This past weekend Haus barista, Ryan and I made our way up to Seattle for a 48 hour accelerated (yes, pun intended) coffee bar tour and visit to this year’s Coffee Fest. While we did have several priorities lined up and a very specific agenda, unfortunately a few were missed out on (Leah- I’m still bummed I couldn’t make the cupping with you!). However, that’s not to say we didn’t get cracked-out on some of the industries best coffees, visit world renowned cafes and try out the latest coffee toys. Without boring you with a minute to minute log of coffee jargon, notes, and two guy’s nerdiness, some of the highlights are as followed.

Raul Rodas of Guatemala (not pictured), competing out of region began his performance with an extraction of fruits in a syphon for his signature drink, which he later added to his espresso as the final product. I thought that what he ended up using the extraction for was a bit disappointing (even if I was drooling towards the end) though the idea of using a syphon to extract something other than coffee is certainly intriguing.

While it was difficult to pry myself away from Espresso Part’s modified 5 group murdered-out paddle Linea, we barely made it to Stumptown’s 3:00 cupping in the basement of their cafe which serves not only as their roasting works, but also as cupping lab and training facility. I can’t recall all of the coffees on the table, though as you can image their Panama Don Pachi Geisha Varietal was the super star and tasted like the left over milk from a bowl of Fruit Loops.

Mahlkönig had a booth set up which with was riddled with even more bizarre looking grinders than their past stock. They even had a portion grinder I’ve yet to see or hear of, that looked like a meat grinder. My interest was lost with much of their grinders, but look at how great the Guatemala F (imagine it without the brew basket holder) and R2D2 look together! Ditting shared their booth and was exhibiting a rad little grinder I doubt is made for home use, yet would fit nicely in my kitchen.

Victrola certainly toped my list of memorable cafes I’d love to have around my corner. The shots at both cafes we visited were served up proper and left me feeling satisfied- short, but not too short, syrupy, bright with a pleasantly sweet finish.

One of the places Ryan lined up for to stay was a punk house/ venue. I’m pretty sure we covered all of our bases in Seattle.

We didn’t get a chance to visit a Vivace location for drinks, though I did manage to purchase a pound of their Espresso Vita, which was pulling nicely in our warehouse yesterday. Lots of sweet pine!

After squeezing in every last minute we could at the convention on Saturday afternoon we made it back to San Francisco in time to get a few hours of sleep and serve up coffee at this past Sunday’s market. I’m still detoxing from all the coffee, though it was well worth it.

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Shark