This Sunday I will be hosting an open lab at Espresso Parts from 10-3. The lab will be strictly slow brew, no espresso. In the near future I will hold an espresso lab session but for now we will focus on manual brewing. Batdorf & Bronson has donated three pounds of Guatemala Antigua for us to play with. Huge thanks to them for helping out and being an active member of the coffee community! Feel free to bring any coffee you have that you might want me to help you brew better. I look forward to seeing you there!
The USBC started yesterday. Today the semifinals were held and two of my co-workers participated. Sarah Dooley and Robbie Britt represented Espresso Parts in the Fullest. It makes me proud to have that kind of talent in our company. It was so great to watch competitors from Sam Purvis to Scott Lucey be amazing representatives for our industry. Every year the competitors get even better and make the rest of us practice even harder to be great. Here are the finalists:
1. Kevin Bohlin (Ritual)
2. Pete Licata (Honolulu Coffee Company)
3. Trevor Corlett (Macap)
4. Lorenzo Perkins (Cafe Medici)
5. Ryan Knapp (Macap)
6. Nik Krankl (Gelato Bar & Espresso Cafe)
The first brewers cup was held this weekend and two of my good friends competed. Jared Gum and Mike Cannon repped well for the PNW and have made it to the Finals! I am so glad these two made it, they have worked their asses off since NW regionals and deserve to win it. Good luck guys!
Espresso Parts is hosting a USBC finals viewing party tomorrow starting at 10am and going until the winners are announced. So come to the Olympia lab and make coffee with us while we watch the finals!
I have been going to the lab on Sunday’s to keep sharp, especially now that I don’t work in a cafe. After the first few times I decided I needed to have at least one other person to try the coffee I was making, before my next lab session I tweeted an open invitation to whoever was in the area. My really good friend Larissa who roasts for Seattle Coffee Works was my first visitor for my Trifecta blog. We had a lot of fun and the extra company was nice to have. Last week I had three people visit but I really want to talk about this weekend.
My Sunday started normally I had some breakfast and got my things together for the lab. I jumped on my bike and headed to EP with nothing in particular to work on this week. First I made a Clever of the Guatemala Finca Santa Isabel and headed over to Oly coffee to chat with the staff (we share the same building as Olympia Coffee Roasting Co. and I used to work there). Jared and Carson were working and I invited them over if they had extra time to play. Mr.Elvin was in the cafe so he and I chatted it up for a minute and as I was leaving I noticed my friend Rebeka was there so I invited her over too. After a while I headed back to the lab to start lab time.
As I was getting everything together Mike from shipping showed up. Mike just moved here from Mass. and is looking forward to learning more about coffee. We chose to brew with the clever, which has become my favorite brewing method as of late. Mike really liked how easy it was to use and was impressed with the quality of the coffee. Shortly after that Rebeka and her friend Sara showed to make some coffee. Next up we brewed a syphon using an infrared beam heater and F.S.I from Oly coffee. Everyone loves the show you get when using the syphon and the IR beam heater really adds to that. I normally don’t brew with the syphon because it’s not the easiest thing to use and I really don’t like the cloth taste. A few more people trickled in and before I knew it there were ten people in the lab! We have a new guy from Oakland, his name is Jeff and he’s pretty cool. Jeff dialed in the Big Truck blend from Oly coffee, it ended up tasting sweet with some hints of lemon and had a very syrupy body.
It was so much fun sharing great coffee with people who want to learn more about our industry. This was definitely one of my favorite coffee days I’ve had in a while. The whole room was filled with people eager to learn share techniques and make coffee better. It makes me feel great that even in this small town there are people who do care about the craft and embrace specialty coffee. I want to make it easier for coffee consumers that maybe haven’t worked in a cafe before and lack some basic knowledge that we think of as common sense to join us in celebrating coffee. Educating our customers is one of the most important things we can do. The more we educate our customers the more they can enjoy and appreciate the experience we provide with this amazing beverage. KEEP EDUCATING AND APPRECIATING YOUR CUSTOMERS, without them we wouldn’t have anything to do.
Thursday Rusty from Bunn visited the Espresso Parts lab to demo the Trifecta. We had coffee from Dillanos as well as Batdorf & Bronson to play with. To show us the inner workings Rusty removed the cover and back splash panel which was very easy to do. There is a 20 oz boiler on the bottom right side of the machine as well as pumps for the turbulence/press out air. The drain is in the cup support, you must make sure to keep the drain tube clear of grounds. We had a bit of a build-up and had to hit it with some Puro Caff to clear the line.
We adressed my issue about the screen not coming out, the trick is to push a lot harder than you think you should. Unfortunately the Trifecta does not have the ability to have a hot water rinse, there are ways around this. What you can do to get a hot rinse is to set your brewing parameters to just fill and press out. We learned Pre-wet is cold water although the manual says to use it for coffee, it is only for tea preparation. I was really happy with the turnout and I feel like Rusty did a great job showing us the ins and outs of the Trifecta. After all the technical stuff we started to brew. I’ve attatched our initial notes from dialing in the Nicaragua Finca Los Milagros. We brewed around three pounds total, cleaning the machine was a breeze and we were able to brew a lot very fast. FYI a Coava Disk fits in the Trifecta handle…just sayin’. The EP lab was full, the coffee was tasty and fun was had.
Thoughts of Clouds 
