Guatemala COE

I’ve been foolish for the past 5 years.

I’ve been foolish in the sense that I have worked in coffee, and have not taken advantage of an extremely powerful tool that Minneapolis, and St. Paul have to offer coffee professionals, that Tool is Cafe Imports, and Jamin Haddox.

For those who don’t know, Cafe Imports is a green coffee importer, and wholesaler.  Their warehouse is equipped with an awesome cupping lab (no surprise there) and a really awesome coffee lab, equipped with a 2-group Synesso Cyncra, Robur, Anfim (temporary), Probat, Clover, Ditting, Fluke, and Extract Mojo among many other really cool little toys and tools.

Jamin is the Director of Quality Control for Cafe Imports, basically sample roasting and cupping everything that comes through the doors.  He’s awesome and has been super insightful to us and to the coffee industry in the Twin Cities.  Much thanks Jamin!

Jamin has also set up public cuppings of most of the Cup Of Excellence selections of which I haven’t had much of a chance to participate in (bad priorities on my part).  I recently was able to participate in the Guatemala COE cupping, and let me tell you, it was really cool!

The cupping was composed of two rounds of two tables of 7 coffees, 28 coffees total.

I was in attendance along with @MWalcher (Michael), @CoffeeBrigade(Shawn, my roommate), @madcapcoffee(Ryan Knapp),  and manager of @quixotic_coffee(Gordon), all from Madcap’s new account Quixotic coffee in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. also, @kopplins(Andrew Kopplin) @BullRunDan(Dan, my coworker) and of course Jamin.

COE Farm List

The cupping score in the box is mine (obvious) the one circled is the average of the room, the one above it is Jamin’s (most respected palate/Q cupper) the one way over on the left is the score from the judges at origin.

I was amazed at how consistent our room was considering that this was my first COE cupping and our group doesn’t typically cup 28 coffees at a time.