Workshop Description: The founders at Anthem Coffee learned the art of blending from their uncle, Vaughn Neblock, the lead coffee buyer at Folgers in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Many of his employees went on to lead major mass market coffee companies and used what he taught them to run their buying portfolios. Using techniques learned working alongside him we hope to give participants a reliable framework for building blends that can remain consistent regardless of market and buying conditions. We will introduce the Category approach and lead participants through the use of the Affective form for gleaning information and data from their own internal team and customers to learn how to use replacement coffees and coffee buying to keep their blends reliable and consistent. A combination of presentation and hands on will give participants practical experience with building blends on a budget. The final hour will challenge participants to match a commercially available blend with coffees that come from the Categories we present.
Learning Objectives:
1. Greater familiarity with the Affective form and how powerful of a tool it can be for roasters when used to collect data at all points in their blend development process
2. Foster in specialty roasters an awareness of the applications lower quality coffees have in their roasting stables and blending practices
3. A greater appreciation for how defects actually affect the cup quality of your blends, i.e. "maybe we CAN blend with 150 defect coffee at X percentage and nobody really will be able to tell the difference.
Date: Friday, April 10, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Room Number: 31 AB
Category: Brewing
REGISTRATION FEES:
Regular - $275
Paid Member - $230
Booking: To book your place in this Workshop, head to the World of Coffee San Diego Registration & Booking Portal and add a session to your order. Already registered? Simply login using the credentials created at purchase to access your booking and add other paid events to your badge.
Instructor
Russell Thorpe
Director of QC
Russell Thorpe is the Director of QC for Anthem Coffee Imports. Starting as a barista, he arrived at his current position through a combination of curiosity, hard work, and a little bit of 'right place, right time' luck. He has been a quality evaluation roaster and cupper since 2015 and a certified Q grader since 2021. He has a wide skill set primarily focused on the pedagogy of learning and regularly uses that to help a wide array of roasters develop blends and profiles to best fit their needs.
Jacob Burlin