Legacy and Final Thoughts

Ready to rock and roll. Ready to rock and roll. Let's do it. First question . Big question . Can you tell us your full name as you'd like it to appear on the video? Where you live, which is a tough one and what you do for work . am Ki Jansen . I live right here in the moment And I get to work in coffee and share my coffee and my goal in coffee is to connect people and raise consciousness to connect people and raise consciousness . Yeah. You gotta unpack that for me . Well , as you get into coffee, you realize it gets more complicated and you actually have to sort of embrace that complication. You start to realize that every little thing matters . So for instance, I started to notice that different cups created different flavors back like ten years ago. So then I started to create cups that like these right here . Okay , that have different rooms . Okay that create different flavors in your mouth . And for some it's just something they find out some they don't taste it . But tell me a little bit about that theory if you can. That's where it sort of goes in terms of connection and raising consciousness because we don't really know how we taste. We have a pretty good idea, but we're starting to find out it's more vibration than it is actually the molecular structure. So how the coffee hits your mouth changes the flavor . So let's say this one will actually have more sweetness and acidity . It's the thinner side and the thicker side will have more mouth feel, less sweetness. , interesting . Interesting. You don't have now again, not something to say that it's your own perception. I'm not telling you how it is. It's just to how people find it. So it's gone to the point where now you have many different cup companies that are doing exactly that. Right. The Kai Jansen special . Definitely not. They're doing their own special take on it. It's just I've been working on it for some time and they did it, which is fantastic. I love it because it really just shows that every little thing matters, your water, everything. I mean one of my sort of go to statements is that coffee is so complicated. If it was easy, we'd call it wine . Because as a coffee producer, I would be able to just bottle it and give it to you and be you' liked,, alright I know what that's going to taste like. But in fact, coffee is wonderfully connected because every single stage, whether you're from production to shipping also matters and how it's shipped and roasting and brewing and even the cup, even how you pour, right? Range of the profile . So if it was easy, it'd be wine. But as a coffee producer, everybody wants to become a winemaker. That means understanding how to affect coffee in a way that is intentional and has the results in the cup that you want. As a coffee producer , would you like to get further down the path and ideally bottle your own bottle being metaphorical, bottle your own product so it is ready to drink for a consumer and they don't have to play with their own expression. I think that there are some people who are actually getting that technology to happen. Like there's gas in Japan that's been doing really nice bottlings . So I think it is something that you want to do, but also make sure that you're respectful of your part ners that you're working on. I don't want to just do this for me, but still connect ing because that's how we create great coffee in partnership with others that love and have a passion for great coffee. Right. So you don't want to step on the toes of your current partners which purchase green coffee from you and then they roast and finish you have to navigate that . Yeah . And each culture sort of has its own take on our coffee as well, which is which is great because it is a collaboration. I mean in nineteen ninety five we did the first sort of seed to cup website and the whole idea from the beginning was that coffee is a very interactive work. I mean till the last part you can put the wrong water, you could put the right water. But in that time it was like you can add water, you can add milked you, can add sugar, et cetera. Everyone plays a part in creating their own great cup and it is whatever you feel is your great cup. Is the thing. There's no nothing that's outside of you that you're trying to figure out how to bring inside, but rather connect. Okay You've been exploring coffee for thirty forty years. Since nineteen ninety two is when I started first coffee. thirty four, that's my age. You've been exploring coffee my entire lifetime. Apparently, apparently. Yes , that's neat. Tell me what are you focused on today? What fascinates you the most today and your exploration . What fascinates me the most today I mean what I want to celebrate the most is that coffee culture has grown so much. The level, I mean, I was a coffee geek from the beginning. So what I wanted to do in production and with coffee was not really accepted because coffee was just not perceived to be valuable enough . And coffee's become much more valuable in people's lives and also shows in pricing as well. But to go around the world and see the level of sophistication and passion for coffee is outstanding. I do travel a lot to do coffee and it's pretty amazing to see how it's grown . And you know, that's pretty special from my perspective. It's a very special time to be coffee. It's also a scary time because of climate change and political turmoil. So just savor every cup right in the moment where I live in the moment where I live, I like that. You just use the word value and then you had price as a different metric . How do you define value in Gothi? I think price is always a reflection of value in some way. But I define value as what you connect with in terms of your experience with that coffee and also with your community . I mean, I think that that's kind of key because you can learn from so many people . I mean, competition is sort of a show of that. There's a community that's really looked to elevate coffee and try to push the limits of how you can create a great coffee experience , which can be everything from flavor to focusing and also the effect that coffee has on you. The conscious mind that you mentioned. Yes. Have you found a lot of people seek that out or is that something that you've kind of brought to the surface and presented to the world ? I think that it's underlying in a lot of what we do. So it's implicit. But it's certainly people take have their own take. I mean, it's kind of like the shape of the cup. It starts to appear in other locations. You know, like I can think of our good friend Justin who was really trying to look at, okay, how can you start to grate how that coffee makes you feel as well as how it tastes? And that's something that actually I was doing very early on because I found that if you had coffee , the original coffee ritual was one in which you actually roasted, ground and prepared the coffee at the same time . And that has a different effect than if you have roasted the coffee and drink it two weeks later in terms of your body. I would suggest. And it's I love the scientific method in terms of saying it's, you know, see if this hypothesis works for you or not . But so now you can start to do a modern version of it with machines like Sam's Link to Roast Coffee and taste it. And when you get to the level of what we get to do in coffee , which is somewhat complex and you have to embrace that. You start to realize that maybe it doesn't taste best when it's just roasted, but you can do different things to make it taste better like I know one person who was using Sonic beds to take the bake off of coffee before he drank it and it worked pretty well. Well , that would be JQ . Using Sonic Beds? Sonic beds, yeah. And this was in twenty seventeen . Wow. I mean, every there's just so much experimentation. Right now you see so many different drippers and there are even more designs that are there that can change your coffee profile in your connection with it. So it's not one way it's many Okay, most of the world thinks coffee is just a cup of coffee and it's a very simple product. Yeah. Can you run me through, maybe start to finish what's going on in a cup of coffee that makes it so complicated ? Well, I think number one it's very reassuring to people to think that it's just that and that's great, right? I mean because it becomes very easy, it doesn't need to be complicated . It's simple. And they know what their cup of coffee is and how they want to have their cup of coffee. Yeah, I'm wondering if that bird's okay. It flew off. It's okay. Okay. Yeah So I don't I mean, I think that each person has their own relationship with it in terms of the process. I mean, it's not easy to grow coffee. It takes years before you can harvest . And then harvesting is becoming an even greater situation of concern because we don't harvesting is hard work and we have great partners here who are fantastic harvesters , but as things change, you start to see that people want to do different things . And so it's becoming increasingly hard to have harvesters. And then things like COVID make it different because here We have families that would harvest here and in Costa Rica and come back, but with COVID, they wouldn't be able to leave and come back. So particularly Costa Rica was hit somewhat hard by having shortages of har vesters and we all somewhat do . So that 's one big part that's difficult and then how you process the coffee. There's so many different ways of processing coffee and how you dry it is incredibly important and then finding the right people if you're like me and need to make sure that it's someone that has a passion for coffee that lets your coffee shine because we put so much passion to do it is important. But you know, I think that at the end of the day coffee is whatever you make of it. And if for you it's just a cup of coffee that's great . For me the cup actually is even extra extra coffee, which is a little different . I mean, it's not just a cup of coffee for me, of course, but when you deliver it in these nice dual, dual rimmed cups that you had custom designed, it's like , wow , I will say that they're actually the other ones are more infinity rim because you can start to choose your own flavor. There's an actual ition there. I like that. I can imagine this will release one day and we'll see infinity rimmed cups within six to twelve months in the market. Yeah. It's a Kai Jansen trademark, okay, people see what happens. Talk to me about the farms. Your family started producing coffee in nineteen eighty nine, if I'm not mistaken. We started planting coffee around that time. Okay. And that was here around the lake. And it was mostly Katla . And then shortly thereafter we bought Los Alpes, which is over in Tissing up in that direction . And up there we basically from the start, it was all geisha Well, not really, but we'll say it that way. Strike that we started planting up there back in very shortly thereafter. There wasn't any education at all . So they were actually at one point we had a sort of a different model of how we were doing coffee . But what changed after we started planting coffee was that my dad came to visit me in Seattle where I was doing my little coffee company and he fell in love with specialty coffee. He'd always wanted to be a winakerem and sort of realized that we could do that here . To save this farm, the family had looked to see, okay, what are the experts say that we should be doing here? And they said grow coffee. So we started growing coffee . And then in nineteen ninety three after he came to Seattle, my dad built a beneficio, which people have told me is the first specialty only beneficio specifically for specialty coffee most beneathios previous to that would be just only doing it for commercial. And then if you could contract with them, you could do it for specialty in different ways, but it wasn't built completely from beginning to end for specialty . And he did that really quickly. And then what happened was that we got to taste our cattoy, and luckily it was good . And we started marketing panamaffee C.o I mean , it's pretty funny now to think of how we like the brochures that we made in nineteen ninety four were like Panama, the hidden secret between Costa Rica and Colombia because no one knew Panama Coffee and it was back in those days, you know, there were cup profiles that you would look for every country and it had to be defined by that cup profile. So if you found something like an African sort of style of cup, it was like, Oh no, there's something wrong , which actually happened to us . But anyway do you want to talk about that as a there's just it's it's I think the story of Panama as a whole is one of sort of a rediscovery of coffee in a different sort of way and a rediscovery more in a also cultural way because I think I think other cultures, Asian cultures were looking at coffee in a different way than most Western cultures and looking at more as a connection with tea. So it didn't have to be defined by what people thought coffee was that could do more crossover. And Panama , in particular, Geisha has helped to elevate coffee to that level of seeing it in a different way rather than just being defined as a cup of coffee that is black and you add whatever you want to it to see the nuances . So there are places that will not serve you coffee if you are trying to put sugar in it , things like that. For that level and that means just understanding the nuances and the culture and generations tea drinkers and elevation of that. There's also the crossover of wine and other spirits that are there . So I think it's important to note that it's been sort of rediscovered and continues to be rediscovered. I mean people are defining how they're doing it. A lot of the drinks now that are sort of popular are sort of different sort of combinations of milks and different things that make people happy. So that's great. Talk to me about the nineties. You were living in Seattle. The specially coffee movement was, I think, just kind of kicking off in Seattle many people in the community there. And what was that like and what was it like for you being involved also with the family farm and family production? So Seattle was very much espresso and milk based . There was a small company called Coffee Connection in the East Coast, George Charles Company that was doing more of what we wanted to do in coffee , which was present brewed coffee . I mean, I think at one point Starbucks sold, they might still sell more milk really rather than coffee . So Seattle is very much espresso and it was how you did milk, et cetera. And I had really good friends that were that doing that, and I was working with them. And I started importing the coffee and selling it main ly in the US and in Canada to second cup . And we were doing the state coffee. So we were sort of promoting and trying to educate . And Seattle was a great place to be because people were very, very passionate for coffee. So Ed Liebrick at Lighthouse was doing great stuff. And Tim McCormick, who I got to know he was one of Ed's mentors and he really was quite an amazing cupper and a promoter of coffee and he was part of a group in Starbucks that splended off , but they had sort of a non compete that they were doing. And then when one day Ed had Duane Sorenson walk in and ask if he could learn how to roast with him and that's where Duane got his start. And Duane was the first person that sent me Geisha . And it was an interesting interesting experience because for me in terms of how you look at Geisha, it was fun to see that for me it was like, okay, this is so special because it's like being in a fully flowering coffee field, which is just intoxicating and amazing and that's what I took away from it . So that was sort of the first time that I had it. But still it was interesting because just at first you'd be like, oh wait, it doesn't have the body that other coffees have , but that nuance has ch anged and for me, you know, I've addressed the body by doing different brain methods to try and evoke more of the elegant , full bodied geisha . Which I want to talk to you about but, I'm fascinated by the history at the moment . The nineties, the nineties are a tough time for Panama, a tough time for the coffee industry. It was it was a very tough time . Yeah. I mean, coffee was, you know, sixty seventy eighty cents. There had been the coffee dream had fallen apart . My father had worked even to make sure that Panama Coffee could be put in as contract C, so that took a lot of work to do . But the main thing that we were doing is we were marketing Panama's an estate coffee. We had been working with Tim Castle who had written a perfect cup. My dad saw the book when he was in Seattle and reached out to Tim and Tim came down and cupped with us and you know, the luckiness that we had was that we had great catawai . And Tim had been working with Bill McCalpin, who was in Costa Rica, Terrazu, and Bill had done Laminita and he promoted the whole idea of an estate coffee, which was distinctly different than most commercial coffee because it was saying, okay, this is coffee, it's speaking from one estate. So you could think of one Terra . And he was selling it at a fixed price. And began when everyone else was selling at sixty seventy cents . We were selling it three dollars for our sad piss and two dollars and fifty cents for our coffee here, which for many was a huge stretch, but we were doing the quality and it started to work. And that was pre scap. I mean, I think Scap was somewhat inspired by my dad's work, but the work that Scap has done, especially coffee association in Panama is pretty amazing, has a very lucky group Panama's very lucky in being a very small and very passionate community that wasn't didn't have a tradition and a government agency to define who they were, so they were able to learn collaboratively . So we've been very fortunate for the most part working together rather than competing against each other. So that's one thing that makes Panel special. Yeah, I agree with you. The community is very small but mighty in the way that they work and collaborate, but also compete in a very mostly healthy way . There's some above and beyond, but mostly healthy way. Yeah, I mean, it's like two brothers competing brothers and sisters, etc in a certain sort of way. But we share a lot of information. I mean, some people don't share as myth much as others . But Panama has been very, very lucky and fortunate and have individuals that really are quite tirelessly passionate. I mean, when you're doing some stuff with SCAP, you're almost like , you know, it's almost more of a burden than actually your day job you're on meetings that are quite long and quite specific and ideally get stuff done ideally . Where were you when Geisha had had its big moments in the best of Panama? Were you here? Were you in Seattle? I was in Seattle. Yep. No, so Duane sent me some swims uit at Stumtown when it was being discovered . And I sort of , you know, that was the beginning and then I shared it with my family to see what we were thinking of doing. And then Michael and my dad went to went to town in terms of being passionate about growing gay shape, which is not easy, you know, so you have to learn how to grow it and it's not as productive , but obviously it's quite amazing, right? Would you say that moment changed everything for your family, for Panama as a whole . I think it changed everything more so for people that are actually coming into it because they didn't have to go through the arduous fight of the earlier years. So there have been a lot of people that have capitalized on all the work that was done, you know? I mean, I think in all the noticing that was done . I mean Daniel noticed that, Hey, this coffee tastes different. And then he brought it to a cupclass that Rick Reinhard was teaching and Rick who, fortunately, was someone who was not a normal , at least in that day, traditional American coffee roaster because he knew Ethiopians very well. So he was able to see that this was his fantastic coffee and asked Daniel to take him up to his farm and ask Price if he could buy it all. He didn't offer enough. then And the next thing that Rick did was actually take some coffee and take it to the SCA at that time in New Orleans and put in the cupping pavilion and hundred out of one hundred and three cup is rated as their chopped coffee. That was sort of the beginning. And then people don't know that actually a group of people or don't remember a group of people actually bought the first geisha together. One of them was Flame that sort of skyrocketed and changed everything in terms of I think that moment for me is the biggest moment because the person who was running the auction was like someone's hacked into the auction. I mean, how are they paying ten dollars kind of over ten dollars? Like what's going on? I mean, because there was a ceil ing and a perception. I mean, you had certain places like Blue Mountain that had a perception, you had Kopi Luk, things that had different things. And this all of a sudden sort of changed everything everything . And so I think that changed everything, but I also think it's worth to say that as I've been recently trying to explore to find out, but I think that the best of Panama also had a great influence on coffee processing as whole because even though they didn't allow natural coffees to begin with, they did allow them and then elevated them and celebrated them to the point where that became valuable to other people because there were cupping tables in which there were certain roasters that if they saw a natural they would just give it a zero and not even put it because it was dirty and that's changed. And now you just see all sorts of different processings. So I think that that's also something that should be noted in terms of how the best of Panama. I mean, obviously there were still great naturals everywhere. It's just a question of whether people their perception of it . So I think that the discovery of geisha having the mechanism of the best of Panama there to sort of change the value function. I mean, I think it sort of breaks the ceiling or the bonds to other people def ining what that is, and also celebrated producers in a different way . Because I think the connection that happens between producers, judges, buyers at the best of Panama is much more collaborative everybody's in the same room so you can learn from each other and understand what the market trend is and what's good and what's not and then try different things . And we were always I think Panama as a whole has always been trying to do something better. That was a great answer, guys . Can you tell me your memory of the first geisha you tried? What did that taste like? How did you drink it? Where were you in that moment? I was on my houseboat in Seattle and I was in my kitchen and I was like, wow, this smells like being in , you know, the jasmine was just amazing . Because there was I was sort of alluding to an earlier varietal or coffee that we had that we sort of lost when they were like, Oh yeah, that's African and then it just got at one point those plantings where we got the coffee from, we thought we could decide what that coffee was and it went to a different place and that coffee just got lost. But that coffee for me is still sort of like a magical unicorn because that coffee aroma had body had just incredible flavors was completely around. So I was comparing that to the geisha and I was like, wow, this one has certain aspects , but doesn't have this whole package . So I'm still looking for that coffee . But so I was in the room, you know , drinking it. I was definitely doing a French press at that point. Okay , but I started roasting on home roasters, whatever they might be back in nineteen ninety three . And it's worth to note that there was a cafe robe in Japan that you would be able to roast, grind, and brew your coffee all in one machine . So people have been exploring, you know , how to create different coffee experiences for a long time. If you consider that even a long time in the nineties in the nineties or early two thousands I guess. They were, I think they might have even been the eighties. Wow , wow can you describe geisha washed? What is your ideal profile for a geisha was hed when you're looking for maximum expression or articulation ? I think that for me the geisha experience as a whole is one in which the coffee takes you on a whole sort of a ride across a beautiful landscape of flavors from hot to cold. So certainly fragrance if you're cupping is important aroma if you're just it's already has water touching it , making it come alive. For me, you know, jasmine, you know, it's sort of classic lemongrass . A lot of the classic sort of geisha wash would be more stone fruit, but I actually appreciate a geisha wash that maybe has , you know, not the fermentation method allows for raspberry strawberry to come through. I still consider that for me. I just for me the ideal I mean it's I'm going to sort of pivot on how I speak to it because for me the ideal geisha is one that you don't really know what the process is because it has elements of washed, honey , natural, classic, natural and aerobic , in a very clean expression that takes you for a ride. So you're going to taste maybe at the beginning, oh wow, this is, you know , supernatural. And then oh in the middle as it cools down, this is expressing more of the washed quality. And then at the end it becomes so super sweet that it has that anaerobic sort of fruitiness . So I think that's, you know , for me, that's's it something that sort of just takes you away from the moment and puts you in the moment at the same time . It's something that I strive for in coffee and brewing and, you know every time that I'm doing a geisha wash, ideally . But I also I do have a preference to have to have naturals end and wash. I'm not I don't geisha wash for me is fantast ic and it's really really hard to do because you can as a producer, you don't have as many levers that you can do to try and change what's there or improve it . But increasingly we are finding ways to do that , whether it be how to ferment, and then for certain things, how to inoculate if that's the case , for that coffee or how to dry as well so for me yeah it's it's obviously the biggest thing on it the huge jasmine flavors that you get in the floral flavors and the ride of from hot to cold in terms of how that coffee changes with each sip. I mean your second sip of coffee definitely is different from your first no matter what because of your receptors . You've spent a lot of time focused on brewing, exploring brewing parameters, roasting, trying to take the green coffee product from the farm and elevate it from the roaster perspective in the barista slash brewer perspective . What is your goal? You referenced a little bit heavier body in geisha, a more full bodied geisha. Well, my first goal is actually to learn as much as I can as a producer because it is complicated so learning how to really get that full experience is why I do everything from roasting to everything that I can to learn . I think that like, for instance, in terms of one brewing method , which I call the oily bloom, you know, the idea is to let the oils come into the cup to give the cup of an elegant velvety mouth feel. So someone like my sister who does love tea but expects her coffee to have more body, it allows for more body to be there and in a beautiful way . So there is the goal of just trying to see how to express it in different ways and using different methods , whether you want it to be more tea like or whether you want it to be heavier in the palette. Okay heavy in the mouthfeel. The oily bloom is one of my favorite brewing methods today. You have to brew it though. It can't be from anybody else. It has to be from your hand. Can you explain a little the theory and why you call it the oily bloom? Yeah, the way that this came up was actually because I was going to be doing the brewer's cup and I was practicing to brew by competing in one of these little Hario competitions that were that was happening in Milan in twenty twenty two . And when I showed up, I found out you had to use a W sixty, which is Pete Lakada and Harriet Worked on a screen that fits into a larger sort of version of the V sixty, thus the W sixty . And I had to brew with it and Matt, who was actually the reason that I was there because he was an ambassador for them. Matt went in. He said, I'll just make it as easy as possible. And I'm like, because I'd been wondering how could I actually create more oil and like, oh, this is what I can do. So in that moment I ended up brewing the first pour, which is known as the bloom just through the screen . And then I picked up the screen and put in the Hario paper and did the rest of the brew and that brew won. And then I was like, oh and ironically or strangely the same recipe that I did on that stage in that moment is the one that sort of kept happening, which was a very sort of heavy. It was fourteen to one and really just created a completely different experience that actually got my sister to love Geisha because she liked how that mouth feel lent . And then since then there are other methods that are starting to show that. So I don't have to do the Olym as much because it is complicated to pick up the screen and put in the paper, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a little dirtier than being able to do it just with a paper filter. So there are paper filters nowadays or versions of filters like the high flex that allow for oil to come in more and more are liking that idea of oils coming in . And the reason that I did the oily bloom is somewhat at least in my intentionality was because like in an extra olive oil you sort of do the first expression is the cleaner expression. So you're able to get that first expression of the oils and then you use the paper later on to be able to to really allow the structure and elegance of the coffee to come through. And those other oils it might be a little more rancid. Like if you actually try to do it all through the screen, what you end up with is a very muddied cup of coffee without the clarity that the paper allows you to do. So that was the whole idea was to create that experience that you when you cup coffee you have, sort of a juicier experience and people tend to prefer that if they're cuppers. But I think that when you brew coffee, you can actually create more elegance and structure. So it was the idea of combining the cupping experience with the brewing experience that I was trying to do and luckily I think it worked . One day I'd like to sit in your mind and just see how things work that was that was very well described on a very complicated , you know, if you don't know coffee, that's a very complicated stylistic approach to making a cup of coffee that is very well described. Yes. Apparently I like complex chaos , which is what coffee is. Simplicity through the complexity. Yes, at least that's again, that's what coffee is for me. Right . You know , you took this brew method to the competition stage. You're a coffee competitor. I'd love to hear your experience about competing, why that's important to you, and why you've invested the time to participate. I think that 's a good question because I'll give you as thorough of an answer as I can while spinning just kidding . That's a good question. And I'll give you as thorough of an answer as I can . In Seattle, you know, I had friends that were the Brista champions and a very high level. And when they were competing, I'm like, What the heck are you doing? That sounds really weird . I mean, we celebrate coffee. Why are we competing against each other ? And so like Braun Surda, et cetera, and just enjoyed hanging out. We did great coffee, but I was like, what the heck? Competition was definitely different then . But I ended up going to Taiwan and seeing the groups there just compete and what coffee really meant was learning how to elevate coffee, how to how do you do the best coffee that you can. And it got me really thinking about doing competition. So I got lucky and there was an AeroPress national championship in Seattle at KXP's La Mar oZk spo ace and they had wild cards . So I got a wild card . And I thought about how I would compete, found out that I couldn't use my coffee like a few weeks before , and thought of, okay, how can I do this and realized that, oh, it'd be kind of cool to do double immersion single extraction. So I double immersion . So you would have you'd use the same coffee to create more complexity and it was a canyon that we were using . You would be able to grind coarser and that would be your first immersion. Then you put in the finer grind, and that would be your second immersion and then you do one single push for extraction. And I won my first round . The second round it was two to one and the person that I lost to ended up winning and getting the trip to Korea . And I realized that I lost then because I didn't taste my coffee because maybe I could have done a little bypass or something. So actually when I was on the stage in Milan, I used that to go, oh, wait a second, let me taste the coffee at this level, which was not my normal amount, which would have been fifty to one. And I'm like, oh, wait a second, this works. And so that was sort of like paying attention and realizing okay, competition is something that can allow you to improve your coffee experience as a whole . It's definitely not for everyone and it's definitely incredibly stressful for me. But I kept doing it and was still, oh yeah, you can you brew really well. You should try to do this. So then I ended up figuring out the oily bloom. I didn't call it that because that would be perceived like oh is it oily ? And how you say things and how you present things is important . I didn't practice enough, that's for sure . And it was kind of lucky because I got third place and then my coaches Daniel and Garam were like, hey can, we use your brewing method and your blend that you created ? Because the one thing that I did in competing is that I wanted to sort of connect Bokan and Bokete. So when I did the brewer's c up , I chose to the surprise of many, combined your coffee. So Justin and I combine a coffee. Essentially what ended up happening was that we went on a trip and after a milan, we were supposed to work on the coffee and I said, Okay, check out the blend. And Justin was like, Okay, great, that's it . There wasn't a lot of exploration on that blend. And it did work. And then that same blend Garim used to win in Brazil, and then he used his own sort of version of an oily bloom to get third place in twenty twenty three . So he got third when Borum got first, which was pretty magical. It would have been crazy to have two first place brothers . That would have been interesting. Especially their last name is Oom. Yes. Yeah . Yeah. They're a lovely family and just incredible ambassadors for coffee and an incredible ambass adors for coffee in Brazil and really rejuvenating the whole spectrole coffee industry there. It was because of going to that competition in Brazil and helping out or trying to support Garm andin Daniel that I got to know the whole Loom family and that's when our relationship started with Kafi , which has been ongoing and they're lovely. So Ken talk maybe a little bit about Borum. You mentioned him there in twenty twenty three, he won the World Berista Championship. You were there in the stadium, you were there in the rafters. You were crying more than I've ever seen tears come out of your eyes. Tell me about that moment. Tell me what happened after that Wow , didn't expect to do that . I the first thing that comes to mind and let's see if I can speak through it is how magical it was that you know, for bore him . You know, Danny, you know, Danny, which she was on the stage and Danny had used her coffee before. So I was like, I was, you know, I was really feeling for Danny as well. But to go to what was almost, you know, making me cry or made me cry was that I called my dad to say, hey , for one using our coffee, you know, it was because for, you know, our family's been working on coffee for so long, so I was more proud for him . For Michael, etc . It's not easy, you know, I mean competition number one, everyone does such a great job, you know, and there is such a big thing, okay, you are the champion, that's how the world works, et cetera. So it was pretty amazing to be there, share that. And I had my family there, so it was fun . And I'll just try and change the thing. What's really fun was that Borum and Garim went in Brazil using Jansen as well , which was pretty crazy. And you were there in Muan when we celebrated Borom winning , which was fun . So it was just a culmination of everything, you know, and then seeing just what an amazing champion he is an ambassador was key . And you know, it's it's the biggest thing to go, you know, again to go back to competition is the community of competitors in terms of how everybody's really trying to elevate. I mean, that's why you see different cups, different brewing methods, different things that really become different expressions of coffee. They don't make it just one cup , but the infinity cup. You invest a ton of time, both as a competitor, but also into competitors , right? You have you have people here at your house all the time at the lake, you travel all corners of the world, you spend a lot of time with competitors around the world . And that's a relatively new area of specialty coffee, right? Kind of the in last ten years. That's been a much bigger focus than it was. Has that been become a big part of your business model, your business plan and a way to get Jansen coffee out to the world ? I think I mean it is just the sense of you want to share your coffee with people that care about coffee that are doing great coffee so that follows that you're looking for those partners that are really paying attention to what their coffee passion is. So it does become a part of the business plan. I mean, I'm a little different in the sense that I would like to say that it's a part of the business plan, but it's also a part of what we need to do and what I'm attracted to do from an intentional perspective because again, if I'm trying to connect and raise awareness, you sort of see that every little thing matters . And that's really a wonderful thing. I mean the magic of coffee is that people have different pallets. We already knew that from a scientific way. So people see perceived differently. Sometimes when we come together and there's something that's overriding, you're like, well, that's crazy. pretty special and sort of connecting . So traveling the world, seeing different I mean it takes a lot of time and passion to compete. So being there to support people and understanding that competition is you know, there's one winner and there are many people that get to learn from their experience being one of them so it's it is something that's changing. I mean co,ffee does the market continues to grow with different trends that do come out of competition and understandings . So it is it is important and, you know, like I used to be like, What the heck are you doing? And then once I realized that it really was moving coffee in different ways. And that's, you know, like brewers , like, you know , Joseph here at ninety plus, you know, like how many world championships they won and what they were doing and how they pushed coffee, you know, he really pushed coffee in the natural way to open up the idea of what coffee is and much more than just one black cup of coffee , right ? You've given so much to that space in terms of time, energy, passion . What's something you've received back from it that has better Jansen and better the family farm . I think that, you know, there's, you know, looking at in terms of you can see, you know , business partnerships or relationships, you know, growing over time into different markets. Okay . I think that for me it's community, right? It's people who share a passion for coffee and taste and for lucky food as well , you know, because it really does there are very similar crossovers that happen . So it's it's , you know, I think value is connection much more so than price . So I feel like I've learned quite a lot and continue to. I mean, if I compete again, it's because I've come up with a concept that I haven't like anybody else to do in Barista. So maybe that's what something I'll do is have to compete and brace you to see if that actually has something because then you get to say, okay, you know, surprise someone with a different way of roasting to produce a different espresso . That would be so cool. If you compete in Barista, I'm a supporter. I'm a fan of that idea. It would n't be funny for me who really does not prepare well now to go to Barista and do that . But I can do the latte art. You can compete in Panama at the world burst a challenge . Wouldn't that be amazing? Stressful, obviously stressful and yes, it would be pretty humorous. It would be true. Well, because it would be interesting because of everybody that I'm helping out. I mean, from my perspective, competition is still collaboration . So there are people that like, you know, are very competitive and you know, maybe they tend to win because they are so competitive. There are others that share in certain ways. And those are certainly the champions that I appreciate the most, but everyone has their own take on how they do competition. But it's an incredible community, you know, and it's not easy. I mean the, most amazing people there are judges because they're giving their time and it's not easy being a judge, right ? You know , the one thing I will say that I'd like to put out there is that I would love to actually have competitions in which people openly share their scoresheets so you can learn because that would allow for more learning because all of this is about learning how to do great coffee. So if you can see other people's short scores sheets , people would start to learn maybe how to compete better, easier. Because competition is a huge investment of time and money and it is very stressful and all of a sudden it gets put into ten minutes or fifteen minutes depending on how you see it. But the wacky thing about competition is just for me I didn't really think of it enough the first time that I competed which is, just being back stage and getting ready and then the nerves that happen to get there. And then for me, the first time that I competed, I was like, I froze because I was like, I realized that I felt the pressure of like from my family like, all right, what if I fuck up? Let's see how that one works. What if I screw up ? And I actually had a plague moment, and then I looked down and I had the first line. I'm like, oh yeah, there we go and started going. And by the end of it, in my first competition, like part of competition is that things mess up. The person that was supposed to tell me I had three minutes came up to me and told me I had one minute. So when I looked at my clock and it said three minutes, that's the most proud thing I did. I didn't turn to that kind person and yell at them because they gave me the wrong information. It just relaxed me and I'm like, alright, let's just go with this The second time I competed, the opposite type thing happened. The guy who was doing the music didn't do the music right . So I was told when my music ends, you know , I have five seconds to finish my competition. When the music ended at seven oh three , when I looked at the screen, I couldn't believe that someone had messed up so much that I kind of lost it. I was like, What the hell and that coffee was the best coffee and it was probably the one chance that I had to win. But I didn't handle it as a competitor because what you need to do is just be like, okay, whatever , you know, stuff happens. People have had dogs come into their competitions, but you're expected to compete it. So competing is a challenge and there's always something . It's just a question of overcoming it . Do you see it at all as a sport ? Do I see it at all as a sport? Competition like define what a sport is. Okay. You're a sports guy. I've heard you tell lots of stories about early days Seattle Super Sonic, he's a ticket holder, you know, back in the day, the NBA didn't make a lot of re venue and a lot of those people in the early days had to have second jobs, et cetera . Today, the NBA has a lot of viewership, the audience has grown in the world of coffee competitions, coffee, sport, let's call it the season, the first season's the year two thousand s . There would have been no money going into the world champions and sponsorship and funding and that sort of stuff. And now we fast forward to twenty twenty six , and there's a lot of ambassador agreements, there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of growth for those that compete, and there's people that spend all of their time practicing, focusing on building the competition . So I mean, I'm going to sort of change your question to I think it's a professional sport because there's amateur sports in basketball , you know, as your example and professional. I mean, and just to remind people, as I've been told , in the early days of the Barista Championship, you were allowed to smoke on stage . Yeah . And you added sugar to your cappuccino . So you've seen a different level of professionalism that then has become more quote unquote, valuable so that you know, it's becoming more of of a lucrative sport if you put it that way. I mean, I think that what's more what's kind of exciting for me is when you go to Brees League, you go to all these other events that sort of allow you to actually learn because when you're competing, you're learning for different competitions. So there are the world championships, but there are national champions, but then there's also other things. And AeroPress has its own sort of version of fun competing , right ? In terms of the way that it takes it what it does . So I do think it's become more professional, more lucrative. It'll be interesting to see how much more it becomes, I think that it will at some point become sensationalized. In fact, there's rumors that that's already starting . And that will be interesting because we'll lose a lot of the learning experience in the situation in like in Milan from everybody being able to see everything because it's going to be much more separate and it's going to be more costly. I mean, that's the one thing that's happening is the competition's becoming more costly . And there could be an improvement now that you're required to use the official grinder on stage, but it's certainly more costly to those people. So the amateurism that might have been there before, whether it was smoking cigarettes or being able to use your own grinder. Because right now imagine doing tast e notes and you're not doing taste notes on the grinder that you're going to be using. You're doing taste notes on a grinder that's similar. And as we all know backstage, it can be very different than onstage, especially when you're forced to use water that you can't control , right ? So yeah, the answer is yes is it can be categorized as a sport and it's moving from amateur to professional . And how lucrative that might become will be very interesting. I mean, what's it been sort of what has to I mean what's been intriguing is to realize cultures like in Japan really really praise and respect producers in a way that sometimes it's very different in other areas. And it's been very interesting to see coffee producers being celebrated in the way that they are. It's very hard to do and it's, very touching , you know, to see the level of connection that people feel with the people that produce their coffee. It's very touching. The barista, the brewer is the athlete . Who is the coffee producer in that relationship should turn it back to sport ? I think that's simplifying it , right ? Because, you know, you don't talk about the basketball, you don't talk about the court. You can talk about the crowd, right? So maybe if you're going to use your analogy , you know, the reason that I like going to professional sports when I do go is for the crowd experience because it's a different energy. I mean, the reason that I love coffee is because of the energy that can be shared on multiple levels . In a way, coffee is an incredible art because you can drink it. You know, just like food is an incredible art because you can eat it . So being creative in how you do what you do is you know, for me, I'm just creatively bent. I don't necessarily ever do the same recipe the same way . And I've always tried to see how to do things differently to see what expression in that moment fits best. So the coffee producer increasingly in competition is very important . So in a way, it, you know, I have different ways of thinking is you could think that the coffee producer is the coach in certain ways, but that's not really clear because in competition coaches, people that are giving you the feedback that you need, the support . I mean , cleaning , wiping down all that kind of stuff that happens behind the scenes. I mean, you have a whole team. I just tried to compete and I didn't have a whole team. I was like, oh yeah, I can do it. It was like, oh yeah, no, you just learned that no that was I did do what I wanted to do was be able to be on stage and not feel, you know , stupid for not having prepared for so long. So I did that , but I still prepared stupidly . So it's more of what creates a great meal . So you can have a great chef that creates a great meal, but if they don't have the right ingredi ents . So coffee producers become more of the ingredients. And in a way because it's so complicated we try to help out with how to actually create that. So you can be a pharm to table chef in a certain sort of way, but it's also really wonderful when you have someone that's just a chef. But more and more people really want to control their ingredients or have the best ingredients . And I see it more along the lines of the chef analogy than I do the sports analogy. Okay . No, I think that 's a great answer. I like that. I like that a lot. We're on an exponential rise in specialty coffee in the competition scene and prices and everything , really . What do you think the next sort of five to ten year future looks like for specialty coffee ? So from my perspective, we've reached somewhat of a peak, okay ? And maybe I'll be wrong . I think that demand continues to I mean, the big thing is especially coffee is so many different tiers , right? I mean, I think that coffee in general , what I believe and you know, intend is that Panama can lead the way and sort of raising the tent or raising the tide in terms of all coffee producers because coffee is disappearing . So how we can create great sustainable options that still taste great is kind of very, very important for it . And as Raya comes into the picture so that I see specialty growing, I see it getting a lot of competition from alternatives . There are people that are doing fake coffee artificial coffee, and that's always been one thing that coffee was so complex that you couldn't like do it. So it'll be interesting to see if that ever takes hold . I think that beverages or hot beverages and specialty beverages that are non alcoholic that maybe include coffee will become more a part of it. I think that coffee, especially coffee we're figuring out coffee has great benefits. One of the things about the oil bloom is that the oils that you get there are actually really good for you if you're not doing them in excess , like a French press, which is a different extraction method . So I see especially coffee growing at least from my perspective, what I want to do on it, is create greater coffee with less coffee because we're just it's just disappearing. I mean, you asked, you know, what are my sort of like my interests here? And one of them is working with Gary n's wave technology in terms of looking how to , you know, there's as a producer you, can taste what you consider past crop i bagginess really quickly. And I've found that actually if you can produce a red coffee it can actually hold its value or its non bagginess for longer. And using like the platform wave allows us to actually extend that longer. So that's really important for producers because producers have always had the short end of the stick in terms of the amount of risk is much greater than a roaster. But roasters or beverage companies at the end sort of their margins tend to be higher . They can choose from many producers, so their risk is less . And as a producer, it becomes more and more risky in today's climate to grow coffee. But you're seeing people pushing the limits. So what we couldn't grow at a certain altitude here in Panama, now we can because of climate change. Now not to go political enough, but just climate change is climate change. Right now we're having a pattern here in Panama where we're having five o'clock showers or rain in the dry season. Last year we had rain in the dry season that affected flowerings and flowerings were less. So here in Panama where we have less coffee. So you have to try and make it more valuable to be able to survive . And I think that there if you look at life, it actually ups and downs and I'm thinking I don't know how exponential we will continue to be given the costs and the risks, but we're trying to do the best to navigate that technology . Connection, right? And people's awareness and understanding different learning from each other. I mean, competition is great in that respect. I mean, it's interesting to see how many times people think that they're doing something for the first time and it's not oh double grinding no was done before, you know , but still might be a different take on it and sort of sharing but we're creating that knowledge base to be able to make it better. And that's why I think scoring having score sheets and a lot of people like no, that's a bad idea because it exposes judges . I think that from my not being a judge perspective, I think it's important to be able to share the scoresheets so that people get different understandings. And I think judges can become better as well so they can start to see even what different tendencies are . Because if you're in a safe space to connect it. It's a great way to learn . Very true, very true . I want to ask you about legacy. What does legacy mean to you you're a third, third generation here on the farm, I believe, second generation producing coffee . Can you talk to me a little bit about legacy? I think legacy is it's family and it's also in the industry that you're in terms of what effects you're trying to create. I mean, the reason that I was so touched when Borum one was because that , you know, we had done so much effort to receive recognition or to to really share how we felt about how great our coffee was, so to see it being celebrated. And of course, a big deal as you were a part of the dream team was how it was all put together . So having the conversation with my dad and just feeling so proud that he could say, you know, that his coffee won a world championship or helped for him the team win a world championship. So legacy is one of generational understanding of where we're going and what vision we have and how we execute it because each generation has a different vision so that it's sustainable. And also, you know, like my people ask me are your kids going to get in a coffee? I'm like, they're going to get into whatever they love. If it's coffee great, you know , because ironically, my dad, you know, wanted me to be a lawyer and he wanted me to do other things . And you know, and it's just crazy that we've been in coffee and that I get to see him as much as I do because a shared passion for coffee. That wasn't something that like we decided, hey, this is it. It was what we ended up doing because he ended up saying, hey, no, I want to see if we can create great coffee here on our coffee farm. This farm was put together by my grandmother and grandfather and sort of be a family legacy. And I think coffee has allowed that to really continue and flourish . And part of is the family, other legacies become more informing like we do have we do have hydroponics that are happening. We have different efforts here on the farm to make it really thrive and become a living legacy for the generations of Jansens . And in coffee, the idea is really from my perspective, to create a legacy of curiosity and passion for how you brew, how you taste, how you connect with with coffee and how important it is to be aware of every little aspect because it matters , as long as it matters to you . I like to be as long as it matters to you . Yeah, I mean, it's it's, you know, there's there's different ways to perceive and sort of going with the normative rule is an intriguing one. And I mean the crazy part is when you give a person a hot cup of coffee or a hot cup of anything, it sort of has a different sort of physiological effect, but it tends to be very positive, right? So I mean, my first experience was like doing coffee was being at supermarkets selling the coffee product that I'd created and sort of going, okay, have one taste, have the second because you started to realize that different the second taste is always different in terms of your receptors . And why is that? You're referencing that a little bit earlier . Because generally you're from my perspective, you're if you're a professional coupler, that isn't generally as true . But from my perspective, and it's not scientific, it's basically sort of opinion that you'll taste and your sort of receptors are in your brain are saying, Oh, okay, what is this? And your second taste will be different. And so I always have done that as my own little experim ent to see if that works and it does for most people. I mean, there are some people that are super taste and they think, oh yeah, the rim doesn't do anything . And hey, this is , you know, this is total bologna and there are others that are like no and then they can actually use every single level to dial in whatever it is that they feel their flavor is if they want less acidity, if they want more sweetness, they want more body. Okay . Do you think there's a long way to go in the design cups and shapes? And I think that I don't know if I would say a long way to go. I'd say that right now it's amazing to see how much action there is in terms of different perspectives on I mean you've got two different you know the two way and then honey's cups that are sort of dominating different things. I think that there's also, you know, aeration versus non aeration and things like that. So in fact, I'm in the process of designing some espresso cups . Okay . So there's a lot of room, I mean in so many different ways. I think there's a lot of room to improve in cupping protocol . COVID sort of changed cupping protocol. When I was cupping in large groups like in Korea before COVID, I was trying to teach people how to use the two spoon method . This was pre COVID, just because there was a lot of sharing that was happening. Sharing is great. German sharing is necessarily so great . So there's a lot of improvement in so many different ways. I think that the big thing that has to improve and focused on is how do we improve revenue for a producer . And I think that cascada and other methods , flowers , blossoms, teas, etc are worthy to look at. And there's also looking at it from a perspective of health and longevity because you're seeing that the antioxidants in coffee are very beneficial. So how to really make that more of a part of everyday living so that we can lived out or through coffee. Like diversifying your portfolio as a producer. Yep. I got one more question for you. All right, what does coffee mean to you ? The easiest answer is love. So love is connection and energy I. ha Andven't talked about energy enough , but energy is , you know, for me the primary thing. We're all actually made of energy and how we connect with that energy is key . And if you're in a bad mood, you're chasing a cup of coffee, most likely you're not going to have the best experience, but sometimes that coffee can change your mood . So coffee to me means energy on a sort of primal and sinctual level. It means love, you know, in terms of connect ion. My wife loves coffee and whenever I you know it so I love to make coffee for her and share that was sort of one of our first connections and then for family obv,iously it's, a a passion and connection for community, you know, friends , connections and really, you know, how that sort of changes people's perspectives and ideally makes them pay more attent ion to our world and our ecosystem to celebrate all our insects and everything else. That's a beautiful answer. Wow. It's a beautiful space. Coffee is a beautiful place.. It is it And this is a beautiful place in Panama's pretty amazing. Hey, yeah, how's it going? Kai, thanks for taking the time to sit down, share your thoughts, your perspective, your story of Jansen, your personal journey. Hey , it's been a pleasure. It's always great to see Eco and meet new folks and get to share. I mean, share, hopefully to inspire if possible. Absolutely . You've inspired me. Thank you, thank you for everything. Thank you. You inspired me very much. Much love.