STiR coffee and tea magazine

20 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 2, 2020 (April / May) strong local café scene with young farmers who can cup and roast and are experimenting with processing of every conceivable style and very aware of the innovations and quality of coffees around the world represents where specialty coffee is heading in the years to come, with more internal demand and catering to the tastes of internal markets just as much as toward exports. STiR: You're also renowned for coffee processing experi- ments. Tell us about how you came to embrace an experimen- tal approach and what you're working on these days. Meza: I guess it has always been my approach to coffee. Whether roasting or processing, I'm constantly experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't, and continually refining things. Ten years ago, that meant applying processing styles that were then newer, like naturals and hon- eys, to coffees in Hawaii and other regions, as well as experimenting with styles of processing from other regions of the world like Kenya and Sumatra. For a time, I felt I had optimized these different processes as much as could be done and there wasn't much left to experiment with. In the last five years or so, there has started to be a lot more scientific research on the biology of fermentation and ways to control it in ways we've never understood before, which is exciting and leaves a lot of directions to explore. We can create flavor profiles that are different with some newly developed methods, and, in many cases, create overall improvement on traditional styles. A lot of what I have spent my time on over the last three years is using wine yeasts in fermentation with washed, naturals, and honeys, and more recently taking the best of those results and combining them with anaerobic fermentations. Temperature control of fermenta- tion and inoculation with other organisms, such as lactic acid bacteria, are other areas I'd like to pursue in the near future. STiR: What is your most spectacular coffee failure, and what did you learn from it? Meza: One notable story is also part of how I ultimately ended up in Hawaii. In 2007, two farms AWAKEN AWAKEN * Don't Miss a Single STiR ring Issue of the World's Leading Coffee and Tea Industry Magazine. AWAKEN a paid subscription to STiR Coffee and Tea Industry International Visit www.stir-tea-coffee.com Email info@stir-tea-coffee.com *SYNONYM: STiR, stimulate, animate, arouse, excite... w w w. s t i r - t e a - c o ff e e . c o m w w w. s t i r - t e a - c o ff e e . c o m from the Ka'u region in Hawaii placed in the top 10 of then-SCAA's Coffee Of The Year cupping competition. I ended up purchasing the sixth- ranked coffee — and quite a lot of it — 10 bags, I believe, of expensive coffee. I thought surely a coffee from a region in Hawaii no one had heard of before that was ranked among the best coffees in the world would be a hit. It was a great coffee, held its own on tables of Panama geishas, auction-lot Kenyas and COE coffees we had at the time. But it didn't sell nearly as well as I'd hoped. It took a couple of years to move it all. With higher-priced coffee, especially, I'm a lot more cautious these days. I try to order a little less than I think we can sell and, for single- origin and rare coffees, we have subscription programs that feature rotating coffees, so it's easier to calculate the minimum we can sell of a coffee. Most coffees I mention to some of our wholesale clients, as well, to gauge interest. While that Ka'u coffee didn't receive the press or customer response I would have expected, back then it did make a big impression on me and, as a result of that coffee, I ended up moving to Hawaii a year later to work with coffee farms and get a better understanding of coffee quality on the origin side of things. STiR: What is your vision for the future of specialty coffee? Meza: I hope to see it expand — to more growing origins and more species. I've always been a big believer and supporter of specialty robusta, and I hope to see the same kind of attention to detail given to arabica applied to robusta, as well, at both the farm and research levels. We really haven't even scratched the surface of what the quality potential or flavor profiles possible with this species are, as it's always just been written off. The reality is that robusta and introgressed hybrids using some robusta parentage have to be the future of coffee as environmental conditions change in growing area around the world. The less prejudice we hold against non-arabica varieties, and the more work we do now develop- ing their potential, the better the coffee we drink is going to be 20-50 years from now.

• Cover