French Barista's

We have been talking about the coffee scene in Paris before.

As well did Oliver Strand in this article.

Bit by bit the scene is changing for the better.
Also thanks to our friend Channa who recently asked us for a coffee for the French Barista Championships.


Jeff filled his backpack with fresh coffee's last Tuesday and dropped some of the goodies at Café lomi.

A couple days later Peta came in 4th at the Barista competition with some beans of our best lot of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Peaberry from Mamo Kacha.


What a surprise. This girl practised not more than 2 weeks for the championships and we only came up with our coffee a couple days before the comp. Very well done Peta.
Winner was : Ludovic Loison.

Paul from Lomi won the Latte Art before a good Caffenation friend Anaïs who used (of course) Knopes coffee. Well done Anaïs!! Next year #1 is yours.

So things are moving nicely in Paris. Very good motivation for us to go back south from time to time to give them a helping hand.

New Bags

From next weekend on we'll have new bags.

Small green ones for our Little Green Bag.
And small black ones for our espresso roast of the week and other beans. From that one we expect half kilo bags next month as well.

Send in photo's soon.

Cupping at 2

Every Saturday we have a free cupping session at Take Out Nation.

A 2 o'clock Roeland and me are presenting a couple of nice (new) coffee's at the Take Out Nation Bar, Hopland 46.

Hope to see you one of the upcoming Saturdays.

Planned for tomorrow : new crop coffee's from Tanzania, Zambia and Rwanda. C u.

New Coffee's from East & South Africa

Nice stuff coming in.
This weeks espresso of the week : Rwanda Rwabisindu : Big nutmeg aroma's, upfront some nice lemon, then very nutty, medium body and long and creamy aftertaste. The coffee is complex and becomes very sweet cooling down. I think we have a winner here. 91

This weeks filter of the week : Zambia Munali : Nice full aroma, nice acidity, bit of chocolate, 'Dutch drop' and wood tones. Full and clean aftertaste. 89

Coming up next week : Zimbabwe Salimba : Earthy, lemon, tobacco, wicked balance - changing all the time, nice cooling! 86

And a Tanzania AA Utengule : A bit stronger then the others, veggie stock, walnut, bitter but clean aftertaste. 85,50

We had at the public cupping yesterday eve also a Burundi and Kenya on the table. At the warehouse since December, but the same region.
Nice fruitiness in the Kenya AA. Always lovely.
The Burundi was better then ever. Sooo Sweet!!! Best cup and a blazing 93 points.

Soon more....

Starbucks New Logo

Better

Coffee Prices Insanity

The current coffee price crisis continues.

Everyone in the coffee industry, although some a bit more then others, is suffering from these steep prices. Let's have a look at it.

First link in the chain : the farmer.
Some could think that coffee farmers are the first to benefit because of the increase, but the contrary seems to be true.
Lots of farmers who have been rewarded with Fairtrade prices now risk to be overseen. Because of the huge increase, lots of roasters go searching for less expensive blend components and end up with the cheapest of the cheapest, meanwhile forgetting the more sustainable coffees.
This article by Jill Richardson is an interesting read on this matter.

Because of its popularity over the last year, we expected the Specialty Coffees to become much more expensive and therefor wider the gap with lower priced (budget) beans. We now notice the contrary though.
On average we see that the cheapest Brazilian beans approximately doubled in price over the last year, while an average single estate specialty bean increased the same in value, but way less percentage wise.

The reason for these higher prices?
Lots of people are telling lots of things, but one after another has to admit that's impossible to really understand.
First it was a low Brazilian crop, then it was speculation, then oil dollars, then Guatemalan tornados or Colombian tactics or the poor dollar. I heard a lot, but nothing explaining the coffee index going nuts. Look at this chart to see the evolution over the last year.

We, as a new roasting company, are a bit overwhelmed by all this happening in our start up year. The price difference between our pre orders in April and the prices now is shocking. With an average price increase of 60%, we have a hard time staying credible opposite our clients.
Last summer there were a couple of articles in the press about this matter, but lately we've seen almost nothing related to the record high prices. And when we tell our clients we have to rise prices they mostly seem to be surprised and dissapointed.

Nevertheless it's still nice to be in the coffee business.
And soon prices will go back down again. (we hope)
We stay as positive as possible and try to enjoy the drink as much now as we did before. Cheers.

Honey badger

Honey badger
Originally uploaded by King Seven

BLEEDING MACHINE

Best Wishes for 2011 (Dutch)

Een 2011 met veel lekkere kopjes koffie. Vele nieuwe Afrikaanse bonen zijn al besteld en op weg richting branderij.
Die branderij gaan we verder uitbouwen. Verschillende espressobars in de Lage Landen zouden de volgende maanden de deuren moeten openen en onze koffie schenken en verkopen. We houden je op de hoogte.
Gepland is een opendeurdag te Braziliëstraat zodra het kwik van de barometer hogere waarden haalt. Alvast welkom.

Ook nieuwe koffiezakjes om al dat bruin goud in te verpakken. Vorig jaar (zie foto) mooie rode pakjes ; nieuwe kleuren en slogans tegen februari.

We verwachten de Bunn Trifecta Filtermachine een van de weken....

We hebben opnieuw kampioenschappen, maar spijtig genoeg geen Caffenation Barista(s) op het wereldkampioenschap, tenzij eentje voor de Aeropress wedstrijd, maar die moet dan eerst het Belgische Kampioenschap winnen. Een wedstrijd die we half maart te Hopland zouden willen laten plaats vinden.

En voor eenieder die nog een goed (koffie)idee heeft : comment....

Goede gezondheid en geluk aan iedereen,
Rob