COMSA -- Pushing Manure Management to Entirely New Levels A Field Report from the Diplomado Organico, Oct 23 - 30, 2016 By Monika Firl, CoopCoffees Director of Sustainability Preparation: What a delight to work with the COMSA team and our producer partners to pull this event together. From start to finish, the logistics, planning and communications were fluid, collaborative and (nearly) without fail. CoopCoffees sponsored the training-food-housing costs during the week-long event, while COMSA has developed the curriculum and organized all the local details both for the trainings on the demonstration farm La Fortaleza and for the producer site visits. Meanwhile, each of our interested producer partners was responsible for getting their representatives to Honduras. We had producers flying in from as far as Peru, and others traveling by land for as long as 72 hours in order to take part! The Mexico / Guatemala group formed a carpool and rented a van together to lower costs. And, far from any of this generating fatigue or frustration – throughout the week the group was an impressively cohesive, collaborative and a fun-loving bunch of people! COMSA set the context of the meeting with a round of introductions and expectations from each of us, which would be revisited at the end of the week, in order to gauge to what extent we and the workshop organizers met our and their own expectations... which we did return to at the end of the event – with quite stellar results! COMSA - Introduction: “When we began this journey 15 years ago, we thought organic agriculture simply meant that we needed to eliminate chemicals from our production systems,” said COMSA Tecnico Fredy Zelaya. “But along the way, we learned that true organic agriculture means so much more, and it begins in our brain.” “We are each a divine being; we are emotional, spiritual, energetic, physical and mineral beings,” he added. And we’re connected to our world through our five senses.” Café Orgánico Marcala (COMSA) was founded in December of 2001 with a vision of creating new and alternative development opportunities for small-scale coffee farmers in the region. The organization originally brought together 69 small-scale farmers of Lenca origin who were interested in selling their coffee collectively under the umbrella of a rural credit union. At that time, the predominant production system in the region used conventional (chemical) practices and sold to the local coyotes, often at prices that did not even cover their production costs. One of the primary founding objectives of COMSA was to seek out and promote new ways of thinking – both in production, moving from conventional to organic production; and in markets, moving from commercial to specialty buyers. But the transition was tough for a lot of the initial members and several dropped out, leaving the organization with only 42 active members. In response, the COMSA BoD and technical team looked for new methods of intensive organics to support their transition and established a strategic alliance with the Corporación Educativa para el Desarrollo Costarricense – CEDECO.With CEDECO’s support, staff and members of COMSA learned new and innovative practices to transform their lands into integrated organic farms – promoting soil and water conservation, and the preservation of local plant and wildlife. Meanwhile, members began to see improvements in coffee yields, better family relationships and rapid growth in membership for COMSA. “We were beginning to understand that before we could expect improvements in production, we would need to recover the life in our soils that we’d been killing all those years with chemical production poisons,” Fredy added. “That’s when we began experimenting with micro-organisms.” With their initial successes, members became more and more open to experimentation with innovative organic practices, and the following “organic evolution”: 2001 – use of organic materials; 2006 – application of micro- organisms in compost; 2010 – exploring the use of minerals; 2012 – production of fermented “moleculas vivas”; 2013 – strengthening the grey matter (brainpower) of their technical team, members and strong educational program with their youth and women’s groups. Today, COMSA is 1200 members strong and with a waiting list of producers still hoping to join the organization. “Many of our problems today, are a result of the bad decisions we’ve made in the past,” continued COMSA tecnico Victor Perez. “We have become detached from the cause and effect of our own actions... and one of our principal problems is that these days all we do is act, without taking into consideration the consequences of our actions. If we understood the impact of our actions on life around us, maybe we would become a little more careful....” The Diplomado Organico was an interesting blend of: big picture understanding of regenerative production systems and sustainable community development; learning new recipes and applications of specific organic composting systems and foliar sprays, as well as biodynamic agriculture and mineral energy; farm visits and diversification; and a good dose of alternative education and cultivating a spirit of innovation. OR in COMSA terms: a Crash Course of the 5M’s (materia organic; micro- organismos; minerals, moleculas vivas y material gris). We spent a full day at the organic concoctions production site: with explanations, demonstrations and hands-on learning to prepare MM Solids and Sprays, Super MM, Bioyogurt, Mineral Soups for different periods of the productive cycle, “Bocashi”anaerobic compost practices and a variety of “live molecule” insect/disease repellents and foliar nutrient sprays.

Did you know our roaster Conscious Coffees belongs to a coop?  As a member of Cooperative Coffees, we help to ensure the coffee you're sipping is not only excellent, but also ethical.  The Coop strives to ensure fair compensation for farmers and establishes personal, long-term relationships.  This more personal approach to sourcing your favorite cup ensures transparency, social and environmental responsibility, and accountability!  Learn more about the Coop and Conscious Coffees by clicking on our links below. http://www.consciouscoffees.com/impact http://coopcoffees.coop/about/history/

What in the heck is a "honey-process" coffee?  This great little article gives some insight!  Make sure to give our honey-process Honduras a sip next time you're in!  

The American Homebrewers Association recently published an article about how to make cold brew coffee and use it in your home brewed beer . They checked in with us here at The Cup to see how we make toddy.  

"Cold brew coffee is made by steeping coarse-ground, dark-roasted coffee beans in cold water for 12-24 hours, then straining until free of sediment... You will be amazed at flavors and aromas you get from a cup of cold brew coffee compared to the same beans being hot brewed and then chilled."

  We couldn't have said it better ourselves! Cold brewed coffee is a favorite at The Cup, whether it's the toddy, nitro coffee, or the 8-hour Kyoto drip. Check out the full article here for more detailed directions and awesome advice for making your own coffee flavored beer at home!  

Have you tried our new Nitrogen Coffee? That's right - we have put our delicious iced coffee on a Nitrogen tap - and boy is it delightful! Nitro Coffee has a beer-like "head", which cascades gently through every glass, just like a Guinness Stout…but it's all coffee , baby! Come down and try Boulder's FIRST NITRO COFFEE!

As conscious citizens of an ever-expanding global economy, we love our “fair-trade” products. We want to know that our money is supporting good in the world, instead of contributing to more global destruction and suffering. But if you’re like me, you wonder whether or not your money actually makes it all the way back to the people working long and hard to produce tasty treats like coffee and chocolate, and what their lives look like. You wonder what exactly goes into that little mug of morning warmth. Whose hands cultivated the beans that went into it? Who are the children whose mouths were fed as a result of the cultivation of those beans? How much labor, money, and natural resources went into it? These are the questions my sister Annie and I asked as we embarked on our journey to visit the coffee producing community of Pueblo Nuevo in San Marcos, Guatemala.
Armed with second-hand hiking shoes, notebooks, an essential roll of our own toilet paper and a healthy skepticism of capitalist trade, we set out across Lake Atitlán by boat and then slightly North West toward Quetzaltenango. The three-hour, Marimba-filled bus ride had us clinging to our seats around questionable corners, and wondering out loud to each other what we were getting ourselves into. Reaching Quezaltenago, we literally squeezed our way between the Guatemalans whose stop had not yet arrived, and who, despite their tiny size, manage to seemingly fill every crack of space, making exiting the bus a feat in and of itself. The bus, barely making it to a stop, left us on a dusty corner on the outskirts of the busy ex-colonial town.
From there, we were soon whisked off in a red pick-up truck owned by a Manos Campesinas, an umbrella organization that works with 8 grassroots organizations of four different geographic departments: San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Retalhuleu and Sololá. Overall, Manos Campesinas represents 1,073 individual members, all of them small coffee producers. Their goal: to get coffee produced by family-owned farms from the tree and to consumers in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany while adhering to fair trade principles such as livable wages and democratic organization.
How much more “up” could this winding dirt road go, we wondered? We had figured that the energetic discussion and dark-black coffee we were treated to at head quarters would be the extent of our visit with this deeply impactful organization, but six hours into a journey from the relative highlands of Quetzaltenango into the tropics of San Marcos, we turned off onto a red dirt road, at which point our new friend Miguel turned to us and said, “only two more hours to go!”
The hairpin turns and impossibly steep inclines were entirely entertaining until monsoon-like rains morphed them into vertical rivers that had us wondering whether or not our Toyota 4x4 came equipped with flotation devices. White knuckled, Miguel ensured us that this was normal, and that we had just a few more inclines to summit before reaching our final destination: the amazingly isolated community of Pueblo Nuevo, lost somewhere in the mountains between Chiapas, Mexico and Malacatán, Guatemala.
As we drove in, we were welcomed by a combination of blank stares, waving hands and curious smiles. Uniformed school children scattered across the washed out road, while mothers with babies looked on with wonder, and men with machetes either ignored us or tried intently to make eye contact and flash a gold-toothed grin. Though we were eager to stop and make friends, we were ushered on by Miguel who drove us past the tattered town center and up another steep hill, before finally breeching a plateau that yielded a breathtaking view of Mexico as the backdrop to the local coffee cooperative’s office. Asociación de Pequeños Caficultores Orgánicos Maya-Mames (APECAFORM) is made up of 400 farmers in 17 communities all cultivating their crops on the slopes of Volcano Tajumulco in the Southwestern Highlands of the Guatemalan Department of San Marcos. Their headquarters and processing facility is here in Pueblo Nuevo because of its relatively central location.
After hiking down to the newly built office we were immediately shown to a cement-walled room with beds outfitted with thickly woven wool blankets - a luxury afforded to the cooperative by their increasing income and stability. The APECAFORM cooperative, we learned, was founded in 1992 and legalized under Guatemalan law in 1998. Its foundation was laid at a time in Guatemala’s history wrought with government-instigated violence and dire poverty, especially right here on the border with Mexico, making its success an even more triumphant story.
Members of the cooperative proudly showed us to a room wall-papered with posters depicting the fair-trade principles and lined with old desks piled with stacks of wrinkled papers and new filing cabinets waiting to filled. There, we learned the basic pillars of the fair trade coffee, which some might be surprised to learn do not revolve entirely around price of the coffee. To the cooperative, the most important aspects of fair-trade coffee are democracy, transparency, education and organic production, not just bottom line prices.
As members of the cooperative exporting through Manos Campesinas, APECAFORM farmers are able to sell their crops for at least three time the price they might earn from selling to coyotes (middle men looking to pay lowest prices at the fastest turnaround). Yet keeping these coyotes out of the equation is one of the biggest challenges Manos Campesinas faces. Occasionally, coyotes offer slightly higher prices, but selling to the coyotes rather than cooperative, producers lose benefits such as education and support structures. We listened intently as the excited members of the cooperative ushered us out the door and started us down a forest path.
We could barely keep up with Juan de Dios, a middle-aged father and respected leader in the community, as he descended the seemingly vertical slope down from the dirt road through the community and onto one of the many parcels of coffee-producing land. Calling out a distinct whistle to get the attention of coffee farmer Ernesto Perez Hernandez, he seemed to hop effortlessly down as we clung to tree branches and searched for adequate footing along the muddy path. Eventually, the call was answered and Hernandez appeared from below, wearing dirty jeans and a worn out puma cap, his machete swinging by his side.
A father of six children, all mostly grown, Hernandez proudly introduced us to his parcel of land, as if it were itself one of his children. He led us, traversing across the steep terrain, to all of the hidden corners of his empire: the gentle fresh-water spring, the well hidden seed nursery and the area creatively designed specifically for growing food for himself and his family.  Variety, we learned, was the key to successful cultivation of anything, not just coffee.
For Hernandez and other small coffee producers, intercropping was perhaps the most important element of organic cultivation. Interspersed among the glossy-leaved coffee trees live tall stalks of bananas, papaya and orange trees, and Pacaya, an edible palm locally adored. Hernandez, carefully whacking at each with his machete, explained how each served a specific purpose: some fix nitrogen, some retain water, some add high volumes of organic matter and some provide ample shade for the coffee trees. Though seemingly simple, the shade versus sun ratio provided by trimming orange trees, for example, is critical to controlling moisture. This in turn controls the potential invasion fungus and insects as well as the incubation of diseases. The parcel next to Hernandez’s was full of nearly-naked trees, which he explained was because his neighbor had not adequately cut back the branches to allow more sunlight to get in: this year had been a rainy year – more sunlight would have dried the soil more and kept his trees healthier.
In Hernandez’s hill-side seed nursery we learned that, congruent with quality standards put forth by Manos Campesinas, the coffee seeds were adapted from within the community itself, selected from the best branches of the most healthy, vigorous, and high-producing trees the previous year. After selection, the seeds are de-pulped manually and dried in the shade before they are planted in the organically disinfected and nutrient rich soil in the outdoor nursery. To us, the nursery looked like a mound of dirt covered in leaves, but using his machete, Hernandez gently brushed a few leaves away, revealing a tiny sprout, just shy of shedding the seed armor in which it was born. It was clear that indeed, Hernandez had a mountain of coffee babies he intended to watch and care for until it was time to set them free and watch them turn into new coffee-producing trees.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of coffee production, we came to believe, was the harvesting of the beans themselves, a step which can only take place after the tree matures for at least three years. Although coffee “cherries” (as the beans are called when still encased in their fruit) mature at different times even on the same tree, only ripe ones can be picked. The only way for this to happen is for them to be carefully examined for their color and individually hand-picked by people (not machines), who carry loads of the freshly picked red coffee cherries up and down the mountainside. Juan de Dios hand-selected a few ripe cherries for us to admire – to them, and to us, the plump, bright red beans looked valuable enough to be currency themselves.
As if collecting the cherries and traversing mountainsides with a fifty-pound sack of them were not exhausting enough, the cherries must be delivered and de-pulped the very same day to avoid pre-mature fermentation. When received at the wet-mill, all coffee must be inspected to ensure that it is ripe and clean, de-pulped in a large machine, uniformly fermented and then dried on a drying patio, being turned over at least once every hour. The dried beans are then packed in clean, dry bags and stored in a warehouse where they await a local roaster or shipment abroad. APECAFORM, while much of its coffee is shipped abroad via Manos Campesinas, owns and operates their own small roaster and sales business, in which they are fine-tuning their roast and developing their own coffee liqueur that they hope to one day find an international market for.
After climbing the steep terrain back from Hernandez’ parcel and tossing back a few sips of the coffee-infused liqueur, we settled in Juan de Dios’ smoke-filled house, where we were accompanied by his wife, beautiful daughters and the occasional wandering puppy or chicken. While a delicious chipilin soup with home-made corn tortillas were prepared for us, we sipped mugs of the local coffee and discussed the realities the coffee producers face. Fair trade prices and cooperative economics certainly make a difference in their lives, and they have what they need as far as the basics go. But things could always be better: the community still has no permanent medical center, the roads are still washed out, and people still go hungry if coffee crops fail. According to Juan de Dios and Ernesto Perez Hernandez, this is a life they love, it is what they know and how they feed their families. They wouldn’t trade it, but said that, somehow, they’d like to diversify their incomes to make a little more money and have a back up plan in case their crop fails. Juan de Dios showed us the bee-keeping system he is currently experimenting with, hoping to find an international market for his organic honey.
The amount of knowledge, strategizing, attention to detail and manual labor that go into the growing process alone is mind-boggling. But once picked, de-pulped and dried the beans must be transferred from the APECAFORM cooperative, through the hands of the umbrella marketing and export organization Manos Campesinas, and then to the international coffee import cooperative Cooperative Coffees, an organization made-up of 23 community-based coffee roasters in the USA and Canada, “who are committed to building and supporting fair and sustainable trade relationships for the benefit of farmers and their exporting cooperatives, families, and communities”. Cooperative Coffees then sells the coffee, still green, to our very own local roaster, Conscious Coffees. This Boulder-based, top-notch roaster, who won micro-roaster of the year in Roast Magazine in 2011, supplies coffee to your favorite spots in Boulder, like The Cup Espresso Café and the Kitchen.
It has been argued that coffee is the second most legally traded commodity on the world market, and has been valued as a nearly $100 billion dollar per year industry. Whether or not such estimations are completely accurate, one thing is certain: there is a lot of purchasing power in coffee, handing to us the power to make a real difference in the lives of real people all over the world. Because of the extraordinarily meticulous process, coffee production can never be mechanized. Coffee will always be produced by people, mostly in the developing world. Knowing this, we keep producers like Ernesto Perez Hernandez in our hearts and minds with each purchase we make and each sip we take. Indeed, our world is ever more connected and it is up to us to ensure the wellbeing of those who contribute to our lives, even if they are on the other side of the globe. By Sierra Brashear, Cup Barista.

Experience the uniqueness of single origin espresso on Saturdays and Sundays! These coffees have been roasted for espresso preparation highlighting the characteristics of each region. Drop by and try something different! Sure to be delicious!

Chicago first ripped off 25 wins to start the season - then ended it dramatically with a come from behind win in game 6. Stunning ending to a real great season for the 'hawks.

Coffee Review, Kenneth Davids: This month’s highest-rated sample, the 93-rated Conscious Coffee Organic Colombia SOS Espresso Roast. For readers not familiar with the strategies of roast style, coffees like this one are not “dark” roasted like Starbucks and Peet’s are dark roasted. In this case the roast is terminated just before, or occasionally just at, the point that the pungent, roasty sensation begins to develop. The goal is to maximize caramelly sweetness without introducing any burned flavor whatsoever, round acidity, fatten body, and turn the fruit notes gently toward chocolate and pungently sweet stone fruit like apricot. The Conscious Coffee Colombia achieved this tricky move close to perfectly with a roast that managed to maintain the crisp berry and sweet floral notes associated with medium roasts while promoting deeper, more raisiny fruit and chocolate. Read the entire review at: http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?ID=207

Once again, Conscious Coffees has scored! ...a 91 that is!

Read up: http://www.coffeereview.com/review.cfm?ID=3087

Scoring a 91 is a big deal in the coffee industry - so congratulations Mark and Mel on once again scoring BIG!