Seasonal Coffee Menu
These stand-out offerings allow the coffee curious to explore the best tastes of the season. Dive into the flavors and the stories that highlight how our sourcing relationships are bearing (delicious) fruit.
Women in Coffee Series
Organic Double Shift
Colombia | March ‘24
Light Roast
Complex & Sweet
Grapefruit, Goji Berry, Sugarcane, Herbal
Farmer Co-op: Asprocafé Ingrumá
Origin: Caldas, Colombia
Varietals: Variedad Colombia, Typica, Bourbon
Elevation: 1,350-1,800 MASL
Lida Guerrero’s day begins at dawn. Before making the walk over to her farm, she starts the morning by harvesting food from her backyard and preparing it for her family. Today, everything that’s getting cooked is coming right from a small plot behind her house. After smoking fresh banana leaves for tamales and tending to the chickens, she gets to work on making arepas for breakfast. Later in the morning, when the men in the household wake up to fresh coffee and breakfast, Lida is not shy to point out the extra work that is expected of her as a woman managing a coffee farm.
Her family plot, named El Pulpito, is just under one and a half hectares of steeply graded land lush with coffee, medicinal plants and other fruit trees that maintain a rich biodiversity and promote soil health. Today, Lida plants an avocado sapling before she starts harvesting coffee cherries, all while starting to teach her 3 year old great-niece, Sariyah, about caring for the land.
Normally, our Women in Coffee series is about celebrating the increasing role that women have in coffee supply chains. Coupled with that progress, it feels important to acknowledge the continuing challenges and inequities faced by women in coffee on a daily basis. Both in the coffee industry and beyond, women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of domestic responsibilities. A report by the World Bank highlights that women globally spend, on average, more than twice as much time on unpaid domestic work as men. This double shift—managing both household duties and contributing to the workforce—can limit the time and energy women have to invest in their personal and professional pursuits.
Because of existing norms and power structures, it’s not often easy for women to speak so candidly about these imbalances. But, on a recent Equal Exchange visit to Asprocafe Ingruma in Caldas Colombia, Lida helped us see firsthand how what’s required of her as a woman is often at odds with what’s needed of her as a farmer.
We were so appreciative of Lida’s honesty, and immediately thought we needed to highlight her experience in this seasonal series. As we aim to amplify the voices of women in the coffee sector, we want to be sure that celebrating these achievements doesn’t drown out voices like Lida’s calling out that there is still a long road ahead.
For more information about selling this coffee in your store or cafe, call (774) 776-7333
Organic Cold Brew
Ethiopia | D.R. Congo
Full City Roast
Fruity & Bright
Raspberry, Chocolate Ice Cream, Blueberry
Farmer Groups: Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union & SOPACDI
Origins: Ethiopia, D.R. Congo
Varietals: Bourbon, SL-14 & SL-28
Elevation: 1300-1888 MASL
This cold brew coffee blend was specifically designed to be smooth and chocolatey, but it also tells the story of co-ops in Africa that have formed a new bond across geographic and cultural borders. The origins of this blend are exquisite, each reaching elevations that surpass 1,500 MASL. On these high slopes, farmers work hard to cultivate great quality beans. In 2011, we began working with the small farmer co-op SOPACDI and were excited to introduce the US specialty market to coffee from the DRC. Beth Ann, our Quality Manager, noted that this young co-op didn’t have a cupper on staff, and she offered to help them find and train one. Over the last 2 and a half years, we have supported both this person and this vital function through training and crossborder exchanges with our producer partners in Ethiopia. Here is how that work has unfolded:
2012: Beth Ann travels to DRC to help identify a copper for SOPACDI: Dunia ‘Moises’ Muhindo.
2013: Moises travels by bus to Uganda to work on roasting and cupping with Beth Ann and Anne Marie, the cupper from Gumutindo co-op.
2014: Beth Ann returns to DRC to work with Moises on intermediate cupper training.
2015: Moises flies to Ethiopia to meet Mike, Equal Exchange’s Coffee Quality Coordinator for a 4-day seminar with Quality Manager Dame Regassa of Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union.
For more information about selling this coffee in your store or cafe, call (774) 776-7333
