On a trip down the South Coast this week on a top secret coffee mission, we were delighted to chat to Dylan Cumming of Beaver Creek Coffee Farm about the changing wisdom around coffee grown in South Africa and the exciting things that are happening in this landscape.
Did you know that farmers are growing coffee in Eshowe? Hillcrest? Munster? In fact there are hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape that are prime locations for growing coffee. In a climate where importing is becoming increasingly expensive and supply is volatile, it seems like a good idea to motivate more farmers in South Africa to start to grow coffee and that's exactly what Dylan and the team have been and are aiming to support over the next decade. We will be keeping you up to date on this story as it unfolds, but if the opportunity to grow coffee has piqued your interest, we know Dylan is ready and waiting to help you facilitate that! They want to collaborate with people to make South African grown coffee a booming industry as it has the potential to be!
We tried Stone Creek, coffee grown in Hillcrest, made expertly by current SA Latte Art Champion, Jeff Stopforth and took home three other South African origins to try! Roasted under their Red Berry label, these microlots are tasting great!
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They also have some extremely exciting experiments on the go with international coffee giants and Charles Denison, local coffee expert, with regards to the Racemosa varietal of coffee. Playing around with processing methods and fermentation times, we smelled a racemosa experiment that Dylan accurately described as, "it smells like the colour purple!" Classic!!!
In fact Charles, and hopefully Dylan, will be heading to Boston in April to represent South Africa and this varietal at a global coffee conference, Re:Co Symposium. Very exciting times indeed!!!
