Maddness. COE Maddness.

Well, after 4 hours and 30 coffees, there's no lie... I'm tired. This years Colombian COE's bring in some craziness. We cupped the coffees blind in two 15 coffee rounds. Ends up round one held mostly coffees from the back end of the jury's selection, while round two held the majority of the top 10. It was an awesome learning experience for me, as I have never cupped that many coffees at once, let alone all from the same country of origin.

Some of the stand outs to me were the first and second place finishers. Both being very nice. I actually scored the second place over the first place by two points, but don't get me wrong, Isaias Cantillo Osa's farm, La Esperanza produced a very fine coffee and I will be very interested in seeing how much it sells for. The second place finisher came from El Cedro, a farm owned by Leonte Collazos Rajas'. I found the aroma to being more pleasing in this coffee than Esperanza. Ironically, though, these coffees were the last two in our line-up, so my senses were numbing a bit.

One of the other notable coffees was actually the 30th placed finisher. What I liked about it most was the aroma. It smelled of fresh mozzarella, or a similar soft cheese. It was something I had never experienced before. I enjoyed that part of it.

The first round of 15 was harder to score. So many of the characteristics of them found to be common in the field. Lot's of acidity found all day long. Enough that I could have just had a few bowls of tomato soup and had the same kind of sensation after.

Monday, Cafe Imports will be cupping the top 10 scorers from today to determine which they are most interested in buying. I'm hoping to get enough roasting done early enough to join them once more. I should have more of an in-depth recap of the top 10.

Colombian COE's

I heading to Cafe Imports this morning to cup all the COE Colombians... I'm stoked. More later...

Clover Cupping

So, it's taken me awhile to get this posted, but here are my notes from playing with our new Colombia micro-lot...

Taken December 15, 2006.

Colombia Tolima

Brewed on the Clover, 19 grams, 6 oz. serving size

35 second extraction time-
Smell: initially light, of mild fruits, raisin... then cocoa, light caramel, smokey, fruit
Taste: initial first sip hints of vanilla, tangy~ black tea, citrus, dried fruit, smokey dried raisins, finishes with smokey, tangy raisin, but clean, moist on the palate, not dry.

40 second extraction time-
Smell: initially of chocolate, cinamon, spice, then of dried fruit (kinda prunish)
Taste: initially of mild spicey, tangy plumb, (hint of grapefruit), then moves to be more black tea like, finish is still spicey-tangy (mostly tangy), flavors of darker black tea, stew fruits, mild-strong citrus, grapefruit mostly, kinda lime

45 second extraction time-
Smell: initially of cocoa, sundried raisin, then loses the cocoa, gains spice, still raisin.
Taste: Initially light, mild, tastes of dried fruit and chocolate. Then very stewey, almost chewable (savory), light smokey, dried fruit. Then begins to pick up black tea properties. Mild in both body and flavor, delicate, like a tea. Finishes slightly more bitter, but not in a negative manner. More smokey properties come out, ends as a cup of smoked, stewed fruits...

Andrew and I really enjoy this coffee... he even named it our pick of the season for the holidays. Anyway, it sparked my interest to find the different properties that the Clover was able to pull out. I think we ended up choosing a 38 second extraction time to use in the shop. Well, we will see what coffee I can play with next...