About us
Kawio.cz - who are we?
Our travels on plantations started in 2005 when the owner Jakub Fiala (see photo and story below) visited the first coffee plantation in Indonesia.
The timber business made me travel regularly around the Indonesian islands and visit timber suppliers. These trips usually took several weeks and the free time on the beaches became boring. From friends I learned about the world's most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak civet coffee. Since I had made many friends over the years of traveling in Indonesia, I cast my nets and waited. Gradually, I began to hear from friends in Java, Sumatra Sulawesi, Bali and other islands. My coffee journey began. I traded my free time on the beaches for time on the plantations.
After many false alarms, visiting plantations and roasters on several islands, I reached a plantation near Semarang (Java), petted my first civet and tasted my first civet coffee. But caged civets were not my goal. I searched further until I came across Robusta plantations in South Sumatra, which is the cheaper bitter coffee but with wild civets. The journey to find them wasn't exactly easy. It was 2008 by then. But the result was my first wild civet coffee. Kopi Luwak Liar Robusta. And also my first roasting experience.
Yes, I learned roasting on civet coffee :) .. back then on a hot air Gene coffee roaster at 250g. (today I roast on a Golden Roaster 20 kg with airflow). But this was not the end of my search and persistence was crowned by finding Kopi Luwak liar Arabika and this in North Sumatra now a very famous area of Aceh.
Coffee and other continents
However, my quest for wood and coffee also took me to other continents. In Brazil, together with long-time friends from Poland, we visited several plantations in and around Minas Gerais. It was interesting to compare the work of farmers on small plantations counted in hectares and on plantations spread over hundreds of hectares. A really interesting experience was cupping on an organic plantation where the owner Riky managed the coffee cultivation according to the stars, yes according to the position of the stars in the sky :) and where we could also pick coffee from Jacu birds, birds that like civets eat coffee cherries and digest them.
Africa, Mt. Kenya area
And a visit to Dohrmans coffee lab. Truly an experience that should be had by anyone who is the least bit serious about the coffee trade. Cupping at Dohrmans (see photo) consisting of 25 of the best coffees from the current crop was truly unique and educational. Not only was I able to interview the great and experienced Q-grader (coffee tasters and evaluators) but equally interesting was chatting with the roasters. With their advice based on years of experience, they expanded my understanding of the process of roasting African coffees, among the best in the world.
Cuba, a country that produces great Arabicas even in difficult conditions. Contact with the smaller local farmers here is more difficult. Their aloofness towards foreigners and virtually zero knowledge of English does not allow much room for long discussions and tours. Still, I was able to share my experiences with some of the smaller farmers and together we roasted and tasted freshly dried harvest samples. Their excitement at tasting their coffee roasted to a medium degree (they always roast over a second crack) was equivalent to children being gifted a new toy.
There were many more coffee journeys and they are still ongoing. They include visits to plantations, farms and roasters both large and small.
The work of farmers in Asia, Africa and America
The work itself is different and comparing them to each other has helped and continues to help me understand how to work with coffee properly and how to go about selecting the most delicious microlots.
We will be happy to tell you the whole story of our coffee journey together with video and photo documentation at one of the workshops we offer on civet coffee or home coffee preparation. The workshops always include the history of coffee from the first bean found in Africa to the latest methods of processing and preparing coffee.
More photos from Aceh, Brazil, Kenya and other trips with micro stories will follow :)