From the Philippines to Berlin, a Coffee Lover on Brewing and Farming: S8E2

Marielle is a Data Scientist in Berlin. She is also a long-distance coffee farmer because her family started a coffee farm in our ancestral home in the Philippines (in Mankayan, Benguet). They practice organic and sustainable Agroforestry and they hope to one day export their coffee through a transparent supply chain.

Original publication date: February 29, 2020

More: https://linktr.ee/stephfuccio

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So I'm in Berlin, Germany at the moment. I've been here for a year now, or like almost a year, but I've been in Germany for um seven years in March, end of March.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

So I've been here a while. Let's do it chronologically. So you're born and raised in the Philippines and moved to Australia and then to Germany?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Right. When I first moved to Germany, I moved to Munich and I was there for two years, or a little more than two years. And then I moved to the western part of Germany, so closer to the Netherlands. I was in a city called Duisburg. That's where I did my PhD. And I moved briefly to Düsseldorf to be with my partner there before we moved to Berlin. Or I moved to Berlin rather last year. And then he followed about four months later. So yeah, pretty, pretty settled in Germany. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder whether I still qualify as an expat because I've been here for so long.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Yeah, I use it very loosely. Sometimes I interview people who've never even left their home country but are so connected to other places. I'm like, that's fine. You're yeah, that's fine. To the inside, you're all mixed up, and that's the people I like to talk to because that's kind of my internal confusion/slash gorgeousness of this life. Let's talk about what you're doing right now. Are you drinking coffee right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I wish I was, but I already had my coffee. So I um I so I so I uh hand brew my coffee every morning. So if you've heard of um all these gadgets like chemics and v60s and things, I use a V60, Hario V60 hand filter uh to brew my coffee every morning. And this morning I had coffee from Yunnan, China, which is actually not that common. So my favorite roastery here in Berlin, it's called 19 Grams. Um, they're the only cafe and roastery in Berlin that offers like coffee from China. So I um couldn't pass up the opportunity to have yeah, Yunnan coffee because it has a really distinct kind of fruity, yeah, kind of like pleasantly sour taste that I really like.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So um that's what I had this morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

But I ran out. So that was my last, that was the last of the bag, and that's really unfortunate that I couldn't be drinking like as I was talking to you. But um, I'll probably get some more tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

You can definitely get some more. I didn't realize I have been to that coffee shop, but I haven't actually bought any beans there yet. Yeah, I have a fun fact, I have a chiropractor down the street from them. So I was just like, oh, coffee shop. Of course I'm gonna go into this place.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

And um, you should try their brunch as well. It's pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Okay. Well, I'm not leaving today, but someday I'm going over there someday soon. So the chemics selected out the the sixties, the filter. So is it a basic filter or is there any special things that are happening in there?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Well, yeah, each of these um each of these like uh filters have their own like paper filter. They that maybe they come with their own paper filter. I I don't know if it's just like branding or whatever. I guess you can use just any other like any kind of filter that'll fit the funnel. But yeah, like I just like to like use chemix filters with chemicx filters and V60 filters with V60, with V60 hand uh hand filters or do you grind your own? I do. So I have like an expensive uh hand grinder, hang hand grinder. The brand is called Commandante. It's actually a German brand, and a lot of um like champion baristas and brewers use it for competitions. And I don't know why. I just wanted to like level up my like home brewing game by like buying this like grinder for Christmas. And it's expensive uh apart from like the parts that are and the the materials that they use to make it, and apart from them being really like sturdy and yeah, I guess professional grade, um, you can actually control the like the grind size to a pretty kind of like minute level. So it's for like when you really want to be precise about your brewing. And like a lot of champion like baristas like to say, it helps them like make consistent cups of coffee. So if you like made a really good cup of coffee at this particular grind size, you can like just use that grind size as your your go-to grind size for when you have like new coffee so you won't brew. So yeah, I do that. And it's a it's always nicer to like have like freshly ground coffee when you brew in the morning. I don't know. I know maybe a lot of this is just like psychological. It's like, oh, if it's freshly made, then it must taste better, but I'm not risking it. I don't know. It's harder than coffee, joy.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

It's definitely harder to coffee. In fact, I try to because I get in a weird twist of fate, I actually get up uh sooner than my husband now, and I want I started to make him coffee in the morning, and he's like, Thank you, but the process is pretty important to me, so I really would prefer if you didn't. I'm like, oh cool, even better for me, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I get that because for me also when I like when I find it and I cook and I cook it, not cooking, but make it. They do say cook in German for coffee, don't they? The cook the coffee cook. Yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

Yeah, they do. So anyway, sorry, I'm like, why do you say cook? I think my A1 level has just starting to get in there. Um anyway, so that that's the smells that come out of it and the process and watching it change and transform. I think they're a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, exactly. So there's this um thing that you have to do when you hand brewed coffee. It's called the bloom. It's when you like pour just a bit of water onto the coffee bed. If you've I guess you've heard of it, um, and you let this like I guess gases or whatever from the roasting process, yeah, it releases those gases because I don't know. Honestly, I s I suppose I should dive into coffee science a bit more, but like as you probably know, I'm more kind of more interested in the agriculture side of it and the sitting around in coffee shop side of it. And I'm just kind of like, yeah, I look up how to brew coffee from either YouTube videos or even podcasts, actually. And from the like that I've met here in Berlin. But I've never really understood kind of like the chemistry of it or the technique of it. But um, I'll probably get there at some point.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

I'm in no rush. I'm I this is a lifelong love affair for me. So eventually I'll probably get to the point my coffee is like, but right now I'm not there. But it'll it'll miss talent. It has like 20 minutes. I hope so too. My coffee making experience, yeah. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

So okay, do you put anything into your I do not. I I don't think there's anything more to say other than please don't put milk and sugar in your coffee. Especially if you're getting single origin coffee. Because that really just defeats the purpose of it, right? Like if um for blends, then maybe it's nice to maybe add a little bit of sugar and milk to heighten, I don't know, the flavors of the blend. But if you get single origin coffees, the the flavors come from the process that was used uh post-harvest. So you're going to lose a lot of the subtleties that the farmer and the processors and the roasters want you to taste. So that's kind of like, you know, just a shame. The people I drink coffee with, I mean, like I'll never tell them, oh my god, like why are you putting like milk and sugar in your coffee? That's like, you know, blasphemy or whatever. It's more of a prevention thing for me. It's like if you ask my opinion about a good coffee, I'll just say, like, just drink it as it like it was meant to be drunk. But and that is without milk and sugar. But that's just a personal preference. How about you? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 7:44

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SPEAKER_03 9:16

I do like a little bit of foamy milk occasionally, especially if I know the place. Like if I'm meeting someone and I'm iffy on the coffee, I'll go with a cappuccino or like a macchiato first. And then I'll eat the brand. And I'll smell theirs if they get, you know, if they get it untainted, and I'll kind of, you know, work it. But if I know the place is amazing, I definitely want to have just the coffee first.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Right. And right. I guess that's also because I don't know how to make like coffees with mix. Like I don't know how to do like cappuccinos or like I don't know how to make latte art and things like that. So um, and I think hand filtering is I mean it it it takes a lot of time as well, like a lot of time, like 15 minutes um out of your morning. But to me, like I I find that like making espresso and making cappuccinos is really intimidating. And so I just like go for like the the simple hand brew, like less the fewer ingredients there are the the better. Um but me but I I think I'd like to get to a point where I can make like my own cappuccinos and latte and like flat whites and things and make pretty latte eye and stuff like that. So I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

I like the fact because I have a slight lactose intolerance. So I feel like if I learned how to do that well, it would be a very slippy slope, and I would just be like, let's make the first cappuccino of the day, and ten cappuccinos later, I would have like massive I would be like correct. So I I kind of like it something I do in a coffee shop and not at home.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Right, right. Got it.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

But we are kind of hiding part of your coffee history from the listeners to now. Why don't we tell them about your coffee background?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, I I wouldn't say we have like a long coffee, like a long continuing coffee history. My dad's family is from a region in the Philippines called Bengate, which is like in the mountainous regions of the Philippines in the north of the country. And as you probably know, coffee grows in high altitude, right? High altitudes. So um that area is was known for a long time um as a coffee growing region. But in the like turn of the century, turn of the 20th century, there was a coffee ravaged that area. It's called coffee rough, and it basically devastates entire plantations of coffee. And so that area is not known for coffee growing anymore. But my dad's family has land over there, which isn't being used for anything right now. I mean, until we started grow growing coffee there two years ago. But we found out as we started to research about like the land that we own over there and the history of it, that uh my great-great-grandfather, who was actually American, grew coffee there and had a plantation of his own that he kept secret from authorities. I'm I'm not really sure why he kept it a secret. We just found like really old letters from our great-great-grandfather saying that like letters that he wrote to his family back in the US saying that like I'm growing coffee here and it's going really great. But we don't know what happened to that plantation, actually. Our guess is that it's like the coffee trees that he used to grow there is just now part of the forest. But that's the that's just growing there in the wild. So yeah, so um we now like have about 5,000 coffee seedlings that we've planted on about three hectares of land. I could be getting the numbers wrong because it might it's my mom who does most of the farm management. But yeah, we started planting two years ago and now we have about five, around 5,000 coffee seedlings. And we aren't expecting a harvest until three years from now because coffee takes up to five years to mature. After that, we hope to like sell some of that coffee in the Capitol, or if we find like good partners here in Europe and maybe export some of it here.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

And are you involved in any part of the growing process or that? I mean you're far away.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, I'm actually I'm the one who um helps my mom find like coffee resources or like like either books about like how to like basically best practices for coffee farming. So the thing about coffee farming in the Philippines is that because of this this coffee rust disease that basically destroyed the coffee industry in the Philippines, like it kind of never recovered from that. So coffee farming techniques in the Philippines are a little updated. So what I do is that because I'm living here in Europe, I get to meet other coffee professionals who then work with farmers in other countries that have more advanced techniques. And from them I learn about a lot of books that are really helpful and a lot of resources that might be helpful. Podcasts are really helpful, actually. So there's an association called like Special Tea Coffee Association, and they do a lot of interviews and uh talks with like coffee farmers in like South America and Africa. And so I help my like basically help my mom by curating all of these resources that she then like yeah, listens to, or like uh we work on like what techniques would then we work for our farm, and then she communicates that to um our partner farmers in um in the Philippines. So besides that, I go to a lot of coffee events, like there's this big event called World of Coffee, and it's like yeah, just a gathering of like specialty coffee professionals from all over the world, like roasters and importers. Um I use that opportunity to like ask um coffee professionals what the market is looking for. What kind of coffees do Europeans like? What kind of coffees do Americans like? And that's the kind of information that my mom wouldn't have access to, and because and it it's really important because Europe and North America are the biggest consumers of coffee. So um yeah, I'd like to think I'm useful. I like to think that I'm bossing my parents around from far away. They call me the project managers.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Yeah, I'm a little floored right now because I did uh in full disclosure, I did read your Twitter feed last night and you're a data scientist, is that right? Yeah. Okay, so on top of my day job, which is pretty hefty, uh, mentally speaking, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, exactly. You know, I it actually depends on the day. Like, I don't know which is like which job is my side job and which one is my real job, because there are days when I just cannot with coding and I cannot with data, I cannot with uh data split statistics, and I just want to read up on the latest like roasting technique or brewing techniques or like this new fermentation that you can try with your coffee cherries. And then there are days when I'm like, okay, um, my boss needs something, so I should probably learn this new algorithm. And then like I'll like see my like messages pile up from my mom because she um yeah, she sent me regular updates. Not not that she's there in the farm all the time, but like she's there like maybe twice twice a month. Uh yeah, twice a month. And then I just kind of let her then take like most of the initiative because both data science and coffee are um like full of like really passionate uh people. Like I feel it it feels like like sticking to just one of these fields gets a little too intense that like I can't devote my time or like 100% to it. Otherwise, I don't know, it's just not good for me. Like I get so like passionate and intense about it that like I don't know, like my I feel like my head's like gonna explode. So I'd like to think that one, like when I'm concentrating on one like field, I the other one is like kind of my creative outlet. So we'll see how sustainable this is. I just started two years ago.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

So well, okay, what if you're and I don't know why I'm turning into a career council right now, but what if the two worlds met and you found a data science niche in the coffee world? Would you like to do you want to keep them separate?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

That would be actually ideal. Um you just kind of have to be careful about like coffee and and coffee and technology because you know, coffee and is it it's an agricultural product, right? So and a lot of um people in tech are very interested in automation and like artificial intelligence and machine learning, and you be we basically risk like like building, I guess, tools that would then quote unquote steal jobs from farmers and other like people on the field literally coffee. So I think I would I would like to keep that separate for now. So, like for example, like one application that I've seen of like artificial intelligence in coffee is sorting uh coffee cherries after harvest. So, in order to get the best coffee, you have to harvest the reddest, ripest cherries. And you can use like image recognition to like basically take pictures of I don't know of your of your harvest, and it'll then learn which ones are um the ripest cherries. But then that means you won't be able to hire people to you won't you won't you don't need to hire people to then hand sort these coffees for you because like the machine's more efficient. So I'd rather like kind of I'd like to think that there's still a lot of like social responsibility in coffee, especially if you're farming in areas like ours where they're it's pretty isolated from cities, therefore like the people there need, you know, they need jobs and they need like a source of income. But like there are other things that I can use my technology, I I can apply my technology in other ways. So for example, I try to build my own um weather station that like um that my mom can install when she's in the when she goes to the farm. Because she's like coming, she comes to visit me in Europe every summer. So like when it's ready, I'll just give it to her and she can like kind of install it. And then that'll collect data about the weather patterns um at her farm and I can analyze that from here.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

The world of coffee event is that in the same place every year, or does it rotate locations?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

It rotates locations. Actually, last year was held in Berlin. And the year before that, which is the year when we started this coffee farm, it was held in Amsterdam. And this year it'll be in Warsaw, which is not so far from Berlin. Definitely go there this year again, and this time my sister will be joining me. So my sister, she is based in uh Singapore. She's a lot closer to my parents, so she gets to go to the farm more often, I guess. Um, but this year she's gonna like um come join me in the world of coffee, and then together we're kind of we're gonna like kind of suss out the suss out the market together.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Is that an event that just coffee drinkers would go to, or is it very focused on the business side of it?

SPEAKER_01 19:26

It's good for both, actually. But I think if you're in the coffee business, you'll get more bang for your buck, I guess. They also have um competitions running at the same time, like like barista competitions. I think that's always fun to watch if you're into it. And they have this thing called the Roasters Village where um roasters from all over the world come and um yeah, serve their coffees, and you can like score free samples and things like that. Um of course the idea is you know that they like give away the samples to people who might be interested in like getting coffee from them, but like they're also happy for anyone to enjoy it.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

Last summer in Shanghai, they actually had a coffee festival, I think is what they called it. And it sounds very similar, although it probably wasn't as big because it was the first time it was happening. And yeah, they had different beans, different books, different all kinds of different things. And all and I had I thought I had exhausted the specialty coffee of like now. I thought I had explored a lot in Shanghai before this, but they also brought people in from other cities in China and other countries. And so I was just like, this is the day, this is gonna take a while. It was great. Oh, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

I think I heard about that event and I really wanted to go. Um, of course, it was too far away. And I think I think it would have been interesting uh to to see because like China is a really big market for specialty coffee nowadays. The thing about Asian coffees I find that I find very exciting. So for World of Coffee is very um European and North American-centric, because I think just mostly because of geography, but I find I find fascinating about the Asian specialty coffee market is that a lot of coffee from places like the Philippines and Thailand, like the best coffees from these countries, stay in those countries. So maybe if you've ever had like a coffee in in China, maybe you you didn't realize it, but that's probably the best that China has to offer because they're so precious that like they prefer to just sell it within within their like respective countries. And like for those of us who are outside, we miss out on a lot. Whereas here in um in big coffee events like World of Coffee, like all these like roasters um who source their coffee from yeah, South America and like uh and South America and Africa, yeah, they these markets are so like well established that they're happy to just sell their best to the European market. So so yeah, I mean you definitely need to check it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what happened to me when I went to Colombia. I was living there for a few months and I thought, oh, this is gonna be great. Even if the job doesn't turn out to be amazing, the coffee's gonna be great because that's where my priorities are, right? That's when I realized for some markets, they send mo some of the best stuff out, and the most popular place was like. Juan Baldez coffee, which was basically like a knockoff Starbucks equivalent. Sorry, sorry, Bogota, but it's true. It was really hard to find good coffee in Bogota. Yeah. And I was just like, how is this possible? And that was that was my education on import export as far as coffee goes. Right. Okay, let's go back to your own individual coffee drinking experience. When did you fall in love with coffee?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Um, I think I fell in love with coffee when I moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 2010, actually. So that was 10 years ago now. Coffee used to be just a a drink that I would have when I needed to like study, I don't know, with college and like, you know, I'd do all nighters for exams and things like that. Yeah, keep my sanity or whatever in college. I was a big nerd and like um I really enjoyed like studying and things like that. But then when I like I stopped studying and I started working, like I guess I could just take it, I could take it more easy. So then like I so coffee drinking became more of an experience and not just a a beverage that I would consume to stay awake. And Mel Melbourne is known for its like coffee scene. Before there was even a word for like specialty coffee, it had specialty coffee. And of course, like Australia is uh is also the birthplace of um of the flat white. And so uh that's when I started to drink quote unquote specialty coffee. And back then I kind of mostly stuck to yeah, like cappuccinos and flat whites and lattes and things, and I didn't really discover single origin and hamburg coffees until I until actually until we started the coffee farm. That's when I I thought I was like a coffee connoisseur, then I like I knew like the best cafes and coffees in in Germany. Uh, because yeah, uh when I then moved to Germany in 2013 after spending time in Australia, that I learned that like Melbourne was just kind of like the exception. There was good coffee everywhere in Melbourne, but and there's like and I thought that was just like everywhere in the West. But like I moved to Germany and like most coffee is crap.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

But then I was I thought, oh, I know like where to get the best coffee because I lived in Melbourne, so it's like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

But then I didn't know that there was such a thing as single origin as hand brewed coffee, as like you know, aeropressed coffee and like all these subtleties, and until I started to like study like coffee farming. And then I realized that like coffee is good not because well, this is just my subjective like opinion, is that coffee is not good because of like what the barista does, like the milk and the sugar that you added to the to the cup, but because it's good because of the way that it was grown, the way it was harvested, and the way that it was processed at the farm level. And that's how you get really excellent single origin coffees. So this is all a pretty new kind of experience for I feel like I'm learning something new about coffee every year.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

So what is your go-to, like when you go out and have coffee with friends and whatnot, what's your go-to coffee that you get?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I like to get batch brews, actually. What wait, batch brew? So what what is that?

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So a batch brew is uh hand it's like it's basically like hand brewed coffee times 10. Let's just say like a lot of cafes have these big filter machines that they that they use to brew coffee the way that they would do for hand brewed coffees, but like because it's just not feasible to like hand brew every single cup, they just do it in one big batch. Um and it'll taste just as good if you have good if you have good like equipment. Um and they're also much cheaper than like you know, hand brewed coffee. So um I get my single virgin fix without without the price tag. I'd like uh there aren't that many cafes in Berlin that offer batch proofs, actually.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Mostly I haven't actually had that. I just didn't realize there was a phrase for it. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Really?

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Yeah, yeah. Are you not gonna go? Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Um also flat whites if like I I feel like having milk in my coffee.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

The coffee in Berlin. Love it, like it, wish it were better, wish it were worse, too much choice. Like, where do you fall on the spectrum?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

I wish um they were cheaper.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I wish to I wish I'm good coffee right here.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I would I have to say that um a lot of good coffee here is quite good, but kind of overpriced for what for what you're getting, I think. So yesterday I was at a famous Berlin coffee restaurant that I won't name, but they charge like four euros for their um flat whites. Like I I I don't know. I just feel weird about like having to pay more than 350 for for a flat white that you know is a bit quite was a bit watery and like you know, was pretty average from from from my taste. Like, yeah. And you know, hand brew coffees for like seven euros, like mmm. Really? I mean, so yeah, in some places. Also bec I I say this also because I've lived in other places in Germany, and I know that like a like you can get really good flat whites in a medium-sized city like Düsseldorf for like three euros or 250, and it's just as good, if not if not better. And I think because as a like serious like um homebrewer, I buy a lot of beans from these cafes, right? Um and you can get a good bag of specialty coffee in Dusseldorf for like like 10 euros for 250 grams, or 10 euros, 12 euros, maybe, and that would be 12 euros would be the like on the pricier side of things. And here in Berlin you can't get anything cheaper than like 15 euros for 250 grams, and I find that that's just madness. Right. And um, maybe one thing that you also learn when you go to World of Coffee is that all these cafes pretty much buy from the same importer. So it's like, well, I don't I don't know. Maybe it's just business, and I'm not like, you know, I'm not in the cafe roastery side of things. So maybe I'm like missing something, but like as a consumer, I I want to understand what I'm paying for, and sometimes I don't know what I'm paying for.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

There's a previous guest, Anna Blackstan, who is an expat living in Prague, and she introduced me to beautiful phrase peak coffee experiences. And I I want to ask every here on out what their peak coffee experience was. Like one experience, one coffee experience that you will never ever forget. What's yours?

SPEAKER_01 28:39

I think my peak coffee experience is um trying uh coffee from China for the first time. It was, yeah, also at 19 grams two years ago. They were serving a coffee from China as well. It's not the same one as what they're serving today. Just remember, like, yeah, having coffee from China, and I didn't even know that China had a coffee growing region. And I just loved it. It it tasted like cranberries, it was quite sour, and it was on par with like um, at least in my opinion, with like Ethiopian coffees, which are known for like kind of blueberry fruity and floral florid tastes. And I guess maybe as an Asian person, it's just nice to see Asian coffee being sold in Europe. I mean, like hashtag representation matters, but like it's I'm not saying that ironically just feels nice. I don't know. And I felt that like seeing that when when I saw that coffee on the shelf, I thought that like while it's possible for our coffees to quote unquote make it as well in um in in in in like the specialty coffee market here in Europe. And this was like maybe, I don't know, a month or two after we decided to start a coffee farm. And now, like kind of my perception has changed. Like I feel like I don't we don't need to impress the European coffee market anymore. But because back when like we started it, I was like, oh, we need to export this coffee and we need to like conquer the world and like like return smoking coffee to its former glory, blah, blah, blah. So now I've kind of been chilled out, but like I'll never forget how good that coffee was. And from then on, I started to get like have a soft spot for less popular coffee origins, like um Thailand, um, Laos has also really good coffee, Myanmar has really good coffee. Okay, like we most of the coffees I'm mentioning are from Asian countries because like Asia is not very known for its coffee, specialty coffee, apart from Vietnam, which is known for its more commercial coffees. Yeah, so it wasn't just like a pea coffee experience because of what it tasted like, but like it just opened up that whole world of like um unknown origins or unexplored origins. And it was just different from you know the usual like African and South American coffees that are usually served at coffee shops here. So yeah, I would like encourage people who are um into specialty coffee to try unknown origins. Like coffee companies in China and Japan are really good at sourcing like the best coffees in the world. And I've like I've heard this from other coffee professionals as well. Because like as you can imagine, like these roasteries and coffee shops are like are bidding for the best, like the best beans, right? And but for some reason, like China and Japan like win like the best lots, like the comp what you call competition lots, where like yeah, they're the best crops like win, I don't know the high scores from like based on the SEA's like standards. So yeah, I should really do a coffee tour in China, in Japan at some point.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

So for future guests, we we usually again focus on people's individual coffee experiences. What things am I missing that I should be asking them?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I don't know, this might be a controversial question, but I would encourage you to ask people how much they know about coffee farming and how much farmers actually getting paid for the coffee that they grow. The price tag at the moment is a dollar, I don't know,$1.50 a kilogram. I may be getting that wrong. Um, but that's that's not a lot, right? So to pay just a dollar fifty for a kilogram of coffee to a farmer, considering how expensive coffee is to grow, is not all that fair to me. I at least personally. There's this big push amongst coffee, especially coffee roasters and cafes called like I think transparency reports. So it so these cafes and roasteries then disclose how much they pay for their coffee per kilogram. And then that's where that's when like that's what consumers can then use to decide whether they're going to support that cafe or their roaster based on based on what they're willing to pay per kilogram.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

So like a coffee transparency rate kind of thing. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

I didn't know that existed. The more you get into the coffee industry, the more you realize that there's so much you can still do to help the farmers and the people who are in this like whole coffee supply chain. So I I I'm not gonna say that like this is how much you should be paying for your coffee, or like this is how much your your roaster should be paying for coffee, or this is these are the kinds of standards that you have to look out for. But like I wouldn't just maybe encourage people to maybe just think, start thinking about this and kind of figuring out for themselves what's fair and what's not.