Kaffeologie's Notes: SCAA - Coffee Circus in Anaheim

A note from Coffee Catcher co-inventor, Nate Jones:

"SCAA was a blast. It was one giant circus, complete with clowns (coffee aphrodisiacs anyone?), ringleaders, sideshows and food your stomach regrets. At times, I felt lost in all the chaos, but my job was clear: set up an attractive booth and brew the best coffee possible. We warmed up our Zojirushi boiler, set out our scale and proudly displayed our coffees: Estate Honduras from Water Ave. Coffee and a very special Lake Toba Sumatra from Herkimer Coffee.

"Friday and Saturday were crazy, with lots of cafe owners, media people and company execs trolling the booths. Many of them stopped to ask about the Coffee Catcher and some (if they weren't over-caffeinated!) tasted the Coffee Catcher difference in our coffee. Visions Espresso even created new Coffee Catcher fans by doing a head-to-head tasting between a traditional French press and a Coffee Catcher-assisted press.

By Sunday, everyone was dressed casually and exhausted. During my times away from the booth, I got a chance to try out the new Synesso concept machine, visit with friends at the Slayer booth and check out the new Bunn Trifecta coffee maker. Boothmate Tom Pikaart of PouredOver was in hot demand, he even took a turn manning the Roust About Slayer booth (formerly Hario USA).

"The coffee world is huge! A whole part of the show was all about drink containers - thankfully most were being touted as reuseable or compostable this year. There were syrup people. And the cookie and snack food people. There were even water people! To make tasty coffee, water needs to contain a certain percentage of dissolved minerals (in most places, you get pretty close from the tap) and companies like EverPure are devoted to filtering and adjusting the mineral balance in water so that the cafe can focus on producing quality coffee from that water.

"The activity wasn't limited to the trade-show floor. On Friday evening, a large cross-section of the convention piled into buses and headed into LA to the Intelligentsia Roastery for a big coffee shindig. Intelligentsia brought in Brat trucks, $2.50 tacos and plenty of ale courtesy of Eagle Rock Brewery (with whom they are producing a coffee beer). DJ's were throwing tunes from the coffee storage lofts and barkeeps were pulling espressos from hand-held mypressi TWISTs.

The whole party was worth it for a look at Intelligentsia's LA roaster. Wow. What a beauty. The roaster's an old German machine from mid-century. It's built with super-thick walls and a double-barreled construction for thermal stability. There are two separate heat sources (air and direct) and belly dump doors so the coffee is removed super quickly when it reaches the right point. The whole thing was painted with Intelligentsia orange trim and hooked up to a laptop for detailed roast profiling. (I've attached some pictures below.)

"The show was a big success for the Coffee Catcher. We made contact with a couple of big distributors who could help us to reach market more quickly, and we met and made friends with many coffee people and companies from around the world. Enjoy the pictures!