Anything Trubaca Does, I Can Probably Do Once In A While.

I want to actually do this blogging thing, so I'm actually going to do this blogging thing. Let's start off at once a week, at least. Short, sweet posts. Sounds tasty. So here's where I'm at right now:

The week before last, my manager asked me if I wanted to take over public cuppings. A former employee of ours used to do it once a week, but she moved away, and cuppings pretty much did too. The staff has talked about it at meetings, and before my manager asked me, it seemed like it was something that was going to happen, but no one knew when or how.

Enter: me.

I say yes.
I spend the next couple of days figuring out what I want to do and writing a little info sheet about it. I figured and simple cupping would just be tasting the differences between processing methods. Ideally, I would have the same coffee processed different ways, but this was not the case. Instead, I had the following:

Washed:
Haile
Ethiopia, Sidamo Grade 2
Heirloom

Pulped-Natural:
Brumas del Zurqui
Costa Rica, Central Valley, Heredia
Caturra

Dry:
Harrar
Ethiopia, Harrar, OCFCU Co-op
Heirloom

Semi-Washed:
Lake Tawar
Sumatra, Aceh

The info sheet I made had little write-ups on what processing meant and what each method entailed, as far as both technique and resulting flavors. People seemed pretty stoked on the whole thing. I had a group of about 10 people cupping. It was super satisfying, because I got to see all these people light up whenever they smelled/tasted the difference between the coffees: "Wow, this one has a lot of berries", or "This one smells spicy", and "It has a lot of flowers."

It was good.

So it's going to be a regular thing. However, it won't always be cupping. I figure like 60% of the time, it will be, but I want to do more, like show off some of the brewing devices that we sell at the shop, but don't use. Siphon, Eva Solo, Clever, etc. This week, in the spirit of Summer, I'm going to mess around with some Iced Coffee, Toddy style. We'll see where it goes from there.

So yeah, if you're in town, Fridays at Noon. See you there.

-Ian.

P.S. I might put stuff up here that has nothing to do with coffee. For example, I'm hella strong and really feel like you, the reader, need to know about the 210 pounds I bench pressed last week. Or the fun little photoshop images I've been messing around with.

Yeah.

P.P.S. I replaced the cloth on my siphon with a GB5 dispersion screen. More on that later.