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I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode two of a really interesting five-part series with Beck from Zentfeld Farms, Coffee Farms, in Australia, of all places, Australia. We are talking about Australian-grown coffee and we are in this episode going to be talking about the distinct terroir and the coolest sub-tropical climate of Australian-grown coffee. My first question to you Beck is the thing that I really want to ask the most in this episode is how does Australian-grown coffee taste and how is it indicative of the terroir? And I guess we shouldn't answer it as if we're all one terroir either, should we?
Oh, nice point. So I'll first have your local head on. My region, which is the sub-tropical Northern Rivers and South Wales section, which also goes, as I said in the last episode, it kind of carries on around into Queensland to suburb Brisbane. 100 to 200-kilometre zone around that sort of corner, eastern pocket around Brisbane.
So we're the truly the coolest sub-tropical climate here. So what that brings with our rich red volcanic soil, and I don't really want to see coffee growing down in the sandy soil flats. I really think there's some flavour potential that is brought out in that rich soil. It's a sweet soil, as they say.
We don't have to get technical about the type of soil that's a really rich sweet volcanic soil. So what does that do? It actually helps bring out the sweetness also with our cooler sub-tropical climate. We've got definitely chocolate notes.
We're talking about a mid, almost like a milk chocolate, if I say colour, what the roast profile might be. I don't think there's any point using a roast tile, and I'm going to say for another milk chocolate looking colour. So when I do it to it, I say look at the colour, I feel like it's like milk chocolate. That's a nice roast colour.
For me, it brings out sweet chocolatey notes. Absolutely. Some berry notes without getting too fancy. They're not going to go crazy into the apricot and whatever pineapple notes if it's a lighter roast.
No. Where the chocolatey, and I think that's what we celebrate the most, is quite a real natural chocolatey taste that comes in with. A definite berry sweetness. And that's pretty nice.
And what makes the Toa in Australia so distinct? Yeah, it is to do with our volcanic soil, and that being so much by the south of the equator, being naturally in that cooler climate. Sub-tropical world. As I say, it's rather like, as if we were up in the mountains, if we were in Costa Rica or Honduras, we would be 1600 to 1800 metres high.
We don't need to be up in those mountainous conditions. We don't have that altitude here. If you don't have any mountains that high in our zone. So we're close to the sea, but we've got that volcanic unique Toa in this little zone.
Now, when we go into Far North Queensland where it sort of jumps up where the real main commercial growers well established on the early 80s, they're up high in a plateau behind Kansas. You've got the beautiful tropical coast, and within half an hour you're up on high country, high flat country. And that goes from being a sandy soil where the main lot of growers are to then starting to look very hilly as if it should be dairy and country like my zone here. And quickly gets cloudier and rich red volcanic soil.
And their coffee starts to taste like ours. So we've got like 2000 kilometres away or so. I should have looked it up. It's a long way between Kansas.
And then you've got a very similar little Toa microclimate. So it is in here. We all know this with coffee growing lands that you can have these unique spots that really bring out something special or different, at least different from what might be only 40 kilometres or miles away. Does it taste like any other origin that you've tasted?
Some very high growing Kenyan. I remember in the early years people saying, oh, your coffee reminds me of being in Kenya. And I last haven't been to Kenya, but have been to a few of the specialty coffee traders in the United States. And that's the last way to be able to walk around the trade floor and try coffee from different origins.
And certainly some Hawaiian coffee, definitely some similarities to Hawaii. Really? We must make more friends with the Hawaiians. I can make that happen.
Online. I need to make the visit happen. It's really what I need to make that time exchange and bring copies to each other. That's going to be terrific.
And I know other Australians have to and feel similar with that. That coffee is quite similar. So what is your big into regenerative ag? And we're going to be talking about that in-depth biological farming in the next, not the next episode, in the fourth episode.
But does the distinct turawa that we have in Australia lend itself? Does it lend itself to needing more regenerative ag? Or are we looking at coffee farms that are plush and they're already in balance and they don't need as much help to be in harmony? No.
No, I do think that's probably wishful thinking to think we're all already in harmony. Yeah. Mine did a bit of, you know, a bit of piece of love and hippiness in the hills behind Byron Bay. I mean, that kind of world.
Byron Bay and Nimbin and the range of power people. So I'll admit to them if anyone is. The range of power people, that's fantastic. So I'm certainly in that zone.
But it's really about for every farm, what's its history? What's happened on that piece of land? And I think we probably should go into this more in the biological farming episode. Historical use of farms.
If they have used a lot of fertilizer, a lot of herbicides in the past will maybe other production purposes if there's been a lot of runoff. Yeah, a lot of soil movement. Then you've lost that beautiful beach volcanic. Right.
So different farms are the start off healthy. If they're more, you can almost save them more virgin farms. Or if they've perhaps had a sensible use of cattle on them or dairy farming. So a lot of good poo.
Now there's nutrition there without being compacted. So it's about the historical use of the farm. But if you think about some of the other areas that are now starting to grow coffee, they're looking even in Western Australia. So other side of our country.
And then down south a little, again, they've got this subtropical little section. Might only be about 80 kilometers zone with red volcanic soil. So we're growing citrus trees and some other fruit trees in that area. And now a couple of farmers are thinking, we reckon we've got the right conditions over here to start growing coffee.
So that leaves in quality, a rabbit coffee. So that's exciting for us for the future to see how newer zones come on. Further south of Sydney. We're also looking at farms that are getting, like that's 800 kilometers south of me.
So we're getting cooler, again, cooler, but drier. And more, yeah. So we're looking at, I just sort of generally say, if you've got red volcanic soil, and then if you think you've got the right amount of rainfall and access to water for irrigation for the young trees. Not too windy.
You've got those right conditions and the right terroir, which includes rainfall, really. Yeah, you can look at growing coffee and there's demand for it. Yeah. Yeah.
And there's some encouraging. There's going to be continued demand for it, given what's happening with the coffee crisis. What else can you tell us about the uniqueness of growing coffee in a sub, in a cooler subtropical climate? I'll show you one of the challenges.
Without what happens with our environment is we've got the coffee taking that longer period of ripening. So it takes a good 11 months. And that's amazing because I know other coffee growers that might be listening from around the world go, really? You take a 11 months for your coffee to ripen.
It's a very tropical flower right through. Wow. That's a long time because often it's nine months, like even in North Queensland, it's more, you know, nine to ten months. So we're at least 11 months for taking that coffee to ripen because we've got a very nice winter.
But it is, you know, we have got a solid, at least three seasons, we might say. We never snow, you know. We don't do frost. So it's still like a coffee, growable conditions.
But it's almost like we're on the edge of it being too cool. And that's a good thing. Okay. Because that cooler microclimate means if you're just on that edge of frost and we found our frost line over the years down near the creek.
It's going to be cooler down there down the gentle sloping hill. That will kill off the coffee trees. So without, and right, the landscape works. Yes.
The idea that you'd want as we have rolling hills, not too steep so that we can put tractors on. That's really important. I mustn't forget that because we're planning to be a coffee grower. The only way that we can be profitable is to, is to incorporate some machinery.
Absolutely. And have access. Yeah, have access for a harvester. And they're a big beast of a machine, sort of a big square box, self driven track harvester that we've got.
And you know, you don't really want that on steep, sloping land. You don't want to, you don't want to buy that. So we don't want, we can't have it on steep land, which most often other coffee growing lands are. So that's, that's, that's not just the part of the two I would be the landscape conditions that we have and having access.
Talk to me about the kind of varietals that are best suited to, and we're going to go into a lot of depth about that in, in the final episode of this series. But I'd like to introduce it here. With regards to the Turawa and the subtropical climate that we have in Australia. I say we, even though I'm sitting in Dubai, but the time this airs, I will be in Australia.
So back to the future kind of weakness. Excuse me. But when, what kind of varietals you were talking about the K7 in the last episode. But what, what are the kind of varietals that tend to thrive in that kind of Turawa?
Yeah. Yeah. So in Australia, we are only growing a rabbit coffee for the last 40 years. So it's been solidly gross with that.
And we want it to be at the top end. You know, we don't want to grow coffee that could be considered a lower value because the cost of land, our cost of labor, our cost of production are extraordinary. And I know it is for all growers, but you know, comparatively our labor costs are quite intense. So for us to be competitive in the, in the cafe, in the wholesale, in the retail market.
You know, we can't be, you know, five times zero when it gets to selling the price point of the coffee. But yeah, our cost of production are a lot as we understand with this, particularly the cost of, the cost of land and labor. So we've got a rabbit car K7, a couple of other varieties. What we've been looking for once though that are, and this is really important for our future production too, that have been proven to be disease and the coffee leaf rust resistant, resistant to those.
Right. We've been most fortunate. We've had these 40 years without that one pest, no berry bora in Australia. We've got to keep it that way.
That's really important to us. And no coffee leaf rust. So the earlier varieties, and in North Queensland, I haven't mentioned yet, they mostly grow. At least 90% would be the cutaway, actually pronounce it properly.
Yes, cutaway. Yes, cutaway. Yes. Old habits there.
So cutaway is what they have grown successfully since the early 80s up north. And they're both quite old varieties. So what we've been held back from is not having access to the newer varieties. So we've been chugging along growing the same trees.
We have done replanting, you know, the seed are totally viable from their parent tree. So as long as you choose trees that look very healthy and a proven good production. And you like their shape and, you know, general, general sense of self. And the qualities are there.
Then you will just pick that, select that seed, you'll just hand select that seed and regrow. In fact, free, you know, every grow, I can choose their own seed and put on. So that's been relatively cheap for the grower, which is a good thing. No, generally no hybrids.
That's a new thing coming in, which I can talk about. We'll talk about that. Yeah. And are you finding this is a, a novice question.
So if you give my ignorance in this, but when you, are you finding that there are particular varieties that tend to taste better, specifically in Australian soil. If they were growing somewhere else, they wouldn't taste anywhere near as good as they taste. Is it the soil in Australia that I'm sorry that that sounds like such a silly question. That's okay.
I don't think we can prove that enough. When we're going to talk about now, we've got access to the newer varietals. We've just gone to a really good 70s or solid five year trials have happened. And we're testing those newer varietals in our soil.
And that's been really interesting to see which ones we prefer more. So now we're like, oh, no, we're excited by we want to go at this variety in this variety. The case of this proven itself in other lands, typically coming from Kenya. So we've been very confident with that.
Look, some growers over the years were saying, Oh, no, definitely this variety over here is far more exciting and taste-wise than that patient. It's rolling her eyes. I'm not like that. We had in the mid 90s, we did some taste testing with other professional tasters came in and out of five varieties on our farm.
Actually, just getting it down to, okay, on this hill or facing the same direction. It's not like a block, the different blocks. And they say with one grapes growing that it's like, Oh, no, five is definitely better than block three. Very, very, you know, it's a small farm.
Fifty acres. So side by side, there's the five varieties and they could not. They absolutely couldn't tell. They couldn't pinpoint the varietal difference in the tasting of the cup.
When we got to the cupping stage, I roasted them all as best as they could to be the same rose profile. And it was really, if anything, they were saying, if anything, we can pick up that slightly lighter rose profile there. It is not the variety that we are picking up your soil. Five varieties.
Take your pick. You're not going to have to select one of those varieties at the time. That was in the mid 90s. So maybe they were similar then.
Maybe professional couples have more developed with their taste buds and done more, you know, I guess there has been. I would say there is more professionalism in tasting today, you know, the industry has grown a lot in those 40 years too. So nowadays we are certainly looking at rating some other varieties higher, which is where we also will be moving into. Now, I haven't mentioned processing at all.
So I wonder if that's something to talk about the two different types of processing we do here. Sure. I just want to give some context into why I ask that question. If that's OK.
Monarch Coffee Farms in Hawaii. The farm has closed now. It's moved. It moved on.
But it was an award-winning farm for over a decade. And the very interesting thing was they introduced Geisha into Hawaii. And they bought the stock from Rachel Peterson from Hacienda La Esmeralda. And they took it from there and they planted it in Hawaii and it tasted completely different.
It won awards through the Wazoo. But it was a completely different profile. Same seed stock as they were growing and very different because of the Toa. So that was why I was asking.
It's fascinating. That's going to be exciting. Yes. Well, and that's, yeah.
Well, it will be interesting to really see because we've now only yesterday. So talk about good timing. We've just got the report through from the five year child project. Let me talk about that.
I can actually say how some of their favorite profiles are coming through. But what I don't know is how they compare to say the Geisha being grown back in Hawaii and back in St. Honduras. Yeah.
I don't know how that comparison is. It's really interesting to see how the impact that a Toa has on a Geisha. Like from Panama all the way through to Hawaii, both award-winning, but they taste like they're completely different seed stock. Completely different.
No, not even close. It's like a completely different expression of Geisha. Really fascinating. Yes.
It gets to me about processing. Well, I was going to say, I'm excited to talk about, as you say, the expression. That was a great word because when we get on to that in another episode, I do truly think that the expression of our coffee in the volcanic soil doesn't make a difference. I want to take my own horn when the first lot of Australian, truly, straight, wide coffee competitions started and the other centering of my younger years.
And so I got the 23 awards. We were the most awarded company for quite a few years and I went, you know, that's enough. So I've proven that. And it's always been, it's wonderful to see that as other coffee growers have come through and entered that they're still today winning awards against copies that, yeah, and other coffee, Sydney and Melbourne and other city roasters are roasting, but from other origins.
So they only have to compete against the origins from elsewhere. So that's lovely. We can chew down horn to say that Australian coffee has proven itself. Well, yeah, awesome.
So that's a sense of our terwah. Yes. And also our taste, our sense of terwah has been proven with a research project that took two years and our future is Australia is a research body that we're grateful for, that they are able to access some federal funding, not to go to industry, but to go to research and development projects. And they, so they ran the project to allocate university, our local southern coast to arrange for taste testing of our different varieties over and of our different origins within Australia over two years.
And that really, the results of that have been proven and are on the AgriFutures Australia website. So we'll be able to share that link to say that we do have a true taste of place that there is a definite sense of flavour that comes from coffee in our subtropical climate as well as in the more northern, more northern districts up near Cairns, the tablelands. I've said about our chocolatey taste here. I know from buying from the North Queensland growers too for over 25 years now, I believe, that for me, in my roast profiles from the North Queensland, that it's a dry chocolate, but it's like a chocolate biscuit.
And I think it's a life order. Yum. And I think it's a life order. Okay.
Chocolate, not a biscuit. We'll have a chocolate and berry. And we'll not be happy with one of those things. Well, I think you do a tin tin tin slam in a coffee like that and you are set.
Nice. So tell me what were you going to say about processing? Or should we leave that for another episode? I'm not sure now.
How are we going for time on this one? Just give the basics about processing. Yeah, let's do the basics of the processing and let's continue in the next episode. Go for it.
Okay. So we've traditionally done the wet process. Now, even what does that mean? But we've bought the wet pulp mill back from Columbia and I believe the water bath came from Brazil.
So without that, thank you. Thank you for reaching countries for being innovative and inventive. And what you think now is also linking with one of our constraints. We have a lot of rainfall typically, you know, throughout the year.
It's not a definite wet and dry season where we are in the subtropics. I think Hawaii would be like this too. Would it not? That it's relatively on and off rain through the year.
You don't have four months of dry? I don't know. To be honest. Anyway, well, in Far North Queensland, they have a wet and dry.
They're tropical. So you have this tropical summer storms and then you have a dry or winter. They're able to get up there. They're able to, with their couture.
They can, they irrigate and they can turn the irrigation off in maybe autumn and set. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm wrong. Earlier before, before flowering, before flower set in springtime, turn the irrigation off or get it to a trickle to stress the tree somewhat and then boom.
The flowers will come out. And then they'll all come out within a week or two straight away, but the flowering will be set. Well, solid set of flowering after they've stressed the trees with that water loss. And then when it comes to the harvest season, it's fully dry and it's dry for months.
And they know they can harvest and they won't have the rain coming at that time. And it's very even. So they get a terrific, even set of red cherries. That's a lot easier to harvest than for us.
We have a dryer early spring. And that's what happened this year. It was really prime conditions where we had a terrific flower set after unusually eight weeks of dry. That was unusual for the sub-tropics.
Usually it's every two weeks, something will rain. So what happens with once you start getting frequent when is the flowers just come in little sets. So you get flowers in late October, flowers in early November, right through December into February. So when we go to harvest time, we've got red and we've got some green and it's not an even flower set.
So that's annoying. So there's sub-tropics. There'll be other growers around the world. Not in the head going, yeah.
We know that problem. So that's something that we're looking forward with. There will be some other varieties that we're looking to trial. And that will be exciting to see if they are more naturally setting in one period and may well switch our sub-tropics better to ripen, you know, even a little bit earlier together.
That's a possibility that it might even be related with access to new varieties. Wow. Okay. This is so interesting.
I can't tell you how this is just not, it's not what I expected. It's that I really didn't know that there was so much coffee being grown in Australia. Like I didn't, I thought there were three producers. So bigger brand names that you may know.
Yeah. So yes, we haven't even gone into some of the prices. So we definitely use wet prices because we've got water. So we've got access to water.
And so that works well. And we don't have a dry season. So we can't let the coffee dry. If you imagine we can't be lucky at the idea these days and have lovely natural outside.
So when we get some coffee turning into raisins and sautanas, which we do as we're getting into the end of the harvest period, we've got some that are red, right, cherries, but we've also got some turning to dry raisins on the tree. So when we're harvesting, we've got both. So then we'll have to separate them out. Even though they go through a water bath, they will separate that out.
So then we finish up in the dryer. We can't be outside. So the only time we use a decent amount of diesel is getting the dryer going to make sure that we're drying those naturally dried, shriveled up fruit, finishing them off. You can't have them going moldy.
They need to dry well compared to the wet parchment coffee from the wet process. Right. Okay. So in the next episode, folks, we're going to talk about what the challenges are.
And we've started digging into those, but we're going to go even deeper with that. So the challenges of growing Australian or the challenges that Australian coffee farmers are facing right now. So join us for the third episode. Peace off and peanut butter.
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