The new Monthly Coffee Challenge combines an element of The Barista League’s competition with a coffee subscription service—plus prizes.
BY KATRINA YENTCH
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of The Barista League
Although The Barista League’s international coffee competitions have been on pause recently, the crew has been busy keeping things stimulating for coffee folks at home. On top of hosting The Barista League: Online, they’ve also introduced a coffee challenge that everyone can partake in, and it includes tasting your way through some mystery coffees! Inspired by the The Barista League’s notorious Sensory Skills competition round, they’ve teamed up with Gothenburg, Sweden-based Morgon Coffee Roasters to offer the Monthly Coffee Challenge, a coffee subscription that keeps you on your tippy toes by testing your palate sharpness.
With every installment of roasts by Morgon, participants will receive a set of 15-gram coffee samples under a themed challenge curated by The Barista League. Once they’ve been thoroughly caffeinated and made their guesses, participants can scan these guesses via QR code on the website, which will direct them to the answers and tasting explanations by the talented team at Morgon—who have a combined 30+ years of coffee experience themselves. To kick things off, this month’s theme is “Coffee Memory,” and it comes with three coffees to pair with provided images.
“It’s not often that folks have the chance to experience something like tasting four different Colombian coffees side-by-side to see the variety there can be from one country, for example, even if they work with coffee every day,” says Steve Moloney, founder of The Barista League. “And it’s even more rare for someone outside the industry to get to experience this. We know coffee can be fun and we want others to get to experience that too, so we thought … ‘why not make it into a game?’”
Markus Vestergaard, Morgon Coffee Roasters cofounder, says, “… We’ve always felt coffee is at its best when it’s fun, inclusive, and approachable. Our vision for Morgon from the start was to build a brand that inspired just that, through relationships, exciting designs, and delicious coffee. By teaming up with The Barista League for the Monthly Coffee Challenge we feel that we have locked down a key piece of the fun, tasty, and weird puzzle that’s Morgon Coffee Roasters.”
It wouldn’t be a challenge without some rewards though. For this month, the winners of the Monthly Coffee Challenge have the chance to grab a decked-out home brewing kit from Espresso Gear, which includes a My Weigh scale, a Cores Stainless Steel Cone Filter, a vacuum air-free coffee storage can, and a Huskee Cup. Once you submit your answers, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win these, along with plenty of TBL merch and even more coffee.
If you don’t live in an area that The Barista League has visited yet, the Monthly Coffee Challenge is a fun way to connect to the international coffee community—and prepare yourself for the next public event. To sign up for the subscription, you can head here. You have until tonight, and the last Tuesday of every month, to partake in the games, but you can pause or cancel the subscription whenever you’d like.
