With the South Australian Barista competition coming up again (12th and 13th or September at the Royal Adelaide Show) it has proved to be the perfect time to head back to my favorite capitol city in Australia to team up with the crew from Five Senses and nut out a blend.
So after a couple of decent cups of coffee at tiger tiger and velvet it was off to the cupping lab for some lengthy tasting of god knows how many coffees. I'll keep it brief, but basically at the moment the blend is using two exciting direct trade coffees, one from PNG and the other from some very excited farmers in sumatra. The next couple of weeks we'll be playing around with the roast profiles the the optimal aging of the beans to present them to the judges. And I may just squeeze a little Rwandan coffee into the mix but we'll just have to wait and see.
Will defintely keep you updated as things progress =D
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7 comments:
good to see some new posts up Ian.
Wow favorite capital city in Aus might have to check this perth place out.What's the main flavour charectaristic of your blend, sounds like it might be wild berry or wine with rwanda, png can also have this taste aswell from the right farms, is that right?
I don't really want to go into specifics about the general flavour profile of the blend just yet, as it's still being tweaked. But I will say that the png and sumatra are the main features of the blend and consequently will dominate it's flavour profile. The Rwandan (if added at all), is really more there to tame the beast and make the blend a bit more comp friendly.
I will also say, that the PNG and Sumatra are nothing like your usual suspects (eg sigri and mandheling). The flavour profile is very different. I suspect if i had the same proportions of mandheling and sigri I'd have an earthy, berry-licious blend, with a strong, almost dirty aroma. Nothing like the blend I'm hoping to be serving.
Both of the two direct trade coffees i'm using come from very, very small co-ops of passionate farmers yeilding fantastic coffee with close to zero defect. The end cup is amazingly clean, with great length and depth of flavour. Certainly sweet, but (at this stage) not very winey at all. Maybe somewhat vegetal with a slight piquancy, but once again i'll re-iterate. It's still not finnished so we'll just have to wait and see.
Whatever comes of it, it will be exciting!! Hope you get back in time to check it out =D
My god man put down the dictionary your embaressing the rest of us lowly baristas lol.
sounds very interesting i´ll be back in just over a week so i´m looking forward to trying it.
Haha, yeah reading over it now it does come accross quite wanky, lol.
Wow, a week, that's great!! Make sure you give me a buzz as soon as you land
That Sumatran is a wild one. We cupped it at Ristretto on Friday. All 6 participants picked it as the stand out cup from a high quality line up. Can't wait to get into it as espresso this comming week. Good to see you in Perth - Emanuele.
Sounds like good times are afoot!
Are you using the golden cup Rwandan? It was absolutely awesome, but I don't know if it played well with others.
CoE Rwanda awards ceremony is later today. It's the first CoE in Rwanda and the jury is packed with heavy hitters.
Got to say that props should go to the PEARL dudes for setting up plantations with bourbon.
Cheers,
Luca
Hay Ian!!
I thought you weren't competing this year!! HAHA! I'm overseas at the moment (for a year) so sadly won't be competing this year. I just had a look on cg and was suprised to realise that the SA comp has already come and gone. How did you go? How about the new rules? Also, since your in the know .. when are the WA comps? I'm in LA at the moment ... just had a clover at intelligentsia, Hacienda La Esmeralda, geisha ... awesome!
Hope all is good ...
Jen :-)
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