Our intrepid intern Joanna Han (@joannakarenina) succinctly recaps our wild and wacky week. Do you follow her on Instagram? Her photography is really quite delightful. And yes, she is definitely a real person. 

Sprudge LIVE!: Are you following @SprudgeLive on Twitter yet? It’s our brand new Twitter handle dedicated exclusively to live broadcasting barista competitions and events. We tested it out for the first time the other night to tweet through the premiere of Todd Charmichael’s Travel Channel show, “Dangerous Grounds,” so if you missed out, follow us and catch up with our not-to-be-missed commentary!

Take Our Survey On Barista Health!:  Our very own Alex Bernson is working on a special series on the health effects of barista health, and he needs your help! Please take our easy 14-question survey to help contribute to his research, pass it along to your barista friends, then watch for the series in mid-November. Do it!

NPR x Coffee: NPR’s been doing more and more coverage on coffee lately, including this week’s feature by Allison Aubrey on four African women who are changing the face of coffee, including Mubula Musau of Kenya, certified Q-grader; Angele Ciza of Burundi, owner of a 24.7 acre coffee plantation and employer of 100 women. A highly recommended read (or listen). Here are some past NPR coffee features: cat poop coffee (ugh), a “hot debate on cold-brewed coffee” (double ugh), and coffee as the new wine.

The Coffee Collective Releases New Book, God Kaffe: It’s been a few weeks now, but Copenhagen-based The Coffee Collective has released a new book. Titled simply “God Kaffe,” or “Good Coffee,” the book covers the basics of specialty coffee, from cultivation to latte art pouring and everything in between. For now it only comes in Danish, but for non-Danish speakers it could come in handy as an aesthetically-pleasing book to show off on your kitchen’s coffee shelf, right between your Aeropress and copy of Coffee With Tim Wendelboe. Try reading Google Translate’s hilarious translation of the synopsis in a Scandinavian accent for your own amusement.

Oh, Starbucks: Starbucks has a few unnecessarily extravagant but admittedly nice-to-look-at stores in Dubai, Xi’an, and Fukuoka, and plans to test out the first-ever Starbucks on rails are in the works in Switzerland. Two double-decker Starbucks cars will be speeding along between St. Gallen and Geneva beginning 2013, and if successful, more will be added to lines traveling through the Swiss countryside. But wait, that’s not all! Starbucks has shelled out an absurd $35 million on an all-new expo they call the “Leadership Lab” in Houston, Texas. 9,600 Starbucks store managers were gathered together for part leadership training, part corporate trade show. Starbucks, man.

And to end this week’s Weekly Weekend Week In Review, here’s a nice little video of the Saturday Night Live throwdown at the Flatlander’s Barista Cup:

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Until then, Travel Channel has released four promotional videos. The first episode takes Todd back to Haiti, where his infamous hand-made video made waves in 2010.

The post Tonight: Todd Carmichael’s Travel Channel Show Premieres appeared first on Sprudge.com.

As first reported on Eater, La Colombe Torrefaction owner Todd Carmichael’s reality television show Dangerous Grounds will premiere on November 5th, 2012. Sprudge.com caught up with the globetrotting Mr. Carmichael, currently grounded in Haiti, drenched by Tropical Storm Isaac. Borrowing a nearby NGO’s WiFi connection, Mr. Carmichael was able to candidly answer the following questions we had for him about his new series on the Travel Channel.

What follows is the transcript from that interview.

Sprudge: Mr. Carmichael, congratulations on your new Travel Channel television program. How would you describe the series? Is it No Reservations meets True Lies? Is it Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern meets Rambo?

Todd Carmichael: Ha, no. Its adventure travel with an ultimate purpose, to find a coffee I like. Its a series about a guy that tends to march to his own drum – marching to his own drum – in origins often neglected.

Sprudge: In the first episode, you travel to Haiti. Can you tell us about the brew battle that occurred during the shoot?

Mr. Carmichael: The Haitian mountains seem to change weekly, nothing is as it first seems so every run is a whole new experience, and that one proved the point. I don’t want to be a spoiler, but I’m fairly confident others have experienced the same when trying to open new troubled regions.

Sprudge: For folks watching this series at home, this may be the first time people watch “green buying” in action. Do you think it’s a fair portrayal of the job? Do you fear that it over-sensationalizes the business?

Mr. Carmichael: I’m sure it does – but it’s my way. In short, I really don’t think many buyers operate the way I do. No second tier COOPs, no reps, no starting at the mill, no drivers, no calls to exporters, no guides. I’m a fruit farmer and an adventurer at my core, and nothing pleases me more that just getting in a truck and going up and finding out for myself. In short, I take the harder route when given an option, because that’s where real life is – that’s were I feel my best, and that’s how I fall in love with a coffee. No, I don’t think your average cupper/buyer approaches the job that way.

Sprudge: We find the process of scouting new coffee growing areas to be truly fascinating: getting a border crossing day visa to travel in the DRC, traveling across Borneo in tiny two-seater prop planes… how do you “discover” these remote places? Do you rely on exporters, or do you have a sixth sense about the whole thing?

Mr. Carmichael: Exporters, no. Don’t you find them limiting? (They are like attorneys, call one once you’ve done the crime, not before.) For origins, each one is different. Ethiopia doesn’t take much more than a truck and a map, a goal and your personal flavor profile preference. As for off the radar regions, its broader logic and a topographic map. Take DRC for example: Anyone visiting the Belgian dry mill near Lake Kivu can speak to any of the cats working the hullers and they will tell you, a significant amount of parchment is coming over from the DRC. Bingo. The rest is curiosity – pure undiluted curiosity.

Sprudge: Are there any Direct Traders who’ve inspired your quest?

Mr. Carmichael: I’m not sure inspired is the right word, respect is. Duane and Doug – even though we don’t see the world the same, I loved both their early work in Rwanda. Bravo.

Sprudge: Will La Colombe customers be seeing coffees from Malawi or Madagascar available in their favorite La Colombe cafe? Is the show going to be integrated to drive customers to your cafes?

Mr. Carmichael: No, none of us want this to be some schlocky infomercial. Having said that, when I find something I love, I’ll share it. In the end, my hope is that people enjoy, even just for an hour, being a part of a travel experience outside their own comfort zone, and mostly just get a little more curious about where their coffee comes from, and hopefully, make a simple connection to a farmer or two.

Sprudge: How did you get hooked up with the Travel Channel? Was your Haiti video from last year a demo for this show?

Mr. Carmichael: The movie “Race to the Bottom of the Earth” drew their attention – a guy alone in the wilderness. The Haiti video was a sort of appeal to other roasters – come, its here! I still haven’t given up on that yet.

Sprudge: What other kind of coffee TV shows would you like to someday see? How excited has The Travel Channel been about putting specialty coffee into the homes of millions of Americans?

Mr. Carmichael: I’m jacked about the opportunity, to share what I love, we love, in my annoying unique way. I am, however, terrified of the coffee community blow back – its not as though I’m not a controversial figure already, right? As for Travel Channel, they seem genuinely excited about the series – being given 8 episodes is testimony to that, and an honor.

Sprudge: Thanks for the time, Todd! Stay dry!

Todd Carmichael’s series Dangerous Grounds premieres November 5th on the Travel Channel.

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In 2009, Cuba had the worst harvest on record, yielding just 5,500 tons of green coffee. Raul Castro had to personally order over $50 million dollars worth of imported coffee just to meet the demands of all of those thirsty Cubans. “That’s not really a luxury I can afford right now so I’d rather we just figure our shit out here in Cuba,” Mr. Castro told reporters (we’re paraphrasing). So what’s an embattled Communist leader to do? Biotechnology to the rescue!

You know, biotech has saved the world’s supply of coffee in the past. Think of all of those delicious varieties you enjoy at home – many of them were at one point in time designed to be high-yielding, disease resistant, and fortified with deliciousness. Well, those Cuban scientists are crossing traditional local varieties with coffee plants from Africa that Deputy Agriculture Minister Ramon Frometa hopes will pump up production to over 20,000 tons in 2015, making Cuban Coffee a viable export product. Has anyone told Todd Carmichael yet? Coffee Hunter season two!

You can read about it over here at Xinhuanet, but we dissected all the juicy bits already, so you don’t really need to. We’re looking forward to cupping mutant Cuban Heirloom African Hybrid varieties in 2015!

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No, really, this is actually happening: Todd Carmichael is getting his own TV show. It’s called “Coffee Hunter”, and it’s been confirmed by the Travel Channel for their summer line-up of programming. The details-adverse folks at Philly Eater have a Q&A with Todd:

Where are some of the other places you’re shooting episodes for Coffee Hunter?
Angola, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Madagascar. We’re headed to re-emerging places that in a lot of cases the world forgot about. It’s funny, people are always on the hunt for buried treasure, and in my opinion when you’re looking for that, you need to go where no one else is looking. We’re working on Cuba, too, which is my real goal. We have to figure out a way to get there and establish trade without getting arrested (laughs). But, really, Cuba is a goal for us in terms of coffee at La Colombe and for the show.

What do you think will be the most surprising aspect of the show for viewers?
Beans aren’t grown at chateaus in wealthy areas. There aren’t these beautiful vineyards full of beans growing all over, usually they’re grown by farmers who also have yams, potatoes, and peas in the same rows of soil. Sure, you can go to developed areas like Costa Rica and see it in a different light, but in reality, most of our beanage comes from places like Haiti. It’s going to surprise people to see that, I think. People group wine and coffee together in terms of enthusiasm and those who are passionate about it, as well as knowing good quality product. But, we save the meat of a grape to make wine, and we save the seed of the coffee plant to make coffee. It’s a different beast. And that’s almost a metaphor for the different cultures surrounding wine and coffee production.

We’ll hold off on the op-ed until we actually see “Coffee Hunter”, but we hope The Travel Channel knows the very real responsibility they’ve taken on by developing this program. We wish we’d seen someone from the Travel Channel – or Todd Carmichael, for that matter – at last week’s SCAA Symposium, an event where serious issues of global coffee commerce were discussed and dissected in a non-sexy way. We hope the producers who green-lit Todd’s program took a moment to verse themselves in his subject matter, by reading books like “Uncommon Grounds“, “God In A Cup“, or Jean Nicolas Wintgens’ “Coffee: Growing, Processing, Sustainable Production“. And last, we all-but expect that the folks at the Travel Channel took the very real culture of coffee buying and cultivation seriously enough to consult about their new TV show with outside experts, i.e., people who are not Todd Carmichael.

The idea that you can just plunk someone down somewhere – Myanmar, Madagascar, the Moon – and simply “find” coffee is more than just stupid; it’s ignorant, deeply ignorant, and if this is how they portray green buying on their show, they will be misinforming millions of Americans. Let’s all hold our breaths, shall we?

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From the latest issue of “Garden and Gun” magazine, an interview with Todd Carmichael that will make you reach for your root vegetables and arm your rifle:

“To develop coffee blends, you taste the food—the traditional smokiness, the woodiness, the minerality of things from the earth—and go from there,” Carmichael explains. “In Portland, they’re drinking fruity and floral coffees. That’s no kind of coffee for the South.”

 

Or, to put it in its intended ethnographic parlance, “Batdorf & Bronson, Counter Culture Coffee, and all you accounts down South servin’ Stumptown and Intelli? Y’all can kiss my grits.”

Those flavor notes are part of La Colombe’s “Louisiane” blend, which “Garden and Gun” bills as “a custom blend dedicated to the South”. Dark roast smokiness might be just fine for the cafe sua da you enjoy at your favorite pho joint off Buford Highway, but in Atlanta’s cafes – among the finest in America – to say nothing of Atlanta’s dining rooms – really, some of the finest in America – there exists no old timey cotton tariff on the coffee drinking palate. This is true not only in Atlanta, but in other cities and suburbs across the American South, and increasingly in the city of New Orleans itself (for whom the “Louisiane” blend is named). Fine New Orleanian cafes like Velvet and Cafe Treme would not be caught dead at Sunday supper serving coffee that tastes of woodsy minerals.

Mr. Carmichael has isolated one of specialty coffee’s most fascinating and fast-growing markets and deemed them disinterested in “fruity and floral” coffees, as a matter of cultural proclivity. This isn’t just merely offensive; his statement seeks to throw a wrench into the otherwise healthy rise of great coffee in the South. This is like telling your average Atlantan that “y’all ain’t interested in eatin’ nothin’ but cornbread and bbq,” to which he or she would point to the aforementioned Buford Highway and its bounty of banh mi, dim sum, and Baja fish tacos as a forceful counterpoint, to say nothing of dinner at Empire State South or drinks and snacks at Holeman and Finch. Which is a way of saying: Southern specialty coffee drinkers have quite capable palates, thank you kindly.

Add to that the fact that Mr. Carmichael is a Northerner, based in Philadelphia, who roasts his coffee to taste specifications rooted in early-1990s Seattle, and the whole thing starts to snowball down towards the ridiculous. “Garden and Gun” trots out La Colombe’s presence on the menus of Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud, and given G&G’s editorial mandate – “A Southern lifestyle magazine that’s all about the magic of the new South” – the choice is somewhat baffling, as Ripert and Boulud are perhaps the two least Southern men in history.

Mr. Carmichael should be lauded by the industry for his capitalist-humanitarian efforts in Haiti, and we’ve done so on this website. We’re committed to offering both praise and critique of Mr. Carmichael’s oft-controversial media presence in a professional, gentlemanly fashion – a tone we have not always lived up to in the past. But this latest tactic from La Colombe – “coffee fer the South, dag nabbit” – is about as authentic and worthy as a creeping web of kudzu.

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This is a terrific, captivating source trip film, and it’s the most fascinating thing we’ve watched all day. And yes, it’s La Colombe Torrefaction’s Todd Carmichael. Uh huh, that Todd Carmichael.

The post The Odds Are Good, But The Goods Are Todd: Video From Haiti appeared first on Sprudge.com.