The SCAA roasters guild retreat was recently held in Portland USA. During the retreat a Roasting Challenge was held where over 200 participating roasters were split up into teams of 10.

Each team had to develop a cold brew concoction from 5 available origins. They then had to cup each origin and choose which origins to roast and blend. The teams had a range of roasting equipment available to them including Proaster, Has Garanti, Probat, Diedrich, San Franciscan and Giesen.

Pat Connolly, of Veneziano Coffee, was part of the winning team that claimed this coveted Roasting Challenge Trophy. Pat’s team chose to work with the Diedrich roaster as they believed it would provide the cleanest sweetest cup profile. They then had to develop roast profiles, a roasting philosophy and submit a blend along with tasting notes for judging. The team chose to brew each origin with a different method based on how each would highlight the body, acidity, flavour and sweetness of the chosen coffee.

Each teams coffee was blind tasted by a panel of judges with Pat’s team awarded the winner. The winning cold brew blend comprised 3 origins: a washed Guatemalan, wet hulled Sumatran and a washed Ethiopian.

Congratulations Pat on this achievement!