mie

back to reality, i've sample roasted the cup of excellence samples from brasil, lots of samples from bahía and minas gerais that's on the cupping table all week. it was a pleasant surprise coming into the lab this afternoon when robert had made a blend out of the naturals from bahía and pulled shots of them. super sweet, but of course you can not cup or drink naturals from brasil without thinking about whether you like the concept or not. a clean cup is for me the most important criteria for natural processed coffees and a nice acidity to balance the sweetness. more about the results after some more cupping later this week.

the roastery is constantly working on the espresso blends, and right now it's the caffe forte blend that's under serious supervision. mr b, the roast master, and the rest of us, are constantly cupping and changing the blends, thinking that the forte blend should be even darker and fuller - it's a blend that has historically consisted of the same coffees as crescendo, but roasted through 2nd crack. however, we have serious plans to change the components and make crescendo (dropped at the crescendo of 2nd crack) even lighter putting more florals and citric notes into it by adding new components. right now forte is a blend of two caturras: panama don pepe (from boquete) and colombia buenos aires (from pitalito), a pacamara from guatemala el injerto (huehuetenango) and a washed ethiopia sidamo processed by adem bedane at kombo (referred to as ethipia sidamo adem kombo). so many things to think about when labeling coffees and most of us have a long way to go to get it right.