flyingthud

It looks like I’ll be doing a fair bit of roasting over Christmas although I wish it was under different circumstances. As you may already know, we roast all our coffee in house on a 5 kilo Probat and are currently going through around 400 kilo’s a month. Sadly over the next few days, two of the best staff we’ve ever had, Liv and Dave will be leaving. Liv is heading off to work in Austria and Dave is moving back to Malmo in Sweden where I beleive he is keen to get involved in roasting, even if it means commuting to Coppenhaggen each day.

Luckily one of the baristas in the cafe Rachael has developed anough of a passionfor coffee that she’s gonna leave the bar behind for the glory of roasting. I remember when I first stepped away from focusing wholly on my barista skills and became more aware of roasting, and the immeadite sense of Christ I haven’t a clue. But surely enough, you stick at it, an d you knowledge and skill develops but all the same I think it’ll be interesting to see Rachael go through the same process.

The reason I’ll be doing more hours though is that we are yet to find another person to become a roaster. We’d like to get someone with a little coffee backround if possible but its not a necessity. What is important though , and it seems a little superfluos saying this, is that they must drink coffee. So should you know anyone who lives in Ireland, or the EU, has good english, and a friendly personality, drop me an e mail and we’ll arrange an interview.

After a really tasty lunch, we headed off to the cupping workshop with David Williamson. We were presented with the top five Cup of Excellence coffees from the second harvest Colombia this year and asked to try grade them as we think the judges might have. THis was particularly interesting as we weren’t looking for what we personally preferred but more for which coffees stood out or had more character. I got 6 out of ten which I’m happy enough with. We then tasted a flight of Brazils ranging form your some rough robusta to some very pleasing and not so pleasing daterras. The daterra bruzzi was particularly good.  Putting our cupping spoons aside we then turned our attention to the brand new clover installed the previous day. As far as I know this is the first cover to come into the UK or Ireland and it was great to play around with some of the variables and get such quick feedback.

The last workshop of the day and possibly my favourite was the sensory one with Dr. Eduarda Cristovam. After a brief chat on coffee freshness and the challenges in calibrating a human being for sensory tests, especially in coffee, we were put into a special room for some tasting. We were each shown to a table, where under infrared lighting to take the visible aid out of the equation, we had to grade four different espressos under freshness. WE had as much time as we liked and had the coffees passed through sliding doors in the wall as we munched on crackers clean our palettes. It was a lot more difficult than I expected but a great learning experience. We then had to identify three differnt aromas from sample viles. I got the vanilla, mistook the caramel for almonds but would never have guessed wood for the third.  I really enjoyed this sort of training and its definitely something I wanna do a lot more of.

This was followed by a small latte art competition where the top three scorers of the day’s quizzes were called up. A very nice lady, whose name I regrettably forget, but who I remember owns a fantastic restaurant in Edinburgh called Urban Angel, was called up first. Deaton was second and then lastly myself. Troels was the appointed judge but would be out of the room while we were pouring so not to affect his decision. This was kinda of funny for me as two years previous I had competed against Troels in the World Latte Art Competition in Athens, with him taking second and me placing third. We’d only met a few times since then so when I came 2nd, (deservedly I might add) to Deaton, I became the subject of his playful mocking.  I did get a chance to settle with him later though when we headed back to Tinderbox for some food and drinks to finish off the successful day.  We sorta stormed over to the bar and thanks to some very understanding baristas who were trying to clean up, we had a bit of a pour off challenge. I’m not afraid to admit that we’d both consumed a few beers at that time to the extent that I’m not quite sure who came out better, but it was good fun. I wish I’d gotten a chance to chat to more people then as a lot of them left after a few drinks.

So to quickly conclude yet another rambling post as its now late at night and also bitterly cold, I thought the day was a great success and I sincerely feel that anyone wishing to hold a barista jam in the near future, in and around these isles, will have big shoes to fill.

Its around nine on a Sunday morning and I’m one of two customers in Glasgow’s newest quality focused cafe. Adam Green and Postal Service are humming softly and I’m really enjoying my custard tart even if it is a little heavy for my hung-over delicate self. Before I go into the main subject of this post, I really need to talk about this cafe a little.

Often when cafes or bars go after a very trendy design they sacrifice a sense of character and comfort. They’re usually a little too stark and cold, and end up resembling every other bloody ‘trendy’ bar. Luckily this cafe, called Tinderbox is not in this categroy. With one already in Glasgow and another in London, this Tinderbox opened three weeks ago. I have to say its on of the nicest cafes I’ve seen in the UK and Ireland. The colour scheme is quite nice as you can see in the pictures, and I’ll always love somewhere thats basked in natural light. The bar is well designed with a good flow system and quite a fancy order screen. Its quite big so they definitely had a luxury of space when designing but still kept it quite tasteful. Its a lot more bar like than cafe but thats something I’ve often liked. I’ve had two cappuccinos here and while they were a little hot, they were quite balanced and in a nice small cup. The shots I saw being pulled looked solid too and their food offering is a lot more interesting and attractive than the norm. Staff are particularly friendly efficient and were pretty cool when a drunken me and another well known coffee guy asked if we could have a little latte art re-match right when they’re cleaning the machine. (More about that later)They also sell beer and wine and if the small upright piano is anything to go by, I’m guessing the intention is to have live music in the evenings too. So yeah, altogether a great little spot and I just wish one was open in Dublin.

So why am I in Scotland? Yesterday saw the second SCAE accredited Barista jam held in Glasgow, Scotland. The hosts and organisers of the event were long established roasting company Matthew Algie with all the classes and workshops taking place in their Roasterie.

The day started with all the participants gathering early in above mentioned cafe, ‘Tinderbox’. Everyone got a free coffee and pastry and had enough time to mingle with the new faces before we jumped on a bus to the Roasterie. Along with my good friend and co worker Deaton Pigot, it turned out I knew a fair amount of the people there; SCAE UK co-ordinator Steve Penk, Northern Irish Barista Champion and a better photographer with the same camera as me, Se Gorman, Ben Townsend who was on the winning UK team at the challenge back in Dublin, John Sherwood of the SCAE UK and importer of Jamaican Blue Mountain, Joe O’Hara of Daily Grind Trading Co and the special guest for the day WBC Champion 2005 Troels Overdal Poulsen.

The director for the day and just a lovely person Kirsty soon bundled us into a bus and brought us to the roasterie located not far from the city centre. After a quick introductory chat by Matthew Algie Director David Williamson, we were separated into different groups and sent off to our first workshop of the day. As a member of Team yellow we had Troels first and did a workshop on espresso and milk. I might as well mention it now but the only misgiving I had about the day was how the participants were grouped. I was in with Deaton, a really nice New Zealand guy called Tom who had a background in wine and another chap who had absolutely no experience with coffee. So essentially only two of us had experience with coffee which made our first workshop with Troels a little basic for Deaton and I yet perhaps too overwhelming for the fresh guys. Alternatively I guess you could argue that the premise of these jams is to expose people to new techniques and meet other baristas and so maybe segregating the classes isn’t the answer. I still really enjoyed each session and it was only with Troels workshop that it became an issue. I’d imagine it was frustrating for him too, but at the same time I really enjoyed watching him teach some of the more rudimentary skills as you can never have too many analogies for how to pour a rosetta. In addition to this, the class was really well facilitated with around 8 fully equipped espresso stations set up, lots of milk and coffee and the patient cleaning skills of Ruth from Espresso Warehouse always at hand.

The following workshop was a tour of the factory by one of Matthew Algie’s head roasters who’d been in the business I think around 25/30 years now. He was really informative, quite funny and I’m kicking myself for not remembering his name. (edit, he was and still is Peter McGadey).  The factory was really impressive and some of their quality control methods are really quite remarkable. One machine I hadn’t seen before was a chaff compressor (not the official name) which made little concentrated tubes of chaff that apparently they sell to some guy who uses them for worm farming. What was really interesting though was the information that apparently some of the larger roasters blended this chaff back into their ground coffee as technically it was still coffee. I’m sure it’d be in small amounts and I doubt it adds huge weight but bloody nasty all the same.

I’ll add more to this tomorrow as right now, I’ve to sleep, tend to the girlfriend, check some names and get more photos. More pics on flickr.

me

Welcome to the beard’s new online home. I figure enough people have moved over to WordPress that its ok now to follow suit. Those of you who hoped I’d get rid of the whole flyingthud thing, well I’m sorry to disappoint. Its sorta stuck now and I can’t envision a change anytime soon. It was quite funny hearing Nick Cho trying to say it on one of the podcasts and recently I’ve been getting these scary visions of the future with ‘The Thud Cafe’, or ‘Flying Thud Coffee Roasters’. I’ll change it some day. Here’s a nice pic to start off the new home.

(long post)

I first travelled to Italy when I was 18. Along with my two best friends, and my girlfriend we bought an interail ticket and journeyed by train from Slovenia, down to Venezia, over to Verona, through Firenze, to Sorrento and finally Rome. I was only really into latte art then but had a fairly good sense of what espresso should be, at least in UK and Ireland terms. I sadly had that young barista arrogance where I’d snob entire cafes just because their grounds chambers were full, regardless of how nice the space might be. How I didn’t notice that practically every grounds chamber in Italy was full is beyond me.

But it wasn’t all bad. I remember noticing how I never got the big long pale shots that sadly still swamp the market here. The shots were short and the extractions seemed good. But what stuck in my mind the most, was the cappuccinos.

On my last morning in Italy, I was waiting for the Ryanair flight home in some small airport outside Rome. There was a small cafe bar at the gate with a semi automatic 2 group, a grinder, a fridge with a few sandwiches and a barista. Its likely that I was recovering from the previous night’s last night drinks, but I remember that wasn’t the reason I ordered around 4 cappuccinos in a row. They were so small, so sweet, and so wonderfully not boiling.

So essentially I always had good memories of coffee in Italy. As I learned more about coffee I think I probably thought back on some of the technical practices in Italy and ultimately labeled the country’s coffee scene as good but a little sloppy. So it was very interesting to have the opportunity to go back to Italy and not only re-check the scene, but do so at a coffee exposition.

As mentioned in the previous post, I was working for Glasgow based EspressoWarehouse, who are a sister company of MatthewAlgie Coffee Co. and who in turn distribute Elektra machines in the UK. So the deal for Trieste was that I’d be working on Elektra’s new concept K machine and making drinks for any customers Espresso Warehouse might have. Fool around on a prototype machine and play with the latest espresso parephenalia? Yes please.

We flew in last Wednesday and were picked up by Frederico (Mr. Elektra) and went straight to the Elektra Factory. It was a public holiday and so apart from a few guys, the place was closed up, leaving the place free for us to stroll about. I’ve never seen a neater or cleaner factory ever. (I’ve probably visited around 4 factories ever, but still) Frederico showed us some very old, very beautiful machines and it was interesting to see just how significant Elektra’s role was in espresso machine development. For example, they own the patent on the three way solonoid valve. They prioritise the look and style of their machines as much as they do the function.

Unlike other companies they also build every part for their machines, even down to the screws. They might not be my first choice of machine but I was pretty excited about their new grinder. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of it but if I were to open a cafe tomorrow, this would be the grinder of choice. (300 rpm, conical, doserless, a very steep chute and particularly fancy, a built in fan under the motor.)

We finished the evening with a fantastic meal and a few glasses of wine around Treviso, including one house wine for only 70c, which amazingly wasn’t bad. The following morning we were picked up by Elektra and travelled to Trieste.

The show wasn’t huge but then that was kind of a relief in itself. The new machine is still a prototype and so some parts were still cast in plastic. As you can see, both steam wands and the hot water dispenser are on one side, which is intended to better facilitate two baristas working simultaneously. I loved the toggle steam switches and as far as I know this is the first machine with a built in water filtration system. It analyses the water and adds or subtracts nutrients, also notifying you if it needs a cycle. Another variable looked after it seems.

I didn’t see many exciting new products save a few nice cup designs and the odd new pitcher. Reneka had a new machine which at this point all I’m qualified to say is that it was very pretty. I saw a few nice tampers from Coffee consulate and Steffen Schwartz very kindly gave me a nice 54mm tamper which I need for the Dalla Corte currently installed in the cafe.
I also luckily got a chance to check out a fantastic old machine exhibition in the city centre. Jim’s already talked about this on his blog but I need to say too that some of the machines were just beautiful. The artistry that went into them far outdoes any modern machines on the market. Even this early Cimbali got me. I love the lines and the colours.

So how was the coffee? With 6 years in the coffee industry did I still see the Italian coffee scene as good but sloppy? Yes and no. I got a lot of weird looks for grinding each shot to order, flushing between shots and taking such care in my distribution and leveling. One criticism I was glad of though was when I was making my milk too hot for my cappuccinos. I generally make my cappuccinos a little cooler but evidently not cool enough. Since getting home I’ve tried going cooler but feel now that I still like around 135f – 140f.

I think the general standard in Italy is far better than any other country I’ve visited. There is an understanding of what espresso should look like and roughly taste like. Obviously there must be competition baristas who are aware of wbc standards and practice them in their cafes, but you get the clear impression that Italian coffee has been the same way for quite a while now and really feels no need to change. And thats fine with me. Its something worthy of a lot more discussion but alas I need to sleep.

check my trieste and elektra sets on flickr for more pics

steve