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.

EK 43 Espresso's on the Menu

Finally, - since the 5th of November -, after 5 months of testing, we have the new menu running.

2 weeks later we may say it is a big hit.

Getting the EK (as we call the grinder) in the line up for all clean espresso shots - we mean as a coffee to drink pure - is the biggest change in our bar for the last 3 or 4 years.

A small look on the history of espresso making at Caffenation, or elsewhere.

2003 We start at Caffenation with an old Gaggia machines and 2 Santos grinders.
We didn't know much about how espresso should taste like.

In the years 2004-2008 we get our game plan enrolled along as how a Barista pulls his/her shots in a competition :
Cleaning of the portafilters shot after shot.
Flushing of the group heads every time again
Clean machines and work stations
Grinding on demand
Tamping the grounds
and (not in Championships) Using Teflon Portafilters

Every step was a big step forward. And every step again my Barista's were wondering what the gain was. I have to admit that it wasn't always so easy to measure. Also because our coffee's in those days were not as clean as they are today, and for sure roasted a whole lot darker.

In November 2008 we bought our first La Marzocco. Finally we paired our technique to a supreme coffee machine and with the newly bought Anfim on demand grinders we were heading bit by bit to coffee nirvana.
In 2010 we started roasting ourself. We roasted lighter, brought the water temperature lower and started to experiment more and more with naked portafilters.

In May 2012 we moved our main bar to the current location - Mechelsesteenweg - and changed the coffee menu seriously.
Before this we made 2,5 to 3 cl espresso and had a separate grinder for ristretto's.

At the Mechelsesteenweg we only served 4cl doubles made with a naked portafilter.
When we had combined orders of a ristretto, espresso and a doppio espresso, we served 3 times the same drink, as discribed above.
Most espresso lovers understood the system and bit by bit we even reduced them towards 3-3,5cl or appr 33grams of weight espresso - crema included. This was sometimes very complex and even a bit too ristricted for espresso but surely gave better 'milk drinks'.

And here's where the problem is situated in most of the bars. There's a grinder and a machine for espresso making, but it needs to grind and extracts for two different type of beverages - the black ones and the ones with milk.
Of course it's possible some type of espresso is perfect for both goals - drinking clean or with milk, but most often it's a stradlle we can't make.

When reading about the EK 43 experiments and with particular enthusiasm about the higher TDS compared to traditional coffee grinders, which resulted in a higher and better tasting extraction yield, we started to research this for ourself.
Here an interesting post about this subject. (m perger)
And here. (m colonna)

The whole idea : You can extract more, without getting over-extracted flavours when using a Mahlkonig EK 43 grinder. 
In total it took 3 different versions with all different burrs and settings and in total 2,5 years (with intervals of course) of research.
In a later post we talk more about settings and techniques
Today our menu and the new way of serving espresso.

Since 8,5 years we serve single origin espresso's, but always as some kind of back up for the main blend(s).
We respected early adaptors of the concept with only SOE coffee a lot - think, for Belgium, Kolonel Koffie, Broer Bretel, Viggo's, Superette, etc - but not all of them succeeded. Sometimes it didn't work for the milk drinks or sometimes the clients did not understand the concept. But now in 2015 i guess people are more and more aware that it is much more interesting to drink a single origin espresso in stead of a blend. See it as a Single Malt Whisky vs a Blended/Normal Whisky. Or a bottle of specific wine from a specific farm vs a 'table wine'. Or a single origin chocolate vs a plain chocolate bar. If you give people the choice between something specific with a story or something generic; people prefer the first one.
In the 3 comparisons above you can argue that the single is much more expensive than the blend, but in coffee it doesn't have to be like that. Or at least it should't make a big difference.
We sell singles a bit more expensive, but that's because we do 40+ different onces a year and there's a lot of work involved in the finding, investing, stocking, roasting and then communications and techniques to get all the flavours out. Plus we push hard to get our hands on exclusive specialty lots, which isn't always easy.

Briefly we changed the menu and when you come in and ask for an espresso or a double espresso we serve you the single origin coffee of the moment. And that one is prepared - this is the whole point of this post - with a Mahlkonig EK 43 grinder.
For best results we increased the volume towards 45 grams for a double and serve it in an open (cappuccino) cup. There's a lot of drinking here, but where i had problems finishing a double ristretto pulled with a naked portafilter, i have no problems finishing this one.
The mouthfeel is smoother, we taste more details and the cooling down is a whole lot better.
And most of all we have way less problems with these typical 'metalic' tastes you sometimes encounter when making espresso's with light roasted beans.

Of course this way of making coffee is showing all nuances so perfectly that a less clean coffee is sacked very quickly. So high cupped clean cut beans needed.

The Limu Burka Gudina we have on the grinder since today is such a coffee. It sometimes takes a while to dial in the grinder (and machine) when a new coffee has landed, but once we found the recipe - 2 barista's start 15' earlier every day to focus on this - we can't believe why it took so long to make these changes.

Oh yes, to finish of i want to tell the fans of our Mr LGB blend (or Roast ED) that they don't have to panic. We use them for our caps and flat whites, so when politely asked we still serve you this great cup of joe, no worries. It's not that there's something wrong with these kind of coffee's, we just think those new 'EK shots' are something more tasty and spectacular.

ps : don't confuse these type of espresso's with coffee shots. These last type of coffees is something different and probably on our summer menu of 2016.

Chemex : Where it started and where I am now

More than 8 years ago this post was my 5th ever.
Meanwhile a lot of things happened and both coffee and Caffenation are now in a totally different phase.
But the Chemex is still there. What happened with it after all those year though?

8 years ago the Chemexes i bought were probably unique in Belgium.
And i started to make my coffees with this brewer time after time, to end up ... frustrated. I could not understand what to like about the Chemex, except for its look.
Of course in those days, (filter) coffee brewing was a new experience, and a totally different texture and taste than the espresso, lungo or americano we were used to drink.

When in 2009 Scott Rao launched his book with a big chapter on extraction ratio's, we were all quickly understanding this would change our view on coffee dramatically.
And at the same time he was so negative about the Chemex, the whole 3rd wave coffee change was shaking on its feet.
Read this very interesting discussion on coffeed.com, between Rao, Thompsen, Hoffmann, Piccolo and others.

After my negative experiences prior to this discussion i gave my Chemex to a friend. I was on the side of the non-believers.

Bit by bit the Chemex became more popular - see this photo underneath from a popular Horeca shop, Hanos, that stocks the Chemexes today, to my surprize - and bit by bit i was ready to restart experimenting with the brewer again.

And here is when it all starts to become more interesting. Most striking in this whole story and discussion is that we did not specify enough what type of Chemex we used. When checking out the 6 and 8-cup Chemexes i noticed an enormous difference between these big ones and the 3-cup Chemex, i started with in 2007.
If you would use approximately the same pour over technique on both models - stating both the 6 and 8 cup are seen as the big model - the outcome is very different.
The Small Chemex is extracting shorter and give way less body and bitters and more acidity.
The Big Chemex is slower, with more body, sweetness and less acidity.

In general i found the brews from small ones very often under extracted and the big ones over extracted.
As most people i forgot about the small ones and started training on the bigger version.
Very often the problem was that it started of really well the first 2 minutes or so, but then we had 2 problems to fight with. One was the fact the Chemex is sucking itself vacuum too fast. Having the triple layer of filter on the pouring side was helping a bit.
Second and biggest problem is the fact - and here Scott Rao is right - that too much of the coffee grounds got squeezed in to the bottom part of the filter and this is not capable of letting the water through fast enough. All the coffee and water is sitting there and with some bad luck your extraction quickly goes up to 5, 6 minutes or more.

Best tips to avoid over extraction is to grind coarser but most of all not using this brewer for large brews. I know it looks like you can make 0,6 up to 1 liter of coffee with the Chemex, but don't go there. To my opinion it is not capable of brewing stable when you go over the 0,5 liter mark.
But even staying low is not always helping and way too often my Chemex brews are unstable. Over the years i have been cursing so often at it, i started to loose my trust in them.

When a couple of years ago Hario launched a similar type of brewer, the V60 Dripper Decanter, i had, on my first usage, the cup right where i wanted it. That was the day i gave my 6-cup Chemex to a friend.

With no Chemexes in the house and less Chemexes around it felt like we could bury the discussions we were in for over 7 years.

In 2014 we were called in by the famous and one of a kind restaurant In De Wulf in Dranouter Belgium to have a look at their filter coffee.
I was deeply impressed by the chef's cooking skills and we helped him with his coffee at his Superette resto project in Gent. But the filter coffee i had at In De Wulf 2 years prior was not to my liking. Old coffee, dark roasted and a brew that lost all of its freshness by keeping it too long in the pot.
Now they were ready to serve 3-cup Chemex, with fresh roasts from Mok and/or Caffenation.

Ok, so Jens from Mok, Valentine from Superette - who organized this project! - and me were testing some coffees in Small and Big Chemex brews.
And i was pleasantly surprised by the small Chemex brews. It had less dept and body, but great refinement and freshness.
I  noticed at Caffenation, and we follow a bit the world wide trend on this, we make our espresso's stronger and more complex and our filter coffees lighter and more refined, over the last couple of years. I don't want to judge too hard on other desires or preferences, this is just how it feels right to us; it is a personal thing.

Now we are 1 year into brewing Chemex at this great restaurant and we have the 3-cup back on the shelf in our shop and on my own kitchen work table.

So almost 8 years it took to finally embrace this awkward looking coffee brewer with funky filters.

I feel that there's still a lot to experiment, but this is the way i work with the 3-cup now :

Folding the filter is still the same way as i always did it, although i put more pressure when folding it.
Then you have to brew with a minimum of 300 grams and a maximum of 360 grams of water, of which appr 15 grams stays in the grounds at the end of the brewing cycle.
I heat up the water to 90 degrees in a kettle with a fine spout.

Of course i rinse the filter paper first, meanwhile heating up the vessel/brewer.
Then i bloom with 10% of my water and leave it for 15" blooming.
Then i pour half of the water slowly in circles in the middle of the filter.
When it lowers a bit i tend to slowly add the rest of my water. I always stay in the middle.

This morning i had a total brewing time of 2 minutes and 30".

Conclusion : The Chemex is very nicely designed coffee brewer that can be the perfect tool for your coffee at home, work or in a professional environment, but it's a tricky one.
Your grind, water temperature, ratio and pouring technique need to be just right, to get the all the nice things in your cup and the bad out of it.
First train your taste buds, then your brewing skills and this could work out just fine.

If you feel it's too much of a hassle and complicated, you better go immediately to a Hario V60, Kalita flat bed, Aeropress or even Clever dripper.

Flat White 2015

This is what i wrote 3 years ago :

All over the world the Flat White is on the rise. There are a lot of different recipes and stories about this drink, but all around i see the double ristretto based cappuccino, size approximately 18cl-6oz, becoming the favourite drink of the new generation.
The 1 oz espressoshot became a double ristretto, very strong, high on acidity and very siropy. The milk is fresh and steamed at +/-60 degrees. The mugs mostly brown or white and from Italian origin. The equipment is somewhat more flexible

And what do we see now april 2015 : The Flat White is (almost) the most dominant drink in the Specialty Bar in the big cities in Western Europe.

The figures are up. We prep 5 times more FW's than 3 years ago and it's closing in on our number 1 drink 'the cappuccino'.
We still use 20cl cups - Nuova Point.
The milk is super fresh milk from a local farm - Hollebeeckhoeve.
And the coffee - mostly a tad too acidic to drink clean - more concentrated (we use 3,2 cl double shots). This gives us a way better mouthfeel. Water and milk are enemies and the less water we use, the better the marriage between both. And an improved mouthfeel.
Also we get a darker coffee which gives us more contrast in the Latte Art. Yes!

Filtropa #4 Coffee Filters

We did use a lot of white Melitta number 4 filter in the past. We needed them in our bar at Hopland to go into our Clever Drippers. And in the Mocca Master brewers.

Very often we were cursing though, when - once again - they busted and so we started putting 2 in after a while. 
Very expensive at the end of the line and more work as well.

These Filtropa filters seem to be much stronger and still not expensive at all. 
Since this week we have them available in our shop at Caffenation. 
First we have to finish the small boxes of 40 pieces (at €1,40), but later on the normal sized boxes with 100 will be available at €2,45/box. 

Here a small discription on the Filtropa's by Sweet Maria's, who's selling them since a while : 
"The Filtropa are my favorite cone-type filters. They don't impart much paper taste and are very sturdy. I think they are far superior to the flimsy Melitta filters that have busted at the seams while I have brewed my coffee on many occasions. The filter is bonded without the use of any glues or chemicals, and the paper stock is certified dioxin-free. Filtropa uses an oxygen-based whitening process which produces a totally chlorine free paper."

Belgium Aeropress Championship 2014 : Results and Recipes

Oh yes, yet again the comp was a bit hit. The 4th BAC was a lot of coffee fun.

18 Aeropressers at the starting line. A great coffee. And lots of spectators.

The judges from a country North of Belgium were a the top of their toes and picked these 6 semi finalists :
Sofie from 32 cup : Vice champ last year : she went for a strong full bodied cup with nice acidity. For sure the most extreme drill of the year.
Alex from Caffenation : Light cup, sweet, well balanced. And the only one using the company's competition water. Most contestants prefered Spa blauw or (Sofie) Lidl water.
Charlene from Or : Improved version of Alex her recipe and close by her world championship recipe of 2012 in Portland.
Jeff from Caffenation : Very compact flavors. Sweet. Perfect mouthfeel. The first time you drink this your mouth falls open.
Bert from Caffenation : Comparable cup, but a tad stronger. Clean mean, but just not good enough for the finals.
Isabelle from Coffeelabs : Stellar cup! For me the sexiest cup of the day. Sweet, clean, but with an extra twang - spices, sours. She was also the only one analyzing her first brew and then redialing it the second round. Still waiting for her recipe though.

TOP 3 :
1. Jeff Verellen. Multiple and Reigning World & Belgian Champ : The king is still on his throne
2. Isabelle Verschraegen. Reigning UK Champ and ready to take over next year.
3. Sofie Nijs. Second podium in a row. What a gifted girl.

With 4 out of 6, the women were omni present this year.
No amateurs in the semis this year.
Price for bad luck goes to the 2012 champ Vincent. 2 years in a row it felt to me that he had the best coffee of all losing first rounders. Keep it up 'boyke'; you still got it.

Jeff's recipe (in his own words) :

Aeropress in regular mode

Cooled almost iced container to brew on.

Rinse the filter with boiling water to open up the paper and clean it. 

Water: 

Spa blue

Grind: 

Picking out lights, quakers, ears anything weird.

Setting 7.6 on EK-43 grinder running.

Don't "twack" the grinder.

Sieving with sowden filter: only very small fines removed. Also using static on the filter to remove chaff and nerves. 

Use 17.3 grams of the sieved coffee.

Water at 83-82c to bloom, nicely wet everything, 40 grams or so.

Wait about 30 seconds.

Use a dash of cool water to get the kettle water to 76c

Very slowly pour in the middle of the aeropress to get to about 285 grams total on the scale, take about a minute for this.

30 second plunge.

Leave 1/5 of the brew in the press and discard. 

Are you salivating yet?

This recipe sounds easy, but actually it is (to use WAC host TC Varneys words) : a fiddly one to nail.

Isabelle's Recipe :

• pick out about 20g of beans of a similar (small) size - discard quakers and defects

• rinse the paper filter thoroughly with very hot water

• grind your coffee, medium coarse (I started with 7.2 on the EK but switched to 6.8 after to get a slightly stronger cup) and discard whatever's left in the grinder's chute (these are fines and chaff we do not want)

• transfer the grinds into different cups/tins so as to use static to discard more fines. you can also slightly shake and blow over the grounds to let the chaff fly (thanks to Simon for the trick)

• press into a cold server

• weigh 17.5g of coffee into your aeropress

• use soft water… I used Spa Blue. It has a TDS of about 30ppm and pH of 6.

• heat the water till 84°C, and take the lid off the kettle immediately. Leave open

• slowly pour about 265g of water, making sure to evenly wet all the coffee

• stir once in the NSEW direction

• leave dripping for about 20sec

• press very gently for about 1minute , until the slurry reaches number 1 on your aeropress (so you leave quite a lot of liquid in your device)

• pour slowly into cup

• stir with spoon until coffee reaches temperature of 55ºC

Sofie's recipe :
16,5 gr - fines out - medium to coarse grind
inverted
240 ml water at 84°
pour, stir for 10 seconds
steep for 40 seconds
flip
plunge for 30 seconds

For next year maybe already a good new idea.
If we would have 27 competitors in the first round, 9 in the second and 3 in the finals.... Possible.

Drink (Espresso) Till You Drop

Every day again we're talking, talking, talking about coffee.
And we're measuring, weighting, dosing, counting coffee.

But do we know enough what we're talking about?

Say 'ESPRESSO'.

Since 100 years it's a quick drink. Let's say 2,5cl content, made with a machine that presses hot water through a cake of finely grind coffee.

It seems everybody has a different opinion about how it should taste, and this opinion is changing on and on.

In 2013 we made big progress on Espresso at Caffenation. We used 3 machines, 2 different water filter, different grinders, different cups and different portafilters.

Moving from the mighty Mistral to a Simonelli T3 and now a La Marzocco Linea PB we now have the ideal machine to pull 4cl double shots with naked portafilters.
Does the Linea PB helps? Sure. And it helps working in a consistent matter. It's easy to change the temperature, pre infusion time and resting time. It feels like there's still a lot of testing to be done, and every time we change the beans we need to look at it again. Every day as well.

The water we have now is a Brita system - on test - that neutralizes the water, like osmose, and then adds the necessary stuff to get it at championship level. We came recently down from 200 ppm to 80 ppm, but that seems to be a bit too much. Most important is to change the filters often enough. Once you go wrong there, you may damage the machine seriously.
Did it help a lot?
Yes it did. We have a higher definition. More taste, but also a more shaky coffee. Everything needs to be exact to have an improved cup.
Maybe the biggest advantage of the new filter is that we can brew hotter. For the moment 92,8 degrees in stead of 91 before. This means we get more out of the coffee.
Do we tame the acidity enough? Mostly yes. :-)
We're still in the testing fase. Maybe we need to roast a little bit higher for this technique, what would be a dangerous thing to do, cause all our clients have a different machine, water temp, and so on...

For me the big thing with espresso brewing is that we need to tame the acidity. We need some, mostly at the start, but not too much. It's like a bottle of good red wine. You don't need to taste it all the way through and after.
But once you don't have any acidity at all ; you have a boring, flat drink.

Different grinders. Next week we expect the new Simonelli grinder with heated burrs. For the moment we use a Robur and a Super Caimano. The Robur clumbs a bit more; yes it does, but both grinders are top level and produce great shots.

On cups we noticed that smaller cups with a
round bottom gives best crema and less acidity. Test it.

And naked portafilter gives way better mouth feel and creaminess. Also a darker crema. Nice.

We hope these experiments helps you to get your shots tastier and more consistent.
You're not sure? Of course you can always buy yourself a refractometer, but best is to drink more coffee. Not only from your own machine, but from anywhere. The more you drink the more you know. Certainly if you drink with other Barista's and discuss the flavors.
Good luck.

Iced Coffee : The Sequel

Like almost every year at the start of the summer we start discussing Iced (black) Coffee again.

Last year we made a huge step into the right direction and poured in hundreds of Iced Blacks over the summer.
Here the article from last year's experimenting and final recipe.

Again, the main problem to my experience is the very long bridge we have to go from very hot to very cold.

With the slow/cold brew from last year we started half way at 40 degrees.
After dripping 2 hours the coffee was 20 degrees and then cooled over night in the fridge towards 4.

Today we have a different recipe and do not start half way, but stop half way.

For having the opportunity to make the iced coffee 'a la minute' we experimented again with brewing and pouring over ice. We noticed way better acidity/freshness and a cleaner cup.
And why not using a great Bunn brewer if you have one....

This is the recipe (for the moment) :
We grind a double dose of light roasted Kenyan coffee. Caffenation Zahabu AA.  240 grams.
Then we brew on our Bunn ICB batch brewer 2,2 liters in a container that contains 500 grams of fresh (and hard) ice cubes, no sugar!

I guess this coffee is now approximately 44 degrees Celsius.

Serving and diluting happens at the end.
We take a big glass (32cl content) and fill it up with ice cubes, pour in the coffee and finish off with a slice of lemon - no sugar!

Once the ice melts we have a cold black coffee that's refreshing, delicate, tea-ish and very addictive.
I think we touched home base with this one. :-)

Espresso or Ristretto?

Let's first start with some thoughts i blogged before :

here
and here

Some stuff does come back, but coffee is an un going story isn't it?

Long ago it was all very simple.
You ordered an espresso and they gave you a 3cl (1oz) beverage. Strong, full of flavors, good with milk, no problems.

Then they started to up dose the filter baskets - those bloody aussie's :-) - and the drink became sweeter and more bold.

Bit by bit the espresso volume went down towards 2,5 cl and soon after you saw a lot of Barista's going back to the original 3 cl, but not with a single espresso shot in the cup, but a double; so actually a double ristretto.

Where will it end and how do we deal with it?

It is very clearly not global, but meanwhile wide spread. Although the WBC rules insist on pulling 'regular' doubles, in the field the double ristretto's are taking over.
Go visit the average San Francisco, London or Melbourne Specialty Coffee Bar, order an espresso, and they will serve a double ristretto straight away. The rules (mostly adapted): 20 grams of extra fine ground of espresso roast, approximately 1+ ounce of filtered water that's pressed through it and we have a 20 to 35 seconds dripping naked portafilter, preferably engined by a high tech pressure profiled espresso machine monster. A lot of power and complexity in the cup and great base for fine textured fresh milk.
In The Netherlands, Belgium or France this is mostly not the recipe and also Germany and Scandinavian are in jeopardy.

Normo Antwerp is the first Belgian bar only pulling ristretto's, although still splitting them (for milk drinks) with the double Portafilter. Nice initiative and double as good once this Strada is going to land at the Minderbroedersrui - go check out that monster once its in.

We, at Caffenation, have fantastic results with our double ristretto's, called Dorito (on the menu).
The naked filter technique results with the La Marzocco Linea were very shaky, but our Mistral now does a great job and the ('naked pulled') Dorito and Dorito based Flat White (16cl cup or 22cl glas) are on the rise.

The next logical step for us would be to offer this concentrated shot straight away when someone orders an espresso. Most probably this is something we can't stop happening, but what about the 'classic' espresso we spoke earlier about?
I think this still is a bloody good drink and I don't want to lose it and, as a result, weaken our menu.

So for the moment we ask our clients - certainly the international and progressive by nature ones - to specify what they want when ordering their espresso.
And the same for the cappuccino; "1 shot of espresso or a double (ristretto) based one"? "In a cup or in a glass"?

Iced Coffee : Where we're at?

Last Sunday our theme at the trimestrial Home Brewing Session was 'Iced Coffee'.

Not the Frapuccino's or any other milky drinks, but the pure uncut black cold stuff, iced and iced.

I did some tests in the past.
Almost day to day 5 years ago I posted this.

Meanwhile i didn't taste anything spectacular anymore. I heard about a hundred of recipes, but was very sceptical about all of them.
Main problems are ; 1, starting at 90 degrees or more and bringing the coffee later on to iced temperature, a lot of 'negative' tastes come peeping in your cup/glass.
If you cool it quickly : There's a chance at some acidulation (or is it rancidification?) that's really not pleasant.
If you cool it slowly : There's some harshness that's really not pleasant.

2, the original flavors of your bean start drifting away over time. The longer you cool the coffee the stranger it's tasting.

3, if you start with espresso's as your base, you need too much ice or water to get a serious drink.

So, here we are at Caffenation testing some of the iced coffee's I prepared.

I had a Kenia and a (medium roasted) Espresso blend brewed on a batch brewer (Bunn ICB) that was cooled down to room temperature and the cooled in the fridge over night.
The Kenia didn't do it for us. Drinkable, but too sour and harsh.
The Espresso cold coffee was discusting all the way.

We had a filter brew on 85degrees and cooled that one over ice. Too light. Clean, but boring. It's true that a higher ratio helps for a better balanced cup, but up to today I never had one to my liking.

We had a slow cold brew (on a Hario Slow Brewer) that we cooled a bit and that one was not bad at all.

But then we also had a cold brew Kenia, prepared with a V60 the day before and chilled over night, and then served. Yes sir, the winner.
I remember my best iced drink from a couple of years ago was close to this one. I admit the main problem is that we miss a lot of flavors we find back when extracting the coffee at a higher temperature. This saying we won the Aeropress championship brewing the coffee at 78 degrees, which is almost in between very hot water and 'our' temperature. 
The cold brew I'm making is with 40 degrees 'cold' water.
I admit it's lacking some acidity, but gets very sweet and once it's cooled over night in the fridge it gives a very good mouthfeel and bourbon-liquor taste.
When picking a coffee that's clean and has enough acidity from origin, this method is very interesting.

Yesterday and today we decided not brewing the cold brew with a V60, but with a Hario slow dripper.
Why?
It's a nice demonstration tool, brews by itself and is lot of fun to use.
The Barista on duty may have it running a couple of times a day -it mostly runs 1 and a half hour per brew-, and you bet our clients do find it a very interesting to look at.
Later on it's poured in a ceramic pot and chilled in the fridge.

So, drop in one of the days for a look at this wonderful tool. And when it's not running ; maybe ask for a demo.

Writing this and meanwhile doing some research I see James H wrote about it as well last month -LINK. Interesting, but here as well we read the result is often a bit too weak and tea-like.

The Future of Coffee

This probably is going to be a long one, because its my imagined future of both slow and express.
And this in bars, not at home.

The future of coffee is black. Our slogan on the espresso of the week bags is for real.
But of course its not only black coffee that's changing.
All over the world the Flat White is on the rise. There are a lot of different recipes and stories about this drink, but all around i see the double ristretto based cappuccino, size approximately 18cl-6oz, becoming the favourite drink of the new generation.
The 1 oz espressoshot became a double ristretto, very strong, high on acidity and very siropy. The milk is fresh and steamed at +/-60 degrees. The mugs mostly brown or white and from Italian origin. The equipment is somewhat more flexible. For grinders its mostly Mazzer, by preference the Robur, and left or right an Anfim Super Caimano. For machines La Marzocco is king, but Synesso, Slayer, KVDW and the upcoming Nueva Simonelli do have a bright future.

No special espresso stuff at the horizon?
Not really. The flavored lattes are mainstream but not supported very well in the 3rd wave bars.
The nice sig drink ingredients from championships are left behind on stages or in training rooms.
And the cold coffees are no longer espresso but slow & cold brew based.
And as someone who commented on the 'lungo post', why not promoting Americanos/ Long Blacks? Even when you tune them in perfectly and promote them all the time, they hardly become very popular. They lack the mouthfeel of the espressos and aren't as aromatic as the filters. I stopped putting my energy in this beverage.

This brings us to the other side of black; filter/press coffee or the slow menu.

The history in bars is very short, so it's hard to tell how the future is gonna look like.
Just as Marco rep David Walsh cited before; the quality of manual pour over is very shaky. This knowing; the most popular drippers in the espresso bar, the Hario V60 and the Chemex, are the most shaky of all.
Besides of this they are very time consuming and time is money, certainly in Belgium.
These 2 problems is the reason i advice most starting espresso bars to go with the Abid Clever dripper. It's faster and more stable. And cheap.
The Aeropress is another possibilty. The main advantage : it's hard to screw up. The main disadvantage : it's hard to excell. If you compare our 2 (winning) recipes, one with a Yirg and the other with a Kenya, on 2 consecutive World championships and you see they are night and day.

What about the good old French Press?
Bit by bit we notice in slow coffee a change in flavors. Where in espresso we notice much more stronger&explicit tastes, the filter coffees turn more subtle and cleaner. And it's on the last part the French press is failing. And that's because of sediment we find back in the brews.
Of course you can, as we did with the Trifeca, filter the 'pressed' coffee again after the brew, but then again time and cost are not on our side. Temperature stability neither.
Trifecta is very expensive as well and the machine seems to be not as sturdy as an espressomachine or big filter machine.

What's the future now?
World wide i don't have a clue, but right now and here, I have a couple of interesting slow bar projects in the pipe line though.

One is a large pour over bar with the Grindripper drippers. Weird enough these dripper demand less skilled pouring. I pour in to bloom and then i fill up the dripper, with a rinsed Hario size 1 bleached filter, 2 or 3 times, depending on the volume. I use in between 10 to 15 grams.
The result is stunning and i'll show you all once it is installed.

Another project i want to install in a couple of bars is with the help of the Bunn ICB brewer. This programmable flat bed brewer is the best machine i know for quick top class coffee. With more top class containers you can give all who are interested samples. Probably soon at your favourite bar.
I keep you guys informed.

The Hatred of the Lungo

Long ago when the first espresso machines were hitting the Belgian and Dutch restaurants and bars the machines were programmed to offer us coffees the size of a 'normal' cup, say in between 12 and 18 cl, 4 to 6oz.

The extraction parameter of a 25 seconds run was correct. The grammage of the dose and temperature of the machine were almost correct. And the average roast and origin of the beans were not too bad either. But still we had a cup 'full of mistakes'.

People were getting used to drink this kind of beverage and the taste of it didn't change a lot over the years. Most probably it became a bit stronger and dirtier and people started to add more and more sugar and nutroma/coffee milk.

When I was younger I barely drank these kinds of coffee, called a 'koffie'. Sometimes people think I've always been a big coffee drinker, but the opposite it true.
The days I discovered Italian espresso a new world opened up, but because in Antwerp I couldn't find a decent place were this beverage was offered my coffee intake continued to be very low.

At the age of 28 I started my first espresso bar. Influenced by the Italian original and New York copies I saw a hole in the market.
Those days I thought that Illy, Lavazza and Segafredo were the only brands that offered beans that were good enough to brew the small shots and it was this last company that offered us the best help and a free 2-group espressomachine with grinders.

We learned the difference between a real espresso (3cl) and a lungo (15cl). The extractions were not too far off and the milk frothing was ..... a bit Starbuckslike I think, but at least the cappuccinos and lattes were espresso based and the place was booming.

But there was still one drink on the menu that I totally disliked and that was the lungo, or the coffee we served when people ordered a 'koffie'.
In those days I thought the mistake we made was the type of Segafredo blend we used, the strongest one.
But one day I tested a lighter blend, that was conceived for lungo's and that cup was very dirty as well.

At the age of 35 I started Caffenation and had 3 espresso's and 5 or 6 lungo's on the menu. This helped me to show all my coffees and blends to my clients, but myself I never liked the lungos. They were tasting better then the Segafredo ones, but still I felt something was wrong.
Of course I knew in Italy a 'normal' coffee was 3cl, the French and Spanish the double, but still I had a hard time understanding why our lungos were so bitter and dirty and nasty.

Now in 2012 we walked the walk and talked the talk, we are way better informed now and 2 years into slow coffee century we are bit by bit ready to bury the classic cup.

I knew for years the espresso machine was never made to brew 15cl cups, but as the market demanded this garbage we were used to serve it. STOP.

When you cup a normal or good arabica you can taste all different characteristics and the lighter you roast (I don't say 'bready'), and the better your bean you pick, the more you can taste coffee is a type of fruit. The suble nuances, fruity notes, enhanced acidity and overall sweetness is 2 die 4.
When we later on brew this freshly ground coffee with a decent filter or press we have an almost perfect beverage.

Then when we roast the beans a tad darker and we pull a correct espresso and again we have an almost perfect beverage. Of course totally different from the filter coffee, but still wonderful.

Then we take the same espresso roast, grind it a bit coarser and use the espresso machine to make a lungo, we at once discover all kinds of 'off tastes' that were not in the original cupping and neither in the filter or espresso brew.

THE ESPRESSO MACHINE HAS NEVER BEEN DEVELOPED TO BREW LUNGOS. NEVER EVER.

Why do we still have a lungo of the week on our menu?
Over the years we stopped making classic lungos, but never found a beverage to replace our lungo of the week. Here we use the fine (espresso) ground, appr 14 grams, dose it in a double portafilter basket and pull a 13 cl coffee, with of course a 25to30" extraction. This coffee tastes in between a double espresso and a classic lungo. Yes it's dirty and yes a filter coffee is way better, but we came from very far and still hundreds of clients believe this coffee is the one and only. Possibly more for its texture then for its taste.
We tried to convince them to switch to filter/press coffee, but they think that's too light. We tried to push them towards doppio's, but they think that's too strong or small.
The day - it's not the planning but a thought - I open I new bar it won't be on the menu, but so long we still make them, like 25 times a day. My heart is almost bleeding every time they order one, but it's not easy breaking metal with bare hands and so we try to live with it.

So yes I hate the lungo and yes I love the espresso and filter. For sure it's the original and for sure it's the future.
And .... this future is black. :-)

2 Years of Slow Coffee (at the bar)

Of course we discovered the merits of a good filter or press coffee since very long, but it took a while before putting it on the menu in our bar in Hopland.

And that's almost 2 years ago.

And we weren't even the first in Antwerp, since Jens (Barchoq-Normo) launched his Aeropress of the week formula a couple of months before we did.

Why? Why would we serve filter coffee for our clients? That was the question.

For me it's simple : I thought it was a great way to extend the experience. You have a great (slow) coffee and time at the bar and with taking the coffee home and brewing it there you can enjoy it over and over again, and also share it with friends and family.
And that's much more complicated with espresso.

Filter/Press coffee is also a long drink. It's a quality drink to enjoy for 15 minutes or longer. Even better ; it takes minimum 5 minutes before the coffee grows to its peak. Espresso is express. Filter is slow.

I remember philosophizing about this subject with Rick from Espressofabriek Amsterdam. And we thought that offering filters or presses was business wise a tricky thing. We had this magical espresso machine guaranteering a fast top class experience that people almost couldn't copy at home. And now we were playing with the idea offering a coffee that was close by the coffee we drank when visiting granny.

For me there was no discussion. I wanted to reach more people outside my own bar. Distributing coffee to other bars and restaurants was one way. Serving filters and selling the filter beans at the same time is another.
When I chatted with my hero Geoff Watts about this subject, he shared exactely the same opinion and it were the Intelligentsia bars who showed us very well how to serve filter coffee in a bar.

Now 2 years later the volumes didn't go very high. I guess maximum 10% of our turn over is filter/press coffee.
But it brings in a lot of atmosphere and sales of filter beans are probably triple of espresso beans, which means (appr.) X 6 compared to 2 years ago. (By the way : espresso bean sales certainly didn't go lower).
And .... we like to drink it ourselves; over and over again. I think filter coffee is more addictive than espresso coffee.

The slow bar menu : it has been very shaky over those years : From V60's and Aeropress, we switched to Abid Clever Dripper to Trifecta to filtered Trifecta and again I feel it's time for the next step (up).
So keep an eye on my tweets and don't forget to drop on by for the next filter of the week.

Technivorm Mocca Master Review

We start with the link : Technivorm Mocca Master Brewer.

And I also start with the beginning : the first encounter. (sounds like a movie)
Visiting Willem Boot in San Francisco bay for our Roaster class (Jan 2010), Jeff and I were wondering what those small American Coffee Brewers were all about.
Willem used the Mocca Masters to prepare his cup of coffee and to test filters. Of course not only with this machine, and certainly his main reference with a classic cupping, but still he used them al lot, it looked like.
It wasn't very convinced by the taste, but wasn't so sure this 'off taste' came from the brewer or the coffee. Most probably it was the combination of both.

Then we had the Cup Tasting Championships in London. I followed this comp from close by because Bert was our Caffenation man to defend the National pride.
When Rose Van Asten first and Bert later on started to complain about the over extracted and dirty cups my opinion about the company that brewed the cupping cups, Technivorm, was not too positive.

One more year went by and the boys from The Village in Utrecht started their bar with a Technivorm boiler and also had a couple of those brewers on the shelf.
First I didn't really pay attention, but when Marc Berendsen from It&M came to visit me a couple of months ago all dots connected, and the brewers were not American at all but very Dutch!!

This tickeled my curiousity and in stead of refusing the offetr on those Technivorm brewers I decided to buy a couple to give it a decent test.

Because I still believe manual pour over is a lot of work and very unstable, and at home we could use an automatic brewer with thermos, the KBT 741 was a logic choice.

Once on the shelf I liked the look and feel of the machine. Retro and robust, easy handling and good cleaning posibilities. On top of that it had a good price tag.

The first brews were not bad, but not good either. From the first sip on I was catapulted (?) back to San Fran and had this little burnt taste in my mouth.
I checked water temp and noticed 92 degrees celcius was not to my liking.
For medium roasts or dark roasts I don't see a problem, but for our filter roasts this temperature is way too high. For not loosing any flavors 90 degrees should be seen as a maximum.
The boiler at Caffenation or The Village also gives 92 degrees, but here we don't pour the water directly on the coffee grounds, which means most of the hand pouring water is 5 to 10 degrees lower.
The same for our Trifecta were we program the machine on 86 degrees.

I wouldn't be the good old Roberto Bergami and throw in the towel from the first day on, so I went searching, together with my taste bud companion Martijn, for a solution.

I started with getting the lid of the dripper. It was like a boiling pot there and this way it had more cooling.
The impact in the cup was minimum, so we started thinking of making the drip arm higher so the water would loose temp by falling from higher, but we never managed.

Then I remember how an old sport once adviced me to bloom the coffee ground with cold water. I first rinsed the white paper filter with cold water, then added the freshly ground coffee and, closed the dripper underneath and added tap water ; the same grammage as the coffee.

Once the hot water dripped on the cold infused coffee I had it sit there for 15 or 20 seconds and then opened the dripper.
This coffee was already way better then the 'original' one, but still i missed some details.

Later on I grinded a bit courser and lowered the ratio to 50 on 1000 grams and this gave me a more balanced cup.

End result is a satisfying cup, but not to the level of a professional manual pour or well executed Aeropress.

So when it should be easy and decent, this brewer can give you, with a cold pre infusion/bloom, a good morning cup, but is still not a machine on the level of a flat bed Bunn brew or a decent manual 'Barista' pour.

One Year Trifecta

Yes, it's already one year we bought this remarkable Bunn brewer.

First tests with this machine were very convincing. 1) The taste was good. 2) We were able to offer plenty of beans on the Slow Menu. And 3) I saw a good business opportunity to install such a device in first class restaurants.

We start back wise with 3)
It's still a good idea to offer a real coffee menu in Michelin Star Restaurants. And the Trifecta would be an ideal help. A monkey can use it, it's fast, brews very stable and doesn't take a lot of space. The disadavantages could be taste wise (later more) and price wise - Count quickly €6000 for the brewer+grinder - but mostly they couldn't see any business in it. Why? Simply because these type of restaurants do not believe in filter coffee. It's very sad, but that's the truth.

I'm a hundred procent sure that they are wrong, but probably it will need some more time before they start realise this by themselves.

2) From day 1 we offer people 4 different coffee's. 2 of them are (light) filter roasts ; a weekly one and the Afro Man in which we have 1 or more premium African coffees.
Then we offer 2 coffees roasted for espresso, but on the light side. One is the LGB blend. This Trifecta brew is called the House Coffee and our most popular one. The second is the Mokka Man, mostly a medium roasted Mokka Harrar from Ethiopia.
Most coffee professionals prefer lighter roasts for filter brewing, but half of our clients think these coffees taste a bit too thin or tea-like and go for something stronger. I understand this and do not mind to keep on playing that ball.

1) The taste. Yes it was good, but even the best Trifecta brew of the year wasn't more than a 7/10. And while playing with the idea of filtering the Trifecta's or maybe even swith the machine with a Bunn ICB brewer, I had a mind blowing Aeropress at Broer Bretel last Sunday that gave me the last push.
During the night I couldn't sleep and by the morning I found the solution.

Isabelle and I were already filtering some brews with V60 material, but that was way too slow and the Kalita Flat Bed filter way too brown, but that early Monday morning I remembered having some more Belgian filters somewhere hidden in our kitchen.
Read this article from 3 years ago and you know what I'm saying.

First brews didn't go well at all.
The problem we discover in our Trifecta brews is the sediment that comes with this type of brews. When using Medium Roasted coffees it's less irritant, but on lighter roasts it costs you guaranteed 3 points on that scale of 10.
But these metal filters didn't stop the residue.
Then I noticed the form of the filters were exactly the size of our small Aeropress filters.


From the first Aeropress/Belgian Filter filtered brew we saw a great improvement in cleanliness and it didn't need a lot of extra experimenting and fine tuning to implement this in our way of working.
+ 2 points for every brew is significant isn't it?

Swing by one of the days and ask for a filtered Trifecta. I hope you enjoy it.


This photo shows the residue 'catched' by our filter.

George Baker Summer Tour

Here we go with some hot news from the Caffenation Management.

I'm happy to announce George Baker is touring again. Not to play songs, but to test and pull some Little Green Bag espresso's and espresso based drinks.

I think it's good for me to learn more about all the LGB cafes and their habits.

This Saturday July 16 I'll be ascending the stage at Kaffee-Ine, OLV Straat, Mechelen. Hope to arrive at 2 and give Yves a hand till 5 or 6 in the afternoon.
I think I have a good idea about the coffee market in Belgium and Holland, but I'm sure there's still a lot more I can only learn by working in all these specialised bars.

The idea is to continue touring till all LGB distributors experienced a Roberto/George Bergami/Baker performance.
The complete Touring list will be available soon.....

Greetings from Una Antwerp Paloma (Blanca)

Maastricht Coffee Brewing (by Jeff)

First this photo from the yearly Sausage Board of Management Meeting (Bert, Thomas and Rob were excused; myself behind the cam). Welcome new member and Secretary of State Charlene.


Last week was intense for the caffenation roasting crew.
Bert, Roeland, Jeff and special guest roaster Kees Kraakman to spend special attention for the filter roasts in preperation for Maastricht. On the menu: Kenia Mwiria Estate, Indonesia Sumatra Mena Gold, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Bagersh, Ethiopia Sidamo and a Tanzania Ngila Estate. After a head to head roast and blind cupping Kees was tied with the Caffenation team. By comparing the different profiles used there was much to be learned. For example the Mwiria was entered at totally different temperatures, thus 1st crack occured at a minute difference! What we tasted was more freshness and brighter acidity in Kees' roast resulting in overall better mouthfeel. The Kenia peaberry, grown at high altitude 1800+ was to our amazement a very soft bean! Needless to say we selected the best of the roasts to brew with in maastricht.



We were designated a small stand in "the village" a new concept from the scae to give a chance for small roasters or companies to exibit themselves. A boatload of brewing material and knowledge was shipped to Maastricht.
Our weapons on the brewing table:
-Hario v60 manned by brewguru Roeland
-Hario woodneck flanel sock
-Hario syphon
-Aerobie Aeropress
-Temp hacked hario bueno kettles
-Compak R80
-Bodum boiler
-De ranke bitter xx and saison dottignes, in the fridge.
-Sharp-777 disco light edition boombox.

The aeropress was a big hit instantly, with lots of curious stares, strange that a great device like that is still not known that well...almost all brews were excellent.
Next ... I was never a great fan of the flanel sock and syphon, I quickly found out I was wrong. The Kenia Mwiria was excellent on bolth, armed with a sharp reliable grinder and a course grind, a bit courser than paper filter, bolth came out super clean, juicy, and bright. While the cloth sock gave more balance and deeper citrus flavours: pomelo and orange, the syphon brewed lime and white flowers. The Indonesia was successful on v60, it brought out cedar , some dewdrop, thyme and damp soil.
A great deal of experimenting was done the whole of the 3 days, we like to thank everybody for their input and enthousiasm!

Jeff, Caffenation Head Roaster.

Best Belgian Aeropress Recipes

The two finalists did a great job with our Rwanda Rwabisindu filter roast (well done Caffenation Roasting team).
Most remarkable was the totaly different technique.

Charlene won with this one :
Take 15 gram of relatively fine ground (in between filter and espresso)
Water temp = 85°c
Pre wet the filter with a lot of hot water
Set the (pre heated) Aeropress, placing the funnel in normal standing position (no reversed!)
First give it a 30" bloom
Then pour in slowly the rest of the water (22cl in total) in 30", right in the middle
Then press for 30". Stop before the 'sissing' sound

very simple and good. clean, bright, well balanced. top job!

Marc came in second with this one :
Take 20,5 gram of relatively coarse ground (6,5 on a big Ditting)
Water temp = 81°c
Use a Coava Disk 008 and preheat both filter and Aeropress
Place the Aeropress in reversed (inverted) position
Pour 75 grams of water. This for 15" while turning the press
Let it bloom for 15"
Pour 165 grams of water. This for 30" while turning the press
Put the cap on, swirl quickly and give it a little rest
Press for approximately 50"
Stirr
Let it cool down a bit
Drink

a bit more difficult, but more body, very sweat and creamy. i could drink this one for hours.

very difficult to pick a favourite, so just try both at home!

Oh yes. Also a warm hand to all other contestants, not forgetting christophe and simon, the other semi finalists.

Thanks Charlene and Marc for the info and good luck to everybody with the brews.

Slow Coffee is taking over?

Nice article from 'world famous' WBC judge Jessica.

Espresso Brew Temp Control

4 out of the box La Marzocco's in a row, brewing espresso's at 94,5 degrees. Is this Naples?

The same this morning at The Village, Utrecht.
Not their fault of course, but it's something we have to keep our eyes onto. As we do right now.

It doesn't mind if you have Lavazza in your grinder, but Caffenation roasts are lighter and blends brighter. The taste balance with this high temp is gone. Too much acidity upfront. Not enough body. And sourish, flat aftertaste.

Average temperature at Barchoq, Inspire or Caffenation is 91! Result is a punchy start, then sweetness and body and a long lingering mild aftertaste. Perfect on cappuccino. Very good for espresso.
An maybe on the side an espresso of the week that gives you the opportunity to go for a different SOE or Blend.
Count a 20 grams for a double. Anfim Super Caimano grind time of 8,5 seconds and an extraction time of approximately 28", pre infusion included. Everybody happy.

Next week we start pulling shots with scales.

BTW : The Village rules. A blog post soon.