Erwin Mierisch

Erwin J. Mierisch is a Nicaraguan coffee producer who sits on both sides of the specialty coffee table at once. He grows and processes coffee with his family at Fincas Mierisch, the estate group his great-grandfather started in 1908 — and he is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the nonprofit that runs the Cup of Excellence competition and its auctions.¹²

That combination is unusual enough to be the point of this page. Most producers meet a competition as entrants. Mierisch has been an entrant, a head judge, the person running the logistics, and now the person running the organisation.¹

From petroleum engineering to coffee

The organisation’s own staff biography is the fullest account of his career that exists in a primary source, and it is short. He studied petroleum engineering, then moved into coffee in 1994, and has since worked across the chain — production, processing, exporting and importing.¹ The same biography describes him as a fourth-generation coffee producer whose “family began coffee farming over a hundred years ago when his great grandfather emigrated to Nicaragua to design the railroad”.¹²

That great-grandfather is Ernst Bruno Mierisch Boettiger, the German railway engineer who was paid in land rather than money and planted his first coffee between Matagalpa and Jinotega in 1908 — the story told in full on the Fincas Mierisch page.³

What he has actually done for Cup of Excellence

ACE lists four separate roles he has held with the programme since 2002: operations manager, head judge, trainer, and winning farmer.¹ “Winning farmer” is not a courtesy — his family’s farms have taken Cup of Excellence placings in two countries, including Santa Lucía’s outright wins in Honduras in 2019 (94.84 points) and 2021 (90.67), both washed Geisha.⁴⁵

The operations job was the long one. A 2013 trade report describes him as a former Cup of Excellence operations manager who worked alongside ACE founder Susie Spindler for eleven years, until 2011.⁶ Operations manager at COE is the unglamorous engine room of the thing: getting sample sets to juries, keeping lots anonymous, making sure the coffee that wins is the coffee that ships.

The first private auction, 2013

When ACE opened a new private auction channel — a way for producers who had already proved themselves in Cup of Excellence to sell small exclusive lots online outside the main competition — Fincas Mierisch ran the inaugural one, on 25 April 2013, under the collection name “Los Favoritos”: fifteen coffees split into thirty-nine lots, deliberately broken into small batches so that small roasters could bid.⁶ The family member quoted in that announcement was Steve Mierisch, not Erwin.⁶

It is a small event with a large idea inside it. A competition auction is a once-a-year lottery; a private auction lets a farm that has already won use the same transparent bidding machinery on its own schedule. Much of what is now normal in green coffee buying at the top end runs on that logic.

As a producer and processor

On the farming side, Erwin Mierisch is most often named in connection with El Limoncillo in Matagalpa, the family’s best-known farm and a second-place finisher at the 2008 Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence.⁷ Roasters routinely describe Limoncillo as run by, or owned by, “Dr. Erwin Mierisch and his family” — see the ownership caveat below.

He is better documented as a processing voice. He is one of the producers quoted at length on this wiki’s Anaerobic fermentation page, both on equipment — Grainpro bags and blue plastic barrels working alongside stainless tanks that control temperature, pressure and pH — and on temperature as a flavour dial, with his own ferments running as cold as 8–10 °C for “a cleaner and vibrant acidity”. That figure is one of the reasons the anaerobic page argues there is no standard temperature for the method.

To verify — which Erwin, and which generation

There is more than one Erwin Mierisch, and the sources do not line up. The family’s own history page names Dr. Erwin Mierisch Buitrago as the third generation and Erwin “Wingo” Mierisch Jackman as the fifth, naming nobody as the fourth.³ The Cup of Excellence and ACE staff pages call Erwin J. Mierisch the fourth generation, and describe Bruno the railway engineer as his great-grandfather — which, counting Bruno as the first, makes fourth generation arithmetically right.¹² A roaster listing adds a third variant, “Dr. Erwin R. Mierisch and his wife, Maria Ligia McEwan de Mierisch”, leading a “third-generation” family business.⁸

The most likely reading is that Erwin J. is the son of Dr. Erwin, and that the family site and ACE simply start counting from different ancestors. But that is inference, not documentation. Do not attribute a specific generation number, or a specific farm’s ownership, to a specific Erwin without a primary source — and treat any roaster bag crediting “Dr. Erwin Mierisch” as possibly meaning his father.

To verify — the dates of his Cup of Excellence roles

ACE says he has served the programme “since 2002”;¹ the 2013 trade report says he worked with Susie Spindler for eleven years until 2011, which would place his start around 2000.⁶ Neither source gives a start date for his current Executive Director post, and no announcement of his appointment was found. The title is stated as fact above because it appears on the organisation’s own current staff pages.¹²

To verify — the San José Geisha

A single roaster product page credits a natural Geisha from Finca San José in Lipululo, Jinotega (1,250–1,400 m) to “Erwin Mierisch and Jorge Luis Mendez” as co-producers.⁹ San José is on the family’s own farm list at that altitude,⁷ but the co-producer credit appears on one retail page only, with no cupping score, price or buyer attached, and no primary confirmation was found.

Related

• Fincas Mierisch — the family farm group he produces with, its fourteen farms and its competition record
• Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the nonprofit he is Executive Director of
• Cup of Excellence · Cup of Excellence records by country — the competition he has judged, run, and won
• Nicaragua · Honduras — the two countries the family farms in
• Anaerobic fermentation — where his fermentation practice is quoted at length
• Geisha · Catuaí · Pacamara — what the family plants
• Green coffee buying · Direct trade — the buying world the 2013 private auction was aimed at
• Peterson family · Pacas family — other multi-generation producing families with notes here

Official links

• Official staff page — Alliance for Coffee Excellence
• Official staff page — Cup of Excellence
• Official site — Fincas Mierisch

Footnotes

1. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Staff — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the Executive Director title, the petroleum-engineering background, the 1994 move into coffee, and the operations manager / head judge / trainer / winning farmer roles since 2002 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Cup of Excellence — Our Team — confirmed via WebFetch; same Executive Director listing and the “4th generation coffee producer” and great-grandfather wording ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Fincas Mierisch — History — confirmed via WebFetch; Ernst Bruno Mierisch Boettiger, 1908, and the generation labels ↩ ↩²

4. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence Honduras 2019 results ↩

5. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence Honduras 2021 results ↩

6. Sprudge — New Private Auction Program From Fincas Mierisch and Cup of Excellence (28 March 2013) — confirmed via WebFetch; the 25 April 2013 “Los Favoritos” auction, the eleven-years-until-2011 operations role, and Steve Mierisch’s quote ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Fincas Mierisch — Farm Info — the farm list, altitudes and competition placings ↩ ↩²

8. Espresso Red Catuai, Washed, La Alita — Finca Mierisch, Honduras — Sumo Coffee Roasters ↩

9. Nicaragua Fincas Mierisch San Jose Natural Geisha — Idle Hands Roasting ↩