LA PAPAYA, ECUADOR — About 10 years ago, with no fanfare or publicity, Alaska became more known in South America with the creation of Alaska del Sur, a specialty coffee farm, high in the Andes mountains of southern Ecuador, where the Saraguro people have been living in harmony with nature and each other for hundreds of years.
Curt Madison, formally of Manly Hot Springs and Fairbanks, moved to La Papaya, a town the size of Manley, in the Loja Province. With an altitude of 6,400 feet, and the right slope, humidity and temperature spans, La Papaya has a near-perfect climate for growing coffee. It is were Madison planted Alaska Del Sur.
Madison came to Alaska 1971, fresh out of Stanford University with a degree in psychology. He went first to Nenana, and then paddled down river and built a salmon camp near Manley Hot Springs. He spent most of the next 40 years living the Bush life, although he earned a Masters Degree and a Ph.D. along the way. He spent some time in Bethel as a health care administrator, and eight years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as director of Alaska Distance Education.
Over his 40-plus years in Alaska, he established himself as an author in a series of biographies of outstanding people in the Yukon-Koyukuk School District and producer of several video documentaries of the Interior and its people. He has always been an innovator of fresh ideas and a forward-looking thinker as well as a master woodworker — attributes he took with him to Ecuador.
Ten years ago, he started on an old cattle pasture, and with his wife Betty, who is from the Ecuadorian city of Riobamba, they built a home and a 6,000-tree specialty coffee farm.
“Specialty coffee is much more labor-intensive than the commercial grade coffee, and sells at three times the price,” Madison said. “Our organic coffee production goal is to use whatever inputs improve the taste in the cup regardless of cost, strive for economic fairness across the production chain, and to maintain healthy sustainability of the soil.”
To that end, Alaska del Sur uses 100% organic practices, and the Madisons pay above market wages. They sit down for coffee and pastries with their employees every morning before work, and in the evening after work, it’s glasses of cool, fresh fruit juice from fruit grown on their farm they drink as they talk about ... work. They seek — and get through open and respectful exchange — the best ideas to proceed with whatever is before them.
The science of a specialty cup
Alaska del Sur uses a range of laboratory instruments to monitor production and post-production. Attention to science is required in each step of production: seeds, planting, drying, processing, roasting and brewing.
“Every cup of specialty coffee tells a story, a tale that begins with a single bean. This journey, rich in detail and passion, distinguishes specialty coffee from the rest,” William McGhee of Wanderlust Beans, out of Bryan, Texas, writes, in his blog. “At the heart of specialty coffee lies its beans, nurtured in specific terroirs that provide them with unique characteristics. Factors like altitude, soil quality and microclimates play pivotal roles.”
While it’s growing on a tree, coffee beans are surrounded by a peel that turns bright red when ripe. It looks like a cherry, and that’s what they call it. The trees stand about 6½ feet tall, and when the beans are ripe, the cherries can be harvested individually by a worker standing on the ground, leaving unripened beans to mature.
The nature of the plant is to continue to produce ripe cherries throughout the growing season. The same tree is picked several times during the five harvest months.
In large-scale commercial operations, the tree is picked by machines without regard to the maturity of the individual cherries when the highest percentage is ripe. There-in lies one of the great cost and quality variances between specialty coffee and commercial grade.
Once harvested the peel has to be removed from the bean. That is done by a mechanical depulper. The bean is fermented, and then air dried in trays in the drying house.
In learning to process the beans, Madison realized that there are important nuances in the drying process, and he developed his drying house with an envelope structure in the ceiling that regulates the air circulation, and helps balance the temperature and humidity of the room to more consistent levels throughout the day. He believes this innovation improves consistent taste in the bean, and says anyone who has lived in Alaska is familiar with the tricks to keep a place warm and dry.
Fermentation is the first step of post-harvest processing, where the taste can be influenced most clearly by the procedure. There are a variety of fermentation steps that can be used, and three different drying processes. The natural process dries the beans with the peel on. The honey process removes most of the peel and dries with some pulp on the parchment. Washed process removes the peel and dries the beans in their parchment. Each has its own particular effect on the on the taste.
The grower’s art is in determining which fermentation processes they want to apply to a particular batch of beans.
Madison will choose the fermentation processes, depending on what flavor profile he’s seeking for the particular variety of beans being fermented. Alaska del Sur grows four genetic varieties of beans; Typica Mejorado, Typica Criollo, Geisha and Sidra.
All of this describes Curt’s role, attention and efforts as producer Betty takes care of the marketing and business administration.
Their coffee finds repeated success in various tasting and brewing competitions, and they have developed personal relationships with coffee buyers from Japan, Korea, China, France and the United States, who visit Alaska del Sur periodically to taste and buy the season’s crop.
The missing link in specialty coffee production
“When I came to Ecuador deciding to grow coffee, I realized the roasting step was the missing link,” Madison said. “As I got started, it was obvious I couldn’t add to knowledge the quality of growing of the generations of coffee farmers. I could and did learn from them. On the marketing end, expert international are buyers and sellers and they have been negotiating the business for a long time. They were doing very well already. The missing link in coffee production in this area was the roast.”
He installed a Diedrich high-end roaster for his own tests and finishing, and provides the service for his neighbors as well. Because of the short shelf life of the fragrances of speciality after roasting, high quality coffee ships green to the buyer, and is roasted just before it is sold to the consumer.
It takes two weeks after roasting for all the CO2 to come out, and that’s why the bags in the stores have vents. Then coffee’s peak last about three to four months before it starts to decline. Freezing the roasted beans does not help preserve flavor and in fact hurts it.
“A lot of history and tradition comes into it,” Madison said. “Italian and French roasts would be really dark, and then you have a the northern Europeans who like it really light.”
Despite the range of varieties, growing environments, fermentation and roasting techniques, there are only two species of coffee plant that makes its way to the market — Arabica and Robusta.
Arabica is mild and has less caffeine content. Pretty much all specialty coffee is Arabica. Robusta is typically stronger, has about twice the caffeine, and is found more commonly in blends and espressos.
“Regardless of the species, the dark roast sacrifices much of the coffee flavor. A light roast preserves the fragrance, body, and tastes that the dark roast burns away. Specially coffees tend to be light roasted. You’re going for flavor as the priority, roasting basically is burning the bean and burning the flavor,” Madison said.
For this reason he and most specialty rosters prefer a light to medium roast.
After growing, harvesting, fermenting, drying and roasting — brewing brings another level of opportunities to influence the taste of a cup of coffee, and that is the barista’s art.
The coarseness of the grind, the temperature and quality of the water, the water to coffee ratio, brewing time, even the turbulence and technique with which the water is introduced to the grounds can have an effect on the flavor. One of the most amusing things in the barista’s world to go through all of those parameters, striving for the perfect cup of coffee, only to have the customer dump loads of sugar and milk into it.
Global Information, inc., a private market research company finds, “The specialty coffee market is thriving, driven by a growing consumer demand for exceptional quality and unique flavor experiences. Catering to coffee aficionados, this segment focuses on highlighting origin, processing methods, and the intricate characteristics of coffee beans, offering a broad spectrum of taste profiles. As consumers increasingly seek premium products, they are willing to invest in high-quality coffee that promises an elevated sensory journey.”
G.I.I. determined the world specialty coffee market was about $24.5 billion in 2022 and predict it will have a compound annual growth rate of 11.2 percent, to reach a value of $63.5 billion in 2031.
Alaska del Sur coffee can be found in specialty coffee shops from Shanghai to Seoul to Paris. Curt Madison can be reached through Instagram or email at curtmadison@akrivertracks.com.
