Origin: Sumatra
Region: Aceh Province, Bener Meriah region, Pondok Baru microregion
Varietal: Bourbon, Catimor, Timor hybrid
Processing Method: Wet-hulled

Cupping Notes:
This Vienna Melange, an old-world roasting/blending technique of combining different roast styles of the same coffee, features a rich, heavy body and thoroughly satisfying earthy cup.

The Story: (From the TransFair USA website)
The Gayo Organic Coffee Farmers Association (PPKGO) is an organic Fair Trade coffee cooperative located in the Gayo Highlands of the Aceh province of Sumatra, Indonesia. Cooperative members are small-scale coffee farmers dedicated to producing 100% certified organic, shade-grown coffee. In a region known for political conflict, the co-op has continued to produce, process, and export high-quality Sumatran coffee. It has maintained relative peace and unity among an ethnically diverse membership comprised of Gayo, Javanese, Acehnese, Padang, and Batak peoples. Twenty percent of PPKGO’s members are women.

PPKGO lies in an environmentally sensitive region—the buffer zone to Gunung Leuser National Park, which contains critical watershed areas and sanctuaries for endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger. The co-op has been Fair Trade certified by Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) since 2000, and Fair Trade price incentives and technical support provided by the cooperative have encouraged sustainable agriculture and resource conservation.

The Fair Trade price has enabled Persatuan Petani Kopi Gayo Organik to establish various social and productive programs.

Productive Investment
Community nurseries provide improved and grafted coffee and shade tree seedlings. Farmers receive training in growing additional crops such as vanilla, potatoes, and bananas for the market. The co-op has made improvements to the water supply, local roads, mosques, and schools. PPKGO has constructed two cupping labs and 16 satellite wet mills in producing communities. PPKGO offers its members training in coffee cupping and organic certification requirements.

Environment
PPKGO mobilized relief efforts to assist people affected by the earthquake-tsunami that struck Southeast Asia in December 2004.

Credit Program
Co-op members now use a credit union that extends small loans to members and their families, alleviating dependence on outside financing.

Health
PPKGO provides medical training to village nurses and distributes milk for babies.

About the Association

Year Established: 1997

Number of Members: 1,970

Estimated Annual Production: 112 Containers

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Rover @ Home |
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Mexico Ethiopia Burundi Sumatra Panama Decaf

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Mexico Ethiopia Burundi Sumatra Panama Decaf

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Rover @ Home | Go For a Ride

A world tour in your mug!
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Rover @ Home | Best Friends

Your favorite coffee delivered once a month will taste even better when you save up to 15% off retail prices!

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Coffee:

Mexico Ethiopia Burundi Sumatra Panama Decaf

It’s important to remember coffee is an agricultural crop and there may be times where your selected coffee is not available. In this instance we will email you to select an alternative, but reserve the right to substitute a similar coffee when necessary.

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Coffee:

Mexico Ethiopia Burundi Sumatra Panama Decaf

It’s important to remember coffee is an agricultural crop and there may be times where your selected coffee is not available. In this instance we will email you to select an alternative, but reserve the right to substitute a similar coffee when necessary.

Then there’s the coffee.

More often than not, coffee in restaurants is an afterthought.

Red Rover Coffee would like to help you change that. We’re a small, New Hampshire Seacoast-based roaster with a growing consumer following from our participation in local farmers markets. Our focus is narrow: a small portfolio of roast-to-order specialty coffees carefully selected with sustainability and flavor profile in mind. We do not solicit commercial cafe accounts, but rather choose to focus on the end consumer experience and smaller scale programs for restaurants where quality rather than quantity is paramount.

If you are a decision maker in one of the Seacoast’s fine restaurants, we would like to open a dialogue with you. The addition of a thoughtful Red Rover Coffee program could be the crowning touch on your customers’ experience, and a simple yet innovative way to set yourself apart. Contact us to learn more!

Red Rover Limited Edition

Origin: Ethiopia
Region: Yirgacheffe | Gedeo
Varietal: Heirloom varietals
Processing Method: Dry processed

Cupping Notes:
Apricot jam, bergamot (think Earl Grey tea), red licorice, vanilla wafer cookie. Honey-infused lemonade as it cools with a rich mouthfeel of toasted coconut and praline.

The Story: (from our importer’s website)
With the new ECX coffee exchange rules for Ethiopia coffee exports, all lots (with an exception of FTO cooperative coffees) are made anonymous when they enter the Government warehouse. That means we do not know exactly which cooperative or mill this lot is from. We know it is a Yirgacheffe, a Grade 3 (which means little – see my notes on the grading system), and nobody needs to tell us it is a dry-process. One look at the coffee, one sniff of the fragrance when grinding, and you WILL know. While making lots anonymous has been a setback for us, and our coffee relationships in Ethiopia are on hold, a solution is in the works for next harvest … and it doesn’t mean great lots suddenly disappeared. The great coffees are still there, we just know less about them. I would hazard a guess here that this is a Gedio zone lot, which is the best area to do natural (dry-process) coffee in Yirga Cheffe, and that it might be from Idido town district as well. As you know, the tradition in Yirga-cheffe. is wet-processing, whereas Harar has a dry-processing tradition. Wet-processing is the method used in Central America and the like, resulting in a green seed with a cleaner cup profile, and less earthy or rustic cup flavors. Dry-processing involves drying the entire coffee cherry in the sun, and later removing the skin, fruity mucilage layer and protective parchment shell that surrounds the green seed … all in one fell swoop. Excellent dry-processed coffees are difficult because the milling method for wet-processing allows for separation of ripe and unripe coffee cherry (and other defective seeds) using water and machines. But in dry-processing, sorting your under-ripes is done visually, either by sorting the ripe cherry, or later, sorting the “green” bean. (You probably know from experience with Harar and the like that the dry-processed green bean is in fact yellow, mostly because it has more of the silverskin, the chaff, still attached to it). The problem in Ethiopia is this: traditional dry-processed coffee is NOT pre-sorted to include only ripe red coffee cherry and it is sun-dried in a rather haphazard fashion. The difference with this lot is night and day (as an experienced eye can see when you look at the unroasted coffee), this originates with ripe cherry, is uniformly screen-dried in the sun, and has been dry-milled using the same screen and density-sorting techniques as wet-processed lots. A few under-ripes get through, but overall the flavor hints at better sorting up front in the milling process.

Origin: Panama
Region: Boquete
Farm: Volcancito Estate (Jose David Garrido)
Varietal: Caturra
Altitude: 1500-1650 meters
Processing Method: Fully washed; patio dried

Cupping Notes:
Toasty and sweet. Hints of dark chocolate and orange. Rich and creamy body.

The Story:
Finca Volcancito is a true “Estate” as they run both a wet mill, and a dry mill located at a lower, warmer altitude that is well-suited for patio-drying coffee. This allows for total control over the entire production. All of their harvests are separated into micro-lots.

Origin: Ethiopia
Region: Sidamo
Cooperative: Shoye Union
Varietal: Heirloom varietals
Processing Method: Dry process
Cupping Notes:
Melted milk chocolate body and caramel notes.

The Story:
“Shoye Union” is the specific cooperative mill where this coffee originates. A Union = a cooperative. FTO = Fair Trade and Organic certified. Most importantly under current Ethiopia laws, this means the lot can be exported with the name of the mill intact. Originally this is a Dry Process, DP special selection involves harvesting ripe cherry, promptly screen-drying on raised beds, and extra steps in sorting the coffee after it is hulled. This differs from other dry-process Ethiopia coffees, which are often assembled at the tail-ends of the crop, indiscriminately picked, and consolidated later (mixing good coffee with bad). The result is that this coffee has less distraction in terms of earthy, hidey or musty flavors, common in average dry processed Sidamo coffees.

Origin: Burundi
Region: Kayanza
Washing station: Yandaro
Varietal: Bourbon, Jackson, Mibirzi
Altitude: 1760-1850 meters
Processing Method: Fully washed

Cupping Notes:
Floral notes, smooth-bodied with hints of citrus-like brightness.

The Story:
Similar to our last season’s Bwayi Lot 2 coffee, Yandaro is the name of a private washing station/wet mill in the Kayanza region in Northern Burundi, also near the border with Rwanda. In Burundi all coffee is processed and sold at washing stations where the coffee is collected and processed: skin removal, fermentation and sun drying. The beans themselves, grown exclusively by small area farmers, are all Bourbon or Bourbon varietal derivatives such as Jackson and Mibirzi. The washing station is at 1750 meters, about 5740 feet; the coffee is grown at roughly the same altitude.