Refactor this into my tasting sop

Class Prep

• pre-grind all of the coffees that will be used during the session
  • [list coffees and grinds here]

• prepare all of the tools that will be used

  • aeropress x2
  • melitta filter x4
  • scales x2
  • kettles x2
  • cups = people x2

• Minimal investment: drink coffee the way you already do, write down what the coffee is and whether you like it

• Some investment: intentionally try coffees prepared different ways ($5 Melitta, $15 French Press, $25 Bee House, $30 Aeropress)

• Goal: Learn the "bright lines" dividing coffee you like from coffee you don't.

The famous non-attributable quote goes “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. Don’t try to tell me who actually said it first, that’s mostly unimportant. What’s important is that writing and talking about any sensory experience is a rather challenging endeavor.

Pre-Class Survey

• How do you make coffee at home?
• What's your biggest barrier to "getting more into coffee"?
  • I want to know if it's cost, knowledge/difficulty, time, or something else?
  • If it's cost, I can develop a "cheap" pathway for getting into coffee.
  • If it's time, I can develop a "quick" pathway for getting into coffee.
  • If it's knowledge, I'll develop even more courses about what they want to know about.
• What, in your opinion, is the difference between "good" and "bad" coffee at home?

Demystification: Cupping vs Marketing vs Tasting

Building capacity means building the basic building blocks of taste: being aware of what you're drinking and being able to trust your own senses and descriptions of it.

Tasting coffee is like tasting wine, in that a lot of what you hear about tasting them is bullshit. There are three categories of tasting notes: tasting to accurately understand and describe the qualities in a coffee to describe to others (aka tasting for science), tasting to come up with fancy terms to sell more coffee (aka tasting for marketing), and tasting for yourself.

Let's completely ignore tasting for marketing. If someone starts trying to describe a coffee to you as having "notes of pomelo and dry-roasted eucalyptus", they're up their own ass trying to make it sound glamorous and unique.

What about cupping? (crib from the Hoffman article) We're not doing a cupping.

• https://angelscup.com/scaa-cupping
• https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/more-talk-about-coffee-lexicons/

Part 1: Why awareness and tracking matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npUErC5z9p4

Certain variables have an enormous impact on how your coffee tastes. The first part of this class is intentionally manipulating variables to show you how much of an impact they have. Once you know that these variables matter, you can start tracking them, keep them consistent and learn to trust your own sense of taste in deciding which values for those variables you like.

This means I'm going to intentionally limit the coffees to the Ethiopia Kembata (medium and light), Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (light and dark), Kenya Handege (dark and medium) and the Nicaragua Selva Negra (medium, French and Italian). We'll compare the coffees in sets of two to emphasize the difference between qualities:

• Bean (origin country, farm, name)
  • kenya vs nicaragua
  • indonesia vs organic mexico
  • ethiopia vs brazil
• Roast (light, medium, dark roast)
  • nicaragua medium vs italian
  • ethiopia yirgacheffe light vs dark
  • kenya handege medium vs dark
  • ethiopia kembata medium vs light
• Grind (give a picture of the mill settings)
  • coarse french press
  • auto drip
  • espresso
• Level of freshness (when the beans were roasted)
  • one month old
  • one week old
  • one day old
• Brew method (french press, pour-over, etc)
  • immersion vs pourover
  • chemex vs french press vs aeropress

Notebooks

Hand these notebooks out after a tasting class:
https://www.33books.com/products/33-coffees

• $4/notebook + $2.80 shipping (free shipping for $50+ order)

Part 2: Exploring different coffees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWapFZKnCjw

Exploration

• try one coffee two+ ways

  • pourover
    • bonmac (paper filter, cloth filter) > beehouse > kalita > v60
    • chemex (paper filter, cloth filter, metal filter)
  • immersion
    • aeropress (paper filter, cloth filter, metal filter)
    • french press

• try one method all ways

  • aeropress (paper, cloth, metal)
  • chemex (paper, cloth, metal)
  • bonmac (paper, cloth [have to buy a coffeesock])
  • beehouse (paper, cloth [have to buy a coffeesock])

GOAL: I want them to start tracking the coffees they're tasting and decide whether or not they like them. I want them to fill the book so that, at the end of the process, they can point to an origin or a roast-style or a brew method that they enjoy. I want to reiterate that Charlie has invited them to "whenever you want to, you can come in and have at the coffees to try."