Author Archives
Licensed to “Q”: Grading Coffee
A couple of weeks ago I traveled to the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) lab in Long Beach, California to take the Q Grader certification course which is actually a rigorous 3-day exam comprised of 22 sections of content including sensory skills, olfactory, organic acids, sensory triangulation, coffee cupping, green coffee grading, roast identification,
Continue reading »Special Geisha Roast
We’ve roasted a small batch of our Hacienda La Esmeralda Especial Geisha 2011. It’s available in our online shop, ready to ship. A 12 ounce bag is $32.99. Features a mouthful of flavors that makes Geisha famous: classic orange blossom fragrance and aroma, flavors of sweet juicy peach, honeycrisp apple, with bright lemony acidity and
Continue reading »New (to us) Gothot Sample Roaster
We recently installed an all-electric 1967 Gothot five-barrel sample roaster in our Bellingham cupping lab. Our expert technician Jim Smith spent a great deal of time over the past several months executing a meticulous tear down, restoration and rebuild of this beautiful coffee roaster. Not one nut or bolt went untouched or unchecked. After the
Continue reading »El Salvador San Joaquin: 89 Points from Coffee Review
Tony’s is proud to report an 89 point review from Coffee Review. Here’s their blind description of this awesome coffee. Intense but rather simple aroma: faint suggestions of dusk flowers, fir, blackberry. Sweetly tart acidity; silky mouthfeel. In the cup aromatics lift and open: lemon, dusk flowers, hints of white wine and fresh pipe tobacco.
Continue reading »Tony’s Competes in Fourth SCAA Tasting Competition
The annual Roasters Guild Roaster’s Choice Tasting Competition is held every year during SCAA’s Expo and is designed to highlight the art and craft of coffee roasting. Tony’s roasters have participated every year since the inception of the competition. Our coffee placed in the top ten the first three years as follows: 2008 — 6th
Continue reading »Ganesha Espresso Wins 92 Points
Coffee Review is a bi-monthly newsletter with a simple concept: “Conduct blind, expert cuppings of coffees and report the findings in the form of 100-point reviews, much like those that exist in the wine industry.” Ken Davids founded Coffee Review in 1997 with Ron Walters with this stated goal, from their Web site, “To entertain
Continue reading »Taste of Place
We are excited to bring our customers another tool for offering the finest freshly roasted coffees year round. We spend much of our time here at Tony’s sourcing and cupping coffees from all over the world to select the very best and most interesting coffees for our customers.
Continue reading »Our Freshest Offering: Honduras Café Conquistador
Café Conquistador is grown in the cloud forests of Santa Barbara, a mountain town in the west highlands of Honduras. This coffee is comprised mainly of the Pacas varietal and is grown between 1200 and 1600 meters. Harvest time is from February to May, mainly from very small family growers that each produce roughly 15
Continue reading »Tony’s Sulawesi Toarco Peaberry Wins Award at SCAA Expo
Our new season of Sulawesi Toarco Peaberry has arrived and we couldn’t be more pleased with the quality of this year’s crop. In April we submitted it as our entry into the 2010 Roasters Guild Roaster’s Choice Competition at the SCAA Exposition & Symposium in Anaheim, California. The theme of this year’s competition was fully
Continue reading »Organic India Balmaadi Estate
Award-winning coffee makes a debut. One of our favorite offerings this year is a very special coffee from the Balmaadi Estate. Balmaadi is located in the Blue Mountains of southern India, within the Nilgiris District, where elevations reach levels as high as 6,000 feet. This elevation, combined with excellent terroir and shade from the native
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