Coffee Kids World Barista Champions 2012 Calendar
By Colin Loh
With the World Barista Championship spanning the last 12 years, Square Mile Coffee Roasters, and the last 12 World Barista Champions have come together to lend their hands and faces to a worthy cause – The Coffee Kids World Barista Champions 2012 Calendar.
Coffee Kids is a non-profit organisation which helps the poverty-stricken coffee-farming families improve their lives and livelihoods. Coffee Kids work with these families in 5 countries – Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Honduras, and Nicaragua and their projects affect more than 81,000 people in more than 130 communities. Their projects fall into 5 categories:
- microcredit and economic diversification,
- health awareness,
- education and training,
- food security and
- capacity building
All proceeds from the sale of these calendars go towards Coffee Kids. For any additional donations, please proceed to the Coffee Kids website.
So, have a different handsome World Barista Champion in all his glory grace your wall above your espresso machine this year, for the next 12 months, and give yourself a pat on the back for championing this worthy cause. Coffee’s going to taste especially good with May’s Barista of the Month spread!
Unveiling the New Yellowbird Espresso Blend
By John Ryan Ting
Drying the semi-washed coffee at Fazenda Machado
It is once again time to introduce the latest changes to our flagship Yellowbird Seasonal Espresso Blend. We are proud to introduce the new bean that goes into our beloved blend that most of you have enjoyed over the last two years.
Recently, our Chief Geek Officer, Mr Keith Loh, made a trip to Brazil, the leading producer & exporter of Arabica coffee. He travelled with our esteemed coffee partners from Mercanta to the region of Bahia, located in the north-eastern part of Brazil. The main objective of this trip was to establish contact with some of the farms located in the Chapada Diamantina region as well as to evaluate the quality of the coffees coming out from this region, as compared to the much acclaimed Minas Gerais, Mogiana, Cerrado, Sul de Minas. The list goes on. (Keith will complete the blog about his trip.)
So today, I will be introducing one of the coffees that Keith has tasted and fallen in love with during his trip to Brazil. Fazenda Machado, located 1,240 metres above sea level, the farm extends over 100 hectares in the mountainous Chapada Diamantina region. Some 18 hectares are filled with a selection of Catuai, Acaua, Catucai, Topazio and Bourbon varieties.
Fazenda Machado is owned and managed by Sr. Agnon Aruajo of the Bahia region. As a young man, Aruajo decided to move to Sao Paulo to find work and earn a better living. However, after a few years he missed life on the farm so much that he moved back to Bahia and used all of his savings to buy Fazenda Machado, where he planted coffee and fruit trees.
This thoughtfully selected pulped-natural, mixed varietal coffee from Fazenda Machado is blended with our current selection of Ethiopia, Sidama. Our current Yellowbird Seasonal Blend exhibits notes of piped tobacco in the aroma, rich & intense mouthfeel, flavours of bright sweet prunes, with hints of umami in the mid palate, completed with lingering notes of pomelo in the finish.
Jobs available at Oriole Coffee Roasters
Oriole Coffee Roasters (OCR) is a specialty coffee roasting facility in Singapore and we are relocating to a brand new three-storey roastworks in the heart of town which includes a coffee boutique, coffee lab & training lab. OCR is the wholesale roasting arm of Oriole Cafe & Bar, Oriole Espresso & Brew Bar and several other restaurants under The Food Chain Group. OCR is steadily growing its wholesale client list and is looking for multiple positions to service this increasing client list. All our coffees currently cup at scores of 80+ or higher and we currently run espresso blends, single origins, single estates and Cup Of Excellence offerings. Oriole Coffee Roasters works as a team and have very clear strategic growth plans. We are looking to build a core team of experienced coffee professionals who are prepared to build their careers with us.
Please visit
www.oriole.com.sg
www.facebook.com/oriolecafe
oriolecafe.wordpress.com
for some background on our company / companies.
OCR is looking for experienced hospitality professionals with a minimum of 3 to 5 years working experience and predominant coffee related industry experience. The candidates must have worked and have extensive experience in specialty grade coffee either in retail, wholesale or in coffee consulting. A fluent command of English is preferred.
Available postions are:
Senior Barista
Coffee Boutique Manager
Account Manager
Trainer
Salary commensurate with experience. Please state your expected salary.
Accommodation, travel and work visas will be included in remuneration package for international applicants.
Please send detailed CV’s to keith@thefoodchain.com.sg, patrick@thefoodchain.com.sg
Oriole Coffee & Technology Series – ExtractMojo
By Colin Loh
Termed by some as being “one of the best coffee universities around,” Oriole Coffee is no stranger to technology. Oriole Coffee never ceases to be on the forefront when it comes to leading the pack with high tech toys. Just recently, Oriole Coffee became the proud owner of the first La Marzocco Strada EP in Asia. This blog post marks the first of a series devoted to examining how Oriole Coffee integrates technology to help bring more bang to the consumer’s buck.
2010. Enter Vince Fedele and the ExtractMojo.
Waiting for the espresso to cool before piping it into the ExtractMojo
The ExtractMojo is a small hand-held refractometer which measures the coffee’s refractive index and determines its concentration, which can then be compared against an Universal Coffee Brewing Control Chart. You can read more about this technology on Gizmodo. Naturally, Oriole Coffee’s Chief Geek Officer, Keith Loh had to have it.
Keith and John record the ExtractMojo readings
I spoke to Keith and he remarked excitedly, giddy as a schoolgirl that “now there was a tool to empirically assess the extraction levels of the way that I was pulling my shots and it probably allowed a consistent way to measure quantitatively instead of qualitatively what I was doing. I’ve attended many cupping classes and tasting classes and the one thing I realized is the diversity of opinions when it comes to taste and flavor. After understanding about brew strength and extraction yields, there was finally a tool that could actually produce these results on a repeatable and measurable basis easily through just one small device.”
Keith further elaborates that
“We’ve been using the Extract Mojo for almost 2 years and I feel it’s time to unveil that the Extract Mojo is the secret little weapon we have, or the secret little tool that has helped us to understand what we were doing. It comes full circle because we’re about to launch our VST baskets across all our outlets. In fact, we’ve actually been rolling out the VST baskets at all our outlets for almost a month now. And we’ve been backing up our results with the Extract Mojo as you can see here from our chart. The trickiest one and the one we left to the end was the Strada EP, of which we should be rolling out as we speak.
Keith adds “This is ultimately the means to an end, and not the means itself, the end being the entire product experience, and not just the coffee. When you sit down, how fast you get served, how it looks, how it’s presented, its price and how fast it’s being served to you – the product experience.”
Tight datapoints grouping of the Strada EP using VST baskets
This is the final grouping test we did for the Strada EP on the 22 gram basket. And as you can see, they’re so close that I don’t think we could’ve achieve such tight grouping with normal baskets. So, it’s nice to see that the Extract Mojo has proven that as we move along, we will continue to use technology to improve our consistency and let it work as a feedback loop to maintain our protocols, or to advance our protocols as we increase our volume.”
Last but not least, Oriole Coffee’s resident coffee roaster John Ting adds, “It changes how you looked at espresso extraction and makes you rethink all that you have learned, bringing you back to basics.”
ExtractMojo graph on the Lenovo laptop
Finca La Fany
unripe cherries waiting to mature
Some of you may have already noticed that we have a new coffee on the shelves. A coffee that gives you a juicy mouthfeel, notes of cane sugar, sweetness of oranges and honey, clean lingering finish.
Majority of El Salvador’s total coffee production is of the bourbon varietal, one of the most desired coffee varietals. It is harder to grow, more susceptible to disease and provides a lower yield than some other varietals, but it also produces some of the finest coffee in the world .This coffee is 100% Red Bourbon and is an example of one of El Salvador’s finest coffees. This shade grown coffee is exceptionally creamy and sweet. The cup leaves a mouth full of creamy caramel.
Baskets of Fully Ripe Cherries
Finca La Fany located in the altitudes of 1400- 1600 meters above sea level. Within the Department of Ahuachapán and in the municipality of Apaneca Ilamatepec Mountains region which translates to ‘River of Winds’; and this is by no coincidence! The winds in this region are very strong, so very tall Copalchi trees have been planted in a grid or waffle like shape to protect the coffee trees from strong winds.
Finca La Fany has been producing coffee in El Salvador since 1870, and has belonged to the same family from generation to generation. Situated on the Santa Ana Volcano, the farm provides work for 24 families in the community in a biological corridor that stretches for 28 hectares from Mexico to Panama and is full of Bourbon and Pacamara coffees.
Fantastic view of the farm
Rafael and his wife Carmen Da Silva have been running the farm for the last ten years, and are the fifth generation of their family to be producing coffee. Rafael is a keen agronomist and takes great care in looking after the farm.
Only just recently, the Da Silva’s installed a wet mill on their property which now gives them much greater control over the coffee from harvest through to export; a very exciting development.
Beautiful and delicate when brewed as a pour-over, sweet and creamy when enjoyed as an espresso.
Introducing our latest Yellowbird Seasonal Espresso Blend
A view of part of the plantation of Samambaia
Firstly, many thanks to all who loved our previous seasonal blend created with coffees from Fazenda Lambari from Brazil + Sidamo Valley, Ethiopia. It’s a pity that we ran out of the coffee from Fazenda Lambari sooner than we expected. But fret not, we have got our hands on some lovely, creamy pulped natural coffee from the similar region of Minas Gerais, this varietal of Mundo Novo that has been grown at the altitudes of 1,150 metres above sea level.
Fazenda Samambaia, located in the city of Sul de Minas, is owned by Henrique Dias Cambraia who contributes the success of the farm to a combination of various factors – the geographic location at 1,200m above sea level, steady cool climate averaging 21 degrees centigrade, competent management of the plantations, constant training based on total quality control program that involves the whole team that works on the farm.
Henrique is committed not only to producing high quality coffee, but to farming in a way that is socially responsible and environmentally sustainable. He is happy to say that, during his absence from the farm between March 2000 and July 2001 – when he was studying towards a Master’s degree in International Business in Phoenix, Arizona – his employees demonstrated that they fully understood and were capable of upholding the Samambaia concept of sustainability.
Recently, Henrique Dias Cambraia was elected President of Sulminas-Café. Together with other 20 coffee producers of the Santo Antônio do Amparo region, he founded the Santo Antônio Estate Coffee, to build relationships with the specialty coffee market.
Combining this lot of coffee from Samambaia with our current stock of the coffee from Sidamo Valley, we present to you a combination of; creamy & viscous mouthfeel, balanced sweetness of caramel & honey, notes of hazelnuts & vanilla, finished with a soft orange acidity and subtle floral finish.
Look out for these notes in our Yellowbird Seasonal Espresso Blend that is hitting the shelves. Have you gotten yours yet?
Introducing Oriole’s new Seasonal Espresso Blend
We have gotten our hands on a very limited lot of coffee from Fazenda Lambari, located in the region of Minas Gerais, Brazil. This farm is certified by the BSCA, which means that the farm meets the criteria of Quality, Social Responsibility, as well as Ecological Responsibility.
Fazenda Lambari is located in Poços de Caldas, in the far south of the state of Minas Gerais on the Serra da Mantiqueira. On this farm, coffee is grown at 1,100m, accompanied by two well defined seasons: one rainy and dry. With an annual average temperature of 19oC and 2,000 mm of rain spread across its long summer.
The microclimate of this region favors a concentrated flowering and therefore uniform maturation during the dry winter when harvesting takes place. The great difference between day and night temperatures combined with “patio” drying makes a unique coffee. In this region you even find Bourbon plants that may well be over 100 years old.
This naturally processed coffee is of mixed varietals of Acaia, Bourbon & Catuai from the crop of 10/11. Cupping notes of this coffee on its own: buttery mouth feel, flavours of butterscotch & almonds, clean & refined.
Creating a blend using this coffee as a base, completing it with a fully washed coffee from Sidamo Valley, Ethiopia, our latest seasonal blend displays floral notes in the front palate, rich & creamy mouth feel, hints of almonds and ending with a dark chocolate finish.
This will be featured for a limited time only as this is a very sought-after coffee. Do try it and give us your feedbacks on how you think of this.
