Persistance Pays

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge and host a pre-auction cupping of El Salvador 2009 Cup of Excellence samples. I was hoping to become part of a buying group for the auction that followed.  The auction came and went, and maddeningly, many of us were not able to pull a group together, despite the relatively low prices for this auction (many lots priced in the $3-$4/lb. range).

Prior to the auction, I had contacted the Colleen Anunu, Director of Coffee at  gimme! coffee, a small artisan roastery serving retail, wholesale, and web customers out of NY state. We discussed possible collaboration on Cup of Excellence buying, and agreed to compare notes on the El Salvador lots.

The auction opened, and, like the Colombia auction, I could not get together a group.   Here’s a quote from one of the many emails I sent after the auction:

There I was cobbling together folks, working on getting importing support, and BAM–auction closed. I should have done what I wanted to do and just bid on a lot and let the chips fall.

Pricing for the lot I most wanted, the #19 Altamira I, ended at $3.10.

Crushed.  It mattered not that I didn’t have the cash on had for the whole lot, or that I’d only bought my first bag of coffee little more than a year ago, or that my entire customer base is a small group of home coffee roaster spread thinly around the country.  Failure does not cup well.

Fortunately, I’ve been cursed blessed with modicum of stubbornness, so I started checking the listings for the winning bidders on each lot. Lot #19 Winning bidder….T.A.N. Coffee!  I had contacted Lay Yong Tan from TAN Coffee back in April, during the Colombia auction.  I got him on the third ring, offered my congratulations on his winning bids (he won the #21 and #25 lots as well), and asked the question du joir:  Would he be willing to sell any of the Altamira?

The answer?

(photo credit: gimme! Coffee)

Nearly five months after the auction, I purchased almost half the lot of Altamira I from TAN Coffee, and immediately sent ten 34.5 kg boxes to gimme! coffee.  Less than a week later, five boxes arrived here at No Quarter Coffee, accompanied by boxes of the #21 El Salvador, La Trinidad,  and the #27 Colombia lot, La Esperanza.  The first glimpse of the coffee housed at the freight terminal brought a smile to my face that remained for days.

Bolivia Cup of Excellence 2009 – Winning Farms

The 2009 Bolivia Cup of Excellence competition completed October 9.  This competition was the next to last on the calendar for this year, with the Brazil competition to complete the season in November.  The international jury, led by Sherri Johns, awarded the Cup of Excellence to thirty lots, including seven lots achieving a CoE Presidential award for scoring higher than 90 points on the final day.  A fine showing for Bolivia, which in the words of a good friend, are “a food group all their own.”

The winning farm listing can also be found on the Cup of Excellence site.

Lot	Farm	Farmer	Score
1	Agrotakesi SA	Mauricio Ramiro Diez de Medina	93.36
2	Café Sima del Jaguar A	Braulio Luque Yana	92.05
3	Café Monterrey	Valentin Choquehuanca Aduviri	91.62
4	Café Jacaranda	Elias Choconapi Chino	91.38
5	Café Alan Coffe	Luis Yujra Arismende	90.90
6	Café Central	Luis Huayhua Chiji	90.71
7	Café Mondono	Carmelo Mamani Titirico	90.17
8	Café Palmeiras 3	Mario Mamani Machaca	89.12
9	Café Origen	Damian Huanca Flores	87.95
10	Café Gelen	Ayda Titirico Hilari	87.52
11	Café COACS Ltda. Aurelio	Eugenia Condori Mamani	86.62
12	Café Kantuta	Rosendo Quispe Tintaya	86.33
13	Café Cooperativa San Ignacio II	Anacleto Uluri Luque	86.26
14	Café Primavera II	Agustina Machaca Quispe	86.12
15	Café Cooperativa San Ignacio V	Juan Coaquira Mamani	85.81
16	Café Wara Wara III	Lucila Isidora Quispe de Quispe	85.60
17	Café Frente a Illimani II	Santusa Lucana de Mamani	85.57
18	Café Flor de Mayo	Pedro Castro Conurana	85.24
19	Café Golondrina	Celso David Mayta Quispe	85.24
20	Café Picaflor	Valentina Flores de M.	85.21
21	Café Alto Asuncion	Eleuteria Villca Salvador	85.17
22	Café Rio Cumbre de la Selva	Gabriel Chura Uluri	85.14
23	Café Primavera	Victor Quispe Mamani	85.00
24	Café Oro	Teodocia Castro Conurana	84.95
25	Café El Sombral	Damian W. Condori Poma	84.81
26	Café Rudi	Franklin Cahuapaza Ticona	84.69
27	Café Flor de Mayo I	Felipe Sacaca Diaz	84.60
28	Café Sofia	Sofia Quisbert Castillo	84.33
29	Café Flor Rosa	Martha Ojeda Mamani	84.33
30	Café Flor de B	Sebastian Olori Huanca	84.21

In the Hand

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. –Epictetus

In the world of home roasting coffee, the slippery slope lurks just down the road.  I write often of falling down the rabbit hole, where each new discovery merely opens the aperture up for that which has not yet been discovered.  The spark of interest is the lighter side of the desire (obsession) with coffee.  It’s the wonder of the child, looking at the world with fresh and curious eyes.

There’s a darker side–a shadow–of the wide-eyed child, looking to learn more.  There’s the desire for more, the envy of that which we do not have.  Whether it is a particularly exceptional lot of coffee, or a new roaster, a new grinder, a new espresso machine, this endless desire for that which we do not have can blind us to the joy sitting in our roaster right now.  The experience in the cup we have just made.

It’s impossible to not admire the next best thing–a new toy, the shiny new roaster, the skills to coax the perfect combination of flavors out of the bean.  But that admiration must be tempered. Tempered with the gratitude for what we do have, the appreciation for what we have.  A good friend of mine used to ask me this question frequently:

“Where are your hands?”

A simple concept to keep us in the now–a reminder that life happens right here, right now, right in our hands. So, Where are your hands?

Back to Writing

Ugh, been away from the blog for far too long.  To many stories to tell at once, so I’ll summarize.

Cupping, meeting, buying, roasting, enjoying.   Repeat ad nauseum.

I have met too many people to mention (immediately) over the past four months, and have learned more than I thought possible (including the continuing realization of how much more I have to learn).  Here’s to more regular updates and insights as I continue to learn more about the bean and the people around it.

Now, I’m off to roast some more samples from one of my favorite suppliers, Royal Coffee NY.  Be sure to check them out on Twitter @RoyalCoffeeNY.

Guatemala Cup of Excellence 2009 – Winning Farms

The five week marathon of Central American coffee competitions came to a close this week with the finish of the 2009 Guatemala Cup of Excellence competition.   The jury awarded the Cup of Excellence to twenty-three lots, including a repeat #1 winner (El Injerto), and two lots achieving a CoE Presidential award for scoring higher than 90 points on the final day.

I’ve listed the winning lots below; the detailed listing should be available on the CoE site shortly.  Many thanks to Alistair Durie from Elysian Coffee in Vancouver for the regular blog updates and pictures from the event.  Thank you for taking the time to keep us onlookers informed.

Lot	Farm		Score
1	El Injerto I		91.98
2	Monte Cristo		90.58
3	Las Macadamias		89.33
4	Alotepeque (1964)		89.25
5	La Esperanza (1963)		89.25
6	Asuvim		89.05
7	Puerta Verde		88.40
8	La Providencia II		88.35
9	Carmona		88.28
10	El Socorro y Annexos		88.08
11	San Antonio de Esquipulas y Anexos		86.58
12	El Libano		85.83
13	Isnul		85.43
14	El Mirador		85.38
15	Santa Ana		85.25
16	Granja El Tempisque		85.18
17	Claima		85.15
18	El Volcan Raspado		85.10
19	San Julian		85.08
20	La Soledad y Anexos (1869)		84.95
21	Santa Clara y Anexos (1867)		84.95
22	Santa Delfina y Anexos		84.90
23	Florencia y Anexos		84.43

Road Trip – Rojo’s Roastery

Last week I ventured to New York to participate in Royal Coffee NY’s cupping of the top twenty Costa Rica Cup of Excellence coffees.  The afternoon drive offered the opportunity for one coffee-related detour, so I chose to stop by David Waldman’s Rojo’s Roastery in Lambertville, NJ.

The first benefit of the detour was the avoidance of the New Jersey turnpike.  Sure, I had to venture near Philadelphia, but the scenery on that leg easily surpassed that of the turnpike (at least if you could get past the endless billboards advertising the Ford Focus hybid–I counted at least fifteen in and around Philly).  As I crossed the Deleware into New Jersey, not far from Washington’s crossing, I was treated to a scenic journey down River Road into Lambertville. I hadn’t expected to be reminded of my Pennsylvania rural upbringing on this trip, but the twenty mile drive along the river was an unexpected joy.  Put me right in the mood for visiting a small-town, artisan roastery.

When I arrived in the Roastery–my eyes were immediately drawn to this red beauty in the corner.

David was positioned a little off to the right, testing out a shot pulled from an Quickmill Andreja Premium espresso machine he was working over.  After he finished pulling and tasting the shot, we sat down to chat.  David has an extensive coffee history, though he started off as a home roaster.  We talked about his pride and joy, the 1956 fully rebuilt Probat UG15  roaster.  He described the work he and Marty Curtis did to disassemble, refurbish, and reassmble the roaster.  David picked up the roaster from the original owner, and obtained all of the original sales documentation from Probat.  The full pictorial history of the refurbishment can be found here. 

We talked green coffee, including David describing his early involvement with Abdella Bagersh’s Idido Misty Valley coffee, and his friendships with some of the bigger East Coast coffee names–George Howell, Peter Guilano, Marty Curtis, and others.    We shared stories about many of the last year’s lots of coffee that we both enjoyed, lamented that much of the best coffee ends up on the West Coast, and bounced green bean storage ideas off each other.  David brewed a Yemen Hufashi on the Clover–he talked about his disappointment with the bean, but then he was comparing it to last spring’s Sana’ani lot from Royal NY (one of the best Yemeni coffees in recent memory).  I also sampled the house Fetco brew of Timor FTO Maubesse, and his head barista pulled a double shot of their espresso blend.  They just finished installed a new three-group Synesso, and she thought the shots were pulling too acidic–all high-end flavors with no bass note.  I didn’t think them too sour, but agreed with her assessment.  David had to cut short our time (I think we could have talked all evening) to make some deliveries.  He runs the roastery as a one-man band–roaster, bagger, buyer, cupper, deliverer, forklift driver–you name it.

Huge thanks to David and his staff for the coffee and mostly the time taken out of a busy schedule to sit back and talk.   Call this a regular stop everytime I head to The Big Apple.

Rojo’s Roastery
243 North Union Street
Suite 150
Lambertville, NJ 08530
(609) 397-0040

Google map & directions

Kick It Up for Coffee Kids – Final Week Results

The month-long Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org just completed this evening.

Throughout the month of May 2009, Homeroasters.org conducted
auctions on a wide variety of items, many of which the specialty
coffee industry donated with jubilation. Items up for bid ranged from
assortments of top-quality green coffee, to magazine subscriptions,
grinders, brewers, roasters and much, much more; all proceeds are going
directly to Coffee Kids.

Here is the final tally for the auction:

Week 1 Subtotal $890.00
Week 2 Subtotal $775.00
Week 3 Subtotal $587.00
Week 4 Subtotal $1,026.00
Stone Soup items Subtotal $610.00
Month-long items Subtotal $1,720.00

Total Auction $5,608.00

The top lot was a Behmor 1600 home coffee roaster, donated by Joe Behm, combined with 15 pounds of Colombian Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon donated by Royal Coffee NY, which fetched $600.  Close second was the refurbished Zassenhaus hand grinder donated by Orphan Espresso, which fetched a last minute, over-the-top bid of $547.  Additionally, Joe Behm donated a second roaster as a surprise last-minute lot for the second place bidder.

Thank you to all who participated as bidders, donors, well-wishers, public advocates via blog or Twitter, and organizers.  As one of the organizing team, all of you made our work possible, and made for a month and a result well beyond any of our expectations.  Thank you all for allowing us to funnel your incredible generousity to the kids!

El Salvador 2009 Cup of Excellence Washington DC Cupping – Initial Thoughts

Yesterday I held my fist Cup of Excellence official group cupping at the Counter Culture Coffee Washington DC training center.  We had six people cupping these excellent coffees.  First, I have to extend a huge thank you to Alex Brown, who runs the training center for all his hard work helping me host this event.  I could not have done this without you carrying so much of the load.  Thanks also to Counter Culture Coffee for setting up the training center as a place where all in the local specialty coffee scene can collect and do wonderful things.

Besides me, our small crowd included Samuel Demisse from Keffa Coffee, the aforementioned Alex Brown, Joel Finkelstein from Qualia Coffeehouse, David Fritzler from Tryst Coffeehouse, and our surprise star-cupper, Peter Lynagh (formerly of CoE Founder George Howell’s Terroir Coffee).  Here he is in action back in the Terroir days.

When I invited Peter, the name rang a bell–and I knew he had some experience, but I had not yet connected the dots–turns out I brought in ringer.  While he looks young, he’s been on two CoE juries (I believe he was the youngest jury member ever in the CoE) and learned and worked for over five years alongside George Howell and his staff at Terroir.  Peter was a great addition to our event, and had excellent insight into the beans–as did all of our cuppers.

We managed to stay mostly on schedule, and reached some consensus on lot preferences.  Overall, there were some outstanding lots on the table–most of agreed that the #1 lot stood out in the top five.  From my own view, the effort to arrange for a group cupping was infinitely more satisfying than cupping the lots solo.  I learned so much more from having all of us compare notes after each flight, and it was more satisfying to roast and prepare samples for more than just me.  Everyone enjoyed themselves and we drove off into thoughts of future plans for local events and cuppings.  Stay tuned for more events.

When I first hatched the idea of hosting a CoE cupping, I had little idea what I had signed up to do.  Roasting and cupping the Colombia samples gave me a view into the roasting effort and the concentration needed to cup several flights of similar origins, but I had yet to learn all the work needed to pull together the event for more people.   I had little idea of the interest or potential turnout, especially for an unknown and a homeroaster.  As it turned out, we had a good mix of people, and a small enough group that the logistics did not overwhelm me on the first attempt–another good learning experience.

One thought has stuck with me as I prepared and participated in the event.  As I try to break further into the industry, with coffee as an avocation vice vocation, it’s easy to see where I am at a great disadvantage in one area.  You see, in one particular way there is a huge difference between the home-(roaster, cupper, barista) and the professional roaster/barista/cupper that is comitted to their craft.  What the “home-” version lacks are the hours, the daily sessions, in many cases the tools, and, most importantly I think, the mentoring that many folks get from the master roasters and cuppers that have been refining their craft for decades.  If I look at what Peter brought to the table, it was easy to see the years of mentoring that George Howell and his staff gave him.  I see some of the same things as I interact more with the pros–I just do not have the hours available to practice my craft like they do.  It’s not insurmoutable, but it is an important lesson to remember.  I will not go as far to say that the home-roaster or home-barista does not have useful insights to provide to the discussion.  What I and we must remember is to engage the community with the humitily that all of us have far more to learn than we have learned.  That said, what I do think the home- community can bring to the table is an ability to collect, communicate, and innovate at a pace which the individual professional cannot hope to achieve. The sheer numbers, if networked well, can provide for a pace that could be blistering.  Think of an analogy of the current version of massively parallel computers, which consist of thousands of small, relatively cheap individual processors linked together and quickly took over the supercomputer market vs. the large, expensive processors like the old Cray computers.  That’s the potential of what a well-connected home- or prosumer community could bring to specialty coffee.

An event like this is humbling, and a good reminder of what more I have to learn.  That is not disheartening in the least–in fact, the view ahead looks better every day.

I’ll post some more thoughts after another round of CoE cupping tomorrow, along with some photos of this event that I managed to grab in between slurps.

Nicaragua Cup of Excellence 2009 – Winning Farms

The 2009 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence competition completed May 22.  This competition also heralded two major milestones–the 50th Cup of Excellence competition, and the 10th anniversary of the Cup of Excellence.  The stars came out for the international jury, including one of the CoE founders George Howell and Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia, and others whose combined total of CoE juries ranged close to two hundred.  The jury awarded the Cup of Excellence to twenty-six lots, including five lots achieving a CoE Presidential award for scoring higher than 90 points on the final day.  A fine showing for this special event.

Full listing of the winning lots can be found here (in Spanish); I’ve also reproduced them below.  Many thanks to Sarah Allen of Barista Magazine (also a Kick It Up for Coffee Kids contributor) for the regular blog updates and pictures from the event.  Geoff Watts and George Howell also contributed mid-week updates–thank you for taking time out to keep us onlookers informed.

UPDATE:  Cup of Excellence site now has the winning farms posted.

Lot	Farm	Farmer	Score
1	La Esperanza	Maria Amparo Castellano Paguaga	92.75
2	El Recuerdo	Jose Efrain Espinales Bautista	91.83
3	Cima del Cielo	Francisco Noel Zeledon Centeno	90.75
4	La Picona	Olga Marina Gonzalez Cuadra	90.43
5	San Jose	Ruperto Alidio Cornejo Salgado	90.30
6	Santa Maria de Lourdes	Octavio Jose Peralta Paguaga	88.43
7	La Minita	Inversiones Mierisch	88.08
8	La Carolina	Andres Figueroa Lopez	87.68
9	San Antonio	Bernardino Fortin Altamirano	87.38
10	Santa Gema	Mario Jose Vilchez Urbina	86.53
11	Las Limas	Donald Ramon Roque Blandino	86.47
12	Himalaya	Mauricio Arturo Ortez Beltran	86.28
13	Las Colinas	Eugenio de los Angeles Zeledon Vilchez	86.25
14	Buenos Aires	Luis Emilio Valladarez	85.28
15	La Leona	Luis Beltran Cornejo Barreda	85.22
16	Los Planes del Aguila	Bayardo Jose Diaz Garmendia	85.19
17	La Guadalupana	Napoleon Tercero Gomez	84.97
18	Coop. 15 de Septiembre	Aristidez Miranda Blandon	84.86
19	Los Achiote	Estela Marina Mendoza Sanders	84.69
20	Monte Cristo	Jaime Jose Molina Fiallos	84.47
21	El Naranjo Dipilto	Luis Emilio Valladarez	84.44
22	Los Cipreses	Domingo de Jesus Herrera Ruiz	84.25
23	Las Nubes	Noel Antonio Ruiz Ramos	84.19
24	Santa Fatima	Jose Efrain Guillen Portillo	84.19
25	Cofradia	Fabricio de Jesus Zeledon Lopez	84.17
26	Oro Verde	Bismark Pastrana Perez	84.00

El Salvador 2009 Cup of Excellence – Washington DC Cupping Event

Thanks to the generosity of Alex Brown and the folks at Counter Culture Coffee, I will be hosting a cupping event for the top twenty lots from the El Salvador 2009 Cup of Excellence.  The event will occur at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday May 27, 2009 at the Counter Culture Washington DC training center.  Please contact me (chad at noquartercoffee dot com) if you are interested in attending.  The space is limited, but we’re not out of room just yet.  Map information is below.

I’m roasting up samples right now–these are some beautiful coffees, and the roasting fragrances fill the air with the anticipation of excellent cups.