So, the legendary Black Cat from Intelligentsia has entered the plan cafe… It’s had quite a trip, flying over from the roastery in the US, courtesy of Kenny at Diego’s cafe in Hereford - via him, then via our roaster James’ Gourmet Coffee in Ross on Wye, and then to us!!

I’ll keep this brief, as it will only be with us so very, very briefly, sadly, as there is such a limited amount (none to sell as beans either, sorry!). It will be on for espresso for the earlier part of just one day, depending on busy-ness! I’ll have it on either next Tuesday or Wednesday 5th/6th.

Kenny might have it for slightly longer, if you’re in Hereford!

Last day today! Naturelle back tomorrow!

This has arrived and is resting, and I will be starting this next week, on either the 15th or 16th May. We’ll be serving it for maybe a little over a week, with Naturelle from my usual roaster, James’ Gourmet Coffee on before, after, and inbetween on the weekend of the 19th-20th May.

This seasonal blend currently consists of 50% Brazilian Sertao, with Colombian La Serrania and Samaniego.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited! Square Mile Coffee is simply one of the very best roasters there is, and it’s great to be able to do this.

As mentioned in recent posts, coffee from our usual roaster, JGC, is fantastic, which is why I use them, but using a few other equally fantastic roasters for our espresso as Guests is something I’m going to do a bit more of here and there, along with my usual varying selections from JGC inbetween. Which will make things even more interesting and diverse for our customers, and us! Another exciting guest (or two) is already lined-up, and I’ll be working that into my regular line-up over the next couple of months! Square Mile will no doubt be back at some point soon as well.

In other news, Maxwell of Colonna and Smalls in Bath has won the UK Barista Championship 2012! I thought this might be his year..! And it’s always lovely to see it go to a barista working full-time in a cafe, who people can actually go and get a coffee from! Congrats to him, and best of luck for the World Championships later this year. If ever you’re in Bath - Go (as will I, if ever I’m there)!

Also, check out the new latte art post and pictures on new local coffee website, Cardiff Coffee City, for which I contributed some demonstrations and info recently. Thanks Katharina and Co, glad you liked!

(these two images of me pouring latte art are courtesy of Katharina Kraus and Cardiff Coffee City)

Whilst my holiday was fantastic, and much needed, being back in work at the cafe this week has been just great actually – honestly!! Extra lovely comments from all sorts of people all week (and for coffees from the whole team too, which is great), many nice varied coffee conversations and communications with customers, friends, staff, and others, and I’ve been (crucially) pretty comfortable all week with how the coffee’s been performing (rare for me!). All in all just a really nice vibe.

Oh! And of course, there’s my new toy to investigate at home as well..!

http://coffeecuppers.com/Espresso.htm (Re-read. Yet again. More thoroughly this time around!)

http://www.coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2969

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/beautiful-rich-and-exceedingly-bitter-espresso-t20696.html

Schulman’s CoffeeConPDF covering many of the same theories as the ‘Some Aspects…’ paper

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/grind-not-dose-t11872.html (Partly re-read. Yet again)

http://www.coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1520

http://www.coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2969 (Re-read. Yet again)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.coffee/HgDiGJVD-gA

http://www.coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1520

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/blonding-point-meaningless-t10423.html

http://www.baristaexchange.com/forum/topics/1688216:Topic:160921

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/when-did-this-espresso-extraction-go-blond-t5747.html

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/when-did-this-espresso-extraction-go-blond-t6875-10.html

http://www.home-barista.com/tips/under-extraction-grind-finer-or-increase-dose-t14892.html

This has been in conjunction with quite a bit of practical experimentation, and quite a bit of note-taking and writing about everything I’ve been looking at (I realised yesterday this latest exercise has now reached 10,000 words since starting a couple of weeks ago. But I won’t subject you to this!).

There have been highs and lows (and some very caffeinated early mornings, and evenings!) throughout this, but a few things have slotted together,  and I now feel that the exploration over the last couple of weeks has been really positive and valuable. It all goes a little way towards gradually building understanding generally.

In other news, I’ve just popped a KR1203 in my kitchen. I never imagined the Rocky could look so tiny, and feel so light! Total overkill, and insane. But hey. So that’ll be fun!

I’m away for a week or so for a short holiday soon, but when I’m back, I’ll be arranging for the first of our new Guest Roasters for espresso to visit the cafe (see last two posts)!

Oh, and check out Cardiff Coffee City‘s new site about local coffee. A pleasure chatting to Katharina about what I/we do a couple of weeks ago!

And, I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again; some of the blog ‘pages’ do get updated and revised every so often. There’s a new bit at the end of the Latte Art Information page for instance…

And wow, for some, it’s nearly that time again… GOOD luck all 2012 UKBCers! I especially envisage great things for some who know the ropes already..!

And…

And (ever so briefly!)…

Due to one thing and another, it will be several more weeks yet before the first of the newest guests appear (eta May). But in the meantime, as ever, we have fantastic, ever-changing coffees from my usual roaster James’ Gourmet Coffee to make the wait an enjoyable one. After setting up Caffe Naturelle once again recently, I was rewarded with a shot full of the bright, yet ripe, soft, sweet and juicy lime and apricot that I would hope for in the current version of the blend. As for the Guests …watch this space! Looking forward to tasting, learning, and offering even more.

With this in mind, I am organising for one or two more very special Guests over the coming weeks and months!

I’ve said to each roaster I contact that I love what my regular roaster, James’s Gourmet Coffee, does. That I have developed a great relationship with them and their coffee over the last few years, and have discovered first-hand how fantastic it is. I wouldn’t use them if I didn’t honestly believe this! And therefore this is not something I’m looking to change – they will remain my primary roaster.

But, we are fortunate to have a few other top artisan roasters in the UK who are also recognised as being at the very pinnacle when it comes to coffee roasting and sourcing. And using coffee from some of these other great roasters occasionally for our espresso is something I’d like to do a bit more of.

New flavours, new farms, new roast styles, new packaging! A broader spectrum. It’s entertaining, exciting, and enlightening for everyone involved to try coffee from various equally renowned speciality roasters at the top of their game. Both for those customers who know a little (or a lot!) about coffee and roasters, and also for our baristas. It helps everyone to develop a wider appreciation and understanding of good coffee. Of the origins and farms it comes from, who’s great at roasting it, and what it tastes like from different, equally respected sources, who have handled it with the utmost care!

It’s important though, for me, to work primarily with just one great roaster, for many reasons. Just one reason is it enables me to carefully manage our stock for espresso (its freshness and its resting periods) so that coffee is used within an ideal window, as often as possible. Ordering from every which way the whole time could jeopardise this crucial process of offering coffee at its peak. This means these guest roasters will be occasional, and carefully worked into my existing lineup of coffees at the cafe, but this may become a fairly regular thing, here and there …and you will start to see these guests popping up SOON! Excited!

Just for fun, I’ll start by giving a few (lame!) Clues as to the identity of our latest upcoming Guests..! Nearer the time, I’ll post here on the blog, and on Twitter (@TheBeanVagrant) exactly what and who is happening. And there may be more new guests arriving in the future!

2 589 988.11 m²

and…

…If you know …you know!

Update 31st March:

And, possibly, due to a wonderfully off-the-wall suggestion by Kenny of recently opened Diego’s Cafe (be sure to visit if you’re in Hereford!), there might at some point also be some…

These few weeks right now see an exuberance of different coffees appearing as my espresso selection for the cafe. After quite a long time (for us!) with the wonderful Winter Hoard, I am now using many new coffees, and really mixing it up. At the moment, these include Fazenda Samambaia from Brazil (chocolate, salty-caramel, buttery), Formula 6 (currently featuring 6 farms) (depth, rich, chocolate, caramel, fruit, buttery), Caffe Naturelle (featuring Kelenso Mokanisa turning seasonally into Suko Quto Estate, and Finca Bourbon) (wow! sweet, soft citrus, ripe, clean, fruity, soft stone fruit, juicy, floral, delicate), Finca Suiza (tart, juicy, cranberry, red and black currant, citrus), Caffe Limone (featuring Santa Rita, El Salvador, and a lot from the Illimani region, Bolivia) (sweet, bright, ripe, lemony citrus, creamy-delicate with milk), and I have also arranged a (short) week of coffee from guest roasters, Origin in Cornwall (currently a Brazilian blend of naturals and pulp-naturals), coming up soon!

I have logged a lot of data with the Scace during January and February… This has been fantastically useful. Really. Is ‘revelatory’ overused? I have now returned it to our roaster. And Gloria has received a lot of care and attention recently too! With more nips and tucks to come! She’s feeling pretty spruce, all in all, and it shows.

And good luck to all those entering the UK Barista Championships this year… there are a few people entering again, who I know will do great things! People do ask, but no, I’m not entering! I still feel I’ve achieved everything I want to in competition for the moment. There is so much that is positive about competing, but it’s also a lot of expense, and a huge amount of work to do well. Also, the theatrical and competitive aspects of preparing coffee on a stage are not necessarily something I naturally gravitate towards, just for the sake of it. Hence it’s not something I’m going to do every year …but at some point I might enter again! For the time being, I’m dedicating my attentions towards continuing to further my learning and understanding of my craft outside of the sphere of competitions (through continual practice and research both in the cafe and at home), and to both maintaining and constantly refining what I do as head barista and trainer for all our staff, and for our customers, at the plan cafe, which is also a lot of hard work, and a full-time committment. This does mean I don’t get to see as much of the wider coffee community though; the competitions can be a good place to meet with lots of other people who care about great coffee!

Finca Suiza continues to be my coffee of choice for home right now. I have to say I prefer this coffee as filter. Just wonderful coffee!  

Happy New Year!

The Winter Hoard 2011 blend has been exceptional, and I have stayed with it as our espresso almost continuously over the last few weeks. Partly because it’s so exciting and unique, partly because it’s THE seasonal blend right now at the roastery and won’t be here for long, and also to learn more. There have been eager requests from some of our guys along the way *I GET Winter Hoard, when are we going to get something new?!*, and I admit, the temptation to keep trying new coffees the whole time is strong! But for me, it’s been another rewarding little journey, patiently sticking with just one great blend for a while again, and observing it from many angles, in an attempt to understand it, and espresso generally, more intimately. I think there’s almost no limit to how much you can learn using just one blend, if you look closely enough. And how much you can miss if you don’t. Even though I often turn coffees inside out searching for stuff, I barely even scratch the surface, to be honest. Espresso’s a devious moving target, and even the same coffee is alive and constantly changing, but at least if you keep this one variable ‘fixed’ for a while, you can look at many things a little more clearly. I’ve said it before …and probably will again!

Just one of the things it has lead to is a current in-depth look at brew temperatures on our machine. Following my taste as I worked with the blend lead me to a place with temperatures that I could hardly believe. Our roaster then kindly re-loaned me his 53mm Scace, and I’m currently logging lots of data in an attempt to more intimately understand how our machine, our set-up, and temperatures generally, perform and affect espresso brewing. I’m also logging things like ambient temps and humidity and roast age simultaneously alongside the Scace readings to try to get a broader picture. And I’m recording, and simulating, various working and environmental scenarios as well. It’s fascinating! Again, despite the lengths to which I am going in doing this, it’s still really only snapshots, relative to how detailed, methodical, and scientific you could be when using the thermofilter …First and foremost there are drinks to make and customers to serve, afterall!

I first borrowed the Scace a couple of years ago, and did quite a lot of readings on our machine back then, but I’m looking at a little more detail this time, being a bit more methodical, and many things have changed since then. One thing I’ve learned is the importance of using a clean Scace on a thoroughly cleaned group! Initially, I thought something was different to the first time I borrowed the device, but thought little of it, and took readings for several days (on clean but not immaculately, freshly, purpose-cleaned groups!), before coming to realise the flow rate had been out from the start (and was worsening), and therefore the readings were inaccurate. I fixed (dismantled and cleaned) the Scace’s flowmeter and filter with 5 amp fuse wire, brushes and PTFE tape, and now I’m confident I’m getting measurements that accurately reflect brewing, and I’m keeping it that way (hence the machine is even cleaner than usual to boot)! But even this error has proved valuable; the data with the clogged flowmeter is interesting and useful in itself…

Taste is what I followed to arrive where I still am with the settings for our PID controlled temps for the blend, even though it seemed crazy, and this is always the most important thing to trust, precisely because it seemed crazy, but wasn’t infact. But the readings from the Scace are interesting and have helped to corroborate and make sense of what I was tasting. There’s always a lot of extraneous noise as well with espresso I think, so having some more ‘definite’ device-measurement of things like temperature (and cross checking of one system against another) can help to put the whole picture together better, and more swiftly, without all the doubt, and adjustment of every variable under the sun!

But can we really trust the readings from even a correctly functioning Scace? Does it really correspond to the brewing temperatures within your cakes of coffee, at your flow rates? I believe some people have compared Scace readings to homemade ’up and over’ thermocouple readings, and found that the results stand up. And even if the results don’t always specifically translate to your shots, they still provide an accurate picture of how the machine’s system works in terms of the temperature of the water delivered, and how various scenarios affect brewing temperatures on the machine, for calibration, and to help build some understanding of your set up. What the actual temp of your actual shots is needs a still more accurate measurement …like the tongue, and the eye?!

There are some things I’m able to take from this now and use generally, with other coffees. Although, as always, it can produce more questions than answers, ultimately.

Nice little (!) old thread on HB for the Scace. And instructions. And related WBC procedures.

Speaking of other coffees, Naturelle’s back right now, and there will be 4 different coffees alternating as the espresso at the cafe over the next week or so; two single estates (Brazilian Samambaia and El Salvadorian La Suiza), and these two blends! Because afterall, just as important as enjoying and experiencing one coffee at length… is trying new ones… and revisiting new crops of old ones!

Some truly stunning V60s at home recently with Finca La Suiza as a filter too. It’s fabulous!

…A ridiculously beautiful picture of Finca Suiza, forwarded to me by our roaster!

I’ve finished selecting coffees for the plan’s newest menu of coffee for cafetieres – this will be available from midweek, this coming week! I’m really happy with this season’s selections:

New Season Coffees for Cafetiere

@the plan   2011-2012   (Trevor’s V-3/1)

Kenyan:      Gatomboya  

Juicy, dark berry-fruit and blackcurrant notes, with citrusy top notes, and a complex, delicate finish. Sweet, syrupy body. From the Nyeri region. I’m excited to be able to offer such a stunning coffee, which epitomises truly great Kenyan coffee. Washed SL28 and SL34 varietals.

El Salvadorian:

…Two very different Single Estate coffees:

1)     Finca Suiza

Beautifully crisp, clean and balanced coffee. Cranberry, currant, cherry and citrus notes. This farm won the prestigious Cup of Excellence competition in El Salvador in 2010, and the exceptional quality of this farm is displayed again by this year’s crop. Washed-process.

2)     Cajamarca Farm

Deep, soft, red and dark fruit, Cola, and red liquorice bootlace flavours! A wonderfully produced, remarkably clean-tasting, natural-process microlot via Graciano Cruz’s Hi-U designer coffee project. Bourbon varietals. Located in Najapa, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Ethiopian Blend:     Habesha

Ethiopian specialty grade coffee. This coffee is all about sweetness, fruit, and the essence of great Ethiopian coffees this season. Named after the old English word for Ethiopia: Habesha.

Indian:     Monsooned Malabar

The coffee is taken to the coast at Malabar for drying, acquiring a unique aged taste. Very low acidity, with a spicy, musky, woody flavour. From Faiz Moosakutty’s Bibi Plantation in Sunticoppa, Southern India.

Decaf:     Available on request

Premium Arabicas …Ethically traded …Traceable to origin

…Freshly craft-roasted by James’s Gourmet Coffee

As usual, the first few on the menu are the ones which have changed, and are the newest most awesome coffees, whilst there are also a couple further down the list which remain available throughout the year. I have to admit, I’ve taken off the Dark Roast blend (even though it was a good one). I know some people like it (mostly with cream and sugar?), and I was happy enough to offer it as a contrast to the other coffees with more vibrant, coveted, origin flavours, for those who wanted it. But maybe customers are now coming to us seeking the more interesting, lighter roasted, crisp, juicy, speciality coffees. Either way, the dark roast simply wasn’t selling much (… and does anyone really want to drink coffee that’s less than fresh?), to the point where it is just not worth keeping it. This suggests more people might be ‘getting’ what it’s all about, and enjoying better coffee, which makes me optimistic!

It’s worth pointing out that the flavours described in the tasting notes are the subtle, natural flavours of the specific coffees, and they will be best when enjoyed black, after proper brewing, and when the cup has cooled a little (or even a lot – I like it really cool!). If you simply prefer to have milk, and to drink the coffee at its hottest, they will still taste good (and milk can sometimes add a positive, whole new dimension to the flavours), but you might not quite get the flavours as described. Also, you could buy the whole-beans, and brew at home trying other methods like single-cup pour-over filters, for instance, that can give a different, cleaner representation of the flavours. You’ll need a good grinder (ideally a burr grinder) to grind fresh as you need it – but it is worth the investment if you want really delicious coffee!

At home, with all the coffees above, I have been experimenting with a slightly courser grind, and shorter bloom and brew times with my V60s lately, with some  great results. Much crisper, brighter, more balanced, and with better, more controlled shaping of the bloom and grounds in the cone. Pouring kettle temp of 92-96C. Continuous pouring method. V60 01 and 02.

Whilst my new TCA5 syphon on the other hand remains wonderfully challenging and labour and time intensive!

Winter Hoard 2011 is still my selection of choice for espresso at the cafe right now, whilst it’s still around! …along with some Naturelle and Formula 6, here and there, to mix things up a bit!

I’m always researching coffee techniques, experimenting, practicing, fine tuning, re-evaluating, and trying new things. With espresso, at work, over the last few days, I have once again been flirting with nutation! I vowed not to after the last time …but the temptation is too much!  Some people say ‘nutation’ is an inaccurate word for the technique. Some people say it is a redistribution technique, rather than a tamping technique. But it is a technique which can have dramatic, and positive effects. Often it is used to fix issues with channelling. I infrequently suffer from (obvious) channelling on our set-up, and rather for me, it’s about experimenting with more even extraction, blonding, brew time, and controlling flow rate better. Some people report noticing little difference when using the method. Which always surprises me. On our set-up, the results can be immense (too immense!?). And contrary to what some people report, the main issue with using it for me has been the consistency. But the favorable results are so tantalising as to once again make me investigate it further… There are many variations on how to execute nutation as part of your technique, so I’m trying a few things to see if I can find a permanent ‘fit’, that is consistently better than my current, established technique. Luckily, I already own and use a US curve tamper! Nutation Nutation Nutation.