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Last week, I was contacted by a new micro-roaster, Coffee Bean Shop, asking if I'd be interested in a free sample of some of their beans to try. I didn't have to think long about gift-horses before deciding that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Steve Leighton, of Has Bean Coffee has launched a simple new website, called Coffee 101. Want to learn a bit more about coffee? Here's what the site says about itself:

The first half of the book of Leviticus describes many different kinds of sacrifices and offerings that the people were to make in Old Testament times. It describes circumstances under which they were to be offered. Who was to offer them. Exactly how it had to be done. And so on.

Here are a few quotations.

Before you read this post, see my post yesterday about a funny coffee shop you could imagine me running…

“What conclusions would you draw, if you saw such a price label, about my intentions in selling this particular coffee?”

Let me suggest a few.

Imagine, if you will, that I start to run a coffee shop. Not one that sells cups of brewed coffee. One that sells packs of freshly roasted coffee beans, to be ground at home and turned into a cup of the very best.

Here’s the price label on a 250g bag of single-origin, know-the-farmer-personally, roasted-yesterday Guatemala.

“Price: £5.
For those who cannot afford £5, the price is £2.
Those who cannot afford £2 may pay £0.50.”

What a funny kind of shop I would be running.

Thanks to David for posting the executive summary of the Adam Smith Institute’s report on fair trade.

Which gives me a prompt to introduce the Cup of Excellence competition to those who haven’t met it.

The Sulotco has had 24 hours to rest now, so time to do a bit of cupping.

It’s easy to worry too much about doing cupping “properly”. At its heart, cupping offers a method of preparing and trying coffee that allows someone to explore the flavours and components of a particular bean as fully as possible. Cupping is about maximalism in coffee exploration.

Well, the Sulotco is here. Here they are:

I need to find an Indonesian coffee I like.

Indonesian coffee, to generalise, can handle a much darker roast than many other origins. The result is a caffeine-rich, dark-roasted, full-bodied coffee – nice to have from time to time for variety’s sake.

I’ve been meaning to post a link to this for a while. Steve Leighton has written an article on how the Fair Trade movement impacts coffee growers. It’s insightful, because he has a lot of inside knowledge when it comes to the coffee industry.