New 2024 Coffee Sensory Training Kit

New 2024 Coffee Sensory Training Kit
Cup These 8 Coffees - Grow in 2024!

This is the latest, featured Limited Edition, 2024 release of our popular Sensory Training Kit. Enjoy the videos below and be sure to follow along with your own coffees available at: Training Kits

Featuring 8 Unique Coffees
for 4 Paired Exercises
+ 2 CUSTOM CUPPING SPOONS:

SP1 Arabica Species Papua New Guinea Baroida Estate Wet/Washed Coffee

• SP2 Robusta Canephora Species Java Gambung Pulp-Natural Coffee

• GR1 Specialty Grade Sumatra Organic Aceh Bukit Wet-Hulled Giling Basah Arabica Coffee

• GR2 Commercial Grade India Araku Valley Timor, Tafarikela, Catimor Dry/Natural Arabica Coffee

• PR1 Washed Wet Process Ethiopia Guji Goro Bedessa Arabica Coffee

• PR2 Natural Dry Process Ethiopia Guji Buno Dambi Uddo Coffee

• RO1 Lighter Roasted Colombia Alto Occidente Wet/Washed Arabica Coffee

• RO2 Darker Roasted Colombia Alto Occidente Wet/Washed Arabica Coffee

• Four x2 Cup A-B Cupping Placemats

• x2 Bonus Cupping Spoons!

Enjoy!

Cup These 8 Coffees

July Sensory Training Kit - Cup These 8 Coffees

Listed below are the coffees featured in the Limited Edition, July release of our popular Sensory Training Kit. Enjoy the video below and follow along with your own coffees available at: https://sca.training/shop-offers/sensory-training-kit-july2023

Featuring 8 Unique Coffees for 4 Paired Exercises:

An Arabica Mexico Chiapas Sierra Mariscal wet/washed coffee with a Robusta Canephora Java Gambung pulp natural for species comparison.

• Mexico Chiapas Cupping Notes: Whole bean fragrance starts very herbal, mint-like which carries through in the grounds that turn to a subtle green apple note on the wet aroma. The coffee is clean and bright with a simple high acidity which is pleasant in balance with a medium-full body and smooth finish.

• Java Gambung Cupping Notes: Whole bean fragrance jumps with brown spices, malty and pungent. When ground a roasted grain, corn and basmati rice comes through. The body is immediately huge and chewy in the mouth. It’s rough which is an aspect of big bitterness on top of the huge body. A bittersweet chocolate with animal-leather tones follow. Note: long after the cupping a tobacco flavor lingered in the air and in my mouth. Wow!

A specialty higher grade Kenya Nyeri Rukira wet/washed coffee paired with a lower scoring (not commercial) grade Brazil Fazenda Furnas dry/natural.

• Kenya Nyeri Kukira Cupping Notes: The whole bean fragrance has a luscious red currant, floral and tropical fruit character. Once ground those notes give place to mango and cherry tomatoes… both of which carry through into the wet aroma. The coffee is clean, complex in acidity like layers of juice tropical, bright, and high acidity which pairs nicely with the big body and sticky mouthfeel. Aftertaste is of grapefruit bitters and lemon rind.

• Brazil Fazenda Furnas Cupping Notes: The whole bean was simple like brown spices and chocolate, but once ground a subtle sweetness of fruit and especially peach came forth. The peach and chocolate carried into the wet aroma. The coffee is clean with strong earthy and bittersweet chocolate character. Creamy big body.

A pair of washed/wet processed Ethiopia Kecho Anderecha coffee and a natural/dry process Ethiopia Senna Kaffa Mountain.

• Kecho Anderecha Cupping Notes: Whole bean fragrance starts with coffee or orange blossoms. Once ground a white grape sweetness emerges which carries through in the wet aroma. The coffee sparkles with bright acidity (like white grape juice) and has a medium-light body. There is a slight astringency like green tea.

• Senna Kaffa Cupping Notes: Whole bean fragrance has soft raspberry tones but with cereal grain like character also in the grounds. The aroma is soft vanilla again with raspberry. It was more syrupy with sweet mouth coating feeling for body and texture. It finishes with an earthy lingering sweetness.

Finally, a lighter roasted Colombia Alto Occidente wet/washed with the same darker roasted Colombia Alto Occidente coffee.

• Light Roasted Alto Occidente Cupping Notes: Whole is herbal like green pepper with milk chocolate. Once ground apple emerges which when wet turns to honey and walnut. The body is full and very smooth to drink with a balanced cup profile and lingering milk chocolate finish.

• Dark Roasted Alto Occidente Cupping Notes: Whole bean has a rich hazelnut vanilla which ground yields to dark cherry. Dark cherry carries through the wet aroma which continues sweet like molasses and maple syrup. The roasty note of soft smoke and dark chocolate blend with full body for a bitter cherry dry mouth finish.

This is comes in whole bean unless requested medium-cupping grind with four x2 Cup A-B Cupping Placemats.

Enjoy!

Developing and Maintaining a Coffee Training Program

Developing and Maintaining a Coffee Training Program

Presented at Coffee Fest, Seattle, WA

Friday 30 Sep, 2022 

By Adam S. Carpenter

Founder & Lead AST

ROCC Coffee Co.

Greeting & Invitation

Thank you for attending this session!

I’m excited to work on this topic together with you today. I intentionally use that phrase, “work on this topic” because we are all learning and growing to develop better coffee training programs and methods to maintain them well. Thank you.

This is one of three sessions that I am presenting at Coffee Fest PNW, 2022. 

1. The first is Developing and Maintaining a Coffee Training Program.

2. The second is How to Get the Best from Your Beans: from Sample, to Profile to Production Roasting.

3. The third is Cupping Controversial Coffees.

If you’re able to attend any of the other sessions or connect after the show, I would be happy to dialogue.

This session will be shared with attendees by PDF and email in addition to special discount codes to join my SCA certified courses online and to enjoy savings at www.sca.training and www.rocc.coffee.

With your name and email address, I’ll also be giving away free prizes at the end of this session.

Introduction

First, my caveat.

Every speaker has a desire to be well received and to impress the crowd. Leading up to this show, I certainly felt those emotions, so I admit and lay them aside to approach our time with humility. That’s the best path for us all.

Let’s start with an overview of our time together. We need a few definitions for a baseline of expectations. Bear with me, while we move fast to lay a foundation on several books and theories, so that we have time at the end to get some work done together. We should either:

1. Work out a training plan for you, or specifically how to start developing a training program.

2. Or to work on a specific objective that you are prepared to add into your training program.

First, let’s consider what brought you here today? 

I enjoy interactive learning and sharing, so if I don’t call you out, please feel free to speak up and share your comments. Most often if you are feeling or sensing something, others in the room are on the same page. We all just need a nudge sometimes. How many of you, carried in the room today, a specific training PROBLEM, NEED or PAIN POINT?

We are in pain with training problems that need to be solved

My name is Adam and I love helping people grow to Make Life Better. That’s our vision at ROCC and we use coffee training and tools to build Community and Provide a Playground.

I grew up on a small farm in Michigan drinking Folgers instant coffee with my dad and grandpa. They worked hard and I wanted to be like them. In university I had the chance to stay at a Costa Rican coffee farm. Picking coffee cherries by day and playing futbol at night changed my life.

My wife and I married, went to China as English teachers and then in 2012, I opened Central China’s first artisan coffee roastery - ROCC. We roasted for wholesale coffees and had two retail outlets. One coffee window and one full Coffee Discovery Bar. In 2015 I started training as a fully certified AST with the SCAE running courses in both English and Mandarin Chinese all over China. Today I lead certified SCA courses online and offline in the Coffee Skills Program while supplying training tools and coaching for clients - especially roasters & labs.

I would be honored to work with you or your team to grow your business.

Part 1 in Leadership Series on YouTube

Developing and Maintaining Training Programs

Our demographic or business position doesn’t really matter for this topic. 

You may be in a Roastery, a Cafe, in Sales and Business Development. 

If you care about training, you are a leader.

• How do we start as leaders?

• How do we complete our training plan or program once we begin?

• How do we ensure we are helping our people to grow so that they can train others in the future?

I am pulling ideas and theories for our training framework from several authors and mentors.

My college chaplain would always advise the student leaders: 

“If you fail to define the moment, the moment will define itself.”

I encourage the concept of The Great Formula by “the coffee boys” for creating your first playbook or for writing the first pages of your first training binders.

Build a page day by day and week by week. Like building a wall you successfully lay one brick at a time. Laid properly it supports the bricks placed on top. 

Use The Great Formula to ask, “does my business have…”

• Low sales

• Failure

• Frustration

• Low Results

• Stress

• Low Profit

The right hand column shows us the problems, emotions or stressors most often hitting us on a “bad day.” From that list, which would you identify as the most urgent one or two items that you need to address?

Would it be people or systems or sales? Either way, we need a model to work with. We need to be able to build on that model. And our goal for today is that each of us can Plan - Do - Check - or Act after considering various theories and applications.

So we will come back to The Great Formula and the PDCA cycle. 

These are tools that we can use for our staff and employees.

But, first we must apply the theories and models to ourselves!

Strategy Maps

Don’t leave (or kick me) when you see that header “Long-Term Shareholder Value” This is from my old MBA textbook and was published by Harvard Business School in 2004. 

Believe it or not, it still works and holds true, but it’s not a complete picture in isolation. A business or a brand is a living creature - it has both a head and a heart. No one would advise that you only follow your head. A good, growing and rich life requires that we also follow our heart. Together we meld our hearts and minds.

We’ll address the head to lead us into the heart: Culture and Leadership.

In our limited time, we will only concern ourselves with the bottom strata; our foundational learning and growth perspective. Specifically we will emphasize Human Capital.

For those who wish to go further with this model, you may do so with Kaplan and Norton’s “Strategy Maps” from the Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=15760 

Learning and Growth Perspective

Learning and Growth are at the heart of growing our human capital - another word for your team and the value they provide your business. “Capital” is a term for wealth or asset. 

Our people are our greatest asset.

What words would you use to describe your team?

If you don’t have a team, write down 2-3 key words that you wish would describe them.

Culture is when you walk in the door to a business and you feel: “oh… this place is…something…” or “oh… these people are…really…what?”

The importance of culture cannot be overstated. It should be hired when you spot good cultured people. And, it should enfuse the workspace like atmosphere and aroma… or it will linger like stink and decay.

Culture is caught. It is imbued in the atmosphere.

This leads us into “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni. Our strategy map models structures, like bones in our bodies, it is the skeleton. But when we layer on culture, it becomes the muscles and nerves to help us move and to keep us safe.

What is your team playing for? 

• Does your team have an actionable Mission?

• Is there a captivating vision that people can really see?

• What authentic values do you and your team feel and believe in collectively?

This is the game that we repeat over and again. We play the same game on and off the field. In and out of the office or roastery or cafe. This is who we are!

Does our team feel like everyone has a part to play?

Do they know how they can contribute in large and small ways to help us win the game?

Leadership and Alignment.

Leadership is the WHO. It’s all about people. Ultimately someone is going to ensure that the job gets done, or that all of the jobs get done. 

Did you ever have an employee (or a friend) who always made sure things got done? You never had to worry about the business, you never had the nagging “what if” in the back of your mind. If so, good for you. If not, it sure sounds amazing! Right? 

I have 2 employees now and they are both like that. It is such a blessing to know that they care and they are on top of things. I don’t have to - and I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO - micromanage either of them.

Using our Great Formula matrix, ask yourself: “Who is ultimately responsible for…

1. Keeping PASSION alive?”

2. Ensuring that TASTE is on point?”

3. Monitoring our POSITION in the market?”

4. Helping get the right PEOPLE on the bus and with the team?”

5. Sharing and creating value through MARKETING?”

6. Building and overseeing our SYSTEMS?”

7. Managing and directing our MONEY?”

Name the people and tasks individually. Can you play a matching game with your team by name and task or do you find that it is YOU for a majority or all. This is most likely a reason that you may feel stress.

Ask yourself WHY IS IT ME and then deal with the answer truthfully.

The popularized concept of “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink might help you (like it did me) come to the point of saying “If I am the boss, then everything is my fault!”

Let’s say it together so that no one feels alone, “It’s my fault.”

Opening the cafe went poorly, “it’s my fault for not ensuring we had the supplies ordered last week.” But you may say, “it’s my manager's fault for not ordering.” Then we come back to ask, “why is it my fault that the manager did not order last week?” Admit, “it’s my fault that I didn’t provide training or checklists or time or accountability or a clear system and process for my manager to ensure that they ordered last week.”

This SYSTEMS ties back perfectly to ALIGNMENT. 

We must be perfectly clear. This is what we do, and this is why we do it, and this is how it helps us win, grow, succeed together. Our team needs to know (and be reminded daily) THIS IS HOW WE WIN. Emphasis on the “we” because if they lose, you lose. If you lose, they lose. We are a team.

When I (Adam) was a Shift Manager at Starbucks we had a stack of binders with checklists and detailed instructions from warming pastries to reconciling bank deposits to ensuring bathrooms were clean and temperatures in the freezer were on point. Everything could be measured, checked and marked complete.

A personal anecdote.

When I was a boy, people would tell me something or I would hear something and then I would interpret it.

Beware if your team and people are interpreting what you say and do, rather than receiving it with clarity. I would listen to a history lesson at school and contextualize the concept. I would listen to a song or a speech and interpret it into my own words or way of speaking. I thought I was being creative and integrating something into my own personality or learning modality - but in fact I was altering the truth. Details matter. I would call myself a “big picture” person or a “macro-thinker” but in fact, I was lazy and I didn’t appreciate details like I ought.

Details matter!

Seek clarity - always.

Practice what my (Adam’s) children do at home and at school every day. You ask them, “can you tell back what you just heard?” Ask your team, your friend, your staff to repeat back with precision. It’s not demeaning and it’s not offensive. It’s just a test of accuracy. We stop to listen to customer complaints, no matter how we view the situation. We repeat back exactly what they said and acknowledge that we are sorry for the mistake and misunderstanding. We take action. We tell them how we plan to resolve the problem. We encourage them to come back and help us next time with gratitude for bringing the situation to our attention.

“Can you tell back what you just heard?” 

It’s amazing how often our words and training is not received the way we think it is. We say something - they hear something else. If you feel you are going crazy, it’s because you are crazy. You are saying one thing, expecting another while they hear a 3rd and do a 4th… this is the cycle we must break as we put into place our Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.

Our goal is to Plan - Do - Check - Act.

Let's create, beg, borrow or steal a one page action plan like this beautiful Customer Service Recovery method from Starbucks and Howard Schultz called: LATTE. This page is a copy from our ROCC Coffee Discovery Bar Training manual which had 30 Competencies. One of them was LATTE for problem resolution.

Every ROCC barista would work through our 30 competencies from green coffee to espresso grinders to customer service and safety. Some required skills demonstration or role play. Of course there were more than 30 skills required to be a good barista, but we found that 30 was more than enough to give them (and us) confidence that the rest would be caught through good culture.

You may want to try LATTE role play with your team.

Now, let’s plug in the LATTE framework into our PDCA cycle.

• What would happen if we didn’t have a feedback loop for customer problems?

• What if we never made a plan to fix that faulty drink or product service?

• What would our employees think about our business?

• What would happen to the business as a result of guest experiences?

These are all BRICKS IN THE WALL as we plan, do, check and act.

And thus over time we apply and reapply the PDCA - Plan Do Check Act. The goal is to then help them to become HABITS that take little or no effort to perform. They become culture!

The Employee Review

Let’s look at another one, the Employee Review. Show it to new applicants when they apply for the job. Warn them with advance notice - we will check up on all of these items and work through them together monthly. 

See if that excites or demotivates them. This is a culture test before they ever gain access to the team.

Give applicants aspirations and goals before they evey enter the team and face work challenges. Some forms like this are easy to download, borrow and adopt for your own. Many procedures and forms like this are better JUST TO BE DONE than to WAIT for perfection.

A job done is better than one that never began. 

You can even ask the employee, “would you please write down 5-10 things you want me to follow up on after 30 days?” This is a great place to start building alignment and checking for clarity.

Another essential training (and maintaining) tool is the task list and checklist. 

This is something your team members can easily build and grow. Ask them on a weekly basis (when you review them) “was anything missing?” Ask them to write things down when they are doing it so that next time they have the talking points right in front of them.

IMPORTANT : If you make a list and ask the employees to work it, then you are held accountable for reviewing those lists and documents.

Take Extreme Ownership.

I can’t recommend enough adopting the one page Playbook as Patrick Lencioni promotes in The Advantage. 

He walks us through items to include: who we are, what we do and how we do it. 

Bonus: consider what “we don’t do… we refuse to… etc.”

Sometimes the “we fight against” statement can be confused with “we fight for” statements… take care of the negative effects in a company. It is critical that we monitor what our culture is. Culture's definition is much more clear than the non-culture definition. As humans we have “mirror neurons” which help us to become like our atmosphere and community. 

Where do our mirror neurons point?

• If you want your team to move in a certain direction: you should strive to be that kind of person.

• If they should save money, you should save money and celebrate it with them.

• We adopt things that are celebrated by our community and culture.

• If they should be more detailed with numbers, then we should lead by celebrating numbers.

• If they should be more accountable to timely reporting, then let’s provide them timely reports.

It’s easy to lead a culture when we own it and celebrate the toil and work!

One page to rule them all. 

Not one ring - borrowed from my favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien. 

If our team gets this right, then they will be aligned with culture and mission. Can you name that ONE THING or that ONE PAGE? It is absolutely critical!

You may think, “one page, that’s not enough to lead a team and a business!” Don’t worry, it will come with time. There will be things left unsaid… they can come after. We had 30 competencies which followed the 1 page we called MVV - Mission Vision Values.

It’s a document that is birthed from your soul (or the business soul) so don’t overthink it. This is a time to let the mirror shine on what is within. We cannot copy/paste another company or team. We can borrow their employee review forms and LATTE service recovery steps, but the One-Pager must be birthed from heart and culture. 

Our One-Page Company Culture Must Be Authentic!

This one page document (as outlined by Patrick Lencioni) provides our team a 5-word summary, an elevator pitch and quick sales reply for what we do and why we make the world a better place by existing.

It may even boil down to one word like “Wow!”

Resist the temptation to make 7 plans. That’s my (Adam’s) style. I want to try to do everything at once, rather than sequentially knocking down the dominoes and building momentum. Lay your plans out on your desk and ask yourself honestly, which ONE will I do first?

Share in the comments or with the group if you know the answer to: THIS is my one thing! 

It may be the easiest one. Pick the low hanging fruit to get some wins and feel the momentum of progress.

It may be the most important one. The one you DREAD the most. Get it done for the satisfaction of doing a hard thing.

Let’s Get to Work!

It’s question and answer time. There is no stupid question, except the time when a girl asked me (while driving her to LAX airport) if she should have brought some chopsticks with her on her trip to China for the summer. 

That was the one dumb question! 

Any others? 

It’s an open field now. 

Thank you for your great contribution to our time together!

Be sure to check out my other presentations and here is our drawing for winners of cupping spoons, sample coffees, roasting trays and more fun items on display from www.rocc.coffee and www.sca.training.

I’ll be around the show presenting other sessions and would love to connect with you! 

Join my email list at: http://eepurl.com/cZU5R1 

And connect with me on Instagram @asc.coffee 

I am happy to share this presentation with you by PDF and offer you special discounts on certified SCA courses at www.HowToCoffeePro.com as well as training tools and equipment from The Labs at ROCC and SCA.Training. Have a great day and Make Life Better my friends!

Updated Cohort Calls Model for HowToCoffeePro and SCA Training

Hey Friends!

Adam at ROCC Coffee at SCA.Training and HowToCoffeePro. I have an exciting announcement if you are a new learner on the fence or one of our alumni. So, stay tuned and be sure to pay attention.

First, you want to ensure that you are on our: Email List so that you get every announcement about new course offerings, the cohort calls and the Live social media sessions that we are going to be having.

So here’s the update: all of our courses that had been self-paced and self-directed with one-on-one coaching are now moving to a more dynamic cohort model. 

SCA Training International Cohort!

To provide you with distance learning convenience with a cohort team and class experience. This is something we’ve been working on for a long time to build, and in part we just needed to have a greater number of alumni and students. And now we’re there.

---

As of August 1, 2022 we want you, we want new learners to watch for the Open-Enrollment window of time. This is the open enrollment when you can join into a course. The first course, for example, is going to be Sensory Skills Foundation, and it’s going to be open for 10 days. Sensory Skills Foundation, all the new learners should join from August 1st - 10th.

Now, these will be changing and updated by email.
Every student who joins this course will be able to start your study, work on your practicals for the course and you may even have time to complete the entire course. Wait for the announcement for our first Google Meeting and class call. All of our new students, that first cohort are going to be invited.

You need to attend the call, just like you attend your class in order to keep progressing. We also are going to invite in our alumni.

We’ve got dozens… hundreds of students who have taken specific courses over the past years, we want them to come in and to join your course. Not only will you be able to ask me questions and to interact with your classmates in that meeting.

We want the alumni to share with you what it’s like to go through that course and take steps in their career and in their coffee business.

Open Enrollment will close and you’ll have to wait to the next class to get into the next cohort. Yet, once you’re an alumni, if you took this course last year, you’re always a part of that group. So every time a new cohort joins you’ll alway be able to join. 

We’ll be cupping, we’ll be roasting, we’ll be looking at equipment. Once you start this program (as long as you want to stick around) we’re going to keep developing and creating meetings with classes for you to visit.

We’ll be sending those out by social media and sharing those by email so be sure to:

• @HowToCoffeePro on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtocoffeepro/

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CoffeeTraining 

• Join the Email Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cZU5R1 

Those are going to be the three hot places to be, though more may be coming, and we’ll be sure to share the news. 

If you’ve been thinking about joining an online SCA course and if you’ve been asking, “what’s the online experience going to be like?” This is the time, it’s going to be rich and it’s going to be flexible and it’s going to be dynamic with an international cohort from around the world. 

Once you join, you’re a part of our Community of HowToCoffeePro alumni, so come on back alumni, please join us for these calls, watch for the announcements, join in on the Instagram lives. We would love for you to speak into these topics. Tell us about your company, tell us about your career and the challenges you have faced and overcome.

We need to give hope to the next generation of coffee professionals. That’s what HowToCoffeePro is all about: giving you the how to skills to become a coffee professional and Make Life Better.

I can’t wait to see you in class! 

Come on, let’s go.