Nordic Roaster Competition Rules 2017

The 2017 Nordic Roaster competition will be held at the Nordic Roaster event on the 12th to the 14th of October.

The aim is to reward the best overall roaster with the title “Nordic Roaster 2017”. The title is for the winner to use during its reigning year and can be used only by the winner.

Application process:

The competition is open only to 10 roasters.
Any roaster, regardless of geographic location, that is registered as a business and who is selling roasted coffee, roasted by themselves, can apply for participation.

The competition fee is € 680,- (euro) and includes one attendee ticket to the Nordic Roaster Forum.

Since it is a Nordic Roaster Competition only applying roasters located in the Nordic countries will be granted a spot in the competition until the 31 August 2017.
(The Nordic countries are defined as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Åland Islands, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.)

After the 1. September any roaster can be granted a spot in the competition given that there are less than 10 Nordic roasters that have applied before the 31st of August.
Roasters located outside the Nordic countries can apply before 1. September, but will not be granted a spot in the competition until the 1st of September and will only be granted a spot if there are less than 10 Nordic roasters competing.

The first who pay the competition fee will be the first in line to enter the competition. Competition fee will be refunded to those that has paid, and not having their application granted.
All applications will be treated by the “first come, first serve” principal.

The Competition

The 2017 Nordic Roaster competition will be held at the Nordic Roaster event on the 12th to the 14th of October.

Each competing roastery must have one person present during the evaluation of the coffees on both evaluation days and also at the award ceremony on Saturday the 14th of October.

There will be two (2) categories in the competition:

Category 1, provided coffee: In this category each roaster will be given 30 kilos of coffee by the Nordic Roaster Forum coffee sponsor. All roasters will be given the same coffee and the coffee will be sent to the roaster in advance prior to the competition. We are aiming to send out the coffees in early september. Information on this coffee will falso be given when the coffees are sent out. All competing roasters will have to roast the provided coffee in line with their preference and style on their roaster of choice. Each roaster must submit 10 kilos of roasted coffee for the competition.

Category 2, washed Colombian coffee: In this category each roaster must submit 4 kg of roasted coffee beans of any washed coffee, from Colombia. The coffee has to be processed by traditional washed, eco pulped or semi-washed methods where the pulp and mucilage has been removed before drying. The category is not open for natural processed coffees, pulped natural or honey processed coffees where the coffee has been dried in contact with mucilage or pulp. There are no limitations to cultivars used to produce the coffee. The coffee must be a single origin coffee, but can be a blend of coffees from smallholder farmers within one country for example a cooperative coffee.

Submitting coffees:

All competing roasters must submit 10 kilos of coffee for category 1 and 4 kilos of coffee for category 2 all packed in 250 gram bags. The coffees in both categories must be roasted by the competing roaster and the coffee from category 2 must be available for sale from the roastery at the moment of the competition.

The coffee has to be delivered to Jens Nørgaard at the Nordic Approach HQ on the following address: Tøyengata 29C, 0578 Oslo, Norway. before 08:30am on Friday the 13th of October 2017.

The roaster shall pack all the coffee in 250g bags and must mark each coffee bag with the following information:

1. Name of the roastery and the city and country it is located in.
2. Name of the coffee (Farm name, cooperative name, etc)
3. Country of origin and the area it is from within the country of origin.
4. Name of the cultivar (variety)
5. Number of competition category (1 or 2)

This information also has to be sent to Jens Nørgaard before October 10th.

Evaluation:

The coffees will be evaluated by the attendees at the 2016 Nordic Roaster Forum.
The coffees will be evaluated by the cup-tasting method and will be tasted blind, meaning the attendees will not know which coffees they are tasting and from which roaster they were submitted.
There will be one cupping on the Friday and one on the Saturday.

The cupping brewing ratio will be 60 grams to 1000 grams of water. The extraction % will be set by the Nordic Roaster Forum organizing committee according to the grinder used. As an example we have previously used a Mahlkönig EK 43 grinder and the cupping strength was approximately TDS 1,2 yielding an extraction % of 21,3.

Bare in mind that all coffees will extract slightly different. We aim for an average good extraction for all coffees.

The water will be filtered Oslo City water.
The normal mineral composition of the Oslo water is:

GH: 2,5
KH: 2,0
pH: 7-8
TDS: 55-60

All attendees will submit one score sheet for each category.
The score sheets to be used is the same as the Cup of Excellence cupping forms that is basing their scoring scale on 0 to 100 where 100 points is the best.

After each round of cupping, the attendee will calculate their scores and submit the score sheet to the auditors. The auditors will calculate each coffee’s average score in each category and then add the two scores corresponding to one roasters submitted coffees together. The best possible score for one roaster can be 200 points.

The roaster that gets the best total score will be rewarded the title “Nordic Roaster 2017”.

In case of a split decision, the one roaster with the most total top scores will win.
There can only be one winner of the “Nordic Roaster 2017” title and there will be no category winners announced. However the full results will be published on the Nordicbaristacup.com web site. The winner will get the Nordic Roaster trophy to keep until the next Nordic roaster competition is held.

The winner will be announced on Saturday the 14th of October during the Nordic roaster dinner where one representative from each competing roaster must be present.

Feedback session:

After each round of cupping there will be a 30 minute feedback round.
To make it a bit exciting, the attendees will be asked what their total score was and then give some comments on the coffees during this session.
This way the roasters can get some live feedback on their coffees from the attendees and roasters will get a feeling on which coffees are most likely to win.