Saturday's Intended Schedule: Wake up at 8:00am, go get Sierra, go get coffee and milk for the Great Lakes, check traffic report, leave for Chicago by 9:00am.
Saturday's Actual Schedule: Wake up at 8:00am, walk outside, fall on my ass due to the solid inch and a half of ice coating EVERYTHING, go to the shop to get milk and coffee, find out that every freeway to Chicago is closed due to major pile-ups, apologize to Sierra, apologize to Jim, work a counter shift like a chump.
Today was the first round of the GLRBC. Our friend Jim is competing for the first time and we're suppose to be there. However, there is now a sheet of ice covering everything in lower Michigan. The traffic reports are telling me it will take around 9 hours to get to Chicago. Apparently, there are 10 major accidents between here and Jackson, which is only 45min away. So here I am, sulking in an empty cafe. Hopfully, I'll get to at least listen to Jim's set via cell phone. Since the comp is going on as I type. I'll let go some info on Jim's set.
The blend we built is totally custom, made especially for the comp. It's based with a Brasil Sul De Minas Fazenda Cochoeira Yellow Bourbon. This gives a nice silky mouthfeel, amazingly clean frontal notes, and a light honey finish. We felt it was a perfect base as it acts more or less as blank canvas at the profile we used. The first accent bean is a Sumatran Triple-picked Iskandar from Sweet Marias. It's a very clean Sumatran, unusually so. It boasts one of the most complex finishes I've ever come across. Orange peel, market spice, earthy wet raspberry, back to orange peel. The front notes are very subtle with a little hint of muslin and big body. The next accent coffee is a Yemen San Ani from Sweet Marias. We used a very small percent of this one in the blend. The Yemen was all about the front notes. They were fruity, sweet, punchy, with a little black tea note. The tail end of this coffee was interesting by itself, but clashed in the blend. So we dropped the Yemen content down to about 10%. We felt that at that percent, the top notes were there, and the funky bottom notes were covered by the Sumatran. This combo gave a taste that reminded me of chewing Juicy Fruit and drinking coffee at the same time. Wierd, but good. The topper was a Monsooned Malabar Elephant. We used high percent of the Malabar, against the advice of our esteemed Victrola friends. Our excuse was this: this Malabar doesn't really taste like a Malabar. It's deeply fruity with dark chocolate and smoked almonds. It did have the trademark body and smooth feel, but didn't get gross at lower temps. In fact, it was the saving grace of this blend. It really tied everything together and made the blend "pop" in milk. Without it, the blend was too sharp and seemed too contrasted. The blend, in it's final form, had great top and middle notes of clean fruit, white sugar, and cinnamon, middles of chocolate and earth, with a endlessly complex finish that ties everything together in a mixture of bitter citrus, dank berry, fresh soil and spicy black tea. The straight shots were good, but this is a blend for milk drinks, hands down. I've never enjoyed a macchiatto as much as I did with this coffee. Everything breaks through and is heightened by the milk. Heavy shit. The blend will be available for a very limited time at the cafe, as straight shots or macchiattos only.
The sig drink...is as follows. It's a two part drink consisting of a little shot of fresh raspberry puree, followed by a macchiatto with a little drop of violet. It doesn't show off the espresso too much, but it goes really well with it. The trick was to overdose the shots for the sig drink and only pull about .5oz into each glass. Otherwise, the violet overpowered the espresso.
I'll have another post tomorrow about the results. GOOD LUCK JIM!!!!!!!