Cupping, a Love Story

I went down to the store this morning (even though I was supposed to have today off) because there was a coffee in the roastery that I wanted to taste. It’s a natural Ethiopian, the first fresh Ethiopian crop I’ve had access to in a while. When I sniffed the bag the green beans arrived in (they were vacuum-packed in foil) it smelled like fresh grass and garden peas – sweet, starchy and wholesome.

I missed the first roast of that coffee yesterday. I missed the drop and the burst of fragrant vapor that fills the roastery when the beans are emptied into the cooling bin. I did get to smell the beans a few moments after they’d been roasted, though. The smell was muted, like most super-fresh coffee tends to be, but I could pick up promising sweet and floral notes.

I cupped it yesterday afternoon, a few hours after it had been roasted. The gas sat like a bubble on my tongue, but even still I could detect fructose sweetness, the promise of cherry. I couldn’t wait to get up this morning and taste it again. So this morning I did. Hauled my butt out of bed, rolled into yesterday’s clothes and trudged down to the shop. And there I cupped the coffee again.

Maybe it was just that I had my favorite Neil Young album on the noisebox. Maybe it was the peace and quiet of an industrial space still in bed. Maybe it was the fifty pairs of hands that cared for the coffee before I got it. Whatever the case, the coffee was stunning; Fresh cherries, creamy body, and an effervescent, delicate finish. And it’s not even peaking yet. I could still taste the CO2 muffling the other flavors.

I can’t wait for tomorrow because tomorrow I get to cup that coffee again. Time will have pulled the veil from the flavors. Tomorrow it will be perfect.

Pee Ess: This coffee isn’t on the board just yet. It’s coming up soon, though, so keep your eyes open, and don’t hesitate to ask if it’s available yet.

The End of Waste

In autumn, you guys supported our involvement in Carrot Mob, an organization that aims to use consumer power to affect positive environmental change. With your help, we raised just about 3000 bucks that we’ve promised to put back into the business in a way that’s going to shrink our environmental impact.

Today we’re happy to announce that it’s the end of waste at Discovery. Or, almost. There are still going to be a few things that do have to go into the garbage, but there are lots and lots of things that don’t have to be thrown out and in fact would be better recycled or made into compost. We’ve been meaning to find some way to recycle our everything, but just never got around to it. So, thanks, Carrot Mobbers. We have the means and a great excuse to put into place a huge recycling, reusing and composting program.

We’re starting to curb our waste by, well, getting rid of our big dumpster. It’s huge and ugly, leaks unknown nastiness into the drains, and, according to findings of our intrepid John and Justus, it holds piles of stuff that’s actually recyclable. The best way to encourage us to get serious about a recycling program, we figure, is to get rid of that puppy all together. So it’s going at the start of February.

We will keep two tiny micro garbage cans in the washrooms to provide disposal for the few things that genuinely cannot be recycled, composted or reused, but our goal is to become as waste-free as possible. No more could-have should-have, no more leeching of scary stuff into the drains, no more huge trucks coming by to empty the bins, no more plastic garbage bags getting thrown out and not recycled. We’re trying to achieve the end of waste.

We all ready compost all our coffee grounds, but with our new program, we’ll be stepping the composting up a notch. That means we’ll have enough to provide free compost to the community too, everything from spent coffee grounds to the dry, delicate chaff that comes from the roaster and is, we’ve heard, an excellent mulch. If you want some, bring a bucket (or a truck!) and come to the cafe to find out where we keep it.

Thanks again to the Carrot Mobbers. You guys got us pointed in the right direction. And thanks to everyone who helped us raise enough money to build the compost and recycling bins, and the storage shed that’s going to double as a secure staff bike lock up (’cause emissions is garbage too, guys).

Happy New Year

Happy new year folks!

Here’s a list of the cool things you guys collectively did involving coffee in 2009:

– Took a total of 9 classes all about tasting, brewing and cupping coffee.

– Drank somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000 cups of coffee off the Clover.

– Donated over 300 lbs of coffee to the Open Door (so much coffee, in fact, that we’ve gone through way more than we anticipated and need to order a month a head of schedule)*.

– Helped us open the Oak Bay store.

– Lowered our environmental impact (more to come on this in the next few weeks!)

– Supported the Mustard Seed with food donations.

– Raised over 100$ for the Times Colonist pennies-for-presents drive.

– Drank over ten metric tonnes of coffee. Woah.

*I should add that all this coffee has been raised but not all of it donated. We simply didn’t have enough people to roast all the extra coffee during the crazy that was December, so the donations will continue into January until we hit the three hundred pound mark.