By Sarah Allen
(Before I begin this post, I’d like to add a clarification from George Howell about my write up on his lecture this morning:
My point about the silver skin is that if beans with 90+% silver skin are sorted out, the cup will be far cleaner and sweeter (as well as far more expensive). One cannot remove silver skin on immature beans without polishing the beans and adding destructive heat. Also the astringency and harshness are to be found in the beans themselves, not the silver skin – which are only a reflection of the beans’ immaturity.
Thanks for the clarification, George!)
So a lot ”a lot ”has happened since the last time I blogged. I can hardly wrap my head around it all. Paul Songer followed George’s lecture with a fascinating discussion of roast chemistry, covering how changes in flavor of coffee due to roasting occur, acids, types of simple carboxylic acids, chlorogenic acids, minerals, phosphoric, nitrogenous compaunds, lipids, carbohydrates, sugar browning, and on and on and on.
Since I’m the farthest thing from a scientist you could get, I’ll leave the nitty gritty to Paul to explain ”just watch the vidoe of his lecture that Zachary will be posting soon. But bravo, Paul ”your lecture was truly heavy stuff and made for great discussion the rest of the day.
Soon after lunch, Zachary and I headed to the Nordic Barista Cup event space to see how things were moving along, and wow! The event space is terrific! It’s near the university, so there are tons of people strolling around, and the space itself has a great espresso bar in the first floor, and a great big lecture hall upstairs, which is big enough that the cuppings will take place in the same room. I can’t wait!
I also got a sneak peek at these beauties, speaking of cupping…
So finally, we tore ourselves away from the NBC space and headed back to Solberg and Hansen, as well as Kaffa, where sessions on the Loring Smart Roast were taking place. Mark Ludwig, who designed the Smart Roast, was on hand to talk about it with attendees, and pretty much everyone was excited to find out more about this roaster.
Participants had a cupping of various coffees roasted on a Probat, and then also on the Smart Roast, and compared notes about them.
The discussion that followed was pretty interesting. Some prefer coffee roasted on the Smart Roast, because they feel it’s cleaner. But others love the old Probat, claiming there is more body in the cup. It seemed subjective at the end of it all.
The discussion continued, but I snuck off to S&H’s beautiful cafe space to do a blog post, when who should I see but my dear friend Tone Liavaag! She took me and Zachary on a great tour of the facilities.
And now, here we are back at Kaffa for an evening party to wrap up the Nordic Roaster and to celebrate the beginning of the Nordic Barista Cup! The menu for tonight: beer and hotdogs, yeah baby! Oh, but I also got a sneak peek, and yummy taste, of a special treat that the S&H guys have in store for us: Cascara beer, made with Aida’s Finca Las Alpes cascara. It was sooo good!
But I’m off to drink an Aass (no, tat’s not a typo) beer now, which is what’s on tonight’s menu ”and I’ll take it!
More to come!
