The Coffee Wars VII Call for Beans is announced
The Coffee Wars Results were (finally) announced
CoffeeWars VII: Pre-Con Ranting
Wake up and smell the coffee war, people: DefCon 14 is just around
the corner, and that means another edition of the world's best-known
hacker coffee competition. Already, the frenzy has begun!
Friday, August 4th. 10:00 AM.
Entries can arrive any time after 9:00 AM.
Brewing starts at 10 promptly.
Coffee Wars usually ends about 11:00 AM.
What could be more fun than the start of DefCon? Starting DefCon
with a bloodstream full of psychoactive chemicals, that's what!
But which chemicals, and how to get them there? Allow us to offer
a suggestion: caffeine is a pretty good one, and coffee is an
excellent medium for delivery. OK, we know that's not exactly a
novel concept. Moreover, we know that hackers hate inferior
solutions (get it?), and so we arrive at a critical question: which
coffee is the best?
Good news! We've assembled an enthusiastic team of experts to find
the answer. For the seventh year in a row, we will gather at the
start of DefCon to conduct CoffeeWars, the craziest and most useful
competition of them all. First, we invite coffee-loving hackers to
submit their favorite beans for competition. The good stuff: whole
beans, unflavored, from your favorite roaster. The contest staff
sets up a blind taste test with a standard set of brewing tools and
methods, and our esteemed judges sample and rate each brew. We
tabulate the results, and the winner is announced at the closing
ceremony, with the appropriate degree of glory and spectacle.
Why do we go to such lengths? Why do the judges punish their nervous
and renal systems to such a degree? Why do we cart a truckload of
supplies to Las Freaking Vegas every summer? Make no mistake: it is
all about love. Love of coffee, to be sure, but also love for our
fellow hackers. We want to make sure that you have access to
trustworthy, impartial information about the things that are
important.
We don't want you to spend the whole year wondering where the good
coffee is. We don't want you to run the risk of buying horrible
inferior coffee. That's why, each and every damn year, we publish all
our results in full.
Our process is simple:
Grind --> Brew --> Drink --> Vote
But our goal is lofty: to discover and honor the coffee that
hackers love best. If you visit us, you'll find us hard at work,
throwing ourselves headlong into the coffee war. If you bring
your beans, we will greet you with respect, and subject them to our
rigorous tests. But who knows? Maybe yours will be the batch favored
above all others. Victors in prior coffee wars have gone on to become
world leaders, prizewinning scientists, and reclusive billionaires.
These last assertions are slight exaggerations, but it should
nevertheless be clear that having entered coffee wars is a badge of
honor, and that winning cannot possibly fail to make you more
popular.
Plus, I bet it looks good on the resume, if you're into that kind of
thing. Photos of last year's
happy winner are now available.
"If kids today chose coffee over
methadone, the world would be a far better and more productive
place."
-AJ Rez
