Welcome to Barista Magazine‘s weekly blog-in-review post! BMag Back Atcha is our catchall post we put up every Sunday so you can see all of the week’s posts and catch up on any you missed.
Once again we had a pretty busy week on the blog with Sarah preparing to go to London and then onto Nice, France for the annual SCAE show and accompanying WCE competitions, we had previews, news, and contests.
First we had a report on Taylor Maid Farms opening a shiny, new place in Northern California (full of reclaimed wood and other sustainable building materials) to roast and serve coffee.
Then it was across the Pacific to New Zealand for a story on cutting-edge coffee company Flight Coffee of Wellington where they are doing some awesome stuff with coffee cocktails.
So Wednesday rolled around, and that meant it was time for Humpday Giveaway our fun coffee trivia contest where you give the right response and win amazing prizes. Really this week, the prize was off-the-charts fantastic, and we had a record-setting number of entries. With our friends at Baratza, we gave away an Encore grinder!
Didn’t win? Don’t worry! We, and you, have another Wednesday right around the corner, and guess what? We’ve got another great prize in store!
Also on Wednesday we had a report on the new season of Cup of Excellence auctions which kicked off with a record-setting event in Honduras.
Then we had a really fabulous story by a guest writer, Christine Goepfert about why she has volunteered so many hours to being a barista competition judge. And thank goodness she and so many others do make the time and effort to judge, without them, we couldn’t have competitions at all. Thanks, Christine! And really, give it a read! Pretty good stuff!
Moving across the Atlantic in anticipation of the upcoming SCAE event, we had a story by Christina Chirouze about the BArtista Project in Paris. (And no that’s not a typo, it’s a combination coffee and art project and it’s really cool!)
Following that up was a brief review of some cafés and shops worth checking out in Paris, particularly if you’re passing through on the way to Nice next week. Though really, when isn’t it a good time to visit Paris and check out cafés?
Finally we moved into some hard science and some hard stuff to hear about the effects of coffee leaf rust on farmers and the coffee harvest in Central America and the length and difficulty of recovery efforts. We will have more on this important subject soon.
Stay tuned for more on rust, the SCAE and WCE in Nice, news and reports, and of course another chance to play Humpday Giveaway! And thanks for reading the BMag blog!
