World Barista Championship 2007 Competitor Showcase MTV

Thanks ZacharyZ and James H.for bringing the WBC via this blog to Belgium.

My own coffee plantation

What do you think about my first coffee tree?
Click on the photo to enlarge it and you'll see it really is a coffee bean germinating. Incredible!

In my early days of blogging i visited Viva Sara Coffee Company. Peter gave me 2 coffee plants and some cherry's. All my efforts to have plants growing from these beans failed.

Then 2 months later Michel from AKC gave me a couple more cherry's from their tree and .... bingo.

I do not know anything about it, but with a little bit of luck it's going to grow and grow and grow.
We'll keep you posted.

Barista news

Next week is the big week you fellas.
World Barista Championship or WBC.

Monday presentation of the 50 (!) candidates.
Tuesday and Wednesday competition.
Thursday big finals, for the 6 highest scoring competitors.
Favorites? Hard to tell. I don't know who's competing for all different country's, but at a first glimpse it's Norway, Great Britain, Canada and Iceland for the title.
Here, you can click for the pdf (not complete) list.
And our Belgian participant?
Peter Deprez has been training as a madman last weeks. He's way better prepared than last year and in a good day top 20 would be fantastic. His Signature has the credo 'why not' and that's the right way of looking at it i think. His beans selection is not public yet, but i hope to have it posted soon. Or Peter can comment us directly if he wants to.
Good luck Elder, James, Rose, Tasos, Peter and others in Tokyo.
For more info : click here.

Meanwhile i'm planning my holidays for august.
En autre Paris pour un weekend, avec la byciclette au long de la Seine .
En Nederland, 4 dagen.
And Stockholm at the end of August. Curious if i can catch up with the people from Espresso Specialisten for Teflon Partafilters, Presso tamper or other Barista tools.

This week i've been drinking AKC Indian Mysore A, Tazza D'oro and Eustachius straight from Rome, Costa Rica Tournon EState HTM, Panama La Tarcoza Estate Bouquete and right now on Chemex, from Stumptown, Ethiopia Misty Valley Idido. Not a bad week uh?

Soon more posts about my coffee plant finally germinating, the Stumptown beans, Espresso Porn Pics and the fantastic Costa Rica espresso of the week.

Latte Art, the sequel

Look closely at the froth of this cappuccino.

Also check the latest post on jimseven.com. FUN

Thai Starbucks: Wawee Coffee

One prime example of Chiang Mai's coffee culture.
(flickr photo from Ididu)

Chiang Mai and the high rise of Oriental Espresso

If you think coffee, you think Seattle or Copenhagen or London or ...., but Chiang Mai Thailand? Not directly.
Fact is that Chiang Mai's cafe culture and coffee production is creating a buzz.

Want to know how 'developed' a country is? Don't waste your time confusing statistics, but simply look at how much coffee it consumes. The top coffee-drinking country's in the world also enjoy the highest standard of living, while those who eschew the brew come in at the bottom of the list.
To be fair, this is an overgeneralisation and highly unscientific. Yet there is the past in which we saw that coffee drinking did a lot of good the people and their community. Is it a concidence that Microsoft and Starbucks both came of age at the same time, in the same city of Seattle?

Coffee not only gets the brain going full-tilt, but it is a vehicle to connoisseurship ; like fine wine, art and complex music.

Chiang Mai, that disarmingly city in northern Thailand is certainly on prime example of the above stated 'theory'.
Aside from a breakneck boom in five-star and boutique hotels, cutting-edge restaurants and bohemians art galleries, the town is advertising its ambitions most evidently in the explosion of a domestic coffeehouse culture.
Where five years ago, 'fresh coffee' meant you had just broken the seal on your jar of Nescafe, today you can't wander for more than two minutes without spying a flashy new coffeehouse, or even just some humble little espresso machine at a roadside shack.
Happily, unlike some other Asian cities, Chiang Mai has steered its upward momentum with a ginger style that has come typify what makes the town so appealing to visitors.

Starbucks made their appearance in the streets already a year ago. And where the Seattle-based chain has often been known for the way how they build up their espresso bars next to the small coffeehouses and eventually running them out of business ; it looks like the opposite is happening now.
Wawee, 94, Cafe Nero, Smoothie Blues, Bake and Bite, Kopitam and others are full of costumers, while Starbucks hosts far less, primarily rich Thais from Bangkok and foreigners who are bound by brand loyalty.

Besides of the fast rise of espresso bars we also see a very productive coffee bean production, with local, mostly fair trade, brands like Duang Dee, Doikham and Kocth. Specialty coffee picked and processed and roasted it the same country you drink it ; this opens huge opportunities... and definitely worth a visit.

(inspiration and information from Oliver Benjamin's article for Fah Thai Magazine)

The truth on fresh

Nearly all of the coffee, even at coffee retail shops, is stale.
The good news is that stale coffee is drinkable if you've never had truly fresh coffee.
Talking fresh coffee, I'm not talking about coffee that has been roasted in one or another factory. And definitely not ground! Once ground, even packed vacuum, pads, pods or in capsules, the taste evaporates very quickly. We notice already a really big difference after 5 (five!) minutes.
The bad news is that once you've tasted truly fresh coffee, you'll be forever hooked. It will make you giddy every time you go to make a pot. Tingle right down to your toes. Reverberate around your head like a funky aura. That's because coffee, just a few days out of the roaster, is nature's most flavorful drink - more complex than even wine - containing well over 900 flavor compounds to dance on your taste buds. But after a few weeks, you'd be lucky to see half that number.

How do you know if coffee is stale?
Simple test : If it's bitter or flat, it's too late. Coffee is actually know by connoisseurs as a 'sweet' beverage. But shush ... you're not supposed to know that. And who doesn't want you to know? Coffee companies who make their living on convenience. And yes, believing that freshness is as simple as slurping air out of a coffee container, is convenience.

Truly fresh coffee is a pain cause you have to order it frequently.
First you have to find it though. And then try to have it week after week fresh and unspoiled.
Enjoy.

(flickr photo by sirwiseowl)