Today I was able to participate in our first attempt at buying coffee from a competition auction. We were able to obtain five bags from a twenty bag lot of a wonderful coffee from Ethiopia.
Here's how it works: An organization puts together a competition for a certain group. In this case, it was for Ethiopian cooperatives. Eligable interested cooperatives put together an auction lot of the highest quality they can. These lots are cupped and scored by an international panel. The top ranked coffees are selected to go to auction. At this point, samples of the winning lots are sent to interested companies which decide what coffees they would like to try to obtain and a bidding strategy.
Most lots in this auction were 20 bags. The smallest was a 9 bag lot. This is more Ethiopian than we can use in a reasonable amount of time, so after a couple false starts in arranging a bidding group, I spoke with someone who was arranging several groups. I explained which lots I was interested in and what we would be willing to bid up to and we were fortunate enough to be able to obtain an exceptional coffee.
The coffee is a dry processed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Hama Cooperative grown at 2100 meters. There's a lot of character and complexity to this coffee. I'll have more to say about it once the coffee is here and I have a chance to try a production roast.
Chances are good that the coffee will not get here until after we run out of Ethiopian Moka Harrar.