The
Mid-Atlantic Regional Roasters Group rolls into Blacksburg town on Friday. The weather greeting this circus befits a gathering of people who play with fire: lightning, heat and sun. More heat when the grills are fired and the mustards are served at
Kathi Z's flavor dynamics class. Black lightning when the chocolate is sampled and espresso shots are pulled. Poor Mountain is no longer burning but there will be smoke. Roast smoke. Pig smoke. Tobacco smoke as only
Joe Nazare can present it. We'll cool things with a water quality class delivered by Skip Finley of
Cirqua. Need a break from the sensory overload? Play with the roast analyzer on loan from
Javalytics.
When we sat down to work on recipes for the beer banquet (Did I forget to tell you about that?) planned for Friday night, we quickly diverged into stories of previous MARRG meetings. Stashed bottles of Port, oyster roasts until dawn, bonfires visible from space. I asked
The Rev to read the roster of the people heading our way. Because of coffee, we have friends from Virginia's Eastern Shore, Clearwater, Zimbabwe, Matagalpa, New Orleans, Green-vul, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, St. Paul. We wish we could devote more time to those friendships. We neglect them. But here they come, spending their own dough to get here. For one weekend in the summer, for the third straight year, Blacksburg is the center of the Mid-Atlantic Coffee Universe. And we are going to enjoy ourselves.
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