Roast the Best Coffee, Win a Trip to Honduras

The team at the Genuine Origin Coffee Project are holding a contest to see who can roast the best version of one of their offerings. What’s the prize? A trip to Honduras.

BY ASHLEY RODRIGUEZ
BARISTA MAGAZINE

Photos courtesy of Genuine Origin

œBe the best roaster. Win a trip to origin.  Those are the basic rules to a new competition hosted by The Genuine Origin Coffee Project (GOCP) called Roast and Go. The Genuine Origin Coffee Project is a branch  of coffee importer Volcafe, and hopes to improve connections throughout the coffee supply chain in order to better serve producers and buyers. Through this contest, roasters that buy a particular green coffee (Honduras Reserva Guama Danta), can submit samples to be cupped and judged besides the same coffee roasted by other coffee professionals, and see how roast profile affects the final flavor of the coffee.

œAs a former head roaster at Kaldi’s, I was always on the hunt for coffees that I roasted that other roasters might have picked up themselves and roasted as well,  says Anthony Augur, Regional Partnership Manager for the Lower Midwest for GOCP. œI would then order them to see what their interpretation of the coffee tasted like. Now that I’m on the green side of the industry, I am even more curious to see just how roasters can alter the flavor profile of the same coffee.  On the GOCP website, the Honduras Reserva Guama Danta is described as balanced with flavors of vanilla, cinnamon, and brown sugar, but those are subject to change based on how roasters interpret this coffee. Grown between 1500 and 1700 MASL, this coffee represents a particular microclimate in Honduras known to be very mild and covered with pine trees. Honduras has seen a swift growth in coffee production due to the dedication and intentional hard work of Honduran farmers, and is now the third largest producer of washed Arabica coffees.

As the first pick for the inaugural Roast and Go competition, Honduras is also special to GOCP. œAs a team, we all fell in love with our coffees and producing partners from Honduras,  Anthony shares. To enter, you can simply go to the GOCP website, order this coffee, and submit two roasted samples (at least eight ounces each) to be judged. The judging ceremony will be held in two parts ”first all the samples will be blind-cupped and evaluated by trained tasters using the SCAA Roast Evaluation form, and then the top eight coffees will be judged in a bracket style head-to-head competition at Rise Coffee in St. Louis. Although you don’t have to be present to win, this contest provides a unique opportunity to taste one coffee roasted multiple ways.

Along with the roasting competition, GOCP will also host a tasting competition. Called Taste and Go, competitors will triangulate coffees and see who can get the most correct in the shortest period of time (much like the US Taster’s Competition). In conjunction with these competitions, there will also be a latte art throwdown, where all the buy-in money will go to Create A Loop, an organization that helps low-income children learn to code.

Winners of both the roasting and tasting competitions will win a trip to Honduras to visit the farms that supplied the coffees for the roasting competition. And this aligns with GOCP’s goal of connecting the coffee producers throughout the supply chain. And if you don’t win first place in the roasting competition, you can still win a spot to travel to origin ”the folks at the Genuine Origin Coffee Project want to share the opportunity to see farms and meet producers with as many people as possible, and will take the first, second, and third place finishers of the roasting competition (along with first place of the tasting competition). The competition will be held December 16; all entrants must submit samples before December 14 to be eligible. For more information please check out https://roastandgo.splashthat.com and register for one or both competitions.