The milling season is back in full swing and that means I
have to leave Oku a few times to visit Bali. We haven’t moved our organic
coffee from the village storehouses yet, so there isn’t too much for me to be
paying attention to down here, but I’m using the few days I’ve been down here
to introduce Jude to the place and make sure that all the improvements we settled
on following our inspection are in place. It’s actually pretty minimal this
year since we took care of all the problems noted during our first inspection
over the past year. Maybe the most notable change is that we added a polisher
to our milling line, so when the coffee finishes having the parchment taken
off, it is run across a flat screen that rubs off the silvery skin you find on
unroasted coffee. There are a few benefits to this:
1. It’s a little bit prettier for wholesale customers
2. There is a little less debris left over after roasting as
the silvery skin becomes a bit of papery fluff during the process
3. Sorting is easier
Number 3 is definitely the most important to me. Removing
the silver skin gives the coffee more uniformity and makes identifying defects
simpler. Thus, our coffee is going to be cleaner and our sorters are able to
get through a bag of coffee a little quicker than they would otherwise. Since
they are payed by the bag that translates directly into more money per day (not
necessarily more money though, since that depends on how much total coffee we
process).
I shouldn’t underplay those first two benefits, though. They
represent a commitment to quality that makes me proud to be working for Mocha
Joe’s and our partner Alpine Coffee, Ltd. This is the third year I’m seeing
this mill operate and it has gotten better and better. Whether you’re in
Cameroon or the US there’s a lot to be said for a business that doesn’t get
complacent with being ‘good enough’. In the long run, good enough never stays
good enough for long and that is going to be more and more true in buying and
selling coffee from Cameroon as the profile of the region grows (which it is
doing). We welcome the competition.
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