Western Regional Barista Championship

The world is back on the road toward crowning another barista champion, taking the helm over from last year’s winner Gwilym Davies. The next qualifying event in the US is the Western Regional Barista Championship, taking place in LA this weekend — 2/26 – 2/28 — at Siren Studios on Sunset. Baristas from California and Hawaii will be competing against each other to qualify for the US Barista Championship later this year. That final winner will then compete on the international stage against other national champs from around the world.

In addition to the competition itself, they usually have other great events that coffee lovers in general will enjoy. This year, they’re holding an ‘Origin to Art: Coffee Expo and Art Exhibit’ during all three days of the competition that will feature tastings, demonstrations and interaction.

Hoping to catch one of the competitions in your region? There’s a few more left to go and you can find out more from the main US Barista Championship website.

Velton’s Limited Edition Holiday Blend 2009

Last year’s dark roast drip coffee holiday blend was so popular, Velton spun it off into the Twilight Blend. This year, he’s introduced a coffee suitable for espresso and drip, that features an equal amount of Bourbon Arabica beans from Brazil and El Salvador. We love its buttery and smokey flavors, balanced with a little cocoa and a little sweetness. Packed up in a gorgeous red bag, this limited edition coffee is an excellent holiday gift!

Get yours now — available through 1/15/10, or until supplies last.

Home Barista Wish List Giveaway 2009

One of our favorite online stomping grounds, Home-Barista, is running a holiday Wish List Giveaway contest to promote awareness of their website and others in the online coffee and espresso community. If you’ve got some time to kill or are looking to pick-up some brand new toys, check out the full details of the contest on their site. They are also a rich information source for more technically-minded home espresso enthusiasts.

We’re participating as sponsors this year and so will be offering three different levels of prizes:

• Gift: 1 free Baratza Vario burr grinder
• Delight: 10 coupons for 10% off any Rocket espresso machine
• Surprise+: 50 coupons for a free bag of Velton’s Bonsai Blend for espresso

Have fun while increasing your espresso knowledge and maybe winning a little somethin’ somethin’!

Calling All Coffee Artists: $250,000 Prize

We received a missive from Barista Exchange last week concerning ArtPrize, an upcoming international art contest taking place in Grand Rapids, MI, September 23rd – October 10th. The contest features a $250,000 grand prize, which will be voted on by the community that attends the contest, and additional prizes for the top 10 placing artists.

It’s a unique and groundbreaking attempt to open up the interaction between artists and their audiences, including how their work is shown. Each participant must secure their own viewing venue somewhere in the city of Grand Rapids — after they’ve been accepted by ArtPrize, they need to connect with and secure their slot in one of the volunteer venue locations.

One such venue is MadCap Coffee Company, the source of the email we received, who is looking for artists within the coffee community:

“madcap will be offering its space as an artists venue. we have an amazing site with lots of visibility. our first option is to offer this site to an artist within the coffee community, that can highlight and draw attention to the world of coffee. maybe you are a farmer that is also an artist, or an artist and barista that has traveled to origin and can showcase coffee in all of its attributes. if so, we would like to talk with you.”

Interested? Contact MadCap directly at chad@madcapcoffee.com

Kona Coffee Cultural Festival 2009

If you’re like us, you’re pretending that these long summer days won’t end — but we all know that they will and, if you’re also like us, you’ll have several months of dreary weather to work through before you get to your next crop o’ sunshine.

The best way to beat those mid-winter blues (and also give yourself something fabulous to look forward to)? Start planning an adventure to one of the world’s most celebrated coffee regions, of course! Infuse your winter with a little tropical sunshine while also engaging in one of our favorite festivals: the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, located on the Big Island from November 6 – 15, 2009. Featuring workshops, parades, the Miss Kona Coffee pageant, several contests and cuppings, this diverse and delicious festival has something for everyone. The official site also has a PDF driving tour for visitors to poke around the Kona coffee region on their own.

Giro D’Italia Giotto Auction Opens Today!

We are thrilled that today kicks off our series of five auctions of Giro D’Italia Giottos to benefit the non-profit organization Coffee Kids! This is such an awesome machine — we’re still waiting for them to arrive (they needed to engrave the name of 2009 winner Denis Menchov) and we can’t wait to get our grubby little paws on them.

These machines take all of the excellent performance and functionality of the Giotto Premium Plus and accent it with several specialized touches that make this limited edition stand apart — and since we’re the only US importer bringing these machines in stateside, these unique collector’s items are incredibly rare as well. But while your friends will be coveting the gorgeous stainless steel design or perhaps the Maglia Rosa-inspired pink manometer, the bragging rights will really be about all the money you donated to Coffee Kids, giving you a direct hand in helping to support tons of community projects for coffee growing families throughout Central America.

Check out the full details on the machine and our auction!

5 Giro D’Italia Giottos Auctioned to Benefit Coffee Kids

You know we’re big fans of Rocket Espresso and think that the Giotto Premium+ and Cellini Premium+ are some of the best prosumer espresso machines on the market. When Rocket contacted us about a limited edition model of the Giotto that they designed in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Giro D’Italia cycling race, we thought we’d make buying this collector’s item a little bit more special.

And what better way to do that then to auction them off and donate all the proceeds to the non-profit organization Coffee Kids? We love their mission and we love Rocket, so for us they go hand in hand.

Beginning on 6/19/09 and continuing through 7/24/09, we’ll be auctioning off one Giro D’Italia Giotto each week, 5 of the 100 total espresso machines available in this limited edition run. If you or someone you love digs cycling, owning this little piece of history will give you something to brag about — not only because these machines are so unique, but you’ll be giving to a really great cause, too!

Interested in learning more about the race, the machine or the auction? Check this out.

Beyond Kona: Hawaiian Coffee

The Big Island of Hawaii is the home of the world famous Kona coffee region, which has long been touted as producing some of the tastiest coffee in the world. But it's not the only source of delicious Hawaiian coffee — as we wrote about last month, Maui is undergoing a renaissance in coffee agriculture, and there is also a pretty serious emergence of another coffee growing region on the Big Island itself: Ka'u.

Big Island Video News has an interview with a Ka'u farmer that is quite interesting and they also show the recent Coffee Festival held in the area to promote the coffees from this region. Also, if you live in the islands or are planning on traveling there sometime soon, this great guide gives you a run down of the expansion of coffee agriculture throughout the islands, as well as some tips for visiting different plantations.

We're hoping to get to the Big Island later this year and look forward to sampling some of these emerging beans. Aloha!

2009 World Barista Champion: Gwilym Davies

The UK National Barista Champion, Gwilym Davies, took the top honor Sunday at the World Barista Championship! Held this year in conjunction with the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s exposition in Atlanta, the competition featured four days of trials and eliminations with participants from 52 countries. Throughout the course of the competition, Gwilym created four espressos, four cappuccinos and four signature drinks, coming out ahead of finalists from Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Korea and the US.

In addition to the super-tight title of World Barista Champion and a hefty trophy, Gwilym also walks away with a Victoria Arduino Athena espresso machine and Mahlkonig K30 grinder. He’ll reign supreme until next year’s competition, scheduled to take place at the June 2010 Specialty Coffee Association of Europe’s exposition in London.

Congrats to Gwilym!

Coffee: The World in Your Cup Lecture Series – First Lecture Update

Last night was the kick-off of the Coffee: From the Grounds Up lecture series that is being held in tandem with the Burke Natural History Museum's Coffee: The World in Your Cup exhibit. The series was kicked off by Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds, and was quite enjoyable. He discussed a lot of what is in his book, but here are some bits n' pieces we picked up that we thought were interesting:

• Caffeine is likely a natural pesticide that exists within the cherry to keep it from being decimated by tropical pests. This is similar to how coca leaves have a small amount of the chemical used to produce cocaine.

• There is a resounding myth around the discovery of coffee — replete with dancing goats and monks — but there is some evidence that, at some point, nomadic Ethiopian people discovered that grinding up the beans of the cherries, placing them in fat and then ingesting the mixture would help them travel long distances…and this practice is still in existence among nomadic tribes in that African region today.

• Brazil became such a big player because of two primary reasons: They had a lot of land and they were poised to take over the crop when the coffee rust disease nearly wiped out all of the bushes in Indonesia.

• Americans have a very emotional relationship to coffee and kind of act like it's our birthright that we should have access to cheap beans, regardless of market, environmental or political forces. There have been several times that frosts in Brazil resulted in an increase in bean prices — which then spurred congressional hearings to discuss the cause of the prices and find a way to resolve it! Communism was listed quite often as a cause during much of the cold war, and in 1962 there was an international coffee price agreement that was in affect until 1989, when the cold war ended. It was in our best interests politically to support the large coffee growing regions of the world, lest they fall pray to the evils of communist ideals!

• There has always been and always will be a boom/bust cycle in coffee agriculture, due in part to the economic drivers of coffee growing regions as well as the basic growing cycle of the bushes themselves. They take a few years to produce quality cherries, so a time investment can be lost if too many are grown or not enough, etc. Around 2001, there was a huge bust due largely to an overproduction of robusta coming out of Vietnam, which was being grown to the detriment of the native highland peoples there that were being systematically and forcefully removed and persecuted in order to make room for coffee plantations. This is something that hasn't been talked about much that we're going to look into more.

• Haiti was the site of the first and only successful national slave revolt, which included the burning down of coffee plantations and tons of the native trees. There are some theories that posit that the heavily denuded nature of Haiti and the removal of the colonial structures could play a part in the fact that hurricanes ravage it so often and it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere to this day. Another interesting topic for further research.

• Because carbon dioxide is produced during the roasting process, coffee has to be a bit stale to begin with if it's going to be packaged for export; this makes it not an easily manageable product for mass production, because the packaging can explode if the coffee wasn't allowed to sit long enough. With the invention of the one-way release valve that is seen on many high end coffee bean bags these days, however, the coffee can be packaged more freshly and this could mean that roasting could take place in the growing country instead of after it's exported to the consuming country. This could mean that there is room for future economic benefit in the growing countries, who could start roasting the coffee as well and then ship it out in bags with release valves.

Next week's lecture is on direct trade and we'll provide a similar synopsis of our thoughts here then. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or comments on what we shared here.