Coffee Bean International's Bruce Mullins and His Coffee Journey to Kenya and Ethiopia
February 4, 2008
Kenya – Chapter One:
It has been a dream of mine to travel as a volunteer for the Coffee Corps since I first heard about the program in January, 2003. I remember thinking at the time what a great idea it was – to directly link specialty coffee professionals in the United States with coffee producers around the world, allowing us to share some of our experience and talents with others, while inevitably learning more about great coffees and interesting cultures that produce them.
With an extremely full schedule at Coffee Bean International during the past few years, my time had been more than spoken for – it just wasn't realistic for me to volunteer. However, I had never forgotten about my interest in Coffee Corp – I had kept the file on the credenza behind my desk, knowing that eventually I would be in a position to volunteer. That chance finally happened in November 2007, when my schedule opened up enough to allow me to join a Coffee Corps trip supporting the Coffee Quality Institute's (CQI) "Q Coffee System" roll-out in Kenya and Ethiopia. The Q system is an innovative program from the CQI which independently and objectively certifies the cup quality of specialty coffees from around the world – similar to the 1-to-100 scale for wines pioneered by The Wine Spectator®. It is the only coffee certification in the world related to cup quality, and while not diminishing the importance of other certifications related to how coffee grows or how it is purchased (e.g. organic or fair trade), many of us in the specialty coffee business are incredibly excited about the Q certification.
Since I started in the specialty coffee industry in the late 70's, I've wanted to visit East Africa. In fact, it was a pound of Kenya AA coffee in 1978 – the first high quality African coffee I had ever tasted, and which I still vividly remember to this day – that convinced me that my future somehow must be in specialty coffee. And now nearly 30 years later – through good times and bad times, through certainty and doubt – I remain changed by that single pound of extraordinary Kenyan coffee. But until now, though my coffee travels have taken me to places around the world I never dreamed of, I'd never visited the lands that produced what are still my favorite single-origin coffees.
My job in Africa sounded straightforward – meet up in Nairobi, Kenya with Tracy Ging and Ted Lingle of the CQI, and spend a week helping them evaluate and test a group of Kenyan coffee tasters hoping to become certified Q Graders, as well as participate in stakeholder meetings as a specialty coffee roaster to offer a business perspective on the value and potential in the US for the Q Coffee System. When that mission was done, Tracy and I were to travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a week of stakeholder meetings to similarly help inform and gain support for the Q program there. As you might imagine on this type of trip, we had our fair share of challenges and changes, but throughout the two weeks we enjoyed the support of some terrific in-country partners and eventually accomplished all that we originally set out, and more.
