TomC wrote:IShe laid out clearly her interest in connecting with and engaging with directly the small scale hobbyist roasters like ourselves going forward. This wasn't an easy thing to achieve!

Reports on the 2021 crop so far are very promising! I can't wait to try any of her available processing methods.

This is one of the great features of HB. Thank you again Aida for creating a dialog to go along with the access to your different coffees. Thanks Tom for the time you put into this.

TomC wrote:I'm late on this reply. Was just chatting with Aida. It's coming, just stay tuned.

I love HB and I love this community of coffee fans, but I also realize that we're a microcosm for many in the greater coffee world. Aida's livelihood depends on larger scale contracts and purchases and no-one can fault her for putting her focus on those first. She'll get to us soon. She laid out clearly her interest in connecting with and engaging with directly the small scale hobbyist roasters like ourselves going forward. This wasn't an easy thing to achieve!

Reports on the 2021 crop so far are very promising! I can't wait to try any of her available processing methods.

Last fall, I got a text from Aida as I was out hiking. She was asking about how I liked the coffee. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Couldnt believe that she'd take the time to connect with a customer like that.

I wish we could think of a way to make her personal interaction with us lucrative for her.

I only drink about 50lb of coffee per year. I buy from multiple sources, so we are only talking about a couple hundred $. I have no idea how many people are nerding out on green coffee like us, but I suspect it's a pretty small number.

We do have something more valuable, though ... we roast a lot of batches. I wish there was a way to leverage all that information. The lack of consistency in our equipment, goals, approaches and tasting abilities prevents that information from being fed back to the producer in a meaningful way.

Itd be cool to have an Aida Battle bootcamp or a contest where we could systematically get at some deeper information about her coffee that might be more valuable to her than money.

I expect Aida to take care of her business before she gets to us little folk. I would assume that all of us here are thrilled that she has afforded us the opportunity to access her coffee as well as her time.

I do hope there is a way that we all can provide some feedback that is of value to her beyond, "Your coffee is awesome!" which it is btw.

Maybe if we all posted our best profiles with tasting notes it might be of value. With enough of us, the noise from different machines might be filtered out.


Either way, I would just like to echo the thanks of others here as well as point out that I will be patient and express gratitude if/when I get more of this superbly high quality coffee.

+1 on everyone's feedback that Aida should attend to her business and that we're grateful she engages with us at all when she can.

Also, +1 on whether sharing our roasting logs would be beneficial. I think many of us use Artisan, which also lets you capture cupping results for a roast. While each of our roasters is different, Artisan's Comparator let's you align roasts on different milestones so it could still be of some benefit? We could also agree on using a simplified/customized cupping form in Artisan (sweetness/flavors, mouthfeel, acidity, aftertaste) as few likely have training in cupping.

Just wondering if crowdsourcing enough "big" data might be useful to a producer somehow, perhaps on their website. Imagine showing various roast levels and associated cupping info. over time for a given crop. OK, now that I've finished brainstorming, someone bring me back down to earth on why this would not work and just end up being useless "noise"?

Brewzologist wrote:+1 on everyone's feedback that Aida should attend to her business and that we're grateful she engages with us at all when she can.

Also, +1 on whether sharing our roasting logs would be beneficial. I think many of us use Artisan, which also lets you capture cupping results for a roast. While each of our roasters is different, Artisan's comparator let's you align roasts on different milestones so it could still be of some benefit? We could also agree on using a simplified cupping system in Artisan (sweetness/flavors, mouthfeel, acidity, aftertaste) as few likely have training in cupping.

Just wondering if crowdsourcing enough "big" data might be useful to a producer somehow, perhaps on their website. Imagine showing various roast levels and associated cupping info. over time for a given crop. OK, now that I've finished brainstorming, someone bring me back down to earth on why this would not work and just end up being useless "noise"?

I'd bet with an 8 day week of 30 hour days Aida still wouldn't have time to look at all of the data we can provide. But maybe one of the roasters that she supplies like Panther would want to collate the data as they may benefit from it as well and they could in turn pass on any info/data points that would be useful back on the finca?

I don't really know but it is worth brainstorming a way that we can in turn, somehow be helpful.

I do like Steve's idea of using Artisan.

Artisan allows you to choose a number of different cupping forms so you would have to decide on that. Artisan Plus allows users to share profiles and data with others if they have been given permission so that could be cumbersome. Artisan Plus initially doesn't upload the full profile currently, but it does upload some of the roasting data.

Cup Profile data can be saved as an image to import here as well as the roast profile. Since this board won't store the .alog files that would have to be done in a cloud drive. Comparator would be good for comparing a variety of roasts and Transposer could allow one roaster to see what settings to use to match someone else's roast. So there are useful tools in Artisan to help people find great results with this coffee.

Forgot to add this image of the cupping chart.

baldheadracing wrote:FYI, Scott Rao's and Ryan Brown's https://facsimile.coffee subscription service will have Aida Batlle as guest cupper for #7 ...

Not sure how many others got in on this, but it has been interesting so far. The coffees were sent "next-day" which I really liked as I'm so used to having coffee arriving 'late' from the USA to Canada.

The coffees seem more developed than the usual cupping roast - I pulled the samples as espressos this morning and found them delicious. (7.2g:22g and a fast extraction in the Elektra Micro Casa a Leva)

I got the green samples as well; I'm going to roast these shortly so I can cup everything on Saturday.

Agree on the level of roast Craig. Looks similar to the level I usually roast Aida's greens, which I'd call more medium light. Looking forward to cupping these. And unlike some Facsimile cuppings I'm quite sure I'll use up ALL the samples!

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that Facsimile cuppings are production roasts because we are working on palate development rather than looking for defects. Also, learning about styles of roast, processing, and different cultivars.

But I am with you guys on anticipating some delicious coffee!