For all you coffee freaks and geeks here is what’s coming up at Fine Coffee Merchants (FCM).

Today we’ll be roasting up some washed Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia as a filter roast. We’ve been really loving this coffee in our shop both as filter and espresso as this coffee has been displaying some really unique fruit characteristics. Definitely citrus and floral, but some of our staff have been getting banana! We’re almost at the end of this coffee so if you want some get in quick. Thursday’s light roast will be the Guji OCR, grade 3 sidamo. This coffee is a natural, extremely sweet and vibrant, displays some powerful berry characteristics in the cup as well as aromatics that have to be smelled to be believed. Order some before 9 AM on Thursday if you are interested.

We’ve been really happy with where our blend is at currently. As espresso or in milk it is tasting sweet floral and fruity from the El Salvador and Ethiopian coffees, balanced with a nice round body given to it by the Brazil we’re currently using.

Our decaf is set to change in the coming month. We’ve made the decision to try some pre blended Mountain water process, and also some Colombian excelso in the Swiss Water process. We are very excited by what opportunities and flavours we might be getting out of our decaf once these new green coffees start making their way through Spike the roaster. Here at FCM, we love and take pride in our decaf just as much as our other offerings.

Coming Soon to FCM

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Our future blend for WHC is going to have two amazing coffees at the core. The first is Ethiopia Operation Cherry Red Guji, sweet fruity beautiful coffee. The second is Brazil Espirito Santo, which when we cupped the sample tasted more like a beautiful Yirgacheffe than something from Brazil; floral, citrus, and delicate body. Obviously very attractive characteristics in any coffee, but we are particularly excited to showcase this one from brazil which is often a misunderstood origin. We will be offering both of these coffees as origin espresso and filter as well.

We also have some other amazing African coffees coming but there will be more information coming on those closer to when we are able to provide them.

Look forward to hearing from you, and wishing you all the best,

Brian Cole
BC, WHC-123

A fortnight ago, was crazy for team white horse, Matty ristretto, Domtron, BC stansion, Jim Jamz, Baz and Boyne-saw all attended the sensory skills course run by coffee logic.

It was an interesting course run over three nights, for me the it was a humbling experience, humbling and rewarding, seeing my bruzmen all learning to cup coffee properly as per the SCAA standards and our MVP for sure was Baz, who was the most successful coffee cup taster in our rag-tag, blouse ridden, fedora donning bunch.

Although for me the time trials of the silver bullet vs the red commo were a special experience too!

…who says you can’t make it from Sutho to Ryde in 25 minutes

So my name is Matty Ristretto

The other owner of WHC…. DomTron has been carrying this blog for too long…. his shoulders are getting sore…. so…

New Year New Flavour

Matty Ristretto

Luke Barrett

BC

And Of Course the one the only Domtron

Whc123

We attended a fantastic coffee cupping and coffee roasting seminar on
Good Friday that most of our staff also attended, it was an amazing event held at AIR roasters in castle hill, Tim Wendelboe was inspirational and we got a sip or two of some of the best coffees currently available worldwide.

Our coffee roasting has seen some ups and downs, trying to sort out a new roasting machine and profiles have been quite draining, but we are starting to try out some new profiles and ordering better coffees.
Im hopeful to be roasting some amazing coffees, sooner, rather than shun…

What is it you say? well its a simple set of aromas, specifically collated for coffee and with a manual to help you describe and articulate said aromas, the idea being that the more you use it, the better you get at identifying aromas of coffee. This is vital for a coffee roaster, being able to identify aroma taints as we know much of coffees flavour is in its aroma, so training our olfactory is the new frontier for gourmet coffee professionals seeking to make our coffee better.

Well here goes, a simple tron guide to what my first full on run through the Le Nez du Cafe is telling me or smelling me, lol.

1. earth
very fresh, like soil freshly dug, wet soil, it has something which reminds me of the way mint is received on the olfactory, it runs straight up the inner sides of both nostrils and is sharp and so fresh

2.potato
just like a light version of the earth aroma, but it doesn’t smell earthy, more of that light mint stuff, i think its actually like a methylated spirit scent in a way, the earth has this also, but it smells like dirt, this doesn’t

3. garden peas
this is a tough one, its light, it takes me several minutes to get the real nature of it, its lighter than both the potato and earth but once again its in the same family of scents for me, its apparently very unlike canned peas, it does have a greeny aroma to it, which i spose is fitting

4. cucumber
holy crap, this one is 100% easy, its lively, fresh and has that methyl-like touch again, the crispness of it is un-missable, subtle wood tones come through on it as well

5. straw
wow, this smells like a Chinese grocer, quite similar to some dried Chinese noodles also, also reminds me of a light vegetal broth

6. cedar
just like the smell of pencil shavings, its fresh like fresh cut cedar or fresh cut pencil shavings

7. clove-like
this one is easy, then hard, clove is such a distinct flavour but this a bits of vanilla and general medicine cabinet stuff going on

8. pepper
While this one sounds obvious, it is rather subtle and complex, there is a weird cologne-like smell, and the underlying aroma is a peppery one, and i know this sounds insane, but initially it smells really sweet

9. coriander seed
think fino sherry, very different to fresh coriander which makes it really hard to decipher

Stay tuned for part 2 next week, my nose is now expanded.

We previously have been struggling with eliminating some scorching on the coffee we have been roasting, its a different beast our 5kg renegade, you cant just directly apply what you know works on another roasting machine, so its taken us a few weeks to get a nice sweet spot with our roaster.

we reduced our airflow which is electronically controlled via a fan we reduced it from 55 hz to 45 hz and we dropped our temperature of the chamber of our drum at first crack from 205 degrees C to 200. wow, what an impact.

After lasts weeks roasts and slight adjustments, i was confident for a good roast today, first roast out was our decaf, holy crap this shit looks so good, we’ll cup it and see, we have been receiving some spectacular feedback about our D, and we are super keen to raise the bar in this area, stay tuned for more on that.

Well its here! although in standard WHC style we like to crawl before walking but when we walk we run real fassst! what i mean by that malarcky is, unfortuneately most of you wont be tasting our own roast for some months until we tweak out all of the kinks in the roast, trust me… its in your best interest.

WHC - 123

Firstly i sent a txt to my bro and business partner Matty, he too was speechless, i then started to search the web for evidence and it seems the cyberspace rumours of this award were true!

The crema Top 5 is in my opinion and i honestly believe it is also regarded as the most prestigious and well respected cafe review awards, the 2011 cafes were:

1. Coffee alchemy, Go HAZEL! woot woot woot, she was the barista/roaster who whooped my arse in the 2005 OZ barista comp, with one hand even!

2. Mecca, Go Boyz, Go Pauly G, Go Alex, Go James and Zane, well done boyz, these guys supply our coffee and i worked at Mecca in several stints over my career, between J-Land and various Barista associated distractions

3. Go Russ! Russ is the proud owner of “The Source” in mosman, he is roasting on a 5kg renegade, which is the same roaster that we bought, we hope to emulate as good-a cup as what they are doin up there on the North side!

4. White Horse Coffee, all i can say is that our boys break there backs, brains, necks, wrists and everything in between getting the job done at Sutho’!BIG UPS to Bella, AP-50, Jim-Jams, BC Stan, new recruit D-train, Wolfy, K-dog, of course my main man Matty Ristretto, and myself Domtron, we really worked hard for this, and we don’t want to be a “flash in the pan” and aim to increase our service, quality and speed so we are still in the top 5 next year! BOoyaH.

5. and finally, Le Monde, congratulations to Anthony and his team, us at WHC love what you guys do down there and obviously everyone else does as well!

All i have to say to finish is that i frequent all of these cafes on my days off and i love what they do, and i urge anyone reading my drivels to do your best and visit them too!

Locations

1. Coffee Alchemy, aka, Flint and Steel, 24 Addison Road, (corner of Cook Rd and Addison Rd)
Marrickville
Tuesday to Saturday 9am to 2pm

2. Mecca Espresso, 67 King Street, Sydney
Opening Hours
Mon – Fri 
6.00am-4.30pm 
Sat 6.00am-3.00pm

3. The Source, Mosman, 6/914 Military Rd (entrance on Raglan St)

4. WHC - 2 / 137 Flora St Sutho’

5. Le Monde, 83 Foveaux St, Surry Hills

For Official Article CLICK HERE

Foreword:

If my memory serves me correctly the first time i encountered something that was not a standard espresso machine water filter (5 micron or 0.5 micron) was when i visited Seattle in 2005, i recall elaborate multi filter systems and thought little of it other than it looked great.
During that time i was an employee not an employer and i vowed that one day i would research the RO (reverse osmosis) units when i had my own espresso bar operating.
This type of water filtration was said to be the forefront of water filtration for espresso machines, so why five years on is there little to no cafe operators using the systems?

Day 0 - Installation

We decided to go with an upgraded twin RO unit with a massive 35 Litre static tank, from green pastures Australia. Click Here to check out their systems.

Installation was easy, its a pleasure to work with Damien from GPA.

Day 1 - Frist day of trade

Our excitement to get to work and start making shots was indeed warranted as the coffee was tasting superb, however our enjoyment of the pure, clean espresso due to our prized Ro unit was soon wrenched from our grasp…
It seems that our math was incorrect and that we draw more water than we initially thought.
The pump was starved of water at 930 am mid morning, we had no choice but to shut the shop, apologize and i guess we had “egg on our faces”, we made an executive decision to uninstall the RO unit and re install the 0.5 micron, Matt sped off to reece to get some fittings and the rest of us cleaned up, screwed around, and craved another espresso that sadly we couldn’t make.
In record time we installed our old system and we were only closed for under one hour, ill take this opportunity to apologize to those people we did not serve during this period - SORRY
We finished the day of trade and discussed our options with Damien.

Day 2 -  back to the oldskool

We decided to persist with the culligan 0.5 micron until Wednessday night, we had our tails between our legs during this time as we had allot of explaining to do to industry friends and customers.

I’ll take this opportunity to give a breif explanation of why the RO unit failed, well the filtration process takes time, for every 1000 ml the system uses 500 ml becomes pure RO useable water the other 500 ml becomes waste, it can produce 35 litres of water per hour but this was not enough.

Day 3 - repairs and upgrades

Damien was gracious and sourced everything we needed to improve the rate of water production of our RO unit, we decided to install a pump to force the water pressure into the RO membrane, it only becomes active when pressure drops so its good with power, but it was promised to us that this would be our white knight.

We also added some funky check valves and taps so in the event of the RO being drained again we can just flip a tap and use our 0.5 micron water filter, a wise choice, and really something we should have done from day 0, live and learn i guess.

Day 4 - The Return of the RO

We had an absolute corker of a day and tbh i was shocked that the RO kept up, we had our busiest day in a long time and there was no sign of the RO falling short in water supply.

Final thoughts

We had another crazy day on saturday and the RO was fine, sadly it seems many cafe owners dont see the benefit of using these elaborate systems, im guessing the price scares people off as they are 8 times the cost of regular filtration, some units are evevn 40 times the cost of a 5 micron water filter.

More time will show the true benefits of the RO, but for now our coffee is simply tasting cleaner and sweeter than ever, we are happy with the unit and we are proud to be one of a handful of cafes in Australia using RO water.