Daniel's World of Coffee

What I've Been Up To

The last time I posted in May, I was in Panama. I'm in Seattle now, and here's a quick run-down on what I've been up to in the coffee world.

1) First of all that Panama trip. As I noted before, I was acting as host for a group of Puerto Rican coffee farmers who were sent to Panama to observe specialty coffee practices in Panama. There were a dozen people in our group, and we spent our time in the western highlands of Chiriqui. I knew it was going to be fun before I left, but it really ended up exceeding my expectations. I'll post some videos and comments about this project over the next few days.

2) Speaking of Puerto Rico, I'm finishing up the analysis of the soil-data project I started way back in November. There's a huge document detailing all of our findings that I've created. I will share part of that this week, and the rest of it when it's all officially available.

3) As always, I'm teaching roasting and cupping courses in California with Boot Coffee. In May and June I was down there with Willem, Jodi, and the rest of the crew for some really great courses. I will be going down there again at the end of July for another 10 days, into August.

4) In the next 12 months I'll be teaching courses in Honduras (twice), Panama, and hopefully Colombia as well. Stay tuned here for more information. Or you can check out the Boot Coffee website.

5) After a long and arduous journey through my own preconceptions, I've become a full-on believer in Kahlua. It's just so much better than every other coffee liqueur I've tasted (and you'd be surprised how many I have tasted.... think double digits). Last September I did some work for Kahlua in Stockholm. In June, this project took me to grand old New York, where the Ost Café folks were as good as good can be to me, despite new babies and new pork sandwich stands springing up left and right. Best cafe in NYC, y'all. In the next few months I'll be doing more work for Kahlua here in the USA. I'm excited to share with you what I've been doing. I'll be sure to mention it here on the blog when it becomes appropriate. Did I mention I get free rum, coffee, and Kahlua?

6) Fresh Cup Magazine published an article I wrote in the June issue, about branching out from the old familiar origins and finding new gems (Nepalese coffee, anyone?). I'll post some snippets here, copyright permitting.

7) Theoretically I have something coming out in Parade Magazine... but I have yet to see it appear and your guess is as good as mine.

7) Somewhere along the line there I was in Houston for the SCAA conference. Somewhere along the line there, Alejandro Mendez from Viva Espresso in San Salvador won the World Barista Championship. Anyone who reads this blog is already well-informed of that stuff. But still... it did happen.

8) All work and no play makes Homer something something...

(PS I am in Seattle currently... oh wait, I already said that).

"Norwegian Coffee ... Bad!"

Scandinavia is the epicenter of the world quality coffee movement. Last week I was in Stockholm drinking coffee and researching my Nordic roots. At the same time, on the other side of the great peninsula, the Nordic Barista Cup was taking place in Oslo.

I've never been to the Nordic Barista Cup, but it's very high on my list of coffee to-do's. Baristas and coffee professionals from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland get together once a year and have all kinds of coffee events and parties. Teams from each nation dress up in matching jumpsuits like Olympic athletes, and snapshots from the various parties always show beautiful people having a lovely time.

This year, barista magazine had some top-notch blog coverage.

As for me, I had a lovely time island-hopping in Stockholm. I did some interesting work for Pernod-Ricard, the spirits company. Absolut — a very Swedish vodka, of course — is one of their brands, and that's what took us to Stockholm. But I wasn't doing any work on vodka, but actually on Kahlúa.

I did some very interesting blind tasting of various coffee liqueurs. They are most decidedly not all the same. Some have some extremely disagreeable chemical-rubber tastes underneath all that sugar. I hope to be able to share the outcome of the work I did there on the blog soon; but for now I have to keep it somewhat under wraps.

For you New Yorkers out there, I thought you might get a kick out of this picture. It's a collaboration Absolut did with Spike Lee (no joke).

I uploaded some more pics on my flickr page. Not much coffee related (except the awesome french press hotel coffee I got which made my day on Thursday), but there's some pretty rainbows.

Finally, I shot this video at dinner (amazing food at this restaurant). You can't see anything cause the light is too low. But you can hear what my Swedish friend, Frida, thinks of Norwegian coffee.

Funny

Here's a pitch-perfect send-up of barista competitions. There are a lot of inside jokes in this. The humor is so dry at first that I didn't realize it was a parody.

Final TV from Brendan Inkognito on Vimeo.

Daniel Has Returned... and Søren is Champion

Hi everyone. I am back from my seven week trip which took me to San Francisco, Ethiopia, New York City, and Los Angeles. From the safety and comfort of Seattle in the springtime, I'll be writing a running diary of what happened on my trip, complete with pointers and diagrams and photos and videos.

On my trip I did lots of cupping, roasting, brewing, shot-pulling, and other assorted coffee activities; plus goat-roasting, cold-catching, storm-dodging, train-taking, whiskey-drinking, and people-meeting. So stay tuned for stories and pointers from the World of Coffee.

In the meantime, I would like to offer a hearty congratulations to Søren Stiller Markussen for winning the Danish Barista Championship this week. Søren was part of the Harar Cupping Caravan in March. He's a really great guy, and I have a couple of stories about him to tell in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here's a picture. Søren's in the front-middle, in the plaid shirt. Hard to tell here, but he's crouching slightly. He's actually a quite tall man (taller than yours truly, behind him in the pink shirt).

A report on the Danish Championship from Coffee Collective here.

Alive and Still Drinking Coffee

Hello coffee people!

After a long spell working on the Project Which Shall Not be Named, I'm back to the old blog. Thanks for sticking around!

I'm in Marin County, California, this week, teaching a roasting and cupping course. So because I'll be talking lots of theory this week with my students, I think I'll drop a little theory here on the blog. The class is through Boot Coffee. Willem Boot himself is on his way to Honduras and then Ethiopia, as a part of the Ethiopia Cupping Caravan project I'm also working on. So in the meantime I'm here in California teaching this course.

It's a ton of fun. I have 7 students here, learning how to cup and how to really roast with knowledge. Here in the lab (a converted garage) there are four roasting machines, an espresso machine, grinders, and more coffee making devices than you can shake a stick at. We have green coffee from every corner of the globe, even more roasted coffee, cups, spoons, videos, pictures, maps, one dog, and a cat. Just to give you an idea of what's here, here's one of the sample roasting machines we're using:

Hope you all have been well. Sorry for the absence, but once again, as always, I'm back! Happy coffee to y'all.

Barista, the Cartoon

A strange little cartoon movie called "Barista." (h/t: Sprudge Report)

My first thought was: the only thing more annoying than people who ask rather uneducated questions like the blue lady are the baristas who answer with prickly, egotistical non-answers like the man in the hat. Being a friendly, non-pretentious human being ought to trump being some kind of coffee sommelier. On a second viewing, though, I think that's the point of the video. Er... I think... Um, maybe I should stick to the coffee and leave the social satire alone.

The ending made me laugh.

Event(s) Report: Coffee Fest Madness

I work in coffee and I was born and raised in Seattle, WA, and yet it's been four years (!) since I participated in Coffee Fest Seattle. Well, this last weekend I got my fill of Coffee Fest-ivities at the Convention Center downtown, as well as at various spots around town. This is really more than one event...

One. The Actual Show. Lots of great coffee and interesting products on the show floor again this year. There was an understandable skewing toward Northwest companies, like Caffé Vita, Synesso, and the honorary Northwesterners, La Marzocco USA.

The best cup of brewed coffee I had all weekend (though not the Coffee of the Week... I'll get to that in another post), came from the Hario booth, where I got a perfect pour-over cup of Intelligentsia's fresh crop Kenya. Thanks to Bronwen for taking me by the hand and guiding me to the Hario booth when I was jonesing on Friday morning. (Hario also wins best business cards for their flaming hot pink numbers).

The funnest little activity at the show was the Aroma Challenge where you had to take a quiz on matching Le Nez du Café vials of essential aromas to a list of aromas. Very tough! I got 10 out of 16, though as soon as I turned in my sheet I realized I had misidentified the most obvious one (potato!) and should have got 11 right. Anyway, it was a fun challenge.

2. The Northwest Regional Barista Competition. I didn't actually see even 2 minutes of this thing, though I hear it was fantastic as always. Northwest barista legend Billy Wilson took the gold. You can read about it on coffeed.

3. Party Madness. Lots of fun at the party at Visions Espresso on Friday night, where baristas played with their array of different espresso machines while the wine and cheese flowed. Coffee people are the most fun people there are to have parties with, I've decided. They get really wired on coffee, then they start drinking. Sarah Allen also led an expeditionary party up the hill from downtown to Linda's, which is actually my old stomping grounds (those many years ago), where we took over an entire banquette outside and drank Tecate and argued about coffee.

On Saturday night it was thee Latte Art competition between Seattle and LA hosted by Victrola. Even more people at this one. Got to see lots of great friends. The LA folks took the competition pretty handily, to Seattle's undying shame. But a good time was had by all. Victrola really has the perfect location and space for parties of this kind (fire marshall regulations aside... it got a little too full at one point).

4. Cupping at Coffee Enhancement Lounge. Sunday it was back down to Visions for a wonderful, peaceful, clean cupping of those pacamara coffees I have been talking about lately. It was the perfect way to wrap up the weekend. The CEL has great natural lighting... the sun was shining in through the skylight. Sarah put on Elvis Presley, and we cupped 14 beautiful coffees in peace and calm.

I really hope to do more stuff at CEL soon. It's such a great location and the folks at Visions are the greatest.

....

At some point this weekend, I did have the Coffee of the Week. But this post is getting too long, and I have a coffee shop review I want to get to, too. So I'll post that a little later. The hint is the picture at the top of this page, if you know that man.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/latteart/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

2009 SCAA Show Highlights

Back in New York City after a long weekend in Atlanta. SCAA was, as usual, lots of faces, lots of parties, lots of interesting new concepts and machines, and way way way too much caffeine. Good times

I'd like to share some highlights and lowlights from my experience:

Highlights

1. Gwilym Davies' signature beverage. Gwilym is your new World Barista Champion. Of course, as a non-judge, I didn't get to taste his espresso. From everything I heard, and judging on the fact that he beat out the 50 best baristas in the entire world, I'm assuming it was positively fantastic. Roasted by these guys.

But, although again I didn't get to taste it, Gwilym's signature beverage was a sight behold. At the beginning of his competition time, he gave the four sensory judges each an envelope and told them to open it and follow the instructions therein. It was a mystery to the general audience what was going on. Then he made his espressos and cappuccinos. When sig-drink time came, he collected the envelopes and announced what four flavors the judges had selected. You see, each card contained four different flavor components, divided into four categories, and Gwilym had the judges choose their "favorite flavor component." Then he went to his tray of 16 different ingredients and selected the four named by the judges for the drink, and prepared the drink. Ballsy, entertaining, and presumably delicious.

In the first round, the choices were butter, hazelnuts, honey, and cherry. I didn't catch the combo in the final round. But all 16 were components he claims are in the espresso, and it's easy to believe him based on the scores he got. Every time I think baristas couldn't possibly come up with new innovations, the best prove me wrong. I have no idea how next year's champ will top this — that's why they are champs and I am not — but I'm already intrigued. Bravo, Gwilym!

2. Chris and M'lissa's wedding reception. Good friends and great people (and great coffee people) Chris Owens and M'lissa Muckerman were married recently, and they saved their big reception for the SCAA show. M'lissa used to run the show at Octane coffee in Atlanta, and that's where about 400 drunken happy baristas and assorted coffee folks descended on Friday night to toast them and dance the night away. At the end of the night there wasn't a single drop of booze left in the place (seriously), though they had started with a mighty inventory. Chris wore a tux and M'lissa a pretty dress, and everyone was smiles all around, spilling out into the parking lot and the streets of Atlanta. So great to see so many old friends! It's a tribute to how much everyone loves those two that it was such a great party. Also a good thing that my primary job the next day was to drink coffee.

Thanks Chris'n'M'liss! Congratulations!

3. Devin's shot of Black Cat. You get a ton of coffee at these events, of course. Some of it is good, some of it is great, and some of it makes you wonder what people were thinking (in a room full of 1000s of coffee experts, better bring your A-game!). I went in hoping to get a real transformative experience from some unknown coffee, but the best shot I had all weekend was actually a shot of Black Cat espresso made for me at the Intelligentsia booth by master LA barista, Devin Pedde. Perfect chocolate and caramel, touch of rich fruit, velvety smooth mouthfeel that stayed with me for an hour.

The other fantastic shot I had was at the Barista Guild of America cafe, a shot of Terroir Coffee's Daterra Reserve (a famous Brazilian grower, roasted by a famous Massachusettes coffee expert), pulled by fellow New York Stater Chris Ganger of Ithaca Coffee Company. Very clear and light for a Brazil, but with lots of sweetness and great aromatics. Nice job, Devin and Chris.

4. First Annual Taster's Championship. Won by another northeasterner (detect a pattern?), Ben Kaminsky of Barismo. This has been a long time coming. For all the attention given to barista competition, it's about time we had a national competition for tasters. The format is simple differentiation of triangulated coffees (pick which of the three is different from the other two), in as short a time as possible. Geoff Watts of Intelly made the top three, but Kaminsky pulled out the championship in the end. Now it's on to world's for him. Major props. If I have the balls I will compete next year myself.

5. Hartmann Honey from Gimme! Gabe Boscano of Gimme! Coffee gave me a small bag of Panamanian coffee from his latest batch on their restored Probat drum roaster. Gimme! has air-roasted from the start, and the drum-roaster is a new venture for them; Gabe's helping to drive that bus. I didn't technically taste this at the show, but rather brewed myself two pots this morning. It's very rich and sweet for a Panama, due in part to being "honey-processed" coffee (pulp dried right on the parchment instead of fermented off). I know this is a risky way to process coffee, but the Hartmann family did it perfectly, and the Gimme! crew roasted it perfectly. I'm already looking forward to drinking some more later today. Thanks, Gabe!

Lowlights

Just one here: JFK airport almost completely shut down on Monday due to a little blustery weather and heavy rain. That place is so damn busy, the slightest glitch seems to send it into total disarray. People were getting canceled and redirected all up and down the East Coast. My colleague David left very early Monday, ended up in Cincinatti somehow and barely made it home. My colleague Steve had to spend the night in Raleigh, NC, and then was delayed again on his morning flight. As for me, I was delayed several hours out of Atlanta, then circled over New Jersey for an hour or so before they sent us to Boston where we refueled, took off again, circled over Long Island for a while and then, at the last moment, they let us land at JFK 7 hours late. Oof...

But I'm back now. And luckily, the highlights (of which these five are only a small selection) vastly overpower the lowlights.

Way to Go, Mike

Results are in from the WBC. Mike Phillips, US Champion, finished third. Fellow North American Sammy Piccolo of Canada was second, and the Gwilym Davies of the UK took home that country's second championship in three years.

Final results:

6th: Attila Molnar, Hungary
5th: Lee Jong Hoon, South Korea
4th: Colin Harmon, Ireland
3rd: Michael Phillips, USA
2nd: Sammy Piccolo, Canada
1st: Gwilym Davies, UK

Congrats to all competitors. It was an amazing competition.

The Final Six

We're down to six baristas left standing after a year of competition. USA Champion Michael Phillips is through to the final round! America, Puck Yeah!

Other final countries are Ireland, South Korea, Canada, UK, and Hungary. Finals are tomorrow afternoon and announcements will be made around 4 pm Eastern. Live streaming video and more details here.

Lots of interesting stuff at the show, but of course no time to post on it right now.