Ben Ferreira, the owner of Brothers Coffee Roastery in Great-Brak, was recently announced as the Top Finalist in a country wide competition. 43 South African coffee roasters entered Coffee Magazine’s “A Shot in the Dark” sponsored by Genio Roasters. In the end only 10 would qualify for the Finals round. Now, this number 43 seems like a smallish number, right? But standing in the Sevenoaks Boardroom, and seeing 43 bags of coffee, snaking all the way down the long table and all the way back down the other side, with handwritten Roaster’s Notes alongside each bag, is quite a sight to see. Because every single one of those 43 bags of coffee represented a person or a team of people, who spent countless hours planning, testing, experimenting and tweaking. Honing their craft to bring out the very best possible flavour and potential of this Tanzanian bean.
South Africa has a handful of qualified Q-Graders and 4 of them run the judging of ”A Shot in the Dark”; Cuth Bland, Nicodemus Nabakwe, Mike Mac Donald and Abby Berman. They cupped 43 coffees blind. And they scored them down to 100th of a point. At no point in the day did they know who’s coffee they were tasting. The cupping lab at Sevenoaks is internationally certified as an SCA approved cupping lab. The water used was the same water specified on the entry forms. In short, every single measure was taken to ensure that the coffees were judged objectively, consistently and without bias as far as we could control.
Well done to the 10 roasters, especially our local Roaster, Ben, who have made it through to the Finals Round!
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