marietta Street NW, Suite m210
Asheville – 77 Broadway Street

The post Counter Culture Cupping Event – 6 Cities, One Cupping appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Our “Musicians In Coffee” feature continues today with Peter Giuliano, industry paragon and pal o’ Sprudge. Sprudge.com got to see some serious Peter G guitar shredding in Nicaragua, during a community BBQ at Finca Esperanza Verde. He’s very busy in the coffee industry (President of the SCAA, Director of Coffee and Co-Owner of Counter Culture), but when he’s not working, chances are you’ll find Peter Giuliano strumming a guitar, banging on an accordion or blowing an Irish tin whistle.

Check out his SoundCloud with several songs he recorded when he challenged himself to “write a song a day for a week”. Here’s one of our favorite cuts:

Society for the creative anachronism by Geodesic Recordings

We asked Peter G about his musical background:

“I asked my mom – who was a folkie – if I could play the fiddle when I was about 4 and that’s when I started as a musician.  So, I played bluegrass fiddle growing up, until I got fascinated by reggae, ska, and soul music in high school.  Later, I became interested in Mexican music and Irish music, and wound up studying ethnomusicology.  I wound up playing lots of instruments, including guitar, accordion, Hammond organ, mandolin, violin, Irish tin whistle, bass, drums, piano, and a handful of traditional instruments from various places.

I actually got my first coffee job as a complement to my music gig.  I played in lots of bands, including a band that played exclusively Congolese Soukous music and a kind of punk Mariachi band.  Along the way, I started writing songs.  I still write songs all the time - these SoundCloud songs are just ones I do for fun.”

The post Musicians In Coffee #2: Ain’t Nothin But A Peter G. Thang appeared first on Sprudge.com.

JimSeven: The Naturals Debate

The post “Please don’t ever compare Yirgacheffe coffees to Celine Dion again.” – Geoff Watts appeared first on Sprudge.com.