Roasting and Cupping

Dang there's a lot going on around these parts.

The new sample roaster (1925 Jabez Burns) is up and running.  Jason and I have been practicing and learning and it's not easy.  The roaster works like our big roaster (1953 Vittoria) with a perforated drum tumbling the beans as a gas flame roasts the coffee.  On the Vittoria the flame is constant.  The variables we change are the amount of coffee in the drum and a vent and damper.  With the Jabez Burns, we can change the amount of coffee in the drums and the amount of flame.  It's a different way of roasting so we're having to learn to control these different variables to achieve the desired roast.  And it's easy to mess it up.

We've been getting more samples than usual, because we're working with different brokers.  With the new sample roasting setup it's easier to get samples roasted and ready for cupping.  So we're refining our cupping protocol.  We've found it's easiest to cup 4-6 samples at a time.  And we usually try the coffees in a presspot the following day.  We have a sample of La Magnolia from Costa Rica- I know that was a favorite of some of you, so if it cups out good maybe we'll offer it again.  We're waiting on a sample of the Rio Negro coffee- from the farm I visited on my last trip to Costa Rica.  We have several samples from a broker called Cafe Imports.  Specifically we're going to try a couple different Yemens, some coffees from Burundi, more Ethiopians, and a couple other origins.  An importer called Zephyr sent us a few Ethiopians, a Brazil and a Panama.  We also have the coffee from San Rafael- Alfredo Correa's farm in Concordia, Colombia.  Lots to look forward to if things pan out.