Daniel's World of Coffee

Advanced Roasting Fun

Here's a video I took this afternoon... a sunny August afternoon in Northern California. This is day two of a three day Advanced Roasting Techniques class I am teaching at Boot Coffee.

There are three groups going here, one on a 1 pound San Franciscan roaster (the red one), one on a 5 kilo Probat from 1948 (the black one), and one on a three barrel Gothot sample roaster (the silver one). Each team has a different task to complete, using green coffee from the stock of dozens of different coffees Boot Coffee has in its lab.

Tomorrow morning we are going to cup the results (27 coffees!) and have each team interpret and defend the results of their experiments.

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).

Roast Profiling and Cupping

For the next three days I am in Marin County, California, teaching a class at Boot Coffee Consulting. The course is called Roast Profiling and Cupping. It combines information on sensory analysis, heat-transfer dynamics, and artisan roasting techniques.

The first day of this class begins with, well, coffee of course. Once everyone's acclimated to the lab, where we have several different sample roasters, brewing equipment, an AV set-up, cupping lab, coffee library, etc, we start with a lot of theory. What's the difference between convection, conduction, and radiation when it comes to the development of coffee during the roasting process? How does processing affect the way beans of different densities absorb heat?

Then we dive right into sensory analysis. We do sessions with nuts, dried fruits, chocolates, apples of different acidity levels and sweetness levels, fruits with different kinds of mouthfeel. All this is leading into the really important stuff: the sensory analysis of coffee. Cupping, that is.

We cover cupping vocabulary, cupping protocols, cupping technique, and we do LOTS of triangulation exercises to put people through their paces. And that's all just day one.

Day two and day three involve a lot more theory, but mainly it's about roasting and cupping, and roasting and cupping, and roasting and cupping. I teach or help teach this class several times each year. We have roasters from all over the world come to learn and practice. This class has folks from California, New York, Wisconsin, Seattle, Massachusettes, Australia, and Singapore.

This week we set up a canopy outside because of the heat in Northern California. Students are starting to arrive right now as I type this. Time to go!

The Beautiful Blonde and Her Cup of Coffee

My sister got married in May. After the ceremony, my job was to drive the happy couple to a special location on Lake Washington to shoot some extra photos. From there we had to drive to the U-District in Seattle for the reception.

Rick, my brother in law (as a Brazilian, he's a man with coffee in his blood), said suddenly, "Do we have coffee at this reception?"

My sister and her husband realized that they might have another 3 or 4 hours of speeches, dinner, toasts, greeting, dancing, etc, before they would get a cup of coffee. This, of course, after hours of getting ready, taking photos, and the ceremony itself.

That was all the prompting I needed. I took them to Solstice on the Ave, where I used to study my Cervantes and my Lord Byron back in my college days. How many times do you see a beautiful 5'10" blonde woman in a flowing white wedding dress in the middle of a college café? That's my sister for you. It runs in the family, see...

So when the newlywed-mobile rolled up to the reception, we all got out holding our americanos (extra shot, natch), and Rick and Jane-o powered through the festivities with a smile.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area this week, where it's in the mid-90's (???), where I'm shooting some instructional videos; from Wednesday to Friday I'm teaching a course on roast profiling, cupping, and sensory evaluation. Anticipating, "Teacher can we have class outside today?" we're setting up an awning and folding chairs. A little delayed summertime, nice!

Happy Ingrate Day

Dear friends, I am in the land that time forgot, the land wherein the infection first festered, Seattle, USA.

Sunday/Monday I was in California for about 24 hours, helping to spread the love/word about Salvadoran coffee. Then it was on to the Great Northwhilst to do the same, and drive under dismal gray skies at midday. I haven't had a spare moment to hit up the cafés, but I'm carving out some time tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'd like to report that I'm starting to feel really partial to Salvadoran coffees, like to an old lover. All the necessary qualities are there: the beauty, the sweetness, the tang, and the moments of unexpected surprise. On Sunday night in Marin County, California, I stayed up late roasting coffees in the full-spectrum-lit lab of Willem Boot, on his lovely orange roaster; batch after batch of El Salvadors. I left New York City that morning, where things were headache-bright and cold as f***. California, upon deplaning, was predictably, mockingly balmy and soft. The air there has a silky quality you never know you're missing if you don't leave the East. There's a fig tree growing in the back yard at Willem's house.

Those coffees, roasted with love and alacrity (yes the two coexist), tasted all sweet and yet all different the next morning when we cupped them. Fifteen or so Bay Area lovelies made the trip out Golden Gate-wise to see us (and some new brewing equipment about which I will tell you soon... or don't bother reading it here cause I have a feeling it will be all over the place within a year). Again in Seattle, with CA in my rearview, the coffees were pulling into mind oranges and chocolates and the hills of Chalatenango, where I saw farmers learning to cup, all cowboy hats and creased faces. I've been five times to El Salvador in the last year, which is no boast but rather to point out it feels like another home almost and home feels nice but it also frees you up to really start saying some real stuff. You can take the kid off your gloves and throw a couple grown-up punches. I say without reservation that damn, when the Salvadorans do it up right, they do it up right.

Thanksgiving's come and gone (and I've made more than a couple pots for the parientes in the mean), and even though the stuff I have is roasted super light for cupping purposes, I'm feeling the beaches of La Libertad and the slopes of Santa Ana as I sit and watch my poor, bedraggled Seahawks take another lick on the chin. Here's to good coffee and family, to having a little food in your belly, and if the right team doesn't always win, at least the popcorn tasted good.