The Supremes

The company: Coffee Supreme.

The blend: Supreme.

Following discussions about Coffee Supreme on the Melbourne Coffee Review facebook group, I decided to wander on down to supreme and pick up half a kilo of the supreme blend to try it out for myself. Back in the day, this blend was a light, clean and acidic blend with a relatively low body. I liked to think of it as being similar to Campos' superior blend and you can bet your bottom dollar that Campos would start sweating if Supreme decided to put supreme up against superior. (Supreme vs Superior ... seriously.)

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this blend was interrupted by the palate training course that I did recently, so, with considerable irony, I apologise that my descriptions of this blend will be incomplete and based on recollection.

Drip/Siphon/Cupping: A classic cup; flawlessly clean, somewhat sweet, mild acidity, medium body.
Espresso: High in acidity, low in body when young, but improving after several days' rest.
Cappuccino: As expected, no presence in milk whatsoever at 3 days resting time, improving considerably at 7 days.

So there you have it. Not very useful, but it's something.

Supreme clearly put excellent coffee in the blend, but I think that a lot of people expect their espresso to be very high in body and very low in acidity. Here, Supreme demonstrates why a company has multiple offerings - try their FTO blend instead.


A clean cup in a dirty world.

As a quick addendum, I got to have the briefest of plays with a new WBC spec NS Aurelia. As with the other NS machines, the steam lever is totally awesome. Beyond that, I think what my tastebuds and my thermocouple readings told me are best summarised by the following photo:

Coffee Supreme's Fair Trade Organic Blend

Introduction

Going back a few years, Coffee Supreme seemed to be all the rage. These were the dudes that supplied Ray, the cafe that started it all for Mark D of the St Ali Empire. Now, for some reason, I barely hear about them. Well, business can't be all that bad - a few months ago they moved in to a bigger, badder and better factory with a bigger, badder and better roaster. It happens to be two minutes walk away from the Veneziano factory.


Digression

Of course, this put me in a bit of a quandry. I haven't ever featured any of the big V's blends just because I thought that it would be pretty cheesy to. By the same token, is it poor form to be reviewing the competitors down the street? Well, I figure that both of these are rather moot points, seeing as final year uni has forced me to wake up and smell the coffee, pun intended, and focus on actually doing something with that uni degree that I study between sips. Of course, this means that at some stage after I finish working at Veneziano, I'll be posting about some of what is actually the bulk of the coffee that I drink these days.



Notes

So I dropped by Supreme's factory and picked up a bag of their fair trade organic blend to keep me going whilst studying last week. I'm not opposed to buying fair trade coffee, nor am I for it - I'll make my decision based on taste. Ditto for organic. It so happens that the fair trade coffees that I have tasted over the past few years have hit more strikes than they have home runs. Still, Supreme have done a great job of working with a limited pool of green coffees. The ground coffee definitely smelled like it had some sort of natural processed coffee in it, but perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me - it never made it to the cup.

French press: Roast flavours predominate; too dark for my tastes. (I often find that stuff that tastes great as espresso doesn't shine in a french press or in traditional cuppings.)

Espresso: Dark crema, rich mouthfeel, malt/vegemite, moderate acidity and a very vague hint of some sort of dry spice.

Cappuccino: Cuts through milk with confidence; malty/vegemitey flavour and dry cocoa finish. Great.

Missed It By This Much: PNG PSC AA

Background: It's amazing how an interest in coffee can bring together people from all kinds of places. At the beginning of last year, Corey from Epic Espresso was at his previous cafe, Core Espresso. He was kind enough to take in this barista for a few shifts so that I could extend my trip to Perth for a conference. Not only that, but we went and visited the gang at Five Senses, who were great hosts, firing up their linea and bringing on a slew of different single origins. The standout, by far, was their exclusive PNG PSC AA. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and I was thrilled to receive a few bags of it in the mail not too long ago. Thanks, guys!

Before they were famous: Vanessa (left), Megan (blur in background) and Ben (right) at Core.

But I'm not the only person who this coffee has brought together. Dean, the major-domo of the company, has established a direct-trade relationship with the growers of his PNG coffees. Without getting too technical, PSC stands for "premium small holder crop" and seems to be a designation used to rip off growers without too much trading power. Dean circumvented all of the BS and cut out the middle-man to ensure a better deal for all involved. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that he gets the "AA" grade ... the best part of the crop ...

A random Linea sits in the hallway at Five Senses.

Tasting Notes: In Perth last year, the PSC AA beat me over the head with liquorice and cherry flavours. I was unable to recreate that with the lot that arrived here, but was treated to a distinctly chocolatey coffee that made for a very nice cappuccino.

Conclusions: Get on the mailing list for this one.

Tasting coffee can be hard work!

Introducing ... The Golden Cobra

Last week I had a lovely surprise when one of the usual suspects, Matt, dropped in to visit me at First Pour. Matt has a habit of ordering coffee from roasters across Australia and the globe and occasionally brought in some of the big-name US stuff to us at Maltitude and Maling Room. Last week, he brought me some stuff from Golden Cobra in NSW.


I only got to have a few shots out of the stuff that Matt gave me, so I won't try to give an in-depth description. For now, they will sit on the "must order" list. But I will make a few observations:

• I liked the shots that I puled.
  
  
• I was expecting coffee that was lighter in body and higher in acidity, ala Campos, Morgans, Numero Uno et. al. I was surprised to find that the blends sat more closely towards the Five Senses, Veneziano et. al. end of the spectrum, with a rich mouthfeel.
  
  
• These guys are terrible at online marketing. Do a quick google and all that you will find is some random blog comments. Their webpage is a work in progress.
  
  
• Golden Cobra have managed to seduce several cognoscenti that I know, including one that almost entirely eschews commercially roasted coffee in favour of his own roaster and linea combo at home.
  
  
• Apparently one of these guys is ex-Campos. They're at least a year old.
  
  
• Their logo is going to make for some really cool branded cups and paraphenalia.

It's always nice to see small roasteries starting up and I wish Golden Cobra the best of luck ...

... whoever they are.

Espresso 'Aida' (All El Salvador Blend)

Courtesy of Nim and, I believe, Jon in the US, two bags of Counter Culture Coffee's Espresso 'Aida' made their way to Melbourne about a month ago. It's a safe bet that this is the furthest south that this particular blend has ever travelled.


This blend was developed by CCC and Murky Coffee's Nick Cho to win the US South Eastern Regional Barista Competition, which Nick did. But it's greatest achievement was surely travelling halfway across the globe with multiple pit stops and still behaving itself. Ordering coffee from overseas is a fun and expensive way to pass some time, but it often ends in heartbreak. Last year alone, various people have had various blends from most of the "usual suspect" roasters in the US and they have invariably been oily and well past their prime by the time that they got here. (But that's not going to stop us!) So it was certainly a very pleasant surprise when we ripped into this one and it looked like it had been roasted here.

OK, so a fair bit of time has passed since I tasted it, so my descriptions aren't going to be the best. I remember that as an espresso it was very acidic, but not unpleasantly so. Where it really shone for me, though, was as a cappuccino, where the blend tasted of nuts and honey.
Pretty funny, because I heard that Nick used a different blend for cappuccini in the SERBC! Certainly, I think that plane travel really does alter the flavour of any coffee.

Checked the CCC webpage today and evidently Nick's blend is done and dusted. Damn. Hmm ... maybe I should shell out for Aida's Grand Reserve ...

Coast Peaberry (Australia)

Some background info: Peaberry coffee beans are a naturally occurring anomaly where the coffee cherry develops only one bean with a completely rounded surface, rather than two with flat surfaces. Take a look at the photo to the right (link to source). Most sources will tell you that the beans result from stress to the coffee plant, such as insect damage or drought, but also confirm that they will pretty much always occur in some coffee cherries harvested at the tip of the branches of the coffee plant. As a result, 2 -7% of a coffee farmer's crop will usually be peaberry, which will be screened out and sold separately. Peaberries are usually considered a defect in conventional lots, but are sold as individual lots, too. The flavour of peaberries is usually described as a concentrated version of the conventional bean.

About this peaberry: Australian coffees are rare enough, but Australian peaberries? My sense of curiosity was instantly piqued when Mark from St Ali told me that he had some in stock. After Tim Wendelboe used some of the peaberry from Mountain Top to win the 2004 WBC, we tried out a blend using the regular MT coffee and were very happy with it. (This was at Maltitude, the cafe that I used to work at in the city.) Since then, I had only had some relatively disappointing Australian coffees and had certainly never even heard of "Coast" coffee. It was a very pleasant surprise to have a traditional double-shot cappuccino from Toshi, perhaps one of Melbourne's best baristi, earlier this year. The phrase "best coffee of the year" springs to mind. It was rich and unctuous; the closest thing to a rich hot chocolate that you will ever get out of coffee. So when they roasted up the last of the bag, I couldn't help but buy some for myself and for my boss, Andrew, at Maling Room.


The tasting notes:

The coffee was roasted on the 17th and I drank it at home from the 20th to the 25th. Through my Silvia/Rocky combination, I was unable to recreate the magic that Toshi had earlier created. The resultant espresso was low in acidity and tasted of cocoa, cutting through milk well, but I was unable to bring out the sweetness to transform it from cocoa to hot chocolate. I had earlier mentioned that it would be awesome to blend this with some Daterra Sweet Collection. Of course, I picked some of this up from Mark as well and blending them together produced great espresso off the back of the Daterra. A french press brewed on the 24th had a berry aroma that I couldn't discribe more precisely than that, but that flavour did not make it into the cup, which was full-bodied and low in acid, unexpectedly becoming sweeter and sweeter as it cooled!


On the 26th (9 days old), I took Andrew's 1/2kg into Maling Room, which was fortunate, as the house blend was quite unimpressive on the day. Not having been able to repeat the "wow" experience from St Ali earlier in the year, I was unsure how it would go through the Synesso. We dialled a head to 201F and found that, as an espresso, it wasn't overly impressive by itself; chocolatey, for sure, but not terriffically complex, nor was the mouthfeel anything special. The thought that it would make a great blend component was again confirmed when Andrew just had to show off the Sidamo that he'd roasted that week. Of course, there was only 10g or so left, so he pulled an impromptu blended shot. Score; lovely acidity with some chocolate. Sure, the extraction paramaters were off, but pretty good overall. Anyhoo, the customers went bannanas over the milk drinks that went out for them and within a few hours it was all that I could do to snag the last double shot for myself:

Yes, I need to remember that the Synesso has way
more steam than my Silvia ;P

Conclusion: A unique and somewhat perplexing coffee to work with. A 150mL milk drink based off a double-shot, if pulled correctly, can potentially blow your mind, however it seems to be a bit finnicky in this regard. Perhaps the difference in ability to pull great shots between home and work indicates that this one is best left to sit for a week before using it. In this regard, it is similar to most of the nice robustas and monsooned coffees. If this is around in a year, I will certainly revisit it, likely as a blend component.

Links:

Roast Magazine on Australian Coffee