Caffenation and Barista news

It takes ages to get my new (old) Simonelli machine running. Plumbing, promised for yesterday eve, didn't happen. Bummer.

The Anfims are doing great, although i have not programmed the timer yet. Can someone help me?

This and next month there is elarged interest from professionals to work with our Caffenation House Blend. It's a big honour for me to help people launch their business or change their coffee on the grinder.
Every day again i notice competition is totally not capable or motivated to prep grinder, machine and/or workstation. These days there is so much knowledge available, but almost nothing is happening in the field. Are these companies blind? In this city and country it seems an impossibility to pull an espresso with a 'normal' extraction. In 99% of the businesses they have one grinder. This one mostly has old rusty blades and is grinding course for cafe creme. So if, and i say if, somebody is smart enough to understand that a good cappuccino needs a good espresso to start of with, the 'espresso' runs approximatly 7 seconds!
It's almost a one man's action to bring in decent espresso in Antwerp, but bit by bit we change the landscape. Single handed we achieved to have plus minus 15 etablishments following the basic rules of coffee making. GRIND, DOSE, DISTRIBUTE, TAMP, BREW, SERVE, REPEAT.

Next week we celibrate our 5th anniversary. And for that we have at Friday the 13th a special party. We asked our clients to invent a coffee drink, style signature drink.
The simple rules are the same as in championships : coffee based and no alcohol.
The five nominated persons, although we hope and expect groups of 5, are coming over that night to prepare, with our help if needed, their drink. Each group has half an hour to make enough drinks so everyone can see and taste them.
At the end we will give points at the best drink of the eve. This one will be offered at all Caffenation clients during the summer season.
This week is final week to put recipes in the box at the cashing. Good luck. Soon the results of this competition on the blogspot.

WBC Copenhagen.
I heard Bart is training hard for the cupping competition. His style is very special, but i'm sure he's capable of beating the sh.. out of everyone out there in Denmark.
Meanwhile Peter for the Latte Art and Detlev for Barista are training hard. This friday i'm invité at the Viva Sara headquarters to judge their performances. Curious....

As espresso of the week we had our Daterra on the grinder.
Also the bean sales went really well ; the twenty kilo of Yellow Bourbon Daterra was sold out in 16 days. Not too bad for a city like Antwerp.
Yesterday Daisy and Katrien pulled shots with the Hasbean Honduras COO and today we have a Rwanda gold on the grinder. Only one small bag, so in the running of the day we gonna get over to the good old Napoli styled Barberra. Come on in for a shot. Cheers.