Stumptown Coffee has a new annex on SE Belmont, 2 doors down from their current place. I call it the "Stumptown Coffee Education Center," because they were so excited to teach us about all the coffees. Here we are participating in a "cupping," an industry-standard technique to taste coffees. You pour water over grounds and let it sit for 4 minutes, then you carefully break the crust of grounds without mixing them into the water; the idea is to let them stay on top of the water but make sure they've all been in the water. Then you taste a small spoonfull of coffee from each cup, after the grounds have been carefully skimmed off by hand. You do this by sipping it in forcefully, kind of spraying it around your mouth, like you do in a wine tasting. Each kind of coffee has 3 cups, and you taste each, in case a "bad bean" tainted one of the cups. Then you make a second pass, because after a few minutes of sitting you'll get different tastes and aromas from each cup. That's what they told us anyway. We didn't catch all the nuances, but we could tell that the four different kinds of coffee were very, very different! I've been wanting to educate myself more about coffee for a while, so this was just perfect. I look forward to going back. They'll be cupping every day, and it's where they sell bulk coffees now. They'll also brew you an individual cup of any kind of coffee you want. Lots of fun.

Concurso de Papas, Lima Peru Wait, I think I came here for the wrong "concurso." Wasn't this supposed to be coffee we were judging. I mean, I like potatoes, but I don't know much about them. Anyway, it appears they take "papas" more seriously than "cafe" in Peru, sometimes. Many of the coops fight here, and one company controls nearly 50% of the exports. It's one reason that cup of excellence has never been held in Peru, to date. Peru still ahs too much of a "bulk coffee" (or even "bulk organic") mindset. Maybe the Concurso de Papas Peruano is more progressive than the Concurso de Cafe? --