One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

Wow. What are a wacky couple of weeks we’ve been having here at the cafe. With the ongoing recession, political corruption scandals, arctic blast and up and down fortunes of the Portland Trailblazers, you might miss that the holidays are here, too. Two weeks ago, we had a special event in the back office at the Fresh Pot on Mississippi – a blind coffee cupping. Our staff with assistance from Stumptown Coffee Roasters had been building towards this for a couple months. The day finally arrived and along with Skip (our wholesale rep and FP associate – if the cafe was a Mason’s club, he would be the past-president – but I digress), we had two special guests in the guise of Jim and Jen (head of quality control and wholesale trainer for Stumpy, respectively). As an aside, if I ever use that many parenthetical quotations again, please call the University of Arizona English Department and turn me in. Turn me in to what? Why did I end that sentence with a preposition? Blogging is hard!
Anyway, the cupping was pretty awesome. It consisted of two rounds with three groups of coffee at each stop. The main gist was to spot the odd man out taste-wise. So say we have a three cups of coffee, two of them are from somewhere in Latin America and one is from Indonesia. Hopefully, with our cupping history and our palates we can tell the difference. Writing down tasting notes is especially helpful as most of these coffees are in regular rotation at both shops and with so much variety it’s necessary to keep a few descriptions in your head when we’re talking coffee with customers. We had a pretty big turnout for a Tuesday morning – about ten FPers came to compete. Skip hooked us up with some terrific prizes for the top finishers – Stumptown T-shirts and high–end coffee. It was a really fun event and the next one should be even better. Check the pix from our co-worker Seth at the table.
Next up, the FP holiday party at Biwa…