Coffee Adventures in Honduras

In January of this year I was invited to teach Roasting and Coffee Cupping Classes in Honduras as part of a USAID and Winrock effort to give new information in an effort to bring added value to the coffee that the producers of this region of the world grow.

The 16-day experience involved three separate groups of students. I taught for 2 1/2 days on the average to each group. Each of the individual groups was diverse from one another. The first group involved mostly businessmen in the coffee industry. There were a few farmers in this group; however, it was the second group that was all coffee producers. The 3rd was a group of cupping students of the host organization, I.H.C.A.F.E. (Honduran Coffee Institute) that requested my presence. The classroom portion of my teaching involved PowerPoint presentations that taught the importance of consistency in every step. This covered aspects from the roasting process, to the cupping process to the marketing of their product.

Alberto Ponce was my right hand man during the course I taught. He was trained by, and works for I.H.C.A.F.E. as a roaster and has completed their 3-year intensive course as a certified "catador" (cupper). He roasted the coffees for me on this cute little 5-pound Probatina. This is a roaster that he is well versed in because it was transported from his work place in San Pedro Sula for this training event in La Fe. As he roasted, the students and I would gather round the roaster and discuss the multiple variables that are required in order to create the best roast profiles for varying coffees.

Despite the language barrier that we both brought to the table, we accomplished what we set out to do. The students learned a lot and so did we!!! Alberto will be coming to Hood River Coffee Co. as an intern in the September of 2007. We can't wait to have him with us!

The students took this practicum very seriously. The roast time and temperature was recorded every minute. This information is used to maintain consistency as well as to help keep the roast master aware of any variables that may indicate that something is wrong. This information was used later as we cupped the coffees. Most had never had the opportunity to work with a coffee-roasting machine or to actually cup coffee previous to these classes. Most of the coffee producer students that I worked with had high hopes of opening up their own roastery and coffee shop.

As a coffee roaster for, I.H.C.A.F.E., Alberto Ponce has a lot of pride in his job. His extensive skill and desire for his young years promises to help him create a bright and content future for himself. Here he shows off the finished product….roasted by Alberto, himself!

Here students gathered in the La Fe cupping room to compare coffees that they roasted. This exercise involved one type of coffee roasted three different ways. The first was roasted too quickly and too hot. Therefore it was not thoroughly roasted inside and was burnt at the delicate tips of the coffee bean. The second was roasted very slowly- baked as it were. This style of roasting dulls the profile of the coffee, creating an uninteresting cup of coffee. The third was roasted "just right" as Goldilocks would say. This perfectly timed roast allows for the bean to be roasted evenly throughout. The end result was a well-balanced cup that optimized all that the coffee had to offer. This exercise was invaluable. Many roasters I had visited earlier in the week before classes started were filling their roasters too full. This indeed produced baked coffee. It is really quite a shame given the fact that Honduran coffees are best known for their bright strawberry like acidity and honey sweetness!

Cupping what the students roasted was a critical piece of the coffee roasting education. Without learning how to correctly taste the end product, they would not have a clear understanding of the roasting process. For many this was their first experience in cupping. A few of the women were a bit shy at first. However, by the time we all got to know one another, they were "slurping and spitting" with their male counterparts with abandon!

Cupping involves breathing in deeply the dry aroma and then once hot water is poured over it, the wet fragrance. Once this is done the coffee cools down for a bit, the cupper breathes in deeply the fragrance as he "breaks the crust" which is the cap that forms on the top of the brew when water is first poured.

The intensity of teaching 3 classes back to back for the entire week from Monday to Saturday was broken up with a planned trip into the local town of Pena Blanca. My second group of students (all coffee producers) and I piled into this small school bus for a "night out on the town"!!

In my broken, but "bastante bien" (fairly good, so they said!) Spanish, I told my newfound friends on the bus that I would be honored if we could all sing my favorite Latin American song together. They hooted with laughter and were obviously quite pleased when I told them it was "La Bamba". It was a touching moment for me to be careening down the unpaved mountainous road, at dusk, singing La Bamba with my new compatriots. We were unified at that moment as we found happiness singing at the top of our lungs after a hard day of classes!
After the 16 of us unloaded off of the bus and piled into the sparsely stocked local computer store all at once. Five minutes later, we piled out the same way. We then made our way up the street and around the corner to the local market. It was here that we settled in for a spell to drink a couple of local "Port Royal" Honduran beers. It was "a day in the life" for us folks to enjoy and remember as we soaked up the surroundings and our time together.

No trip would be complete without stumbling upon a look-a-like. Once I told Austerio and his buddies that he looked like Sean Penn to me, it stuck like glue. Three months later when I returned as a Cup of Excellence International Judge I was reintroduced to him as "Sean Penn"!

So I walked away from my first experience in Honduras absolutely exhausted mentally. I had never been responsible for teaching students for that long. Nor had I ever been thrown into a situation with so little understanding of how it would all really work and flow. But flow it did. The 3 groups of Hondurans have showed me what a gentle and respectful people they are. We all learned many things from one another. Roasting, Cupping and living!