 Sunny skies (well, this weekend anyway), temps in the 70s... now we're talking! It's time to savor every moment that life serves up... and the Peace Crew is stoked (spoked?) for some biking, hiking, gardening and other outdoor fun and frivolity. Our company activities are heating up, too: At the end of May, Lee, our roaster Ivoire and Sarah Elhardt, the MN State Fair coffee trip winner, leave to visit the APECAFORM co-op in Guatemala. Also at the end of month, the Peace Coffee bike team kicks off the first race of the Minnesota Mountain Bike Series (go team go!) And from June 4 - 6, Minneapolis is hosting the Coffee Fest trade show for the first time and Peace Coffee will be pulling shots of espresso made with our delicious Brazilian coffee (read more about it in the Roaster's Corner and find out where you can go to taste the deliciousness). In this issue of Peace Spokes, we explore the connection between Peace Coffee and the movie biz (and discover how our tasty brews kept one Minneapolis film crew happily caffeinated). Andrew Ranallo updates us on the IATP staff garden; we promote an event for one of our favorite causes, the Midtown Greenway; and Keith takes Brazilian espresso on the road. Grab a cup of your favorite Peace brew, take a long, luxurious sip and read on...  by Daniel Getahun  Ah, spring: warming sun, blossoming flowers, budding trees and hours spent frolicking in fields. At least that's what I hear secondhand, since I typically spend as much of April as I can indoors in dark rooms. Yes, movie freaks like me don't truly come out of hibernation until after the 28th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF), presented by Minnesota Film Arts and a great opportunity to travel to dozens of countries through the magical power of film.The local community actively supports MSPIFF, and this year Peace Coffee sponsored two screenings of Bananas!*, a Swedish-produced documentary about the Dole Corporation's use of a controversial pesticide in the late 1970s that rendered sterile a significant number of the company's banana farmers in rural Nicaragua. I have to say Bananas!* didn't shed a lot of light on the banana industry as a whole (and for that matter was disappointingly silent about fair trade), but it was still a well-intentioned reminder about why the source of many of our dietary staples matters. Read on... (Back to Headlines)   by Andrew Ranallo, Communications Assistant, IATP  Like a tiny sprout coming out to meet spring, the IATP staff garden is beginning to take shape. The first official garden committee meal incorporated chives, one of the perennial crops already harvest-ready (this delicious fettuccine with chives and toasted breadcrumbs recipe from Edible Twin Cities), and reminded me why the participation fee and muddy knees are more than worth it: the food! Yes, the gardening is fun, too, when the weather holds up.For a more seasoned take on things, I asked IATP’s Katie Rojas-Jahn about how the staff garden ties into IATP’s culture. "I think it helps build community here. We do the garden lunches and we do work hours together and I think it's a nice way for people to get together and work on something that they all enjoy and share knowledge," she said, "it’s kind of an egalitarian approach to gardening." Read on... (Back to Headlines)   The (first annual) Greenway Challenge will highlight committed Twin Cities riders in a bike-a-thon in support of the Midtown Greenway on June 5, 2010. The Challenge? Participants will ask friends and family to pledge support for a 44-mile bicycle ride on the Greenway.The Grand Prize for the biker who raises the most money in pledges: flight for two and a week's stay in a chateau in France's wine and bike country, sleeps eight. The house is located in a French village, with very private courtyards and gardens. You can take quiet walks and bicycle in the vineyards, and taste wines from more than 30 vignerons. The Second Place Prize for second highest pledge-raiser is a new bicycle and the Third Place Prize for third highest pledge-raiser is dinner for two at a premier local restaurant. There is also a package of great prizes for Best Decorated Bike and Best Personal Costume. All winners will also receive a limited run event art poster by Adam Turman. All entrants will be entered in a drawing for a variety of prizes such as bike tune-ups, free tandem rental time, and other biker-supportive prizes. For more information and registration form, visit the Midtown Greenway website (Back to Headlines)  Samba into summer with our limited time only Brazilian Light-Medium roast or buy any of our coffees, teas, equipment or Peace Gear and take 15% off your entire order (before shipping charges are added). To get your discount, enter BRAZIL in the Promo Box at checkout. Offer ends June 14th. (Back to Headlines)   Many roasters use Brazilian coffee as their canvas, per se, when building an espresso blend. It provides great crema and body and is typically a pretty soft coffee. 'Til now we’ve not had a Brazilian coffee at Peace Coffee; we’ve typically used Nicaraguan coffees for these characteristics in our espresso. Our current limited coffee offering comes from a phenomenal farmer co-op called COOPFAM located in southern Brazil. After pulling and tasting so many delicious shots of this coffee in our cupping lab, we decided it would be fun to take these beans on the road, literally.One thing we noticed right away was the increased acidity inherent in this coffee. This, a result of it being wet processed, was intriguing to us and made us want to play around with the coffee as a single origin espresso. Many and most coffees used for espresso are blends, different beans used to “paint” flavors onto the aforementioned canvas. After much experimenting we found the sweet spot, where the coffee shone both as a brewed cup and a single shot of espresso. This coffee has a bright front with floral aromas, orange marmalade and hazelnut flavors with a long clean sweet finish. After pulling and tasting so many delicious shots of this coffee in our cupping lab, we decided it would be fun to take these beans on the road, literary. We set up “pouring times” at various cafe accounts in the Twin Cities to share a sample of this sweet & rich single origin espresso. I was, admittedly, nervous about doing the first free espresso demo at Common Roots Cafe this month. I’ve spent hours in front of our La Marzocco GB5 perfecting my technique, but had yet to ever practice out in public, in the morning, when people most want their coffee. Not sure what to expect, I stepped into Common Roots and that is when I met Adam. Adam is one of the many great baristas that work at Common Roots, and after briefly chatting with him, we quickly decided that it made much more sense for him to be pulling the shots, which is what he does exceptionally, and for me to talk about the coffee, which is what I do well. And so it was then that one idea turned into another even better idea and I was reminded about the joys of just getting out and doing something fun and a little anxiety causing and see where it takes you. Please come join me for the three remaining events and see what comes of them! Moose and Sadie’s Friday, May 14th- Late afternoon Birchwood Cafe Saturday, May 15th: 2pm-4pm Anodyne Coffee House Saturday, May 22nd: 1pm-3pm Cheers, Keith (Back to Headlines)  "Coffee is to wake up, coffee is to work with, coffee is to live with, coffee is life" ~ Tim Parsons (Back to Headlines) Peace Spokes is a monthly publication from the crew at Peace Coffee. ph 612-870-3440 ph 888-324-7872 fax 612-252-1821 info@peacecoffee.com Thank You for Supporting Fair Trade. It's Simple. It's Fair. It Always Tastes and Feels Better. Upcoming events and other fun stuff: Fan us on Facebook & follow us on Twitter |
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