Whet­her it’s an empha­sis on advanced cof­fee cup­ping, in-depth lessons on cof­fee defects, or an eye-opening look at cof­fee farm eco­nom­ics and the rela­tion­ship to qual­ity, the cur­ricu­lum at the annual Roasters Guild Roasters Retreat always deliv­ers. In fact, it’s famous for rais­ing thought-provoking con­ver­sa­tions among the roast­ing industry’s élite.

The Retreat is cer­tainly revered in the indus­try; it’s con­sid­ered a “must” for cut­ting edge, inno­v­a­tive roast­ers. It’s the place where they gather, share and gain per­cep­tion on where the indus­try will be in the com­ing years. This year’s meet­ing, the 11^th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat, is set for Stonewall Resort in West Virginia, Aug. 18 – 21 (www.roasterguild.org).

“To me, the most rec­og­niz­able impact that the Roasters Retreat has had on craft roast­ing is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cup­ping,” says Phil Beattie of Dillanos Coffee Roasters in Sumner, Wash.

A forward-thinking affair
Beattie notes that long before “rela­tion­ship” cof­fee, direct trade or the sin­gle cup craze even hit the main­stream, they were hotly dis­cussed top­ics at the Retreat. He clearly sees how the event makes an impact on the roast­ing com­mu­nity. “In the early years of the Retreat, the per­cent­age of roast­ers attend­ing who had never cupped cof­fee was fairly high. At that time, some roast­ers saw cup­ping as a skill that was only needed for large roast­ing com­pa­nies and importers. Now, it is hard to find a roaster who doesn’t see the value and neces­sity of cup­ping. No mat­ter how much cof­fee you roast, some credit for this cup­ping pro­lif­er­a­tion has to be cred­ited to this Retreat.”

As a mem­ber of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (www.scaa.org), direc­tor of cof­fee and green cof­fee buyer for Dillanos and the cur­rent secretary/treasurer for the Roasters Guild, Beattie believes the mod­ern roaster is part arti­san, part world trav­eler and part infor­ma­tion ambas­sador. Rather than zeal­ously guard­ing trade secrets, he actively seeks oppor­tu­ni­ties, like the Roasters Guild Roasters Retreat, to share his pas­sion and knowl­edge with oth­ers. It’s an event he prefers not to miss.

Beattie, who acts as a “roast­ing emis­sary” in all his cof­fee pur­suits, says that roast­ers are exposed to hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent roast­ing philoso­phies and taste pref­er­ences each year at the retreat. “Even the most vet­eran roast­ers are forced to ques­tion their own approaches to cof­fee, and this ques­tion­ing is what fuels inno­va­tion and progress,” he says.

Delving into the key sub­jects
This year’s Retreat offers edu­ca­tional and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for roast­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, importers and cof­fee farmers—all gath­ered in one inti­mate set­ting. “It’s an excel­lent way to expand your sourc­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties or even find other roast­ers that would like to take part in coöper­a­tive buy­ing, if you are inter­ested,” explains Beattie, who believes that edu­ca­tion is the No. 1 rea­son to attend. “I can say with con­fi­dence that the rela­tion­ships and knowl­edge that I have gained from Retreat have been the foun­da­tion of my growth in the cof­fee industry.”

Some of the main top­ics for this year’s event include: Green cof­fee defects and roast defects; the eco­nom­ics on a cof­fee farm: the cost of qual­ity; advanced sen­sory sci­ence; the Roasters Guild Certification Program; a sen­sory skills test, to eval­u­ate a cof­fee cupper’s abil­ity to iden­tify and dis­cern dif­fer­ent taste thresh­olds, uti­liz­ing vari­a­tions of sweet and sour mix­tures; and an intro­duc­tion to cup­ping and cal­i­bra­tion cup­ping, among other themes.

Beattie says, “Beyond giv­ing roast­ers the data and prac­tice needed to roast and cup cof­fee at a higher level, the Retreat exposes roast­ers to the atti­tudes and approaches taken by some of the most suc­cess­ful roast­ers of our gen­er­a­tion. It pro­vides the tools and infor­ma­tion to allow roast­ers of any skill level to return to their com­pa­nies and have imme­di­ate impacts on the qual­ity of their prod­uct.”
At the meet­ing, par­tic­i­pants take part in hands-on lessons with roast­ing equip­ment, round­table dis­cus­sions and many oppor­tu­ni­ties for the exchange of ideas. For Beattie, he’s going to be tuned in to the strate­gies of his col­leagues, who have estab­lished rela­tion­ships at ori­gin. He wants to know how they’re main­tain­ing those rela­tion­ships. “As the price of cof­fee goes up, the con­ver­sa­tions of re-negotiating con­tracts and con­cerns of main­tain­ing the qual­ity of deliv­er­ies from co-operatives increase,” he reveals. “I will be inter­ested to hear how roast­ers are deal­ing with these challenges.”

Looking at sup­ply chal­lenges
According to Beattie, the biggest cur­rent issue fac­ing roasters—and the industry—is sup­ply. “The amount of qual­ity green cof­fee avail­able con­tin­ues to dimin­ish while prices con­tinue to soar, so the role of the roast­ing pro­fes­sional in blend devel­op­ment and con­sis­tency will con­tinue to be cru­cial to the suc­cess of roast­ing com­pa­nies,” he says. “Indeed, the issues of cost of goods, sta­bil­ity of rela­tion­ships at ori­gin and global cof­fee con­sump­tion and its impact locally will surely be hot top­ics at Retreat this year.”

In addi­tion to these key issues, the Retreat will high­light “roast­ing to style.” “With the increas­ing diver­sity of brew­ing meth­ods, it is becom­ing cru­cial for roast­ing pro­fes­sion­als to under­stand ways of match­ing the style of roast to the brew­ing for­mat that the cof­fee is intended for,” explains Beattie.

Tri Style Roasting Challenge
One high­light of the Retreat is the Tri Style Roasting Challenge, where teams will roast cof­fees, either a blend or a sin­gle ori­gin, and then brew via one of two meth­ods. There will be a win­ner for each brew­ing cat­e­gory, but the over­all win­ner will be deter­mined by whichever team has the high­est aver­age score between the two brew meth­ods. Another ele­ment that’s planned for the Challenge: a cal­i­bra­tion cup­ping and eval­u­a­tion of all of the cof­fees. Judges will score each cof­fee at this cup­ping, and then each team will choose a sin­gle cof­fee and roast it in an attempt to achieve the same scores as the cal­i­bra­tion samples.

“Overall, you can say there are tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to attend­ing this Retreat,” says Beattie. “But the biggest reward is intan­gi­ble. It is the renewed sense of curios­ity and cre­ative spirit that every roaster who attends takes back to their roastery.”

To learn more about the Roasters Guild and to reg­is­ter for the Retreat, visit www.roastersguild.org. The Roasters Guild is a trade guild that con­sists of spe­cialty roast­ers ded­i­cated to the craft of roast­ing qual­ity cof­fee. Through col­lab­o­ra­tion, pro­fes­sional cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, the mem­bers of the Guild are able to refine their skills and gain a deeper under­stand­ing of their professions.

Aaron Kiel is a free­lance writer, pub­lic rela­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant. He can be reached at akiel@akprgroup.com.

SCAA Roasters Perspective Sponsor: Scolari Engineering S.p.A.
Scolari Engineering S.p.A. pro­duces green silos, computer-driven cof­fee roast­ers, grinders and roasted stor­age sys­tems. Discover more at www.scolarieng.com or by call­ing Howard Weiss at 856−988−5533.