Limited Edition Microlot: Ecuador, La Papaya

When people talk about their favorite coffee producing countries, you don't hear much about Ecuador. Meet the coffee producer who is changing that. Juan Pena is the owner of Hacienda La Papaya in the Saraguro region of Ecuador. Before growing coffee, Pena grew long-stemmed roses, but when a storm wiped out his entire crop he switched to coffee.

Despite being relatively new to coffee farming, Pena is producing a fantastic crop thanks to some innovative practices. Pena has an experimental garden on his farm where he tests the impact of different varieties and fertilizers. Pena's scientific commitment to isolating variables and standardizing practices reveals itself in an exceptionally sweet and complex cup of coffee. We were excited to partner with Cafe Imports to source this microlot.  

This lot of coffee is 100% typica, an old variety known for its sweetness and body but unpopular with farmers because of its low yield. Despite its fantastic cup characteristics, it's very rare to find a 100% typica lot. We taste cherry and chocolate with a crisp chardonnay finish. It's a truly exquisite coffee you don't want to miss. 

La Papaya is available by the cup in each of our cafés and on our webstore. For more information about coffee in Ecuador read this fantastic article by Erin Meister. 

New Year's Resolution: Drink Better Coffee at Home

Sure, you could resolve to learn a new language or run a marathon in 2016, but why not make a resolution you'll actually keep? Making better coffee at home is a simple, attainable way of improving your quality of life in 2016. And we can't think of a better way to enjoy fresh, seasonal, single-origin coffee at home than our coffee subscription. 

With our subscription program we'll send you a rotating selection of single-origin coffee to your door step. Over the course of a year you'll try coffees from Africa, South America, Central America, and the Pacific Islands.  Whether it's a single-estate, regional-select, or a micro-lot, we only source coffees that are exceptionally sweet, dynamic, and complex. All of our coffees ship out the within 24 hours of roasting, so you'll be brewing it up at the height of its flavor potential. 

Whether you drink a cup or a pot a day, we have a variety of different subscription plans which are bound to meet your needs. With all of the subscription packages the shipping is on us and the coffee is discounted, making it the most convenient and affordable way to enjoy Quills Coffee at home. Give a coffee subscription as a Christmas present and we'll throw in a t shirt or travel mug for you! 

 Cover image courtesy of The Coffee Compass. 

Introducing the Quills Coffee Brown from Falls City Brewing Co.

Photo www.bizjournals.com

At Quills, our passion for quality extends beyond coffee to everything we consume, which is why we were honored when Falls City Brewing Company approached us about a limited-release brewing collaboration. We're excited to announce the resulting Quills Coffee Brown is now in select restaurants and stores. 

The Quills Coffee Brown is a brown ale infused with our signature Inkwell Blend. The cold brew coffee is well complemented by chocolate and crystal malt. With a blend of Cascade, Columbus, and Perle hops, the Quills is a well-balanced breakfast beer that's sure to appeal to craft beer snobs and coffee aficionados alike. 

For a limited time you can find the Quills Coffee Brown at the following places:

New Albany: Exchange, Richo's Public House, Big Four Burgers (New Albany location), 

Louisville: Over the 9, Red Castle Liquors (growler fill up), Johnny Brusco's, Outlook Inn

The 2015 Quills Holiday Gift Guide

Trying to figure out what to get the coffee drinker in your life for Christmas? We have a few ideas.

Chemex 

Invented in 1937 by Peter Schlumbohn, the Chemex has been used by James Bond, Mary Tyler Moore, and yours truly. Not only does it make an exceptionally clean cup of coffee, the timeless design earned the Chemex a space in the MOMA's permanent collection. 

Travel Mug

Let's be honest: nothing tastes as good as it could in a paper cup. But sometimes you got to take that coffee to go, which is why we have these beautiful double-walled, vacuum-insulated travel mugs. Guaranteed to keep your coffee hot longer than you want it to! 

Gift Card

It's kind of embarrassing at this point, but you still don't know your loved one's coffee order. It's hard to go wrong with a gift card. Put $25 or more on it and we'll give you a free drink too! 

Coffee Subscription 

There's no worse feeling than stumbling into your kitchen at o-dark-thirty only to find you're out of coffee. Avoid the agony of a coffeeless morning with our coffee subscription program. You'll receive a rotating selection of fresh, seasonal single-origin coffees shipped to your door. Sign up now and you'll receive a free travel mug or t shirt! As always, shipping with the subscription program is on us! 

Hat

Rep your favorite coffee company while covering up that bad hair day. These snazzy snapbacks  will make you the envy of every Jerry and Jane on the block. 

All of these, other than the gift card, are available on our webstore. Order $50 or more and you'll get free shipping with the code holidaze.  

Wholesale Spotlight: Collective Espresso in Cincinnati

At Quills we're committed to sourcing and roasting the best coffee possible. Of course, a lot of that coffee ends up in our cafés, but we're also proud to partner with some amazing coffee shops, restaurants, and business. In a new blog series we want to highlight some of those partners. 

Residents of Cincinnati need no introduction to Collective Espresso. What started as a small espresso bar in Cinci's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood three years ago has expanded to three locations around the city. Their most recent location in the lobby of the Contemporary Art Center is as beautiful a café as we've seen anywhere. 

What all three locations have in common is a simple, coffee-centric menu and a next-level commitment to quality. Owners Dave Hart and Dustin Miller have a keen eye for design and discerning palate for coffee. We're proud that they feature our coffee in a line up that includes some highly esteemed roasters. 

After opening three cafés in three years, Collective shows no signs of slowing down. If you're ever in the Cincinnati area we would make visiting a priority! 

All photos courtesy The Coffee Compass. 

New Coffees: Brazil, Santa Ines and Colombia, Cauca

Just in time for the holiday season we have a couple of fresh crop single origin coffees that are sure to keep you warm these colder months. 

The return of Brazil, Santa Ines has been highly anticipated by many of our baristas. Produced by the Pereira family, this pulp-natural process coffee has a complexity seldom seen in a Brazilian coffee. The sweetness and body one expects from the region is there, with notes of plum and raisin to round out a wonderfully dynamic cup of coffee. It's one of those rare coffees that is both exciting and interesting for coffee nerds while remaining approachable and immensely enjoyable for a broader audience. 

Because of these qualities we selected the Santa Ines to be featured as our single origin espresso in December. 

The second coffee is from the Cauca region of Colombia. Colombia has such a diversity of coffee growing regions that there is almost always a Colombian coffee in season. The Cauca region is known for its sweet coffees, and this blend of caturra and castillo  varieties is no exception. We taste a sweet caramel complimented by notes of mixed berries and cherry.  

Both coffees are now available on our webstore and in all of our cafés. 

The Peru Diaries: Cenfrocafe

This fall we traveled to Peru to find the best coffees from the region, meet the producers who grow our coffee, and learn first hand what it takes to grow specialty coffee. We've been sharing our experiences in a series called The Peru Diaries. 

It's impossible to tell the story of Peruvian specialty without mentioning Cenfrocafe. By all accounts this cooperative of more than 1,900 farmers has been the greatest catalyst for improving coffee quality in the region. 

Peru is well known for being the number one producer of Fair Trade and organic coffee (FTO). While FTO certifications are helpful in ensuring base standards for farming practices and quality of life, it doesn't tell us how the coffee actually tastes. A coffee could be organically farmed, Fair Trade certified, and taste horrible. Quills buys a lot of FTO coffee, but our primary concern is always the quality of flavor.  Thankfully, Cenfrocafe shares our convictions. 

It's rare to find such a large cooperative committed to quality-based incentives. It's easier to blend large lots of coffee to sell on the commodity market than separate out microlots and test for quality. Cenfrocafe recognizes that paying farmers a premium for higher scoring coffees is the most effective way to improve their livelihood. Companies like us are willing to pay more for better tasting coffee, which has an impact on the entire cooperative. Currently about 15% of the coffee produced by Cenfrocafe members is being sold on the specialty market, a number up several points from previous years.  The cooperative actively works with their producers to help them improve their coffee, whether it's through teaching better farming practices or providing loans so producers can improve their infrastructure.

Coffee producers deliver their harvest to Cenfrocafe's warehouses in large bags known as quintales. The technicians at Cenfrocafe will take a sample from each quintales to measure moisture content and calculate the percentage of defects. The numbers are then crunched to calculate that producer's yield, i.e. how much sellable coffee is present. Samples of coffees grown above 1400 MASL that score a high enough yield will be sent to Cenfrocafe's lab for further testing.

We spent most of our week in Peru at the Cenfrocafe lab. Our partners at Cafe Imports tell us that Cenfrocafe's lab is one of the most advanced they've seen in a coffee producing country. Coffee samples are roasted with a Probat sample roaster and then cupped according to international standards. Over the course of the week we cupped 40 different microlots from around the region and found some truly exceptional coffees. Peruvian coffees are known for their sweetness and body but not much else. But these microlots defied all expectations with a complexity and vibrant acidity seldom found in the region.  

We're excited to share several of these Peruvian microlots with you. They're currently on a ship and we're optimistic we'll have them in time for the holidays.  We're thankful to have partners like Cenfrocafe and Cafe Imports, who are dedicated to pursuing better coffee through meaningful relationships. 

All images by Michael Butterworth. 

Behind the Scenes at El Eden with Roberto Delgado

The man responsible for bringing us coffee from Mexico's El Eden Cooperative is Roberto Delgado. Roberto is the founder of Tiger Orchid Coffee Company, which specializes in importing Mexican coffee. This is the third year we've bought coffee from El Eden and we were pleased to see the quality is better than ever. Roberto was kind enough to answer some of our questions about what he does and why this coffee is so good. 

How did you first discover the El Eden Cooperative? How long have you been working with them? 

I met one of the producers in a trade even in 2011.  They gave us a roasted sample, which was rancid but there was enough there to entice us.  The next crop we got a green sample, and off we went.  We bought a little coffee in 2012 and have increased the amounts ever since.

How have you seen their coffee improve over the years?

The consistency is much better.  In the first couple years, the fermentation could really vary from bag to bag and from producer to producer.  A big part of this improvement has been to reinstate drying beds to control air temperature, moisture and pile depth.  We have also charged the better producers with overseeing the weaker ones.  The production is now pretty consistent, within the limits of their technology.  We now see differences in the producers themselves, which is where we want to be. 

This is the first year that we've bought coffee from a single producer in the cooperative. What are the benefits of keeping the different lots separate? 

The incentive is the main benefit.  In a traditional co-op, the commingling of coffee creates a free rider problem so their coffee is only as good as the worse producer.  The star producers are not paid for their work, so why put the extra effort.  We are trying to side-step this issue by keeping each producer separate.  In this way, we can give each one individual feedback and control consistency.   We have also started to price discriminate producers, and we will continue to implement this going forward.    

This has been one of our most popular coffees these last two years. What's so special about coffees from Guerrero?

Everything about this coffee is unique.  The production area is very close to the coast but the elevation rises very quickly.  It can take 4 to 5 hours to travel the 50km from the coast.  It may be the highest growing region in Mexico.  The soil is also incredibly fertile, and we need to do more work on understanding this.  Because of their isolation, they have developed their coffee program separate from the main Mexican coffee regions.  People in Mexico are still surprised to hear that the state of Guerrero produces coffee.   Their focus on naturally processed coffee is a deliberate effort to differentiate from other coffee regions.  These outside factors are important, but the main element is these producers are bad asses.  They are resilient and focused like no one we have met.  This has cultural underpinnings and historical influences.  No one has ever given these communities anything.  What they have, they have developed themselves in a very harsh environment.  Their culture is quite unique, the same as their coffee.