Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/123507
OFF THE WIRE continued from page 18 says. "While I work, I talk and listen to fun music, and that's what I did on stage. I wanted to represent me as a barista and as a person." On the Brewers Cup side, the New York-based McCarthy took first place using a coffee many of her barista colleagues likely know well: the Hacienda Esmeralda gesha variety. Esmeralda is a farm located in Panama, and it gained worldwide recognition in 2004 when one of its gesha lots took first place at the Best of Panama cupping competition. Onstage at the Brewers Cup, McCarthy paid homage to the bean's celeb status. "I called it the 'Meryl Streep of coffee,'" she says. McCarthy's gesha was harvested in January and roasted by Counter Culture. She admits it was a little unorthodox bringing such a well-known coffee into a competition landscape—many baristas use the USBC and Brewers Cup to introduce the rest of the industry to quality coffees their companies may have recently discovered. "I wanted to talk about how this coffee is so good that it comes with a set of expectations and it holds up to them," says McCarthy, who is a machine technician at Counter Culture and is a previous employee of Ithaca, N.Y.-based Gimme Coffee and 1000 Faces Coffee in Athens, Ga. "I think that the U.S. coffee community, when something is talked about for a long enough time, it's kinda like, 'OK, we get it.' But this coffee is still one of the best coffees I've ever tasted." McCarthy brewed the Esmeralda using the Kalita paper-filter pour-over method. The Kalita is similar to other pour-over cones but features a flattened bottom, which McCarthy says creates extremely even distribution of grounds across the bed of coffee. She brought even more consistency to the brew by filtering out the finest particles in the grind before her routine and using a silicone "flow restrictor" in her pouring kettle during the second half of the brewing process—the idea was to reduce agitation at the tail end of brew and bring out the Esmeralda gesha's renowned clarity. Second place at the U.S. Brewers Cup went to Jonathan Bonchak from Counter Culture, while Sean Stewart of Nashville, Tenn.'s Crema took third. —Chris Ryan and Dan Leif TEA SELLERS HAVE A FORMIDABLE NEW COMPETITOR— COFFEE ROASTERS Tea consumers in Toronto will soon be encountering another line of loose leaf at cafés, restaurants and specialty stores around their area. The brand, called Benchmark, includes 10 tea and herbal blends, all presented in hip Mason-jar-based packaging. So is Benchmark the latest Kickstarter-fueled tea upstart looking to tap the growing interest in quality leaf in North America? Actually, the brand is a fairly calculated effort from a company most Canadian café dwellers probably know well: Reunion Island. The Ontario roaster has helped build the specialty-coffee movement in Eastern Canada since the mid1990s, but in recent years the company has also started focusing on loose leaf. Consumer interest in tea has been rising, and wholesale accounts were looking for suppliers that could bring quality product. "If a roaster who's supplying them can also get them good tea, that's awesome," says Reunion Island's Adam Pesce, who managed the development of Benchmark. "That's one less order, one less invoice, one less check to cut at the end of the month. … Good luck competing." Reunion Island is not the only specialty roaster that's recently SHOP CHOP: Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee announced it will close 80 U.S. locations and "transition" another 88 to Peet's Coffee & Tea establishments. Among the major cities in which Caribou will close most of its locations are Chicago and Charlotte. German investment firm Joh. A. Benckiser acquired both Peet's and Caribou in 2012, and it will reportedly focus on growing Caribou in Minnesota markets. | continued on page 22 20 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com