Our December hours are:
22nd, 23rd : 08:00 – 18:00
24th, 25th, 26th : Closed
27th, 28th :11:00 – 17:00
29th, 30th : 10:00 – 17:00
31st : 10:00 – 15:00
1st January : Closed

Please note, from 1st January 2009 our opening hours for weekdays will be 08:30 – 17:00

We are glad to announce our new member of staff is Ms. Stine Bang.

Stine used to manage the Stockfleth’s branch in Tinghuset and has been working as head of coffee and store manager for United Bakeries at Majortstuen.

Stine is a very dedicated coffee professional, and we are very happy to have her on our team.

Our final 2 films on espresso have been uploaded to our resource page under videos.

In fim 6 you will find recipes for classic espresso based drinks. In the 7th and last film we show you how to clean and maintain your espresso machine and grinder.

We really hope the films can help you get closer to great espresso every time you make one.

Finally, films 4 and 5 are posted under videos in our resource page.

This time the films are about milk steaming and latte art.

We hope you like them.

Friday we hosted an Ethiopia coffee tasting together with Supreme Roastworks and Solberg & Hansen.

The shop was packed with invited guests that eagerly tasted every single drop of coffee in the cups.

10 different Ethiopian coffees were tasted and I think the coffees from Ninety plus coffee were the ones that stood out.

The 3 roasteries involved had also roasted the same lot of coffee, which was a Shakiso natural processed coffee from a development project near the city of Shakiso in Ethiopia. This was very interesting as the 3 different roasteries had very different styles of roasting and the coffees vere quite different in taste although the green coffee was the same. The one roasted by Solberg & Hansen was 2 days fresher than the other coffees, but showed great intensity but lacked a bit of acidity and clarity. The one roasted at our roastery was more light, clean and elegant but lacked a bit of the sweetness that Supreme Roastworks brought out. There were a lot of different opinions of which coffee was the best among the 20 people that tasted the coffees. And that really shows that when it comes to great coffee we can never agree of what is a perfect cup of coffee, because there are so many opinions and styles to consider.

Here are some pictures from the event:
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This is now our new website with new state of the art integrated blog and newsfeed.
Make sure you subscribe to this new hi-tech blog instead of the old blogger blog that will rest in peace from now on.

We have also uploaded the 3rd film we have made. This time it is about espresso extraction.
Visit our page filed under resource to have a look at it.

Here is the second film in our production.
The film is about adjusting the espresso grinder.
We hope you like it.

Our national television NRK sent a very interesting and critical documentary about fair trade yesterday.
You can watch it here

Although we endorse the principals of sustainable trading and also care about the welfare of the workers that in our case pick our coffee, we have never been huge fans of the fair trade organization.

The reason for this is because we believe it does not benefit the farmer in long term, because there is too little focus on the quality of the coffee and the certification is too expensive and the control system is not efficient.
We have also experienced that most fair trade stamped coffee is of poor quality.

Therefore we have a different take on the principals of fair trade:
We pay more for better quality and try to create a relationship with the coffee farmers in order to make them focus on quality of the coffee as well as for their workers. You can only get the farmer and the picker to do a better job if you pay them well for it.

An example of this is our project in Colombia with Finca La Lomita. We are currently paying USD 2,50 per pound of green coffee for Mr. Alvaro Diaz’ coffee which is over USD 1,20 above the market price and the fair trade price. We know that Mr. Alvaro Diaz is getting his money and we know he pays his workers well.
How do we know? We communicate with him and we visit him and talk to him and his neighbours as well as with the cooperative he works with.

Although we are paying more for a better coffee, we cannot call the coffee “fair trade coffee”. Despite this my conscience is a hell of a lot better.

Here is another film that was made by Mediaplanet a month ago.
It is not part of our film series, but I thought you might enjoy it anyway.

(And, yes, I had cold during the shooting of this film..)

We are very happy to present a series of short films about espressopreparation and milk steaming basics. The films are made in assosciation with espressospesialisten in Norway and will be published on their and our website.

The films were actually shot over a year ago, but due to my busy schedule and some new adittions to the family of the editor, it has taken a lot of time to get them finished.

Credits and thank you to Patrick Watz from espressospesialisten to give us the kick in the ass so that we finally made our film plans become reality.

Our very own Ola Brattås, who has a history of being a film director, is currently in the editing room to put his final touch on the films.
Therefore we will launch the films one by one as they get ready.

Here is the first one:

Of course it is in Norwegian at this point, but we might have to translate and dub them in English in the future.

If you liked the first film, make sure you pop in to our blog every day during the following 2 weeks and you will get more…