{"id":87156,"date":"2023-10-24T19:05:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T17:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nomadcoffee.es\/?p=87156"},"modified":"2023-11-02T13:47:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T12:47:13","slug":"chronicle-of-how-we-won-the-award-for-best-speciality-coffee-roaster-in-spain-at-the-bcn-coffee-awards-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subs.nomadcoffee.es\/en\/chronicle-of-how-we-won-the-award-for-best-speciality-coffee-roaster-in-spain-at-the-bcn-coffee-awards-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicle of how we won the award for “Best Speciality Coffee Roaster in Spain” at the BCN Coffee Awards 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all began when we received a little bag of coffee from Brazil, Milena Rodrigues variety Arara, natural process, and grown at an altitude of 1100m, courtesy of the importer Flor de Caf\u00e9. The importer provided some tasting notes for this coffee, mentioning flavors of maple syrup, yellow fruits, tangerine, and liquor.<\/p>\n

It turned out that more than thirty roasters from the country would have nearly a month to roast the same coffee and send the best sample in that first round of the competition, so we got to work.<\/p>\n

With this Brazilian coffee, we had 30kg (we were not convinced to roast a single batch of 5kg on our 22kg Probat machine where we usually roast 18kg batches). We decided to do five roasts of 6kg each.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nomad Coffee’s first roast of Brazil’s Milena Rodrigues coffee.
\nAfter the first blind roast following our philosophy and five subsequent experiments trying different approaches, we decided to send the sample from the first roast, which we liked the most on the cupping table, scoring 85.67, with notes of chocolate, figs, tangerine, and orange liqueur.<\/p>\n

The top twelve most favored coffees would move on to a final round, and from those, the winner would be chosen on the last weekend of September at the BCN Coffee Awards.<\/p>\n

We were nervous, eagerly awaiting the announcement of the twelve finalists (in random order): Kima Coffee, Urban Coffee Roasters, Harmony Roasters, Caf\u00e9s El Magn\u00edfico, Three Marks Coffee, Slow Mov, Hola Coffee, BRKLYN Caf\u00e9, Dalston Coffee, Brew Coffee, Right Side Coffee Roasters, and us, Nomad Coffee.<\/p>\n

Seeing ourselves among the twelve best roasters selected with our first 6kg roast gave us a lot of confidence and affirmed that, yes, by following our way of doing things and our endless quest for consistency and quality, our coffees could stand up to the best specialty coffee roasters in the country.<\/p>\n

We were celebrating with proud yet timid looks when the coffee for the second round arrived. Importer BELCO<\/a> sent us 5kg of Ethiopia Chelbessa, Heirloom variety, washed process, grown at an altitude of 2000m, with tasting notes of peach, apricot, lemon, caramel, and jasmine.<\/p>\n

Now, that was a real challenge. 5kg and a single opportunity to get it right and produce a great coffee we could proudly send to compete for the Best Roaster award at the BCN Coffee Awards.<\/p>\n

Fran, our Chief of Coffee, told me to go for it and entrusted me with the Ethiopia coffee. Ambitious as I was, I opened my notebook and wrote a calendar with all the days remaining until the festival weekend. I tried to guess which day the Q-Grader judges would taste the submitted coffees if, in theory, they were going to announce a winner on Sunday, October 1st. I planned which day I could roast this Ethiopia so it would have the ideal resting days for the judges to taste it at its best.<\/p>\n

Then I jotted down the following bullet point in the goals for this semester:<\/p>\n