Here is the second teaser in our upcoming TV show.
Hope you like it.

This is the second of a series of videos filmed by Brendan J Doyle in Oslo with Tim Wendelboe. Follow Broken Yellow (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube) and Tim Wendelboe for future instalments.

Broken Yellow – Norwegian Coffee TV Series w/ Tim Wendelboe

First of a series of videos filmed by Brendan J Doyle in Oslo with Tim Wendelboe. Follow Broken Yellow (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube) and Tim Wendelboe for future instalments.

Look out for full TV series coming soon…

We have spent christmas cleaning up the store a little bit and have decided that we want to get rid of equipment we don’t use anymore. Therefore we will have a garage sale in our cupping room on Saturday the 8th of January from 1pm. We do have some nice items for sale and the prices will be up for discussion.

Here is a list of items that will be for sale:

• Tampers
• French press
• Moccamaster
• Shot glasses
• Espresso Cups
• Cappuccino Cups
• Stools
• Teak table
• Water kettles
• Steaming pitcher
• Eva Solo
• Hario V60
• Other Brewing Equipment

So grab your wallet and help us get rid of the stuff we don’t need anymore.

This Christmas we will have the following opening hours:

24th to 26th of December: CLOSED
27th to 29th of December: 8.30 – 5.00 pm
30th of December: 10.00 – 5.00pm
31st of December: 8.30 – 3.00 pm
1st to 2nd of January: CLOSED

From the 3rd of January we will be open as normal.

Merry Christmas to you all.

As promised here are some more notes from our trip to Kenya last week.

After spending a whole day at the Tekangu coop, filming their processing techniques (to be launched in video soon) and handing over the drying tables we funded through our Drying table project, we went to visit some smallholder farmers to document the picking of the cherries. We visited one shamba (smallholder farm) which was by far the best one I have ever seen.

The trees looked super healthy and the farmer Mr. Eliud Kimotho delivers his coffee to the Karogoto factory. (No wonder their coffee is so tasty.)
He produces an average of 30 kg of coffee cherries per tree and had a total of 180 trees only.
Eliud started farming 10 years ago when he retired from his old work and he also grew corn, potatoes, bananas, grass for his cattle, all mainly for domestic consumption.
We were promised a bag of Mr. Eliud’s coffee to be dried on on the new drying tables at Karogoto and hopefully they will keep their word so I can taste that coffee in February.

On another Shamba we visited in Kirinyaga, the trees looked a lot more stressed, had more leaf rust and were carrying very little cherries.
This was because the farmer did not have money to buy fertilizer and copper spray as the cooperative he was a part of were not able to pre-finance his farm input. The problem with this is that in Kenya most farmers get pre-financing for farm input (fertilizer, etc) based upon the last crop yields. Since the crop yield is very low this year, the farmers will not be able to buy enough fertilizer, etc for the 2011/12 crop -the prognosis is that it will be very high in volume. That means the farmers will not be able to produce to the full potential in 2011. It is easy to forget what long term effects a bad crop can have on a farmer. As a coffee buyer we are only affected by the fluctuations in the prices and that is why I believe it is important to support the farmers also when the prices or yields are low by paying more for their best qualities.

Thursday morning we also cupped different grades.
This means we took samples from the same lot but sorted the beans in the different sizes as they are sold on auction. (AA / AB / PB / C / T / TT and UG). The results were fairly obvious, the AA was the best (biggest beans) The PB (Peaberry) and AB were fairly similar and C, T, and TT were bitter and flat and some had sour and fermenty taste. The UG (Ungraded) was by far the worst coffee I have ever tasted. It tasted like manure and rotten fruit. The aromas was similar to the ones you get when you are standing in a barn full of cows and sheep. What is shocking about these coffees is that they are actually sold.

On friday morning we drove from Nyeri to Ruiru to visit the Coffee Research Foundation.
We had just heard that they had released a new coffee varietal, called Batian (The name of the peak of Mt. Kenya,) that they spent 12 years developing. Batian is a new alternative to the not so tasty Ruiru 11 that the Research Foundation had developed in the 80′s. Both varietals are more resistant to Coffee Berry Disiease and Leaf Rust than the traditional varietals grown in Kenya, SL 28 and SL 34. The problem is that the best coffees from Kenya are normally coming from the SL varietals, so we were interested to taste the new Batian variety next to the Ruiru 11 and the SL 28 and SL 34.
When we arrived we got a tour of the CRF and also a presentation of what work they are doing there. Basically, it is a resource center for coffee in Kenya where they train farmers, analyze soil and fertilizers, develop new varietals and research and develop new agricultural practices.
The greatest part of the tour was their varietal museum. Here we got to see some amazing coffee trees, and their Coffea Ecxelsa and Liberica trees were the biggest coffee trees I have ever seen.(See biggest trees in pictures below)

They also had a lot of other varietals in their museum plot, but you can see more of them in the slide show on the bottom of this page.

After the tour we headed in to the CRF cupping lab to taste coffee. We were presented with 4 unnamed samples that we cupped before the coffees were revealed as Batian, SL 28, Ruiru 11 and a cup with a blend of Ruiru 11 and SL 28.

It turned out that I actually liket the Batian varietal the best. It was by far the sweetest and most floral and fruity. My second favourite was the blend and my 3rd favourite was the SL28. This was an unusual result but not too surprising as we were already were sceptical of the setup of the cupping. To be honest, all the coffees were very dark roasted and roasted on the same day as the cupping. The SL28 was not a good SL 28; it was both baggy and from the west part of Kenya which traditionally does not grow the best coffees. In fact all the coffees were grown in different parts of the country, so we suspected the CFR guys to set up a cupping to favour the Batian varietal as they have spent 12 years developing it. The only thing that did not surprise me with the cuping was that the Ruiru 11 was the worst coffee. This was flat and woody and very bitter.

I asked to get some samples of the Batian coffee to take home so I could cup it next to our SL28/34 from Tekangu and Mugaga, but our tour guide at CRF would not let me have it.
Regardless of that, I am very much looking forward to tasting the Batian varietal in the future as it seemed that a lot of farmers were already implementing the new plant in their fields. Hopefully it will not compromise the quality of Kenyan coffee in the future.

I will be going back to Kenya in February to buy and taste the coffees that is picked right now. More on that next year.

After the recent Nordic Barista Cup, we were lucky to be given the Bunn Trifecta to play with for 2 weeks.

I had previously only seen it at the SCAA show in April and had some good tasting brews on it but I really did not have the chance to play with it myself. Also, the recent intense focus on manual brewing methods has put the interest on machines like the Clover and the Trifecta a bit on hold. However, I was very curious to try it out, as we have been looking for a new solution to brew black coffee for our bar for some time now due to the fact that the Clover is not always giving us the results we want.

So, what is a Trifecta? I will try to sum it up for you:

1. The Trifecta is a 1-2 cup brewer that brews a filter styled coffee within 1-2 minutes.

2. It uses a fine mesh metal filter to filtrate the coffee.

3. It uses compressed air to create turbulence in the brew while brewing (stirring)

4. It uses air pressure to press the liquid through the metal filter, much like the aeropress.

5. The Trifecta allows the barista to play with dose, grind particle size, brew time, pre infusion, turbulence velocity and amount, temperature, etc. it is all repeatable by programming through an easy to operate menu.

Working with the Trifecta is not very difficult. It took me about 10 minutes to hit an extraction at about 18,5% on a 65g/l ratio with a brew time of 45 seconds. However when I tasted this cup it tasted very bitter and not good at all. I noticed that the program I was working with had a very strong turbulence that might have lead to an over extraction of the fine grinds, and although I ended up within the Gold Cup standards of extraction ratio, we must not forget that the Extract MoJo that I am using to measure extractions with is only measuring the average extraction yield.

I tried to adjust the grind coarser and prolong the brew time, and that seemed to help a lot. I also adjusted the turbulence to a minimum velocity but with several short intervals within the brew time which now was about 70 seconds. At the end I got a really sweet cup of our Cielito Lindo coffee with clarity and great aftertaste that also ended up at a 18,5% extraction.

With such a good result on the Cielito Lindo coffee I was eager to see if the Trifecta could cope with our Kenyan coffees. This turned out to be a real challenge. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to get that crisp and lively acidity in the cup that I normally get with an Aeropress or when I am cupping the coffee. Sure the coffee still got very sweet and clear, but without that firm acidity the Kenyan coffees are not that interesting to drink. I am sure it is all a matter of adjustment and trying harder, but in the short time I had to play with the Trifecta, this seemed to be my biggest hurdle.

In retrospect, regardless of acidity or not, all of our coffees came out really nice from the Trifecta. They were all sweet and clear and well defined. The repeatability was also impressive, and I think the reason for this is that once you have the brew profile programmed there is nothing you can do to screw it up. Like on the Clover, you can still affect the quality by different stirring techniques. This means that all baristas will brew a slightly different brew just because of the variation in stirring techniques (turbulence).

Would I buy one? Well to be honest I really dislike the design of the Trifecta. Putting it in a neatly designed coffee shop it looks like a tractor in a Ferrari store. Not very sexy. (It doesn’t help that it makes a lot of nasty sounds when it dispenses the final brew into the cup either.) The Trifecta is also a bit time consuming. Although the brew time is only 1 minute or less, you have to add at least 30 seconds more, because the machine has a routine it needs to go through before and after the brewing process. That means the whole process for our Kenyan coffee took about 1 minute and 40 seconds (see video below) + measuring and grinding time. Although this is not a lot of time, you most certainly can make an Aeropressed coffee in less time and the brew would be equally tasty.

The price is also a bit steep. I could buy a lot of Aeropresses for that price and still afford a high quality water boiler that is more useable as well.

Despite this, I still think the Trifecta really has potential. If I was running a chain of coffee shops, I would definitely  consider installing a Trifecta. Why? It doesn’t take a huge amount of training in order to operate one and the repeatability and the results are great. It is a really good way of making freshly brewed black coffee, especially if you compare it tho what most coffee shops are doing today, which is brewing “todays coffee” on huge filter brewers. We all know what a stale coffee from a half full air pot tastes like and with the Trifecta you will never have that problem, ever again.

To sum it up, the Trifecta is a great tool, but not a necessity. Especially if you feel you are already mastering the “brew by the cup” concept. I still would like to see the Trifecta in action in more places as I really enjoyed some of the brews I made on it.

(In case you are wondering we went for the Aeropress and an Über boiler to replace our Clover. This will happen in 4-5 weeks as we are waiting for the Über boiler to be delivered.)

Trifecta brewing from Tim Wendelboe on Vimeo.

Yesterday I got a link sent to me by a good friend and coffee enthusiast in San Francisco. The link is to an Internet forum called Home Barista that is basically a discussion forum for coffee enthusiasts from around the world. I was a bit surprised to read this post on a forum created by and for coffee lovers, so I felt I had to reply in order to educate our customers and also to try to explain that not all coffee companies are the same.

Transparency

A lot of high quality driven roasters, including ourselves, preach that transparency is the most important part of our trade, but rarely do we actually get to see the numbers in the coffee industry. Sustainable Harvest is one of the few companies that are trying to do something about this through their Relationship Information Tracking System.

Cup of Excellence is also a great example of where consumers can get full traceability of the coffee trade.

I have been trying to establish a traceability system of our own and also to develop a contract that shows what the farmer gets when we pay USD 3 pr. lb (453g) FOB for coffee. We do have the contracts in Kenya as this is cooperative coffees created by hundreds of farmers. For all the other coffees we have bought this year we feel we don’t need it as we are communicating directly with the farmers anyway. We are still far away from being 100% transparent but hopefully in the future we will be able to get a system for it that enables our customers to get all the info they need.

As a temporary solution I have started to systemize all the information about our coffee purchases from the end of last year, and to my surprise we are actually paying a higher average price for our coffee than I thought we were.

Coffee prices

For the past months we have read that the C market price for coffee is at it’s highest in over 10 years at about USD 1,6 pr. lb. (453 g) of green coffee.

Although this is not a very high price for coffee it is still very positive that it is going up, as the price has been way too low for the last 10 years, forcing a lot of producers to start growing other cash crops in order to survive.

As you all probably know, we do not trade coffee based on the C market price and we do not sign future contracts based upon today’s prices like most of the bigger roasteries do. We buy the coffee direct from exporters or farmers and negotiate the price based on taste and quality. We negotiate with the farmer and the exporter. Not with a broker. We also have gentlemen’s agreements with farmers that if they continue their work with quality, we will be there to support them by buying their coffees.

As promised, I will try to do an effort for transparency, so here are the prices in USD pr. lb that we have payed for our coffees FOB  (free on board) in 2010:

Panama, Hacienda la Esmeralda:______ 26,50 $ + packing

Honduras, Cielito Lindo 2010 COE:_____  8,10 + packing

El Salvador, Las Palmas 2010 COE:_____ 5,31 + packing

Honduras, Naciemento:______________  3,50

Honduras, Finca El Pantanal:___________3,00

Guatemala, Santa Ana:_______________ 3,50

Kenya, Mugaga:_____________________ 4,77

Kenya, Tekangu:____________________  5,23

Of course these lots are not the same size. The Esmeralda was only about 120kg for instance. So the average price per lb. so far this year is actually USD 5,06.

Adding to the cost

As you may know, this is just for the green coffee. We also need to  pay for the shipping and handling of the coffee before it gets to our roastery. Shipping cost can vary greatly depending on the origin of the coffee. The price of the coffee gets about 25 to 30 % higher for the coffee when we include these costs. On average this means the price for the coffee when it has arrived to Norway is about USD 6,58 pr.lb.

We also need to cover our travel expenses that we spend when we travel around the world to find these coffees and visit the producers.

So far this year I have been to Kenya and Honduras, and I am going to Brazil next week, to Colombia in October and visiting Kenya again in November. That adds up to 60 days of traveling and a cost around NOK 120.000,- or about USD 20.200,- only for 2010.

My accountant may think I am crazy spending so much on traveling, but I think it is totally necessary and a good investment for the future. We are building relationships with serious farmers and we are trying to secure a good supply of great coffees in the future. We want to develop long term relationships with the farmers, not have one night stands with them.

After the coffee has arrived to Norway we still need to roast it, so you have to add the  cost of production, rent needs to be payed as well as salaries, delivery truck, electricity, maintenance, etc, etc. Of course the cost of living is higher in Norway than in Colombia and therefore we need to add a bigger margin to the coffee than a farmer in a producing country needs in order to make a living. For example, a beer in Colombia is about 1 USD. In Norway a beer in a bar is about 10 USD.

Is coffee expensive?

Some people think our coffees are expensive, and I understand that they believe so, especially if they compare us to a coffee sold in a supermarket. But if you taste the difference and understand how much work and effort is behind these coffees, I still believe that our coffees are cheap. It all boils down to about NOK 5,- or about USD 0,9 pr. cup. Compare that to what you pay for a bottle of water here in Norway (USD 5) where we have plenty of super clean water free from the tap, I think there is no need to discuss whether coffee is expensive or not.

Why is some coffees worth more than others?

Because quality of the coffee varies. Not only from farm to farm but within the same farm we can sometimes find a huge range of different qualities and varietals.

Take Cielito Lindo and Naciemento for instance. These 2 farms are neighbouring farms run by father and son. They grow coffee from 1500 to 1800 masl. in 2 very different types of soil. They grow 5 different Arabica varietals (Pacas, Catuai, Catimor, Geisha and Bourbon) These trees produce (like all other fruit trees) both very mature coffee cherries and also unripe and cherries that fall to the ground and get mouldy and rotten. Of course this will produce coffee of different quality.

Next year we will be there during their harvest in order to help them separate the different varietals. We are going to taste the coffees blind and  score them according to the COE cupping form. We will pay more for the better tasting lots and less for the lots that get lower scores. Would we do this if there wasn’t a difference? I think not. So, why do we do this? Because we want to encourage the farmers (above: Jobneel and Extreberto) to grow more of the qualities we like so that we can get more of this coffee in future years.

Simple and easy.

Why pay more for coffee?

Well, I see it as an investment. The farmers are able to invest in necessary equipment in order to raise the quality and they are able to save a little money and make a decent living. If we treat them well today, they will treat us well tomorrow.

I  believe that we cannot continue to exploit the coffee producers. Sooner or later they will stop producing coffee and that is a scenario I would not like to see. So, if you love coffee and would like to continue to be able to appreciate its wonderful flavours and diversity, then choose quality coffee before cheap quantity coffee.

I also think all roasters need to practice transparency in a greater way. It is time we practice what we preach so that more people understand what we are all about.

Hopefully this post was of some help to clarify what we are doing and trying to do in the coffee world. I could go on and on writing about this, but instead I encourage you to leave comments in our comments section and I will make sure I reply as soon as I can.

I know I have been writing about the La Marzocco Strada before, but back then I did not have a lot of experience using the machine.

Not that I have a lot of experience now either, after only playing and working with it for some weeks. To be honest, I haven’t had the time to use the machine as much as I would have liked, but I did get to use it during our 3 year anniversary and I was the only one using it for the whole day, profile-pumping out about 300 espressos from the 3 groups. I have also managed to make some terrible shots on the machine as well as some super delicate and sweet shots. (More about that later.)

Since this La Marzocco EP3 is a prototype, there are a lot of details that needs to be changed. I am not going to bore you with all that stuff, but I did send a 3 page long document to Paola and Roberto, the engineers at La Marzocco, and I got a great reply from them telling me that they are on the case in most of my comments.

So, what are my thoughts after using the machine in a more realistic environment?

• Working with pressure profiles, when it comes to taste,  is very difficult. It changes the taste of the espresso so much that you can get anything from syrupy sweet espressos to more elegant and transparent shots. It is also very easy to make really bad tasting shots. I no longer know what I want my espressos to taste like. It is very frustrating! Therefore I think one needs to have a clear vision of what the espresso should taste like before one starts playing with profiles.

• Playing with the electronic paddle is very easy. The paddle is super responsive and allows you to change the pressure with great accuracy, once you get the hang of it.

• When experimenting with different pressure profiles, I always record them, meaning I am always programming the pressure profile when I experiment, as it is extremely difficult to make the exact same profile manually from shot to shot. When programming / recording, you are able to reproduce the profile you just made as many times as you want. But does it work when it comes to taste? See next point..

• When using a pre-programmed profile, one has to be super consistent in dosing in order to get the same results. I struggled a lot more getting consistent results with my blend than I did with the Single Origin coffee. Probably because the blend consists of different coffees and you will always get different beans in the filter from shot to shot. It is definitely more noticeable on the Strada as opposed to the FB80, probably because the coffees respond to pressure profiles differently.

• A profile programmed for one coffee on a Wednesday does not necessarily work with the same coffee on Saturday. The coffee degasses and this changes the taste a lot. I had to totally change the pressure profile from Wednesday to Saturday even if I was using the same coffee from the same roasted batch.

• Playing with the Strada is definitely very difficult when it comes to taste. Maybe there should be a default pressure profile that is similar to what you would get on a FB80, pre programmed, so that baristas could always use that as a standard reference to go after? I know the La Marzocco team is working on some standard factory default profiles that will help you get started. Realistically I know that time is expensive and also a thing we do not have enough of in our coffee shop. I spent about 2 hours tasting maybe 40 or 50 shots of coffee on the morning of our 3 year anniversary in order to make some decent profiles for the 2 coffees we were serving from the Strada. Of course with some experience you will get better at developing profiles more easily, but in order to make all my employees understand the machines and the effect of pressure profiling, I think we need to train and taste a lot together. It is going to take a lot of time and effort to become a true Strada player, so this machine is definitely not for the lazy barista or the cheap bar owner.

• Would I buy a Strada? YES, I can’t wait to get my hands on one! The possibilities are fascinating and when you nail a profile

the taste

is just absolutely fantastic. It has made me become enthusiastic about espresso again. The shots I have made with our Kenyan Mugaga espresso has been by far the best espresso I have ever tasted made on a Kenyan coffee, Ever!! The brew profile that worked for this coffee and actually has worked for some days now, has been like this:

Parameters:

Brew water temperature: 93,5 C +/- o,5 C

Pressure profile:

1-10 seconds: slowly ramp up from 0 to 7 bars

11 – 13 seconds: brew at 8 bars

14 – 20 seconds: brew steadily at 7 bars (slowly raising the paddle as pressure decreases during brewing due to less resistance in the coffee puck)

20 – 25 seconds: Ramp down to 4 bars and then shut off.

(This was an attempt to replicate on a blog post. I might post some videos later)

I haven’t measured the weight of the shot nor the coffee. The espresso is not short but normal, so I am guessing about 25+ ml per shot and the wight of the ground coffee might be abut 18 to 19 grams as Kenyan grounds tends to be quite dense and heavy.

The flavour profile of this espresso is:

Aroma: Strikingly winy and fruity. Intense!
Acidity: Super balanced and refreshing. Like eating very ripe fruit. Winy like in light red wine.
Mouthfeel: Very delicate. Not heavy but lively and light. The shot is still concentrated in flavour yet texture is somewhat between a french press brew and an espresso.
Flavour: Very intense and winy fruit flavour. Juicy berry aromas. Tropical fruit in the end.
Finish: Sweet and lingering. No harsh bitterness like in a lot of SO Kenyan shots I have had before and that is much more present when pulling this coffee on a FB80.

We will be having a Strada party in our bar tomorrow where some fellow coffee enthusiasts and I will be playing with the machine. The machine is on trial for a couple of more weeks in our bar, before we have to send it back to Italy. Feel free to ask questions in our comments section on this post, and I will be happy to answer. (If I know the answer).

After a long flight over the Icelandic volcano and spending an unwanted day in Panama waiting for my flight to Honduras, I finally made it to San Pedro Sula, 36 hours behind schedule. Nevertheless, my plan to visit Cielito Lindo was not affected, and I have to admit that I was very excited but also a bit afraid that my expectations were too high before my visit to the farm we have bought coffee from twice at the Cup of Excellence auction. I guess that not being able to communicate directly with the farmer and also hoping that he would be the “perfect farmer” was making this visit extra exciting and nerve wrecking for me.

Afer a 2 hour drive from San Pedro Sula, I finally met with Mr. Extreberto’s son who kindly showed me around his farm and then his father’s farm. I have to say that not only is their coffee beautiful, but it is grown in one of the most beautiful farms I have ever been to. The landscape is breathtaking and really impressive. I spent over 4 hours walking from 1500 m.a.sl. to 1800 m.a.sl. struggeling to get both up and down because of the extremely steep hills. I can only imagine how hard it must be carrying a lot of coffee on your shoulders walking up and down these hills, and Mr. Extreberto does it every day at the age of 71.  To be honest, I was exhausted after the first 100 meters, but the beautiful scenery just made me want to see more.

Well, enough of the romantic rant. To my surprise they were still picking coffee on the farm. The climate has been changing in Honduras during the past years, and we are starting to see a similar situation to what Kenya and Colombia is having with 2 harvests per year. At Cielito Lindo they start picking coffee in november and they finish in may. That is a very long harvest and by the looks of it they are going to have a tiny harvest in late august as well, due to some rains that occured some months ago.

Another interesting thing is that they grow a lot of different varieties, and have competed in the Cup of Excellence with great results both with their Catuaí and their Catimor varietals. Up until now they have normally been blending these 2 varietals, but I suggested that they separate the varietals next year, so that we will be able to taste them side by side. They also grow some Bourbon and Pacas and are looking in to other varietals too. The biggest issue with separating these varietals from each other is not during the picking, but the lack of drying space makes it difficult not to mix them up. They need to invest in new solar dryers (raised drying beds) as they have very limited drying space. Hopefully we will be able to help them invest in this by purchasing some more of their coffee this year.

I have asked for some samples of their harvest, and apart from the coffee they have delivered for the Cup of Excellence it looks like they will have 20 more bags for us to buy if the quality is satisfying. So I am very happy that we have the opportunity to continue buying coffee from Mr. Extreberto and his son, and hopefully we will see more of their coffees in the future.

Well, that was a short report from a very interesting day. I am absolutely beat after a long day at the farm and a 5 hour drive from Cielito Lindo to Santa Rosa, Copan, where I will be staying for 2 days cupping coffee and visiting some other farmers. On monday th Cup of Excellence is on, and I can’t wait to taste all those coffees.

More pictures below.