Next week coffee enthusiast/booster/educator Perry Czopp — A.K.A. @thecoffeechop on social media — has put together a lineup of coffee experts, baristas, coffee shop owners, and buyers for an educational event. The Coffee Educational Series aims to expand the minds of coffee fans in the ways of buying, brewing, and sipping coffee and will be held at Peixoto Coffee, the coffee culture epicenter of downtown Chandler.
From 6 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27, six speakers will discuss various aspects of the coffee-consumption experience, including how to buy, how to home-brew, and how to consider the taste and quality of milk in your coffee drinks.
At the event, Julia Peixoto Peters, co-owner and co-founder of Peixoto Coffee, will give a talk from her life experience growing up in a farming family in Brazil.
Peters says understanding where one’s coffee is sourced is an important part of being a responsible coffee consumer. She and her husband have established a business practice of buying direct from coffee farmers with whom they’ve personally established relationships, thereby cutting out the middleman. Meeting the farmer and visiting the land is advocated lately as the best practice among ethical coffee buyers in today’s market to ensure the farmer’s are receiving a fair market price for their crops.
Julia Peixoto Peters’ husband, Jeff Peters, is the head roaster and co-founder at Peixoto and will lead a conversation about quality measures in roasting. Because it isn’t a full-day event, and the roasting machine can get quite loud, he won't offer a demonstration, but he will show beans in various stages of roasting — all the way from virgin green beans to semi-dark to fully roasted.
In addition to the presentations by the Peters, speakers will include Cartel barista Michelle Johnson, who will lead a discussion on coffee tasting and different milk variables. SCAA-certified instructor, co-owner of Due South Coffee, and specialty coffee manager at Ally Coffee Richard Pereira will talk about the ins and outs of green coffee buying. Czopp will talk about coffee as an ingredient, and Bryan Schiele, local coffee enthusiast and photographer, will open the night with a conversation about consumer and at-home brewing and buying the perfect retail beans.
Czopp says throughout the night there will be demos and samples, light food pairings, and even a cold keg of beer. At the beginning of the night there will be mingling, then the series of speakers, and then more mingling.
“We want it to be fun,” he says. “We’ve planned it to be more conversational and less of a lecture series.”
Thirty spots are available for the Coffee Educational Series. Tickets cost $30 and are available through sellfy.com/p/i4pk/.
