The story of the excellent Cup Cup Of Excellent? Ever-winning champion | Panama Finca El Cielit

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The story of the excellent Cup Cup Of Excellent? Winning champion | Coffee beans from Finca El Cielito Coffee Farm in Panama

At present, the largest number of coffee-producing countries in Central and South America are COE members: Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico. Only Rwanda and Burundi come from Africa. Brazil and Colombia are among the top coffee producing countries in the world, so there are two COE competitions each year. 、

Cup Of Excellent (COE), a competition similar to Taiwan tea or French wine, is an annual coffee competition held in many coffee-producing countries to identify high-quality coffee, organized by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence Coffee Alliance (ACE). The first match of the Cup of Excellence was held in 1999, and in 2013, the Cup of Excellence was held in Brazil, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Rwanda, Burundi, Colombia and Bolivia. The full name of COE is Cup of Excellence, which translates into Outstanding Cup, extraordinary Cup or extraordinary Cup in Chinese. Every year, the organizer ACE (Alliance For Coffee Excellence) picks out thousands of coffees from member States, selects a batch of high-quality coffee through domestic cup test review, and then submits the selected coffee to the top 10 by internationally recognized cup test review, and these 10 lucky coffees will be auctioned online around the world to get a good price. It takes about three weeks from the initial domestic selection to the international cup to the final auction, but it can completely change the life of a coffee farm and put them on the international stage.

Coffee bureaus of various countries, as members of ACE, first hold domestic coffee competitions on their own. Farmers first hand in a certain amount of coffee to participate in the competition. Each coffee must undergo at least five cup tests. The evaluation criteria include eight items, such as cleanliness, sweetness, acidity, taste, flavor, aftertaste, balance and overall performance. Only those with a total score of more than 84 can be recognized as COE coffee beans. In the scoring process, as long as a referee has the slightest doubt about the quality of the coffee, the coffee will be kicked out of the game, and the final champion will be auctioned publicly on the Internet and will be able to get a sky-high price.

For example, Finca El Cielito, a family farm in Honduras, stood out in the cup test competition (COE) of the Honduran coffee shop IHCAFE, and then, with the long-term assistance of IHCAFE, slowly improved the processing equipment and process of coffee beans, gradually became independent, and continued to achieve excellent results in the cup test competition even without the assistance of IHCAFE, and now began to export micro batches to international exquisite coffee buyers. The success of the Zhuoyue Cup lies in opening up international awareness for many coffee-producing countries and coffee farms, thus increasing trading volume, and award-winning small farmers are also well paid.

However, the "boutique" process of the Excellence Cup was not expected by George Howell, the founder of ACE. George Hall, a pioneer of the American boutique coffee movement and an expert on coffee beans in a single producing area, knew the local culture and varieties of coffee like the back of his hand, started a new trend of light-roasted coffee in Boston, and set up a chain of cafes. It quickly dominated the taste of Bostonians, but later sold it to the Starbucks Group, which attacked the east coast of the United States. Hall, who has made a lot of money, began to travel to coffee-producing countries and became a coffee consultant to many coffee-producing countries.

(Finca El Lerida Manor, the winner of the Panamanian Coffee Competition, is moving towards boutique development, providing a new choice of leisure tourism for the top ethnic groups, a world that small coffee farmers around the world cannot expect. )

In 1999, Hall joined the United Nations and the International Coffee Organization (ICO) program, together with several enthusiastic coffee consultants to create a new model of economic sustainability for small farmers, the Excellence Cup was born and quickly established the international authority of the Excellence Cup. The far-reaching influence of COE, the values behind social awareness, and the opportunity to introduce a small amount of beautiful coffee to customers have attracted the favor and admiration of independent coffee roasters all over the world. Through the promotion of their own roasters, they have linked up with a group of loyal consumers who love good coffee. On the other hand, small farmers who produce coffee can not only get higher pay and the opportunity to become famous overnight, but also get credit in their producing areas or countries.

(Finca El Lerida Manor, the winner of the Panamanian Coffee Competition, is moving towards boutique development, providing a new choice of leisure tourism for the top ethnic groups, a world that small coffee farmers around the world cannot expect. )

However, when the competition is fierce and the big ones are big, I can also see that many coffee farms with strong financial resources can breed and refine themselves with strong strength, and they can also employ more workers to take care of them, while a large number of small farmers are still swept away from the edge of the market. in the absence of support from the government or limited capacity, poor small farmers are even more unable to invest for self-improvement, and they do not even have a ticket to participate in the competition. But now the system created by Hall is supposed to be the concept of "Specialty coffee". Combined with the commercial market, it has been hyped into a high-end and exquisite (Specialty) commercial market. Not only coffee shops have begun to become boutique, but even coffee farms in producing countries have also begun to become boutique, becoming a threshold for market entry. Perhaps this is something he did not expect.

Qianjie recommended cooking:

Filter cup: Hario V60

Water temperature: 90 degrees

Degree of grinding: small Fuji 3.5

Cooking methods: the ratio of water to powder is 1:15, 15g powder, the first injection of 25g water, 25 s steaming, the second injection to 120g water cut off, waiting for the powder bed water to half and then water injection, slow water injection until 225g water, extraction time about 2:00

Analysis: using three-stage brewing to clarify the flavor of the front, middle and back of the coffee. Because V60 has many ribs and the drainage speed is fast, it can prolong the extraction time when the water is cut off.