In the Grinder - Our Daily Coffee Weblog

This weekend Noah and Jamin took off to Skamania Washington for the 2010 Roasters Guild Retreat. We really enjoyed visiting some of our friends and their shops in Portland before the event and checking out the city Minneapolis ousted at the #1 bike friendly city in the US. I could go off on a tangent about this, but honestly, Portland shut down a main road in the city and made it a bike lane permanently, so I highly doubt any city can top that, including my beloved Minneapolis.

The retreat itself was an amazing experience. The backdrop of the Skamania Lodge looks like it was just cut out of a postcard. As Jamin so eloquently put it, "Oh this is what Pandora is like". What a great spot in the Colombia River Gorge.

The variety of classes and workshops at the retreat were extremely insightful. We were able to brush up on Q skills, Roasting, Grinding, and other coffee related topics. I personally found the breakout session round table discussion extremely eye opening. We were broken down into tables and asked to challenge a number of topics like the future of Fair Trade, the supply of specialty coffee, and how relationship coffee can survive plus $2.00 prices to name a few. There were other greenies like us, roasters, shop owners, and others that made up an extremely wide cross section of our industry. I loved hearing perspectives from everyone.

The other really fun challenge was being broken up into 12 teams of 8 and asked to roast and blend an award winning mix of Guatemalan Coffee graciously donated by ANACAFE. Our team made a blend of creamy Coban (25%), intense Acatenango (50%), and sweet San Marcos (25%). We were pretty proud of our blend, but came up just short of the glory. We got 2nd place. Next year we are going to take it all.

What a great weekend and great experience.

We cannot wait for next year! For more information on future Roasters Guild events, visit www.roastersguild.org.