[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1624360845547{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Winning the National Cup Tasters Championship, and off soon to represent South Africa at the World Cup Tasters Championships, is Simphiwe Adams from Sumatran Coffee. “I am over the moon to be the SA Cup Tasters Champion!” says Simphiwe.
“This is the competition where finalists taste filter brewed coffee without milk, but to a level of great skill where there are 8 sets of 3 cups of coffee,” says Lani Snyman from SCASA. “Each set (of 3 Cups) has an odd one within the three, and the taster should identify the odd one out. The taster that does this the fastest, with the most correctly identified, wins. The skill here is that the odd cup within the three cups, could be the same coffee, but grown a few hundred metres higher in altitude, or two microlots within one country or such. There are no judges during the competition, it’s just about whether the taster has identified the correct odd cup from each set of 3 cups (8 sets), and then who does it the quickest.”
©CoffeeMagazine/FerreriaSimphiwe trained together with his team at Sumatran Coffee in the run-up to the competition and, with a perfect score of 8/8 cups identified correctly, it obviously paid off. “For both Regional and National Competitions, my team at Sumatran Coffee prepared daily tasting sets for me. Either Shaun Aupiais and/or Matt Allen did the sets with me to provide a bit of competition. We mimicked the layout of the actual competition format so that it is as familiar as possible on the day of competition. Each set is timed and the scores recorded. After every 3 complete sets, the combinations I got wrong were included in the following set.”
Simphiwe began working in the coffee industry in 2007, but initially either liked or didn’t like a cup of coffee without any insight into why.[/vc_column_text][mk_blockquote font_family=”none”]“As my palate developed, I started tasting the subtle differences in each cup. I started tasting different coffees and making notes of what I liked from each one. I also started meeting with other baristas to taste and discuss these differences,” he says. “I worked as the Head Barista at a couple of local cafés between 2010 and 2013, after which I was promoted to Café Manager. In 2015, I decided that I needed to progress and move in a slightly different direction, but I knew I wanted to stay in the coffee industry – this is where my passion lay. I joined the Sumatran Coffee team almost 2 years ago and the amount I have learned about coffee is just incredible. I started roasting coffee over the past year and this has helped me so much in understanding the taste profiles of coffee. I look forward to learning as much as I can about coffee.”[/mk_blockquote][vc_column_text]On the competition itself, Simphiwe says that “Every cup tasting is a challenge, even when we’re training in the office. But for me, the key was making sure I didn’t ruin my taste buds in the hours preceding the competition (e.g. eating spicy foods or drinking too much coffee with milk). On the day, you just don’t know what coffees are on the table and you have to rely on your sense of smell and taste. The taste profile of each coffee is quite specific, so I have to use my knowledge of taste balance and tactile of the coffee.”
Next stop? The World Cup Tasters Competition in Budapest, Hungary. “I am so ready for it…BRING IT ON!”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
