Back in April The Grounds Roastery hosted our first coffee cupping event with the legends from Cofinet focussing on three unique Colombian coffee producers that we work with. We didn’t expect such an awesome turnout, but we ended up welcoming over 60 coffee lovers through the door, with all the ticket proceeds going to our friends from CafeSmart.

We were so chuffed to see it all come together, and the exciting news is we’re hosting another cupping challenge on June 26th dedicated to Ratibor Hartmann of Finca Hartmann, Panama. We’re partnering up with Latorre & Dutch and Moccamaster for this event and will be giving away a Moccamaster Thermal 1.25 Litre with Thermal Carafe to first place, valued at over $450! To read all about it, and to grab your tickets, click here.

To see a little about what went down at our Colombian event, read on…

We kicked things off by giving a presentation explaining our unique history with Cofinet. Having been lucky enough to see the progress Cofinet has made in the quality of their coffees and the work they have done with neighbouring producers in the last 5 years, it was key for us to be able to share this with everyone. Since working with the crew at Cofinet, we’ve been very grateful to have been connected with producers such as Luis, Rafael and Hector (the true stars of the show tonight!). Our inspiration for this event stems from these guys’ commitment to producing extraordinary coffees despite their lack of resources and the risk involved in growing and processing specialty coffees.

Then we got stuck into the fun stuff… enjoying some amazing coffees…

Andrew gathered everyone around the head cupping table and introduced the coffees from:

• Luis Anibal – Villa Betulia
• Hector Zuniga – Finca La Suiza
• Rafael Amaya – Finca La Virginia

We were never going to be satisfied to just host a standard coffee cupping, we had to mix it up (quite literally!) which is why we set up the cupping as a cup tasting challenge! This involved setting up one table as a reference table, in a standard cupping configuration with three cups per sample, then two identical triangulation tables. The triangulation tables were set up with three cups at each position – two cups being the same coffee and one odd one out. The challenge was to pick the odd one out and then pick the varietal – no easy task!

The judging was more intense than the latest election. Honestly, when it comes to cupping – we don’t mess around. In the end it was Carlos Escobar that took out the title – well deserved, as he successfully chose the odd cup for all 8 in the lineup. Our friends from Xtracted Espresso Solutions gave away some sweet prizes (Carlos from Cofinet took out second place but we stripped him of his prize).

It was really cool to open up our space for our friends, wholesale family, barista team and other coffee lovers. To see everyone come together and enjoy some amazing coffees with an amazing story, some bites from Chef Paul and a few beers, was an absolute blast.

If you’re keen to join us for our Panama Cupping Challenge on June 26, tickets are only $15 and you can grab them here.