Espresso Organica

So it has been about 2 weeks since I've made a blog entry, sorry about that, it has been a busy time with work.

I haven't kicked any major goals on the coffee front recently, but I did stop off at a cafe I had been meaning to try for a little while now, Espresso Organica, so I thought I would give it a quick review, for those who might be interested.

Espresso Organica are on Major's Bay Road, Concord. They roast their coffee in-house and rotate single-origin (SO) coffees regularly, dependent on availability. I tried their SO coffee as an espresso, and their house blend as both a cappuccino, and a latte.

The cappuccino came out looking like this:

A bloody good start.

 Tasting Notes: F*cking awesome.

The milk had perfect - PERFECT texture and their house blend worked very well in a milk-based coffee. The flavour was dominant enough to shine through the milk, though admittedly I ordered a double-shot for the latte after this because I like a bit of kick in my coffee. There was zero bitterness.

Another good test; my partner, as mentioned previously, enjoys a very weak coffee. Typically this amounts to pulling a Ristretto shot (15ml from a single-shot basket) into a full-sized (200 - 250ml) milk-based coffee. My partner's coffee was met with avid approval, and Espresso Organica has now been dubbed "a future regular coffee spot". It was nice to see the barista get consistently good results for weak, standard and strong milk-based coffees as well as pulling a nice espresso shot.

The espresso I had was the SO of the day, Palazzo Rosso (I think that means "Red Palace") and it was pretty smooth going down. I'm not sure if it was added, but there was a hint of cinnamon coming through the espresso - very nice.

On top of the exceptional coffees we had here (we went twice over the course of the weekend) Espresso Organica also have quite a decent menu, including the all important "All Day Breakfast" menu. Plenty of vegetarian options as well as some of the classic breakfast choices. They also make a pretty decent wood-fire pizza.

All in all, I have to give these guys their due; they specialise in coffee, and they certainly deliver on that front. The added bonus of serving good food, and having a few decent serving staff on hand makes this place a "must" on any coffee enthusiasts list if they're in the area.

Brandon.

Lessons Learned..

Well despite being groggy and half asleep this morning, my Saturday morning coffee turned out like this:

At least it's floral-ish

And it tastes pretty good too (I'm drinking it while writing this entry). On congratulating myself on a great coffee extraction and excellent microfoam, I realised that I needed to correct some information I posted here on techniques.

My coffee experience is a learning process (I expect it always will be) and I had been labouring under a misconception, particularly around the techniques for a good coffee extraction. In my entry 'The Basics' on April 29th I said this:

The tamp, is basically how hard you cram the coffee grounds into the filter basket of the porta-filter. This link  will take you to a site that describes tamping in detail, but essentially you want to have a solid cake of coffee grounds in the filter basket that the water will be forced through evenly. When inserting the porta-filter into the group head of the espresso machine (the only place you can stick the porta-filter) you want some resistance as you lock it in - but not so much that it's a struggle.

The part about wanting resistance as you lock in the portafilter is just wrong, I'll explain why. As I have now learned, if you're feeling resistance as you're locking in your portafilter, chances are good that you have over-dosed your coffee - a mistake that I was making. Essentially your coffee puck (cake, whatever) is then crammed hard up against the showerscreen of the group head.

Originally, I thought that was a good thing, my reasoning being that the whole point was to extract the coffee oils from the ground whilst under pressure, so if there is no clearance between the coffee and the showerscreen, the water has to work harder to get through, therefore more pressure.

I had missed a very key piece of information; a good extraction occurs when the coffee is extracted evenly throughout the whole coffee puck. By overdosing the coffee, I was not allowing pre-infusion to occur (I'll explain that term shortly) and was forcing the water only through the centre of the puck, meaning that if I ever extracted the outer edges of the puck, the centre core would be way over extracted.

On to Pre-Infusion. The term pre-infusion means that the espresso machine wets the coffee puck down prior to building up water pressure and beginning the extraction. I believe pre-infusion occurs at around 4 BARs of pressure. In automatic and a lot of semi-auto espresso machines, pre-infusion is already programmed into the single-shot, double-shot and any other one-button-push operations, you will recognise this as the delay of a few seconds once you have pushed the button, before the coffee actually starts coming out.

On manual machines, as the name suggests, you have to control pre-infusion yourself.

So a quick recap:

• You should have a few mm clearance between your coffee and your group head showerscreen.
• A good coffee extraction is an even extraction throughout the whole coffee puck
• If you're not getting the required pressure from your extraction, adjust your grind finer so that you can increase your dose while maintaining clearance.

A good indicator of a decent extraction is the condition of the coffee puck afterwards, it should be basically dry, for example:

If your puck is sloppy, it means your grind was too coarse or your tamp did not apply enough force.

Hope that helps =D

Brandon.

The Baron II: Redemption

So the other afternoon I was in the area and decided to give The Baron another go. First of all there are a couple of things that I noticed which were consistent:

1. The staff are still all very friendly; so it wasn't just the one guy serving me last time
2. Everyone working there really does their best to look cool.

And it works; before you even order your coffee, looking around the place which is reminiscent of some sort of garage-based bootleg bar, you find yourself thinking "this place is kind of cool".

Here's an example, I took a quick snap with the phone, trying to look casual so no one would think I was a weirdo...which may or may not be entirely accurate:

Click to Enlarge

[Brief Segue Alert]: I actually don't mind the quality of pics I get from my phone, particularly if you saw how quickly I whipped the thing up, snapped, and put it back in my pocket. I use a HTC Desire phone running Android which IMHO whips all kinds of shit over the iphone - with the one glaring exception of internal storage.

[Back to Coffee]: So after observing the consistencies in service and atmosphere (good indicators on whether it's a takeaway coffee joint, or a sit in coffee joint) I sat down and ordered a double-shot (learned my lesson last time) decaf latte with a side of metrosexual hand cream.

The hand cream never turned up, but what I got was this:

So far it was looking good; a humble, yet elegant rosetta, great milk consistency and the aroma coming off it was mouth-watering. At the first sip I start mentally composing my review for Beanhunter, they had definitely gone up several knotches on the coffee respect-o-meter.

By the second sip the natural caramel flavours of the coffee really came through, it was bloody excellent. It reminds me of another place that also does fantastic coffee (seems a bit inconsistent, blame the barista) called 'Girdler's Grind', in fact based on the flavour I could almost swear it was the same blend.

Either way, it looks like once you know what to order at The Baron, you can get a fantastic cup o' joe in a cool, friendly cafe.

If you're ever over at Castle Towers and need a caffeine fix, sound them out, the prospects are good!

Brandon.

Time to Invest in a Dairy Farm...

Wishing I had an endless supply of milk so I could keep practising. The hardest thing I'm finding is keeping the technique consistent.

Here was this morning's attempt:

And with some left over milk I extracted my existing shot further to have a go at a layer:

Not the prettiest I've seen, but the basic concept worked. By the way, in case anyone cares, this is what my home setup looks like:

For reference, thats a Sunbeam EM6910 Espresso Machine and a Sunbeam EM0480 Conical Burr Grinder. At this point the only thing I use that isn't stock is a new 58mm tamper which has a nice weight to it, it cost 30 bucks and is far superior to the stock tamper.

New additions soon to follow; I have a tamping station in the mail heading my way. Aside from a neat storage spot for my tamper it assists in keeping the Portafilter (also known as Group Handle) stable while you're tamping, and saves you scratching your bench. I could have just bought a tamping mat, but for 35 bucks I figured I would go with the tamping station.

Also thinking of buying VST filter baskets (probably next pay) which allow for a more even coffee extraction. You can read about them here: http://coffeegeek.com/opinions/markprince/04-29-2011

Cheers,

Brandon.

Coffee in the Mountains

If and when enough people get to reading this blog, I would really appreciate some feedback to this particular post.

The gorgeous girlfriend and I quit the 'burbs this weekend and headed up the Blue Mountains for a bit of a romantic weekend, complete with fireplace and log cabins. Needless to say, it was an awesome weekend and we really don't do enough of those. For those possibly interested, we stayed at a place called 'Seclusions' in Rydal; a quick Google and you will find them easily enough, it's well worth making the trip.

Anyway, our time was spent traipsing around the mountains like the tourists we were, bouncing from boutique shop to boutique shop, flinging money left and right like it was going out of fashion, all in all a great time.

Considering the environment we were in, and the abundance of little cafes and restaurants, and being the coffee nut that I am, I kept an eye out for potentially good coffee spots.

They built me up buttercup, just to let me down.

Planning a day spent in Leura, we were tipped off by a very professional and friendly waiter at Ashcroft's restaurant in Blackheath that the 'Red Door Cafe' in Leura was a good bet for some nice pastries and good coffee.

Unfortunately, I never got to test the veracity of his claims, because somehow despite parking maybe 5 metres from the bright red door of the aptly named cafe, we failed to find it until we were actually leaving the town, filled to the eyeballs with coffee sourced elsewhere. Woe.

So some day, in the not-too-distance future, we will be heading back there to determine if 'The Red Door' might just end up being the Coffee Mecca of the Mountains. If anyone reading this has visited that particular cafe, please comment.

So with 'The Red Door' out of the equation, we opted to just try random places throughout Leura, figuring such a boutique-ish town must have great coffee everywhere. No, no it didn't.

We jauntily strolled into a deli with a cafe at the back, largely because I was having coffee withdrawals and the icy wind was insistent that we find somewhere indoors. On the positive, it was an awesome deli; we spent a stupid amount of money there. On the negative, the coffee was just slightly upwards of terrible. The staff were attentive and friendly - something you see a lot of in the Blue Mountains just by-the-by.

At a later point in the day, we squeezed ourselves into the somewhat urban-feeling and uniquely named 'The Espresso Bar'. My feeling was that with such an ostentatious "we make such great coffee it's our entire identity" sort of name, that they must make a decent cup of coffee. Not really.

Though I feel that on this one I need to be a bit lenient. When I walk into a place that seems to just specialise in coffee, before ordering I make a habit of asking whoever is taking my order just how strong the coffee is. Typically I get a bit of an uncertain look back, which is understandable as it's all relative to the drinker, so then I ask whether it is a medium-dark or dark roast coffee.

Dependent on the answer is whether I double-shot or not. In this case I was told the coffee was fairly neutral so if I wanted strong, order double-shot, which I did. The coffee I got was bitter, and tasted strong enough to blow a hole in the back of my head. Needless to say I drank plenty of water while having my coffee.

Other places serving coffee followed a similar trend, though it should be noted we avoided Katoomba this time, having been there loads of times before, and yes it's easy to find good coffee there.

Then came the unexpected surprise. Most people who have visited the mountains and ventured past Wentworth Falls are probably familiar with Talisman Wood-fired Pizzas; they are just fantastic.

While paying for the pizzas my partner and I scoffed down, my coffee-enthusiast eye caught hold of a latte making its way outside. Noting the perfect milk texture and tight rosetta sitting on top, my spidey-sense started tingling.

5 minutes later I was sipping on a delicious cappuccino in pure pleasure.

So there you have it, the best coffee I had on this trip to the mountains came from a pizza joint. Who woulda thunk it?

If anyone reading this post knows of some great places in the Blue Mountains for coffee, I would really appreciate you commenting as I will definitely make the time to head up and check them out.

Finally, this was the morning's latte art attempt, still got some practice to do:

Brandon.

The Book of Cain..

Disclaimer: This is a total Geek-Out post - you have been warned.

In the lead-up to the launch of Diablo III - a game which has been anticipated for about a decade now I have made a couple of purchases to stymie the frenzied emergence of my inner-nerd, which will be inevitable once I hold the game in my hands.

The first of these, The Book of Cain I read through in a single sitting - it cost me 50 bucks, which admittedly I first felt was excessive for what was essentially a bit of back-story to the game, but my inner-nerd wouldn't be denied. Also my inner-nerd felt it was worth every cent after reading it.

Gameplay aside, one of the things which makes the Diablo franchise so successful is the way the back-story of the game has evolved (I could even segue this into my Literary Neophyte blog) to create a rich, vibrant world for your imagination, as well as explain the situation the player finds themselves in.

For those not in the know, the story of Diablo is the quintessential story of Good vs Evil. Your character can be one of a few different disciplines, hailing from one of several diverse cultures with the sole duty of battling against the Burning Hell's minions and ultimately defeating the 3 Prime Evils and 4 Lesser Evils, IE Diablo: Lord of Terror, Mephisto: Lord of Hatred, Baal: Lord of Destruction, Andariel: Maiden of Anguish, Duriel: Lord of Pain, Azmodan: Lord of Sin and Belial: Lord of Lies.

These rulers of the realms of the Burning Hells are introduced to you throughout the game either by narration, or by stumbling across them during gameplay. Azmodan and Belial have yet to feature at all.

Prior to reading The Book of Cain I was not even aware of half of those titles, and where they stood in relation to each other. Blizzard (the company who have designed the franchise) really did well in fleshing out the details, while leaving clues that hint at what you can expect in the game.

It seems that aside from however Diablo gets resurrected for the 3rd game (I assume we can't have a Diablo III without the namesake featuring) the lords of Sin and Lies may feature prominently as well.

In a nutshell, the book gives a thorough breakdown of how the world of Sanctuary was formed, the Demon hierarchies of the Burning Hells and the Angel hierarchies of the High Heavens, as well as details of past wars, the formation of various cultures, more details around the story thus far (IE what the player went through in Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction) and details around the Eternal Conflict (the war between the Burning Hells and the High Heavens).

All in all, just because of the detail and excellent story-telling involved, and for what it adds to the overall experience of the game franchise, if you're a fan, I recommend getting the book:

The Book Cover

Artwork Example

Oh and the second purchase? The mouse-mat of course: