Another fine Roasters Guild retreat was had by all again this year! Sorry there was no cell phone signal strong enough for a call in to the podcast, but I think that Peter G got some audio of 200 roasters cupping during the Sunday morning showdown. Maybe he can get that to Nick for the next podcast.
The challenge this time was really great. Nineteen teams were created, each with about 8 roasters of varying skill levels. Every team got eight coffees (4lbs. of each) that had been cupped by GW of Intelly and coded from 1 to 13. He kept the types and scores secret until Sunday. A team did not have all coffees.... you had to find out which you were missing and how to cup them...then if you liked them, you had to find a way to get them ....and so, THE BLEND OR BARTER CHALLENGE was underway early Friday morning!
All right, so I had a very solid strategy to win this thing...trouble is that I am on the Executive Council, and we are not allowed to play. Still, I feel the need to be on record for how I would have crushed them all and why it NEVER would have worked even if I could have played.
From the outset, a few coffees stood out as really fab. "number three...number three..." , you could hear teams muttering to one another as if they could keep it quiet. As if no one else had done the happy dance after a slurp of the heady, clean and vibrant #3... a Kenya for sure. And number 5 was a hit (a Yirg the roasters wondered?) - but interestingly, only with half the crowd. Cupping a few flights of five cups of #5 would have been prudent, if you know what I mean. Yes, the Africans were the rock stars, with a Harrar (#2?) generating another kind of buzz. Somewhere in there was a respectable Guat Antigua, a Tanzania peaberry, a pulped natural El Sal, another Yirg, a Colombia, some Indonesians and Brazils.
By Saturday night your team needed to turn in 5 lbs of coffee...one that would beat all others at the table on Sunday morning.
My strategy (and I told a number of roasters this strategy, by the way. No one was interested, but it still kicks ass)... Okay, so my strategy would have been a single origin roasted to its optimum development- plain and simple. The theory was that this crowd would rank a serious single origin well amid a table of blends. I also thought that no team that had #3 would be bartering it away. If you had some, you wouldn't want anyone else to have it, even if you weren't going to use it.
So if you could barter away enough of the #5 to those that loved it, you could acquire all of the Harrar or the Guat or the Tanzania. And if you really had some killer negotiators on your team this would have been the key... to have no other examples of your coffee in any other blends. You could manage this by getting rid of your 3 or 5.
Personally, I would have made a push for the Guat. Then I would have roasted it just once to the crescendo of the second crack....no S.O. blend!! No way!!
But sadly, this plan could never be realized.
Why: In a team setting, this plan does not allow for enough playing around with the coffee. With 8 roasters you'll have about 20 opinions and all are valid. By its nature, the team challenge will always compromise the final coffee. With 8 roasters, there would never be an agreement to barter away the #3... someone would have dug in their heels for sure. Everyone would want to contribute to the production roasting, when really they would be best used to grade the final coffee (pre and post roast)... and that's boring and they would feel like chumps. But probably most importantly, it would never happen because no one would ever agree to this strategy.......discuss. (especially interested in discussions about how a team will always compromise coffee in a blend)
...and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the winning coffee did NOT contain the #3, but it did contain the #5 and #2 and maybe the Colombia???
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as one of the roasters who you doled out advice to, i'd say that your strategy may have helped your place, but that it wouldn't necessarily have won the game.
ReplyDeletethe reason there's uncertainty is that the game itself is flawed.
of the 250 people that are cupping various blends, you have a VERY wide skill level range, from cupping experts to guys who have just learned to cup the previous day. to then subject a flight of coffees to these people without any type of calibration meant that unless there is a SERIOUS problem with your coffee, you should get a score that ranks you pretty high. i think that the gap between 10th and 1st place was about 6 points, possibly less.
the way to correct this problem is simple, you simply have one person from each team do the final cupping. everyone else can cup the blends if they want, but the real decision is made up of a panel of single individuals from each team.
take the scores for each coffee, throw out the highest and lowest for each one, and voila, you've got a much better representation of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Trish the winning blend had no #3 in it. It was made up of 50% #7 which was a guat (we had thought it might have been a El Salvador semi-washed) 30% #13 which was a Yirg and 20% #2 which was the Harrar. We sorted the harrar 3 times once before roasting, once in the cooling tray and then again right before assembling our final blend. Up untill the last minute we were divided as to whether or not to include the harrar or not. some of us, myself included were afraid it might be to wild and unpredictable in 100 different cups. We were so divided on it we left it up to a coin toss to decide to use it or not. The coin said no. But when we were going to assemble our 2 coffee blend we were just a little shy on coffee. we figured this was fates way of telling us our blend was meant to have the harrar in it. and a rockin blend it was to be. I just wish there had been some left over. We didn't get it on our table so we didn't get to cup it untill it was quite cold. We originally thought about a SO blend but didn't think that any one of the coffees would be strong enough to win it. And we did want to win it. So we kept it simple and made a blend that not only did we like but one that we felt would do well on the SCAA cupping form. We also toyed around with using #1 a Sumatra for some added body but it didn't mesh to well with the other coffees and reduced the acidity so we ditched it. The whole bartering thing was actually kind of cool. We had all the coffees we wanted to use on our table so we got rid of the ones we didn't want for more of what we had. Surprisingly we all agreed on which coffees we wanted to use #7 and #13 with #2 as the possible wild card. We were one of the teams that went and did some roasting Friday night. we wanted not only to get a head start on our blend but be able to have a better idea how our potential blend might cup on Sunday after it had rested overnight. So saturday all we had to do is roast the remainder of or coffee and blend it. In the end our blend was much the same as what planned on doing friday when we first cupped our sample roasts. We figured we would do well, top third or so, although I was telling everyone all weekend we were gonna win. And in the end yes we did win, but more importantly we had fun and learned a lot. (wait a minute did I just say that?) My strategy for next year? Make a blend that cups well after several cigars, Tequila and Bourbon.
ReplyDeleteHey Trish,
ReplyDeleteI think your strategy would work. The problem that you face is convincing (or strong-arming) the other 7 people into going along with using only one coffee. I think that there would be all this coffee in your box just crying out to be used or at least just try it in a few blends and see how it tastes.
I think we faulted in making such a poor effort to at least try to get other coffees. I can't blame my team members, as I didn't even ask anyone if I could see the coffee in their bags. (Slap me now.)
Since we didn't try to get anything other than the Harrar, we tried to come up with a blend with a good Kenya (#3), a blueberry packed Harrar (#3), a decent Yirgacheffe (#5) a Guat (#6).
Our blend came in 7th overall. Nothing to be ashamed of. One of our team members thought our roasts were too light. Sorry, I'm not doing a fricking sample roast profile. In fact, our Kenya was Full City if not French (depending on what coast you live on). The others were just a good medium roast (beginning of 2nd crack).
I walked the room Sunday morning and tasted many, many cups. And while I enjoyed a few cups, I couldn't believe how many tables submitted coffees that (a)were as light roasted as they were, and (b) had such a high proportion of Harrar.
Was that Harrar good? Certainly. Was it necessary to give it the leading role? Hmmmmmmmm......No. We only had 1/7th Harrar in our blend.
On another note: We had a Japanese guy who was nice enough, but didn't get 10 words out of him all weekend. A guy brand new to the biz, and hasn't started roasting yet, some newbies, and some very skilled roasters and cuppers. Everone cupped and participated enough. I do wish some of the more experienced people would have said more and taught more. Perhaps, I am I being naively altruistic, but I think the veterans could do more skill teaching instead of just being 1/8th of a team of 8 member. I don't mind teaching, but I'm carefull not to come of as the pompous ass who knows it all. Cuz I don't and don't you forget it!!
Bob
Trish I had no idea you were such a shark in addition to being such a fine Roaster! :)
ReplyDeletethis is kind of a meeting i would love to go to.
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