Moving the Blog

Dear coffee lovers,

After so many years and 1100 blog post on this address i'm moving this type of blogging to the website blog.
With all the other info on the company on the same page it all makes more sense to me.

For those who don't know the Caffenation Website : CLICK HERE

So, come on over to the Caffenation site for more info on our coffee's, research, championships etc...

Greetz
Rob

Mr LGB Winter BIS

Mr LGB Seasonal Specialty Blend : Your favourite Milk Drink Companion
In this Winter BIS version, half and half :
Burundi Gitega Mahonda Lot4
and Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Chelbessa grade 1

For the second winter LGB we go for African beautiest, with Burundi Mahonda and a classic Yirgacheffe.
In Burundi we encountered a small delay in delivery because of political troubles, but quality and freshness is still guaranteed. And the 'potato disease' which gave a lot of troublesome defects a couple of years ago, seems to be almost gone. 
The Mahonda is as clean as it gets. 

After a couple seasonal blends without Ethiopia we go back to our fav origin. 

It's been a tough year to get our hands on a clean cup Yirg this year, but finally we managed to find this fantastic Grade 1 – extra special sorting – lot from the CHELBESSA Washing Station. Expect subtle acidity, with a touch of Earl Grey and yellow fruit.

Try to keep your shots restricted; this way your caps and flats will come out better.

And also for filter brews this particular combo gives magic in your cup. Good luck.

TOP 5 Espresso and Filter Coffees of 2015

Here we go with our annual best Caffenation Coffees.

Of course these are my personal picks.
Maybe some roast profiles were not to your liking, or it was just not your favourite coffee; i fully understand.

2015 was the year of (relatively) weak Ethiopians.
We struggled to find great El Salvador lots as well. And so was also Panama a bit off the radar.

And again no Brazils that were clean and special enough to be mentioned here. Certainly not for filter.
On filter i like above all 'clean cups'. Coffee's without any disturbing flavors.
I like some extra zesty notes and fruitiness. And a long clean after taste. I suppose you understand.

(you can click on the names to go to the links for some extra info)

1) Kenya Thika Kiriaini AA
2) Kenya Nyeri Ruiruiru AA
3) Kenya Nyeri Kii AB (lot 2)
4) Ethiopia Sidamo Sasaba Natural (summer lot)
5) Kenya Kirinyaga Gakuyuni AB (autumn lot)


For Espresso i talk just clean shots, not milk based coffee's.
With our new roaster -and cooling tray!!-we were more in control of the roasts and so we could keep acidity of those punchy Kenyans low. The balance in general was better. And the flavors lasted longer.
Our idea is that the most coffees only peak 3 weeks after roast.

1) Kenya Thika Kiriaini AA
2) Ethiopia Sidamo Hunkute
3) Kenya Nyeri Karinga AB
4) Indonesia Sulawesi Tana Toraja
5) Burundi Kayanza Gakenke lot8

Right now we are still rolling with these last 2 coffee's.

New crop Rwanda - oh boy - is on its way over.

And soon we expect fresh Colombia and Papua New Guinea wonders.

So stay tuned!

TOP 10 CD 2015

A yearly coverage of Caffenation's best tunes, albums, music!!
 For the Antwerp department it is getting bit by bit more difficult for me to filter the most funky notes and keep track of what plays most in the player.
But Amsterdam is still rocking and rolling and Bert did provide me his most remarkable 5 musical highlights of last year. Yes people, this is espresso bar music. Enjoy

CAFFENATION AMSTERDAM :
 1. Coxsone’s music: the first recordings of sir Coxcone the downbeat 1960-63 2015 Souljazzrecords LISTEN HERE
2. Condor Gruppe (BE Antwerp!!) Latituds del cavall 2014
ON YOU TUBE
3. Black devil disco club (reissue uit 1978) 2015
MORE INFO IN THIS LINK
4. Patrick Cowley Muscle up 2015
5. Ata Kak Obaa Sima 2015 Awesome tapes from Africa

CAFFENATION ANTWERP :
1. The Mattson 2 : Feeling Hands
CLIP ON YOU TUBE
2. Rod Stewart : Every picture Tells a story
TO HAVE AN IMPRESSION : CLICK HERE
3. John Mayal with Eric Clapton : Bluesbreakers
4. The Tallest Man On Earth : Dark Bird is home
5. La Priest : Inji (with Oino)
SONG OF THE YEAR CLIP 

Hope i have been inspiring you this way, to lighten up the bar with something EXTRA.

Kenya X-Mas Blend

Kenya X-MAS Blend

• Gitura AA • Gakuyuni AB • Munani PB • in equal parts on City Roast (filter)

Kenyan coffee deserves its own category in the coffee world. There is good reason why many of the most experienced coffee fanatics in the industry call Kenya their favorite: It’s a unique and flat-out spectacular coffee! Why is it so great? A near-perfect synergy of altitude, latitude, botany and processing tradition is the most logical answer.

This coffees come from fields around the famous Mount Kenya, where most of Kenya's top coffees grow in volcanic soils. The variety is mainly SL28 and SL34, with a little bit of Ruiri and Batian. The Screening is a mix of AA, AB and PB (peaberry). The blending makes sure this coffee is well balanced, with good sweetness, subtle acidity and an endless and clean after taste. We believe this could be you ideal starter of the mornings these last days of the year or the perfect finish after a great Christmas meal.

What Greens have we been buying in 2015?

LOTS!
40 different coffees. But more kilo's of the same.
A couple of them never reached any sunlight, cause only for blending, but most were published on my other blog :

COFFEE BLOG

In total we are talking between 45 and 50 tons of coffee, divided in the following percentages : 

ETHIOPIA : 31%

COLOMBIA : 14%

GUATEMALA : 14% 

KENYA : 12%

BURUNDI : 9% 

COSTA RICA : 6%

BRAZIL : 4%

NICARAGUA : 4%

INDONESIA : 3%

RWANDA : 2%

PANAMA : 1%

EL SALVADOR : 1%

Probably this is not fully correct, but it gives an idea.

Ethiopia is classic. Other years it even goes up to 35%, but we had a hard time finding interesting Yirgacheffe lots this year. More good Sidamo's popped up though. 

Colombia we use a lot for blending. Not the most spectacular filter beans, but a good solid espresso base.

Guatemala made a big come back this year after some troubles previous to 2015. Good mouthfeel, spices and excellent blenders.

Kenya in getting more and more important. It became our favorite country and even on espresso we saw some mind blowing results. Super year!

Burundi was in trouble before, but the newest crop 15/16 is better than ever. So expect more to come next year. Value wise the best stuff around at this moment. 

Costa Rica is a classic favorite here. I think we didn't find out lots that were really jumping out, but over all a decent year and moderate prices. 

Brazil is the biggest coffee producer in the world, but not the greatest. Lots of earthy unwashed coffee's, but left and right we found a couple of gems for espresso roasting.

Nicaragua is every year on the list, but mostly for 1 or 2 %. This year we discovered one fantastic blender and bought lots of it. 

Indonesia is never high on the list, but we found 2 nice beans, especially for espresso roasting. 

Rwanda is also on the rise, but we did not blend this one in yet. New great Rwanda lots on our radar though.

Panama. Only one small lot this year. More interesting lots passed by, but in general over priced. 

El Salvador is very often one of our fav country's in Central America, but one way or another we did not roast more than 1 pacamara. Probably more next year, again. 

What have we been missing? 

Honduras - i don't remember i even tried some this year

Papua New Guinea - currently on the cupping table 

Peru - nothing fancy this year

Mexico - mostly we buy the Kassandra, but up to now no other samples of Mexico in sight. weird.

India - too earthy and woody

Ecuador - a down fall here, less and less specialty's around

Malawi and Zimbabwe - nothing cupped unfortunately

Congo - first samples left and right, but not good enough or too expensive

Tanzania - we cup em, but problems with transportation - sloooow - and storage ruin a lot

Home Brewing News

Last Sunday we had a Home Brewing Class at Caffenation. And yesterday i did a lecture, demonstration and competition around the theme at the Kitchen Aid Convention in Antwerp.

It was 2,5 years ago we did a session like this at Caffenation, which is damn too little and too late. But the problem was that we did not have a good platform to announce the classes, too little teachers and not enough interest from the public.

All these 3 things changed now and so we are hopefully ready to get these classes back on track.

Those who were not there; 'bad luck for you', cause there's always a lot to learn when you start experimenting with all tools and with 10 enthusiastic coffee lovers around you.

Of course there's still the blog and here a little bit of the new stuff we discovered or confirmed.

On the theoretical side there's not so much to say, but once at the testing table this quickly changed.

We did a test on the Clever Dripper.

(Between brackets :
Coffee, as for all tests, was the Chelbessa, a one week old filter roast of this washed Yirgacheffe grade 1.
The water : 94 degrees hot filtered water - 100 PPM -, probably 90 degrees C in the kettle)

We gave it a 18 (grams of coffee) to 300 (grams of water) ratio.
And went for a 1, 2, 3 and 4 minute extraction before placing the Clever Dripper on a (room temperature) mug.
These results were a bit predictable. 1 minute gave underextraction, 4 minutes overextraction.

We did a test on the V60. 

Same ratio.
Glass dripper with brown (washed) filter, Glass dripper with white (washed) filter and Ceramic dripper with white (washed) filter.
The Brown filter was as always disgusting. If you have a clean bean on a light or medium roast; always go for white filter paper. If you think it is not environmentally friendly? Go Filtropa!

The, both pre heated, Glass dripper versus the Ceramic V60 dripper :
The Glass gave a faster drip.
And a more detailed, exciting flavor.
What could have been the reason? I guess it's the absorption of heat. While the glass dripper absorbs less of the heat, the water is a tad hotter and runs through faster. Certainly for this years Ethiopians this is a big plus.
A faster run doesn't always end up in extra and more detailed flavors, but this time it worked. We had a 2,5 minutes run for the glass and almost 3 minutes for the ceramic. This is serious of course.

Later on we tested the V60 Glass dripper decanter. The poor was a bit firmer at the start and we kept the coffee bed a bit lower, with continuous pouring. Stop after 2,5 minutes. Fantastic performance by one of our guests Roeland and a supreme cups of coffee!!

One of the challenges at the session is to give the students a chance to test something. Nik wanted to brew a 3-cup Chemex.
The result was very good. Almost the same extraction time, but a heavier coffee. A tiny little bit forced in flavors maybe, but very fruity and a lot of body!

We tested Aeropresses. Our famous Classic Recipe (made to perfection before by Simon, Jeff and Charlene) had a cleaner cup then the inversed. And another student his Press showed much more dirtyness when pressing it too far. Once you hear the hissing sound of air escaping via those tiny holes at the bottom, your cup is ruined.

We tested the pour over Kitchen Aid coffee machine and that surprised everybody. As crisp and clean as any other cup on the table.

The new Kitchen Aid French Press didn't perform well though.

So i was curious yesterday at this Kitchen Aid convention how it would be when 6 groups of 6 people would take on the challenge to make the best possible coffee with this tool - the newly French Press with build in scale and timer.

We used the same coffee as last Sunday and Spa Blauw/Reine water.

And the results were .... better.
Difficult to follow what went wrong last Sunday and better when these Kitchen Aid staffers took control.
First of all the Spa water has always helped to brew this perfect cup of coffee, but also i advised the people to keep the temperature high enough.
Of course no boiling water, but in general you need to give warmer water to 'immersion brews' then to 'drip brews'.
In general for Aeropress we take 80 to 82 degrees warm water.
For Clever and V60 it is 86 to 90 degrees.
Our big batch brewer 88 degrees.
And the Kitchen Aid Brewer is 92, the Mocca Master 93 and the Wilfa 94 degrees Celcius.
For Cupping and French Press we tap off 96 degrees, so expect it a tad lower once poured, but still something like 92. And this works better. Certainly with those (relatively) 'flat' Ethiopians.

Last note on the Automatic Brewers listed above. I've been experimenting a lot with these 3 brewers and like the Kitchen Aid most, before Mocca Master. The Wilfa was better after a couple of months, cause in the beginning the plastic tubes gave off some chemical flavors.
And it also helped when i poured on a bit of cold water at the grounds before the hot water came on....

That's it for today. So see you all at the next class for some more experimenting.