Notes from George

August 3, 2018 Discover genuine iced coffee for the first time. You’ve probably never had a good one! The window for enjoying a properly brewed great coffee is fleeting.  A great cup has a life span of 20 to 30 minutes  (Sprudge video) before its complex chemistry begins to disassemble into murkier realms.  To make a great Iced Coffee, that magic moment must be captured on the spot.Brewed coffee that has been cooled in the refrigerator is dead on arrival. Making a coffee extract to compensate for the dilution when ice cubes are added requires less water and too much...

August 24, 2018 Mamuto Returns!Kenya SL28 varietals are one of the great coffees of the world; there are no other varietals or origins, in my opinion, that can claim to be superior. No other coffee in the world swells so amply with deep, clean, velvety dark fruit flavor, filling one’s mouth like a fine full-bodied red wine. There is no better Kenya representative, year after year, than Mamuto, which we are proud to have been offering since 2006. It must be taken black, to be appreciated to its fullest.This year’s Mamuto harvest is a masterpiece. It arrived very late, however,...

Roast dates and the right time to brewNovember 12, 2018Back in the 1980s, and even 1990’s, the answer to “when is the right time to brew?” seemed simple: immediately after roast! Indeed, my Coffee Connection was the first in the US to post roast dates on our barrels (we were scooping back then!) and on our bags. Many of our customers wanted to buy our coffee roasted the previous day and no later. Then the one-way valve bag arrived, becoming common practice in the 1990s. It allowed us to preserve complete freshness longer, although many of our very well-trained customers...

May 3, 2020Greetings from George Howell!I finally have time to write for our newsletter, something I used to do but found ever more difficult as the complexity of running George Howell Coffee grew. Life has simplified for the time being and this has enabled me to change some of my priorities. I am refocusing on writing about the world I represent. It is one of the few but critical silver linings for me during these difficult days. I will use the newsletter to comment on the coffees we offer, on events shaping farmers lives and on many other themes involving...