Having said that, what a treat it is to receive a package in the mail and to anticipate what is inside. I ordered some beans from Square Mile a few months ago. Every time I opened up my cupboard to brew up some of it I marveled at the wonders of our modern world where I could be making a cup of coffee in the U.S. from beans roasted in London that were sourced from Central America.

I am keeping my ear to the ground for the next event. Here’s hoping [crossing fingers] that my schedule will be able to accommodate it.

I too, would like to thank both of the hosts. Even though I wasn’t able to attend, I learned more from reading about it then I ever expected.

Side note to Chris, I think he was just ribbing you about the good stuff.

To be clear…. both Wendelboe and Stumptown send more than 2 coffees – so we had to chose what to include and exclude on the table for Saturday (each roaster got 2 coffees). Then, in the Sunday re-cup, I swapped some coffees around and relaxed the “2 coffees rule” in the case of Wendelboe. What went on the table was a tough decision when all the coffees were so good!

Definitely wasn’t a “save the good stuff” decision on my part.

It might be apparent to say, but my ratios are based on grams of coffee to grams (or milliliters) of water.

When I bring a coffee home from work, we use a relatively higher ratio of 1/10. Other companies (based on their instructions on brewmethods.com) often use much lower ratios:
barismo 1/14
gimme 1/17
terroir 1/17
stumptown 1/13.5

Knowing this, I usually start a coffee off from a different company at around 1/15, and move up and/or down until I think the coffee is performing at its full potential. I hope this becomes easier to explain to folks with time, because I definitely agree that too often harsh critiques of great coffee are the result of poor brews (and same for undeserved praise).

Good to have you back, by the way!