Daily Grind Vol. 6: The Quality Issue

We don’t talk a lot about quality at Peoples. Perhaps because it is the single most touted topic in the specialty coffee scene and can get a little tiresome when it’s the only conversation in the room.

Yet it’s high time we did. Quality matters to us at Peoples. We are pretty sure it matters to you, our dedicated quaffers of the black elixir. Quality is, and has to be, a cornerstone of our missional business.

I remember back to 2004 - the first year of Peoples - putting my first 50 roasts through the then 5kg capacity Probat coffee roaster - I knew then that even though I had invested everything in creating a brand that championed smallholder coffee producers in name and deed, it would be the taste in the cup that would be the cornerstone of the brand. 

Big ideas like fair trade, social justice and organics are super important, yet without their sister: delicious, want-to-come-back-for-more YUM-NESS, we would be up the proverbial crud creek without an oar.

When we travel to origin to meet producers, it is the quality in the cup that they are continually emphasising. Starting with seedling nurseries, informed organic agronomy, disease management as the hillsides begin to warm with the climate changing, to consistent drying methods - quality is in the mind of the producer at every step of the process.

All these practices help the farmer bargain for better prices, and keep us as roasters wanting to keep roasting their coffees year after year, roast after roast.

Being committed to Fair Trade and Organic coffees grown by small farmer cooperatives has meant at times we have found it hard to compete on sheer quality in the cup with roasters buying high ‘scoring’ micro lots. Micro lots are tiny parcels of highly graded coffees often with weird and wonderful processing methods such as Anaerobic Fermentation, and Carbonic Maceration that fetch eye-watering prices per pound.

Over the last twenty years talking with our coffee farmers, it is apparent that there is a limit to how much more additional processing is worth their time vs what they get paid for it. Rather than demand that coops deliver more quality for little extra value, we have come to a new appreciation of the unique flavour characteristics that cooperatives offer us. 

One of the surprising and fascinating qualities of many of our coffees is that they are a gestalt of a whole bioregion of that one coffee - let's say Colombian. Instead of it coming from one hillside or one farm, we get a graded diversity of a region. What this means in the cup, is a fullness and diversity of flavour spectrum that means you are drinking the complex community of this cooperative.

So then, the flavour follows, even embodies the mission. The all-in-it-together nature of buying from small farms with 1-2 acres of land and selling their coffees as a cooperative travels in its entirety all the way from that blended origin, to our roasters, and out to your waiting cup.

Once in-house, our rostering team dial in the best roasting profile using a mixture of art and science, feel and computer, hand, nose and sight (and a bunch of digital probes and a computer program) to get the best out of each coffee. Alongside our roaster, the QC (quality control person) then cups (tastes) and chooses the best of a bunch of different roast profiles for individual origins (like our Honduras Natural), or combines multiple bean origins for our filter and espresso blends (like the Aty Zarkeiwin and Don Wilfredo blends).

It is perhaps why coffee is a continually fascinating and enlivening beverage for so many people. The sheer complexity of the journey of the humble coffee bean through the many hands of farmers, graders, roasters, baristas and your own home counter is as complex and fascinating as the history of colonial plantations which are the backstory of our brand becoming what it is.

We would love to hear what you think about quality, what it means to you, and how you experience it in your cups of Peoples Coffee - just shoot me a message to matt@peoplescoffee.co.nz if you have any thoughts or comments you want to share

Holiday coffee blessings everyone!

-Matt Lamason, Founder