Before our new Fishtown café was officially open, we hosted an event with TG-LAB in our training center and sensory lab. TG-LAB, which stands for The Green Lab, is an organization based out of Guatemala that works with a lot of the farmers in the country, specifically with Tomastepec co-operative, in order to import coffee to the U.S. They are the folks behind La Colombe’s current Guatemalan single-origin roast. We got to know the TG-LAB crew, and had the opportunity to tour their facility and speak with some of the farmers from the co-op, predominantly a farm called San Jorge, via Skype. They talked about their upcoming crop, and their battle with roya, or leaf rust, which affected 20% of their harvest this year. The group is currently working on tests to see what varieties of coffee plants have the best capabilities to stand up to roya. We also did a fragrance test, and tasted the extremes of the coffee that they provided, which went from more floral to more depth. At the end, they revealed that all the coffees were the same, but the grinds were different. It was a very educational evening, and we wanted to share some of the photos from our inaugural event at the new Fishtown location with you.
