Table of contents for Dec/Jan 2016/17 in BeanScene

The Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) has appointed Will Young of Campos Coffee the new Vice Chair of the ACE Board. Will’s role will lead into the Chair position in June 2017, taking over from Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia. Geoff will finish his tenure as current Chair and move onto the position of Post Chair for two years to give the continuity necessary to steer the COE program. “I’m honoured to be appointed this position. ACE always needs to be led by those who believe in the ethos and values behind COE – right now and into the future – and I stand behind it 100 per cent,” Will says. Will has been an ACE board member for more than a year. He says the new ACE board has embraced…

“PEOPLE WHO HAVE TRAVELLED TO AUSTRALIA UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT WHAT OUR COFFEE CULTURE IS ALL ABOUT AND APPRECIATE IT.” Curtis Stone has made his first Los Angeles-based restaurant Maude a success by celebrating just one ingredient each month. Such foods have included zucchinis, plums, cherries, radishes, and apples, to name a few. When BeanScene asks Curtis if coffee has ever made the cut, there’s a slight pause in his response. “You know what? We haven’t, and I can’t think of a reason why. Coffee is a really good idea. I can’t believe we haven’t discussed it,” he says. “You have to consider whether you can use the ingredient in 10 different courses, and I do think coffee would work – certainly it does in seafood, meat, and dessert dishes.” For…

When you think of the technological devices that use a sensor, such as washing taps and hand dryers or systems with weight-based sensors such as self service checkout machines, it seems logical that milk dispensing would go down the same avenue. “No matter what industry you’re in, everyone wants to work faster, more efficiently, and cleaner, and we believe we have the solution for the café market with our hands-free automated milk delivery system,” says Autopour’s Robert Swords. Over the past 20 months, Robert and his team have been dedicated to the research and development of the i-milk. “At one stage we had about six button functions. But after brainstorming with our designer and café consultant Luke Floyd of Palate & Ply Espresso Bar about what was needed, the idea…

When I was making my first tentative foray into green coffee at Cofi-Com, one coffee in particular fascinated me: the musically sounding Guatemalan Huehuetenango. The name rolls off the tongue, tropical, sunny, and tuneful all in one. Give it a try. Hue-hue-tenango. So, for my last editorial contribution for the year, we’re off to Guatemala. It is a country with coastlines on both the Pacific and Atlantic, nestled between its four neighbours, Mexico, El Salvador, Belize, and Honduras. Before we get into the coffee side of things, it’s important to understand the country’s culture and how it’s influenced today’s coffee producing society. Since independence in 1841 from Spain, Guatemala has experienced a roller coaster ride of dictatorships and coups meddling in its affairs, and in recent years, civil wars. A…

NSW Allpress Espresso 58 Epsom Rd, ZETLAND Austin’s Coffee & Tea 62 Broadmeadow Rd, BROADMEADOW Campos Coffee 193 Missenden Rd, NEWTOWN Coffee Warehouse Cafe 17-35 Parramatta Rd, HOMEBUSH Don Campos 2/21 Fountain St, ALEXANDRIA Double Roasters 199 Victoria Rd, MARRICKVILLE Grinders Coffee 204 Norton St, LEICHHARDT Pablo & Rusty’s 161 Castlereagh St, SYDNEY Pablo & Rusty’s 1 St Johns Ave, GORDON Pablo & Rusty’s 13 Burns Bay Rd, LANE COVE Pablo & Rusty’s Jacaranda Sq, Cnr Dawn Fraser & Park St, SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK Pablo & Rusty’s 3 Plassey Rd, NORTH RYDE The Broken Drum 6/78 Princes Hwy, FAIRY MEADOW Toby’s Estate 32/36 City Rd, CHIPPENDALE Toby’s Estate 129 Cathedral St, WOOLLOOMOOLOO Tulipshi Cafe Suite 307, The San Clinic Bldg, 185 Fox Valley Rd, WAHROONGA White Horse Coffee Shop 2/137…

When summer is in full swing, there’s nothing quite like a refreshing iced tea to quench customers’ thirst. It’s a curious anomaly that Australia, with its parched summers and penchant for artisan gelato, has not embraced iced tea with the gusto most would expect. Perhaps it’s a hangover from our British tea heritage, where iced tea is largely ignored due to an incompatible climate, when we should take after the warmer southern states of the United States where the drink is a mainstay. THE OPPORTUNITY Thanks to Taiwanese entrepreneurialism, consumer interest in cold tea beverages has increased and is a trend likely to linger. Bubble tea chains such as EasyWay and Cha Time entered the market more than a decade ago and their success has encouraged follower brands, such as…

We at the Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA) are proud to announce our first Symposium, taking place on Monday 27 March 2017 during Melbourne Coffee Week in the lead-up to the Melbourne International Coffee Expo. The launch of this exciting event has been in the works for more than two years, following feedback that members were keen to have more professional development opportunities catered to the needs of specialty café operators. The decision to host our own Symposium was voted on at the last Annual General Meeting in September. Since then, a Symposium Sub-committee was formed to collect industry feedback on what issues were most pressing in the industry to determine what key topics would be covered during the event. We’re now proud to announce the Symposium entitled: “Secrets of…

Jared Chapman is the National Team Leader for Mocopan Coffee. He has an extensive background in coffee, training, and consulting, working with cafés of all shapes and sizes. These include independent cafés to corporate coffee chains. Jared’s passion is sharing this experience to help others in the industry run their businesses successfully. Adeline Teoh is a writer and content developer specialising in tea and tea culture. She has a background in small and international business, and manages tea events through Sydney Tea Tastings. She loves high mountain oolongs and wild ancient Yunnan teas. Finding many tea resources too serious, she started www.teashirts.com.au, which focuses on the irreverent side of tea drinking. Ben Morrow is the 2016 ASCA Pura Australian Latte Art Champion, a 2016 World Latte Art Championship finalist, and…

Registration for the 2017 London Coffee Masters competition is now open. The event will take place at the Old Truman Brewery at The London Coffee Festival from 6 – 9 April 2017. If you think you’ve got what it takes to be a Coffee Master – creativity, passion, skill, knowledge, and personality – then apply for this fast-paced, multi-disciplinary barista tournament. Sixteen baristas will go head-to head in a bid to win more than $5000. Interested participants need to fill out the registration form and submit a one to two-minute video presenting a Signature Drink via wetransfer, dropbox, or via email to info@coffeemasters.org. The deadline for application is 31 January 2017. Early bird tickets to The London Coffee Festival are on sale now. Each year thousands of people congregate at…

Coffee and liquor has long been a celebrated collaboration in the Australian coffee community. Think espresso martinis, vodka pour overs, and extravagant concoctions presented each year at the national Coffee in Good Spirits competition. Now, there’s a new pairing in town that has nothing to do with coffee flavour as such, but the outer skin layer of a coffee cherry. Introducing: the new Campos Cáscara Melbourne Moonshine. In 2015, Campos Coffee worked with Mr Black Spirits to produce a limited edition Geisha-infused espresso martini, and now it’s formed a partnership with Melbourne-based distillery Melbourne Moonshine. “I like that we can meaningfully respect [coffee] in a format that has a longer shelf life. With Mr. Black, we were able to preserve the special flavours of an exemplary Geisha coffee in a…

THE LION AND THE BUFFALO 203 Malabar Road, South Coogee, New South Wales, 2034 Open seven days 7am – 3pm 0447 685 466 If there’s one thing you do upon a visit to The Lion and the Buffalo – besides indulge in the food and coffee menu – it’s stare at the huge mural of a woman holding a rabbit, painted by world-famous street artist Fintan Magee. “We were so lucky he came into our little café to paint this incredible mural. He gets flown all over the world to paint. After ours he was going to Dunedin, New Zealand to paint a seven-storey building,” Owner Anna Allison says. As for the inspiration behind the rabbits, Anna says it’s all to do with her love for Alice in Wonderland. “In…

Hey there. So this issue I thought we would put what we have learned so far into practice. We have our key and we’ve got the basics down, so let’s start integrating some ideas to make a more complex piece of latte art. This pattern is one I came up with for the 2016 World Latte art Championship, and is a personal favourite. Generally, I can get a customer to laugh if I put a squid on top of their coffee because it’s something you wouldn’t expect. Let’s hope by the end of this demonstration, you can achieve the same thing. Here’s how to pour the pattern and add in the etch work as necessary, using a key. Start with the handle on the right and lay down our…

Up to this point, our columns have been focused on breaking down how coffee particles are typically sized and how the data are plotted. As we move into the application of that information, it’s important to understand some basic concepts related to extraction. This can quickly get complex, so we’re going to present a simplified approach, with particle size being the sole variable of interest — all else is considered constant for our purposes. Let’s first imagine a single, smooth, spherical coffee particle, like in Figure 1. Let’s assume this coffee particle is made up of around 30 per cent water soluble material, meaning whatever the particle weighs, at most, only 30 per cent of that mass can transfer into water (the actual percentage may be slightly less, but that’s…

As we farewell 2016 and greet 2017, I’d like to encourage all businesses in the coffee industry to take a moment to pause and reflect on the year that’s been. Find some time among the seasonal chaos to thank your customers for their support, thank your suppliers for their services, and importantly, please remember to take a moment to thank your staff for their hard work, dedication, and commitment throughout the year. On that note, I’d like to thank our Community and Events Coordinator Jessica MacDonald and the NZSCA Board for their continued support, efforts, and ideas this year. A special thanks to Emma Markland-Webster for the massive amount of work she does in organising world class events, workshops, and supporting the Roaster and Barista Guilds. The year ahead is…

After winning first place at the 2017 ASCA Southern Region Latte Art championship, Aaron Dongsu Shin of Short Black Café has continued his winning streak, taking out the Veneziano Coffee Roasters Smackdown on 27 October. Teddy Shim of A Thousand Blessings placed second, Joel Tan of Cote Terra placed third, and Joel Irwin of Alimentari placed fourth. A total of 32 baristas competed in the knockout round format until the final two remained standing for one last showdown. Aaron won $1000 thanks to major sponsor Pura, with Cafetto cleaning packs and Pullman tamp gifts for the runners up, and support from sponsor SilverChef. The event was an opportunity to celebrate Veneziano’s recent rebranding and unite the coffee community in its new River Street premises in Victoria.…

“MY GENERATION OF SPECIALTY COFFEE WORKERS ARE ESSENTIALLY COFFEE SHOP DROP OUTS. WE DIDN’T GO TO UNIVERSITY TO STUDY COFFEE, WE LEARNT OUR CRAFT THROUGH TRADITION AND EXPERIENCE, BUT WE ACKNOWLEDGE THERE’S SOMETHING REALLY POWERFUL ABOUT ACADEMIC RESEARCH, AND WE NEED IT.” If Peter Giuliano hadn’t found a career travelling the world for coffee, he would have found a career travelling the world for music. His musical ability is enough to start his own orchestra – accordion, guitar, organ, drums, violin, and mandolin. Peter studied ethnomusicology at university, the study of cultural music. Although it’s no longer his career focus, Peter says he’s constantly surprised how his music passion has intertwined so fluidly within the coffee industry. “Music brings people together and connects communities. It embraces tradition and heritage, and…

Dr Monika Fekete’s handbag has a Mary Poppins effect. When she visits cafés or roasters to complete an analysis, she brings her mobile lab with her. Out of her bag she pulls a USB microscope with x400 magnification to examine coffee beans, a laptop to view the microscopic particles, pH meter to detect lime scale build-up in a coffee machine, and a hand-held coffee refractometer to measure total dissolved solids (TDS) in coffee to help calculate extraction yield. “This is all I need to test and analyse some of the main things people want to know, but can’t learn from taste alone,” Monika says. “Everyone can do science but it takes years of training to do it well, to ask the right questions, and to draw the right conclusions from…

I came to Portland with high expectations. I’m a privileged Melbournian who savours single origins on café menus, and is in her element at the sight of a shiny La Marzocco machine and a crowd of caffeine devotees hanging out the door. I had heard time and time again that Portland was debatably the coffee capital of America (the other contentious city being Seattle) and that good coffee existed because of the plethora of micro coffee roasters. I envisaged something like Melbourne’s Brunswick Street in mass volume, but I couldn’t wait to find out for myself. After checking into my hotel, I raced off to meet Michael Ryan, Director of Coffee at Dapper & Wise Roastery in the suburb of Beaverton. This roastery was highly recommended by barista Cole McBride,…

I first came across the Strietman ES2 around 2012 after reading about the lever machine on some coffee consumer enthusiast blogs. I used to have two Rancilio Z9 Lever pistons coffee machines at the original Bar 9 in Adelaide, and our customers loved the espresso they created. When the opportunity to install new machines for our Outreach café came about, I saw this modern lever version as a great throwback to the original. We use it every day. It is a wall-mounted lever espresso machine combining Danish minimalist design with a robust build to produce manually extracted espresso coffee. The ES2 was a production prototype that pre-dates the current ES3 (wall mounted) and CT1 (freestanding) manual espresso machines. It incorporates a similar aesthetic base and produces equally tasty espresso coffee.…

Australians love their coffee, but when it’s warm enough for your seatbelt to give you a blister, it’s not surprising that coffee sales can start to slump. Unless you’re lucky enough to own a café at the beach, the warm weather can make things difficult for café owners who rely so heavily on coffee sales to make a living. The good news is that there is plenty of opportunities to keep your customers coming in over the warmer months and potentially even win some new customers. There is, however, some work to be done. Last edition (October 2016) I wrote about how to create a coffee menu. Now it’s time to revisit that menu and give it some summer wow factor. Whenever you are trying something new in your café,…