This is the lush landscape of the Eastern Highlands in Papua New Guinea.

Photos c/o Counter Culture Coffee's Flickr

Baroida is a serious contender for quality in the specialty coffee market.  The farm was founded in the 1960′s by Ben Colbran and his family. The farm was sold to a trust in 1979.  For many years Ben’s son Nichol Colbran managed Baroida without ownership.

Photos c/o Counter Culture Coffee's Flickr

After a six year hiatus from managing the farm, Nichol purchased his family’s farm back from the trust. He found the farm had been badly mismanaged and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Nichol and his family began the daunting task of refurbishing the practices of quality on the farm. Needless to say, good job guys! This farm produces coffee that yields an exciting and vibrantly sweet cup.

We are fans of Baroida, but I was beside myself when I heard that Counter Culture’s first micro-lot from Papua New Guniea was available. Of course, I was even more excited to find out the micro-lot was connected with Baroida!

The micro lot represents one day’s worth of washing and is primarily comprised of coffee from a single village named Bonta. This selection has even more intensity and complexity. Sadly, civil war has sprung up recently in the region and the village’s harvest has been destroyed. This is yet another reason to treasure this micro-lot because it may take a few years before we will see this coffee again. Unfortunately, political instability, civil wars, and even genocides are not uncommon in coffee producing regions. Hopefully buying this coffee and praising the people who produce it will, in some small way, help to support the rebuilding of the village.

Karatu

Blackberry, raisin,  ripe tomato

Region: Thika

Varieties: SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11 (less than 5 percent)

Elevation: 1,883 meters

Harvest: October 2010 – January 2011

This coffee, from the washing station Karatu in Thika, Kenya, really stood out to Counter Culture’s roaster Tim Hill. The coffee’s  “distinctive dark fruit characteristics” prompted Tim to declare it one of his favorites on his pass through the country earlier this year.

At Everyman, we are big fans of the dynamic profiles from Counter Culture’s Kenyan coffees; they’re sweet, juicy acid bombs that never disappoint. We have been grooving on the long fermentation post soak Kenyan’s all year and are proud to offer this coffee from the Karatu washing station in Thika, Kenya.

It’s wonderful how the clean bright juicy acidity is cut by a combination of savory, sweet undertones. Basically, it’s got a lot going on and that’s to be expected because it’s a KENYAN!

Are we all clear on how superior Kenyan coffees are? Ok good come get some…

Our coffee roaster Counter Culture created a series of

illustrated slides that explain the current scope of coffee as a commodity

As you may already have noticed, some of our drink prices are rising this week. Our prices have been pretty stable over the past two years, so this may require some explanation.

Two major factors played into this decision. First, the price of unroasted (or “green”) coffee has been rising dramatically for some time now. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of international coffee trade, this means that coffee is more expensive for everyone: importers, roasters, us here at Everyman and folks at cafes around the world. We’re super committed to bringing you coffees that we’re stoked about, so we’re not going to cut corners in order to maintain our prior price point; we have to keep pace with these rising costs.

Second, we’ve been working on sourcing some truly exceptional and unique coffees for our hand-poured coffee selection. These coffees offer some mind-blowing gustatory experiences, but their quality & rarity makes them significantly pricier than our other offerings.

Due to these influences, look for some incremental increases in the price of drip coffee, espresso, americanos and our hand-poured coffee selections over the next week or so. We hope you’ll agree that the coffee’s bangin’ enough to be worth the money. Thanks for bearing with us!

Love,

Sams

WE ARE OPEN 8AM TO 6PM

Thanks to DR. Eric Jesus Grimm who has graciously volunteered to travel through the storm we are open! Be patient remembering that Eric is working that line of under caffeinated New Yorkers by himself. Please Tip him for his bravery and fuckinawesomeness.

THANK YOU JESUS…

Yes, you heard me. We are rocking the Thiriku AGAIN!

It’s definitely one of my favorite coffees this year. It has a juicy sweet acidity that makes your mouth water. The sweetness and the spice give it a lot of depth. I had an Aeropress which really brought out its savory side. Holy sh$%!

It has me humming “I’m in love with a Kenyan”

Let’s see…

I got on a boat called a fairy with Sam Lewontin of Everyman, Meister and Jesse Kahn of Counter Culture Coffee. The boat took us to a not-so-remote, magical island full of sandwiches(yum). The temperature steadily rose to about 97 degrees with a feels like temp of 120. Then to cool ourselves down before our faces melted completely off we made 350 “Japanese style iced” Bonmac pour-overs in 3 hours. Sadly, this was not geeky enough so we had to sing Billy Joel’s “Italian Restaurant” and the Planet Unicorn theme song all the way home.

What the hell am I talking about?

The Serious Eats Sandwich Festival on Governor’s Island!

Meister and Sam L. in the upper left. While i’m rocking the hunk tank on the right.

Check out the full article and read about all the yummy gooey sandwiches Here!

We’re in love with Finca El Puente both the people and the coffee so when we heard Counter Culture was releasing a micro-lot selection from this farm, we were doubly stoked. This year’s main lot is already crazy delicious, so we could only imagine what the top lots would be like. Well, this year’s Finca El Puente Micro-Lot is here, and we’re pleased to report that it’s just as tasty as expected!

What’s the deal with micro-lots?
Counter Culture works very closely with the farms & farmers from which they buy coffee: sharing information, visiting the farms, making suggestions, putting together workshops and the like. One of the awesome ways in which they promote development and experimentation is by funding experimental lots—anything from new processing methods to new coffee varieties to new methodologies of harvesting.  These experiments frequently result in exceptional coffees, and when they do, Counter Culture roasts up the resulting small (or “micro”) lots and shares them with lucky folks like me and you.

This year’s El Puente Micro-Lot is the result of an experiment with post-fermentation soaking. This practice, common in Kenya but almost unheard of in Central & South America, involves soaking the coffee for around 24 hours after washing. Nobody’s quite sure how this works, but it certainly does, resulting in juicy fruit flavors, enhanced acidity & complexity. This selection is bursting with pear sweetness and an acidity like white grapes. In a word: bangin’!
We’ve got this coffee (while it lasts!) in 12oz. retail bags, and we’ll be brewing it up to order (via Aeropress or Bonmac dripper) starting next week! Get some.

These sturdy yet fashionable 16oz to-go iced cups are fabulous. In fact we are inclined to sweeten the deal by filling them with your favorite iced beverage…for FREE at the time of your purchase!

$20 while supplies last!