Coffee Roasters Guild Retreat Returning to the Pacific Northwest, Camp Heads to Portugal

Photos courtesy of the Specialty Coffee Association.

The Coffee Roasters Guild (CRG) has officially announced the 2018 dates and locations of its two largest annual events. The 2018 CRG Retreat will take place Aug. 23-26 at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington, hosted by longtime title sponsor Probat, while the European CRG Camp will take place Oct. 10-13 at the Evora Hotel in Evora, Portugal.

The coffee roasting trade guild of the Specialty Coffee Association, the CRG recently announced at its membership meeting in Seattle that it would continue to offer both these events annually, while working toward the launch of additional events throughout the world.

Details for the Camp will be released next week, but the published Retreat program offers many familiar elements from past years, including lectures, educational workshops, and the roasting team challenge. Optional courses in the SCA Coffee Skills Program (CSP), which launched last year after the unification of the Specialty Coffee Associations of America and Europe, will be offered for the Roasting and Sensory Foundations on Thursday, prior to the main event.

On Friday during the Retreat, attendees will be assigned to teams to rotate through lectures on industry topics in areas such as sustainability in the green coffee supply chain and the SCA Coffee Freshness Handbook, while there will also be time for a team roasting challenge.

Attendees will select two educational workshops to attend on Saturday. Retreat workshop options will include instruction on sample roasting, roasting styles, profiling and theory, as well as sessions exploring the SCA Flavor Wheel, sustainability, roaster maintenance, heat transfer, taste, food safety compliance, and green buying. Full course descriptions are available on the CRG Retreat website.

For roasters who have never attended the Retreat, the Stephan and Becky Diedrich Scholarship program offers “future or current leaders of the coffee roasting community” the opportunity to apply and have their registration fees covered. Eligible candidates are encouraged to apply by June 22.

The CRG has recently released several videos from past events, which provide a glimpse into the type of content that will be offered at their Retreat and Camp.

Coffee Degassing: Impact On Freshness And Extraction — Samo Smrke

Samo Smrke, Research Scientist at the Coffee Excellence Center of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, spoke at Roaster Camp Poznan in October 2017 on his research on the effects of carbon dioxide degassing on coffee freshness and espresso extraction. Research by Samo and his colleagues at the Coffee Excellence Center can be found in the SCA’s recently published Coffee Freshness Handbook:

Exploring Fermentation: Should Coffee Be Treated Like Wine? — Felipe Croce

Felipe Croce of Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF), a coffee farm in the state of São Paulo in Brazil, spoke at Roaster Camp Poznan in October 2017 about coffee fermentation, addressing the question of whether coffee should be treated like wine:

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