There's a chill in the air this week in Minnesota and the L. L. Bean fall catalogue recently arrived in our mailboxes. That can only mean one thing: summer is coming to an end. August was a busy month for classes; we hosted our Advanced Roasters Workshop, Roasting 101, and headed to LA for Coffee Fest, where we taught workshops and seminars to show attendees.
This time of year is important for coffee roasters and shops. With the seasonal change comes updated cafe menus, including the first sightings of the annually viral Pumpkin Spiced beverage craze. This is also the time of year that we begin to plan for our holiday blends (yes, it starts early) and work on sourcing the coffees that will carry us through the end of the year. In August, we cupped 40 coffees, including 10 samples from the latest season of Leaderboard. Here are a few highlights from the table.
Cold Brew Blend Updates
As the summer season winds down, so have some of our contracts on our larger volume coffees. This means it's time to revisit our best-selling blends and ensure that older components are being roasted and combined properly to maintain a consistent flavor profile that our customers expect.
Our Cold Brew Blend is one of our most popular green and roasted coffee pre-blends. It's built to provide excellent body, balance, and a chocolate-covered-fruit characteristic that's perfect for iced coffee. In August, we knew the Ethiopia component was fading, and cupped it blind on the table along with a handful of other production roasts. It tasted sweet and nutty, in a way that reminded me of a comforting bowl of oatmeal with maple and walnuts, but it was missing the fruity flavors we appreciate in the blend. We collectively agreed to increase the Natural processed Ethiopia component to a higher ratio in the blend, bringing more fruit sweetness to the cup. When we run out of this Ethiopia and swap in a fresh crop with a stronger flavor, we will likely return to the standard mix for this coffee, which is 33% of each green ingredient.
Ecuador Hacienda La Papaya Anaerobic Natural
Our production roaster, Sam, picked up a bag of this coffee from the small California-based importer Bodhi Leaf to roast for himself. Nervous that he'd rushed through the development phase a bit, he included a sample on the cupping table to get feedback from the sensory team.
We tasted pink lemonade, mango, purple fruits, and a tart farmhouse-style ale flavor that, while a bit puckering, was still pleasant. Bodhi Leaf's notes on the product page for this coffee include apricot, blackberry, and hibiscus. While we didn't experience the stone fruit or ripe berry notes they describe, hibiscus is an accurate way of explaining the floral, bright acidity in this coffee. Overall, we agreed that the anaerobic processing method probably saved Sam's roast, which went a little too quickly, and helped maintain some complex and balanced flavors for him. If this had been a washed coffee, it might have turned out a bit grassy or underdeveloped, but in this case, a quick DTR didn't negatively impact the experience.
Leaderboard Season 19
Last March, we tested our tasting skills with season 17 of Leaderboard, an international coffee identification game (read my full recap about it here). In August, we picked up the Season 19 box to play again. While the answers are still being released daily, so we don't know our total score for this round yet, we have already experienced big wins (9/9 points for coffee #1) and humbling misses (3/9 for coffee #2).
We love playing Leaderboard because it introduces us to so many new regions and roasters, and tests our knowledge of varieties and growing regions. For the first half of coffees, where there is a bank of options for country of origin, the choices were Ethiopia, Colombia, Burundi, Costa Rica, and Laos. We all identified the coffee from Ethiopia fairly easily; the washed landrace varietal had all the recognizable notes and visual cues. But many of the others from that first set of coffees gave us a run for our money.
Once all the coffees are revealed, we'll share a longer write-up of our experience with this season and our final score. If you're a person who wants to challenge their sensory skills, dive deeper into regional and varietal knowledge, and be taken down a peg or two by an internet-based cupping game, check out Leaderboard and play along.
Honorable Mentions
We traveled out to Coffee Fest Los Angeles in August, where we taught classes, caught up with old buddies, and met tons of new friends over the two-day event. We also took a few turns through the Roasters Row, where roasting companies shared samples of some of their coffees. A stand-out among the offerings was the Colombia Paola Trujillo Wush Wush from the award-winning Be Bright Coffee in LA.
Wush Wush is a rare coffee variety that's believed to have originated in Ethiopia, and its flavor profile supports this assertion. The coffee was lovely and delicate, with beautiful citrus flavors and honey sweetness. It didn't hurt that USBC Champion and Be Bright founder Frank La brewed and served it with warmth and friendliness.
August is also State Fair season in Minnesota, and while you can get coffee at the state fair, it's not exactly what attracts almost two million attendees each year. The best thing I tasted at this year's fair was a soft serve swirl cone at 9 am inside the Dairy Building. Rich, creamy, dense, and perfectly sweet, it was probably the best soft serve I've ever had. I realize that this may feel out of place in a coffee cupping recap, but we always tell students that to become great coffee tasters, you have to become great tasters in general. So, take this invitation to study up on soft serve, milkshakes, and sundaes. I promise those notes will eventually apply to great cups of coffee.
