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A lot of hue and cry is made over buying organic food, organic coffee, etc. But “organic” is actually a pretty vague term. Does it mean a lack of pesticides at origin? A lack of factory processing? No additives? Or some combination?

Lifehacker has a pretty handy article on understanding what it means to buy food labeled “organic”. In particular it helps parse the dozens of certifying organizations and criteria. Check it out to get a better sense of what’s going into your shopping basket.

From the article:

“100 Percent Organic” products must show an ingredient list, the name and address of the handler (bottler, distributor, importer, manufacturer, packer, processor) of the finished product, and the name and seal of the organic certifier. These products should contain no chemicals, additives, synthetics, pesticides or genetically engineered substances.

“USDA Organic” products must contain at least 95 percent organic ingredients. The five percent non-organic ingredients could include additives or synthetics if they are on an approved list. The label must contain a list that identifies the organic, as well as the non-organic, ingredients in the product, and the name of the organic certifier.

“Made With Organic” products must contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients. The label must contain a list that identifies the organic, as well as the non-organic, ingredients in the product, along with the name of the organic certifier.

After reading the article, you may be wondering where coffee fits into this scheme of things. You may be wondering if there’s an extra level of complexity and you’d be right. I’ll talk about that in-depth in an upcoming post.

This past week, I’ve been ironing out the details of an agreement with Coffee Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families in coffee-growing communities through microcredit and other projects. Fremont Coffee is going to have a relationship with Coffee Kids so we can start giving back to the people that make the best coffee possible.

Coffee Kids has been around a long time, and they do good work. They create project lists to fund specific activities in coffee-growing regions that help to educate the populace and diversify the economy. This could mean anything from funding a new school to extending a microloan to help a farmer’s wife open a local side business. Because each community has a different range of problems facing it, Coffee Kids takes these communities individually and suggests projects tailored to address that community’s issues.

In addition to an annual cash contribution, our shop is going to donate 15% of the proceeds from our Fremont Farmer’s Market blend to fund various Coffee Kids projects. Later this year we’re going to try to host a lecture or two in the store from a Coffee Kids representative to talk about what the organization does and how it works (along with a cupping). And we have more planned for this year with Coffee Kids, so stay tuned.

We’re in process of trying to close on a used roasting machine…we’ve been to look at a couple of decent ones but there’s a San Franciscan in a town about 1.5 hours from Seattle that I have high hopes for. We were supposed to go take a look at it yesterday but unfortunately an avalanche in Snoqualmie Pass prevented our trip, so I pushed the appointment back to Saturday.

I’m excited about the San Franciscan because it’s nearly identical to my last roaster, at about half the cost of a new one. Aside from a digital temperature probe, I like to roast as manually as possible, and this machine is fully manual. I don’t really believe in automatic roast profiling, because so many variables from roast to roast can change the final product and need to be accounted for–from moisture levels to batch size to minor differences between yearly crops. Much has been made about turnkey roasting solutions, and I’ve always resisted them; not just because it eliminates much of the roaster’s art which is the fun part of the job after all, but more importantly, because it can’t be relied upon for consistency. Consistency, at least in my opinion, is best achieved by a roaster who knows his profile well enough to know what to change about the roast on the fly to achieve it despite endless minor variances in the green bean from batch to batch.

Anyway, we’re well on our way, and should have a decision on a machine by this weekend. In the meantime we got an amazing package deal on the industrial kitchen equipment we need for the cupping lab/training space (things like hand sinks and a fridge) thanks to a close-of-business sale over in Bellevue, so we’ll be able to truly start remodeling our space soon. When we get all the equipment over I’ll take a “before” picture to show what we’re starting with.