Shortly after my Sunday post summarizing a wonderful, coffee-fueled weekend at the Specialty Coffee Expo, I enjoyed a couple additional experiences thanks to long-time friend Stephen Vick of African Coffee Roasters. At the close of the conference, I was fortunate to join Stephen and a number of coffee luminaries he’d gathered together at Dan & Louis’ Oyster Bar, a Portland institution. I was a thrill to get to listen to the stories of people who had dedicated and sometimes risked their lives in the name of improving coffee, its producers, and consumer experiences. A coffee hero, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, who took tremendous risks to bring some of the best coffees in the world from war-torn Yemen to America, was among the group. Having sampled his coffees some years ago around the time Dave Eggers excellent book “The Monk of Mokha” was released, I can say without hyperbole that these Yemeni coffees are some of the most unique and wonderful offerings I have sampled. (You can learn more about Mokhtar and his coffees at portofmokha.com.)
The next morning, Stephen facilitated a cupping at the Proud Mary roastery of some unusual coffees from a teak farm in South Sudan that is seeking to diversify their crops as teak takes 25 years to mature. The coffee varietal Excelsa grows as a tree instead of a shrub so the farm provided samples from seven different trees to see if there were notable differences among them. While differences were slight, the coffees were very good and very complex. With continued coffee demand confronting the challenges of climate change, exploring new growing areas and varietals will be important.
This past week between this post and the Expo was the week of my final two retake examinations for my Q Grader License. After a poor showing on my practice test, I spent time practicing in the kitchen and was able to get 100% on my African Coffee Triangulation. While I didn’t get the same score on my Organic Acids exam, I was still able to pass. The journey to this licensing started in 2014, practicing with Kyle Larson and David George in the (then) relatively new Stumptown lab. I didn’t pass my first Q course that year but learned an immense amount from Scott Yost, Jim Hottenroth, Terry, and Rebecca during my tenure at DOMA. Sonia Srichandar taught me in a Q Cupping Essentials class in March of 2020, just before the Great Shutdown and Black Rabbit was gracious enough to rent lab space for practice when my work shifted out of coffee roasteries. As to avoid an Academy-esque thank you speech, acknowledging all those who aided me on this path, I’ll close by expressing my gratitude to Jodi Weiser and the excellent team at Gather Coffee who provided stellar instruction and guidance during my course last August and retakes this April.