Dalla Corte dc campus gets schooled on the Orang Utan Coffee Project

Dalla Corte has wrapped up the 2015 edition of its dc campus in Medan, Indonesia. The annual event is put on to give coffee professionals the chance to train for future world finals, as well as connect with coffee origins. This year the camp took place at Ecolodge, which is located at the entrance to one of Southeast Asia’s largest protected rainforests, in North Indonesia’s Sumatra. More than 50 people flew to Medan to meet in the spot that Swiss organisation PanEco has been working with the Indonesian government to run the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme (SOCP). The program is working to save the Sumatran orangutans, which are increasingly being driven from their natural habitat, often due to deforestation at the hands of the palm oil industry. The SOCP works with coffee farmers in the area to preserve the rainforest, through the Orang-utan Coffee Growers group. The members agree not to clear tropical rainforest in order to expand their farmland, in addition to other guidelines. The Orang-utan coffee growers receive a bonus of at least EUR.50 per-kilogram of green bean for their commitment to protect the tropical rainforest and cultivate the coffee accordingly. Dc campus participants spent time learning about the project, in addition to training for the competitions in the Dalla Corte coffee lab. Dalla Corte created the Orang Utan Coffee Lab to provide a training and support centre for the farmers involved in organic coffee farming. The support centre is equipped with a three-group Evolution machine, a mini espresso machine and two dc one grinders. In addition to spending time picking coffee cherries and visiting a hulling station, the dc camp participants undertook workshops in espresso, latte art, coffee in good spirits, and brewing techniques such as V60 and Ibrik.