Sweet Maria's Coffee

This recording is a 28 minute unedited recording of a morning in Moshi, Tanzania May 25 2023. It’s the kind of “waking up” recordings I often do when traveling, both as personal note taking, but sometimes the material I turn into podcasts. This time, I thought I would also upload it to youtube, with images and video clips. So on youtube there’s some added visual information, but it’s not synced to the recording. Images and vocal do not match. But of course they are all from the same trip to Tanzania. Here is the You tube link to hear / view this with images.

This is the second part of of a podcast recording, focusing on tourism coffee and coffee marketing. I read from the article Tourism: Globalization and the Commodification of Culture about Disneyfication, and McDonaldization, read a text from a Starbucks bag about coffee travel adventures through an Indiana Jones / colonial adventurer lens, listen to Dangerous Grounds tv show promo reel that infuses coffee travel with xenophobia, and connect it to the current way roasters talk about coffee buying more as a social mission than something they do so they have a product to sell. The latest approach includes incredible claims like “Kevin [coffee buyer] discovered that small scale poor farmers produced some of the most complex and incredible coffees in the world, yet they had no experience of what was happening to their work thousands of miles away or its tremendous value and appreciation by specialty coffee drinkers.” Poor coffee farmers! Here comes Kevin to save you! So what’s the answer? I don’t have one but it would hurt to kick it down a notch, and just try to learn when you travel. Would it?

I've been a little obsessed lately with reading about tourism and travel narritives, and seeing how these line up with my work as a coffee buyer. What I find is that ideas that interest me in coffee are not really discussed in the coffee trade, and I am not sure who is interested in these things. Trigger warning: if the term "culture studies" or "the other" set you off, don't listen to this podcast. (joke, but not really I guess). This first episode doesnt really get into things much. Hopefully you can listen to part 2 as well. -T

It’s been nearly 4 years since visiting Kenya, and I am excited to be back. When I travel for coffee I tend to make audio recordings over morning coffee, and sometimes I edit these into podcasts later. Kenya trips that focus on cupping can be intense. It’s a marathon of tasting, and very intense coffee at that. I talk a bit about the approach I think Kenya requires in terms of coffee sourcing, and later about the grades of Kenya coffee outside of specialty types. Traveling often leads me to thoughts about the history of coffee production and trade, and with Kenya the specific history of colonialism here. And I end with a song! A 45 single I found in a stack near Nairobi by Fadhili William & The Black Shadows, Hakuna Mwingine. And that’s a summary of this 30 minute podcast recorded mostly in Kenya, in February 2023.

It’s Sunday morning in Shakiso town but it’s not peaceful and quiet by any definition. I am talking about coffee in the area, but I’m competing against the decibels of the Orthodox church and their loudspeaker. I am not sure if this is very “listenable”. It sounds ok to me, but I am used to these morning prayers and just tune them out. It might not be so easy in a recording. Anyway, it’s here for you to listen to … or not!

The Aregash Lodge in Yirg Alem is an oasis! I always look forward to staying here on the way to the southern coffee growing areas of Yirga Cheffe, Kochore, Gedeb, and Shakiso. It’s owned by Gregorg and his family, since 2003. But last year it was attacked by a local mob and one of the main buildings burnt to the ground. (Nobody was hurt). It’s wonderful to be back, and beautiful as ever, but a bit uncanny. Things are not always as they seem in Ethiopia, certainly for an outsider. It leads...

I really was on the fence about uploading this episode. One the one hand, this is stuff I have already said, about photography and coffee travel, about marketing, about representation. It feels like I am just hung up on this. Does anyone care? On the other hand, the second part of this is about a conflict I got into in Shakiso for taking a photo with my phone. And I kinda spun out on it. I think of podcasts as a thing where people want to hear someone talk clearly and with great confidence....

I am in the larger town of Jimma, I think the euphoria of returning to the dirt roads of Ethiopia wore off a bit. It was probably all the dust. Feeling a bit drained, but still happy to be back in Ethiopia, I reflect a bit on coffee travel. I have always had a problematic relationship with using coffee travel to sell coffee, to create marketing material. But in the end I feel coffee can be a pretty straightforward product, and that’s not bad at all. I was going to skip including this one honestly, but decided to keep it in the end.

I am in Agaro town in the Western coffee region near Jimma and Limmu. It feels like I am 70% in Ethiopia and 30% still back in Oakland. Despite jet lag, I talk about what I have learned so far about the competition for coffee cherry, and how the cooperatives are at a disadvantage when well-funded exporters open up coffee stations in the area. It’s not all bad. Coffee farmers are selling cherry at high prices, which helps offset local inflation. I also added on some thoughts about Covid in Ethiopia and some interesting comments I heard from my Ethiopian. This is part 1 of a series of recordings I made over morning coffee nearly every day on my December trip. They aren't perfect. They are monologues. They are a little embarrassing. But there are some good raw ideas in here, perhaps. I have 8-9 episodes if I can bear to post them all! It's a bit much.

Tom posted a set of photos and an article in our coffee library. This is the audio version of that article, read by Tom. It's an insight into the narrative created by coffee photography and how things are or aren't always as they seem. www.sweetmarias.com

Part 2 of 2. Dan and Tom sat down with Pedro and Leo from Medellin, Colombia. They are the folks we work with when we source our coffee from there. They tasted four Colombian coffees that are en route to Sweet Maria's.

Dan and Tom sat down with Pedro and Leo from Medellin, Colombia. They are the folks we work with when we source our coffee from there. They tasted four Colombian coffees that are en route to Sweet Maria's. This is part 1. Check out part 2 for more great conversation and interesting details.

Dan and Tom sit down with Mike Strumpf from Swiss Water Decaf. Swiss Water's non-chemical process is one of the main reasons our decafs taste so great. Ever wonder how caffeine is removed? Listen in and find out.

Tom takes on a few questions submitted by Sweet Maria's customers.

Tom takes on a few questions submitted by Sweet Maria's customers.

Tom, Dan and Ryan use a new exquisite corpse type format to share their opinions on the state of coffee culture and their personal coffee drinking habits.

This is a recording from a presentation we hosted at our warehouse in June 2019. Tom had recently returned from a trip to Africa and wanted to share his thoughts on the global coffee market and small holder farmers in Burundi. Watch the video to see the slide presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWWkAVSxLvg

Okay, this is a "podcast" with zero edits, just a voice recording basically. It's a December early morning in the origin of coffee origins, which is Kafa, Ethiopia, near the town of Bonga. I talk slow as molasses about various experiences and thoughts from the last couple weeks in Ethiopia. Maybe this is super boring. It's not like I am really into these monologues, but when I am jetlagged and inspired (odd combination), my resistance to rambling on is particularly low.

The inventor or the Bullet R1 coffee roaster, Jonas Lillie visited Sweet Maria's for our Bullet meet up event. He was also in town to show Tom and Julio some details about the internals of these awesome machines. One day, we hit the record button during a conversation/repair session in hopes of it turning into an informative podcast episode and Youtube video.

Thompson and Alistair Sequeira talk about coffee and lotsa other stuff in this 2017 conversation in rural Mwakiro, Burundi. The conversation starts off with Alistair explaining how he transitioned his career from mechanical engineering to the coffee industry. Just so you know, there are more than a few F-bombs dropped during this conversation! Alistair lives with his family in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi and has helped us find good Burundi coffees for several years. He was director of a large coffee export office there before heading off to do his own thing in the coffee sector.