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.
