Check out what one the creative staff at our Richmond and Golden location made out of the bags our green beans are delivered in and the 7lb bags in which our roasted coffee is delivered to stores. Beautiful!
Coffee
Our New Mexican Microlot is Now Available
We’ve added an exciting new Mexican microlot to the line-up. This Mexican microlot is from a single farm in Chiapas owned by a farmer named Diego Giron Gomez. Sr. Gomez is a member of the CESMACH cooperative that produces the coffee we use in Mexican Dark and Espresso.
This coffee has tasting notes of roasted nuts, red apples and caramel. It is a medium roast and has a similar roast profile to our Honduran coffee.
It will only be around for the month of October. It’s pretty rare to get a fair trade, organic coffee from a single farm, so please enjoy the opportunity while it is here!
Randy Places Third at the 2012 National Barista Competition!
This past weekend, Bridgehead baristas travelled to the International Centre in Toronto to participate in the 2012 National Barista Competition.
For a synopsis of what the competition is all about, I invite you to go to http://worldbaristachampionship.com/ the world barista championship web site.
There were 14 competitors from across the country, and the presentations were fun, informative and professional. These 14 baristas had to first place top 4 in their respective regional competitions to quality for a spot on the national stage at the Canadian Coffee and Tea Show.
I’m thrilled to say that we had two competitors both qualify and do a remarkable job: Randy Hogg from our Preston Roastery Coffeehouse, and Craig Macleod from our Beechwood location.
Craig has only been a barista for a few months now, but has shown just how determined and passionate he is, holding his own as a national barista competitor. Please congratulate Craig when you see him!
Randy has only been a barista competitor for two years now, but has reached a significant goal this year of placing 3rd in a national competition that gets tougher every year. There were some tweaks to Randy’s signature drink this round as a result from feedback at the regional level, as well as looking at the speaking portion of his presentation to allow for a strong theme and concept. Randy used the stage this year to look at his coffee (Guatemala’s Tesoro de Conception from CODECH) as a case study for what a Fair Trade Organic coffee is capable of in a field of very high quality estate coffees.
I invite you to look at all the National presentations this year, as it was a strong, entertaining group of competitors that clearly took lots of time to refine and perfect their routines. You can access the performance video by looking at the archived footage.
http://www.livestream.com/2010canadianbaristachampionships
The winner of the national competition is Australia bound, as the World Barista Championship is held in Melbourne next year. I’m excited to say our country will be represented by Jeremy Ho from Phil and Sebastian Coffee roasters. Randy was very close behind Jeremy, and Ben (also of Phil and Seb) who placed 2nd. These two (Ben and Jeremy) are veteran competitors, and this will be Ben’s 5th time placing 2nd at a national level. To be competing at the same level with these two is a huge achievement for Randy, and the whole Bridgehead team is proud of you Randy!
Thank you to the judging team! We had 3 Bridgehead staff participate in judging and they did a phenomenal job: Cliff Hansen – Our Roaster was a sensory judge, Ian Clark – Our Director of Coffee was a shadow head judge, and Brendan Butt – Who works at our Roastery, achieved becoming a technical judge on the national level this year.
A huge thank you goes out to everyone who helped by volunteering at the National Barista Championships. I’d like to mention that 5 out of the 7 volunteers were affiliated with Bridgehead, and really were the ones that made the competition run smoothly. I’m pleased to see the culture of volunteerism and passion for coffee evident in our staff. It’s awesome.
Thanks!
Competition Team Bridgehead
An Upcoming Congolese Coffee…
Yesterday our coffee team cupped a sample of the Congolese coffee from the Sopacdi Coffee Cooperative – the first cooperative with Fairtrade certification in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The coop is made up of 3,200 farmers in the region. The coop also works with female coffee farmers to provide solidarity and price premiums that help them provide for their families.
This coffee is also the first production from their new washing station – the first to be built in the DRC in over 40 years! Check it out here: http://sopacdi.com/our-vision-projects/our-new-coffee-washing-station/
Interested in Getting Some Burlap Coffee Bags?
Now that we are roasting our own coffee, we have plenty of great re-usable burlap bags that our green beans come in!
If you’d like one, just come to our Roastery at 130 Anderson St. (at Preston) and a staff member at the coffee shop can help you out. We ask that you donate $2 for every bag and we will donate 100% of those proceeds go to a charity or group. If you have any suggestions for charities/groups that this money could benefit, let us know as we haven’t decided yet!
Also, we’d love to see the projects that are done with these bags so feel free to email inquire@bridgehead.ca with any pictures and we’ll put them up!
Guatemalan Coffee is in!
Our Guatemalan coffee has arrived! We received our order of two microlots from the CODECH cooperative in Huehuetenango – “Tesoro de Concepcion” and “Aroma de Canalaj”. The Canalaj is going into our espresso blend and we will be carrying the Tesoro as part of our regular line-up of medium roasts.
Staff Party at the Roastery!
To celebrate our Roastery opening and thank our staff for all their hard work in the transition to our new coffees, we threw a party to have some fun! It was an open-mic night and there is a whole lot of musicaltalent in the Bridgehead staff – thanks to those who performed!
We also took the occasion to announce the winners of our 3rd Annual In-House Barista Competition. 23 or our great staff competed for the two spots in the Eastern Regional Canadian Barista Competition. Our winner was Randy Hogg (from the Preston location) and the runner-up was Craig Macleod (from the Beechwood location). Both will represent Bridgehead at the Eastern Regionals in Victoriaville, QC on August 10-11 – just four short weeks away! Thanks to those who competed, the judges, and especially Laura for all her work on setting up the competition. Thanks also to Yohan from Beechwood for the pictures!
Our Roastery is Now Open!
Our Roastery and coffeehouse is now open! The Roasting team worked hard to get all of our new coffee line-up ready and out to all the stores in time for the roll-out. On Friday, they managed to roast 2,000 lbs of coffee – about 45,000 cups! Come in and check out the roasting equipment and have a freshly roasted cup of coffee in one of the variety of different brew methods available.
Interested in learning more about the Roastery? Stop by Saturday morning for a tour and coffee tasting at 10am! No need for reservations, just be sure to sign in at the coffeeshop by 9:45am.
Bridgehead 