WHC-123

Machine upgrade time….

well much like spike being absent for the first period of our business, the three group  la marzocco linea we ordered custom built from italy was late for the first two months of trade, we were blessed that our two group, dubbed little annie was a pocket rocket and poured some of the best espro i have ever tasted…

we then installed our three group and it was in some ways having to take two steps backwards, to go forward, because the machine was unrestricted, and for the next two months unrestricted espro was the call, infusion times dropped from ten seconds to 3.5, hence a noticeable drop in body and sweetness was apparrent on the majority of our espro…. having said that josh aka j-bomb pulled me and nick tabet, owner of alley break cronulla, one of the most memorable shots i have ever had, and it was in a peak period rush, weird!

after an extended period we installed our restrictors, we had a 0.6mm restrictor drilled with a 0.66 mil bit, my experience with 0.6 mm restrictors hasnt been good, and i really loved the 0.7’s on little annie (our 2 group linea) and my time in japan was mostly on 0.7mm lineas and standard GB5’s which are 0.8’s standard… regardless right now id like to see how 0.6mm restrictors fare… “O” the frustration! Good thing is that the espro is tasting extremely good, maybe not as good as little anne but really sweet and awesome body.

next… the power of steam, after our trade picked up, we started to notice a fault in the old Lm construction, the blocking of steam valves with milk that gets sucked back up the pipe…. OUCH! I was so frustrated about this for some tme, my coffeegeek post can be seen here, http://coffeegeek.com/forums/worldregional/australasia/417114, at present with the aid of my old mentor his royal heighness of baristas paul bassett, we have successfully installed the espresso parts steam valve and it seems to be going great guns,  i guess we will know in a few months just how good they are…

so i guess the machine is all fixed now and that is a huge weight off our minds…

with our trade increasing we decided to give my old barista comp robur the flick and buy a 3 phase, we also now have a la marzocco swift for take away milk coffees.

here are the pics…

Staff shots

Moments, people, t-shirts, and a monaro!

Yes its true Dom has won the white horse coffee latte art comp twice in a row and in the third comp he is leading by a narrow margin, can matt comeback…. me thinks not… here are some of the drinks that we made and managed to snap, all were for customer consumption… woot!

The Blessing of White Horse Coffee conducted by Father Andrew Benton, when he was still a deakon, was great to see him get ordained at St. Mary’s Cathedral on the 30th of April 2009.

No idea where to start coz i havent blogged in half a year, so here goes…

    ¨°º¤ø„¸¨°º¤ø„¸¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º°¨
 ¨°º¤ø„¸ WHITE HORSE „ø¤º°¨
    ¸„ø¤º°¨ COFFEE“°º¤ø„¸
     ¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø„¸¨°º¤ø„¸

Now that 4 hours has past in doing that maybe i can find some pics of what we have seen since opening the espresso bar on Flora St. Sutherland.

Mecca Espresso

Well we decided to start trading without spike our 5kg renegade, but he may appear soon… WATCH THIS SPACE!

Regardless, Reuben has done what he has always done, roast coffee for mecca that is outstanding, the mecca crew are without doubt leading a new wave of coffee roasters that is unhappy with locally available green coffee, imported and locally grown, these guys have spent many thousands of dollars to obtain some of the best coffees of the world and to try and get it here fresh, it seems insane in the current economic climate that these guys are dedicated enough to spend in some cases 40 dollars per kilo of landed green coffee, where many roasters are spending an average of 5 bucks a key of green coffee it just shows how much passion these guys have to get the best coffee, get it fresh and share it with you, the consumer. All that for three bucks!

Two of the coffees i am speaking about are the current crop ARICHA and BELOYA coffees, funny thing is we cupped them a few months ago, i have some pics, truelly amazing coffees, mecca will be offerring these in their espresso blend and drip filter / siphon roast.

Fun times ahead for the espro crowd me thinks!

Yep yep my first ever post… feels a little scary I must say… anyway I’ll get over it…. the saying goes ‘Once you pop u cant stop’… so guys get ready… Well my name is Matthew Sprem aka Matty Ristretto, as you know it…. I drink Ristretto’s and a lot of them hence the name… Bang.

Its Wednesday 9:01pm cant sleep as this blog has been on my mind 24 hrs a day.. so with the thunder storm doing it’s thing……I got Fluffa( My sisters dog) and Ruby ( My Bird) side by side… with my other love apart from coffee… Scotch the most consistent liquid gold going around and in my glass, there is Lagavulin the distillers edition,  distilled 1988 bottled 2004, double matured  single islay malt whisky bottle # 4/492… and with a drop of water…. it is banging!!

So its short and sweet like a good ristretto should be… so later guys. P.s i’ll be pulling some doubles.

Well stage One is complete, the damn thing is built!

next, as today is Sunday I’m sleeping in, something i haven’t done in a month, but after that i guess some coffee at alley break and then some shopping for errands for shop.

I guess at this point id like to write about our commitment to coffee.

Right now we are receiving our coffee from Mecca espresso, and in all honesty when we start roasting ill aim for something very similar, at mecca their commitment is to only roast the best coffees available and to not be limited by regional areas as crop years vary extremely in the gourmet coffee world, much like the wine industry.

We will always be on the look out for staff, be it boy or girl, , mature age or teen, if you have a fascination with coffee and you are a hardworking team member, then drop us a line at our Flora St. espresso bar.

In the near future we will receive “spike” our affectionately dubbed, all black renegade roaster, and we aim to roast 3 to four differrent coffees for retail sale in our espresso bar, hence that blank right wall, thats where we want to put our bean hoppers, scales, grinders and retail goodies like filters and stuff! Kool ha?

I ’spose the biggest thing i hate about the espresso business is when people only use coffee as a front and abuse it for the ability to earn a living, Our commitment is to always pursue a better up of coffee for the consumer, everyone has their off days, but our commitment is to always rectify problems, be it machinery, or the espresso coffee blend or the origins we will roast for other brew methods.

WHC is about providing a service to the community, a place to meet, , a place to escape, and a place to talk coffee, its about sharing the love of espresso and all other forms of coffee.

Jack Cates once again enlists the aid of ex-con Reggie Hammond–this time, to take down The Iceman, a ruthless drug lord operating in the San Francisco bay area.

Ok ok, if you get that joke your obviously a strange fan of eighties action flicks, regardless domtron and matty riss-bomb pulled a 48 hour marathon to get the shop open.

White Horse Coffee officially opened its doors for trading on 12.12.08, Alan T’s birthday, happy bday Woody!

There were many arguments, many micro sleeps, many cans of guarana energy drinks, and so many more memories that only the maddest of baristi could fathom….

Here are some of the moments involved in the marathon, i wish you could have all been there

Id often wondered what a blend of espresso roasted coffee what be like if roasted and blended in the following style….

Farm X Brasil natural 10%

Farm Y Brasil natural 10%

Farm Z Brasil natural 10%

Farm Q Brasil natural 10%

Farm A Brasil washed 10%

Farm B Brasil washed 10%

Farm c Brasil washed 10%

Farm AA Ethiopia Sidamo 10%

Farm AB Ethiopia Sidamo 10%

Farm BB Ethiopia Sidamo 10%

I hope that adds to 100% LAWL

Obviously this environment is extreme, but it displays my point, coffees from the same area, but not the same farm, i had often wondered what this blend would taste like and recently i saw some things that made me stray from the idea of trying it again…

When i saw a similarity to the environment that i have mentioned, i saw a mix of ethiopian sidamo and ethiopian harrar, both were 25%, the rest of the blend was pretty much “of the norm”.

To work with and extract this blend was a nightmare, constant change of extraction speed was seen because there were too many bean densities at play, well that’s how i saw it.

I shall also mention that i had the opportunity to prepare espresso shots on this coffee environment in a normal espresso bar atmosphere for about three weeks, so i feel that my thoughts on this were constant if not accurate.

The change in extraction speed was so incredible, i saw distinct changes every four shots pulled.

Ethiopian sorting of green coffee is always a concern for coffee roasters and in bad crop years many roasters are left to use “what they can”. The lack of sorting when too many different ripe and under-ripe coffees are roasted together is unworkable for the modern Barista who strives for perfection, cup after cup.

Hence i imagine that a blend of ten different origins/farms/varietals would be extremely difficult to use in a commercial espresso bar.

At some stage id roast this blend up and try it again, but i wont be rushing to do it in any hurry, thats for sure.