Reason to Write
The Holiday Cupping
The moments that were created were just familial, and that was the “Friendsgiving” I needed.
I’m happy to hold space for folks to come by early. Some people came by at least an hour before, and the time was just people eating lunch and chilling while I knocked out some roasts to put on the table.
I tried a couple profiles for Ethiopian coffees, two washed and one natural processed coffee. One profile I wasn’t too satisfied with, but I kept on the table to taste– it didn’t crack.
Honestly though, I am surprised at how a coffee tastes after recognizing what it went through during the roast. Learning to roast for sure made me a better taster, but it also made me a more relaxed taster. I consider so may different angles now when tasting a coffee.
The evolution went from tasting a coffee, to then tasting a brew, then the roast, which might be backwards to most people’s experience. There was this noise called the dial, and I couldn’t listen past it to hear the coffee. The next phase over was what I learned about roasting, and so my bias was to taste and parse out a roast and stop thinking about a coffee.
Now however, having more of these skills in the pocket, I feel like I’m tasting coffee again– ignoring all the noise and listening to a coffee sing.
Feeling parallel, I think these weekly writings have bore much fruit. At least, personally it feels that way. I enjoy the discipline created because of these summaries, and I like the journey of finding my voice on a platform.
The coffees were great! It was a table of what I had roasted (literally an hour before), and then another two tables of coffees the folks were happy to bring. Please bring a coffee to share! We fly through them quite quickly, so I need to do wider sourcing.
Moving forward, I think I’ll let most of the coffee talk happen at the table. People always come ready for dialogue and communicating shared flavor experiences. Come by and give them a taste– I’d love to hear what you think of the coffees.
Not only that, the last few weeks have been really nice to receive a helping hand. I try to clean up everything as a host, but everyone has been jumping in to help tear down and set up the cuppings. Thank you so much.
The end of the cuppings were what a lot of folks came for: pecan pie.
We had a lovely Friendsgiving hang out filled with plenty of industry talk and my wife telling old stories of me. For context, we got married on Black Friday in 2019, so the Thanksgiving season sets a certain tone for us as it coincides with our anniversary.
We had a couple hours of post-cupping coffee talk, then continued more coffee talk over dinner.
I truly value the community that’s been formed through these cuppings, and I hope you get the chance to come out to one of these soon.
Come share a coffee and bring a spoon! (No worries if not, I’m ordering more.)
Mitchell