Hoerai hoerai! Back open next monday..

Dear all, I’m proud to announce you that the shop will be back open next Monday 26 October. Please feel free to say hallo and enjoy with some coffee, it will be a pleasure to have you..

Jens

Bert Van Wassenhove: Belgian cupping champion! What a hilarious show!

Nice show Bert in The San Marco village in Aartselaar. You did a fantastic job at the SCAE Belgium championships! (image by Anneleen Van Giel)

Resident artist.. Tine Lejeune

Copyright above image: Tine Lejeune

For the first time we have a resident artist in the bar. It’s work from Tine Lejeune who studies at Sint Lucas in Antwerp. She made three collages out of paper material with a lot of depth and hidden nuances. Expect a lot from this lady in the future!

Kleine groene zak!

A nice alludation of Roeland on the roast of the week!

Burundi!! And a little green bag! Ooh yeah..

While writing we had already some beans passing the grinder the past few weeks. One week ago we had a Burundi, from the ‘Tanganyika’ region on the grinder which was roasted by Caffenation. These beans could be described as strong, wild, earthy, with a full body. Picture below from this link:

Sweet Maria’s has a good summary about this coffee country:

Burundi coffee bears striking resemblence to neighbouring Rwanda, in both cup character, but also the culture surrounding coffee. Burundi is a small landlocked country at the crossroads of East and Central Africa, straddling the crest of Nile-Congo watershed. Sandwiched between Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, Burundi has beautiful Lake Tanganyika for much of its western border. This is a country dominated by hills and mountains, with considerable altitude variation, from the lowest point at 772 meters (Lake Tanganyika)to the top of Mount Heha at 2670 MASL.

The first arabica coffee tree in Burundi was introduced by the Belgians in the early 1930s and has been growing in the country ever since. Coffee cultivation is an entirely small holder based activity with over 800.000 families directly involved in coffee farming with a total acreage of 60.000 hectares in the whole country with about 25 millions of coffee tree.

Burundi’s coffee, like Rwanda’s, is primarily Bourbon varietal, grown at high altitudes ranging from 1250 to 2000 MASL. Like Rwanda, coffee is planted by smallholder farmers; each farmer is tendering abount 50 to 250 trees. Historically, the coffee was sold as bulked “Ngoma Mild” coffee (an Ngoma is a traditional drum). The farmers bring coffee to washing stations (wet-mills) and theses are organized into “SOGESTAL” management groups, each with about 30 stations in them. Coffee has been sold only by mixing all the stations in the SOGESTAL into one big lot, so separating qualities was not possible. Several years ago, the coffee market was “liberalized” which means that individual washing stations can keep the coffee separate, and it can be marketed to buyers by station, and by “day lots”, the harvest for a short period of time. With this comes the new possibility to find the gems of Burundi coffee that were formerly mixed in with the not-so-good lots. So new possibilities are emerging in Burundi, and it is a coffee to watch!

The coffee for this week on our grinder is a blend made by Caffenation consisting completely out of organic certified beans. It’s a three bean blend composing out of:

• Dominican Republic: Santo Domino Organic
  
• Bolivia: Organic
  
• Ethiopia: Mokka Harrar Longberry organic
  

The blend is called “A little green bag”, and is very well balanced in flavours, with notes of dark chocolate,  sweet syrupy caramel and nuts. Definitely something I like a lot..

So come and see what is in the cup! I’m sure you like it..

Espresso of the week (29)

This week we feature a bean from Ethiopia, that is grown in the Limu area. Limu coffee is renowned for its good cup, sweet, spicy/winey flavor and balanced body, with a dark chocolate after-taste. The beans are medium in size and have a distinctive rounded shape.

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This bean is roasted to a City+ degree according to the Sweet Maria’s pictorial roasting guide. Come and see what is in the cup!

Pimp style! New La Marzocco Linea 3 group in the shop..

Yes yes! After looking around for a while for an upgrade for the Faema Smart I was able to do a good deal for a second hand (but as good as new)  La Marzocco Linea. This machine can be called a historical classic, it definitely helped to establish the independent coffee scene throughout the world.

This machine will put us a on level higher of quality due to the dual boiler system which gives us more temperature consistency, even when pulling some glasses of tea. And at the same time keeping up a constant steaming pressure, so steaming up pitchers will be easier.

One of the options for the machine we will have installed are Portaflon portafilters, this will give a much more constant flavour profile of the shots throughout the day. This Portaflon portafilters prevent the build-up of coffee oils in the portafilter which steadily occurs in a normal brass one. These build-up gives a rancid and bitter taste to your shot, and that is something we don’t like.

Also due to a dual boiler system the group heads will no longer be running too hot, with again a lot of build-up of coffee oils. So overall flavour consistency will improve vastly.

Normal the machine will be in town on Thursday or so feel welcome to come and take a look at this beauty.. For more specifications you can download here the product folder of the Linea.

Hell Yeah!

Peter Hernou is World Latte Art Champion 2009

Belgium is making a good statement in the coffee world. We now have a world latte art champion, Peter Hernou did a great job. Here you see him on the third place from the left. We had an excellent year on the different championships. On the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) website you can follow the progress that Belgium has made over the different years.

For his show you can see the clip over here.

Monsooned Malabar.. (27)

New on our espresso from the week is from this moment on, a Monsooned Malabar from India roasted to a Full City Plus level, which gives an oily appearance to the bean. And gives it a drinking experience close to the Italian Roast we had a few weeks ago..

Map from Sweet Maria’s (Thanks guys)

From Wikipedia we get the following: Monsooned Malabar is a particularly famous variety of the Arabica coffee bean that is produced in Malabar in Karnataka, Southern India, and partially spoilt through exposure to damp atmosphere during the monsoon season, giving rise to the name. It has a very rich, smooth flavour, and particularly strong aroma.

This way of producing the coffee was discovered by accident when a cargo of coffee beans aboard a wooden-hulled ship acquired a unique flavour after being somewhat exposed to the elements during a particular monsoon while negotiating the Cape of Good Hope. Exposed to the monsoon winds for a few weeks the coffee flavours become richer and smoother. Nowadays the process is somewhat different. Now it is done by storing the coffee at the coast taking on the salty sea breeze over a 6 month period. This dehydrates the coffee beans, creating the traditional profile.

This aroma can be further discribed as full bodied, very low acidity with a spicy, musky, woody flavour.

Come and see what is in the cup!

Tamper Tantrum.. Fun fun fun!

Stephen Leighton from Has Bean Coffee in Ireland, who has a video blog for a while now (called In My Mug) where he discusses various bits out of the coffee world and the 2009 barista champion of Ireland Colin Harmon have joined their forces in a video blog where they discus some issues of the coffee culture like the Cup of Excellence, brewing techniques, new toys (the uber boiler), farms and coffee lots of which they’re particularly proud. A cool format for coffee lovers who want to be up to date about what’s currently going on in coffee land..

The video blog is called Tamper Tantrum. It’s like a long player movie, where two guys are having some fun!

If you have some time.. And a true lover of coffee..