Blog — Coffee Cupping

This week, we're cheering on our resident cup tasting legend Jake Donaghy as he heads to the World Cup Tasting Championships in Athens, Greece! Jake's journey from Olympia Coffee roaster and green coffee buyer to U.S. Cup Tasting Champion has been a wild and exciting ride for us, to say the least. For those following along, you might be thinking, "Wow, what a pro!" You might also be thinking: "How can I get this kind of tasting experience for myself?" Or, possibly: "What's with all the slurping?" Whatever your questions, Jake's here to help answer them! In this quick video,...

What's it like to be the Cup Tasters Champion in the United States? For Jake Donaghy, it's back to work as usual... but with the fun memories of Portland to take with him, and even more excitement ahead to look forward to."I just wanted to go and have fun and see friends and meet people," he admitted of his reasons for entering the competition. "But I ended up winning."As the reigning cup tasting champion in the U.S. division of SCA, Jake now advances to compete on the world stage, which will unfold in Greece in June of this year. How's...

In a weekend abuzz with the nation’s most prestigious coffee competitions, Olympia Coffee showed up strong and took not one, but two first-place wins in the 2023 U.S. Coffee Championships! In the U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Championship, Olympia Coffee co-founder Sam Schroeder took the top spot. And, in the U.S. Cup Tasters Championship, roaster and green coffee buyer Jake Donaghy nabbed first place with a perfect score sheet and the fastest time. The Coffee in Good Spirits Championship tests the limits of both coffee and cocktails, and Sam showed off his mastery of both mixology and coffee craft. After...

We know our Gatta Anaerobic is good. Crazy good. Good enough to take to competition, even. Still, when Coffee Review in their March tasting report awarded this recent Ethiopian micro lot with a soaring 94 points, we were blissfully over the moon. Gatta Anaerobic is Olympia Coffee's first-ever anaerobic coffee from Ethiopia, sourced from producer Kenean Dukamo of Gatta Farm in Sidamo. It also happens to be the only lot on Coffee Review's list that hails from the African continent. While more farms in Latin America seem to have jumped on anaerobic processing, the trend has picked up more slowly...

  The Coffee Review writes "This exceptional coffee was selected as the #14 coffee in the Coffee Review Top 30 Coffees of 2013. This lot is comprised entirely of the much admired, bold-bean Pacamara variety of Arabica, a cross between the giant-beaned Maragogipe variety and Pacas, a selection of the heirloom Bourbon. Finca El Aguila is owned by farmer Mauricio Ariz and his sons, who are fourth generation growers. Olympia Coffee is the only roaster in the United States to be offering this segregated Finca Aguila Pacamara lot. Olympia Coffee Roasting is a small-batch wholesale and retail roasting company with...