Coffee Wars vi: Awards Ceremony Speech
Every year, CoffeeWars is unique. You're probably all thinking,
"oh, here's the part where Hook wins again." But no! He decided
that his back-to back championships were enough glory, and he'd
let some other folks have a chance.
We had 21 entries this year. I am not sure whether this is an
all-time record, but there were no disqualifications, which is a
first, so all 21 were sampled in a 3.5 gallon marathon. We had
six judges, and each coffee is judged on six criteria, so that's a
total of 756 votes to tabulate. By the end, some judges were a bit
overstimulated-- mostly writing crazy comments, and one forgot how
to spell his own name.
We make each rating on a scale of 1-10. You might think that this
sounds imprecise, but I would like to call your attention to the
fact that last year's voting correctly identified a scan, in which
inferior beans were being passed off as Jamaican Blue Mountain. The
fraud was exposed elsewhere, abd the firm has shut down, but
we
knew something was up well in advance-- that coffee was lambasted
in the ratings.
I tell this story as a testimony to the collective palate of the
judges-- every year the winning coffee meets with universal
approval. At this point, I'll also mention that for
once, Jamaican Blue Mountain is not the winner, so
it's not as though we're unable to appreciate good coffee in all its
forms.
Before we announce the winners, we'd like to thank DefCon: DT,
Black Beetle, Russ, and the goons. We'd also like to thank, as
always, the Alexis Park staff. And we'd like to send our greetings
and best thoughts out to two people who could not be with us this
year: Alice and Jay Dyson.
The bang-for-the-buck category recognizes the best ratio of score to
price, and this year's competition was very close. There's no prize,
but we'd like to recognize "Just Ken," with his "Baltimoron Blend,"
scoring an overall rating of 6.17 at just $6.00/lb.
This year's winning entry was submitted by one of the judges. Before
you all shout "conflict of interest," I'll point out that the tasting
is blind, and that the judge who entered the coffee gave it its poorest
scores. It's all the more fun because his entry last year was the bogus
Jamaican Blue Mountain.
The only coffee to break the 7.0 barrier, at $30.00/lb, with a score
of 7.67, we declare the winner and undisputed champion to be Red Lion
Kona, entered by Dr. Vann Harl!
This page is maintained by Foofus.
Please direct any comments to foofus at foofus dot net.
