Intro to Cupping Saturday May 6th

Saturday, May 6, 9:30 a.m.
@Victrola

Have you ever wanted to know just what it is you are tasting when you have a good cup of coffee? Or a bad one? Does coffee from Ethiopia really taste that different than coffee from Brazil? Now’s your chance to find out…

Come join us Saturday morning for an introduction to the coffee industry ritual of “cupping.” We’ll give a demonstration, and brief explanation of why and how one pays close attention to coffee. Then you’ll have a chance to taste and compare coffees from around the world.

By the time you leave, you’ll know be able to tell the bright, high notes of an African coffee from the thick, syrupy sweetness of a Sumatra. And you’ll have fun doing it!

You can e-mail Daniel to reserve a spot or ask any questions, or you can just show up at the café Saturday morning! And bring a friend. daniel (at) victrolacoffee (dot) com

Streamline..oh so good

The very beginning of a pull of a streamline americano…Chad has been rockin’ all the coffees, bringing out so much damn sweetness it brings us all to tears of joy every morning at the cupping table. We pull our Americano shots directly on top of the hot water to ensure that you get every last bit of that gorgeous steamline crema.
Just as an FYI, the lattes are just as killer.

Glass Arrival

The storefront glass finally arrived at the new Victrola Roastery this week. Much gratitude to the guys at Herzog glass for doing such a great job and having to endure much heavy lifting. We get so much natural light in the place! We can’t wait to be sitting at the window bar, looking towards downtown drinking our early am espresso….

Six Month Cleaning

Armed with scrapers, screwdrivers and rubber gloves Chris, Chad, Crow, April and I began our six month deep cleaning of the roaster.
Deep cleaning the roaster requires patience, muscle power and being ok with getting really, really dirty. This photo gives you an idea of what builds up on the insides of the roasting machine. We scraped it all out by hand. It was real fun.

After many hours of scraping, laughing, drinking coffee and eating many bagels, the roaster sparkled and was once again ready for another six months of production.

Cleaning of the Roaster..post to follow

Auction This!

Thanks to Jodi’s expert bidding skills and our friends at Solberg & Hansen in Oslo and Barefoot Coffee Roasters in California we won one of our favorite Colombia Cup of Excellence coffees, La Esperanza #1 this morning at auction!

Participating in these auctions is fun AND nervewracking! Fun when your group has the winning bid, nervewracking when you see another bidder keep upping the ante and pushing you out of your secure position OR when you are at the top of the bidding pile and you realize you might have to sell your first child in order to pay the exorbitant amount for that unbelievable bag of coffee!! This was the first time that we were responsible for doing all the bidding for our group. It involves sitting in front of the computer for several hours as the auction unfolds, making lots of phone calls back and forth with the members of the buying group to confirm that everyone is still on board as the price climbs and entering your bids to an online form. The auction page counts down in set increments of time. Every time a bid is placed, the clock refreshes itself and starts over. The auction ends when no bids have been placed within the set time increment.

La Esperanza #1, grown by Helio Francisco Rico and his family, is a beautiful coffee. We fell in love with it for its Kenya-like qualities and are looking forward to taking shipment on it sometime in the next few months. In the meantime, Daniel and Jodi will be holding a public cupping next Wednesday and will be featuring 6 of our favorite Colombia Cup of Excellence coffees including the Esperanza! If interested, please send an email to daniel(at)victrolacoffee(dot)com.

Faux Ding Dong

Hiroki Inoue is a genuis. He bakes some of Seattle’s most incredible desserts out of his charming shop in the Greenlake neighborhood right across the street from Eva restaurant. His most recent creation is a grown up verision of the classic ding dong. He calls them chocolate & chiffon Lamingtons. They melt in your mouth and are the perfect compliment to a streamline americano. Look for them in our cold case in the late afternoons and evenings.

23 Coffees

There is no better way to end a long and interesting week than with a massive cupping of some of the worlds finest coffees. By the end of Friday afternoon, Jodi, Chad, Daniel, April, Chris and I were high & happy from sniffing, slurping and (very little) spitting of the 23 First Harvest Colombia Cup of Excellence winners.

We were given a tutorial from Jodi on how to use the official Cup of Excellence scoring forms developed by the legendary George Howell. This form allows the cupper to evaluate the coffee in 8 categories: clean cup, sweetness, acidity, mouthfeel, flavor, balance, aftertaste and overall impression. Other things factored in are aroma (dry, wet & break), defects and roast color. The form is intimidating at first but by the second round we were all starting to get the hang of it.

We narrowed it down to 8 coffees that recieved our highest scores and we will be roasting and cupping another round this week to pick our top 2 or 3 that we hope to bid on at the Cup of Excellence auction at the end of this month.

Sample Roasting

While V2 is under construction, the mother-in-law cottage behind our house has become the “sample roasting shack”. The kitchen shelves and drawers are filled with green bean samples and our lovely 100g Probat sample roaster stands proud on the counter. Chris is the master of the sample roaster and the man behind the great coffees we purchase. He had a marathon sample roast going on this week with 23 batches of the winning Colombia Cup of Excellence coffees and some new Sumatras and Kenyans. When we know Chris is sample roasting, we get pretty excited! There is nothing more fun than cupping new coffees and making decisions on what to purchase next. Being a small company, we are so fortunate to be able to pick up a few bags here and there of some really special beans.