Lightyear Coffee

To each their own.

Since we last posted about trying, and loving, an Arabica coffee from Uganda, here’s a nice reminder of just how tiny Uganda’s production is compared to an Arabica behemoth like Brazil (and others for comparison).

So if you see a rare offering like a Ugandan Arabica roast at your local coffee place, give it a shot!

Props to in Erie, CO for roasting a rare single origin Arabica coffee from Uganda.

Uganda is a very small producer of coffee (about 1% of global Arabica production), where most of the coffee-growing regions are devoted to Robusta crops.

The Mt. Elgon region, where this coffee was grown, is a small bubble of Arabica production near the border with Kenya, where the conditions are just right to produce and export excellent coffee, despite underdeveloped infrastructure.

👍👍 to Cristos Coffee!

Shout out to for this amazing example of Yemeni heirloom coffee.

According to PT’s, this particular supply chain is highly traceable down to the individual producer, which is rare for a country with such small coffee production.

So small in fact that statistically Yemen’s coffee production and exports barely even register in the global coffee trade.

Yemen produces around 100,000 60-kg bags of coffee annually. Compare this to Colombia, which averages around 13,500,000 60-kg bags.

Try this one while you can!

Happy International Coffee Day!

With coffee production more decentralized than ever with exotic micro-lot options from all over the world, use today to find a traceable, single origin coffee you’ve never tried before!

Happy Fourth of July!! 🇺🇸🎆🎇

At Lightyear Coffee we focus on small, independent, craft roasteries across the US and their innovations in sourcing and roasting. We have catalogued hundreds of awesome who meet these criteria. So this post may seem a little unusual for us, but today we want to give some props to Starbucks and its Galapagos La Tortuga coffee, from San Cristobal Island. As a quick geography refresher, the Galapagos Islands are about 600 miles off the coast of , squarely in the “coffee belt”, with a low-altitude coffee growing environment unlike anything else on Earth.

Availability of Galapagos comes and goes and other smaller roasters have procured it in the past, but it remains very uncommon to see it at craft roasteries.

Highlighting this coffee is also an opportunity to talk about . Bringing an extremely remote and rare coffee to US markets is a logistical challenge, with many steps, costs, and margins built in. This kind of coffee is a great reminder to always seek out single origins. Doing so ensures the farmers are earning what they deserve and promotes a supply chain – which is critical for bringing more remote and rare coffees to our roasters.

The market is undergoing a structural shift right now with cyclical and weather-related issues causing reductions in yield. Production in 2021/2022 was already forecasted to be lower than the previous crop year due to trees entering an off-year in the production cycle, which is being exacerbated by volatile weather events in Arabica-growing environments. At the same time, worldwide consumption of coffee is projected to increase year-over-year, even amidst these supply issues.⁠
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Importing trends have remained fairly consistent globally though. As an individual importer the US imports the most coffee, with the majority coming from South America and Vietnam. ⁠
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The interplay between production, exporting/importing and consumption will continue to be affected by trade and environmental issues in the months and years to come.

If you’re into aged coffees and like whiskey, the whiskey barrel aged Brazilian coffee from is amazing. The right level of extraction from the whiskey barrel on a solid foundation of nutty, expertly roasted coffee. Try it! (if it’s not sold out 😄)

Folks, today we were lucky enough to try a truly stand-out coffee: A microlot yellow honey Honduran roast by .

Excellent bloom, incredible flavors. A unique offering from an excellent roaster.

Agreed,

Jubilee Roasting Co - awesome coffee, unique and traceable single origins, great story.