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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

The 2009 Honduras Cup of Excellence competition completed May 15th.  The international jury awarded the Cup of Excellence to thirty-nine lots.  Samples should be shipping to prospective buyers in the next few weeks.

Full listing of the winning lots can be found here (link is in Spanish); I’ve also reproduced them below. Thanks to the blog updates from Jon Ferguson of Cultiva Coffee Roasting Co. and Mary Tellie of Electric City Roasting Co. Those of us following the action from afar greatly appreciate your efforts to provide regular updates, Jon and Mary.

The Fable of the Stone Soup is a Grimm Brothers tale about cooperation amid scarcity. Paraphrased from the Wikipedia Entry:

A few travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the poor villagers are unwilling to share any of their meager food stores with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making “stone soup”, which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn’t mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn’t reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all–the first square meal they’ve had in ages.

Over the last few weeks, our villagers in the coffee world have heard the tale of the Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org.  As many of them have passed our pot, they’ve generously added their items to our “soup”.  The following items are the Stone Soup Collection of the auction:

1) Coffee Storage Bags donated by member Ed Bourgeois, including 25 one-pound tin tie Natural kraft (lined), 25 one-pound Black tin tie (lined), 25 half-pound Green w/gold tin tie (lined), 25 half-pound clear/gold zipper/valve standup, and 25 half-pound clear/gold zipper/valve light duty

2) Twenty-five coffee clean-up towels (terrycloth, about 6″x11″) donated by member Ira

3) Custom fitted rotisserie one-pound roasting drum for a barbeque grill donated by member Len

4) Wolf Print from original Painting by Carole A. Thompson donated by member Audra Hayes, who has a Wolf Sanctuary in Northeastern Arizona

5) 15 Pounds Colombia Tolima Planadas, Roaster’s Guild 2008 Coffee of the Year, donated by Atlas Coffee

6) 15 Pounds Colombia Tolima Planadas, Roaster’s Guild 2008 Coffee of the Year, donated by Atlas Coffee

7) 15 Pounds Colombia Tolima Planadas, Roaster’s Guild 2008 Coffee of the Year, donated by Atlas Coffee

8 ) Twenty-five coffee clean-up towels (terrycloth, about 6″x11″) donated by member Ira

Come on out for these items, our Final Week items, and our Month-Long Showcase items.  One week to go, let’s see if we can double the t0-date contributions to Coffee Kids by getting to $4500!  Bid early, bid often!

Last week for the month-long Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org.

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

Here are the lots that opened up this evening for the final week of the auction:

1)  Bunn-o-matic Home Brewer, GRXW Model (White), Donated by Bunn-O-Matic Corporation

2) Perhaps the most prized item of the auction, a refurbished vintage Zassenhaus hand grinder donated by Orphan Espresso

3) Five-Cup (22 oz) Yama stovetop siphon pot, new, in the box, with a Cory Rod filter donated by HRO Member Dave Borton

4) 1 year subscription to Roast Magazine and 15 pounds Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon donated by Royal Coffee New York

5) Assorted greens – 16 pound sampler, 3-Continents Delight: 2 pounds from 8 origins selected and donated by Lost Dutchman Coffee Co.

6) Posh & Odd Greens Collection donated by The Coffee Project, including: 1 lb. Cap’n Cook Kona, 3 oz. Kopi Luwak, 1 lb 2008 Colombia CoE #17 Buena Vista, 1 lb. Costa Rica La Minita Tarrazu, 1 lb. Flores Organic Bajawa, and 1 lb. Balinese Blue Krishna

7) 15 pounds of green Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gr. 1 Koke, donated by Samuel Demisse of Keffa Coffee in Baltimore MD

The first week’s lots raised $890 for the kids.  The second week’s lots raised $775 for the kids.  The third week’s lots raised $587 for the kids, for a three-week total of $2252.  Thanks to all who bid.  Don’t forget the month-long items, which I listed here.

Good luck to all in the next week’s bids.  Come on by, bid early, bid often.

To doubt one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.  –H. G. Rickover

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. –Epictetus

Please visit and read this post from James Hoffman,  World Barista Champion 2007.   Best post of this month, if not all year.

As a neophyte to home roasting, cupping, and green coffee buying, and the specialty coffee community, I am heartened to read his words.  Underneath the general warmth and openness of the community, there is at times an appearance of an insiders’ game–one laced with longstanding relationships, inside jokes, old grudges, and “we’ve already learned that” attitudes than can be off-putting to newcomers.

What we all must remember is that an inwardly focused, insular community cannot grow, innovate, or overcome the natural incompleteness, indeterminacy, and entropy growth of any closed system.  New perspective and growth of knowledge can only be added from an outside the current system–whether that’s from introduction  of new people, or from an old hand’s willingness to shatter the status quo and re-forge a new system.  I think Boyd’s premise of Destruction and Creation applies here.  To quote:

“Taken together, these…notions [incompleteness, indeterminacy, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics] support the idea that any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with observed reality will only increase the degree of mismatch. Naturally, in this environment, uncertainty and disorder will increase….  Put another way, we can expect unexplained and disturbing ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies to emerge more and more often. Furthermore, unless some kind of relief is available, we can expect confusion to increase until disorder approaches chaos…”

Boyd hypothesized that the solution to this cycle of disorder and confusion was to apply a continuing process of destructive deduction (analysis) and creative induction (synthesis) to create new paradigms or mental models.  The destruction flows from the shattering of rigid conceptual patterns and deductive analysis into individual elements; the creation results from the inductive synthesis of “finding common qualities, attributes, or operations to link isolated facts, perceptions, ideas, impressions, interactions, observations, etc. together as possible concepts.”

Our ability to start the dialectic cycle of destruction and creation necessary to expand the knowledge and concepts used to describe our expanding world of observed reality flows directly from the ability to shatter rigid conceptual patterns.  In other words, the ability to accept the possibility of being wrong–to throw out a new idea, to listen to a newcomer’s perspective–is the cornerstone to our community’s ability to expand our understanding of coffee, of our business, of our world.

James has touched eloquently on THE essence of how we can grow and thrive.  All of what we can do for ourselves, our community, our environment starts with our ability to humbly open ourselves to new ideas, new thoughts, new people.  To quote a home roaster turned professional roaster and cafe owner Mike McGinnis–

“Ultimately the quest for Koffee Nirvana is a solitary path.  To know I must first not know. And in knowing know I know not.  Each Personal enlightenment found exploring the many divergent foot steps of Those who have gone before.”

I put forth that our knowledge and growth hinges on our ability to collect and share our solitary paths–rigorously examining each others’ lessons and mistakes without prejudice–for we cannot hope to learn all the lessons on our own.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. –Thomas H. Huxley

Read more >> Options >>

Another update on the month-long Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org.

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

Here are the lots that opened this evening for the 3rd week of the auction:

1)  8 cup, 32-oz Bodum Chambord French Press donated by 1st in Coffee

2)  Gift basket with Greens – PNGs, Organic Sugar, Dean Cycon’s Book – Java Trekker, and a CD. 5 lbs of Papua New Guinea, 5 lbs of Organic Brown Sugar, 1 Copy of Java Trekker, Dean’s book on his travels to countries of origin, and 1 Copy of Living Air CD, sounds of a Peruvian Amazon forest.  All donated by Dean’s Beans.

3) Roast Magazine 2004-2005 CD back issues and 10 pounds Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon (greens) donated by Royal Coffee New York.

4)  1 year subscription to Roast Magazine and 15 pounds Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon (greens) donated by Royal Coffee New York.

5)  Assorted greens donated by yours truly, including 3 pounds 2008 El Salvador CoE #11 Santa Maria, 3 pounds 2008 Rwanda CoE #18, 3 pounds 2008 El Salvador CoE #19 San Isidro, and 1 pound 2008 Ethiopia Organic Natural Yirgacheffe Aricha Microlot 14.

6) Assorted greens from the Espresso Collection donated by The Coffee Project, including 1 lb Malabar Gold, 1 lb Brazil FVA Natural Dry, 1 lb Felucca Blend, 1 lb Monsooned Malabar, and 1 lb Josuma’s Indian washed Robusta.

7) 15 pounds Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon (greens) donated by Royal Coffee New York.

8)  Reg Barber Tamper, choice of stock sizes: 49/51/53/58.  Donated by 1st in Coffee.

The first week’s lots raised $890 for the kids.  The second week’s lots raised $775 for the kids.  Thanks to all who bid.  Don’t forget the month-long items, which I listed here.

Good luck to all in the next week’s bids.  Come on by, bid early, bid often.

The 2009 Costa Rica Cup of Excellence competition completed May 8th.  The international jury awarded the Cup of Excellence to twenty-four lots.  Samples should be shipping to prospective buyers in the next few weeks.  Royal Coffee New York will be hosting a cupping at the RPM Warehouse on May 29th, which I will be attending.  Stay tuned for news on the cupping, and post-auction discussion of buying groups and any lots we’ve won.

Full listing of the winning lots can be found here; I’ve also reproduced them below.  Several farms are repeat winners from last year.  Many thanks to the regular twitter and blog updates from Jason Prefontaine, of Fratello Coffee Roasters.  Word on the street is that he’s designed a pretty nice espresso machine, too. Those of us following the action from afar greatly appreciate your efforts to provide regular updates, even with the spotty wifi, Jason.

A few days back, I had the privilege of being invited to give a talk to my church’s women’s group on home roasting coffee. As I began to prepare for the talk, my coffee geek brain naturally started to fixate on all the details of roasting coffee, from seed to cup. As I’ve been told more than once, sometimes my brain is not my friend, so, having at times been blessed with sanguine moments, I sought the advice of she who must be obeyed or appeased. She asked one question that she thought would be of most interest to my audience:

Why Do You Roast?

Yeah, there is a reason why she must be obeyed or appeased. And most times it’s because of wise questions like that.

So, why do I roast?  I’ll start simply, and dive deeper as I go.

Freshness and Flavor

I’ll be the first to admit that I do not have have the skills of an experienced professional roaster–my journey has just begun. That said, I have been lucky and diligent enough to find and to learn how to roast some of the finest coffee available. I have rarely been without fresh-roasted coffee since I started roasting. The green coffee I roast has been cupped and selected by some excellent palates, and represents some of the best green coffee imported into the US.  There is no comparison to the stale coffee found on most supermarket shelves, and even the best roasters do not generally carry the variety found in my overflowing stash.

Accomplishment

There is a quiet dignity and pride to having “made your own”.  Whether it’s cooking your own meal, or growing your own vegetables, or roasting your own coffee–the feeling is a universal “this came from my hands”. I grew up in and around small farms–we raised cattle, grew our own vegetables, had access to dairy farms and orchards. Until I was twelve, the majority of our fresh, frozen and jarred food was all grown by our hands (well, mostly my grandparent’s hands). Roasting coffee takes me back to my roots, where people did for themselves and their family, where people connected directly with the food they consumed.

Connections

I’ve written about connections before–more in context of the philosophy of No Quarter Coffee. That philosophy starts with what I believe matters most to me, and why roasting coffee matters–the connections. Coffee roasting connects me to friends, family, my church and those who share my coffees. I roast and brew coffee for the church every week, as do a great many other home roasters. I aspire to increase our connections to the farmers, processors, exporters, importers, fellow coffee roasters and consumer. That last bit is where my personal philosophy connects with the business philosophy. I wish to expand how we connect with the farmers and all those who enable our daily joy. I’ve seen many people write and speak that a great coffee business is “all about the coffee”. Well, that’s important, no doubt. Perhaps, a more complete vision focuses on connecting, helping, and serving people, with incredible coffee as the medium for our connections.

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.  –St. Augustine

Another update on the month-long Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org.

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

Here are the lots that opened this evening for the 2nd week of the auction:

1)  Personalized wood coffee cup sign, 28″x31″. ‘Steaming Cup of Coffee.’ Donated by Meissenburg Designs, Big Forks, Montana. Winner’s shop name goes on the sign.

2)  3 cup (approx 15 oz) Yama tabletop vacuum pot, TCA-3D donated by Our Coffee Barn.  If the bid goes above $60, Our Coffee Barn will donate 5 lbs. of Panama Boquette green coffee.

3)  Roast Magazine 2006-2008 hard copy back issues.  10 pounds 2008 Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon (greens) donated by Royal Coffee New York.

4)  Assortment of coffee bags donated by yours truly and 15 pounds Colombia Organic Don Telmo Reserva Bourbon greens donated by Royal Coffee New York.  Bags include Costa Rica La Minita Tarrazu, El Salvador Cup of Excellence #18 El Pourvenir, and Guatemala Cloudforest Coban.

5)  $20.00 dollar gift certificate from Nor’west Coffee Roasters and Paradise Café donated by owner Mike McGinness

6)  15 pounds of green Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gr. 1 Koke, donated by Samuel Demisse of Keffa Coffee in Baltimore MD.

The first week’s lots raised $890 for the kids.  Thanks to all who bid, and I’m happy to say I was one of them.  You’ll see the product of my bid here in a few weeks.

Good luck to all in the next week’s bids.  Come on by, bid early, bid often.

As posted before, I have had the privilege to work with a group of home coffee roasters to launch this month’s Kick It Up for Coffee Kids auction over at homeroasters.org, where we are auctioning off green coffee, coffee roasters, home-crafted coffee roasters, and other wonderful items, with all the proceeds going to Coffee Kids.  We organizers  have been blessed with the generosity of our donors.  We have now also been blessed by the widespread press that our donors and other folks in the online specialty coffee community have given the auction.  Here’s a links to articles, blog posts, or tweets about the auction.  Thanks to all of you for helping get the word out, and please send me more links if I missed anyone.

Come on over to the auction!  Bid early, bid often.

Coffee Kids Blog

CoffeeGeek

Texas Coffee People

Home Barista.com

Dillanos Coffee (on Twitter)

Roast Magazine (May/June Issue)

The 2009 El Salvador Cup of Excellence Competition completed last Friday.  The international jury awarded the Cup of Excellence to thirty-three lots.  Samples should be shipping to prospective buyers (including me) in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for a Washington DC area cupping near the end of May.

Full listing of the winning lots can be found here; I’ve also reproduced them below.  Several farms are repeat winners from last year.  Two of the growers whose lots I purchased last year repeated this year-Ana Sylvia Elizabeth Schonenberg Aguiluz with San Isidro at #10 (she won the #19 last year) and Gloria Mercedes Rodríguez Fontan repeated at #18, albeit with a lot from Finca San José (vs. El Pourvenir from last year).  I’m looking forward to roasting and cupping these samples.  Congratulations to all the winning farms, and well done to the Salvadoran Coffee Council, or El Consejo Salvadoreño del Café.  From what Paol Mark from Transcend Coffee has written, the Consejo ran an outstanding competition.  Also, many thanks to the regular twitter and blog updates from Paol.  Those of us following the action from afar greatly appreciate your efforts to provide regular updates.

My coffee friends know that while I enjoy almost every method of preparing a well-roasted bean, my heart is taken by the siphon pot.  It took little time for this monument of glass to win me over–within two weeks of buying my first pot–a stovetop 8-cup Yama–I could barely remember how to spell “french press”.

Since my conversion assimilation, and much to the chagrin of she who must be obeyed or appeased, I have amassed a small squad of trusty pots, including one vintage Cory model that has not been recalled to active service.  Below are the two table-top workhorses of the current stable.

On the left is the five-cup Yama tabletop with decorative base, courtesy of a group buy arranged by Dave Borton, aka BoldJava.  The second is a three-cup Hario Nouveau that I grabbed off eBay.  I’d love to have a small squad of the Nouveaus–in comparative cupping sessions, the Nouveau put a bit more shine on every bean I’ve cupped side-by-side with the Yama five-cup model.  I suspect there will be additional tests in the near future–word on the street is that there’s another three cup tabletop with my name on it inbound–shh, don’t tell she who must be obeyed or appeased.  My green eyes have also spotted another three-cup model from café d’bolla in Salt Lake City.

The folks over there are SERIOUS about siphon brewing, roasting, coffee presentation, and well, just about everything in their shop–they even have a reasonably priced halogen lamp setup (no, must resist…).  I hope to stop by sometime when I’m in Salt Lake City (it could happen).  Check out all of their writings on their blog.  Take a look at the siphon bar setup (photo from their blog).

What a wonderful way to present and to enjoy the bean!  Viva La siphon!