I just got off the phone with Kevin Sinnott and his wife Pat, the founders of CoffeCon. Working the details out with Scott Marquardt, Henry Chang and myself will be heading up a roasting demonstration this year. It should be quite exciting, we'll have a big audience, plenty of hands on participation from the crowd and they'll have their own roasts to take home and enjoy. Me on my Quest M3 (Big Blue isn't portable) and Henry outside on his awesome Mini 500, it should be quite a fun time for everyone.

It will be very interesting to build up this wing of the whole CoffeeCon experience for the public and share coffee roasting at home on a larger platform.

CoffeeCon packs in the best that our coffee universe has to offer. Lectures by George Howell, Jim Schulman, Ken Davids, I'm in rare (and unworthy) company. It's an honor to be a part of this. Further, Henry Chang is one of the greatest assets that HB has, and having him behind the scenes is going to make this an incredible event.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates as it gets closer.

Is this something that will be streamed live for those living across the states? Would be great

Great question. I don't know the answer. But I bet they do. Send them an email and I'm sure you'll get an answer (share it here).

I'm only focusing on the roasting aspect of it. Henry Chang has done as much of the footwork as I, and this is the result of his efforts just as much, so stay tuned to his input here as well.

I'm doing my class on how to pull shots, which features my usual closed loop, QC approach:

• Here's how to grind, dose and pack
• Here's the things to look and taste for
• Here's the corrections you make for each thing that can be out of whack

I know all the long timers on HB are bored to tears by this basic stuff. But it is the fastest and most certain way to teach people how to pull acceptable shots. The more helpers and gear are present; the better this can be done. So I appreciate ayone who can volunteer. Please PM me.

The incredibly unbelievable and wonderful incentive is free passes to the event and to George Howell's talk. Obviously, the passes won't make your decade; but George's talk might.

This time around, I'm gong to try to do tastings with various combinations of water with dissolved sugars, caramels, lemon, gentian (the bitter flavor in campari), cinnamon and chocolate. I'll be testing this in the coming week to get the procedure down, but the idea will be to teach people how to distinguish the bitter and sour tastes in espresso.

In the past, solutions like this have been used at low concentrations for testing tasting acumen. What I'm doing is nothing like that; since the flavors in espresso are intense, not weak to the point of vanishing. So the idea is to teach people how to taste for the direction of the imbalances, and the direction of the correction they should make.

If that interests you, please help.

Anyone in the SF Bay Area thinking about demonstrating roasting at the event?

Please contact me if you are interested!

Thank you, Tom for agreeing to appear at CoffeeCon in San Francisco. When I first created CoffeeCon I wanted nothing more than to attend my own idea. I wanted to be able to compare coffees, brewers and learn hands-on how to improve my own coffee. I also enjoy meeting others from forums. One of the great moments for me as CoffeeCon's host is to see two online friends meet in person for the first time.

We've considered webcasting at least some of the presentations. This requires presenter permissions, and a not insignificant bandwidth and technical attention. We've even sought sponsorship to cover the added expense. Basically we are open to it. Meanwhile, the key reason we are increasing to four CoffeeCon events in four cities is in hopes of giving everyone a chance to get to the closest one.

I am very excited about CoffeeCon San Francisco and am very happy we chose this city, where I've personally had so many great cups, to be the first "away game". I'll be paying close attention to comments in order to constantly tweak and improve CoffeeCon. As I've said several times, CoffeeCon is for everyone who loves coffee, not just me.

When is this happening? I don't see a date listed.......

Coffee con Website under locations and dates http://www.coffee-con.com/#locations-dates. July 26th

another_jim wrote:I'm doing my class on how to pull shots,

If that interests you, please help.

The schedule looks like that class isn't until 3:00 in the afternoon? Is that it's only slot?

Yes. It's always been last on the list, so it can run over time as people play with the gear.