On my visit to Burundi this year, I sat with Dan Brose of Migoti Coffee. Dan and his partner Poncien built this station some years ago, and it all didn’t go exactly as planned. With some bumps along the way, this main station in Mutambu district is becoming a hub, with a new station starting in Kimono and another planned for next year. But what I r…

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 som…

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 t…

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 "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 thi…

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…

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 mat…

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 …

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.comโดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

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.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

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.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

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.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

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

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

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.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

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…

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 You…

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! Alis…

Thompson and Alistair Sequeira talk about coffee and lotsa other stuff in this 2017 conversation in rural Mwakiro, Burundi. Alistair lives with his family in Bujumbura, the capital, 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 coffe…

Part 1 of 2 A while back we had Mary Maina Manyeki visit us in Oakland, and had a great conversation about her experiences as a Kenya coffee farmer. This transitioned into a more general conversation with Wycliffe, a trader and agronomist from Kenyacof, and Kat, a trader from Sucafina USA, about the coffee market in Kenya. I split that generally in…

Part 2 of 2 A while back we had Mary Maina Manyeki visit us in Oakland, and had a great conversation about her experiences as a Kenya coffee farmer. This transitioned into a more general conversation with Wycliffe, a trader and agronomist from Kenyacof, and Kat, a trader from Sucafina USA, about the coffee market in Kenya. I split that generally in…

Here is the audio from a video that Tom shot on a trip to Colombia. "This is a long form talk with Leo and Jenni Henao at the farm in Urrao Antioquia, Colombia. Maybe of interest to farmers and gardeners more than coffee. Leo and I are friends and I'm trying to get him to laugh in this video. But the topic and his use of micro-organisms in composti…

This starts with music buy the Indo pop group The Steps, and ends with a long informative conversation with Daniel Shewmaker of MTC coffee traders, who sources coffee in Indonesia. He also grew up in Sulawesi and speaks Bahasa! While in Timor and Flores we were having good conversations about Indonesia coffee processing and quality, and the way it …

John Karuru is a Kenyan agronomist who works in Rwanda, and a person of wide-ranging knowledge. If you want to know how to escape a charging hippo, John's your man. In fact our conversation veers away from coffee quickly, but John's stories about growing up in East Africa are so entertaining. Where do they smoke coffee leaves? John knows. Hope you …

During his trip to Nairobi in Dec. of 2015, Tom had this casual conversation with Mette-Marie "Mia" Hansen about the confusing Kenyan coffee world and what it's like being a woman in this financial end of the coffee trade. Mia works for C. Dorman Coffee Exporters as a buyer and trader that also buys coffee from Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopa.…

PART 2. This isn't really a podcast. It's a recorded Skype conversation. The quality is pretty low. But if you are dying to know details of the issues facing coffee farmers in Colombia, there's some nuggets of wisdom in here (if you can hear them over the car alarm in the background, ha ha). Leonardo Henao occupies a unique position to discuss Colo…

PART 1. This isn't really a podcast. It's a recorded Skype conversation. The quality is pretty low. But if you are dying to know details of the issues facing coffee farmers in Colombia, there's some nuggets of wisdom in here (if you can hear them over the car alarm in the background, ha ha). Leonardo Henao occupies a unique position to discuss Colo…

For many years I have recorded the ambient sounds I awake to while traveling in coffee-producing countries. Without many podcast ideas lately, and not really wanting to hear myself talk much, I thought these might be interesting to hear as ambient sound. But I found I had to add a voice-over track to explain where I was, and what was happening at t…

Thompson talks with Leonardo Henao about breaking the rules on coffee fermentation, and how a focus on microorganisms might alter the conceptual framework of what processing and fermentation are to coffee flavors.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

Tom describes the subjects of this podcast as "obscure details" but it's actually pretty interesting. We hope you enjoy his reflections on Burundi's coffee industry, production systems, colonial history, co-ops and other organizations.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

During a trip to Rwanda, Tom documented his visit to the Gitesi processing station. This is where we get a lot of our Rwandan coffee from. The son of the mill's owner answers a lot of questions about the drying and processing of the coffee that is produced there. He also talks a bit about their future plans to expand and produce a greater quantity …

Tom and Chris Schooley cup coffee in Chris's kitchen and talk about the information that Tom brought back from his trip to Kansas State University where he met with a group of sensory analysis professionals. Please excuse the slurping/spitting noises that all coffee cuppers make.. The kids playing in the next room got a little loud at times too.…

We describe coffee as tasting like so many other things, fruits, sugars, caramels, candies, spices ... but the core coffee flavors are much more challenging to elucidate. I have come up with a term "coffee identity" akin to the basic taste identifying markers from other food and beverage flavor lexicons, and this podcast touches on the way we seek …

I made this recording in January this year, and thought I would share it as a new podcast because it addresses the effect of Roya (Coffee Leaf Rust) and the current crop. It's not a new problem, but is proportionally more important because it is so widespread now in Central America. It affects the smaller farmer more, as they have less resources to…

For some this podcast may seem esoteric, but I wanted to take on ideas about sourcing coffee and the rather simplistic ideas, overt and implied, in the way "direct trade" coffee is marketed by coffee roasters. There isn't one approach to working with farmers and buying quality coffee, even within one country, let alone in systems as varied as Ethio…

On New Year's Day 2014, Tom was out of roasted coffee and decided to solve the problem with his hot air popcorn popper.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

When in Kenya, and while getting used to the idea of podcasting, Tom recorded some fun conversations.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

The Amharic language in Ethiopia is difficult for any Westerner to grasp. In this podcast, Tom gets some informal lessons from some folks during one of his trips.โดย Sweet Maria's Coffee

Our first podcast takes place as Tom grinds and brews a cup of coffee in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He clears up a few misconceptions that people have about what happens after he steps off airplanes in origin countries. Learn about what goes into purchasing the coffee that ends up in your home roaster. -recorded on Jan. 28th 2014…