November = Events

Don't ask me, why, but there seems to be a bit on this November.

Barista Comp Wrapup

The Victorian Barista and Latte Art Championships were held over the weekend. I did the judging calibration purely out of interest, but intended to study rather than judge. Turned out that there was a bit of a shortage of judges, so I sidelined studying to get the opens judged and happening. The obvious changes this year were the new machines and the new faces - who, without exception, displayed a very good level of technical competence. It would be impossible to remember or list all of the home runs that the competitors hit, so I'll just mention one - Simon James absolutely nailing the description of his espresso. It was nice to see Nim step up to judge, adding another experienced palate to the Victorian pool of judges.

Talor judged by HJ Ross, Myself, Mel, Tom and Jeff.

As usual, Syd has put up his amazing photos of the events. Emily Oak's idea to fly him up to Atlanta to be the official WBC photographer is brilliant.

I was furiously footnoting an essay on Sunday, but it was nice to see a well-deserved latte art comp win from Erin, who I am sure will win the Australians and the Worlds, but might lose the Intergalactics to the seven-handed Florgostillians and their legendary 'galaxy of rosettas.' Big props to Kirby from Maling Room and Dave Seng for their placings. Jesse 'Iceman' Hyde took out the Barista comp, leaving the press with the immortal one-liner:

"I used to play guitar full-time for a living," Hyde said. "Coffee geeks will never be rock stars. Slash (former lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses) is way cooler than David Makin."

Golden Bean

So I've got a 5am flight tomorrow to the Equal Golden Bean conference + coffee roaster competition. Should be fun; really looking forward to tasting the best that Australia has to offer. Many thanks to Mr Makin for the lift and Cafe Culture for the whole thing.

Drinking?

Why yes, yes I am drinking coffee. I have a nice drip roast kenyan coffee generously sent down to me by the boys at Mecca in Sydney. Thanks guys!

Siphon: With a high dose, surprisingly full-bodied, with apple-juice like acidity and mouthfeel. Relatively low on the classic winey/raspberry flavour - for a Kenyan - but definite orange overtones. Wierd. Dry finish, owing to the hot weather that the parcel has been exposed to.

Seriously. Lightish roast kenyan coffee, for brewed methods, has to be as close to shooting fish in a barrel as you can get in coffee. It's usually very impressive and this one is no exception.

PNG Elimbari, Market Leaders and Blog Followers

Sometimes you've gotta laugh. I went to buy some coffee a few weeks ago and ended up getting some PNG Elimbari that I was told was roasted by Five Senses' recently set up Melbourne branch, though it was in another bag. So I'll attribute this coffee to them!

When it comes to PNG coffee on the Australian market, there is a broker that is basically the authority and there is a roaster that is the authority. That roaster is Five Senses. Dean set up the company after working in PNG and getting to know the local farmers. They started their direct trade program years before the phrase came to be prominent. And while we're talking about direct trade, I'll take this opportunity to point out Watts' take on it, if you haven't read it already.

A better name for 'direct trade' would be 'fair trade', seeing as the former results in the exchange of a sum of money that the farmer is happy with for coffee of the quality that the purchaser is happy with, whereas the latter results in the exchange of a fixed sum of money for coffee of unspecified quality. Pity about that whole 'fair trade' movement having the 'fair trade' name - maybe we should think about calling it 'fairer trade' or 'fairest trade'!

The point is that Five Senses' direct trade relationship has enabled them to get spectacular coffee from PNG in the past and the same is true for the Elimbari.

Brewed: Good body, mid level acidity, hints of tomato.
Espresso: Decent body, long finish, clean, sweet, hints of apricot.
Cappuccino: Average ability to cut through milk, but, amazingly, on a few occasions I was able to coax the fruit flavours into the cappuccino.

To date, I haven't dabbled much in trying to score coffees on this blog, preferring to describe and get acquainted with the various numerical score systems in my own time. However, I will mention that I tasted this coffee soon after a cupping of Costa Rican Cup of Excellence coffees at BBB. The Elimbari clearly trailed behind the top two, but was up there with numbers 3 through 9. On this basis, I think that it would be fair to say that this is a mid to high eighties coffee on the SCAA cupping form, which is a bit of a rarity on the Australian market.

And Another Thing ...

I must be like - totally - the best person in history or something. My "followers" list has tripled! To three!

I guess that I should add the "followers" watchumcallit, but to do that I'd have to switch to templates ... and the last thing that I want to do is to lose all of the links on the right-hand-side that I have spent an eternity cultivating for the benefit of y'all, dear readers. Help?

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:

Ugh. Bad Coffee. And On My Birthday.

I am not immune from getting crap coffee. Over the past few weeks, bad coffee has made its way to me from a number of sources. Lest anyone think that I have lowered my standards, I thought that I should share some of my disappointments:

Coffee Number One

Espresso: This coffee ticked a number of boxes to achieve an astounding level of complexity. Unfortunately, those boxes were sour, bitter, rubber, dirt and an astringent finish. No amount of barista-fu could remedy this one.

I think that this coffee must have been a blend of roasts that had a variety of problems.

Coffee Number Two

Aroma: Incredibly strong aroma of raspberry, tending towards vinegar.

Drip/Siphon: Slightly dry, bitter and with a small amount of raspberry. Not incredibly bad, actually.

Espresso/Cappuccino: Vinegar. Ferment. Garbage water. Aftertaste as though someone had sprayed floral toilet deoderiser in one's mouth.

The aroma made promises and the espresso delivered. Unfortunately, I was not clever enough to remember what that promise was.

I think that this was simply a batch of defective coffee.

Coffee Number Three

Espresso: Thin. Carbon. Hardly surprising, given that oil came to the surface a day after roasting.

I think that this one was burnt.

Coffee Number Four

Bin: The only thing that this coffee was suitable for, just from its appearance.

I know that this one was roasted badly by some hack using a newly purchased popcorn popper. I know because I was that hack.

Names withheld to protect the not-so-innocent.

The Emerald in the Coffeebloggosphere's Crown, or not so Special?

Eliminating The Suspense

Esmeralda = emerald in Spanish, OK?

The Esmeralda That Was

Esmeralda is one of the coffees widely regarded as one of the world's best; its reputation is that of a modern-day Jamaican Blue Mountain. Last year, my curiosity got the better of me and I arranged to procure some from Paradise Roasters. In blogging about it, I introduced it as follows:

I probably don't need to write too much about this one. If you have been living under a rock, or if you just happen to be one of the few people who doesn't follow the coffee auctions, you might not know that this is currently the world's most expensive coffee. Previously, that dubious honour went to kopi luwak. (I'll spare you the jokes - google it if it's news to you.)

Esmeralda has an impressive back story; in a nutshell, the gesha varietal that makes up the Esmeralda Especial lot seems to have basically gone extinct except for a few random rediscoveries in Panama. It just so happens that this particular farm's gesha offering has won something like four Best of Panama auctions and every single other cupping competition it has been entered in. In terms of scores, the consensus seems to be that it's a 92 at a minimum, with some tasters going as high as 97!

The 2007 Paradise Roasters lot displayed a predominant and intense mandarin flavour in all brewing methods, backed with hints of bergamot and a slight astringency.

The Esmeralda That Is

Last year's, as far as I can tell, the correct name for it was "Hacienda Esmeralda Special." Flash forward a year and all of a sudden, the Petersons decided to shake things up by sorting the crop into different lots, all of which were auctioned under the "Hacienda Esmeralda Special" moniker. Again, the auction was blogged about widely. Readers are encouraged to post links to other relevant posts in the comments field. If you have to choose only one (other) blog post to read on the subject, remember the old saying - "in Hoff we trust." James' points about dilution of their own trademark and the effect on the market struck a chord with me, particularly seeing as trade marks was one of my favourite subjects.

The auction itself always reads like a who's who, so you might like to imagine Joan Rivers delivering the commentary. Stumptown was wearing batch one, hailing from "north of the creek," but the heavy hitter shared the most expensive batch, two, with Sweet Maria's. The dashing duo deftly devoured batch three, the peaberries, whilst 49th snapped up the sole double pass lot. Though the Petersons didn't credit Mountain Top for their technique - as I understand it - one wonders if the Piccolo clan's decision to purchase wasn't influenced by best buddy, Australian Mountaintopophile and coffee guru, Instaurator, who has done some consulting for them. Batches six through ten were bought by a wide spectrum. For the readers of this blog who I know follow the Japanese CoE buying circuit, it looks like crowd favourite Kentaro Maruyama didn't even contest the Esmeralda auction against big dog Wataru Nishibayashi. Presumably this means that Wataru will edge ahead of Maruyama in the awesome coffee purchasing league tables, but I would still want a several Watarus for my mint condition Maruyama trading card.

Competition results also deserve a mention. This year, the Petersons gave the Best of Panama competition a miss, presumably in order to give someone else a chance at winning. They also failed to place first for the fourth time in a row at the SCAA cupping pavillion (perhaps one of my kind readers could provide the link; I can't seem to find it). Fortunately, though, they did at least manage to walk away with first place in the rain forest alliance cupping for quality competition.

Anyhoo, that's enough background.

Having had spectacular success with the Mamuto, I decided to place an order for Esmeralda with Terroir, along with a few other goodies for various people:



Nim's care package; two packs of Esmeralda, a pack of Mamuto, Coffee Trail book, Hacienda La Minita book and a pack of the AWESOME filtropa pourover filters to go with his filter cone.

Let's take a closer look at that label ...


Where's the trademark Howell photo?

It was interesting to note that last year's batch from Paradise was comprised of unusually long and thin beans. This year's lot from Terroir looked considerably shorter and rounder ... perhaps a consequence of the decision to separate Esmeralda Special into different lots.

Anyhoo ...

Siphon/Vac Pot/Clover: These brews varied from being excellent to OK and I found the coffee difficult to work with. Several tasters agreed that there were Earl Grey tea (bergamot) notes, but differed to the intensity that they perceived. Sweetness was not as high as I had hoped, there was a good measure of acidity and the coffee was dry. The best brews had hints of peach.

Espresso: As I felt that the coffee was slightly too dark for siphon, I took it into the big V, borrowed one of their grinders and treated everyone to some Esmeralda espresso. The espresso had the kind of astringency that I usually associate with a roast that is slightly too light for espresso, but displayed a tiny amount of sweetness and some tannic tea type flavours.

This lot was interesting, but not the mind-blowing experience of last year's lot. Differences could have been due to (a) the separation of the Esmeralda Special lots this year, (b) the roasting of the coffee and (c) the shipping of this coffee, and attendant two week delay from roasting, compared with the last lot being brought over in carry on luggage. It would be very interesting to try out the various lots from the various sources that bought them, but that would probably end up being an expense to rival Krusty the clown's addiction to faberge' eggs.

The Esmeralda that will be ...?

It will be interesting to see if anyone actually does the work of tasting all of the various Esmeralda lots and working out how big the spread in quality is. Who knows how Esmeralda Special will be divided up in future? I am also very interested to find out how 49th's lot will go and whether this processing method might take off in Panama.

Digression - Siphon - Again


Siphon continues to be a learning experience, though brews are usually pretty good nowadays. I thought that the butane burner warranted a quick post. Frankly, I can't see how you can really use a siphon without putting it on the stove or using a butane burner. I bought mine off ebay from Jack Grieve. A similar burner is available at a very reasonable price through Jack's web store, along with some pretty cheap siphons.

When used in conjunction with a thermocouple, the butane burner makes it possible to get repeatable and adjustable brew temperatures. A marathon session of three siphon brews (and three cleaning runs) showed that the burner seems to emit more heat immediately after it is filled with gas. Good practice would be for the first use after refilling to be in a cleaning run.

So far, adjustments to the water temperature, dose and grind for the siphon have had eerily similar effects to doing the same thing for espresso.

One final tip - remember that every siphon brew is diluted by the water that doesn't make it into the top chamber to start off with and, as this is a fixed amount, the proportion of each brew that is made up of water that has never been in contact with coffee will increase if you try to brew less than the maximum amount for any given siphon. This lead to the experiment and realisation that if the brew is slightly on the strong side, dilution with hot water can sometimes save it.

Minita and Mamuto Mumblings

Introduction

I'm a firm believer that the quest for coffee excellence requires tasting a lot of different coffees with an open mind. For my purposes, I try to taste a lot of different stuff purely to build up my own palate, as well as to get an idea of what others are writing about and what is possible in the world of specialty coffee. All of the good roasters that I know also believe in tasting a lot of different coffees - they view it as an exercise in benchmarking, without which they will quickly be proclaiming the virtues of utter crap; emperors with no clothes. Conversely, I don't think it's a coincidence that the very few roasters who I have heard of who don't taste widely do not produce a good product. (That applies equally to home roasters as it does to commercial roasters.)

The USA

Several years ago, I never would have imagined ordering coffee from the US of A. Over the past few years, coffee from the US has made regular, but infrequent, inroads into my usual rotation - fuelled in part by the prolific writings of the US bloggosphere and other coffee web pages.

It would not surprise me if the USA's coffee mainly does live up to the stereotypical Starbucks ashy espresso or the pot of drip coffee that has been sitting on the burner for a week, but they have a lot of good things going for them. As the world's largest economy, they have considerable buying power and they are conveniently placed near south and central america; two great producing regions. Their roasters appear to have developed against a background of a drip coffee culture, in which single origins are appreciated for their unique characteristics ... even if only because of the forehead-slappingly obvious contrast between a smooth colombian and a winey kenyan. In comparison with Australia, their espresso roasts have developed in the vacuum of Starbucks' shadow. Finally, they have an active specialty coffee association and are home to various programs such as the cup of excellence and the coffee quality institute. The USA has well and truly emerged as a big player in both the worlds of espresso and brewed coffee - one that leads the charge in many respects.


(Unfortunately, I appear to have misplaced my bag of Mamuto. I have taken a page from the book of barismo and borrowed this photo from Steve Ford. Steve ran an excellent project where he took a photo of the first cup of coffee that he drank each day over a year. You can check out 'First Cup' here.)

Terroir and George Howell

This particular coffee comes from Terroir in Massachussets. Terroir is run by George Howell, the man who founded the multi-site roastery 'Coffee Connection,' which he later sold to Starbucks before co-founding the Cup of Excellence and winning the SCAA's lifetime achievement award. Avid PQ readers will note that this is not the first time that Howell has rated a mention on this blog and I reiterate that his Long Road To Coffee Quality is a must-read.

The lovely thing about the prevalence of e-commerce in the USA is that the person on the other side of the web site is usually quite responsive and adept at getting around all sorts of problems, which included the difficulty of getting the coffee sent out as soon as it was roasted and correcting for an incorrect credit card number on my part. Nonetheless, postage is still a significant problem, with my package taking about three weeks to get here. Ugh. This activity is also not for the faint of wallet.

Costa Rica La Minita

La Minita has a reputation of being one of the great coffees of the world. It is also a model of quality and ethics working hand in hand. In a nutshell, my understanding is that they are very stringent on their picking and processing, to the point where they pay the pickers a premium to ensure that under-ripe fruit is not harvested. In turn, this means that their product is consistently good, justifying the premium for the roaster. This is a delicate, washed coffee that is really ideal for brewed coffee (drip/filter/siphon/clover). However, I first tasted this coffee in Klaus Thomsen's 2006 WBC winning blend, where it was paired with Daterra Sweet Collection to create a light, clean, crisp and sweet blend.

Siphon/Drip: Bright, slight apple flavour. Slight bitterness emerged on cooling.

This particular coffee simply didn't stand up to the battering that it received in shipping. I have no doubt that it would be better if it were fresher. That said, it wasn't exactly bad, but this struck me as a relatively subtle coffee that was always bound to be overshadowed by the Kenyan powerhouse. Read on.

Kenya Mamuto

The Mamuto has gained notoriety due, in part, to the ridiculously high scores that Kenneth Davids has awarded it over the years. Again, this coffee also demonstrates that quality and ethics can happily coexist at the pointy end of the market - when I bought it, Terroir's web page said that $2USD per 12oz went back to the farm, which is a helluva lot of cash in the world of green coffee.

Siphon/Drip: Bright, sweet, smooth, ribena, coffee cherry, tomato.

This coffee was simply fantastic. I turned off the espresso machine for a week and gladly scrubbed my siphon out. If it was that good after its shipping ordeal, it's kind of scary to imagine what it would have been like earlier. Simon James was of a similar opinion:

Well I’ll cut to the chase! The Kenyan Mamuto was STELLAR! No wonder it scored a 97 at Coffee Review. I can’t say that my description of the flavours I experienced was the same as those of the Coffee Review, but it was certainly sweetly powerful, with a smooth balanced finish. But I got blackcurrant aroma with stewed apricot in the cup. A very tasty coffee!

Needless to say that this coffee stood up to its trip a lot better than the Minita did. I actually took both the Minita and the Mamuto along to a cupping at BBB. The Minita fared well, but was not a standout. The Mamuto was the absolute stand out; it was everyone's pick, regardless of their level of experience.

From my description above, you can see that this cupped up like an exceptional, but classic, Kenyan coffee - very different to what one would expect from a Colombian, for example. It's worth pausing to reflect that perhaps it is the fact that these coffees tend to have the least 'classic' profile that makes them so clearly special. Coffeecuppers deal with the distinction between classic cups and unusual coffees in their short coffee tasting primer. Howell that this consistent and unusual cup profile merited the title 'Grand Cru' - on his fondness for wine analogies, see CG podcast 63 (link directly to 29 megabyte mp3 file).

Teaser

Yeah. I admit it. I have some different stuff on the way from Terroir - readers with less respect for their wallets are invited to taste vicariously through future posts. I'm also keen on getting some stuff from the outstanding Ecco Caffe if anyone wants to split postage at some stage.

Indonesians are generally thick, dirty and not very bright ...

... and that's not a coffee tasting description that you want overheard in public!

With Saturdays free now, I have managed to make it to BBB for cuppings. It seems that most people use BBB's cuppings as a way to learn more about coffee and to build their palate. It's not an exaggeration to say that people travel far and wide for this opportunity - last week Emanuel from Ristretto in Perth turned up; this week it was Perth espresso godfather Corey from Epic and a bus load of his staff. It's great to see such dedication ... and mind-boggling to see a cafe owner flying his baristi across the country just to check out some cafes.

That's all well and good, but cuppings also provide a fantastic opportunity to sample BBB's offerings to work out what to take home. Last week, I was on a bit of a mission to find a fantastic, generic chocolate-bar type blend. I had a fantastic drip coffee - more on that next post - and, so, was looking for the opposite end of the spectrum for my morning cappuccino. I found it in mystery cup number 7:



Cupping: From memory, the cup was not particularly pleasant whilst hot, with an odd rubbery/chemical overtone. After cooling, the dominant sensation in the cup was body, supported by hints of sweetness, dirt, broth and the immortal "funky forest floor." Remarkably clean, for what it was.

Espresso: Striking, dense, brick-red crema. Heavy body. Some acidity, bleeding into a slightly unpleasant camphor/terpene (chemical) finish.

Cappuccino: Effortlessly mastered even relatively large amounts of milk, leaving me wondering whether I hadn't inadvertently added several spoons of Milo. Sledgehammer subtlety.

No prizes for guessing that this was a Sumatran Mandheling - actually a new crop Kuda Mas. I'm looking forward to this one over the next few months.

Eureka! Australian Coffee

Introduction

It's kind of funny. I gather that many of the Australian farms are starting to harvest now, or will be starting in a few weeks ... yet now seems to be the time that Australian coffee is cropping up everywhere. If this means that it's taking us the best part of a year to get coffee harvested and processed in our own country, I have to say that that's kind of pathetic. But you can't argue with the results. Read on!



Archimedes Was A Coffee Drinker. Apparently.

There's a little espresso bar and roastery on St George's Road called "Grower's Espresso." Unfortunately, I'm seldom, if ever in that neck of the woods, so it has been a while since I last tasted any of Mark and Sam's Eureka Coffee. Lucky for me that, like all serious coffee dudes, Mark likes to keep track of coffee happenings all around Melbourne, so a few weeks ago he stopped by my work on a coffee crawl and dropped some of his stuff off for me.

Eureka take the whole bean-to-cup thing literally; they roast a single origin grown on their family farm in Byron Bay. I don't know much more about it than that, but if you're interested you should check out their webpage as linked above.

The coffee itself seemed to have a split personality. It was not difficult to pour and always presented a relatively balanced shot. Whenever I ground the coffee, my grinder was filled with a rather special rose blossom type scent. Enter Jekyll and Hyde: half of the shots were balanced and eminently drinkable, but not especially memorable. Remarkably, the rose blossom scent translated directly into the cup in the other half of the shots. In fact, the whole experience had me perplexed enough that to make sure that I wasn't just spitting out exceptionally wanky tasting notes I actually dug down into the pantry and pulled out a bottle of rosewater to make sure it was actually the same scent. Perhaps this is a coffee that warrants some serious experimentation in terms of dose and temperature. One final note; I found that this coffee benefited greatly from being allowed to sit in a sealed bag for a week after roasting - at two or three days after roasting it displayed the classic symptoms of excessive acidity and ephemeral crema.

On your Marks ...

From Australian coffee from one Mark to Australian coffee from another Mark. Bin 549 is kicking butt and taking names on the Clover at BBB. Various people, including St Ali's Mark, have described it as having a "coffee cherry" flavour. Not having eaten a coffee cherry, I wouldn't know - I'll have to check out the Nez du Cafe kit again. I thought that it started off tasting of liquorice, then some sort of interesting flavour that I'm content to describe as "coffee cherry" emerged. Top stuff. I haven't tried it as espresso yet, but several people have recommended it.

I'll be keeping an eye on the new harvest Australian coffees to come ...

Espresso Wow

Background

In the comments to my last post, I bemoaned the fact that I haven't written up coffee reviews recently. My grinder at home usually features a mix of coffee from work, coffee that I have roasted for myself at work and then coffee from a few of the roasters around Melbourne that I like. I have avoided reviewing coffee from work on my blog - you can find out about that on the Veneziano Coffee webpage. Recently, the sample roaster at work has been down, after five years of faithful service, so I haven't had much of a chance to roast stuff for myself. So you'll have to forgive me for dredging up memories of a coffee that I had several weeks ago for today's instalment.

Introduction

Espresso Wow is Andy Freeman's first foray into blending for CoffeeSnobs Brown, which itself is his first attempt at commercial roasting. However, both of these ventures draw upon considerable experience of home roasting. Andy's description of the coffee is as follows:

"This blend has been years in the making, 1000’s of roasts and samples and this is easily the best all round espresso blend for my taste.

Great as a double espresso with a creamy viscous body, a complete palate that oozes flavour throughout your mouth and an aftertaste that lingers nicely for a good length of time. This flavour profile works just as well in milk based drinks and the strong crema should make a great canvas for latte art."

Unfortunately Andy's roastery was broken into recently. Nonetheless, he managed to roast some of this up and bring it along to the green bean pickup a few weeks ago.

The Cup

As a result of the break-in, Andy and I were actually unsure how old the blend was. Pours at work as soon as we ripped open the bag were relatively bubbly, but, surprisingly, the resultant espresso had quite a heavy mouthfeel and was low in acidity. The flavour was rich and chocolatey, with a rather large salvo of aromatics. I can't remember them exactly, but I think that I said canteloupe (Andy raised his eyebrows) and blueberry (yes, I concede blueberry ;P).

Straight out of the bag, the blend wasn't as impressive in milk, but there was a dramatic improvement after it sat in my hopper at home for a day or two. I left the bag open and noticed a bit of a decline after a week or so. So if you are planning to have Espresso Wow sit around for any length of time, I would recommend splitting it into a few lots and putting them in airtight containers.

I used my standard dose for this, which is to say that I ground more than I needed, rapped three times to settle and struck off. I didn't try my down-dosing technique and would be very interested to see what sort of results that might produce.

Impressions

The thing that I like about this blend is that it is very Andy. There are a number of trends taking place in coffee blends in general. First up, I think that we can thank the various Cup of Excellence programs and Klaus' WBC blend for setting in motion a trend to have espresso that is light in body, sweet, acidic and aromatic. This runs counter to the trend that I had noticed in Australia of heavier bodied blends that are low in acidity, often pulled quite short to accentuate this even further. Next, I get the impression that many commercial roasters are going lighter in a bid to preserve aroma and increase shelf life. One theory that I have heard (from Mr Schulman, I think) is that roasting lighter starts you off with more aromatics, so you end up with more after you let the coffee sit around to age.

As I said, Andy's blend is the opposite of these trends. By going for heavier body and lower acidity, there is no need for you to wait for a lighter roast to age for a longer period of time to develop these qualities. I suspect that this means that Andy relies on freshness to get that fistful of aromatics into the cup.

Conclusion

Andy's espresso strikes me as a very good expression of his particular style, which makes it well and truly worthwhile trying out. It is a particularly good blend for home roasters to try out because it seems to perform very well after a short resting period, which I imagine would be quite useful. Personally, I like this style of espresso, but I basically appreciate any style of espresso that is done well.

A Taste Of Seattle

The usual suspect webpages are dominated by posters from the USA and Canada, who wax lyrical about some of their top roasters. As an Australian, I'm always left wondering what these blends actually taste like and how they stack up to our own. Does the predominance of drip coffee mean that more acidic coffees predominate? Or is there some truth to the name "Charbucks"?

Every now and then, friends of mine or wonderful customers bring in some of these much-hyped coffees. One such person is Mark, who recently returned from a trip to Seattle. (To digress quickly, it's worth noting that Mark's attitude is the complete opposite of the "know-it-all" arrogance that is quite common in the coffee industry. This is not the first time that he has gone to the SCAA conference and he is always tasting, asking questions and experimenting. Gossip: expect some interesting things from St Ali over the next few months.)

Without further ado ...

Victrola Streamline

Image from Victrola's Webpage

As you can see, this coffee was in an unsealed brown paper bag. After three weeks and a plane trip, it was not in good shape and it would be completely unfair to expect it to perform up to scratch. The purpose of this post is just to give some impressions.

This was a surprisingly light roast; the beans were very wrinkled and didn't seem to have expanded much. I don't think that this came anywhere near second crack. As an espresso at about 92C at the group on the FB80, the acidity was overwhelming. This would have to have the temperature bumped up, and I really should have tried it at 95 later. Nonetheless, the sole impression that I want to get across is that this is a lighter roast than I think many Australians would expect for espresso.

Ecco Caffe's Traditional Northern Italian Espresso

Image from barismo

Not only is Andrew Barnett a WBC judge, he is the judge with the highest score on the sensory test! So I was expecting something pretty amazing. Well, it was a case of unsealed paper bags and three week old coffee again, but notwithstanding that, the coffee was impressive. I wouldn't think to try and describe tastes from espresso that poured black for the first few seconds, but what came across was a whole heap of sweetness, backed with a bit of body. The roast was darker than Victrola's and probably at the lighter end of the Australian espresso spectrum, but by no means unusually so.

Vivace Vita

The iconic image from the Vivace Webpage

David Schomer has quite the reputation in the espresso world. I won't elaborate, but if this is news to you, you would probably be very interested in his collection of archived articles. There's usually something interesting in there; the most recent article on latte art (the link is directly to the pdf) provided me with one tip that I have been trying out. Pour slowly at the beginning so as not to break the crema, then start the rosetta when the cup is half full. Seems to result in greater contrast.

David's coffees seem to have quite the reputation for being finnicky and difficult to deal with. I dialled the FB80 to more or less the recommended 203.5F at the group, opened the plastic valve bag and my first pour looked similar to the one pictured above. Dark red, with thick crema that you could stand a spoon up in. The blend actually reminds me a bit of the blend that David Makin took to the WBC last year. Dave's blend was actually also ludicrously easy to pull a great shot with. I suspect that the crema factor comes down to robusta and monsooned malabar. This would be consistent with the uneven looking roast of the beans, which was slightly darker than the Ecco Caffe and about on par with your average Australian commercial espresso blend (for my US readers).

Well, there were four or five double shots worth in the bag and every single one got drunk. After three weeks in the valve bag, the coffee was probably at it optimum. We also found that Dave Makin's WBC blend took quite a bit of time to settle down. Vita is Vivace's milk drink blend. I had a cappuccino with Vita as the base and I have to say that it wasn't overwhelming, although the shot was a little fast. The thick, full-bodied, slightly sweet and quite toasty shots were more satisfying.

No post about Vivace would be complete without a photo of their floor:

Tiled rosetta pattern; photo by Scott Beale

Closing Thoughts

The legends of US coffee are doing some quality work, but it certainly doesn't blow away the cream of the Australian crop. I'd certainly love to get my hands on some fresh Ecco Northern Italian Roast and I'd love to try out Vivace's espresso blend, Dolce. I'm a bit more ambivalent about Victrola's Streamline, but it would be interesting to try it fresh.

Coffeesnobs Brown Launch/Guatemalan Huehuehtenango

I haven't taken particularly detailed notes for this review, but I thought that I should post it simply to celebrate the launch of "CoffeeSnobs Brown." For those of you that don't know, CoffeeSnobs is a group of home roasters who buy green coffee together. The webpage is also home to the most active Australian-only coffee forum, albeit one that caters more to roasters than gear-heads and has quite a culture of supporting the site sponsors.


Andy Freeman owns CS and has recently set up a roastery, "CofeeSnobs Brown," as a commercial venture. To buy beans, you must be a member of the site, which enables you to post in the forums and exchange personal messages with other members. CS members also get access to good deals from the site sponsors. Beans are sold through "Bean Bay," which is basically a poll that is run. The green bean polls take place monthly, whereas the brown bean polls are always open. I presume that Andy is yet to work out the details for the brown bean polls, but it looks like he will roast and post when his roast batches are all polled out.


Anyhoo, work sponsors CS, so last week Andy drove a carload of green beans down to us so that CS members could pick them up. In doing so, he brought down my 1/2kg of Huehueh. I told him that if it was bad I'd eviscerate him on this blog and he asked me to do so, so here goes nothing ...

Actually, it was quite good. I picked it up as something to use as a base for numerous cappuccini to keep me going through the exam period. It delivered clean and chocolatey milk based drinks throughout. I have noticed that home roasted coffee tends to have a very short lifespan, so I subjected Andy's stuff to the "torture test" of producing espresso a week after I got it, which would be about two weeks out from roasting. The result was a pleasant clean cup with some decent acidity and not much else going on. This is not a criticism at all; last year's batch of huehueh was identical. It would make a fantastic ingredient in an espresso blend, but isn't a stand-alone star. The take-home message is that Andy's roasts, executed on a 10kg Has Garanti roaster, seem to have the lifespan that one would expect of a commercial roast.

Overall, an interesting experience. I'm wondering if CS members will start buying a 200g pack of CS brown when they buy their green, just to give them a frame of reference. I'm also looking forward to Andy offering some blends.