At Peter Coffee in Sakata

Today I joined a coffee brewing contest for the second time. Last time I made a video about it and everything, it was a normal hot coffee competition. This time around though, the hosts thought it would be interesting to do an ice coffee competition since it was winter. They must have had a change of mind somewhere along the way as it became ice coffee in the heats and then hot coffee in the semifinal and final.

I never make ice coffee. In summer I always make cold brew and have it with milk, probably a ratio of 60-70% milk at that. So, I came in very inexperienced. I wanted to play to my strengths obviously, so I went for a strategy of making the coffee as I normally do, and then cooling it down in a stainless steel bowl in yet another bowl of ice. I think this tactic was a good way of going about it, the result was a decent cup, however I lost in the first round, and there are a few reasons I can think of for this. But instead of listing the reasons, ever the forward-thinking person I am, I’m going to list up things I would do differently next time.

For starters, as I mentioned I think I had a good strategy, but we all had to use the same grinder to make it fair. I hadn’t used the grinder that was used, and didn’t realize how much fine beans would be left over. I should have upped the amount of beans used, and then gone through a process of removing that above a certain size using the mesh filter container thing I have. After that I could have measured the amount needed, and done my pour that way. I also spent a bit too much time before beginning to brew, which meant I couldn’t get the coffee as cold as I would have liked. I should have used more ice, to be honest I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough for a second round, the ice they provided was way too big and I didn’t have a method of getting it smaller other than stabbing it with my thermometer, which I didn’t want to do. Next time around, I will check in advance all of the tools to be used, so that I have more control and more information over what I do.

This time around I did get to practice with the beans used in the competition, last time I didn’t get a chance to buy them in advance like this time. I still don’t really agree with exclusively using light roasts. I prefer medium to medium dark roasts, and that is what I usually drink. So I was at a disadvantage in that regard. My method of pouring, using a cotton filter called a ‘Nel drip’ (from the word flannel), is probably best suited to darker roasts. I don’t see many people using this method for lighter roasts at all, although it should be perfectly fine to do.

So, who knows? In hindsight I probably didn’t have much of a chance, and although I gave myself the best chance I could, it wasn’t enough. Next time I guess I just have to try harder.

I did have fun though, it’s always fun meeting people who love coffee more than me, and there are certainly a lot of those people around.

Till next time.