I wondered if the little cloudburst earlier today would erase the happy chalked message that appeared in front of Bird Rock Coffee Roasters last weekend. But when I braved the drizzle to get my morning caffeine fix, the sign was still intact. And even after it’s washed away, the accomplishment will endure.
The message announces the fact that the business, which has been operating out of the storefront on La Jolla Boulevard for the past five years, has just won the Micro Roaster of the Year award from Roast, the Portland-based bimonthly trade journal that reports on the specialty coffee industry. Some 60 or so small (under 100,000 pounds per year) roasters competed for the honor, first answering a questionnaire about their business practices and philosophy. Three finalists then had to submit several one-pound roasted coffee samples that were blindly judged by a professional coffee cupper on such criteria as aroma, color, imperfections, and bean size.
Supposedly, it was Bird Rock’s Sumatra Lake Tawar beans that propelled the local enterprise first over the finish line. The big feature story in the November/December issue also notes that Bird Rock’s owner Chuck Patton has been an innovator in many ways. (In the story, he’s cited for being “the first guy out of the box” to trade directly with small growers, and he’s now established relationships with farmers in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Eduador, and Bolivia
.)
I’ve already written about the “cupping” sessions held regularly at the shop and the warm, lively community it has created in this once-barren street. Still, it’s gratifying to see coffee professionals elsewhere recognizing that something excellent is going on here. As one friend notes, “And the world thought all we did was brew the best beer and make the best Fish tacos…”
