I'm hitting the road a little later today to head out west to Oakland for a week of roasting, cupping, coffee sing-alongs, and possible break dancing. This is a really exciting time for Coffee Shrub with the addition of Aleco Chigounis and the potential to do some really exciting things with the coffees that we're bringing in and offering. It's very affirming to experience how Shrub has grown and how many roasters have found what we do to be helpful.
Been working on getting the planets (or some of them at least) aligned, and it looks like we're getting pretty close with Jupitar, Venus, Mercury, and Mars all getting into the fun. What does all this mean for Coffee Shrub? For starters it means that Aleco is just getting back from his first Shrub mission to Ethiopia and Kenya, and word is that there are some stunning offerings lined up. It also means that there will be a Schooley trek out to Oakland in about two weeks.
In February the harvest is well underway in Central America. New coffees from CA are still a couple months away and it is increasingly harder to find coffees from last year's crops that don't show age. It is the time of year to take a close look at your CA coffees from last year, if you still have some. We've been looking at coffees both on the offerings list as well as coffees that we haven't yet offered in order to check for faded cups and age characteristics.
January is slipping through our fingers. But we have some busy, busy like Grant Green, fingers. There are some stellar new offerings from Rwanda, Kenya, and Colombia just launched on shrub in the last week or so. I've also been gearing up to host the Roasters Guild Executive Council annual January meeting here at shrub mountain headquarters in Fort Collins, CO. It will be a blast having all these folks in town, and on the night of Thursday the 26th there's going to be a coffee rodeo at the very super Cranknstein Coffee Roaster, Bike Shop, Tap Room.
This is a classic coffee from Acatenango that is very versatile. Wonderful as a Single Origin espresso, this lot works well all across the medium roast spectrum. Also, keep an eye out for an excellent new Panama lot we'll be adding soon, along with some other great El Salvador and Kenya lots.
I'm off early tomorrow (actually my ride will be here in about 45 mins) on my way to West Virginia to start setting up the Roasters Guild Retreat. Really looking forward to this year's retreat, we've been working very hard on delivering a challenging and engaging program. I'm most looking forward to seeing everybody who's coming out though. If you are coming out for the retreat and we haven't met, please be sure to introduce yourself.
The Manzano process experiments are up on shrub now. We're very happy to be able to offer the experiments all together as a full set to shrubland this year. Some ideas for presentation of these coffees for your employees and/or customers:
- Roast all 3 to the same degree, serve as a set from a single service brew method.
- Set up a cupping to present the roasted explain the different processes and have an open discussion about the differences found in the cup.
If you have been following us on twitface, you might have noticed that I've been doing fun tastings/pairings/cuppings with some folks at Northern Colorado's Odell Brewing Company, mainly Linsey Cornish one of the brewers who works on their weekly Firkin project. I was really excited to try to do a coffee beer with Odell for a multitude of reasons: 1. Odell makes some really fantastic beers, 2. Specialty coffee has a lot to learn from the Craft Beer industry and we share a common audience (or would very much like to share their audience), and 3.
Here it is, the stock report. I know you've wanted it. There are a number of new coffees that have gone up in the last couple of weeks, and if you aren't awares of them, let me open your eyes to some very interesting coffees that would pair very nicely with some of the coffees that are already up or are a great introduction/representation of some different varietals:
We are very happy to be able able to offer to you this year 2 very different coffees from Carmen and Rafael Silva Hoff at Siberia Estate in El Salvador: Siberia Estate Bourbon and Pacamara. We very much try to present coffees to you which can inspire discussion and this is a great opportunity to start a conversation at your roastery or shop about varietal differences. Please take the opportunity to taste these coffees side by side, not only is it an interesting pairing but both are just fantastic coffees.
