Last week I was in Stevenson, Washington for the 14th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat. Every year, a bunch of people who roast coffee professionally get together at a lodge and we talk with each other about what we do, we roast coffee, we do perhaps a little too much drinking (we have keg sponsors), and generally have a good time. It's usually my favorite coffee event of the year because of the hallway track, all of the conversations that happen outside of the organized activities. I had discussions with a lot of people on a lot of different topics this year.
I arrived late on Thursday, in time for the official start of the event. There were some introductory level classes offered through the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) earlier that day. I'd been asked about helping to teach some of those but my travel arrangements had already been made so I didn't do that, but this did mean that the roasting tent was set up and ready to use right away. This was the largest roasting tent the event has ever had with 18 roasters from over half a dozen different manufacturers available for attendees to gain hands on experience with. I made a short video where you can see all of the different machines in use. These machines are used both for classes that are offered during the event and a team roasting challenge. I've taught on all of these so I spent some time bringing people up to speed on how to use some of these. Outside of scheduled sessions there was a common area with an espresso machine and a brewing station. Airpots of coffee were also available if we didn't want to wait for either of these.
Attendees are grouped into teams for the previously mentioned challenge with the goal of creating a balanced mix of experience on each team. This year teams were given five different coffees to roast and three different cold brew devices and the challenge was to create the best tasting cold brew using these. Not really an area of interest for me (takes too long to prepare) but some of the conversations surrounding that did give me some ideas that I intend to explore when I have the time.
Friday had two sessions in addition to time on the roasters. First was a segment known as Symposium@. The SCAA has an event called Symposium before its annual expo, and probably the fastest way to describe it would be TED talks for the coffee industry, but that's an expensive event to get out to so Symposium@ brings some of the conversations from Symposium to events like the Roasters Guild Retreat or Barista Camp and makes that more accessible. The other session was a report on the latest in a long running series of investigations that the Roasters Guild has been involved with on coffee staling, this time focusing on how certain variables (rest time prior to packaging, nitrogen flushing, folding down the bag) affect the quality of coffee within the first 10 days after roasting. (for those wondering, there's a small benefit to having a little [but not too much] rest time before packaging, nitrogen flushing is slightly detrimental to flavor [but you get something much more stable if you extend the staling over a longer amount of time], and while the numbers hadn't been crunched on bag folding since we were doing that evaluation at this event, I personally scored the coffees in the folded bags higher in a blind evaluation.) This series of studies is particularly interesting as the number of participants is much larger than normal in sensory studies.
Saturday had two slots for SCAA classes. There were several options here, but I took one on sensory analysis where we learn about different types of analysis, considerations when setting up a study, reasons why you would want to perform certain studies, ways to compensate for or eliminate different types of bias, physiology, things like that. On the second session I was helping to teach a class on espresso roasting and blending. This is a new class where participants taste different roasts of a couple coffees as espresso prepared by an expert barista, taste some different blends of those coffees, and then they get to roast that coffee keeping what they've tasted in mind and what they want to present as espresso. They could then take that home to evaluate what they've done.
Short wrap up on Sunday. Overall a good event. Would attend again.
14th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat
Last week I was in Stevenson, Washington for the 14th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat. Every year, a bunch of people who roast coffee professionally get together at a lodge and we talk with each other about what we do, we roast coffee, we do perhaps a little too much drinking (we have keg sponsors), and generally have a good time. It's usually my favorite coffee event of the year because of the hallway track, all of the conversations that happen outside of the organized activities. I had discussions with a lot of people on a lot of different topics this year.
I arrived late on Thursday, in time for the official start of the event. There were some introductory level classes offered through the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) earlier that day. I'd been asked about helping to teach some of those but my travel arrangements had already been made so I didn't do that, but this did mean that the roasting tent was set up and ready to use right away. This was the largest roasting tent the event has ever had with 18 roasters from over half a dozen different manufacturers available for attendees to gain hands on experience with. I made a short video where you can see all of the different machines in use. These machines are used both for classes that are offered during the event and a team roasting challenge. I've taught on all of these so I spent some time bringing people up to speed on how to use some of these. Outside of scheduled sessions there was a common area with an espresso machine and a brewing station. Airpots of coffee were also available if we didn't want to wait for either of these.
Attendees are grouped into teams for the previously mentioned challenge with the goal of creating a balanced mix of experience on each team. This year teams were given five different coffees to roast and three different cold brew devices and the challenge was to create the best tasting cold brew using these. Not really an area of interest for me (takes too long to prepare) but some of the conversations surrounding that did give me some ideas that I intend to explore when I have the time.
Friday had two sessions in addition to time on the roasters. First was a segment known as Symposium@. The SCAA has an event called Symposium before its annual expo, and probably the fastest way to describe it would be TED talks for the coffee industry, but that's an expensive event to get out to so Symposium@ brings some of the conversations from Symposium to events like the Roasters Guild Retreat or Barista Camp and makes that more accessible. The other session was a report on the latest in a long running series of investigations that the Roasters Guild has been involved with on coffee staling, this time focusing on how certain variables (rest time prior to packaging, nitrogen flushing, folding down the bag) affect the quality of coffee within the first 10 days after roasting. (for those wondering, there's a small benefit to having a little [but not too much] rest time before packaging, nitrogen flushing is slightly detrimental to flavor [but you get something much more stable if you extend the staling over a longer amount of time], and while the numbers hadn't been crunched on bag folding since we were doing that evaluation at this event, I personally scored the coffees in the folded bags higher in a blind evaluation.) This series of studies is particularly interesting as the number of participants is much larger than normal in sensory studies.
Saturday had two slots for SCAA classes. There were several options here, but I took one on sensory analysis where we learn about different types of analysis, considerations when setting up a study, reasons why you would want to perform certain studies, ways to compensate for or eliminate different types of bias, physiology, things like that. On the second session I was helping to teach a class on espresso roasting and blending. This is a new class where participants taste different roasts of a couple coffees as espresso prepared by an expert barista, taste some different blends of those coffees, and then they get to roast that coffee keeping what they've tasted in mind and what they want to present as espresso. They could then take that home to evaluate what they've done.
Short wrap up on Sunday. Overall a good event. Would attend again.