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Visiting the Thailand La Mai Project

By Stuart Grant

This is pretty exciting.
On Saturday, roaster Stu will be joining a number of others involved with Bright Hope Australia on a trip to Thailand! The aim of the trip is to visit some of the projects happening there including, of course, the La Mai coffee project. Our visit will coincide with the middle of this year's coffee harvest and will be an important part of the trip.
We hope to learn more about how the coffee is farmed and processed in the region - Northern Thailand up in the hills from the city of Chiang Mai - and what we can do to better support the project. We're really proud to be able to do this! It will be our first visit to a coffee growing region outside of Australia, and represents a significant step forward in our aim as a company to close the gap between growers and consumers to support ethical coffee trade.
The trip will also make connections with other projects that our partners at Bright Hope are involved with, including one rescuing girls out of prostitution and rehabilitating them into communities such as those growing the coffee. We can't guarantee (m)any to-the-minute updates while we're visiting remote parts of Thailand, but keep an eye on the blog (and maybe Facebook/Twitter) to see lots of photos and news as soon as we can get it there! The new crop will hopefully get to Australia in April.

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How to: Iced Coffee

By Stuart Grant

Fact: the cafes get busier over summer. Who drinks coffee in hot weather, I hear you ask? Well, caffeine addicts the world over have found many wonderful ways to enjoy cold/iced coffee - this is our guide to the best of them!

Espresso + Ice Cubes:

Probably the simplest method here. All you need to do is to pull a normal double espresso (say, 50mL) directly on top of a couple of ice cubes. Espresso is full of aromatics which disappear soon after brewing (which is why you want to drink it quickly), but cooling the shot straight away stops many of these delicious volatiles from escaping. You can then use this cooled, slightly diluted espresso any way you fancy: add a bit more iced water for a cool long black; add some cold milk for a chilled latte; add Kahlua and vodka for an espresso martini... the possibilities are delicious.

Affogato (Espresso + Icecream):

Put a scoop of quality vanilla icecream in a cup and pull a double espresso (around 50mL) directly onto it. Icecream is just as effective as ice at trapping all the delicious volatiles in the drink, but of course the result is rich and sweet and creamy. I'd normally run a mile from any recipe that adds sugar to coffee, but happily make an exception for the affogato!

Cold-brewed Coffee:

Brewing coffee with cold water is simple as! I use a plunger (French press) and add coarsely ground coffee at a rate of 100 grams per litre of cold water - almost double the usual amount of coffee. You could alternatively use an Aeropress (upside-down method) or any other full-immersion brewing method. Then let the coffee brew in the fridge for at least 8 hours - anything up to 24 hours will work (there's virtually no risk of over-extraction because the water is cold). The result is not what you expect. The flavour is grainy-sweet with a whole range of subtle coffee nuances which develop in the long, long aftertaste. I think it tastes like the aroma of ground coffee. Delicious! You can drink it straight, or with a dash (or more) of milk, or use it as a base for any kind of iced coffee or cocktail. One of my favourite coffee experiences was cold-brew coffee served through a beer tap - carbonated. Strange but delicious. Some cafes offer cold-drip coffee which is a similar product, brewed using a sometimes very elaborate apparatus of glass tubes. In this method, cold water is slowly dripped onto a bed of coffee; the extract drips through and into a vessel. It is similar to pour-over in that sense, except the brew takes 8-16 hours instead of 3-4 minutes.
That's it. Iced coffee can be very simple, and doesn't need to be sweet and creamy and milky to be delicious on a hot day!

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How to: Grow Coffee

By Stuart Grant

Here's how coffee is grown and processed. The following describes the "washed" or "wet" process, which is the predominant style of processing coffee in most countries (notable exceptions: Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia). For the purpose of this article I've focused on growing and processing and avoided topics like the technical and political aspects of farming and producing.

The Coffee Plant:

Coffea Arabica is the only species of interest for great coffee. It is normally an understory plant - that is, a shrub that grows under taller trees - native to mountainous regions of the tropics. This means a frost-free climate with high rainfall, consistent daytime temperatures around 20-30°C, and (preferably) distinct wet- and dry-seasons. Good volcanic soil is also common to the best growing regions. All of the above amount to very specific environmental requirements! The plants can grow to at least 5 metres in height if left untended, those pictured above (at Mountain Top Estate) are pruned to 3 metres to allow for mechanical harvesting. For manual harvesting they are usually pruned to 2-3 metres in height. 

Harvesting:

The plants flower after heavy rain, and it then takes several months for the cherries to grow and swell and ripen. Ideally, they become ripe during the dry season so that they can be dried quickly and easily.
Each cherry contains two coffee beans, with their flat sides facing each other, inside a sweet, sticky flesh. Once the coffee is harvested it needs to be delivered to the wet mill.

The Wet Mill (pulping & fermenting):


"Pulping", that is, the separation of the beans from their fruit, needs to happen as soon as possible after harvesting. A pulping machine is used - it works by using motorised drum to squash the cherries (gently), throwing the beans in one direction and the fruit pulp in another. The freshly-pulped coffee beans are covered in a sticky mucilage, which is generally removed by fermentation. The beans are put into a vat, usually but not always immersed in water, and allowed to sit for 12-36 hours. This allows bacteria and enzymes to break down the mucilage. Next the beans are rinsed again, and then dried.

 

 

Drying:


The coffee is called "parchment" at this stage, due to the stiff papery casing that remain on the beans until after drying. Drying is done by laying out the parchment on either concrete "patios" or on raised beds. Once the beans have dried to around 11% moisture, they are often "rested" for up to a month, before being sent to the dry mill to have the parchment removed. Then it's shipping time!
I hope this article illustrates the complex process of getting coffee to you cup! [I will eventually write a follow up to this one with info on the roasting process...]

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Book Review: God in a Cup by Michaele Weissman

By Stuart Grant

God in a Cup, published in 2008, is food journalist Michaele Weissman's journey deep into the specialty coffee industry. She begins the book by relating her first revelatory experience of amazing coffee - a fitting way of introducing her progression from ignorance to fascination with quality coffee and the industry based on it. In a sense, we are given the perspective of an outsider to the specialty coffee industry as she is invited into it. The book is structured around Weissman's developing relationships with three major players in the US specialty coffee industry - Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia, Duane Sorenson from Stumptown and Peter Guiliano from Counter Culture Coffee. These are the rock stars of the coffee world. But whether you've heard of them or not doesn't really matter; Weissman describes her own introductions with these guys in such compelling narrative that I think any reader will have a sense of who they are and why their stories are worth hearing. If you're anything like me, you'll probably pick your "favourite" of these guys, and diss one or both of the others as their stories intertwine! But why are their stories worth hearing? In a sense, these "coffee guys", as Weissman refers to them, are the explorers of the New World of specialty coffee. They have been pioneers of things like direct trade (ie. sourcing coffee directly from growers and developing relationships with them over many years), promoting education of coffee consumers through complete transparency, and the introduction of super-premium coffees such as Panama's Hacienda La Esmeralda Special to the US market. Weissman examines the obsession to coffee these guys have.
I use the word obsession (as does Weissman on the book's cover) since it becomes clear that their complete dedication to coffee takes its toll, even to the point of compromising their personal relationships, or risking financial ruin. We are given a frank account, for example, of Peter Guiliano's impending divorce, which he freely (and regretfully) admits as partly resulting from his choosing work over family. I find this particular theme fascinating. As an avid reader of various coffee websites and blogs - places where heroic tales of obsession with the pursuit of great coffee are celebrated - it is refreshing to hear a more balanced perspective. It emphasises the humanity of these coffee gods. --- The other theme adeptly explored by Weissman is the ongoing Second Wave versus Third Wave issue. This is essentially a debate between the two sections of the specialty coffee industry - the Second Wave, comprising mostly large coffee companies founded by European migrants in the 1960s and 70s, and the Third Wave, comprising smaller companies established in the last decade or so. The Second Wave, Weissman says:
carried with them old-world knowledge of coffee roasting, tasting, and sourcing [and] introduced American coffee drinkers to high-quality coffees ... Starbucks emerged during this period, the brainchild of Second Wave guys. [pp.4-5]
The Third Wave (which includes the Big Three profiled by Weissman) essentially built upon the work of the Second Wave and take a further step towards the origins of great coffee by emphasising things like direct trade, microlot coffees, and experimental processing techniques. The interesting thing about this debate is that it is a generational one. Twenty years ago, the Second Wave would have been producing the best coffee available; they were cutting edge. Now, in a time when Starbucks Coffee is seen as anything but specialty, the Second Wave's "cutting edge" is looking pretty dull. But this doesn't diminish what they managed to achieve - which is an accusation felt by some of the Second Wave guys. The key question, they might ask, is not whether or not a particular coffee is 100% Pacamara varietal, or miel processed, or harvested on such-and-such a date... the key question is, does it taste amazing? I think this is a great question in an industry so rife with fads and phases. --- I'd definitely rate this book highly and recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about coffee. To those in the industry, I think it should be required reading!

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Our Roaster Arrives!

By Stuart Grant

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