Feb 06th 2009: Our 2nd cupping

Our 2nd cupping on Feb 6th 2009 was done with product from the local roasters Koffie Fabriek Aroma Bandung and Pontianak Kopi. The coffees that we tasted were from 4 regions in Indonesia, mostly single origin and one blend.

Here is what we discovered;

1. Koffie Aroma - Toraja (Pure Arabica)

Fragrance: Woody, Smoky

Aroma: Earthy, Woody

Acidity: No acidity

Body: Full Body

Flavor: Smoky earthy flavor. However, less interesting than its Aceh cousin

2. Koffie Aroma - Aceh (Pure Arabica)

Fragrance: Smoky, Lemony, Earthy

Aroma: Earthy, Lemony, Citrus

Acidity: Mild

Body: Medium to Full

Flavor: Citrus and earthy flavor that shows the Sumatran heritage

3. Kopi Pontianak

Fragrance: Chocolatie, Woody

Aroma: Woody, Smooky

Acidity: Mild, low

Body: Less Body

Flavor: Bitter but one of authentic local thick coffees which goes well with lots of sugar

4. Koffie Aroma - Robusta blend (Java/Sumatra)
Fragrance: Herbal
Aroma: Smoky but less aromatic
Acidity: No acidity
Body: Medium to Full
Flavor: Bitter and strong cup

Coffee tip of the day:

Each region has its own charecterics which make it unique. It is also why each region has die hard fanatic where what their taste buds have been accustomed with certain flavor. How can you be an unbiased, decerning coffee drinker? Well... spend some time cupping yourself to taste the difference! You might be pleasantly surprised with what you find... :)

Jan 28-30th 2009: Jakarta - Bandung Visit

On the last Chinese New Year, some of us went home to our home country and get excited with how our lovely home country which known as the 4th place of the coffee exporter world wide.

Because of the limited time, we listed out the place that we gonna visit. We have listed down 3 coffee houses that we visit over at Jakarta and Bandung

Here are some picture and from our very own comment.

1. Crema
City: Jakarta, Indonesia

Location: Mega Kuningan

Menu: Coffee, Tea, Wine and Cakes

Ordered: Espresso, Cappucino, Strawbery Cake

Price: Premium

Environment: Nice place to hang out over the tea time.

Comments: Maybe because of its location, the price is just a bit higher than expected on Jakarta. The espresso taste very acidic, but not very bitter. Good to have it with the sweet cake. For the Cappucino, nothing special, and the taste is more on the milk rather than the coffee inside.

2. Newspaper Coffee House

City: Bandung, Indonesia

Location: Paris van Java

Menu: Coffee, soft-drink, cakes

Ordered: Espresso, Cafe Latte

Price: Medium

Environment: A little bit not comfort for hang out, because of the place bit dark and looks dusty. But as their concept is newspaper, the decoration is match with the concept. Have a good location in Bandung where lots of coffee house took place.

Comment: Espresso taste bitter, not very acidic. Caffee Late taste weird which can not taste the coffee at all.

3. Caswell's Coffee

City: Jakarta, Indonesia

Location: Kemang

Menu: Coffee, Tea, Cakes, Sandwiches

Ordered: Single Origin Aceh Gayo Coffee, Single Origin PNG coffee

Price: Medium

Environment: The one we went is not the coffee house, but more like the warehouse and Barista Training Centre. But they do serve coffee there. The concept their have on this place is more into the professionalism coffee tasting place. The place looks like a living room, so it feels like tasting coffee at home.

Comment: Aceh Gayo taste nice, It mild and the medium body really hit with ASIAN taste. And since this is an Indonesian coffee, the aroma is earthy. This is a good coffee.

PNG Bunom, have a full body with the a little sweet aroma, makes it taste like caramelized coffee. Also a good coffee, will taste more the single origin when we go there the 2nd time. Sure we will go back.

Over all the coffee houses that we visited have their own style, taste and concept. Begin to understand, that coffee house business is not only about coffee, but also about the concept and style. Here is some picture we took for coffee houses in Bandung.

Jan 17th 2009: Our First Cupping

So you might wonder how do people decide which beans are are good, fair or exceptional...

Well, just like wine tasting, in coffee world people do "cupping" to decide bean's fragrance and taste objectively. Each coffee bean has distinctive flavor, acidity and body. And you can use many words to describe the qualities it possess. Simply put, more words there are, more complex the bean is, and it tend to be an exceptional bean.

So we decided to put 5 distinctive beans under our cupping test!

1. Toraja (Kopi Bali)

2. Cilemo 1st (our very own first roast!)

3. Mawar (Bali Mawar Kopi)

4. Bali Supremo (Kopi Bali)

5. Highlander espresso (Highlander Coffee)

Cupping is quite a simple affair...

The first step is to grind each of the bean in our cute and trusty bean grinder.

The second step is to put the grinds in to a cup.
(8.25g grind to 150ml water)

Then check the flavor of the bean.

Pour hot water (92-96 Celsius) and brew the coffee for 4 minutes...

Next Step is to break the coffee crust on the surface. And check the aroma of the coffee.

Remove the power from the cup using 2 spoons.

Scoop coffee using the spoon and quickly suck in to your mouth and savour the teste and fragrance.

This is what we found in our cupping...

Toraja

Flavor/Fragrance: slightly spicy, herbal

Aroma: charred, smokey, sweet

Body: light to medium body

Acidity: medium

Cupper Point/After Taste: slight acidity at first, but gets bitter after 1 min

Cilemo 1st
Flavor/Fragrance: woody, earthy, a little citrus
Aroma: woody, smokey
Body: full bodied
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, mild acidity, bitter at first, it gets more bitter after 1 min

Mawar
Flavor/Fragrance: earthy

Aroma: woody

Body: full bodied, very strong
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, bitter at first, after 1 min, it gets very bitter and completely looses acidity

Bali Supremo

Flavor/Fragrance: sweet, earthy

Aroma: honey
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, bitter at first, after 1 min, it gets very bitter and completely looses acidity
Body: light

Highlander espresso

Flavor/Fragrance: balanced, ordinary

Aroma: citrus, rich
Body: light
Acidity: well balanced
Cupper Point/After Taste: balanced but ordinary at first, more bitterness but still well balanced after 1 min

Jan 13-14th 2009: Barista Training

After we are back from Bali and also doing our first roasting, the interest of coffee in us extremely getting stronger and stronger. After turning from coffee house to coffee house, from Starbuck to Gloria Jeans, from Highlander to TCC, we decided to get know more about the coffee and how to make a good coffee. The only source for this idea will be the training. We hooked on 1 Barista training centre in Singapore, and decided to register.

We are glad that we took this Barista course, because as a amateur about coffee, we did learn alot from this training. It was 2 days training which 4hrs each day. We done this training on weekday after work hour.
First day, we were taught about the basic knowledge about coffee and also the history about the coffee around the world. After all the theory, we bump to the espresso making with its history.

It is a complete step by step of making a good espresso. And we learn that making espresso is not just making a good coffee. It include art, precission and passion which will determined the taste of your coffee.

The espresso making starts as learning how to precisely grind your espresso. Best espresso should take around 25-30 sec to brew 1 shot of espresso (30ml). To make this happen, the coffee grinding part is very important, because if the grind is too fine, then it will take longer to brew 30ml and it will taste awfully bitter. In the other hand if to coarse, then the brewwing will way too fast and makes the result tasteless. So grinding part also take a good part on making a good espresso.








On this training we have to trial and error to get familiar with the espresso machine and learn how to texture the milk in the way t create a good espresso, capucino or cafe latte.
It was not easy to make a good espresso, but all we have to do is learn, try and re-try. Practise make perfect.





























At the end of the practice, there is a test/exam for us to get the good Espresso, Cafe Latte and Cappucino, which is official our very first piece of coffee. The point that they counted not only the result, but it also included the cleanliness, the sequence, and the correct way to make a great coffee.


After the exam, we have another agenda on the training, which teach us how to do the coffee tasting. We are prepared using 3 different single origin coffee which will help us to differentiate on each characteristic of the each single origin coffee. The single origin coffee bean we are using are Brazil Santos, Ethiopia, and Sumatra Mandheling.
Based on our taste, 3 of us at the end likes Ethiopia and 1 of us likes Brazil.

Do you need to know on our tasting result?

Jan 10th 2009: Coffee Roasting Experience

This is our first experience on roasting, and since we dont have the proper coffee roaster, we just following the amateur guide to roast the coffee using frying pan. We believe we will end up with the modern and proper coffee roaster in the near future.
Before the roasting process begin, we preparing some stuff that we will need.


1. Frying pan


2. Gas


3. Stir-stick


4. And the most important the guide book on when the roasting should be stop.



We pour half of the picked green bean into the frying pan and start the roasting process. As per the guidance the bean need to be stirred all the time to get all bean roasted equally. If using the modern roaster, there s the drum which will keep rolling to make sure all the bean got heated and roasted equally.







After 14 minutes stirring, then it came the first crack and we were very happy and excited about it because that's mean we are doing the correct way.
The beans began to turn light brown color as it start the first crack.
And we can see the chaff begin to separated from its bean.
The smell of the coffee began to filled the kitchen area, and it was really smell good.



On the next 10 minutes stirring, the second crack begin to sounding and the color of the bean turning more and more brownish color, and some of them were turned to black which we think it over roasted. Because using the fying pan, we can not make the equalization on roasting the bean. The stage of the roasting that we were targeting was the full city to french roast.
The smell begun to turn stronger and start the smokey smell, the coffee smell didnt as strong as before, and the smoke begun to be seen and filled the kitchen.
After the second crack sounded, we keep stirring for next 5 minutes before we turn off the gas.
After we finish the roasting, it time to get rid off the chaff from the frying pan. And then we use the media to putthe roasted beans.













After the roasting, here come the grinding process for coffee tasting. We grind the roasted coffee using th norm coffee grinder as coarse grind for the tasting.
And as after grinding we brew it using the boiled water (around 80 deg C).
After brewing we were using the drip filter.

The rest of the green bean and roasted beans we kept it on the air-tight container.


















It was the very fine and excited day for us to have the first cup of our very own coffee... Even it was not the best coffee, but we really appreciate the effort of each of us did, and the coffee taste good. Can compare with Starbuck Daily Brew... hahahha....
Great.....
See you in the next article. =)

Happy coffeing...

Jan 10th, 2009: Hand Picking Coffee

Just a week after we return to Singapore from Bali, we are very excited with the bean that we bought and with the guide from the book, we begin to work on what the coffee amateur did on picking, roasting, grinding until the tasting.

First, we just realized the green bean that we got from "Kopi Mawar" still need lots of job to be done. With the guide from the Japanese book for coffee knowledge, we finally figure out the type of the bad bean which need to be taken away before it roasting. Taking out bad beans as it will affect the taste.
So before we begin to roast the green bean, we have to separate the good bean from the bad one. And as we figure out, hand picking was the only option that we have.
There are 4 of us doing the hand picking on the good beans to the bad beans.
One by one the beans were picked and as per the first time, we almost on doubt that we take the bad bean as the good bean. but with clarifying from each other with the good help from the book guidance, finally we can assure that which one was the good and which was bad.
The hand picking was looked simple, but never come to our mind it was not as easy as we thought.
With the very patient, we were picking 1 Kg unpicked bean one by one.
Here are some picture from the experiment that we have on the hand picking process.















And below is the picture of the good and the bad bean. Madu atau Racun? Which one to choose? Left is the good beans and right the bad beans.














Phew...quite a work but it was great experience to learn the difference between bad beans and good beans. We ended up with red eyes, sore hands but its worth it.

After the good bean has been choosen we are ready on the roasting process. Which will be on the next blog.