By Stefano Bizzarri - Flying over the ocean of lights that is Lima, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this trip. I had visited coffee farms in Hawaii but I already knew this trip was going to be very different. After a busy first day in Lima involving a distracted taxi driver, frenzied traffic and a missed flight at the tired and overcrowded Lima International Airport, we finally made it to Chiclayo, one of the bigger cities in northern Peru and a major hub for Peruvian coffee. Our first visit was to the Perhusa Dry Mill, where we were...

Here’s something to try this month: Espresso with a little correction by your favorite spirits, just enough to fortify the espresso. Traditionalists might choose Grappa for the correction, but Sambuca or brandy can also be used; in fact, the variations are limited only by your imagination - the only essential ingredient is a great espresso. Caffè Corretto, or Espresso Corretto, originates in Italy, and has been used for decades by sailors, fisherman, and other workers to warm and invigorate themselves on the job. Pasquale Madeddu, one of our founders, remembers his father and fellow fishermen taking a Caffè Corretto before...

  The roots of this collaboration date back to the early days when Caffè Umbria and Georgetown Brewing had addresses on Airport Way in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. Every Friday we would trade a few bags of our blends for growlers of their beers, a win-win by anyone’s standards. Slowly, a plan began to emerge to create a light bodied, crisp, drinkable cream ale infused with cold brewed Gusto Crema Blend. After sampling a number of coffee beers, we realized that most had a heavy body and did not feature the coffee well. We then mapped out a plan to create...

At the mill in Chiclayo, Peru, these black bags contain parchment coffee (coffee beans that have been processed and dried, but are still encased inside the parchment envelope, the endocarp). Warehousing coffee this way keeps it fresher until it is ready for export. Once sold, these beans will be sent to the mill to be hulled, polished, graded and sorted. Once milled, coffee beans are referred to as ‘green coffee’ and are ready to be shipped to the importing country’s roaster.

We left the hotel at 7:30am the morning this photo was taken, finally arriving at the farm right before noon. Coffee is a way of life for these farmers, often working from sunrise to sunset and covering large distances on foot to reach the coffee plants that need to be tended that day. The rhythm of work here is more about what needs to get done that day, rather than working a certain amount of hours. It was educational to be on the ground and actually see how much manual labor goes into the agricultural aspect of coffee.