Busy as ever

It’s been a very busy few weeks at school. Everything all comes together for the end of term, translating to a big mess of assignments, projects and tests. Oh well.

The good thing about all of this though is that I have an excuse to drink more coffee. This student refuses to drink Folger’s to stay up. No no, I sip on the likes of the El Salvador CoE #2, or the recent farm release from Guatemala’s El Injerto. Or I bus it down to the Elysian Room and try their offerings.

The El Salvador CoE, Los Planes, farmed by Sergio Edmundo Ticas Reyes, was bought up by Small Axe. My beans were roasted by Intelligentsia three days before I pressed them. The remarkable thing about this lot was that it’s price was higher than the number one CoE. It was, I believe the first time it happened in the history of the auction.

So, the coffee. It was great. Los Planes is a pacamara, one of my favorite varietals, and showed it with big flavor, medium body and a decent acidity. (One of these days I will start writing my tasting notes down… sigh.) All I can say is that it was a great coffee, as it should have been.

In other news, many of you may have heard, but Vancouver is still dealing with a boil water advisory due to very high levels of turbidity in the regional water supply. This affects nearly a million people in the Vancouver area. It also affects my coffee. I don’t really have the money to purchase bottled water and the effort to pick up the cheaper stuff (in the reuseable bottles) is too much for my busy schedule, so I have to press my coffee with the tap water (after being boiled of course). It’s amazing how the suspended particles really do affect cup quality. It is intuitive of course, but still. I imagine shops of good repute here will be changing their filtration systems after all of this is done.