Archive for the ‘Coffee Education’ Category

I have been pondering the blessed and wonderful world I live in and the fruits of my days. A Cuban cigar, a glass of Single Malt here, a lunch at a log cabin there. Such excess I know, but collecting knowledge along the way. Not just puffing on the leaves of expensive smoke and the beans of vanity, but great stuff that perhaps folks would like to read about? On Facebook everyday, I trade stories and photos of who is smoking what that day, so I am not alone.

I am really on the fence about this one. What about folks who have nothing? What about second hand smoke and alcoholics who curse my name? Vegetarians and decaf drinkers? If I gush about these things I love who will read my drivel anyway?

The headquarters of “My Amazing World”  would be this gingerbread log home, Auberge Gertrude in the Grey Highlands near Georgian Bay, Ontario. Pretty hot cost of admission I’d say. Then there is the Canadian ability to buy and smoke Cuban cigars. I have a couple of hundred Facebook friends who share this passion with me and show photos of what we light up throughout the day. I call this “Cigar Porn”.

Also on my list, which I call the “$25 list” – incredible things you buy for this amount – can be topics for discussion. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, coincidentally a product I sell from my company Rocketfuelcoffee.com (no coincidence at all!) , a fabulous ribeye steak from Scotch Mountain Meats, a glass of incredible Single Malt Scotch of your choosing or a pretty good bottle of red wine if you are clever. Get it?

OK, enough advertising, back to the topic at hand. Am I the one to talk about smoking cigars at the bottom of Blue Mountain while everyone else is skiing (I did that on Sunday), tasting Kopi Luwak Cat Poop coffee or going ice fishing? How about buying deer pelts on eBay or antique quilts at auction in Owen Sound? I think I am!

So keep watching as the subject matter broadens around here and of course, always served with fantastic coffee in the cup.

Cheers!

What the heck is she talking about now?

A couple of days ago I read a poll on Facebook by one of my distinguished colleagues in the coffee biz, asking the population if they prefer Fair Trade Coffee. Now I voted on the ground floor at 2 votes in but I could tell where this was heading. Of course coffee drinkers prefer Fair Trade coffee but do they really understand what that term means? Same goes for Organic, Bird Friendly, Rainforest and the new term from Intelligensia Coffee Company, Direct Trade?

Without entering into a glossary issue (look them up if you want), my point is, folks ask these questions about their coffee but then use other products in their home that basically commit mass murder or slavery. My recent obsession with grass-fed delicious steak led me to an article by accident about the kosher slaughter of cows. Let me tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein should pray their son Herschel should grow up to be a doctor not a “Shoychet” (a butcher who kills animals in a kosher slaughterhouse). Yechh. And what of the child or labor who makes your clothes? Enough talk about that. Time for cheerier talk!

When you enjoy a rare coffee from a specific place such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, Komodo Blue Dragon, the Fair Trade issue is off the table. There is not enough of the stuff to require price fixing or unions to harvest it. Usually a small group of growers, perhaps a co-op, sometimes families, grow it and that is it. It may be only available once a year. We may be lucky enough to get it at all. That is what makes it special. The care to harvest it and ship it is at the level of fine wines and cigars, and that is why the price is at a premium. Oh, but the taste is so worth it!

Now many of these wonderful coffees, like Panama Carmen Estate, also bear the mark of Rainforest Certified. This coffee is so wonderful if it had a symbol that said it was from the moon it would just be a bonus. We should drink a coffee because we love it. After all, it may the start of our day, right?

Cup Tasting Championships are exciting competitions. Four participants at a time taste coffees arranged in eight triangles (groups of three). In each triangle, two cups are identical, one is different. Using skills of smell, taste, memory and concentration, the competitor will try to identify the odd cup out in the triangles, in the shortest time possible. After eight minutes, the round stops and the competitor discovers how many correct done by lifting their selections to reveal whether or not it has the tale-tale dot on the bottom of the cup.

On day one, 12 participants compete in three heats (four participants per heat). After all three heats, the top four scorers (those that have identified the most correct coffees in the shortest amount of time) advance to the final round to be held on day two.

In the final round, all four finalists compete together and the competitor that makes the highest number of correct selections in the least amount of time wins and is named Canadian Cup Taster Champion.

The Canadian Cup Tasters Championship will take place on the demo stage at the Canadian Coffee & Tea show in Toronto. Round one happens at 3:00 – 4:30 pm on Sunday, September 26, 2010. The finals round will be held from 3:00 to 4:00 pm Monday September 27, 2010.

Lisa Rotenberg of Rocketfuelcoffee.com will be one of the twelve competitors in this distinguished list of tasters:

Amber Fox – Ecco Caffe

Andrea Piccolo – Swiss Water Decaf

Barrett Jones – 49th Parallel and USA Champion

Ben Cram – Fernwood Coffee Company

Geoff Polci – Crema Coffee Co.

Jean-François Leduc – Saint-Henri micro-roaster

Joaquin Quian – Fratello Coffee

Laura Perry – Bridgehead Coffee

Lisa Rotenberg – rocketfuelcoffee.com

Mark Prince – CoffeeGeek.com

Matthew Lee – Manic Coffee

Pat Russell – Second Cup

Peter Burbridge – Java Blend Coffee Roasters

Sammy Piccolo – sammypiccolo.com

Steve Souphanthong – Social Coffee & Tea Company

Thiago Trovo – Te Aro Roasted

So raise your coffee cup and give it a whiff, a slurp and a thorough taste in honor of us! Let the competition begin and best of luck to all! Cheers!

“Top Shelf” of my humidor… Behike, Davidoff, Tatuje, Drew Estate Limiteds. The cigars of dreams.

In the Specialty coffee business, of which I am a member as a retailer in www.rocketfuelcoffee.com, the coffees beans we sell and drink every day are exquisite. Jamaican Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, Kopi Luwak. Not only is access to these beans privileged, but learning about the various varieties and often speaking directly to their growers, distributors and writers who comment on them is a privilege as well. As a member of the Specialty Coffee Association Of America, I can go on trips, attend shows, workshops, even get accreditation in this chosen field and get paid for the joy of coffee. All I have to do is ask once I show I have the knack for it and time.

A similar world exists in the cigar smoking community. Online forums, festivals, trade shows and societies. A visit to my site www.hisandherf.com barely scratches the surface of this world, but you can get the idea. The equivalent to the top of the line coffees stated above would I guess include Cohiba, Montecristo, Davidoff and any number of coveted bands. But like wines, the verticals or years cigars are issued, their rarity and where you live can drive up their value. Trading cigars and buying from collectors is where the real money is if you ask me.

Cohiba Behike BHK 52′s. Online $40-50 per stick. In Canada, $80 per stick. Worth it? Hell yeah.

Which brings me to my topic du jour, the parallel of the cigar and coffee enthusiast who delves into the best of the best. If you get to buy Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee every day at $25/half pound, what is Sanka going to taste like after that? Cow pee. That’s what. And if you smoke Arturo Fuente Hemingways, Davidoffs or a Dunhill Red Range stick, a smooth creamy cigar, are you going to settle for some modest smoke, even if it says Habana on it? I don’t think so. And if you smoke a Cohiba Behike BHK 52, Cigar Aficionado’s 2010 number one cigar of the year, what then??

I have this activity. I take photos of the cigars Matthew and I smoke and I put the pictures up on Facebook. My friends, and there are quite a few of them who are cigar buffs, also show theirs. Cigar porn I like to call it. As the photo collection has grown, it is great to note that less and less are ISOM – Island south of Miami. Educated smokers have broad horizons and know there are so many great cigars to choose from as coffee lovers know there are great coffees all over the world. But the best ones come at a price and there is a reason they cost what they do. Unlike wines, where you may find a bottle for $12 and a few folks can share it, you may find a cigar for $6 but one person smokes it and *poof* it is gone. And those numbers add up!

A collection of gorgeous bold cigars, estimated value, $100.

All I am saying is Kopi Luwak coffee, the cat poo bean, Rocketfuelcoffee.com sells for $55 a quarter pound. This spectacular coffee sits in my coffee stock and I do not drink it. It is too expensive. And my humidor is heading in that direction. A $40 Behike and a $45 Limited Edition Davidoff 8.5″ Salomone? I only have so many special occasions. I keep trading coffee for these gorgeous sticks. I need to aim a bit lower so I can have some cigars to smoke everyday.

Cheers!