Saturday, January 29, 2011

New Harvest Roaster Visit

It's day's like this one that reminds me why I love my job so much. I got paid to take a field trip to visit my favorite local coffee roasters New Harvest Coffee in Pawtucket, RI.  Six of us from the store went. We spent the day with Todd and Brian showing us around and demonstrating a cupping for us.

 Part of their business is maintaining bar equipment and developing coffees for baristas to use. They ended our visit by making us all drinks. I have to say Brian won me when he grabbed the whole milk without asking (for anyone who hasn't spent some time behind an espresso bar the fattier the milk the creamier and sweeter the foam will turn out).

Todd (on the left) and Brian (on the right) conducted a blind cupping for us. Cuppings are the traditional way to taste new coffees. Since you're brewing directly in the cup without any sort of filter you get all the tasty coffee oil left in. They gave us a single origin from each of the three main growing regions (Africa, Central America, and the Indo-Pacific). I was a little bit rusty but was still able to determine the regions correctly.
 This is where they store all their green beans. I have a slightly bizarre love of the smell of burlap. In fact that mixed with the coffee roasting in the next room had me considering moving in.

This is one of their two roasters. This one was "Wolf Bain" I believe, the other was "Cupcake".

They were some of the nicest nerdiest guys I've met working in coffee. It doesn't hurt they're producing some of my favorite coffees to drink at home. I'm kinda partial to their Rwanda coffee but if the cupping taught me anything it's that I need to start exploring their other regional offerings.

1 comment:

  1. OH NOES. It appears that your cup of coffee is on the ceiling.

    PS YOU ARE A HUGE NERD. <3

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