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.

By Luke Barrett

Bruz’s,

I wanted to say a few words before I take off, never to be seen again (relax, take a deep breath, I’ll be back).

As an abstract (a brief summary of an article) I guess all I really want to say thanks. So if you’re busy, maybe come back to this when you have a few more minutes, but in more detail, it goes like this…

I think the best way to make sense (at least for myself) is to work chronologically. So first up, I wanted to say thanks for giving me a shot and employing me. I’m sure you had your serious doubts about me (like there is with any new employee I guess) with my absurd facial hair, small build and my less-than-impressive coffee order (flat white - standard), so even from the beginning you guys took a punt with me - so thanks.

Then as I settled in and began to learn the ropes of the WHC back-man, Dom decided to start barista training with me on Sundays. I couldn’t fathom how this big dark Croatian man could work stupid hours all week, then back it up on his one day off to train a punk like me - at 7am! It was probably after the second of third one of these that my passion for coffee really became apparent. I couldn’t stop talking to Cait about the relationship between particle size and rate of extraction, or the milk clock, or whatever it was I had just learnt (I’m sure she was listening). So Dom - thanks all your time, patience and knowledge, it means a lot.

We all know how the rest played out (Doms leg exploding, Baz thrown in the deep end only to solidify his position as the Tuesday morning shots man for ever after) but there is one more thing that has lead me to appreciate every second I’ve spent at WHC so much. It struck me after we had all gone into Pizza Mario’s, then Mecca that night and I was telling mum about it. She must have said something like, “Don’t you get sick of eachother? You spend 13 hours of the day with each other working, then you all go out for dinner together, then to a coffee thing, only to do it all again the next day!” While I can see where she’s coming from, it is definitely not the case. It made me realize that in the ten or so months I’ve spent working at WHC, I’ve made some of the best friends I think I’ll ever make. I guess there were always times the boss-employee thing was evident, more often that not, work was about hanging with my mates, doing the things I love (albeit at a frantic pace).

Who knows where I’ll be in 12 months time (my visa tells me its back in Australia), and while it’s safe to say none of us want to commit to anything that far away, I want to say that if the circumstances allow, there would be no hesitation whatsoever on my behalf of coming back to the best job I’ve ever had. I respect you both immensity in your knowledge, work ethic, abilities and character that it truly has been a pleasure to work with you guys. A big thanks might have been adequate, but given the lengths you went to say goodbye to me on Saturday, I wanted to let you guys know as best I could how much I have appreciated everything.

A few more things.
Matt - attached are those two fair trade articles you wanted again.
Dom - if you were serious about hooking me up with a tamper for France, what are you doing Wednesday arvo and could I swing by yours and accept? Hope its not rude me asking but if not I’ll just need to go visit Pablo soon, thats all.
You’ll find all my photos at www.flickr.com/photos/lukebarrett29 so bookmark that one and stay in touch. I also put up some of the photo’s I look at work the other week too - some turned out alright!
And lastly, I’ll likely be in and out of the shop a few times this week, but Cait and I have agreed we’ll come in for our last extensions the morning we leave (tomorrow week)!

Thanks again guys,
Luke Barrett

I’m sick an tired of hearing my customers travelling to the USA and the UK and complaining that the coffee was terri-bad!

For starters the populations of these countries is much higher than ours in OZ, but if we looked at percentages of “good” cafes to bad it might be much similar to Australia, hell i know of only a handful of places in Sydney where i would want to drink a cup of coffee.

Did you know that the past four world barista champions are from these nations, 2010 Michael Phillips United States, 2009 Gwilym Davies United Kingdom, 2008 Stephen Morrissey Ireland,
2007 James Hoffmann United Kingdom.

Whilst the gourmet coffee industry initially gained allot of its learning and expertise from the Italians, it has been the yanks and poms that have led us into the millennium and really fine tuned our methods of sourcing coffee (mercanta), roasting coffee (monmouth) and preparation of brewing methods (schomer).

When i first entered barista competitions back in 2003, the baristas with the edge had read one book, that book was david schomer’s espresso coffee: professional techniques, this book written by an American easily and clearly explained so much that we now take for granted in Australia.

For years in Australia we were at the mercy of what our green bean brokers were bringing in, and our brokers for many years were comfortable with green coffee that yielded low moisture levels and green coffee older than 12 months, two factors which inhibit a cups quality, yes Australia is quite far from most growing regions, so logistically getting the coffee to Australia is difficult but its companies like Mercanta a UK based green bean sourcer that aims to provide 100% traceability and the best freshest green coffee that has made our current brokers step up and realise that our Australian micro-roasters will not be satisfied with the current service, thank god Mercanta is now also delivering to Australia!

Also the current trend in micro-lot-roasting, is a lighter roast which is greatly influenced by companies like Monmouth, they were also pivotal in revitalising filter brewed coffee which has seen a renaissance in Australia in the last few years.

So lets have some respect because even though you travelled and got a poor excuse for a cup of joe that resembled some sort of swill from the bar room floor, these countries are leading gourmet coffee and “we/the ozzies” are actually following them!

On previous trips to Melbourne i had noticed that some coffee roasters were using the same roast for filter coffee and espresso, at this point looking back i remember the roast degree was somewhat of a compromise roast, thinking that it could have been darker for what i have been shown to be “true” espresso roasting procedures, and at the same time i thought that the same roast which was intended to be used as a filter coffee drinking style was a splash on the too dark or too “roasty” side for a style of brewing where we want to attempt to showcase the coffees inherent origin characters. Using the same roast for espresso and filter leads one to think that they are trying to increase yield, hence making more profit, they are too lazy to do two separate roasts or just don’t know the difference.

My recent trip to Melbourne, revealed some interesting coffees, coffee made in a way that blew my mind, it blew my mind into doubting my own beliefs on roasting, here is what i saw….

I spoke to some coffee roasters on this trip and they were stating that the Melbourne coffee community is steering away from espresso roasting that is “too dark” and that they wanted to taste more complexity in the coffees, and that the coffee being peddled in Sydney’s top espresso bars was too dark and that they could not taste any origin characters and only roasted caramel sweetness from the coffee at these sydney establishments.

Therein lies the crux of the topic, espresso roasting vs roasting for filter, i suppose that to understand what an espresso roast is vs a filter roast we have to understand espresso mechanics and espresso extraction and its impact on the end cup, and really as coffee professionals and coffee consumers that’s what we “should” only be concerned about.

The espresso machine “accentuates flavours” it heightens what is available in a particular roasted batch of coffee, so if we understand that lighter roasts retain more acidity, more green straw-like flavours, more fruit notes, and if we understand that light roasts will not have as much sweetness and body and mouth-feel which is “developed” as we roast coffee (because in light roasts there simply isn’t enough time to develop those characters) then if we extract said light roast coffee in the espresso machine then we are achieving an accentuation of this flavour profile - we will taste -
Intense acidity, green, low body, little sweetness, and occasionally fruit driven coffees.

The style of “so-called-espresso” extraction that i saw in Melbourne varied immensely, but there was a trend that i saw where for me the penny dropped, really, truly it was not espresso at all, it was a form of coffee extraction that relies on “under-extraction”  because if you execute a correct traditional espresso extraction on this filter roasted coffee the end taste is INTENSE acidity, green, low body, little sweetness, and occasionally fruit driven coffee, where the style of extraction that is being peddled in melbourne results in MUTED or RESTRAINED acidity, green, low body, little sweetness, and occasionally fruit driven coffees. And all of these perceptions were tasted on single or double ristretto and espresso coffees, one can only “shiver, cringe and be worried” at the prospect of consuming these light roasts, extracted as espresso then diluted in milk for a cappuccino or latte, which is 90% of the Australian market, “warm-milky-coffee” anyone…
This is also probably why the trend of putting double ristretto’s and using crotchless baskets is being adopted by some, its easier to “fool” the consumer into drinking a fake so-called single ristretto when it has been extracted from a double and the same goes for milk drinks.

Mind you, the trend, these 11 minute roasts that are being extracted through the espresso machine seem to be like an almost backlash against tradition and the famed Italian roast of espresso coffee.

For me, as a soon-to-be coffee roaster this hit home hard, what am i going to do, i want to buy the best coffees available, but i don’t want them to be too roasty either, but we KNOW what works and what DOES NOT WORK, the simple mechanics of the espresso machine and espresso extraction lend it to roasting and serving coffees that taste sweet and have great body and mouthfeel, its funny that some people are trying to confuse roasting styles and brew methods and they have come up with their own style of espresso, which IMHO isn’t even espresso anymore, i think if you want to taste the coffees natural coffee character roast filter style and brew it filter style, be it, plunger, siphon, drip, clover whatever, if you want to have an espresso which accentuates flavours then it has to be sweet and with body and mouthfeel, confusing the two into one is just dangerous.