We now have a new espresso blend for sale in the store.

It consists of:

50 % Suaza, Huila, Colombia. Wet processed.
35 % Fazenda Primavera, Brazil. Wet processed.
15 % San Antonio, Guatemala CoE. Wet processed.

Go here to read more about it.

We are sold out of coffee from Fazenda Sao Judas Tadeu, and therefore we have adjusted the espresso blend a little bit while we are waiting for new lots to arrive.

We will launch a newly arrived fresh crop from Kenya on our 2 year anniversary on Saturday…

Go here to read more about the coffee.

We are almost sold out of Amor de Dios as well and therefore we have changed our espresso blend slightly.

The Tim Wendelboe espresso, spring 2009 - blend,  consists of 3 newly arrived coffees:

50% Fazenda Barreiro, Brazil. Natural processed.
25% Sao Judas Tadeu, Brazil. Pulped natural.
25% Amor de Dios, Bolivia. Wet processed.

The blend tastes totally different from our last 3 blends that have been very fruity and acidic. This time we have taken a complete different direction towards chocolaty and caramelly flavours. You should really try it with milk as well. Especially if you like chocolate milk.

For more info and taste description, please visit our TW-espresso page filed under the resources menu button.

Along with the new espresso blend, we will also start roasting the newly arrived coffee from Brazil on Tuesday the the 14th of April. To read more about the coffee from Fazenda São Judas Tadeu, click here.

We are running out of coffee from Finca La Lomita and the Aricha #32 is now sold out. Fortunately, we can assure you that some great new lots will arrive shortly. In the meanwhile we have a new espresso blend being roasted from Tuesday the 10th of March.

For more information, visit the TW espresso page in our resource section.

A week has passed and finally I have time to write on the blog again after some wild time on the countryside in Kenya.

It has been a fantastic week where I have cup tasted about 200 to 300 different coffees, if not more. Some terrible, but many of the coffees I have tasted have been fantastic.
I have been traveling with Thompson Owens (picture) from Sweet Marias and Peter Dupont (second picture) from The Coffee Collective during most of the week. We have had many great discussions and talks which have been very educational and inspiring for me.

I promised you a report, so here it is:

Monday was spent at Dormans head office tasting countless cups of various coffees with various qualities. I did not really find anything spectacular, as the samples were all control samples of the coffees that were going to be auctioned on the Tuesday at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. The coffees on the table were selected because Dormans was unsure of its quality after cupping the lots the previous week.
Either way, the cupping session was really good in order to calibrate my palate for the next days of cupping.

In the afternoon we visited Coffee Management Services (CMS) in Ruiru. We met with Mr. Kamau. CMS is a company educating their clients in good agricultural practices. Their clients are mainly smallholder farmers which are members of Cooperatives. CMS also work as a marketing agent for the coops, which means looking for potential buyers for the farmer’s coffee.

I am not going to explain in detail all that CMS does in this post, but basically CMS will help us to set up a direct trade model with a coop in Kenya and provide us with the documents and transparency so that we are sure that the farmers are getting payed their money. This is especially important as we try to buy the highest quality coffees for a premium price.

We heard about some cases in Kenya where farmers have not got their money yet after the 2007/2008 sales. I can’t even express how disrespectful and harmful that is to the farmers and the coffee trade!

CMS however guarantees the money will go to the coop within 14 days after the sale has taken place, and after talking with a lot of coops and farmers, they often get payed before the standard 14 days.

In the afternoon we went to the New Gatukuyu Coop Society where we had a very nice meeting with the chairman of the coop and his fellow farmers. Meeting farmers eye to eye is very rewarding and we had some great conversations with them about how to improve the quality of the lives of the farmers as well as the quality of the coffee they produce.

Tuesday featured some more cupping at Dormans and also a visit to their factory where we could see how they will coloursort, handsort and vacuum pack our coffees, once we have bought them.

In the afternoon we visited the Gikanda Farmers Coop. Society and the Ndaroini and Gichathaini factories (wet mills) where they have processed some of the best Kenyan coffees this year. Their coffee always stood out on the different cupping tables during the week. Although all the good coffee has already been processed, we managed to get a glimpse of some sorting and weighing of Mbuni coffee (picture below), which is terrible tasting natural processed coffee made out of the leftovers from the harvest.

On Wednesday we visited the huge Central Kenya Coffee Mill in Nyeri where the parchment is removed from the beans, beans are graded, sorted, and cleaned from any foreign matter before they are packed in burlap for storing before the weekly auction in Nairobi or packed in containers for shipping. We also cupped a lot of great coffees from Kiawamururu, Gichathaini, Ndaroini, Kangocho, etc. In the afternoon we visited Kiawamururu which was a great factory. No wonder they produce great coffees!

At the end of the day we had a meeting with the Karagoto coop society, where they have produced the best Kenyan coffee I tasted on this trip. The coffee is produced at the Tegu factory / wet mill which is part of this society, and I will for sure blog more about this coffee on a later stage as I have already bought 19 bags of it.

Thursday and Friday were spent cupping all the best coffees we had found on the trip and a visit to the Kiariaini factory, which was a bit dissapointing compared to all the great factories we had already been to. Therefore it was good to get back to Nairobi for some serious sun bathing by the pool.

Next stop for me is Ethiopia for a week of sightseing of probably the greatest coffee producing country in the world..

See the slideshow below for more pictures from Kenya.

We have got a new Indian coffee from Badnekhan estate in store.
Badnekhan Estate is located in Karnataka in Chikmagalur in India and has won the Flavour of India Award several times. It is a very clean and sweet Indian coffee with aromas and flavours remniscent of nuts, cocoa and cedar wood.
The coffee is very subtle and is not overly bitter like many other Indian coffees tend to be. This is actually quite a delicate and sweet coffee to be an Indian.

We have also updated Tim Wendelboe espresso since some new coffees have arrived.
The new blend consists of:

40% Badnekhan Estate, washed SLn9, from Karnataka, India.
45% Mununga, washed SL28 from Kenya
15% Aricha #7, Naturl processed coffee from Aricha, Ethiopia

The flavourprofile of the new blend is:

Aroma: Sweet smell of strawberry jam, chocolate and nuts on the nose.
Acidity: Balanced mature acidity
Mouthfeel: Heavy sweetness, creamy texture and long bittersweet aftertaste.
Flavour: Cocoa and strawberry jam. very sweet and soft in the mouth. Aftertaste starts with fruityness and ends with sweet cocoa.

I really hope you enjoy the blend and the new Indian coffee. Personally I think this is the best espresso blend we have done so far.

Also, the Honduras Cup of Excellence coffee we bought is right around the corner, so it seems we will have a wonderful fall with great tasting coffees.

Yesterday we released our new version of Tim Wendelboe Espresso.
We are moving more and more towards buying smaller coffee lots and have decided that Tim Wendelboe espresso should reflect the coffee season that we currently are within at all time.
This means that the blend not only will change more often but the taste will also be very different from blend to blend.

This time the blend consists of 2 Colombian coffees that I came across when I went to Colombia in November. In adittion we have added some Ethiopian coffee to compliment the floral notes in the colombian coffee.

The blend is now:
50% Tarqui Quituro, a washed coffee from a farm located in Huila in Colombia.
30% Finca La lomita, a washed coffee from Huila, Colombia (see previous post)
20% Bera Tadicho, washed coffee from a small coop located in Dale region in Ethiopia.

The flavour profile of this blend is as follows:
Aroma: Sweet smell of red berries an jasmin.
Acidity: Mature and ripe fruity acidity.
Mouthfeel: Soft, sweet medium bodied. Bittersweet grapefruit-like aftertaste.
Flavour: Red ripe berries, citrus and elderflower.

The roast profile is slightly different from our previous blends.
We have to roast the Sidamo coffee from Ethiopia separately but we roast the 2 Colombians together. We do this because we want to preserve the acidity and floral notes in the Ethiopian coffee and therefore we roast this it faster and lighter to just before 2nd crack begins. The colombians are roasted a bit slower and darker at 10 seconds within 2nd crack in order to get a full bodied and sweet espresso without roasting away the fruitiness of these two coffees.

Brew parameters for this blend should be close to :
• Brew water temperaure 93,5°C +/- 0,5°C
• 9 bar pressure
• about. 25 - 28 ml including crema per espresso.
• 9 – 9,5 grams of coffee per espresso (18,5 gram per dubbel)
• Ekstraction time 25 – 28 sekunder.

We hope you will enjoy he new blend. It is way different in taste profile than our previous blends, but we hope it will be a positive experience for most of our loyal customers.

Please give us feedback if you like it or not.

We have got a new lot from Brazil to replace our beloved coffee from Fazenda Santa Alina.
Our new Brazil coffee is a natural processed Yellow Bourbon from Fazenda Rainha.
I visited the farm last may and Took really good notes from their production which was quite impressive, but I won’t go too much into details. The coffee is extremely sweet with a nice texture and body. Slightly more on the fruity side which is different from the more almondy and peanutty Santa Alina.

The new Tim Wendelboe espresso blend will replace our current blend within the week and will consist of the following coffees:

50% Fazenda Rainha, Brazil, Naturally Processed
26% Bera Tadicho, Ethiopia, Washed.
24% Korokoro, Kenya, washed.

The new blend is more fruity than the current one mainly due to the Brazil. It has an aroma that reminds me of cherries and marsipan. It tastes similar to eating a cocktail cherry dipped in nut-liquor. The espresso is really sweet, creamy and has a sweet lingering aftertaste.

Hopefully you will all like it.

Ps. we will start selling the Fazenda Rainha as a single estate coffee in February.

Da er espressoblandingen ferdig og i produksjon. Kaffebønna i Tromsø var den aller første som sikret seg 20 kilo. Dessuten har Ricardo Draaisma bestemt seg for å bruke blandingen i en intern baristakonkurranse for studentsamskipnaden.
Dette er en blanding som passer best med mindre mengder melk eller helst uten melk i det hele tatt. Jeg kommer helt sikkert til å lage en blanding til når jeg åpner sjappa, og litt av grunnen til at jeg venter med blanding nummer 2 er at jeg ønsker å involvere min kommende brennerimester i prosessen.
Om du er interessert i å kjøpe, er det bare å ta kontakt. Jeg brenner kaffe en gang i uka inntil jeg åpner. Det er bare å legge inn en bestilling så blir herligheten levert så fort som overhodet mulig. Bestilling kan foretas over e-mail tim@timwendelboe.no eller på telefon 91 84 30 89.

My espressoblend is finished and I am allready roasting for my first customers. Kaffebønna in Tromsø was the first one to get 20 kilos delivered fresh from the roaster. Also barista Ricardo Draaisma is using my blend in an internal barista competition for student cafes. This espressooblend is quite mild and sweet. Therefore I recommend to use it in drinks that does not contain a huge amount of milk or no milk at all. I will for sure make another blend which will be more for the mik based espresso drinks, but I am awaiting this process so that my coming roastmaster can be a part of it too.

If you are interested in purchasing some coffee, please contact me on e-mail: tim@timwendelboe.no. I roast once a week and only by order to ensure you the freshest possible coffee.