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Group coffee review We gather seven espresso blends wellworth trying out Page 8

Going in for the chill Coffee + ice × creativity = uniquely refreshing summer drinks Page 20

Espresso upgrade Four premium machines that will have you pulling shots like a pro Page 28

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caffeinemagazine.com.au @caffeinemagaus

THE GRIND

Stop the press Getting the best from your AeroPress is not as easy as it may seem, Jem Challender explains the theory

icture this: You’re in the pub, and the cool change the forecast promised hasn’t blown in yet. You’ve spent a half hour getting to know a nice pale ale, and you’ve already made the decision to keep the relationship monogamous. The bartender comes over and asks, ‘The same again?’ You nod, and then halfway through the pour, the keg runs out. Not only that, but what did make it into your glass is cloudy, like milky Assam tea — nothing like the golden glory you were expecting. A range of things could happen next. But the worst-case scenario is when the bartender trots off, saying, ‘I’ll just change the keg’, returns minutes later, tops up the half-filled pint glass, and hands it to you. If you’re the congenial type and accept the pint, you’ll notice the beer tastes completely grainy and considerably less bright and fruity than it did before the bartender poured you the dregs. The cause of this drop in flavour is ‘turbidity’. To find out what the current best practice is when it comes to serving beer that contains sediment in the keg or the bottle, we contacted the head brewer and founder of Bentspoke brewery in Canberra, Richard Watkins. Richard explained, ‘I’m not into the roll or shake [of bottleconditioned beers like Coopers], the yeasties have done their job so leave them alone. Best to pour the beer slowly into a glass and leave the yeasties in the bottle. If you do decide to pour the yeasties into the glass, then allow to settle before sampling’. ‘Turbidity’ is not necessarily a bad word in the realm of coffee; you’d be hard-pressed to find a more turbid beverage than espresso. The problems begin when the turbidity levels are high but the strength (measured as total dissolved solids) is low. When coffee turbidity is unduly high, we at Barista Hustle look for ways to dial it back by trying different approaches to brewing. Unquestionably, the brew method that most dramatically demonstrates swings in turbidity is the AeroPress. We at Barista Hustle spent a long time trying to find out how to make AeroPress brews more transparent, with better flavour clarity. We found scientific proof that AeroPress turbidity is adjustable.

Accurately measuring turbidity isn’t simple. You could use a $400 turbidity meter, such as one the EPA might use to measure clay siltation in a waterway — but that meter would be useless to measure turbidity in a complex, volatile substance such as brewed coffee. In coffee, turbidity changes constantly as a coffee brew cools. Some chemicals will rapidly precipitate out, forming solids. Therefore, to measure coffee turbidity, a fancier piece of equipment is required. We asked Bulgarian scientist Nasko Panov to run some tests for us using a UV spectrophotometer that measures the light absorption of particles in suspension. Panov used Kevin L. Goodner, PhD’s method for measuring turbidity in tea. Panov’s experiments answered four very specific questions: 1. Does layering two filter papers reduce turbidity? Yes, using two papers helps, albeit by a very small amount. Many baristas, including two-time World AeroPress Champion Jeff Verellen, have been doubling up their filter papers for a while now. Sometimes, at Barista Hustle even use three. 2. Is turbidity lower if you allow a coffee bed to form on the filter before you plunge? The turbidity of brews produced when the coffee bed was allowed to settle onto the filter paper before plunging was virtually identical to the turbidity of brews plunged immediately after the AeroPress was inverted. 3. Does squeezing every last bit of out of the AeroPress affect turbidity? Nasko’s results absolutely busted any notions that you mustn’t squeeze out the final few drips: he observed virtually no difference in turbidity levels between AeroPresses plunged to the point where you can hear the air come out and brews in which the plunging was halted before that point.

4. What's the effect on turbidity of plunging very slowly and gently compared with plunging fast and hard? Here’s the game changer: Should you plunge as hard as you can? The answer is... absolutely not! Have you noticed the small gaps positioned every few millimeters around the base of the AeroPress filter cap? Applying very hard pressure as you plunge can turn these little gaps into escape routes for undissolved coffee solids. If you want to produce clean, transparent brews with a crisp clean mouthfeel, screw the filter cap on tight. Nasko found that an extremely hard press led to dramatically higher turbidity levels — 71% higher in some cases. Nasko explains: ‘I intentionally hard tightened the AeroPress filter cap. Afterwards, I made some measurements with a loose cap, but still reasonably tight. If I was correct with my assumption, there should be a significant difference between the two methods when the plunging pressure is high.’ The results from retesting confirmed Nasko’s expectation: tightening the filter cap reduced the turbidity of brews made with a hard plunge — by 14% on average. If you’re the type who rolls your Coopers Red ale along the bar top before opening the bottle, you might prefer your AeroPress brew produced with an ultra-hard plunge. We’re not saying that’s wrong. After all, a drink like hot chocolate is as turbid as it gets — and who doesn’t love hot chocolate? But if you prefer your AeroPress brew to have a silky-smooth mouthfeel and flavour clarity like what you’d expect from the best pour-over, take our advice: double up the filter papers, tighten up that AeroPress filter cap, and dedicate at least 45 seconds to the plunge. It sure is nice when science gives you a reason to slow down and take it easy.

Jem Challender is the Dean of Studies at Barista Hustle (BH) in Melbourne. He’s a former UK Brewers Cup Champion and the author of 10 online courses about coffee production. Caffeine readers can access Nasko’s paper on turbidity for free at baristahustle.com or by scanning this QR Code.

ISSUE 02

THE GRIND

Coffee and tea are both close and distant relatives. Tea expert Jonathan Nunn analyses their links in the modern world

hile there are obviously some intersections between specialty tea and coffee, their cultures sometimes exist at two poles. Coffee is precise, exacting; tea is intuitive and about feeling. Coffee is a science; tea is an art. Coffee’s caffeine stimulates and excites; tea’s relaxes and concentrates. All the best cups of coffee of my life have been made with fine-tuned attention to detail by baristas who would be delighted to show you a graph of its extraction over time. All the best cups of tea, meanwhile, have been made with care but without rigour, brewed by people whose muscle memory can tell them when to pour and when to stop. The two cultures move at completely

different rhythms. A coffee shop thrums on SPM (shot pulls per minute) and the perpetual sound of frothers: it takes serious efficiency and ingenuity to quickly serve a rammed shop. A tea session can while away a whole afternoon, as the leaf slowly reveals layers of flavour over multiple infusions. Once coffee is brewed that’s it, it is dead, but a tea can last five, 10, 15, 20-plus infusions, with different aspects of its personality coming to the fore each time. If you tried to age coffee over decades (as is possible with pu’er, oolong and white teas) you would simply end up with stale beans. This is not to say coffee cannot be slow too, but it requires a fundamental

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COLLECTABLE COFFEE CARDS If you enjoy a hand of cards alongside a great brew, Tens Hundreds Thousands has just the thing for you. With bespoke designs from Jose Barrio and Julian Ardila, these eye-catching cards capture the spirit of coffee farmers, roasters and baristas. THT’s products are made in multiples of tens, hundreds or thousands, and once sold out are not produced again, making every item rare and highly prized. To get your hands on a deck, go to tenshundredsthousands.com.

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W OR D S E R I N O’ C ON NO R

Connected by caffeine?

shift in how coffee is perceived. A few years ago I saw a customer at a very well-known coffee shop complain that his Geisha filter had taken 10 minutes to make, ignorant of the careful work that goes into brewing it, and felt sympathy for the barista who replied, “Good.” The main difference is simply time – not just in how long it takes to brew, but in the history each beverage has. When you work in tea you feel the weight of millennia of Chinese thought, centuries of Japan perfecting its tea culture, the remarkable pace at which the British spread tea around the world. You cannot untangle tea from Daoism, from colonialism, from long-held opinions on craft and aesthetics. When you work in third-wave coffee you merely feel the weight of the Jimseven blog and Italians angry at acidic espresso. Of course I’m being flippant, partly because I’m envious of what coffee has achieved. Third-wave coffee’s youth makes it more exciting, a huge worldwide cultural moment; tea is trying to catch up, betraying a lot of what it has stood for in the process. Teabags are now ubiquitous, not just in western cultures but across Asia, while Japan siphons off more and more of its leaf into bottled tea. Ideally the two can work in tandem, learning from each other. Bubble tea and matcha lattes may not be the answer, but their ubiquity may yet turn newcomers on to deeper Chinese and Japanese methods. Whatever happens to these two drinks next, the lesson is simple: there is always virtue in waiting for the kettle to boil.

Keep your cool

Summer started late for many of us and these ingenious iced coffee concoctions will be sure to keep you chilled Photography BentleyCreative

e won’t pretend that drinking iced coffee in summer is some kind of mind-blowing new discovery in 2021. You know as well as we do that it’s a firm favourite as a lively, refreshing drink on toasty days. But we’d love to see a bit more imagination on café menus come summertime. That’s why we asked three coffee creatives to design blended ice beverages for us. They’re sweet, they’re summery, they’re visually appealing, they’re fairly simple for coffee shops to recreate – and doing so could spark even more creativity. Let’s celebrate the end of summer in style.

Coffee Bramble Created by Claire Wallace “The cocktail this is based on is sweet, tart, citric and refreshing,” says Claire, “and my version is even more so, with its added caffeinated kick – plus it can be drunk at any time of day. The coffee adds much of the body and complexity that gin would normally provide. “This recipe makes a single serving, but for best results make three to four batches at at a time. You can blitz all the ingredients together without the ice and store the mix in the fridge until needed.”

Ingredients 60g blackberry purée (or fresh blackberries) 35g juniper simple syrup 15g lemon juice

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50g tonic water 45g cold brew concentrate or cold brew at a 1:5 ratio (preferably a coffee with floral and berry notes – I used a honey process Ethiopian) 150g ice

Instructions Chill a glass in the freezer. If using fresh blackberries, blitz them in the blender first with a splash of tonic, and strain the purée through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Put all the ingredients except the ice in the blender and briefly blend to emulsify. Then add the ice and blend until the texture resembles a frozen slushie. Serve in the chilled glass, garnished with a dehydrated lemon slice.

BLENDED ICE DRINKS

Ethiopian Sunrise Created by Paul Ross “My take on a summer coffee lemonade is crisp and refreshing, with a great coffee flavour coming through right till the end,” says Paul. “Enjoy!”

Ingredients 5g passion fruit juice 25g orange juice 50g cold brew concentrate (I used an Ethiopian Suke Quto) 12g simple syrup (1:1 ratio) Sparkling water Ice

Instructions Make the cold brew concentrate in advance (one part coffee to 5.5 parts water, cold-brewed for 16 hours). Fill a tall glass with ice. Add the passion fruit juice, cold brew and simple syrup. Top up with sparkling water to 5mm from the rim. Garnish with a fresh slice of orange.

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Next level espresso Wanting to step up your barista game? We take a look at four dual boiler espresso machines that will have you pulling shots like a pro Photography by David Collins

here’s just no avoiding it. Budget espresso machines offer an amazing bang-for-buck entry-level experience – no question. However, if you want to take your barista skills up a few notches then you need to be upgrading your gear. Now, none of these dual boiler machines can be called cheap – upgrading usually comes with a bigger price tag – but these machines are well worth the expense. They all come with an industry-standard 58mm portafilter, and electronic PIDs providing the control of brew temperature that you need to make consistently great coffee. They also allow you to extract multiple espressos back-toback while simultaneously steaming milk – something a less expensive single boiler machine will struggle with. We put them through their paces with the expert help of Paul Hallit, Head of Training and Development at The Little Marionette, using their House Blend (find out how it tastes in our coffee reviews on page 8) and grinding was performed by a Baratza Sette 270Wi. “All espresso machines perform the same function, they deliver hot water through ground coffee at pressure,” explains Paul. “It’s the precision delivery that produces a consistent shot of coffee each time.” Prepare to disappear down the rabbit hole of coffee geekery.

Breville Dual Boiler PROS

Heaps of handy functionality; user-friendly CONS

Lots of plastic; limited longevity

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Breville has a well-defined aesthetic, and the Dual Boiler is no exception. Set up is fast and the intuitive interface keeps you well-informed at all stages. Full control is possible with programmable preinfusion and preset/manual-override/programmable shot volume. The shot clock and pressure gauge provide extra levels of fine-tuning and the auto start will preheat the machine to be ready at a set time. The visual water-level guide and handy flap at the front of the cup warmer mean you don’t have to access the removable 2.5 litre reservoir at the rear; but when you do, the retractable wheels make benchtop manoeuvring a breeze. However, at 13.6kg, this was the lightest member of our group with a footprint of W41.5 x D38 x H38cm. The storage socket for the lightweight tamp is nice touch.

Maintenance is easy thanks to the new descale alert and assisted descale procedure. These will help to keep the machine in tip-top condition for increased performance and lifespan, although with a large number of plastic components don’t expect this machine to last you a lifetime. Espresso shots are pleasantly smooth, yet not as refined as something you’d get from the other more expensive machines in this review. The light steam pressure takes a little while to reach optimal levels for milk texturing, but the result is super silky. This is a semi-pro machine with the bonus of programmable volumetrics meaning you can either take full control or just push buttons. You choose. RRP $1,999 breville.com.au

ESPRESSO UPGRADE

Rancilio Silvia Pro PROS

Delivers reliably superb coffee, small footprint CONS

Noisy vibration pump; no pressure gauge, fiddly drip tray

The reputation of the single boiler Rancilio Silvia is the stuff of legend, so this dual boiler Silvia Pro already has a great lineage. It’s sleek, minimalist design features a stainless steel body, housing the same high-quality materials and wear-resistant components that appear in Rancilio’s commercial machines. Reassuringly solid at 20 kilos, it takes up surprisingly minimal bench space, coming in at just 25cm wide! The user-friendly programming functionality of lower-priced models is soon forgotten once you get the hang of the Silvia Pro’s codes. These allow you to manage the temperature of both boilers, set a sleep and a delayed start-up, and activate a semiautomatic cleaning function. The display also has a built-in shot timer and signals when the 2-litre reservoir is empty, which refills via a lid at the rear of the cup warmer. The unique height-adjustable cup tray is a cute touch, however, emptying the drip tray is a little fiddly. The noisy pump and lack of pressure gauge may be a potential turn-off for some, but where the Silvia Pro really wins big is with it’s best-in-class thermal stability. The minimal brew temperature variance makes for consistently delicious espresso. Which at the end of the day is what we’re all striving for. The 8g and 16g baskets are smaller than most, so you’ll need to adjust your dosing accordingly (or you can buy yourself an 18g VST basket). We dosed 16g in and extracted 32g out in 23 seconds. The result being impressively good – a much smoother and less-astringent shot than the Breville. A multi-directional steam wand, with commercial grade four-hole tip, emits nice, dry steam and textures the milk superbly. With simple controls and world-class precision, this machine will prove a welcome addition to any coffee lover’s kitchen. RRP $2,849 ranciliogroup.com

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