Ashton Goggans
Chasing Coffee in Ethiopia: Hyenas Give the Best Goodbyes
At the end of our coffee-sourcing trip in Ethiopia, we drove through the capitol city that had transformed into a sea of saddened World Cup fans. Ethiopia had just lost to Nigeria. Luckily, before our flight home we were introduced to a pack of wild...
Chasing Coffee in Ethiopia: Part Four
We headed into the mountains outside of Jimma to check out some coffee washing stations, but when we got to the place where the dirt bikes were supposed to be, there were no dirt bikes—just a muddy road that ran down into a valley.
Chasing Coffee in Ethiopia: Part Three
On our coffee-sourcing journey through the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, we visited a series of coffee washing stations to collect samples for cupping and roasting. But on our way there, we had a brush with death that changed the course of our...
Chasing Coffee in Ethiopia, Part Two: The Goat Sacrifice
The person to first discover coffee in Ethiopia wasn't a person at all—it was a goat. When I went on a coffee sourcing mission for Sightglass Coffee, it turns out goats also play another role in ensuring a good harvest.
Chasing Coffee in Ethiopia: Part One
I work at Sightglass, an independent coffee company in San Francisco. We take dozens of sourcing trips around the world to places where there's a variety of obstacles: political and health issues, to dangerous terrain.
