Sustainability is one of our core values here at Barista Institute, we want coffee to both taste good but also be good for people and environment. Baristas are there to represent the whole value chain and we have an important role in communicating and executing the product in the best possible way.
Marta Piigli began her career in coffee as a communications manager. She has found her true calling in business management and she encourages all baristas to acquire knowledge about running a business. Love for coffee is important, but it is not enough to keep a business going.
Rwandan coffee comes from small farms. Paulig’s Anna Vänskä and Marja Touri were charmed by the beauty and cleanness of Rwanda during their trip to learn about the country’s coffee production.
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Colombian family farms produce two coffee harvests a year. The impact of coffee bean origin can be detected in the flavour: beans grown in the south have citrus notes, those from the central area are fruity and herbal, while beans from the north have traces of nuts and chocolate.
Have you ever wondered what happens in a coffee farm before the beans are roasted by a coffee roastery? Coffee farms come in different sizes and all have different methods of farming and processing but here is one example from Kenya where I visited early 2019.
For many of us word barista is very closely related to coffee but I feel there is much more to know if one really wants to be a great barista. We have talked a lot about milk, water and spices used in recipes and coffee brewing. But one thing we should talk a lot more is tea. Tea culture is something we should bring to next level in our coffee shops as there is more and more people bouncing between these two beautiful drinks.
Costa Rica is a Central American country that is almost the same size as Estonia in terms of area, but has four times the population. While the crops ideally suited to the Estonian climate are carrot, beet and turnips, in Costa Rica it’s bananas, melons and coffee. In this blog post I discuss how coffee is grown in Costa Rica and what I saw and experienced on my travels.
It is mid-January and it's snowing in the Sahara, but there is still no sight of snow in Helsinki. Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, it's supposed to be dry season and summer at its best, but in recent days the country has been hit by heavy rains and cold winds. Rainfall has caused the coffee trees to bloom for several months too early, which has a negative effect on the coming crop.
Paulig's Sourcing Manager for coffee Anna Vänskä is taking a year to travel around countries of origin. In Costa Rica, she sips on chorreador-brewed coffee while tropical rain is falling on the coffee trees.
Did you know that responsibility and sustainability are taken into account in every stage of the production chain of Paulig coffees? The barista can increase the value of coffee and promote the consumption of sustainable coffee by telling customers about coffee-related responsibility issues.
At the end of October, Paulig launched a coffee grounds campaign in Estonia. In 25 days we collected 4.4 tons of used coffee grounds, thanks to the companies and citizens who joined the project. The energy company Nelja Energia produced over 2,000 kWh of bioenergy from coffee grounds at their biogas plant. With that green energy we covered the energy needs of five households in SOS Children's Village for one month.
