At Coffers Direct we pride ourselves in what connections we establish between roasters and farmers.
Providing the best of what the terroir of the Caparao region of Brazil offers we supply our partners with high quality, sustainable and consistent green coffees.
Yet, there are times when a more direct dialogue with roasters is welcomed to discuss the practices in use, the challenges we are dealing with and form some guidelines for a better coffee future.
So we came up with the idea of a Coffers Best Cup Battle, a platform that allows for discussions between us, partner in sourcing, and roasters while having a little competition between roast masters.
During Slovenia Coffee festival 2024 we organized the first coffee-roasting competitive event in Slovenia.
Thanks to support from our partners, sponsors and ZSKS we had a great day filled with coffee flavors, aromas and knowledge exchange.
Here is how it went.
Coffers Best Cup Battle 2024
The championship itself consisted of several stages.
First up, all the competitors had to choose up to two coffees from the presented collection of Coffers Direct during a cup-tasting session.
All the coffees were Specialty grade and were coded, so no information regarding variety or processing was available.
After choosing coffees, competitors had to roast them and come up with the recipe for brewing the perfect cup.
Here is when the first of our sponsors came in. Thanks to Ikawa, competitors had the highest quality sample roasters to serve them. Still, some came with their own roasters, which was also allowed.
Having the perfect roast, competitors then had to prepare a filter coffee. Here, our coffee friends from Goat Story kindly supplied us with their Arco Grinders and Gina smart coffee brewers.
The quality in the cup was evaluated on a cupping tbale by 3 sensory judges, a special guest from Vienna, Mariia Strizhenko. Lev Volodarski and Rok Fabjan.
Thanks to another sponsor all three sensory judges were in sync. Kavast.app allowed for an easy evaluation process of all the coffees and lightning-fast calculation of the results. As in the beginning of the competition, the coffees were coded so the scoring was done blind.
No competition is done without prizes, so we teamed up with Goat Story to acknowledge the craftsmanship of the top 3 competitors with their latest at the time product, a reimagined turkish coffee pot – Otto.
But it was not all that we rewarded the finalists with.
Among other things, the prize bank consisted of bags of green coffee, ikawa branded t-shirts and, naturally, hand-crafted trophies.
Here is the list of the lucky few who got away with all that treasure:
1st Place: Sabin-Minea Alexandru, Mala Prazarna, Slovenia
2nd Place: Karlo Puric, Four Wheel Coffee, Croatia
3rd Place: Ziga Povse, Tuka Beans, Slovenia
Now we are preparing a second addition to our get-together event and we are changing a few things up.
This time around we are sending every competitor 10 kilos of the same coffee, details about which will remain a mystery up till the end of the event.
Roast-masters are to prepare a perfect profile to present on the 23rd of March, at Coffers Europe office in Slovenia, to decide which roast is the best.
And this time the judging committee is 100% composed of competitors, who will be tasting their own coffee blind and voting for one that is superior.
The winner will be taking home a bag of green coffee from Coffers selection, and a Melitta epour, donated by sponsor Romita Group.
As before, the main goal is to get together to stimulate a discussion of local and global challenges that the coffee roasting business is facing today and may face soon.
And have fun!
If you would like to compete or visit the event please follow this link or write to info@coffers.direct.
