Tag Archives: coffee

#CoffeeCON 2014

Last year, in May (yes, MAY!) I drove through a snow storm to get to CoffeeCON 2013 in the suburbs of Chicago. It was an awesome event where I was able to meet four twitter friends in real life (IRL) and have some fabu coffee. I also took classes and learned a lot about coffee. And got sick. Really, really sick.

You see, with all that coffee there, I was like a kid in a candy store and I had ODd by around 11 a.m. I was hoping to go back this year and was absolutely thrilled to be invited as a media guest.

This year, I knew I would pace myself so I could fully enjoy the day and the coffee. And the visiting, of course. CoffeeCON 2014 was held at the Zhou B Arts Center in Chicago. It’s on the same street, a few blocks down, from the park formerly known as Comiskey.

It’s such a cool old building which I loved almost as much as the coffee. I have this fascination and love of doors and had to take a photo of one to complete my day.

This year, I was not too sick to try the Kopi Luwak coffee from Indonesia. If you aren’t familiar with that, in a nutshell, civets (a catlike animal) eat the coffee berries and they are processed after elimination. Sounds gross but the story behind why they originally did this is very interesting.

I found the coffee to have an interesting, sort of nutty taste. The little coffee cracker cookies they had at their table were delicious!

It was fun to go around and talk to the vendors and sample their coffee. I absolutely got goosebumps when I tasted Rustico from Counter Culture and I had to take that one home. Their website describes the coffee as having a kaleidoscope of flavors and it truly does.

I also got a Sowden Oskar pot which I haven’t tried yet but plan to this a.m. In the Sowden class, the man said it was simply the easiest way to make a good cup of coffee. I’m looking forward to that. The thing that struck me even more, though, and made me choose it over the Aeropress (which I’m sure I will get one of these days) is that it is like French press coffee, which I love, but the filter is so fine, less particulates are left in the coffee when it’s poured. I’m hoping this will help it to be coffee that David enjoys better, too.

The winner of the contest I held last week was Dwana, a long time twitter friend of mine. I was so happy I would get a chance to meet her. Our first reaction to each other, IRL, was “OMG you’re tall, too!”. 🙂

My only regret for the day was that we didn’t take a photo together but I did make my CoffeeCON movie staring Dwana and the Aeropress.

We were introduced to the iCup machine by iCoffee. I enjoyed the presentation we were given. The iCup will take a K-cup and turn it into a good tasting cup of coffee by steaming and aerating the grounds, extracting the Co2 before dispensing the coffee. It also plays a little Mozart!

Although I’m not a Keurig user, I’ve had coffee from one a couple of times and found it to be bitter. The coffee we tried from this machine was much tastier. A real improvement!

Of course I can’t forget about the fun coffee roasters outside. I know I talked about the heat gun lady and popcorn popper guy all year and they were there again.

The popcorn popper roaster had a new addition this year: a Weber grill. Ingenious!

One of the ladies outside gave me my own little packet of green coffee beans. I’ve decided that I will make Beauty Pageant Roast by using my blow dryer and curling iron. 😉

Once again, I had a great time at CoffeeCON. Well, I actually had a better time than last year since I paced myself. Thank you, again, to Kevin Sinnott for inviting me.

There are other CoffeeCON events planned for this year in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Check the website for further information and Carpe Java! 🙂

CoffeeCON Ticket Winner!

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I held a giveaway for a pair of tickets to CoffeeCON and I’m excited to announce the winner is Dwana De La Cerna!

I’m super excited to meet Dwana in real life and enjoy meeting another friend at CoffeeCON where I met four long time twitter friends last year. The face that coffee is involved makes it one of my favorite things to do in life! 🙂

If you want to go to CoffeeCON but haven’t purchased your tickets, you can buy discounted tickets using the code: LCoffeeCon

Super excited to be in Chicago for CoffeeCON on Saturday and I hope to see you there! Carpe java! 🙂

Guest Blogger at Oklahoma Women Bloggers

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So, I was thrilled to be a guest blogger at Oklahoma Women Bloggers and I’ve been waiting to hear when my post, Bag Lady, would be up. It was six days ago! Yikes!

Anyway, give it a look. I enjoyed writing it and hope you’ll get a laugh out of it. 🙂

Coffee Rubbed Steak

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I have found something else to do with my Eight O’Clock Coffee. Coffee Rubbed Steak!

I found this recipe in my travels through the interwebs and it looked delicious.

I made it for dinner last night. After grinding the coffee very finely, I mixed the rest of the spices with it and rubbed it into both sides of the meat.

It didn’t say in the recipe to do this but I did this a couple of hours before I planned to cook the steak, then covered and put it in the refrigerator. Also, although we normally don’t add sugar to things, I did add the 1/2 TBS of brown sugar because it wasn’t very much and I wanted to taste what the original recipe ended up like before modifying it.

I then cooked the steak on the stove top for five minutes on either side. It was done with a little pink in the center.

I’ve never cooked a steak in a pan before and I was worried about how juicy it would end up but it was fabulous!

The taste of the rub was good, the level of juiciness was good. I couldn’t noticeably discern a strong coffee flavor but the combination of the spices with the coffee was wonderful.

I served the steak with my famous roasted baby carrots and mashed cauliflower. Delish!

A Cupping We Will Go

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I have no idea how I landed on the Topeca Coffee website towards the end of last year but there I was. And I discovered that they hold a free cupping session on the first Friday morning of each month. Since that was coming up in a few days, I excitedly signed up for it.

As the marketing director of 21st Sensory, Inc. for three years, I am very familiar with the sensory analysis of foods, beverages (other than coffee) and personal care products. And that is where I first heard about coffee cupping from one of our ingredient salesman friends.

I knew then, being the coffee achiever that I am, that cupping coffee is something I for sure wanted to do someday and before my Topeca experience I had the chance one other time. It was interesting and exciting to actually see how they determine which are the good coffees.

I knew what to expect when I got to Topeca’s Roastery.

When I walked in, I felt like I had entered Lauri’s Playground. 🙂

First we me Ian Picco, Topeca’s Director of Coffee. Is that NOT the BEST title? He took us on a tour of the Roastery.

He explained how their entire process works from shipping, roasting, packaging and shipping back out. I told David we could fill up one of our empty rooms at the house with one of these beauties. 😉

Then we saw where the beans are stored, in a climate controlled space, until they are ready to be roasted.

The bags are pretty!

Then we finally got to do the cupping. This was so interesting and I learned so much. I am a big fan of Sumatran coffee. When Ian said that he expects to taste spicey notes, like green pepper and radish, in a good Sumatran bean I had never heard of that before. But I was able to pick it out knowing I should be on the lookout for it.

The beans were ground and boiling water poured over them.

We went around and smelled all of the different beans and then when they cooled down, we did the actual tasting of them. This involves taking a puddle of coffee into the spoon and doing a strong slurp to aspirate the coffee over the entire mouth so you hit all of your taste buds. Since you taste differently in different parts of your tongue this ensures you taste it properly.

When we were finished I decided my two favorites were these.

Which translates to these when I buy them off the shelf or their website.

Now that the ice is melted, that’s my plan! Thank you so much to Ian and Topeca Coffee for offering this experience. It was fabu! 🙂

If you’d like to do a cupping at the Topeca Roastery, you can click through here to register for the next class. Have fun and happy cupping! 🙂

Early

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up in the morning
it’s dark i should be sleeping
drinking my coffee

Carpe-ing the java @CoffeeCON2013 style

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Yesterday, was CoffeeCON 2013 (@coffeecon2013) and it was amazing!

Before going to CoffeeCON, I was finally able to meet up with Ruthann (@RAWiesner) for breakfast. She took me to a place where they bring donuts to the table like they bring rolls or chips and salsa at other places.

How can you not love a place like that? I had an amazing frittata with spinach, bacon and tomatoes. Yum!

Then it was off to the event du jour: CoffeeCON!

Just opening the door you know was fabulous because you could smell all of the different coffee offerings.

When we got to CoffeeCON, we found my twitter friend, Debra (@debramariem).

Debra is terrific, too, and we had fun hanging out together, visiting the vendor booths, the classes and our other twitter friends,

Coffee Nate (@CoffeeNate) and Robert Caruso (@fondalo) who were bloggers at the conference.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was talking to the roasters. There were several different options there including a woman who was roasting beans with a heat gun (yes, like the one from Lowe’s) and a guy who had repurposed his hot air popcorn popper to roast coffee. He was very excited with his roaster and was cute to listen to.

There were two roasters, though, that had machines that seem like what I would use to roast coffee which I believe is the next frontier for me.

We watched coffee demos and attended a couple of classes.

I was really taken with the siphon coffee maker and think I’m going to have to have one of those. I was sad that we didn’t get to see the Turkish Coffee demo. She had some kind of a water issue but I did get the instructions for making the coffee so will be trying that at home soon. 🙂

Right before I left, I thanked the show producer, Kevin Sinnot (@coffeekevin), for his fabulous event. He wanted to interview me because I had come from Oklahoma for the show. I did that and said my goodbyes.

It was such a great time. Great coffee, great people. I can’t wait to return next year and bring/meet more friends. Will you join me? 🙂

Carpe-ing the java DC style

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So, now that things have slowed down a bit, I really need to tell you about my amazing trip to Washington, DC as the guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee.

Back in the summer when David was doing the project in Amarillo, I got a direct message on twitter from the Eight asking for my email address. I gave it to them and then wondered what they could want. I speculated while talking to David but really had absolutely no idea.

I’ve been drinking Eight O’Clock Coffee since I was 15. I remember going to the A&P grocery store when I was little and they had a bright red package and a grinding machine. I have loved the smell of fresh ground coffee my whole life as far as I can remember. 🙂 I was eagerly waiting to hear what Eight O’Clock Coffee wanted to talk to me about that took more than 140 characters.

Then came the email. They had selected me as a Super Fan and wanted to find out what date would work for me to come to DC for a visit to see their coffee operation.

OMG! I was beyond excited!

“I wonder if we’ll get to cup coffee?”, I asked David.

Several years ago, I was marketing director at a sensory lab and that was where I learned about cupping coffee. We analyzed all types of foods, beverages and personal care products but not coffee because that’s a whole different ball game.

So I gave Jaime my information and waited to find out when I was going and what we would do. When I got my itinerary, there it was, “Plant Tour/Cupping Session”. I was SO excited!

When I arrived in DC, they picked me up at the airport in a limo.

They drove me to the Embassy Row Hotel where I was given a goodie bag full of fun stuff and my room. We all met in the lobby for dinner.

I met my sister super fans, Holly and her husband Bill, Donna and her husband, Rudy, and Ronda. Also, I met Jaime and Lori from the S3 Agency who made sure we were where we were supposed to be.

The first night, we went to dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. YUMMMMY! The only bad thing is that Ruth’s Chris doesn’t serve Eight O’Clock Coffee and I think the waiter was a little intimidated by us coffee achievers when we ordered coffee after dinner.

I was lucky to be seated across the table from Glenn for dinner. Not that everyone wasn’t fabulous. They were. But Glenn had been in the coffee business since he was 18 years old, working himself into his current position where he buys the beans, cups the coffee and makes incredible new flavors like the Chocolate Mint they rolled out around Christmas time and we were treated to the following day.

I transformed, groupie-style, into a Glenn monopolizer and I don’t think anyone else got a chance to talk to him at dinner.

The following morning we had breakfast at the hotel with Alisa, Director of Marketing. She basically held a focus group with us on things that could be done differently or better. I heard a lot of good ideas around that table!

We got fabulous red fleece jackets!

Then it was off to Maryland and the coffee roasting facility.

We were welcomed at the door. And again at lunch time.

We were then taken on a tour of the roasting facility. We had to remove all of our jewelry except for our wedding rings so that nothing would fall into the coffee.

Then we got another gorgeous outfit: white coats, goggles and a hairnet! 🙂

We got to see all phases of the coffee operation including the flavoring which smelled AMAZING. It was Hazelnut!

Then, finally, the moment I had been waiting for. We went to the cupping room and they taught us how to cup coffee. In the end, it really wasn’t too different than sensory testing of foods/beverages that I had already experienced. I was pretty good with a spit cup, having had previous experience. 😉

After that we went back to DC and dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill which was delicious! I can highly recommend the Peanut Butter Pie. 😉

Then back to our hotel to sleep and get ready for an early trip back to the airport.

And there you have it. My awesome Eight O’Clock Coffee trip to DC. It was so amazing, I can hardly believe it really happened. What I learned on my trip was that the people who make Eight O’Clock Coffee are as awesome as the coffee that they produce. As excited as we all were to be there, they were equally excited to have us there. It was so cool.

I tweet about Eight O’Clock Coffee and I’m so excited when I see my friends trying it and enjoying it like I do. Not because of a trip to DC but because the coffee is truly wonderful and it makes me happy to be the bearer of such great coffee information.

Thank you again, Eight O’Clock Coffee. I had the most incredible time and I will never forget your hospitality!

PS – At Christmas time, I got a box from the UPS man. What could it be?

Coffee!!! I thought, “Oh they love me! It’s my favorite French Roast!” 🙂

Lauri Rottmayer

Catch the Rottitude!

Tag Archives: coffee

CoffeeCON Ticket Winner!

Guest Blogger at Oklahoma Women Bloggers

Coffee Rubbed Steak

A Cupping We Will Go

Early

Carpe-ing the java DC style