Golden Bean.......

Being self-employed, one can often find it difficult to measure certain aspects of progress in an objective way. Competition is a way that in addition to connecting with our community, it helps to concentrate the mind on honing our skillset. Entering Golden Bean North America had been suggested to me by a few fellow coffee peeps, so in 2 shakes of a lamb’s tail (or any other idiom you care to insert), I set about turning green things brown and posted them off to Nashville, where the event was to be held. Having lived in a sleepy corner of Vancouver Island for a few years, and not the UK, I wasn’t quite on my guard with banter at the ready. So, when Golden Bean organizer, Sean Edwards bawled across the judging room, ‘Somebody’s let a bloody Pom in’ I was not quite as quickfire with my customary British banter.

The Canadian contingent seemed to gravitate to the same table as if drawn by a huge magnetic bowl of poutine. As it transpired it was just crackers, apple, and sparkling water, which just goes to show you can’t always get everything you want. We were a table of 8 comprised of 5 bona fide Canadians, 1 pretend Canadian (me) a Texan and an Aussie. The next few days were devoted to tasting and judging what can only be described as (and I apologize for the vulgar slang) a shit ton of coffee. The coffees were all blind tasted, and if we found a coffee to be particularly low or high scoring, we would often get our findings checked by tablemate and excellent fellow Nelson, who is pretty bang on when it comes to the old sniff and slurp. I was joined by my wife Hannah and our shop manager Sarah later in the week for some serious marketing and brand consolidation. This transpired to consist entirely of eating hot chicken, drinking booze, and visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The award ceremony was to be given a Western theme, so off we all scurried down Broadway to the Boot Barn. Here, in boot nirvana we purchased the finest bargain boots known to man……. buy 1 get 2 free. The evenings’ festivities ensued, and we were most delighted to win several medals, of which the gold medal that we shared with Proud Mary Coffee Roasters was particularly special. As more alcohol was imbibed, the evening culminated in our drunken band of coffee roasters, asking the singer onstage to play a rendition of Dolly Parton’s ‘Working 9 to 5’ but instead of singing ‘working’ (and here’s the cunning part) could she replace the word ‘working’ with ‘roasting’. So, to her eternal shame, the singer sang ‘Roasting 9 to 5’ and we laughed and danced and displayed not necessarily our finest moments on this earth as Golden Bean North America came to a slightly blurry and faintly headachy end.