This morning I spoke to a journalist on the phone who is writing about coffee in London, as well as the antipodean influence on our coffee scene.
One of the questions he asked was about the influence of Italian populations on coffee cultures. In Australia a good chunk of credit for the early rise of coffee culture there stems from the high standards of the Italian communities that quickly spread to a relatively small population and increased expectation.
Back in 2007, as I was preparing for the WBC, I decided I wanted to do something interesting with the music. I’m guessing a few of you have probably heard the music I ended up with but I thought I’d post up something else.
I have a weak spot for a childish mashup, and so I got in touch with a DJ whose mixes I like and asked him for 15 minutes of music for a coffee competition. I didn’t give much other instruction and I am very grateful for what he sent though it turned out to be a bit too coffee heavy for practical use.
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This will probably end up being quite a long post, and sorry for being a bit cryptic on here the other day. I want to explain the history of this little project, and give credit where it is due.
This morning I got up early to fly over to Dublin, to the CatEx show there. Apart from catching up with Stephen, and lots of other lovely coffee people, and catching a little of the Irish Barista Championship, I was really there to see the guys at Marco and the new machine they had on their stand.
We cupped a few coffees today, and in there were a few from Rwanda. Whenever Rwandan coffees are on the table the conversation inevitably turns at some point to potato.
For those who have no idea what I am talking about I should explain. There is a defect in coffee that is referred to as potato. It is the result of a bacterial infection of the seed, usually after being bitten by an insect carrying that bacteria. Once roasted that particular bean carrys very, very strong aromas of freshly peeled potato skins that is incredibly potent when you grind the coffee and when you brew it.
I posted about it in the predictions round up post, and judging from the number of clickthroughs it seemed many people hadn’t been aware of the project.
After Nick Cho posted a spy photo on coffeed, it seems to have pushed them into post pics of the machine themselves.
Once again pulled from Mark Prince’s twitter1 , I loved this idea and with a few inches outside it seemed inevitable the inner child would take over…
Footnotes:Stumptown are the source of one of my most troubling coffee experiences, one that still haunts and nags at me today.
No one in the coffee industry really likes decaf. We excuse its taste, we get annoyed at how fast it stales, we treat it as a second rate coffee experience. I was in that camp too for a while. Coffee no good? Well, it is decaf…..