Nordic Barista Cup 2010

For those of you who didn't have the time, energy, or resources to attend the Nordic Barista Cup 2010, you really missed out. Opening night, J and David of Intelligentsia introduced us to the competing barista teams at the Kaffa mixer. There, some of our staff (including myself) met Bjornar, one of the roasters there. He told fabulous stories of roasting for the Queen of Norway and vicariously for Obama on his recent visit to the Olso royal family-cool. From day one--George Howell's talk on Specialty Coffee--I was hooked. We cupped at least 40 coffees during the 3-day event and sampled several more. One of the most interesting activites was the chemical tastings hosted by Paul Songer. The solutions also included various combinations of tastes so that the participants could detect such combinations in the cuppings that followed. And, boy, were there cuppings! Even though the event was over 100-plus people, cuppings were hosted at least three times a day. We cupped coffees with defects--or was that the clean cup?--we cupped SO coffees with different roast profiles (and roast dates), and coffees from numerous acclaimed roasters. In case you were wondering, there was a tasting involving Tim Wendelboe roasting the same coffee 4 different ways--the audience doing the tasting was to try to guess what the different roast profiles were like. The trick of it was that 2 of the coffees-which tasted drastically different-were roasted identically. When Tim announced that the only difference between the two was the roast date, everyone in the room GASPED! As it turns out, one had been roasted 7 or 8 days before the tasting and one had been roasted only 2 days before. Never in my life have i witnessed such an emotional reaction from so many people over a roast date. Overall, our entire staff had a great time on the trip. If you love learning about coffee, get out toCopenhagen for the 2012 Nordic Barista Cup--it's totally worth it, promise.