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We welcome summer with a brand new name and look for the Peace Coffee newsletter! We're now Peace Spokes, a title which not only acknowledges our affinity for biking, but also speaks to the outreach we do both in our local community and with producer cooperatives in the coffee lands.
In this month's inaugural issue, Melanee shares her conversations with farmers during her visit to Fondo Paez, source of our Colombian Heavy Pedal coffee. Kyle talks about Peace Coffee's involvement in providing bicycle parts for Project Zambia. We also give an update on our continuing quest for a reliable source of biodiesel in the Twin Cities area and introduce you to blogger and fellow bike enthusiast Bill Palladino, who recently stopped by our warehouse for a visit. And we've got a new Roaster's Corner and a winning haiku in our Peace Pride contest. Kick back with a mug of Peace Coffee, read on and enjoy...
by Melanee Meegan, Peace Coffee Marketing Manager
 I've been serving up a lot of our Colombian Heavy Pedal coffee at various bike events this summer. Heavy pedal is a reference to the amount of weight that our bike deliverers pedal across town every day. As far as the delicious taste of the coffee, the credit is all due to the Fondo Paez Cooperative in Colombia. Earlier this year I visited the Páez farmers who grow this coffee in the central Andes region near Popayán. It was full connection, conversation and coffee.
Miguel Martinez, Fondo Paez's Commercialization Coordinator, Wilman Sotelo & Maria Teresa, of the non-profit Our Colombia, met our group at the airport in the northern city of Cali. I traveled with Chris and Jody Treter of Higher Grounds Trading Company, Chris O'Brien, who is most well known for his book about beer titled Fermenting Revolution, and Gary Howe, a photographer and journalist from Michigan. We went to bed early so we could depart in the morning to reach the offices of Fondo Paez. On the first day we met with 30 coop members in Caldono. Heavy rains put a damper on our walk around nearby coffee farms. Instead, we sat together in a local church and introduced ourselves to one another. 99% of the Paez speak their indigenous language, Nasa. They also all speak Spanish, which is taught in schools, except for some of the elders who never learned Spanish.
Read on...
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by Kyle Feldman, Customer Service Representative
 One of the reasons that I enjoy working for Peace Coffee is our commitment to serving the larger community. Some of this falls within our business model itself—providing donations to charities and nonprofits, supporting local bike culture, choosing eco-conscious delivery practices, and partnering with coffee farmers around the world to provide improved lives through fair prices and long-lasting relationships, for example.
However, we also strive to contribute to causes that fit our mission but extend beyond our daily operations. So when we were approached by Quality Bicycles Parts to contribute to their drive to provide World Bicycle Relief with 5000 bikes for Project Zambia, we sprang into action.
Peace Coffee employees raised enough money, when matched by the company, to provide 5 bikes to the people of Zambia. According to WBR's Project Zambia website, with their country racked by AIDS and poverty, where available healthcare is often limited by difficulties of transportation: "Bicycles, as tools of simple sustainable mobility, will more than quadruple the [healthcare] volunteer's ability to reach those in need, and allow them to travel greater distances more quickly, and with less fatigue, while carrying significantly more supplies. This results in better and more frequent healthcare and education for more people at a lower cost, and enables the volunteers to better care for their own needs."
Additionally, "In support of Zambia's culture of community and volunteerism, the bikes will be provided on a two-year, work-to-own basis to the volunteers. This will provide the following benefits:
• Healthcare and education will be provided efficiently and consistently to those in need.
• Volunteer turnover will be reduced. This adds to consistency in healthcare and allows for an increase in volunteer development.
• Volunteers will benefit economically from having a bicycle, as they are able to use it for their own needs concurrently with their service.
• A sense of ownership will ensure that the equipment will be cared for properly."
Though it's a obviously only a relative drop in the bucket in the overwhelming mission to restore health to a devastated country, I'm proud that I work with a group of people that is willing to use their resources to help others, whether here at home, or, as in this case, part of our global family.
Learn more about World Bicycle Relief's Project Zambia.
Note: A photo of Zambian women with their new bikes is at the top of this month's newsletter.
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 Recently Peace Coffee was included in a recent Star Tribune article titled Biodiesel: Down to the last drop. We were highlighted as an example of a company who has had a difficult time finding a biodiesel supplier in the Twin Cities to fuel our van for deliveries. The fueling station we go to has gone from offering B100 to only offering B2. This change has prompted us to look to other options such as brewing our own biodiesel and even going electric!
This weekend, Brian, our van driver, and Liz, our outreach coordinator, will head to Custer, Wisconsin, for the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in search of sustainable alternatives to petroleum (and to serve up ice coffee to the thousands of the attendees). We can't wait to hear what they learn about and when our first batch of "moonshine" for the Peace Coffee van will be ready!
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 Whether you live in the Twin Cities or come from afar, Peace Coffee always welcomes folks to stop by our roastery. If you call ahead of time we can make time to give you a full tour. On certain days you can also join us for coffee cuppings. Some people actually take us up on our offer, which we love! For example, we met a fellow bike enthusiast, Bill Palladino, at the Fixed Gear Symposium a few years ago in Traverse City, Michigan. His business causes him to travel worldwide. On these trips, whenever possible, he looks for stories to tell about bicycling and the fixed gear universe. So when work finally brought him to Minneapolis, it was a perfect opportunity for him to get on a bike and learn more about the business of Peace Coffee. Check out Bill's colorful story about his adventures during a day in the life of a Peace Coffee bike deliverer.
Thanks for the visit, Bill. We hope others will visit too!
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by Keith Tomlinson, Peace Coffee Head Roaster
 Roasting coffee is hot. Spending four or more hours standing next to a machine that is routinely 400 degrees, meanwhile preparing your next roasts, assisting in bagging the ones you just did, and blending a bunch of them together can be downright exhausting. As the temperature outside inches up, the temperature inside the warehouse moves up exponentially. Each day as each of the roasters begins their shift, we track the temperature and the relative humidity in the warehouse, because these factors play a role in how we roast coffee. In the winter, the temperature is low and so is the humidity. As we move into the summer both of those numbers rise but at irregular intervals. So, now is the time where they both are moving toward their peaks. As the temperature rises the machine stays warmer easier, but as the humidity rises the beans maintain a higher overall moisture content. It is within the first six minutes of the roast that we dry out the bean. What we have to be careful of during this time of the year is making sure that it happens fast enough without burning the bean in the process. This manifests itself in dropping the coffee into the roaster at a lower temperature and keeping the burners off or on low for a shorter period of time, but turning them off sooner and letting the overall temperature of the machine carry the bean through the roast. This is, in general, a more stable time to roast beans, as long as the air conditioner is in working condition.
During this hot time we have all been excited about the newest harvest from the Chajulense Cooperative in Guatemala. This coffee appears in our Guatemalan light roast. Its lemon and spice entangles with a deep body for a refreshing and very complicated rewarding cup of coffee.
Cheers, Keith
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We received this haiku from Cole E. Judge, a Midwesterner now living in New Orleans:
Each day, Peace Coffee
wakes me up with the warmth of
the New Orleans sun.
Congratulations, Cole. You're this month's winner!
If you're passionate about Peace Coffee, show it! Send us:
— a photo showing your "Peace Coffee Pride”
— a short written testimonial about how much you love us
— an original coffee poem or haiku (three lines, 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the last)
Each month, we’ll choose one entry to appear in the following Fair Grounds newsletter. If we choose yours, you’ll win a pound of your favorite Peace Coffee coffee. Please send your entry to mel@peacecoffee.com.
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"When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart."
~ Diane Ackerman
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Peace Spokes is a monthly publication from the crew at Peace Coffee.
ph 612-870-3440
ph 888-324-7872
fax 612-677-3989
info@peacecoffee.com |
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