Archive for August, 2010

Cup Tasting Championships are exciting competitions. Four participants at a time taste coffees arranged in eight triangles (groups of three). In each triangle, two cups are identical, one is different. Using skills of smell, taste, memory and concentration, the competitor will try to identify the odd cup out in the triangles, in the shortest time possible. After eight minutes, the round stops and the competitor discovers how many correct done by lifting their selections to reveal whether or not it has the tale-tale dot on the bottom of the cup.

On day one, 12 participants compete in three heats (four participants per heat). After all three heats, the top four scorers (those that have identified the most correct coffees in the shortest amount of time) advance to the final round to be held on day two.

In the final round, all four finalists compete together and the competitor that makes the highest number of correct selections in the least amount of time wins and is named Canadian Cup Taster Champion.

The Canadian Cup Tasters Championship will take place on the demo stage at the Canadian Coffee & Tea show in Toronto. Round one happens at 3:00 – 4:30 pm on Sunday, September 26, 2010. The finals round will be held from 3:00 to 4:00 pm Monday September 27, 2010.

Lisa Rotenberg of Rocketfuelcoffee.com will be one of the twelve competitors in this distinguished list of tasters:

Amber Fox – Ecco Caffe

Andrea Piccolo – Swiss Water Decaf

Barrett Jones – 49th Parallel and USA Champion

Ben Cram – Fernwood Coffee Company

Geoff Polci – Crema Coffee Co.

Jean-François Leduc – Saint-Henri micro-roaster

Joaquin Quian – Fratello Coffee

Laura Perry – Bridgehead Coffee

Lisa Rotenberg – rocketfuelcoffee.com

Mark Prince – CoffeeGeek.com

Matthew Lee – Manic Coffee

Pat Russell – Second Cup

Peter Burbridge – Java Blend Coffee Roasters

Sammy Piccolo – sammypiccolo.com

Steve Souphanthong – Social Coffee & Tea Company

Thiago Trovo – Te Aro Roasted

So raise your coffee cup and give it a whiff, a slurp and a thorough taste in honor of us! Let the competition begin and best of luck to all! Cheers!

The coffee is black, the cigars may be strong and you can drink with the big boys, but how do you react if someone comments on your personal habits? Do you a) laugh it off; b) counter with an insult; c) run to the bathroom in tears; c) look at the offending body part and shrug or d) punch the critic in the face and wipe the blood on his/her shirt because that will teach them a lesson.

My observation at the cigar patio where I hang out, where females are in the minority (there are two), is that human behavior is more fascinating when the discussion is based on topics where the expertise and passions are heightened. Fortunately for us, the topics are usually cigars, religion, wine, coffee or old jokes. Imagine what must go on at the Pentagon or Captial Hill in Ottawa where testosterone is off the charts! Once in a while however, one of us slips in a  gesture of generosity to the other, meant to improve their experience, or perhaps the group as a whole.

“May I make a suggestion, Lisa, ” Marty, the patio owner shares with me. A fine cigar is not a cigarette. “You do not need to butt it out (and he makes a grinding motion with his hand). It will go out by itself if it you just leave it on the ashtray. It only has a leaf wrapper, not a paper one.” I am mortified but realize he is doing me two favors here. One he has taught me a great lesson and he has waited until the others have left.Others are not so kind. The higher the testosterone, the louder and more aggressive the lesson. And no e-mails please but Europeans, Israelis – the observation of a faux pas can come with a quick correction. “WTF ARE YOU DOING????”, then the look of doom. The point is, in pods of specialized activities, passions run high and the rituals that go with them have very high expectations.

The Specialty Coffee business is no stranger to this activity. The higher up the beanstalk you go, the specific standards become more scientific, sometimes to the degree temperature and hour of day. A lightweight in the coffee business should expect to get roasted about the way their coffee beans are sourced, packaged, brewed and even tasted. To be dismissed by this crowd in round one means you are just having coffee and talking about the weather or movies. They will not waste their time on you. And if you ask about a detail trying to gain entry, get ready to be straightened out and then shut down. This knowledge took months or years to possess, and the explanation would be too long to explain over one coffee.

The best thing about cracking a circle of experts in any discipline is the pain is so worth it. The secret is, (move in close so I can whisper in your ear), to deal in a subject that is so wonderful that the fruit of your labor makes the expert want to hang out with you. In my case, I have rare coffee. I trade fresh, expensive beans and a bit of ego boost for information. “Thanks for that, I never knew that, you are brilliant sir, here’s a bag of Kona.” Somehow I do not think this would work if I was in the plastic cutlery business. Oh and the occasional abusive slur about your greenhorn technique? Goes with the territory. Grin and bear it.

3 Times the Price of you-know-what-bucks ++

A favorite discussion forum of mine, www.coffeeforums.com, where professionals and consumers discuss coffee issues, recently touched on the debate whether rare coffees, specifically Hawaiian Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain were “worth it”. The reason I love this forum is that the moderators and some members are so knowledgeable and have years of experience beyond mine. They actively participate in the threads and bluntly say what is on their minds. More than once they have chewed out a blockhead or two, and added insight on a topic that has taught me so much.

In this case, the member I was speaking with was very knowledgeable and only previously on another post taught me a thing or two about the various ratios of arabica espresso beans, by percentage. He then added, “Those coffees are more hype than anything and are really sought after because of supply/demand, not just because of the taste”.

Well I can tell you my heart and brain lit up like a Christmas tree and off to WordPress I ran. My first reaction was I deal in the 100% pure Kona and JBM beans and I can tell you they are really special tasting, especially when brewed fresh. True they cost significantly more than others, but once in a while, like a good steak, a fine wine, a good Cuban cigar, a good single malt, they are all worth it. My second was, are they genuine, are they old and stale and is the coffee made right? If not, you may as well be drinking Sanka. This applies to any bean and in the coffee business, we of all people would understand.

Then it hit me. I was talking like a rare coffee retailer, as usual, not a coffee lover. With the thousands of coffees cupped everyday at various resources, we certainly do not have to pay these premiums for a pound of wondrous coffee. Companies sell great coffee, review and brag about quality beans at $13/12 oz. Juan Valdez did not ride his mule for 100 years for nothing. If you love your coffee, so be it. If your honeymoon was in Jamaica and when you came home all you want is to relive your wedding night, then only specific coffees will do the trick.

Like connoisseurs of brandy or wine, the truly knowledgeable about coffee is a small number. Sharing this information is a wonderful thing. In the age of internet search by key words, Jamaican Blue Mountain will beat out Acatenenango or even Yirgacheffe every time.  Aspiring to taste rare coffees, like caviar, oysters or fois gras is a real treat – as long as the coffee is the real thing, from a company who sells it fresh and respects the customer who pays the premium price for it. Perhaps the coffee market has not come up the level of service for this yet? Perhaps the market for this is so small, the majority just does not understand? In the coming years, if the public is to know that rare coffee is indeed “worth it”, this will be the challenge.

What the heck is she talking about now?

A couple of days ago I read a poll on Facebook by one of my distinguished colleagues in the coffee biz, asking the population if they prefer Fair Trade Coffee. Now I voted on the ground floor at 2 votes in but I could tell where this was heading. Of course coffee drinkers prefer Fair Trade coffee but do they really understand what that term means? Same goes for Organic, Bird Friendly, Rainforest and the new term from Intelligensia Coffee Company, Direct Trade?

Without entering into a glossary issue (look them up if you want), my point is, folks ask these questions about their coffee but then use other products in their home that basically commit mass murder or slavery. My recent obsession with grass-fed delicious steak led me to an article by accident about the kosher slaughter of cows. Let me tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein should pray their son Herschel should grow up to be a doctor not a “Shoychet” (a butcher who kills animals in a kosher slaughterhouse). Yechh. And what of the child or labor who makes your clothes? Enough talk about that. Time for cheerier talk!

When you enjoy a rare coffee from a specific place such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, Komodo Blue Dragon, the Fair Trade issue is off the table. There is not enough of the stuff to require price fixing or unions to harvest it. Usually a small group of growers, perhaps a co-op, sometimes families, grow it and that is it. It may be only available once a year. We may be lucky enough to get it at all. That is what makes it special. The care to harvest it and ship it is at the level of fine wines and cigars, and that is why the price is at a premium. Oh, but the taste is so worth it!

Now many of these wonderful coffees, like Panama Carmen Estate, also bear the mark of Rainforest Certified. This coffee is so wonderful if it had a symbol that said it was from the moon it would just be a bonus. We should drink a coffee because we love it. After all, it may the start of our day, right?

When strolling the aisles of a grocery store, shopping for coffee, sometimes it can be hard to know what you are actually buying.  Big companies like throw around coffee buzz words in order to ensnare the uneducated customer.  It’s hard enough to catch the difference between a “Kona Coffee” and a “Kona Style Coffee”, but discerning between roasts is worse.  What the heck do the terms like “French Roast” or “Italian Roast” mean?  Even if you are able to figure out that a french roast is relatively dark, where does that fall on the Light –> Medium –> Dark scale?  Or how about the City –> Full City –> Full City+ scale?

Unfortunately there is no easy way to explain this.  When coffee went from being a regional ceremonial drink in Ethiopia to an everyday wake-me-up addiction in the West much became muddled.  To make matters worse, companies like Starbucks refrained from using any of these confusing terms and created their own scale which tries to describe each coffee’s level of “boldness”.  This has now multiplied the number of terms to recognize and understand.

In order to understand what’s really going on here, let’s start with two practical examples.  Look at this close-up shot of Rocketfuel Konakaze Blend:

Rocketfuel Konakaze Blend Close-Up. See the oils?

Take a close look.  See how the beans are shiny?  Those are the precious oils from the coffee bean.  The oils are what provide the coffee flavor itself.  The darker a coffee is roasted, the more the oils begin to leave the bean and appear on the outside.  Fundamentally, any coffee with a lot of oil showing on the beans can be considered a darker roast.  Next, take a look at a close-up of Rocketfuel 100% Hawaiian Kona:

Rocketfuel 100% Hawaiian Kona Close-Up. Where are the oils?

In this shot the amount of oil we see is basically zero.  The beans have an almost pastel look to them.  Most would classify the color as medium brown.  This is traditionally referred to as a medium roast (although this particular case in on the lighter side of a medium roast).

These two examples provide a very good frame of reference for most coffees you will run into.  When thinking about roasting this way, what becomes apparent is that the only universal truth in coffee roasting is the look of the bean; it doesn’t lie no matter what label is applied to it.

Taking this concept a bit further, we can learn to apply commonly used terms to a specific shade of brown.  This way when we see a term like “Viennese” or “Full City” we can have an estimate of how dark the beans are roasted.  See the table below:

Chart based on information from Ken David's book, "Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying".

While learning these terms are important for a coffee lover to understand, even more important is to purchase coffee from a roaster that provides clear and consistent information about their product.  So, next time a lot of coffee roast terms are thrown at you, be on your guard.  Watch out for non-specific terms and you’ll be that much closer to the perfect cup!

Hosting a coffee tasting in your own home.

One of the most wonderful, interesting and glamorous things about the rare coffee business is the variety of coffee beans that we find from around the globe. It is also the most expensive and with incredible risk, since these are sold in minimum pounds and not samples, and green (unroasted). Our roaster, George, will only roast a minimum of twenty pounds so a new coffee is a commitment in capital, time and labeling. Research and reviews from others, faith and vision goes into every bean.

The green beans arrive and they must be roasted by someone who knows exactly what they are doing. George is my man and he tells me whether I have made a mistake or not. We have and we have also done beautifully. I am not Juan Valdez. I must rely on my partners to make sure I am doing things right. HOWEVER. Like my customers, when it comes right down to it, nothing will make or break the bean like what comes out of the cup.

Here is where the most entertaining and fun part of the coffee business comes in and the hard work pays off. You can enjoy this too. Go to www.rocketfuelcoffee.com, and hey, also include some of your other favorites if you must. Invite some friends over for dinner or dessert. Ask one or two of them to bring their coffee makers. If they have different kinds of coffee makers, such as a French Press, even better.

Have lots of cups. No big deal if it is a bag of styrofoam ones. The point is variety, not fine china. Have some milk and sugar if your guests want it. We are not snobs either. If that is how they like it, fine. But maybe they will get to take a swig black to compare? Have some paper and some pencils if they want to make notes. Cookies are good. Always good. And water to cleanse between varieties.

Bring out two coffees at a time and compare the two with half cup tastes, with a huge loud SLLLLUUUUUURRRRRP at the beginning of each. This is how the pros do it (And Jason Coffee is a grand slurper)!

Note that coffee tastes different from the slurp, to the tongue, to the throat to the aftertaste. Sound familiar? Yes! This is just like a wine tasting. And coffee tasters give their coffees a score just like wine too. So why not give your coffees a score out of 95 and pick your evening winner!

Note that not once did I mention price, variety, geography or bean. This is specifically based on your taste, your idea of flavor and delicious. That is why a coffee tasting evening is so much fun.

Enjoy and please let us at www.rocketfuelcoffee.com know how it went!