November-December 2020 Newsletter
What a year it's been! Now that we are finally out of lockdown I
suspect that we're all looking forward to a happier Yule season..
What a year it's been! Now that we are finally out of lockdown I suspect that we're all looking forward to a happier Yule season.
Australia Post seems to be operating with even longer delivery delays than a couple of months ago, which doesn't bode well for Christmas delivery times. The latest official word from them is that Standard Post should be in the mail by the 12th of December, and Express Post by the 21st of December, if you want it to arrive by the 24th. Based on the delays we are currently seeing I would add another 3 or 4 days in advance of that.
Our own last chance for shipping will be orders placed before 8.30 a.m. Monday 21st December. The usual stock rundown warning applies and we'll be filling the last minute orders with whatever coffees we have left. We'll reopen the order pages on Friday 8th January and begin shipping on Monday 11th January 2021.
One of the unforseen consequences of lockdown is that quite a few people stayed in and bought espresso machines. This in turn has led to me getting a heap of questions about why they weren't getting the results they expected.
Some of the questions were easy to answer, "Use more coffee, use the double basket, yes, you do need to tamp!" but by far the most common answer was "Buy a decent grinder." The hardest thing to answer was "What do you recommend?"
As it turns out, not a lot. Finding a decent espresso grinder which is in stock seems to be a bit of a chore. The basic Sunbeam, Baratza and Lelit grinders are all out of stock. The only grinder I could recommend for immediate purchase was the venerable Rancilio Rocky, not cheap or “cutting edge" but certainly reliable.
Of course, if you have a spare $2000 lying around there are a lot more choices, but for a much more reasonable $300 to $400 I'd buy a basic Lelit, Ascaso, Isomac or Iberital conical. They are all the same grinder under the skin, are incredibly noisy and last forever. If only they were in stock! A decent grinder cures a heap of espresso woes, including too bitter, too sour, not enough crema etc. by enabling easy adjustment of shot doses, times and volumes.
The compostable coffee bags met your approval by 50 to 1. We've received a couple of sample bags and currently have them in the compost bin to see what happens, just so that we can guarantee you're getting value for money if we go ahead with them.
Finally there's our Christmas special coffee:
$68 Per Kilogram
Strong
The full name of this coffee is Ethiopian Guji Uraga Grade 1 Yellow Honey. As such it's a rare example of a coffee which isn't either washed or dry processed, the traditional methods used in Ethiopia.
Honey ("Miel") processing was originally a Central American development, but modern information availability means that coffee farmers the world over are able to tap into interesting ways to improve their coffees. This is the first such coffee from Ethiopia that we've seen.
The result is a spectacular coffee with an intense jasmine and honey aroma, cleansing citric acidity on the front palate followed by a creamy mid-palate body and a milk chocolate aftertaste. I rate it a solid 90, the only one this year.
Have a safe and happy holiday season, we'll be back to you in January.
Alan
Nature VS. Nurture: September - October 2020 Newsletter
Coffee can have variety of flavours, some due to nature and some to nurture…
Coffee can have variety of flavours, some due to nature and some to nurture.
There are at least 900 species of Coffea, but the commercially important ones are Coffea Canephora (Robusta) and Coffea Arabica. On a world scale the dollar value, production and consumption of Arabica exceeds that of Robusta by a third. On a flavour scale there's no competition, Arabica wins outright.
And over 90% of that huge quantity of Arabica coffee is still descended from Baba Budan's original seven seeds. The rest is "Native" coffee grown mostly in Ethiopia and Yemen, although experiments with Ethiopian varietals (e.g. Gesha) are ongoing in most Arabica producing countries. This is as much to introduce more genetic variation as it is to discover the next Gesha.
The Arabica genome is terribly limited. Most of the more disease resistant and higher yielding varietals have been interbred with Robusta, with consequent loss of flavour. The hope is that the addition of wild coffee genes will improve disease resistance, yield and taste, as well as produce new and exciting flavours.
The other way to produce new flavours is to change the way the ripe coffee cherries are processed. Traditional processing in Yemen simply spreads the cherries in a single layer on a flat surface (often a house roof) and lets them dry in the sun. The dried skin and fruit is then husked off the green beans and kept to make a sort of tea, known as qishr or cascara, and the beans are further dried then hand winnowed to remove the parchment layer. This is called Dry or Natural processing. Flavour results are generally "fruity".
All the other processing methods rely on pulping the coffee cherries first to split and remove the skins and some of the sweet gooey fruit, known as mucilage. Spreading the pulped cherries out to dry results in "Pulped Natural" or "Honey/Miel" beans which when fully dry undergo mechanical cleaning and parchment removal. Flavours tend to be intense and sweet.
Fermenting the pulped cherries in water then removing the skin, mucilage and parchment while wet and sun drying the beans is "Giling Basah" processing. This is more or less exclusive to Sumatra, and results in earthy flavours and a heavy body.
Finally there is fully fermenting the cherries so that all the skin and mucilage comes off, drying the beans either with the sun or mechanically, then storing them with the parchment on. The parchment is then removed mechanically. This is "Wet Processing" or "Washing." Flavours tend towards clean, pure coffee taste and higher acidity.
Right now people are experimenting with the fermentation stage by using various types of yeast, or eliminating oxygen (anaerobic fermentation) or fermenting whole un-pulped cherries in sealed vessels (carbonic maceration.) They can get excellent results (as with the yeast fermented Burundi last year) but consistency is a problem. So, instead, this month's special is a "Natural" process coffee.
Until November,
Alan
$60 Per Kilogram
Medium
Shimmering strawberry acidity up front with a medium body and a creamy butter and malt finish.
Fully: Nicaragua SHG* Rancho Alegre - Red Catuai - Natural Arabica
Red Catuai is (via a complex family tree and many mutations) a descendant of the "Seven Seeds".
*SHG = “Strictly High Grown”
Marc’s Notes
I hope everyone’s enjoying this series of more in-depth articles that we’re asking Dad to write. We’ve got several more in the pipeline, but if there’s a particular area of coffee knowledge that you feel needs further exploration, feel free to reach out!
Regarding AusPost shipping - Express Post remains the best way to ensure speedy delivery of your coffee right now, as Standard Post is proving slightly inconsistent when it comes to delivery times (5-21 days based on our July/August data). Read more.
Cheers,
Marc
July-August 2020 Newsletter
Retirement, alas, is not all it's cracked up to be…
Retirement, alas, is not all it's cracked up to be. Or it wouldn't be, if I was actually retired. Instead of floating languidly down a tropical river sipping cocktails with little umbrellas in them, I've been fossicking in cardboard boxes with 30 years accumulation of espresso machine spare parts. And shivering my way through the usual cold Melbourne winter.
Marc and I have got the website and ordering systems up and running, and fairly well tuned. He now wants me to do a series of articles distilling the experience I've gained in 35 years in the coffee industry. Which I wouldn't mind doing, especially if I was writing them while on the deck of the boat floating languidly etc.etc.
Travel restrictions having put paid to that, I've been trying to clear out all the junk that's built up over the years, and rediscovered the jumble of machine spare parts left over when my technician retired. Later this month we'll be putting up a new webpage, initially just with parts for the Lelit PL041 and 042 and the PL53 grinder. These will be, in Real Estate parlance, "priced to sell", but remember that it's a list of bits and pieces rather than a comprehensive supply. The reason it's taking a bit of time to do is including the GST so that we can stay in line with the ATO.
Later on I hope to include a few odds and sods for the Silvia and Rocky, the Lelit PL Plus and the laScala Butterfly, but since most of the stuff is Lelit bits we're starting with them.
Now, onward to some of the "experience" bit. The history of coffee tends to emphasise the spread of coffee in the west, starting with bags of beans left behind when the Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna in 1683. In fact, there was already a thriving coffee culture in Venice (Italy) at this time, and the first licensed Venetian coffee house opened in the same year.
However, coffee and coffee houses were well known in the Islamic world by 1510. Coffee was a popular and profitable product from Cairo in Egypt to Mecca in Arabia to Constantinople in Turkey. That's why coffee growing, production and shipping were limited to Yemen, and the (then) Arabians protected their monopoly jealously.
The monopoly was broken in 1695 when Indian Sufi mystic Baba Budan smuggled out seven seeds following his pilgrimage to Mecca, allegedly in his beard. These were planted outside a temple in Chikmalagur, and there are still coffee plants directly descended from these 1695 plantings, growing in the same area.
Coffee seeds from this area were spread to Indonesia by Dutch traders, and from there became the basis for most of the Arabica coffee grown worldwide. DNA studies indicate that both Typica and Bourbon traits originated from the "seven seeds."
It's only recently that it's been possible to get hold of these heirloom coffees processed in the original way. The introduction of the East India Company and British coffee planters in the early 1800's meant that "native" coffee processing methods were set aside in favour of "modern" washing stations. Unfortunately this didn't do much for the flavour, producing clean but bland coffees mostly used for blending, quite unlike this month's special.
$56 Per Kilogram
Medium
Shimmering sweet acidity with notes of cinnamon and cloves in the middle palate, medium body and a burnt sugar finish.
A Changing World
Brewing your own coffee at home is almost as easy as using instant coffee, and the end result tastes heaps better…
"The world is changed. ... I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost." With apologies to Tolkien, this is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today. I firmly believe that the economic and social costs of the pandemic will reverberate for the balance of my lifetime.
Many hospitality industry venues such as cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels are currently closed. A lot of them will never reopen. Right now this is shattering supply chains all the way from farm to table. Much of what we eat and drink relies on a continuity of steps from production to consumption, and the retailers at the end point are in lockdown.
The sheer volume of coffee consumed by Australian cafes and restaurants will probably take years to recover, which in turn affects roasters (still in business but hurting) and green coffee importers. Multiply this by the whole world and it starts to look a lot like the oil industry, with the people at the bottom (coffee farmers) suffering from surplus production and lowered prices.
The social effects may take a lot longer to sort themselves out, but I suspect we're going to come out of this in a much more "back to basics" inclined world. In a time of high unemployment and reduced incomes it might be a long while before the $4.50 takeaway Café Latte makes a comeback.
I've certainly picked up a bunch of new customers, many of them new to brewing at home. It looks like my retirement will be somewhat delayed, and my post-retirement celebratory trip is cancelled until further notice. Fortunately my son Marc and his partner have taken over much of the heavy lifting physical portions of my job. What I will be doing as part of the "back to basics" thing is writing a set of "how to brew" guides, starting with plunger brewing.
For those of you who have forgotten, my instructions are:
If possible, use freshly roasted and ground coffee. Grind should be coarser than for filter but not as coarse as for percolator.
Use 10 grams of coffee per 180ml of water. Add the correct amount of coffee to your plunger.
Boil your water. Allow to stand 30 seconds then pour carefully over the coffee. If your coffee is fresh it should bubble and foam up, this is called the Bloom. Depending on the size of your plunger, allow 1-3cm at the top of the plunger so the bloom doesn't overflow during the next step.
Then take a suitable spoon (wooden if you've got a glass jug) and stir for 90 seconds, making sure you submerge all the coffee including the bloom. v) Insert the filter, slide the lid down the shaft, then push the filter about 2cm under the surface.
Wait 30 seconds, then plunge all the way with a slow, steady pressure. If your grind is a bit too fine and you encounter resistance, pull the plunger up 2cm, wait a second, then press down again. Serve immediately.
This month’s special is:
$52 Per Kilogram
Strong
A complex tropical fruit front palate with a smooth sweet mid palate and a long cedar wood smoke & praline finish
And yes, the tasting notes come from Marc, who is more used to tasting whisky than coffee!
The new website should be fully operational sometime this month. There may be a 24 hour period when it's down as we move the domain, but that should be all.
Until July,
Alan