The Journey To Your Cup

How does your Ometepe coffee get into your cup?  Yes, you pour it in, all bleary eyed in the morning and then emerge your cheerful self after a few sips, but before that I mean?  How does that delicious Ometepe java make it's way from the coffee bushes on Ometepe Island to you?  When you think about it there's a lot of hands helping you get that aromatic brew into your cup.

Ometepe coffee is grown on the side of  an extinct volcanic mountain in rich, volcanic soil. The Arabica beans begin as small red "cherries" that ripen intermittently.   Because the coffee fruit does not ripen all at once it must be picked several times during the season, which lasts from November to mid January.  The cherries are hand picked and carried down the mountain side to the processing plant.  The outer pulp is fermented off  and the inner beans spread on concrete slabs in the sun to dry.  The pulp is composted and returned as fertilizer to help next season's harvest.

The beans  are then carefully picked over by hand, graded for size and uniformity and bagged in 70 kilo units.  Ometepe beans and those for BOSIA (Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association) are gathered together and picked up by a shipping company and put into a container. The container makes its way to a port  and is shipped to either Seattle or Vancouver.  There the bags are inspected by customs and  moved to a coffee warehouse in Richmond where they are put on pallets (10 bags to a pallet) shrink wrapped and shipped to our roaster/storage facilities at Serious Coffee in Duncan.  They remain there until we order a roast.  To create the coffee that you have come to know and love we have carefully chosen our roasting temperature - usually 475 deg F for dark roast, and 455 for medium.  Seventy-six  pounds are roasted at a time, taking about 12 - 15 minutes.

Because the beans have been so carefully picked over and sized they contain no debris and don't require cleaning.  The result is a  very uniform  and predictable roasting. Volunteers from the Salt Spring Ometepe Group do the rest.  They pick up the coffee from the roaster, bag it, deliver it to the stores that carry it, and sell both brewed and bagged coffee at the Saturday market.  And so next time you look at your bag of beans or take a sip of that fragrant brew you can imagine the journey that your coffee has taken to get to your cup.


(with thanks to Brian Finnemore for the details!)

Easter Weekend Brings Coffee To The Saturday Market

March 30, 2013 Ometepe's First Market Day Of The Year

It's that time again. Finally.  Spring is in the air (most of the time) and the Easter Bunny is hopping in our general direction.  And did I mention that Ometepe Coffee will raise the market tent and fill the coffee urns for the first time on Saturday, April 19th.  As you can see from last year, the first market day was sunny and warm enough for some to sport shorts. Should we dare to hope for another one of those?

Last year was the first year that The Salt Spring Water Company provided us with water to brew our market coffee and the verdict is in: it made our market blend taste even more delicious.  Many thanks to The Salt Spring Water Company for their continuing generous contribution to Ometepe.

So drop by on Saturday, say hello, pick up a cup of your favourite organic, fair trade java and a bag of beans to take home and enjoy.  Ometepe coffee is one of those feel good purchases; it brings a wonderful taste and aroma to your home while supporting coffee growers on Ometepe Island and their community.

Enjoy your holiday weekend with coffee or without.

Ometepe Coffee in Victora

If you love Ometepe coffee and live in Victoria your beans are not far away!  You can find our dark, medium and decaf organic beans at The Global Village Store at 527 Pandora Ave, on the north side of Market Square.  I know it's fun to come over to Salt Spring and find Ometepe at the Saturday market but we're not there in winter and I'm guessing you didn't buy enough beans to get you through 'til the market reopens in April.

And while you're there picking up your beans in this lovely little shop, you might just find some other fair trade goodies from around the world that strike your fancy.  Global Village is run completely by volunteers and stocks crafts from over 35 producers around the world.  Most of these are craft cooperatives, 90% of them women who have organized to sell traditional crafts.  In addition to our delicious coffee you will find greeting cards, scarves, hats, jewelry, decorative masks, toys and more.

Global Village is a great match for Ometepe Coffee as, just like Ometepe, it directly supports artisans and workers by paying fair trade prices for the goods you find in the shop.  Just like Ometepe, Global Village is run by volunteers.  It's a fun place to stop, have a chat with a volunteer and pick up the beans for your next cup of java.  We visited with a volunteer from Columbia and chatted about roasting coffee from her own plants in Columbia an mixing it with sugar scraped off a block and mixed with hot milk.  We hear that there are quite a few Ometepe fans that stop in for their beans on a regular basis. Why not become one of them.

Global Village is open 10-5 pm Monday - Saturday.

Christmas Coffee For Santa (And Others)

Santa must surely tire of all that milk set out for him with his cookies. And with the long hours of Christmas eve deliveries, what could be better than a nice cup of rich, dark coffee?

And so you will need to know where best to find those bags of delicious beans to brew the perfect cup for Santa (and your other Christmas guests).  So here's a little list.  You can check it twice before you leave the house, just to make sure that you stop in at one of the following locations to pick up you Ometepe beans on Salt Spring.

If you are on Salt Spring's south end, it's easy to  pop into the Mercantile in Fulford Village for your bean fix. They have so many goodies there you might just leave with more than beans. Careful that you don't develop an addiction to their giant gluten free peanut butter cookies!

Ometepe Coffee At The Mercantile

If you are in Ganges and looking for your Ometepe beans, you have a couple of choices.  You can find both bulk beans and bagged beans at Nature Works.  You might even like to get creative and mix your own blend of medium and dark beans or make a half caff, as a friend of mine does.  And there's no shortage of treats lining the Nature Works shelves to go with that coffee, just in case.

Bulk Beans At Nature Works In Ganges

And the latest addition to the places you can find Ometepe beans is Country Grocer.  If you happen to be on a grocery run, what could be easier than to just buzz down the coffee isle in Country Grocer and toss a bag of your favourite beans into your basket.  Dark, medium and decaf are lined up tidily on the shelf.

Ometepe Beans Now Available At Country Grocer

In Victoria you can find your beans at Global Village in Market Square.  We recently had a lovely note from a faithful Ometepe customer in Victoria that read as follows:

"I have been drinking Ometepe Dark as espresso for over 15 years now. It is still the best coffee I have ever had. As far as I know the Global Village Store here in Victoria is the only local retail outlet. In fact I ended up volunteering at the Global Village Store (a Fair Trade store) for 10 years because of Ometepe."

If you've got your own Ometepe coffee story, we'd love to hear it!  Stop by our facebook page and share it with us.  Wishing you all a happy, coffee flavoured holiday and new year from the volunteers at Ometepe.

Marg Simons - a Founding Member

talking about our early history

Find Yourself, Serve Others, Drink Coffee

The flavours of Salt Spring are rich and varied and go well with a good cup of coffee.  And you can find both at the Saturday market.  One of the best ways to enjoy these pleasures is to stand behind the Ometepe Coffee table as a volunteer at the Saturday market.  As Mahatma Gandhi said: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

And there is much to get lost in at the market.  It is a great place to people watch, see friends and neighbours and chat with strangers. Today on my first shift behind the market table I chatted with a young girl about her pink fairy doll named Lila while her Grandma and mom got coffee.  A couple from California who had visited Ometepe Island stopped by to chat and a young woman said that our coffee was the highlight of the Saturday market for her each week.  Market vendors are always popping by for their cup of coffee.  Today the Raging Grannies came and sang a song beside the table. The Taoist Tai Chi group did a demo on the grass nearby and a palm reader set up on the grass not far away. And there is always a moment to chat with your fellow volunteers.

Baskets overflowing with peppers, ripe melons and onion bread called from a nearby stall and Brigitte and Bruno's artfully displayed French pastries were in clear view.  And there is always a moment or two to nip out and buy your favourite market bread and cheese.

As anyone who has volunteered anywhere knows, you seem to get more than you give. You get to feel good about offering your service. The act of doing your work is a pleasure and the memories of your contribution linger warmly in memory.  The Salt Spring Ometepe group welcomes new volunteer members.  The work is straightforward and not difficult.  And there is always an opportunity to make and nurture new friendships and spend some quality social time volunteering at the market, the film festival and the fall fair.  There are monthly meetings where you can learn more about the organization and their work (and have coffee of course!)
and a Christmas potluck to get to know members and share a delicious meal.

Do You Do Decaf?

Do you drink decaf coffee? We all have different reasons for making this choice. Perhaps you drink it in the evening if you have coffee then?  Or perhaps caffeine makes you feel jumpy and agitated and you never drink caffeinated beverages.  Perhaps you always drink half decaf mixed with caffeinated coffee all the time?

If you do choose decaf, it's nice to know that the caffeine has been removed from your coffee by a natural process.  Ometepe's decaf beans are prepared in just such a way, using the "Swiss-water decaffeination process".  If a coffee doesn't say they have used this method, the caffeine is most likely removed by the use of chemical solvents such as methylene chloride or ethyl acetate.  That doesn't sound very tasty, does it?

Check out this link to learn about the safe and natural process of Swiss Water decaffeination which removes 99.9% of the caffeine while maintaining the flavour: http://www.swisswater.ca/consumer/swiss-water-process.

So whether you choose decaf or not, for yourself or your guests, when you buy Ometepe beans you are buying shade grown organic beans that promote sustainability and support farmers and their families on Ometepe Island.  Profits from the sale of these beans support other projects in Nicaragua.

Find Omeptepe beans at the Salt Spring Saturday market, Rendezvous Patisserie, The Mercantile, Nature Works or Global Village in Victoria.  Coffee by the cup is available at Kizmit, Rendezvous and the Saturday market.  And what nicer way to enjoy your coffee than out on your sunny deck this weekend?  Sip your coffee and savour the sunshine.  Happy weekend.