In 1998, I was in Nepal. I was there because USAID offered me a free trip, provided I completed their mission.

The mission: to assess the coffee world in Nepal, from the farm to the cup. Nepal had some history in coffee production but it was in the distant past. Not much was known about Nepal’s coffee experience in 1998 – so they sent me to find out.

I was set down in a small city called Tenzen. I was housed in a small hotel in the foothills at about 5,000 feet above sea level. From my window I could see five 20,000 foot mountain peaks all lined up, covered in snow, and glowing golden in the late afternoon sun.

Nepalese Coffee Roasters

I soon found out how this trip came about; A local Nepalese coffee store owner who roasted his own coffee (selling to tourists and mountain climbers) had requested coffee information from the U.S. Government.

The question foremost on the mind of that local coffee roaster in Nepal was not how to build an industry that would benefit coffee farmers, but how to market his coffee to tourists. He was interested in helping himself, not growing the benefits of coffee for the many farmers who had coffee trees on their land. These farmers did not drink coffee, and had no ready market to sell into. I immediately re-organized my time and the people I needed to meet. I visited the farms and spoke with the coffee farmers. I soon discovered that my host, the Nepalese coffee roaster, was not liked by the farmers, because he paid very low prices for the coffee he purchased from them.

I got back to my USAID sponsors in the U.S. and told them they had been sold a bill of goods by a self-serving local businessman, and that I could not narrow my study to “How to develop a coffee roasting industry in Nepal” in good conscience. The potential was minimal, and very few would be helped with this mission. Those helped would be the educated middle class, not the poorer coffee farmers, who numbered in the thousands.

Word got back to my host and he was furious. This is not a good thing to happen to someone in a foreign country in the 90’s, where anyone could disappear in some back alley in Kathmandu, or under twenty feet of snow on some nearby mountainside. But I persevered. I decided (since I was already there) to teach the coffee farmers how to prepare coffee cherries for home roasting in a wok. I figured once they knew how to prepare coffee for consumption, they would have the basis for growing coffee for flavor. The idea was that knowledge would open up doors to export coffee, and bring in more money for their families in the future.

Nepalese Coffee Farmers

When I travel to a country to teach coffee to coffee farmers, I always bring green coffee samples from five or six countries to show farmers how the final product looks. It is important to know what green coffee looks like after the seeds are removed from the cherry, perfectly sorted, graded, and then processed for export. I want them to see what they are aiming toward. I also bring a small popcorn popper (110V) to roast the coffee samples if there is electricity available. In this mountain village there was none, so we rested a wok on three round stones over a bamboo wood fire.

This was a great teachable moment. In an open wok, you can see the changes as they come about. We sat around the fire, stirring the beans with a long stick. The heat from a bamboo fire is hot, very hot. As the coffee turned from tan to a dark oily black, I took small portions from the wok and allowed them to cool in a cool metal pie tin. After 15 minutes of wok-stirred coffee beans, we had all seen the changes and we had four separate samples to taste: Light Roast, Medium Roast, Dark and Very Dark (French Roast).

So we began by harvesting five pounds of their local coffee cherries. In the process of harvesting I taught the importance of “Red Ripe.” We de-pulped the cherries by hand (squeezing each cherry until the wet and slimy seeds popped out. Then we set the seeds out to dry on newspaper in the shade. It took five days to get the coffee beans to dry. They start out at about 50% moisture to about 25% moisture, and they need to be at around 11% to begin to roast. The weather was not cooperating, so I finished the drying in a wok over a low flame for a few hours. Then we let the seeds rest overnight.

Now we had Nepal samples and the roasted samples I brought from Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Comparison tasting is a good way for novices to get an idea of their own coffee as it might fare in the export market against the quality of other coffees. In addition, we had the four different roast colors which I wanted to use to show them how they could get different flavors from the same beans.

My next week was spent teaching the principles of coffee roasting and coffee tasting . “If you don’t know what you are aiming at, you can’t hit the target,” I told them. So we spent time tasting and identifying flavors.

It should be noted that the Nepalese are tea drinkers, and chai is their drink of choice. So when I was asked how coffee was prepared in other countries, I told them it was a medium for carrying flavors. In the U.S. we used primarily milk and sugar, but in other countries coffee drinkers added other spices. I encouraged them to prepare coffee however they would enjoy it, and that is what they did. Coffee/Chai formulas were the order of the day, for the next week. Every family made their own version of coffee, and they were all different and delightful. Nothing I have tasted since has come close.

I wrote my report for USAID and sent it in (this was the 90’s, pre-email) and left Nepal via Kathmandu to Bangkok, and then to San Francisco. I left behind 200 farmers who had gained knowledge in roasting and tasting, but had no infrastructure to organize anything. My mandate was to assess the situation and my report gave a clear assessment: build the coffee agriculture in Nepal, and let the roasting trade find its own way. Help the farmers was my message.

It has been two decades since my report was sent off to USAID. I believed I had failed to create what the farmers needed, but I was wrong!

Life goes on and you can’t discount the power of knowledge and education.

2017: Thanksgiving Coffee and Nepal

On Apr 5, 2017, almost twenty years later, I received this e mail from Mike at HimalayanArabica Nepal Coffee:

Hi Thanksgiving Coffee,

I found your company through Greenpages Org as we are also going through the application process and I wanted to take this opportunity to reach out to you to again.

HimalayanArabica believes in organic and ethical way of doing business and everyone along the supply chain from crop to cup can all benefit from doing business the right way.

Please give our coffee a try and you can get a free sample by simply emailing me your address and a phone number for the DHL packet.

I hope to hear from you soon and thank you for your time.

Kind regards,
Mike

Below is a shot of our Roastmaster Jacob Long on the left, posting with the same sack of Nepal Coffee as Michael Bowen, from HimalayanArabica on the right.

I replied on Tue, Apr 11, 2017

Mike,

This e mail was very nice to receive,

In 2001 I was sent to Nepal by USAID to evaluate the Nepalese Coffee situation.

I was part of a team of two. We were asked to come by a man who wanted to develop the tourist trade for roasted coffee in Nepal. My report stated my opposition to this plan as it would not have created a coffee industry , but only one or two farms to provide him with coffee to roast and to sell in Katmandu. I recommended the development of the cultivation of coffee so that many could benefit.

I am happy to see and know that my vision was clear and that in fact, aid and market forces (and Nepalese common sense) made the right situation happen and now 16 years later someone is offering me coffee from Nepal that I can roast and market.

For starters, who in the US is your importer that will handle the coffee ?

What is the availability and shipping date?

How many sacks are available?

What quality do you have ?

Has the coffee been cupped and scored by Q graders or would you venture a guess as to its quality?

Who is roasting coffee from Nepal now?

Send samples to Thanksgiving Coffee Company:

PO Box 1918
19100 South Harbor Drive
Ft. Bragg, CA 95437

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I am very interested and that is an understatement.

Paul Katzeff
CEO

Mike replied:

Hi Paul,

Thank you so much for your reply, it was very educational and got to understand a little piece of history of coffee here in Nepal. My name is Michael Bowen and I am a Korean-American grew up in Wisconsin. I spent some time in Korea and realized I wanted to do something else and somehow, almost magically, I came to live and work in Nepal and was given this fantastic opportunity to work with a company that has the same vision as I do, which is organic, ethical, sustainable and quality.

Raj, the owner, has been working tirelessly for more than 10 years to develop the farms in order for them to move towards the specialty market. Nothing is all set nor perfect here, but we are moving in the right direction.

Even though I have only come into the scene for a little more than a year, I can see that there is a lot of potential here which you undoubtedly saw 16 years ago.

Regarding your questions:

We do not have a dedicated US importer, at the moment.

There is about 8 tons available for shipment as soon as money is received and another 8-16 tons can be made available of the same quality from a different region after some weeks after the order is made.

We only have AAA specialty quality available for export.

Raj is a Q-grader himself and tastes the every batch that comes in. The samples we are sending out now have been sent out to various other graders from US, Europe and Australia and have scored between 83-86. Raj has scored this lot 85.5 SCAA standard.

There are several ‘roasters’ here in Nepal, but we also do our own roasts. Raj was the first to bring in equipment from abroad, from pulping machines to a roaster from Italy, but now there are several places where roasting is done. Raj, I believe, has the most experience roasting and you can check out our website at the ‘home’ section for testimonials for more reviews of our coffee and you can check out some roasted beans we offer.

We will send out samples this week and I will notify you the tracking number.

Kind regards,
Mike

That’s the story in a nutshell.

Time + Knowledge = Evolution.

We received the samples from Mike at HimalayanArabica, and I was surprised at the flavors and the cup quality. But I was more surprised at how good I felt about what I did twenty years ago in the hills of Nepal. I believed that I had failed to make change happen for those isolated coffee farmers, and that there was no hope for Nepalese Coffee.

Life goes on.

Paul Katzeff
Mendocino, California

I was born in The Bronx. I played stick ball. I hung out at the corner candy store. I bought two pretzels for 3¢.

We read comic books, which cost a dime. Once they were read, we traded them for 2¢. You could take your old comics out on the street, set them up on a wooden box, and collect your money for pretzels or an egg cream (8¢). The 50’s were pretty good for a kid. You could go anywhere in the city for a nickle subway ride, and you never thought it was dangerous.

I could tell you a million stories about growing up in the Bronx, including the time I went back in 1975, five years after I had left for California. I discovered that “my” candy store had become a Korean market. The soda fountain, comic books and telephone booths were all gone. (telephone booths were for the local bookies to take their bets and call in their bets they wanted to “lay off.”

I bought a t-shirt that stated The Bronx: Only the Strong Survive.

By the time I was 13 in 1951, I was traveling to Harlem to see the NY Giants play baseball at the Polo Grounds. One night, I remember sneaking into the Polo Grounds to see the Giants play the Cubs. I don’t remember the game at all, but I do remember what happened after the game…

It was about 11:30pm. I was waiting in the parking lot with my program for the ball players to come out of the locker rooms. Autographs were my goal. A reward for successfully sneaking into the game. It was dark, it was Harlem, it was late at night. All the cars were gone. There were no overhead street lamps to light up the parking area. But it was safe… or was it?

Where were the players? I had waited. Paid my dues, but nothing was happening as I watched the last few cars abandon me to being totally alone on a three acre unlit parking lot at midnight in Harlem. Then, a door opened and out came four players. The encounter went something like this:

#1: Hey kid, what are you doing here in the dark?

Kid: Waiting to get autographs.

#2: Where you live kid?

Kid: Palham Parkway.

#3: How you getting home?

Kid: I will walk over that bridge (138th st) to the subway and take the train home.

#4: Get in the car, we’ll take you to the subway station.

I got in the car and have no recollection of anything else. Thirty-four years later, while showing my six-year-old son my baseball card collection (the one most mothers are reputed to throw away), out popped the Giants’ 1951 program. I had not looked at it for over thirty years. Much to my surprise, it had three autographs on the cover and one inside. Who were these players who saw fit to rescue a 13 year old white boy from the long dark walk to the subway?

Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Hawk Thompson. All Hall of Famers. Inside was Don Mueller, the 1951 national league batting champion. They’re the first four guys from the left on the bottom row of the photo below.

There is a lot of the Bronx still left in me. I had my first cup of coffee in the Bronx. They said it was mountain grown and good to the last drop.

Today, 65 years later, I want you to taste a Bronx-influenced blend of coffee I proudly named for myself (THAT’S Bronx Moxie!) I am proud of this blend. It took a lot of personal coffee experience to understand, as I eventually did, how to get the flavor profile I wanted. It’s a Bronx kind of coffee! Intense, heavy, with blueberry/strawberry notes and a long finish. The coffees are from Ethiopia and Nicaragua. Two countries where only the strong survive.

Paul Katzeff, co-founder and CEO of Thanksgiving Coffee Company

We had so much fun participating in Mendocino County’s Fourth of July parade! Check out a couple shots of our piece of the parade, and a few photos of the day…

A great drone flyover video of the July Fourth parade in Mendocino, from California Poppy Films. What a crowd!

The photos below of our Thanksgiving Coffee families were captured by Sam Koski Jones – thanks for sharing!

Friday, June 23 is Take Your Dog to Work Day! Then again, for a few of us here at Thanksgiving Coffee Company, everyday is take your dog to work day. Meet two of our office pups, Zoe and Brutus!

Zoe was adopted from the Border Collie Rescue of Northern California. These guys serve most of Northern California, re-homing animals that need new situations and families that will take care of them. Zoe’s mom is Patty, from our accounting team. Patty has been a part of the Thanksgiving Coffee family for 28 years, and Zoe for 8 of those years!

Brutus is a newer addition to our office. Co-founder and CEO Paul Katzeff adopted Brutus from the Mendocino Coast Humane Society just two months ago! He’s already adjusted nicely to life at our headquarters, although we found out he does not like to pose for photo shoots.

Thanksgiving Coffee Company has partnered with the Mendocino Coast Humane Society to create a Cause Coffee that benefits their shelter. This non-profit has been serving Fort Bragg and beyond for over thirty years. We are proud to be a part of their fundraising efforts, and stand with an organization that is doing good for the animals of our community! Learn more on the MCHS Cause Coffee page.

This weekend is the 24th annual Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, and it’s one of the Mendocino County events that is not to be missed. As you’re driving to and from the festival and need a coffee fix, here are a couple places to stop by and grab a cup of Thanksgiving Coffee!

BOONVILLE

Lizbby’s Restaurant and Bar
Anderson Valley Market
Redwood Drive In

PHILO

Stone and Embers
Lemon’s Market
The Bewildered Pig

NAVARRO

Navarro General Store

YORKVILLE

Yorkville Market

CLOVERDALE

Dahlia and Sage
Eagles Nest Deli

The Upsetter (Espresso)

Did you know that our Upsetter Espresso Blend is a reference to one of our favorite reggae artists? Lee “Scratch” Perry will be performing at Sierra Nevada this year. The label design on our Upsetter (a light roast espresso blend) is a reference to his label: Upsetter Records. Can’t wait to see him perform this weekend!

Have fun at Sierra Nevada… maybe we’ll see you out there!

We’ve sung the praises of our Roastmaster’s Select Club before. An all-new coffee every month, micro-lots that you won’t see anywhere else, small batch roasts, and limited editions that taste magnificent.

But if you aren’t ready to take the plunge and sign up for a blind monthly club subscription, we have another option. Every few months, we pick a favorite from the club, and feature it here on our website for non-members. We’ve featured coffees from Panama, Kenya, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and more in the past months.

What’s up next? Our Colombia Medium Roast from the Cafe Colsuaves co-op.

Coffee From Colombia

Thanksgiving Coffee has sourced coffee from Colombia for years, and it continues to be a favorite origin of ours. We found this lot of coffee while searching for unique Colombian coffee for our club members. Roastmaster Jacob Long sample roasted the green coffee, and blind tasted it alongside a variety of samples — finding this Colombian to be a real stand-out.

This coffee is sourced from the Popayan region of Cauca, on the western side of Colombia. We ended up purchasing 500 pounds of this micro lot, and we’re impressed with the way it turned out. It’s quite smooth and nuanced, with a great body and flavor. The Cafe Colsuaves group produces brilliant coffees by putting a strong focus on lot separation and processing control, creating some truly unique micro-lots.

Colombian Medium Roast

Jacob created a roast profile that brings out the natural flavors of this Colombian, and everyone here at the roastery is loving how it tastes. This Medium Roast is rich and smooth, with complex notes of milk chocolate and vibrant citrus undertones. At the Thanksgiving Coffee tasting room, we especially love it in the Soft Brew, and we’re planning on trying it in our Cold Brew Kit later this month.

Give the Cafe Colsuaves Colombian Medium Roast a try. Add this coffee onto your next order, and we’re certain you won’t be disappointed. Don’t wait too long to get this coffee delivered! In just a few weeks, we’ll be rotating it out for a new Roastmaster’s selection!

Here in the United States, we sometimes claim a cultural ownership of beautiful birds like the Baltimore Oriole, perhaps forgetting that the very same species could just as easily be named the ‘Panama Oriole’, or the ‘Nicaraguan Oriole’, as it spends half it’s life in Central and South America. IMBD is a reminder that the health and abundance of these birds that are so much a part of our heritage does not stop at our own backyard feeders. If we wish to enjoy their beauty and their songs for generations to come, we must care for them and their well being across all borders.

The growing demand for coffee, and the rise of the mono-cultured full sun coffee plantations, has demolished much of the wintering habitat for iconic birds like Orioles. In fact, many of these species are now referred to as ‘Coffee Birds’ because the only forest home left to them are the shade-grown coffee farms that preserve the jungle canopy.

For over 20 year, Song Bird Coffee has been a leader in supporting the farmers who protect their native forests by growing delicious coffees under the jungle canopy, preserving priceless habitat and biodiversity. This year, on International Migratory Bird Day, we hope you will join us in protecting our precious songbirds, just by enjoying a great cup of shade-grown coffee.

San Francisco’s Exploratorium is one of the great gems of the bay area. The exhibits inside Pier 15 will keep you and your family enthralled for hours on end. But before walking through those doors, it’s always a good idea to get caffeinated.

And we have just the place.

Seismic Joint Cafe

In the same building as the Exploratorium is the Seismic Joint Cafe at Pier 15. This little coffee shop is the perfect pit stop before (or after, or during!) your visit to the Exploratorium. Grab a cup of the I Love Curiosity Blend, roasted by Thanksgiving Coffee! This coffee was grown in Nicaragua and Rwanda, and roasted along California’s North Coast.

The Exploratorium

The Exploratorium isn’t just a museum; it’s an ongoing exploration of science, art and human perception. Learn more about them in this quote from their website:

Located in San Francisco, California, the Exploratorium is a public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art, and human perception. Our mission is to create inquiry-based experiences that transform learning worldwide. The vision is a world where people think for themselves and can confidently ask questions, question answers, and understand the world around them. We value lifelong learning and teaching, curiosity and inquiry, our community, iteration and evidence, integrity and authenticity, sustainability, and inclusion and respect.

The Exploratorium creates tools and experiences that help you to become an active explorer: hundreds of explore-for-yourself exhibits, a website with over 50,000 pages of content, film screenings, evening art and science events for adults, plus much more. We also create professional development programs for educators, and are at the forefront of changing the way science is taught. We share our exhibits and expertise with museums worldwide.

Enjoy your trip to the Exploratorium, and don’t miss out on a cup of Thanksgiving Coffee, right there on Pier 15!

The MacCallum House is a cornerstone of the village of Mendocino. This gorgeous Victorian home once housed the most prominent family of the Mendocino Coast, and now houses the #1 rated hotel in the village of Mendocino, according to Tripadvisor!

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This stunning building sits tall on Albion Street, looking over the houses and water towers, with views of the bay below. The house is surrounded by one of the most stunning gardens in the village, begun by Daisy MacCallum herself in the late 1800s. Daisy was an early member of the American Rose Society, and her passion for gardening  is still evident on the MacCallum House grounds today. The restaurant often serves produce grown in their own Chef’s Garden.

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The MacCallum House is a landmark of Mendocino, and the favorite hotel for many of the tourists that visit our area. The Mendocino Coast would not exist as it does today had it not been for Daisy MacCallum’s family, and their prominence in the community made this area what it is today!

These days, the property has a restaurant, bar, hotel, a community hot tub, a greenhouse, and two floors of suites above the first floor cafe. We are delighted to be working with such an amazing partner, to participate in the history that this property offers.

Thanksgiving Coffee and the MacCallum House

The MacCallum House was originally completed in 1882, and became a bed and breakfast almost a century later in 1974. Thanksgiving Coffee became one of their first vendors in 1975 – providing coffee for the guests of the inn, and later the restaurant itself.

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We created a special blend for guests of the MacCallum House, and now sell this unique coffee on our own website:

The MacCallum House Blend is full-bodied with dark chocolate overtones and a finish of sweet spices. This coffee is grown in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, surrounded by mango, guava trees, and avocados.

The gorgeous Victorian-style craftsmanship of the MacCallum House graces the label of this organic blend, so every time you reach for your bag of coffee in the morning, you’ll be reminded of the stunning Mendocino Coast.

During the month of March, our MacCallum House Blend is 20% off as our Monthly Special! Usually $14.50, you can purchase a 12oz bag for only $11.60 until April.

“In 1971 when I first arrived on the Mendocino Coast, Daisy MacCallum had just been moved to a nursing home. I would sneak into the MacCallum House and climb to the attic to read 100 year old books and journals – and imagine myself living back in the early days of Mendocino.”

Paul Katzeff, Co-Founder and CEO

We drank a LOT of coffee this year. American adults drink an average of 382 million cups of coffee every day – multiply that by the 365 days of 2016, and we have a pretty caffeinated nation. As for the year 2016, there were a couple coffees that you (our customers) especially enjoyed this past year… let’s take a look at the top five!

Top Selling (Favorite!) Coffees of 2016

SongBird French Roast

Full-bodied, smoky, and intense.

Below: A shade-grown coffee farm in Guatemala, where some of the coffee beans from this blend were grown.

Noyo Harbor French

Fudgy chocolate notes, toasty hints of caramelized pecan, and a lightly smokey, brown sugar sweetness in the finish.

Below: A coffee farmer picking berries in Uganda, at the Mirembe Kawomera co-op.

Delicious Peace, Uganda – Dark Roast

Fudgy chocolate notes, toasty hints of caramelized pecan, and a lightly smokey, brown sugar sweetness in the finish.

Below: A coffee farmer picking berries in Uganda, at the Mirembe Kawomera co-op.

Grey Whale Blend

Just a touch of vanilla, added to a blend of two brilliant medium roasts.

Below: The Grey Whale coffee package label

Mendocino Vienna

A bold, sweet blend with hints of nuts, chocolate, and caramel.

Below: A shot of downtown Mendocino, featuring the old masonic temple.

Selecting Your Coffee

We can’t help but notice that FOUR of the top five coffees on our website this year are dark roasts. Do you know how you should be selecting your coffee roast? We have a handy page on our website that teaches you a little bit more about the flavor profiles you’re drawn to…

Cheers!