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Up north in the Green Mountain State, Vermonters are well known for their love of snow, which goes hand-in-hand with ‘the cold’.  During the first big snowstorm of 2010, here at Green Mountain Coffee, we  were celebrating the snow,  by enjoying a nice round of creemee’s. [A creemee is a soft-serve ice cream delight for all of you 'out-of-staters'] No, for the record, we are not crazy… and as much as we love our coffee here… in sticking with the cold weather theme, we traded in the caffeine that afternoon for some sweet and frigid yumminess!

Just another snowy day here in the mountains of Vermont.

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Welcome to Ask the Coffee Lab!  Each month our crack Coffee Lab Team will tackle your questions about coffee – from what makes decaf coffee decaf to why coffee tasters slurp – and help to bring you another step closer to being the coffee expert you know you are inside.  If you have questions to ask us, leave a comment here, on Twitter (Follow us: @Coffee_Lab), or Facebook.

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Without further ado, Peter asks via our Facebook page:

“What creates a good coffee bean?”

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Great question. I’m a new Dad. What creates a good kid?

My brother said that before my daughter was born, he thought his own 3 kids came out fully formed, personalities intact and that his job was just to make sure they got three square meals a day and that they didn’t get run over by a car.

Are some beans born good? Kind of. The job is usually to pick the beans at the height of ripeness and then carefully process them so that the bean stands on its own and isn’t impacted by any rough, careless, negligent handling at the mill where it’s processed.

Coffee beans have lots of parents. Some people say that a coffee gets handled by up 150 different people before it goes down the gullet. (Don’t worry – not always literally handled.)

It helps to have cultivators of Coffea Arabica that produce better tasting coffee (as opposed to producing just lots of coffee). Typica and Bourbon are common older varieties (you could almost call them heirlooms) that produce good tasting coffee beans.

Some coffee beans can look lovely and yet have no taste. Some beans can look awful and taste delicious. Some ripe coffee cherries can look great – but be really light and low quality – so looks ain’t all that matters. It’s what’s inside!

It helps to grow at higher altitudes (above 3,500 to 5,500 feet) so that the bean doesn’t get too hot or grow too fast and take on more water. As higher grown beans, good beans are denser – (they grow slower) and are better able to handle the intense heat in a roaster

It helps to be picked when the beans are super ripe – big, red, and meaty – mature and fully developed. Normally they should be milled right away so that the inherent quality of the bean can stand on its own and not be influenced by the fruit or the interaction of the fruit with water and warm weather and microbial activities that can impact (usually in a negative way) the bean.

Good beans will come from diligent and careful handling in the mill in order to not have the good ones compromised by the bad beans in the mill. Good segregation means the good ones get set aside.

Essentially any good bean starts out good and the trick is not to have it compromised on the way to your cup. There’s generally very little anyone can do to improve the quality of a coffee bean – but there are lots of ways to deleteriously affect the quality of the coffee. Imagine a long slow battle hammering away at beans – the barbarians of carelessness, inattention, thoughtlessness and inexperience.

Other things that help:

• For the farmer to have vision, hope, knowledge and a steady buyer with clear expectations and a ready check book.

• For the cooperative to be able to get pre-harvest financing to help pay for a farmers’ beans so that it can compete for the best coffee.

• A roaster that is willing to pay attention to the potential a coffee has and not just cook and bake it or roast the heck out of it.

• A convenience store manager that is willing to use a separate airpot for Hazelnut so that the Nantucket Blend that comes next doesn’t get contaminated.

• You the customer – taking care to use a nice brewer, clean water, cleaning it regularly, serving and enjoying it fresh.

• You the customer – caring about good coffee and being willing to pay for it. (Thank you for that, by the way).

Most mornings, my 5-month daughter sits on my lap when I start my day with my FTO Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with a little organic half and half and a little raw whipped honey. If she grows up to be sweet, clean and bright like my favorite cup of coffee, I’ll be happy.

-Winston

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3/4/2010 Update:  GMC Hot Cocoa and all the Cafe Escapes cocoa items are now available!  Please use the links below.  Thanks.

3/2/2010 Update:  Well, we’ve got some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that Green Mountain Coffee Hot Cocoa will be available very soon.  We expect to have this available Thursday evening, March 4th.  And we will have a steady supply so that you can feel good about adding this product to your recurring Cafe EXPRESS orders.

As for Cafe Escapes, we will have a limited quantity of all four items available for sale this Thursday evening, March 4th.  Due to the limited quantities, we can NOT let folks add these products to recurring Cafe EXPRESS club orders.  We believe we have only 3 weeks worth of product for all four Cafe Escapes products.  We are VERY sorry about this.  If you enjoy our Cafe Escapes products, please get them now!

2/4/2010 Update:  I am told by our Production folks that we can expect Hot Cocoa products to be available by March 1st.  Wahoo!  A big THANK YOU to all our Hot Cocoa k-cup loyalists who have waited so patiently for these products.

1/20/2010:  It pains me to type this, but I’m afraid all of our Hot Cocoa K-Cup products are out of stock.  Due to incredible demand, we’re told we will not have any Hot Cocoa K-Cups to sell from our web site until mid-February (at best).

Let me assure everyone that we are NOT discontinuing these products.  We love these products – and clearly you do, too!

On a personal level, my two kids ask me everyday when I’ll be able to bring home some new Hot Cocoa.  Hopefully, in a few weeks, I’ll have good news for them and you!

These are the Hot Cocoa K-Cups that are out of stock:

• Café Escapes® Milk Chocolate Hot Cocoa
• Café Escapes® Cafe Mocha
• Café Escapes® Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa
• Green Mountain Coffee Hot Cocoa

-Ken

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Welcome to Changemakers Wednesday, also known as Changemakers Tuesday 3.0.  We’re a day behind, but we have another episode of Coffee Break ready for your viewing pleasure  – this time coming straight from the green space – which is more snowy than green at the moment  – behind our Waterbury campus.

This week, Amanda and I are taking a behind-the-scenes approach, showing you exactly what the idea submission process looks like once you click the “Enter Your Idea” icon to submit on Changemakers.com/Revelation.

And don’t forget, this Friday is another opportunity to win some of our revelation-ary coffee through Changemaker’s on Twitter.  Follow us @GreenMtnCoffee and @Changemakers and stay tuned on Friday for more details!

If you missed previous episodes of Coffee Break, take a peek at past episodes in our Coffee Break playlist. Next week, Coffee Break is back with Noelle and Sarah from Changemakers – don’t miss out!

-Kristen

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We’re extremely proud to share that Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. is included on the list of “100 Best Corporate Citizens” released today by Corporate Responsibility Magazine.  The “100 Best” list is known as the world’s top corporate responsibility ranking based on publicly-available information. 

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens List evaluates companies in seven categories: Environment, Climate Change, Human Rights, Philanthropy, Employee Relations, Financial Performance, and Governance.  The list is selected from among the large-cap Russell 1000 companies, based on data provided by leading ESG investor data firm IW Financial.  GMCR ranked 39th overall and was among the top ten food and beverage companies on the list.

The list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens was first published in 1999 in Business Ethics Magazine, and has been managed by CRO and Corporate Responsibility Magazine since 2007.  In 2008, the eligibility criteria and ranking methodology for the list was revamped, limiting the list to companies in the Russell 1000 index.  GMCR’s size at that time prevented it from being considered.  Because of GMCR’s financial growth, this is the first year of eligibility under the new criteria and methodology.

We are excited and humbled to be recognized for our efforts in corporate social and environmental responsibility, and we are honored to be included with the other companies on this prestigious list.  It reflects the passion and work of our employees and our efforts to contribute to positive change in the world.  Visit us at Brewing A Better World for more information on GMCR’s CSR initiatives.

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Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy Coffee-Community Outreach is currently traveling in Guatemala. Rick works and travels around the globe, visiting coffee farms where have outreach programs. Rick’s work specifically addresses poverty and hunger in the coffee-growing regions where we source our coffee.

Here is an update from the ground in Guatemala:

San Miguel Pochutla is separated by one volcano from the communities along Guatemala’s picturesque Lake Atitlan.  Nestled in the mountains above Pochutla is a small hamlet known as Candelaria, that is home to ASOCAMPO, a Fair Trade cooperative that produces high quality coffee for GMCR.
The co-op was founded in 2002, on what was a large coffee estate known as Finca La Florida.  The owner abandoned the farm following the coffee price crisis in 2001.  Many of the farm’s workers purchased the farm with the help of the Guatemalan government. Today over 100 families produce just over one container of coffee.  This is double their production from last year, and the co-op is planning on serious growth, hoping to produce 5 containers within the coming years.

The photo shows a coffee plant nursery that currently is home to 40,000 young coffee plants that will be used to renovate and expand current coffee parcels.  In the coming months this nursery will be expanded to support 100,000 young plants.

Thanks to the support GMCR is providing through Catholic Relief Services, the farmers and their families are now diversifying the use of their land, and in addition to growing coffee are growing food to eat and to sell, as an additional source of income.
The co-op has recently built a green bean packing plant, with the assistance of the Guatemalan government.  Green beans grown by the farmers will be sorted and packed by 37 employees (new jobs!) in the community starting before Easter this year. The project is being facilitated by Cuatro Pinos, supplier of French green beans to COSTCO.
ASOCAMPO is developing rapidly, yet is on a path that is supporting sustainable livelihoods for its family members.

Try some of our coffee that might contain ASOCAMPO’s beans.

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