Copan Trade, in Tom Ball, Texas, receives the coffee beans from the beneficio, the plant in Honduras that dries the beans Family Coffee has purchased from the growers, prepares them for export, and ships them to Copan Trade for roasting.
We took this trip to give our board members and other friends helping sell our coffee a better understanding of all aspects of coffee production. We hope this greater understanding of the process will help them to increase our market share by sharing that knowledge with our customers.
Coffee Cupping. A major portion of the visit was learning about the various elements related to coffee tasting. Many in the group did not fully realize that coffee is graded in a system very similar to wine tasting. We were provided with charts to help us recognize various flavors which may be present—they may be caused by the soil, local vegetation in the coffee fields, etc. Our coffee has traditionally been graded as premium, but now we understand much more about why and how this occurs consistently.
Roasting. In addition to learning how coffee is graded and all the various elements of that process, we also took a tour of the facility. Naturally the main attraction was the actual coffee roaster. There we learned about how various styles of coffee require variations of roasting time and other conditions.
The participants declared the visit a success and even spoke of arranging a similar visit for interested parties in the local area.