Blog: Coffee roaster Rick Maas

Journey part 1 - PANAMA

At the beginning of the summer Rick Maas, our coffee buyer, traveled to beautiful Panama and on to impressive Colombia. Visiting coffee farmers and searching for beautiful new coffees.

Rick Maas: "I had been there many times before, I know the farmers, know the area and knew exactly where I would end up. But still, my mouth fell open with surprise. I was so touched by the beautiful nature, the amazing bird and animal sounds and the energy that the people give you. Right from the first step on the enchanting plantations, your curiosity is piqued. This gives me enormous motivation to translate the new discoveries into our company Boot Koffie and for you, the coffee lovers!"

In Panama, Rick travels directly to the Kotowa plantation of Ricardo Koyner, the coffee farmer of our Panamaria coffee. He is a particularly fanatical coffee farmer and is always working to improve his plantations and working methods. For example, he has completely optimized the drying process of the washed coffee bean. This ensures a great taste .

After picking the ripe red berries, the pulp of the coffee pit is washed. It is then dried from 65% humidity to 10-11%. The speed of the drying and the way it is done also determine much of the flavor layering.


Coffee farmer Ricardo Koyner

For Ricardo, there are three pillars very important, which we fully support, including our mission:
1. Good quality coffee
2. Good for people: in his case the pickers who work for him
3. Treating nature responsibly, he has also won an award twice for this: National Environmental Award

Coffee plants in bloom. This is called flowering. It now takes another 8 months for full-fledged coffee berries to grow from them.



This is a small coffee depulper, a kind of "bruiser" machine. This is used to strip the coffee berry of its 'berry skin' (parchment or cornea). This is applied to washed coffee. Then the pectin layer is washed off and the bean is laid out to dry. This is called "washed coffee.


Visiting the Hartmann family. In the photo we see Ratibor and Alice.

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Journey part 2 - COLOMBIA

In Colombia, Eva - Dutch colleague from MVO (Corporate Social Responsibility) joins us to visit the plantations together. In collaboration with MVO, we are in the Futureproof Coffee Collective, a network of coffee producers, importers, roasters and retailers fighting together for the future of coffee. Learn more about this in our other blog: Colombia Kachalu

On the edge of our seats during the exciting car ride!
They always say that Colombia is a dangerous country due to the presence of the guerrilla groups FARC, ELN and the drug gangs. But what Rick considered especially dangerous were the roads. When he was there it was raining extremely hard and this caused dangerous scenes on the roads like rocks, grit and mudslides. As a result, he encountered many ambulances along the way. It was a bit of a scare when a scooter rider hit a rock. The driver had to be taken to the hospital.

It was too exciting a ride but fortunately they still arrived safely at their destination.
Eventually Rick arrived at the Canyons in the region of Santander. These are gigantic canyons where you can look down hundreds of meters often without being able to see the bottom. A particularly impressive sight. Then they drove the car over the tops of mountains, feeling very small. The canyons are a rough and dry area, a huge contrast to the green oasis where they eventually ended up. The Kachalu plantation is a green oasis full of coffee bushes and other plants.




Family Santander


Kachalu farmers organization
Kachalu farmers produce a total of 800,000 kg of coffee per year. Of this, 650,000 kg is Rainforest and Organic certified because it is grown in an environmentally friendly way according to stricter requirements. These are the two highest certificates that can be obtained. The certified coffee is eligible for a bonus scheme which means the coffee farmers receive a higher kilogram price for their coffee. We have been working with the Kachalu farmers for more than 15 years!

Of the 650,000 kg of Rainforest and Organic certified coffee, another small portion (50,000 kg) is rated as 85+ coffee. This cupping score by the FNC coffee panel means that coffee of this high quality falls under specialty coffee. As Boot Koffie, we buy more than 34,000 kilos of this coffee. Great coffee for both filter and espresso!

What's special about this is that the farmers get an even higher bonus: double. This is why our goal is to sell even more of this coffee, because the farmers get paid the maximum.

A two-year project by Boot in collaboration with the MVO and the Kachalu organisation has shown that the Kachalu coffee we get from the farmers only needs a very small improvement to become completely climate-neutral. Whereas the average unroasted Colombian coffee would cost an extra Euro 7 per kilo to become climate-neutral, the Kachalu coffee only needs 70 cents.
Will you help?

Order coffee from the Colombia Kachalu plantation