SERBC Inside Out, Part II – A Conversation with the USBC
After an intensely busy few days, I’m finally getting some time to sit down and finish up my thoughts on my entire SERBC experience. Being somewhat unsure of to whom exactly to send my questions, I was glad to receive an email and phone call from one of the USBC certified head judges. We spoke for over an hour about the progress of the USBC and regional competitions over the last few years and how that momentum is translating in current and future competition events. He answered every question I had and I feel like I have a much better understanding of the competition and its history.
When entering the world of barista competition at this point in time, one may assume that this is something that has been going on for many many years, but in reality, the WBC and by extension, the USBC is only just over a decade old within an industry (specialty coffee) that is still in its infancy by comparison to the coffee trade as a whole. Very simply, a lot of things are still being figured out, and that is exactly what has been going on for the last decade – practices have been instituted, tested, and then ratified, dismissed, or augmented to make for the best end product. The USBC is, after all, still a growing organization and must be allowed to try different things and learn what works and what doesn’t. There is a committee of head judges that meet regularly to discuss the very issues that have been brought up in this blog (and many others we haven’t even thought of yet) and assess how and when any needed changes can be implemented. It is also important to keep in mind that the USBC is not purely autonomous – they come under the wider umbrella of the WBC, being the home base, so to speak, of rules and regulations. There is a chain of command and mechanisms have been in place from its inception to give ear to feedback regarding the competition and how the R&Rs are flowing. Just a couple of weeks ago, the latest addendum to the rules were released which addresses some very important issues, refines certain criteria which strengthens the judges, gives more control of the presentation to the barista, and furthers the overall integrity of the competition in keeping with the times and in light of late research. That in itself is a huge confidence booster for the state and direction of the competition.
That being said, I have to look at the whole thing with some new perspective that I feel I am gaining – that there are some realities of being a growing organization that are wrestled with every year by those in charge. Having to use judges from outside one’s own region is one of those realities. If there were enough judges inside each region, it wouldn’t be an issue and that falls squarely on our own shoulders within the coffee folks of the southeast. I know lots of coffee pros that didn’t compete this year and it is up to us to put in the work and make ourselves available to learn how to be judges. What if our region keeps growing along its current curve? That would put over fifty competitors in next year’s SERBC, if that would be allowed! Yikes, man! More judges, please! I know that most of us in coffee around here are small companies just carving out a place for ourselves in our local markets and that it costs us a lot to put aside four days for the competition, but what we can gain from it in relationships, contacts, partnerships and education is invaluable in the long run. If nothing else is taken from my little quest for fire here, hear me when I say that if you participate as a judge next year, you will most definitely not regret it!
I had some specific questions on that phone call and I would like to share the answers with you.
Q: Do head judges taste every drink from every competitor as a common practice in every region?
A: Sometimes, because of specific instructions from the competitor, there is nothing left for the HJ to taste, but as a practice, yes. The HJ tastes all the drinks so that he/she is knowledgeable of each drink and are prepared for the post-presentation calibration. That way, they can compensate for any low or high scores that occur because of drinks of different quality hitting the judges’ table during a given course of drinks.
Q: What about caffeine overload as a factor during judging?
A: Before competition season starts each year, HJs work on raising their caffeine tolerance by increasing their coffee intake if necessary so that when the big days arrive, they can hang in there without the caffeine skewing their assessment of drinks. We recommend all judges to do this in preparation if necessary. (Note – if I judge again, I will most definitely do this) In fact, if a HJ sees that a judge is having trouble with the level of caffeine intake, they will shuffle the schedule to give them a break.
Anecdotal experience: When I was at SERBC, I asked the judge who was on the roster all day how she was doing with the caffeine about halfway through the day. She said that she was actually a little behind what she normally consumes during a day at her shop and was feeling good. That just goes to show that people have different staminas and tolerances and that the HJs keep tabs on this throughout the day.
Q: What is the standard for transparency during the judge certification process?
A: During the certification, the scores of the judges being tested are read aloud and placed in “ranks” of a sort, giving attention to areas that can be worked on for each judge. This is the common practice at certifications, but somehow was accidentally skipped in the SERBC judge certification. These scores are kept by the USBC from year to year to chart the progress of returning judges and find those individuals that would make good head judges in the future.
Q: Why is the regional judge certification only one day long?
A: Realistically, if we required even more time for a regional judge to be away from his or her business, judge participation might be more limited. We have found that those who want to be certified can be in this period of time. The certification for USBC judges is two days long and incredibly intensive. As the competition grows in the regionals, there may be room for expanded judge training in the future, but the logistics of such a thing are yet to be worked out. This is, after all, a volunteer organization at the judge level.
Q: Is it standard to have a single panel of judges with no rotation during a regional finals round?
A: Since it is only six competitors and calibration must be as tight as possible, yes.
Q: How is that panel of judges chosen?
A: The HJs keep a running tally of each judge throughout the competition and how well they fare in the calibrations, keeping in mind their caffeine tolerance and professionalism while judging. The highest “ranking” judges with the most experience are selected and make up the finals panel.
I hope that I have characterized the phone call well and accurately because I found this whole conversation to be enlightening and very encouraging. In my idealist zeal, I tend to dive hard into what I get involved with and start finding the chinks in the armor that if fixed, would make great improvements to the undertaking. In this case, however, the deeper I dug by having conversations with others that have been involved much longer than I, as well as talking openly with some of those in charge, the more I found that almost every point that I brought up had already been improved from what it once was and was still being evaluated for future development. How often is that the case? I, for one, am extremely encouraged about the present and future of the SERBC and can’t wait for next year. Thank you so much for the honest and candid communication I got from the USBC head judge who helped me out with these questions. I hope that more conversations can take place in our corner of the industry and that what is produced from them is more people getting involved and pushing themselves and each other to a higher level of participation.
If I have offended anyone by my public discussion of my search for understanding and perspective in this crazy world of barista competition, I would like to gently suggest possibly putting your own perspective to the test by getting involved with the next coffee learning opportunity that comes up. Say, next year when SERBC starts asking for new judges? I will be the first to admit that you may learn some things you think you already know like I did. May all of our acidity be in our cups and not our hearts. Signing off.
Hunt Slade
Safehouse Coffee & Tea
SERBC Inside Out – perspective from the interior
Subjectivity – what a dirty and unavoidably present word. Synonyms being bias, preference, skew and slant, it becomes clear why judging a panel of competitors of any size is solely dependent on clear and concise criteria. The issue then becomes, how intimately familiar are the competitors with these criteria, and perhaps even more importantly, how intimate are the judges with the processes of recognizing and accurately evaluating these criteria. The answers to these questions are difficult to quantify and exponentially more elusive to qualify without impugning the judges’ and competitors’ professionalism, knowledge, sensitivity of palate and ability to divorce oneself from one’s own preferences. That being said, I have many opinions of this year’s Southeast Regional Barista Competition which is just that: my opinions.
Disclaimer: I believe that the Regional Barista Competition is an invaluable asset to the specialty coffee community at large that provides opportunities to baristas in particular, that otherwise would not be available to them. My opinions will be viewed by some to be inflammatory or simply pedestrian to others, and I make them public at the risk of being ostracized from many coffee people of whom I have the highest regard; however I have not seen these issues discussed openly in the forums I frequent nor even in the very open conversations that happen among the coffee professionals with whom I am familiar. My opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Safehouse Coffee & Tea. Let’s do it.
Last year, I and my guys and girls at Safehouse had the pleasure of observing the WBC in Atlanta and a couple of them were bitten hard by the competition bug. They soon asked me if they could compete in the Southeast Regionals in 2010, and of course, I gave them my full support. As time rolled on towards New Year’s Eve, I saw their presentations take shape and be refined again and again – they poured over the rules and the score sheets for weeks and tweaked their routines accordingly. The time came to buy the hardware for competition, and we were instantly torn when the price tags continued to hit us in the face. Locating a WBC spec Aurelia and Mahlkoenig K-30 to practice on also posed several difficulties. Our coffees selected for the competition were also running increasingly thinner, and the reality began to dawn on us, one at a time: we are not ready enough to compete this year. We had a meeting and agreed to wait until next year and hit it hard for next time.
Still wanting to participate, I applied to be certified as a SERBC judge and started studying the rules and regs as if I were coming up on a semester final exam. I have met a judge or three in the past, and to be frank, two of them did not instill confidence in our regional judge certification protocol. In fact, I observed as one of them crashed and burned in simple drink preparation: espresso – choked 6 shots in a row that had “already been dialed in”, chemex – 9 and 7 minute dwell times, press pot – 6 minute extraction. All of these drinks, by the way, were served right in front of my eyes, and this is a two-time SERBC judge? Needless to say, I had no idea what to expect at the certification workshop.
When I walked into the classroom, everyone was introduced around the room and then the head instructor said,
“Alright, here is a five page test and blank versions of the technical and sensory score sheets. Fill them in. And just so you know, if you score 80% or less, you fail.”
Hell, yeah! Things are looking up and these questions are trixie for real! I was gratified in how seriously the whole process was being taken and had high hopes of gaining a high level of understanding from these instructors in the practicum that afternoon. The test was hard – and I test well. The questions were stated in ways that really forced you to read them carefully. There was a multiple choice section, a true/false section and an essay section, followed by the blank score sheets that had to be filled in. I knew that I missed a couple of things on the score sheets, but felt pretty confident in all of the other areas. As I neared completion of the test, the instructors passed out some new sheets and told us,
“We’re about to bring in three different coffees and you have to score them low, medium or high in the categories of body, acidity and sweetness, and include tasting notes for each.”
Yeah, c’mon!! This is going in a good direction. Directly after the tasting test, we were told,
“The good news is, if you failed the test, you can retake it during lunch, but then you will have to score 90% in order to pass.”
This started to throw up a bit of a red flag, but on the other hand, how many people that fail a test can retake it immediately afterward and score substantially higher and under even higher stress than the first time? So I didn’t really worry about it…until I saw that almost one third of the group of judge hopefuls failed. Uh oh. What now? I know that there are about 35 competitors this year and only 15 judges applying to be certified. Is that enough people to carry the workload with balance?
We broke for lunch and those that failed the test went in another room to retake the test. After lunch, I was surprised to see that everyone reconvened in the classroom to continue with the instruction for the day, which consisted of going over every score sheet with great detail and viewing past examples that applied to each scoring category. Well, I thought, the instructors will probably let them finish the class time before dismissing them so it won’t be weird in front of the rest of us. An assumption, sure, but it made sense at the time. We finished out the class time and were given a break before we started the mock judging exercises.
I was surprised again as everyone reconvened once again and we began what I have come to know as ‘calibration’: the process through which the head judge for a given panel reigns the sensory or tech judges in to scoring within a point of one another. In simple terms, calibration helps the judge panel to get on the same panel in order to avoid outliers that are scoring drastically different from the others. It is a fairly streamlined process that can happen in a few minutes and the specificity of the judging criteria make it pretty easy.
As the day finished out, everyone was present and I assumed that scores would be given back to us at the end of the training. Finally, we were done and broke for dinner which was graciously provided for all of us (as was lunch). Wanting to know where I fell in the field, I caught one of the instructors over to the side and asked when we would get our scores.
“Everyone passed,” I was told and clearly dismissed from any further discussion on the matter. Hold on!! Everything in my head was screaming for me to make a scene of righteous indignation defending the integrity of a system I still don’t fully understand. Fortunately, my hard-nosed ideals that come from years of administration and corporate accountability were shouted down by my better angels of self-preservation and accepting that I am a new participant in this. Yet and still, I ask you this – how is it equitable to publish the sometimes embarrassing scores of competitors but not the scores of the judges going through certification? You may retort, “Well, Hunt, I doubt you would want your scores published if they were less than desirable.” And that, my friend, is where you are wrong. I’m not afraid to take a hit for the team if it makes the industry and the SERBC stronger in return. I entered this whole judge certification fully accepting that I may fail and look bad in front of my peers. No one wants to be caught slipping in front of their peers, but don’t we owe it to the competitors to provide them with a very high caliber of vetted, trained and capable judge? I have to say, the way it was compartmentalized was far less than transparent and cheapened the entire certification process for me to some degree. Was the process difficult and comprehensive within the criteria of the score sheets? For sure! Was it taught by highly experienced instructors? Indeed! Did it ensure the production of a judge with a comprehensive understanding of specialty coffee from seed to cup? Meh. Not really.
My experience at the SERBC event itself ran both hot and cold, having really awesome high points and some incredibly frustrating low points which I cannot get into without slicing into specific people, which I am not willing to do and do not believe to be productive or constructive in any way. Overall, it was a great experience, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of it. I personally believe that there is always room for improvement, but the first step toward improvement is honest and accurate communication. To that end, I have sent a list of questions to the head judges that I worked with at SERBC as well as a copy of this post so that they can know my experience (which we were not debriefed after the event for them to find out about) and so that the USBC can enlighten me on many things that were never addressed during the judge certification process and the SERBC. I do not want to base my opinions on speculation – nor is it my intention to embarrass the USBC or shine anything other than good light on the participants of barista competition.
That being said, I think it is important to bring attention to the nature of the WBC rules and regs, which of course, are used by the USBC and SERBC and that nature is to change and grow with the evolution of best practices. WBC released yesterday, the new changes to the R&Rs. You can see them at http://www.worldbaristachampionship.com/downloads .Which brings me to my conclusion of part one of my SERBC 2010 blog.
After round one scores came out, I spoke with three baristas that I respect very greatly. I go to their shops by choice and am never disappointed by what they give me. They are the Samurai of Atlanta coffee and are admired throughout the region for their skills and consistency. When I spoke to them, they were in tatters and shreds after receiving their scores and one of them almost wept openly. I felt like someone had poked my four year old son in the chest until he cried. I’m here to tell you that at those moments, I wanted to kick some wholesale ass. Now, if you are in coffee retail and want to compete in order to validate yourself as a barista, that is most likely a bad idea. However, I will say this – what the hell does the Italian trifecta of espresso (equally balanced proportions of acidity, sweetness and bitterness as specified in the judging criteria) have to do with what is actually happening in the high end of quality-focused shops in America? The American palate doesn’t like bitterness in the foreground of its coffee and that is reflected in the coffees and preparations that sell well in our shops. My customers demand sweet shots of espresso and whenever we have tried to introduce a traditionally Italian espresso (out of curiosity of what reactions would be, not preference), we have been met with pursed lips at best and outright complaints of bitterness and astringency. Yeah, yeah, I know – much of this is subjective and preference from shop to shop, but trying to make the entire world judge espresso based on an outdated and restrictive flavor profile is counterproductive to the innovation that is required for progress in any industry, and in my opinion, shoehorns coffees that sing with terroir into an archaic and narrow minded box. The new changes to the WBC R&Rs begin to address this (as in allowing the competitor to describe what the crema will be like instead of forcing the old Italian ’standard’) and I applaud the progress. I do believe that the regionals that have already happened this season would have turned out differently had these changes been released before competition season, but logistics must not have allowed this for some reason. Good things are happening in the progress of competition, but many stones are yet unturned.
SERBC Inside Out Part 2 will address many questions yet unanswered regarding competition in the southeast – I just want to give the head judges a few days to respond to the questions posed. Until then ~
Hunt Slade for dirtyCup
S.E.R.B.C.
The South East Regional Barista Competition is this coming weekend here in our very own (well, very close) Atlanta, Georgia. Sure Safehouse Coffee and Tea should be competing and yes, we dabbled in training, made our signature drinks and sought out and found a WBC spec machine to train on. All was going well, but with the enormous growth of Safehouse Coffee and Tea this first quarter competition kept taking a back seat to our wholesale customers. The back seat is exactly where competition needed to be at this time. The decision not to compete was tough for us but we are a company that prides ourselves on our quality and to step on a stage like this one without every single parameter being completely studied and understood is not what our company is all about. I could go and pull some great coffee and make some bang up cappuccinos but, sadly that is not what the competition is all about. My coffee and milk were not the problem. It was studying and adhering to a set of rules that I don’t completely agree with. I am not the kind of person to walk into this competition wanting to buck the system and make coffee my way. I want to play the game with the rules that are in place adhered to. I want to win and the way to do that is study the rule book like an equation and eliminate the variables to get the highest possible score. I truly believe I can win a competition of this caliber but next year.
This year however the dirtyCup crew will be at the competition live blogging, interviewing, heckling, twittering, and rooting for our friends. We hope to get some good footage of our buds on and off the stage and really, we hope to learn what it takes to not just do well at the regional level, but to win and move on. I hate it with everything in me that we won’t be competing this year but I would hate even more to not represent my company, a company that I love more than just about anything else, with what it deserves.
To follow the competition on twitter you can follow me and Hunt. Hopefully we will have time to give you guys a good play by play.
twitter.com/jacoborriv
twitter.com/hslade3
Urban Sprawl
I’m sitting in a shoppe that has been a shoppe for a long time. In a sense, i’m also sitting in a brand new shoppe . The paint is new, and brighter than it used to be. The bar is slower, and the coffee is, in my opinion, the best in the state; but none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. Sure, great coffee is why I am here doing this. Great coffee is why dirtyCup.com exists at all, and it is my passion in this world; but this shoppe, shoved in the middle of a deeply rooted stretch of urban sprawl shouldn’t be successful. Hustle and bustle, haste and dollars are very prohibitive to our level of coffee. It’s hard to make a great cup of coffee for people who don’t care what it tastes like. It is even harder to prepare it well when the customer has somewhere to be, and rinsing a Chemex filter is just making it take longer; keeping them from a meeting. This shoppe shouldn’t work but it is. I am elbow deep in people taking a second, sitting back, and tasting. There is a SBUX right down the road and a Captain D’s across the parking lot. How is this place working? It has a lot to do with great coffee. It has a lot more to do with giant smiles, and a willingness to explain why a coffee costs 3 and half bucks. When I first walked in this store it was a much different place. The coffee was good the atmosphere was there, but those giant smiles dominated the experience. When they made the decision to step up the coffee practices in their store, in my mind they cemented themselves in a position to be successful for a long time, even in the urban sprawl that is so hard to overcome. I’m all about refractometers and scaces. I love roast profiling equipment and expensive grinders, but all that is for naught if your customer is in a hurry. Learning to do both is where coffees next innovation lies; that and not dark roasting coffee. STOP IT NOW! Love you guys, Jacob
Seasonality – what does it mean for our Safehouse customers?
I’ll be honest, our recent decision to take Safehouse’s coffee menu completely seasonal is kicking our collective ass. The logistics of changing from coffee that has been harvested within the last year to buying green coffee that is literally weeks from being on the coffee shrub itself is keeping our hands full. See, we want to ascend to a level of quality that embodies quality at every point. Getting our coffees from a supplier that buys directly from the farm or cooperative that grew it assures us that those families that worked so hard to produce top-tier coffee are being paid a good price for their product (higher than fair-trade). But going seasonal comes with its difficulties for a company our size. For us, it means buying from origins that are in harvest/production at the present time. You wouldn’t want a plum that was picked 12 months or more ago, but that is often what is sold when it comes to coffee. Because of all this, our bean menu will be somewhat smaller than in the past until we get a full handle on seasonality within our own shop and roastery. That means fewer origins for our wholesale customers, but it means an immeasurable elevation in quality. We believe this is worth the work and you will too when you come in and get a cup of truly seasonal, fresh roasted coffee. Right now, Brazils are in season and we have three on the menu: Fazenda Monte Alegre, Fazenda Rodomunho dry-processed, and Daterra Farms Sweet Yellow. We are augmenting the menu with smaller amounts of faster-rotating beans that are within the 10-month standard for seasonality so that we don’t overdose on one origin! Right now, those beans are: Ethiopia Sidamo Haile Selassie and Kenya Kirinyaga Peaberry. We appreciate our customers that put up with us every time we have a paradigm shift and the changes that go with them, and we pay them off with constantly growing access to the quality that is really out there int he coffee world. Come see us and taste the difference.
~ Hunt Slade for Safehouse Coffee & Tea
Tamper Review Re-cap
So the Tamper Review was a resounding success! All of our favorite shoppes were represented and the talent of the South East is really beginning to astound me. The level of coffee being made at our bar was, in my opinion, nearly unmatched in the world. First lets go over the coffees that were available:
Finca Matalapa, Libertad, El Salvador
Finca Alaska, Santa Ana, El Salvador
Los Luchedores, El Salvador
Finca El Carmen, Ahuachapan, El Salvador
Riuki Peaberry, Kiambu, Kenya
Sidakaland, North Province, Sumatra
and that doesn’t even count the two amazing single origin espresso that we had in the hoppers!
The southeast barista community really came out and did some great work Saturday night. We had baristas from all over the Atlanta area make the drive to our town to check out these tampers. The shoppes represented were: Element Coffee, Blackbird Coffee, Octane coffee, Batdorf and Bronson, Cafe 19 and of course Safehouse Coffee and Tea.
Motivated Mice productions also showed us so love by bring what I thought was a submarine but turn out to be a camera that none of us expected them to. It is called a Red camera. This thing is amazing. It has two unbelievable LED lights that could eliminate the darkest corners of a gangsters heart. This is the same camera that “The book of Eli” and “District 9″ were filmed with to let you know that quality of the video and that video will be coming soon as soon as the editing is done. I can’t say thank you enough to the folks at motivated Mice!
David Fountain, our newest barista, also screen printed a bunch of dirtyCup shirts. These aren’t just any shirts however. These shirts were sponsored by Alternative Apparel in Atlanta, all organic cotton and pretty much the single softest T shirt you will ever encounter in your life. Get them while they last!
Also the Coffee we served all night as well as tested the tampers with was a fantastic 100% pup natural yellow bourbon Brazil, Fazenda Monte Alegre sponsored by the good people over at Mercanta coffee. Go Leah!!!!
Last but not least we want to thank our tamper sponsors one more time. You will see more of this in Episode 6 of dirtyCup but these tampers were awesome and all of the sponsor need to be thanked a million times.
Espresso parts
Reg Barber
Gorilla Tampers
J.R. Farino (Espresso Accents)
Espro
The latte art throwdown was a ton of fun also! The competition was soo tight and the new wheel of death designed and fabricated by our own Hunt Slade really made the night interesting. Dan Mueller of Cafe 19 took home our custom made trophy and the money this time against dirtyCup’s Dozier in the final match. It was epic to say the least.
Thanks again to everyone for coming out and I will leave you with some really great shots of the night, some by Red Eye coffees Dut Goodman (formally a Safehouse barista) and other by Party of Seven Photography. Thanks to you guys also!
So the Tamper Review was a resounding success! All of our favorite shoppes were represented and the talent of the South East is really beginning to astound me. The level of coffee being made at our bar was, in my opinion, nearly unmatched in the world. First lets go over the coffees that were available:
Finca Matalapa, Libertad, El Salvador
Finca Alaska, Santa Ana, El Salvador
Los Luchedores, El Salvador
Finca El Carmen, Ahuachapan, El Salvador
Riuki Peaberry, Kiambu, Kenya
Sidakaland, North Province, Sumatra
and that doesn’t even count the two amazing single origin espresso that we had in the hoppers!
The southeast barista community really came out and did some great work Saturday night. We had baristas from all over the Atlanta area make the drive to our town to check out these tampers. The shoppes represented were: Element Coffee, Blackbird Coffee, Octane coffee, Batdorf and Bronson, Cafe 19 and of course Safehouse Coffee and Tea. Motivated Mice productions also showed us so love by bringing what I thought was a submarine but turn out to be a camera that none of us expected them to bring. It is called a Red camera. This thing is amazing. It has two unbelievable LED lights that could eliminate the darkest corners of a gangsters heart. This is the same camera that “The Book of Eli” and “District 9″ were filmed with to let you know that quality of the video and that video will be coming as soon as the editing is done. I can’t say thank you enough to the folks at Motivated Mice!
David Fountain, our newest barista, also screen printed a bunch of dirtyCup shirts. These aren’t just any shirts however. These shirts were sponsored by Alternative Apparel in Atlanta, all organic cotton and pretty much the single softest T shirt you will ever encounter in your life. Get them while they last!
Also the Coffee we served all night as well as tested the tampers with was a fantastic 100% pup natural yellow bourbon Brazil, Fazenda Monte Alegre sponsored by the good people over at Mercanta coffee. Go Leah!!!!
Last but not least we want to thank our tamper sponsors one more time. You will see more of this in Episode 6 of dirtyCup but these tampers were awesome and all of the sponsor need to be thanked a million times.
Espresso parts
Reg Barber
Gorilla Tampers
J.R. Farino (Espresso Accents)
Espro
The latte art throwdown was a ton of fun also! The competition was soo tight and the new wheel of death designed and fabricated by our own Hunt Slade really made the night interesting. Dan Mueller of Cafe 19 took home our custom made trophy and the money this time against dirtyCup’s Dozier in the final match. It was epic to say the least.
Thanks again to everyone for coming out and I will leave you with some really great shots of the night, some by Red Eye coffees Dut Goodman (formally a Safehouse barista) and other by Party of Seven Photography. Thanks to you guys also!
Tamper Review & Throwdown Royale in full swing
Great turn out so far. If you are in metro ATL and like coffee you should be here!
What’s in the Roaster at Safehouse Coffee
Fast and dirty on what’s on the menu at dirtyCup.com’s host, Safehouse Coffee and Tea.
~What We’re Roasting Right Now ~
Email hunt@safehousecoffeeandtea.com for wholesale pricing
Fazenda Monte Alegre, Minas Gerais, Brazil $14 retail
100% Bourbon varietal, pulp natural processed to accentuate the stone fruit and citrus flavors and increase the body. This bean is selected and processed specifically for use as a single origin espresso. Jose Francisco Pereira oversees the farm year-round.
Sustainable farming technology is practiced throughout: erosion control, intercropping, wind-breakers, water management, etc. Coffee milling is eco-friendly: all water on the farm is of drinking quality.
Monte Alegre’s work force has full medical assistance, with resident doctor, nurse and safety engineer. All families living on the farm have electricity, running water, school for young children and free transport for older children to attend school in town. All employees have access to on-farm playgrounds and sports facilities, freedom to unionize and all civil rights enjoyed by urban workers. Personal protection equipment is provided to all labor performing risky tasks.
Monte Alegre Estate pays wages above the regional average. On-the-job training is permanent for workers at all levels. The Estate is a fully sustainable business in all aspects: environmental, social and economic. Sustainability and coffee quality pervade all activities, from farming to trading.
Finca Alaska, Santa Ana, El Salvador $18 retail
100% Bourbon varietal, fully washed process. Ernesto Menendez inherited the farm from his father when he was only a teenager and turned it into a Cup of Excellence competitive farm in just a few seasons. This bean is highly sought after every year and we got the first cases from the very first shipment this year – a coup for a company our size. This year’s crop is Ernesto’s best yet, with a fine acidity, handfuls of tree fruit, silky body and an immeasurable balance to round it all out.
Ernesto is currently replanting cypress trees in some areas of the farm and each year plants new red and orange Bourbon trees on Alaska. These two Bourbon varietals help to produce an extremely fine and distinctive coffee, enhancing the brightness of the acidity and delivering a huge range of flavour and fragrance characteristics.
Alaska’s coffee is harvested with extreme care, under Ernesto’s continual supervision. Only perfectly ripe cherries are used and post-harvest cherry selection is always done at the farm to eliminate any remaining immature bean or dry pods.
Finca Las Nubes, Esquipulas, Guatemala $14 retail
Various 100% Arabica varietals, Strictly Hard Bean, fully washed and sun dried, grown at 1500m. Very bright grape acidity, juicy, creamy body, stone fruit, strong aromatics.
Finca Las Nubes is located high in the mountainous region of Esquipulas. The area is populated with pine and cypress trees and a natural haven for many species of wild birds. The farm is some 236kms from Guatemala City and is owned and run by Don Fabio Solís, his wife, Doña Sonia and their children.
Finca Las Nubes was the winner of the Cup of Excellence competition in 2001 with a huge score of 96 points out of 100 and can rightly claim to have been the finest coffee in all of Guatemala in that year. In all, 256 farms entered this quality discovery competition in 2001, and they have maintained that quality every season since.
Sidikalang Co-op, North Sumatra Province, Sumatra $14 retail
100% Rasuna varietal fully washed, grown at 1200m by a loose cooperative of small farmers in North Sumatra Province. Heavy body, boozy fermentation, strawberry, hoisin sauce, ginger, slightly earthy, a “wild” coffee.
This is a truly singular bean, being as it is a very old strain grown and hand-picked by mountain peasant farmers on plots of 1-2 acres per farmer. It is easily identifiable as an Indonesian coffee by its loamy earthiness, but what is unexpected is its abundant fruitiness and that elusive food-like deliciousness the Japanese call umami.
Finca El Bosque, Esquipulas, Guatemala $14 retail
100% Arabica made up of Bourbon, Caturra, and Pache varietals, fully washed and patio dried. It has a very bright grape acidity, juicy, creamy body, dark stone fruit, cocoa, and strong aromatics.
El Bosque farm is located near the capital Guatemala City on a hillside running parallel and a way off from the main road. It may, in future, be jeopardized by urban development but since we have been working with El Bosque prices, returns for the farm have made it a much more stable situation. The farmers, the Solis Family are very motivated and encouraged by the new world of direct relationship external sales rather than having to rely on the usual suspects: multinational mill buyers.
Finca El Carmen, Ahuachapan, El Salvador, 100% Red Bourbon $14 retail
El Carmen Estate is located in the heart of the primary biological corridor that extends through El Salvador, a part of the Mesoamerican Life Corridor System that stretches from Mexico to Panama. In El Salvador, where more than 80% of its coffee is produced under shade, this eco-system is based mainly in the coffee forest. This region is considered an important sanctuary for many species of fauna, especially for migratory birds that travel between North and South America every year.
El Carmen is located 4,300 feet (1,300m) above sea level on one of the finest Strictly High Grown (SHG) coffee production areas of Central America. It is organized with the classic Estate Farm concept, where great emphasis is given to maintain the identity of each lot, from the time its coffee cherries are harvested until the green beans are ready for export.
With the continued effort of Antonio Alfaro, head of the third generation of this coffee family, El Carmen became a symbol of the village, Ataco, now characterized by the beauty of its ancestral farm, the quality of its coffee, and by the help and support given by the Alfaro family to the village and its people.
El Carmen combines all of the ideal ingredients required to produce a genuine Gourmet Estate Coffee. It is hand-picked at perfect ripeness, free from yellow and unripe beans and de-pulped the same day as harvested, processed separately, and kept unblended from any other bean. It is then naturally fermented at mountain temperatures and then washed with pure spring water, and sun-dried on clay patios. Parchment coffee is stored in wooden silos, left to ‘rest’ for a minimum of 60 days under ideal conditions to reach uniform humidity and color. Finally, the beans are prepared at zero defects, and screened to size, according to clients’ specifications.
It has a medium malic acidity, distinct citrus fruit that intensifies as it cools in the cup, very sweet, highly consistent. Moderate body and long pleasant citrus tang in the aftertaste.
Finca Matalapa, Libertad, El Salvador $18 retail
Finca Matalapa is a classic estate coffee, long before there were mini-mills and micro-lots. It has a complete independent mill to service the farm, from the tree through wet-processing, patio drying, hulling and preparation, to loading the coffee in jute bags and packing the shipping container. The mill is filled with fantastic, classic coffee equipment painted in bold colors. And it’s the passion of the owner, Vickie Ann Dalton de Diaz, and the mechanical love of the archaic mill equipment that keeps the mill running and the coffee tasting so wonderful. Finca Matalapa is in the Libertad area, not far from the capital of San Salvador, on a west-facing slop ranging from 1200 meters up to the ridge top at 1350 meters. It’s a 4th generation coffee estate totaling 120 hectares and was founded in the late 1800’s by Fidelia Lima, great grandmother of the Vickie. She maintains 14 acres of virgin tropical forest and keeps her coffee plants shaded with over forty varieties of larger trees. The cup has the character we long to find in El Salvador Bourbon-type coffees, though because of the strong winds in the area they find the native Salvador Pacas varietal to fare better in this region. Pacas is a natural mutation of the Bourbon varietal.
Fully washed and comprised of Bourbon and Pacas varietals, Matalapa is a versatile coffee that accepts a wide range of roast treatments. It has classic balance and sweet accent notes that can be coaxed into the cup, based on degree of roast. The dry fragrance has sweet nuts in the light roast, almost like praline and some soft floral notes at City+. The cup is very approachable, and you can seek out some sweet, mild citrus in the wet aroma, with syrupy malt sweetness. The cup has a buttery body, laced with slight floral and citrus accents. As it cools the cup becomes more and more bright and dynamic. (Also ideal as part of an espresso blend, an SO espresso, or as French Press type coffee). Layered, folded over itself. Very round in the front with an open/clean and bright finish. Lots of toffee in the maltiness. Opens up with orange blossom notes as cools.
Riuki Peaberry, Kiambu, Kenya , SL-28 varietal $18 retail
Riuki is part of the Nyakiri Coffee Farmers Co-op. Society in Kiambu district of Kenya. This area is old coffee farming land, not far from Nairobi, which is why it is dominated by large coffee estates. Many of the estates here are held by multi-nationals and farm coffee using agribusiness techniques with an eye toward yield. That is why having a cooperative of small-holder farmers in the midst of Kiambu is special, and offers the members some better options than simply selling their coffee cherry to a mill at the day’s going rate.
This lot has a malty sweet scent in the dry fragrance, and the wet aroma has fruit juice notes, a bit of peach and apricot in the light roast. Ruiki Peaberry is certainly a bright coffee, especially in the unfettered lighter roast levels of City to City+. It has a pronounced lemon drop sweetness and citric acidity for days. As it cools, an apricot custard with lemon gelee forms as clear as day.