A Shot In The Dark 2021 for the win…

It has been two weeks since Creative Coffee Week, and we are still ecstatic about the win!

What Win you ask, and what is A Shot In The Dark even?

Well… A shot in the dark is the Coffee Magazine’s very own national coffee roasting competition. The only in the country we might add.

It has been going for four years (since 2018), and every year the quality improves and competition gets tighter.
What is noteworthy of this competition is that it does not test each roasteries coffee offering, but rather puts your roasting skill to the test by giving every competitor the exact same coffee and cupping all of them individually according to the specialty coffee association score sheet.
This year they let Sweetness and Flavour count double points, so we had something specific to focus on.

The 10 roasteries that scores the most points go through to the second round, where your roasting skills gets tested a second time with a different coffee, they also add a second challenge in round 2, where you need to make a blend of three coffees specifically for espressos.

Who has taken first place before?

The Previous winners are all well know roasteries that we look up to. We feel honoured to have our name amongst them on the first-place trophy, even more so since it was our first time competing.

2018: Bean There Coffee Company *
2018: Truth Coffee Roasting *
2019: Bottomless Blessings
2020 Father Coffee
2021: Gegrond

* Yes there were 2 winners in 2018. Back then there were 2 divisions. A Central America division and a Africa division.

Why does the win mean so much to us?

For one, we are fairly young compared to the heavyweights of the industry, and although we believe in the product we produce, and the service we deliver, it just gives us that extra assurance that we are on the right path, and are delivering the quality product that we set out to deliver.

We only received our Genio roaster in March 2021, and had fairly steep learning curve to conquer. Our old roaster did not have any means of tracking the roast, so we were roasting relatively “blind”. The new tech that the Genio brought to the roastery was just as intimidating as it was exciting, but finally we could ensure quality and consistency at high volumes.
Taking the win at a Shot In The Dark proved to us that we have climbed the learning curve, but we know that it only gets steeper from here on out.

2021 is an intense year for Gegrond. A lot have happened, and a lot still need to happen, but we believe that the best is yet to come.

Thank you to everyone that has motivated and supported us on this journey.
It impowers us more than you can imagine.

If you have enjoyed a Gegrond coffee before, or have been impressed by our slick service, please take a moment and leave a honest review on Google or Facebook, it makes an immense difference for a small business like ours.

Keep drinking quality coffee.

The Gegrond Team
Frederik, Pieter & Leendert