Beanscene April 2020

A World-Class Coffee Magazine

APRIL 2020

Reusable revolution Setting the standard to #giveupthecup

A sensory overload Danes celebrates its silver anniversary

Bushfire relief: the road to recovery Paul Bassett’s trailblazing career

No.62 ISSN 1449-2547

9 771449 254002

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APRIL 2020

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contents UPFRONT

10 NEWS 14 STUFF ON THE SCENE

The latest must-have products

INDUSTRY PROFILES

16 THE TRAILBLAZER

Australia's first WBC winner, Paul Bassett, reflects on a career built on the pursuit of flavour

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BACK TO THE FUTURE

Danes Specialty Coffee celebrates 25 years in the game

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TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

STARTING A MOVEMENT

Ona Coffee launches #giveupthecup campaign

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ROAD TO RECOVERY

Australia's coffee community bands together after the catastrophic bushfire season

62 MICE2020

National Barista Champions talk comp and expectations ahead of the WBC

CELEBRITY CHEF

Diana Chan talks Malaysian kopitiams and winning MasterChef

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FEATURE NEWS

TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

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A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Brambati implements Ecodesign from the inside out

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SHOOTING STAR

Toby's Estate releases single-serve coffee bags to make specialty coffee more accessible

The Wega Nova has the Australian market in sight

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How Puqpress solves a simple problem

BIGGER AND BETTER

Mocopan's expansion and unprecedented growth

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QUARTERLY SPOTLIGHT

SoCo Roasters introduces its quarterly single origin program

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THE WORLD CUP

Club House on how porcelain can enhance coffee’s flavour

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CAFETTO BARISTA PROFILE

St Ali's Shinsaku Fukayama on success, snowboarding, and specialty coffee

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TAMP OF APPROVAL

FIRST CRACK

How the Syncfo 4 in 1 Coffee Analyser simplifies roast replication

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ESPRESSO YOURSELF

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TRAINING TACTICS

Jibbi Little's imagination and flying unicorn takes her to new heights Mocopan Coffee’s Babin Gurung on why automation is key to consistent products and services

CAFÉ SCENE

58 PASSION TRUMPS PAPER

Espressology’s Instaurator takes a trip down memory lane to the first WBC in Monte Carlo

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TECH TALK

Service Sphere's Maurizio Marcocci on the rise of bulk brewing equipment

DAIRY ALTERNATIVES

A look at the latest products to meet customer demand and deliver variety

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CAFÉ SCENE

Around Australia

78 R&D LAB

Dr. Monika Fekete on why sensory pathways deliver the ultimate cup experience

CLEANER ROASTING

How Loring roasters connect with the Australian and New Zealand coffee industry

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SKILL BASE

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BRAVING THE STORM

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TAMPER TANTRUM

ASCA President Kieran Westlake on how small businesses can withstand the impact of Covid-19 The NZSCA on the state of the NZ speciality coffee industry

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E SCENE

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PUBLISHER Christine Clancy christine.clancy@primecreative.com.au MANAGING EDITOR Sarah Baker sarah.baker@primecreative.com.au JOURNALISTS Ethan Miller ethan.miller@primecreative.com.au

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Calere Coffee 166 Gertrude St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 Three years ago, War on Waste brought the Australian community’s attention to the billions of single-use coffee cups that end up in landfill. Since then, many people, businesses, and the wider industry have looked at how the reduce their footprint.

One Australian business that is looking hard at its own sustainability is Ona Coffee. In February, the Canberran roaster announced #giveupthecup, a campaign to remove single-use disposables from its supply chain and encourage other businesses to do the same. This inspired BeanScene to feature a reusable cup on its cover for the first time. To host the photoshoot with resident photographer Blake Storey, Ona Coffee recommended we visit one of its Melbourne accounts, Calēre Coffee.

For the winning shot, we chose to go with a forebearer of the reusable revolution, the KeepCup. The KeepCup Brew – Cork Edition complemented Calēre's décor well while letting the coffee in the cup shine. We used the honey processed Buena Vista filter from Honduras, a favourite of Calēre Coffee Owner Alicia Feng for its brown sugar sweetness, red currant notes, and honey aftertaste.

Calēre Coffee encourages its patrons to sit down and enjoy their coffee, drinking from beautiful hand-crafted ceramics and sharing what they experience with other customers. Though like many cafés, it also serves its fair share to takeaway coffees. Alicia says she is excited and proud of Ona Coffee’s plans to #giveupthecup, and plans to join the movement.

“I think this is something that is going to happen anyway in the coffee industry, so it’s good to get in at the start of this movement,” she says.

Calēre Coffee has begun stocking cheap and reusable bamboo cups, which customers can buy for their takeaway order for only an additional $3. Alicia says she is also considering implementing a cupswap program. “It will be interesting to give people options and see what works or that they prefer,” Alicia says.

Ona Coffee will begin the phase-out with its Melbourne flagship, which will be overseen by Melbourne Manager Devin Loong.

Devin says in December 2019, the Ona Coffee Melbourne team took part in a Makers Market across the road from its future Brunswick site. He and Account Manager Rhys Woods set up a small pop-up, serving coffee without single-use cups.

“We offered people the chance to take their coffee in a mug they could bring back to us. But instead, those who didn’t already have their own reusable Reusable would buy a mug from the nearby revolution ceramic maker and order their coffee in that,” Devin says. “It showed me that there is a demand in Brunswick, and that people in the area don’t rely on disposable packaging.

“Now we need to communicate to the rest of the community that singleuse isn’t an option anymore.”

APRIL 2020

A World- Class Coffee Magazi ne

Setting the standa rd to #giveupthecup

A sensory overloa

d

Danes celebrates its silver anniversary

Bushfire relief: a road to recovery

Paul Bassett’s trailblazing career

49 ISSN 1449-2547

9 771449 254002

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Peter Papoulias peter.papoulias@primecreative.com.au ART DIRECTOR Blake Storey DESIGN Kerry Pert, Madeline McCarty BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Courtney Walker courtney.walker@primecreative.com.au CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Zelda Tupicoff zelda.tupicoff@primecreative.com.au DESIGN PRODUCTION MANAGER Michelle Weston michelle.weston@primecreative.com.au CLIENT SUCCESS TEAM LEADER Janine Clements janine.clements@primecreative.com.au PHOTOGRAPHY Blake Storey, Matt Osborne CONTRIBUTORS Jibbi Little, Babin Gurung, Maurizio Marcocci, Emma McDougall, Kieran Westlake, Dr Monika Fekete HEAD OFFICE Prime Creative Pty Ltd 11-15 Buckhurst Street South Melbourne VIC 3205 p: 03 9690 8766 f: 03 9682 0044 enquiries@primecreative.com.au www.beanscenemagazine.com.au SUBSCRIPTIONS 03 9690 8766 subscriptions@primecreative.com.au BeanScene magazine is available by subscription from the publisher. The rights of refusal are reserved by the publisher.

ARTICLES All articles submitted for publication become the property of the publisher. The Editor reserves the right to adjust any article to conform with the magazine format.

COPYRIGHT

BeanScene magazine is owned by Prime Creative Media and published by Christine Clancy. All material in BeanScene magazine is copyright and no part may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical including information and retrieval systems) without written permission of the publisher. The Editor welcomes contributions but reserves the right to accept or reject any material. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information Prime Creative Media will not accept responsibility for errors or omissions or for any consequences arising from reliance on information published. The opinions expressed in BeanScene magazine are not necessarily the opinions of, or endorsed by, the publisher unless otherwise stated.

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CONTRIBUTORS In each issue of BeanScene we profile a few of our talented contributors.

Kieran Westlake is the current President, past Treasurer, and past Vice-President of the Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA), Australia’s peak industry body dedicated to promoting and growing the specialty coffee industry. In his role, Kieran is excited to create opportunities and pathways for ASCA members. He is also a member of the Specialty Coffee Association and a certified food service professional.

Babin Gurung is the Suntory Coffee New South Wales Barista Trainer. With a Masters degree in accounting from the University of Southern Queensland, the only numbers Babin crunches these days are extraction and dose times. He came to Australia from Nepal 11 years ago to study, fell in love with coffee, and hasn’t looked back. Babin has worked at many different cafés in Sydney, and now enjoys sharing his coffee knowledge and skills to help build a new generation of baristas.

Rawirat Techasitthanet, also known as Jibbi Little, is originally from Thailand and lives in Sydney, Australia. She is a barista, latte artist, and roaster at Jibbi Little Roasting Co. She is also the designer and creator of the Jibbijug milk pitcher. Jibbi has worked in the coffee industry for the past 10 years. She is a five-time Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA) NSW Latte Art Champion and the 2019 ASCA Pauls Professional Australian Latte Art Champion.

Jibbi is also a Q Grader, competition judge, and founder of the Jibbi Academy.

Maurizio Marcocci lived in Milan and attended the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, where he completed a Masters of Economics and International Relations. He has distinct qualifications from Italy as a Certified Coffee Taster with an Espresso Specialist Certificate. Now, as the Managing Director of Service Sphere, Maurizio has grown the business to become an industry leader in the sales and service of coffee equipment in just 10 years.

Emma McDougall is the Communication and Administration Coordinator for the NZSCA. After gaining a degree in hospitality management, Emma has worked in Sydney, Dublin, Auckland, London, and most recently, Wellington. She has owned and managed cafés and tech-judged the New Zealand Barista Championship in 2015 and 2016. Now, she gets to help run them. One of the greatest joys she gets from the coffee industry is watching young people progress through their coffee journey.

A word from the Editor

LET’S ROLL ON

I

t’s been an interesting month. On a casual Saturday morning I headed to my local supermarket to find aisle four under surveillance by a security guard ready to pounce on overindulging toilet paper hoarders.

“Just one packet per family please,” he yelled. Don’t get me started on the empty flour, sanitiser, and paracetamol shelves, or the couple fighting over the last packet of pasta. Coronavirus anxiety had well and truly kicked in.

Chef Darren Purchase managed to find the lighter side of the situation, unveiling his white and dark chocolate Loo Roll cakes for $10 each while stocks last. Then came the US media, which suggested the Covid-19 outbreak could mean the end of KeepCups with the sustainability movement “possibly forced” to take two steps back as companies make plans to prevent the spread of the disease. Starbucks announced it would temporarily suspend its use of personal cups across its North American stores, but still honour its 10-cent discount for anyone who brings a reusable cup into the store. At the time of print, a similar movement was taking place in Australian cafés, along with cash payment restrictions.

However, you may have noticed the fantastic-looking KeepCup we’ve put on the cover of our April edition. And no, it’s not in defiance of Covid-19.

It’s in support of a sustainable movement to #giveupthecup and eliminate all single-use takeaway cups. Ona Coffee started the campaign in its own stores, and is encouraging others to do the same and go cold turkey on all types of single-use cups. No, it won’t happen overnight, but what if you make a conscience choice today? What if others did the same tomorrow? By the end of the year, we’d be on a significant roll (a non-toilet-paper type of roll, that is). A movement like this requires industry support from café owners and customers, but together we can divert more than 2.9 million takeaway paper cups used in Australia every single day from landfill.

Another show of unity has been the coffee industry’s positive reaction to the postponement of the 2020 Melbourne International Coffee Expo, now taking place from 3 to 6 November. Covid-19 may have forced our hand to hold off the event in the name of precaution and safety of our exhibitors and guests, but we are even more determined to ensure that when the time comes, our coffee expo will make headlines around the world for all the right reasons.

By then, I hope we can look back at this month as a faint memory, put the spotlight back on Australia’s coffee capital, and stockpile some delicious coffee at MICE2020, because that’s worth fighting over.

SARAH BAKER

Follow us on Twitter @BeanSceneEd ‘Like’ us on Facebook @BeanSceneCoffeeMag Follow us on Instagram @beanscenemag

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NEWS

EAGLE ONE LANDS IN AUSTRALIA WITH JAMES HOFFMANN Victoria Arduino and Espresso Mechanics have officially launched the Eagle One espresso machine in Australia, with an event at Au79 café in Melbourne in February.

Former World Barista Champion James Hoffmann, a key figure in the development of the Eagle One, attended the event and discussed the concept behind the new machine.

With sustainability at the core of the Eagle One’s development, James told BeanScene that energy efficiency is not a topic the specialty coffee industry has focused on in the past.

“Manufacturers have been asked to do different things. We’ve demanded stability and performance from them, but we’ve never really said ‘but do it as efficiently as you can’. That was my big push in this project,” James said.

“It is a great machine, but it was also about finding materials that, at the end of its life, are more recyclable.

The total carbon cost, the full lifecycle analysis, is significantly better than most other equipment, which matters to me and to the guys that built it. That hasn’t been a conversation among café owners, but we’re at a point now where consumption is increasingly conscious.”

The Eagle One features a New Engine Optimisation (NEO) water system, which operates in the extraction phase and only heats the required amount of water for espresso extraction. NEO reduces the energy usage and costs of the machine, and is aided by a thermally insulated boiler and steam boiler. A patented Temperature Energy Recovery System also recaptures the thermal energy of

discharged and unused water, which preheats incoming water.

Michele Mastrocola, Senior Sales Area Manager Asia-Pacific at Victoria Arduino, told BeanScene that Melbourne – a prolific consumer of espresso – is the perfect market for the Eagle One. “Melbourne is the capital of coffee and a capital of the brand for us […]

There will be a lot of new things from Victoria Arduino. Australia is by far our ‘first market’, not in terms of volume, but of pressure and where we want to build up the brand,” Michele said.

“We designed this machine to be sustainable from day one – there’s not one single component we have used before in any other machine. They are all built and designed to be more sustainable than before.”

James Hoffmann helped launch the Eagle One in Australia at an event in Melbourne.

MICE2020 AND WBC RESCHEDULED TO NOVEMBER The 2020 Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) has moved its dates to 3 to 6 November to ensure the health and safety of attendees, exhibitors, competitors, judges, volunteers, and staff. The 2020 World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup will both still take place at MICE. “Following the recent announcement from Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and the measures that will be taken by the state government 10

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to mitigate the risk of Covid-19, we have made the decision to reschedule MICE2020,” Show Director Lauren Winterbottom says.

“We want to ensure that we’re delivering the best possible event experience for all attendees, exhibitors and competitors. We also take the safety of all our attendees, exhibitors, competitors, judges, volunteers, and staff very seriously.”

The decision to postpone MICE was made ahead of bans being placed

on travel from taly and non-essential gatherings of more than 500 people.

The World of Coffee event in Europe has also been resheduled to October, and the United States Specialty Coffee Expo is looking at new dates.

MICE2020 will still be held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“We look forward to welcoming the world coffee community to Melbourne in November,” Lauren says.

It’s time for a

NEW ROMANCE

Made from

AUSTRALIAN GROWN OATS

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NEWS

ETHIOPIA CUP OF EXCELLENCE RECEIVES RECORD-HIGH NUMBER OF ENTRIES out of the 150 consignments.

These coffees will advance to the International Jury for the final week of the judging process from 7 to 10

April. The COE Ethiopia winning coffees will be up for sale on 28 May via an internet auction open to Alliance members.

Ethiopian farmers submitted 1459 samples for judging at the country’s first Cup of Excellence.

xx

The Alliance for Coffee Excellence’s first Cup of Excellence (COE) program in Ethiopia has received a record-high number of 1459 samples. The amount surpasses the previous COE record by more than 400 entries.

The samples received at four collection centres in Jimma, Hawassa, Diredawa, and Addis Ababa, were sent to the COE Centre – a sensory lab and coffee warehouse – in Addis Ababa for evaluation by the National Jury.

“This is an opportunity for farmers like me to get incentives for quality,” says Abajihad Abajisa, a producer in the Jimma zone.

The owners of the top 150 samples submitted a consignment of the same coffee for the next round of evaluation. The National Jury, made up of Ethiopia’s top coffee tasters, went through several rounds of cupping to select the best 40 coffees

CAMPOS COFFEE NAMED CHAMPION AUSTRALIAN ROASTER Campos Coffee has won Champion Australian Roaster at the 2020 Australian International Coffee Awards, in a ceremony held at St Ali Coffee Roasters on 12 March.

Campos Coffee Head Roaster Jamie Djambazov accepted the award.

“It’s an excellent achievement and quite overwhelming,” Jamie tells BeanScene. “At Campos, it’s all a team effort, from green bean sourcing to roasting and cupping.

“The time and effort we’ve put in over the years with research and development has paid off. We’ve really focused on how we can do better and receive better results from our roasting and how that translates in espresso and filter coffees.”

Campos also won the in the Champion Direct Trade or Microlot Coffee and Champion Filter Coffee categories. The winning coffee in both categories was the Super Mario Geisha from Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama.

“It’s an amazing coffee. We purchased it recently from Esmeralda and this particular coffee is sweet, juicy, and has clarity and complexity,” Jamie says.

“It’s so outstanding and overwhelming, and not like any other Geisha natural we’ve had in a long time.”

The Taiwan-based Caffe Artigiano won Champion International Roaster, as well as Champion Espresso and Champion Milk Based Coffee.

New Zealand’s Gourmet Espresso won the Champion Cold Brew Coffee category, an award not handed out in 2019.

The 2020 Australian International Coffee Awards staged by the Royal

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Representatives from Campos Coffee and Gourmet Espresso collected their awards.

Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) broke records, with more than 800 entries from 174 exhibitors across Australia and internationally. Gold medals were awarded to 15 entries.

The Head Judge for the Australian International Coffee Awards, Melissa Caia, says while there’s been standout roasters this year claiming the top honours, the field was highly competitive.

“It was terrific to have a notable improvement in the quality of entries.

With the significant increase in the number of roasters entering from both Australia and internationally, it’s a true reflection of the international status of the Australian International Coffee Awards,” she says.

RASV CEO Brad Jenkins says the

impressive participation this year reflects the high regard that the awards program is held within the Industry: “To see the record-breaking numbers of Australian entries this year tells us that the Australian International Coffee Awards is benefiting those who take part, and that more and more producers are looking to participate each year. It’s also pleasing to see continued growth and evolution in international exhibitors,” he says.

“While the morning cup of coffee is something we all like to assess, these awards are about more than celebrating a good brew. At its core is supporting our agricultural industries which are able to benchmark their products against each other nationally and internationally.”

STUFF ON THE SCENE

Stuff on the scene ÜBERMILK Übermilk marks a new standard in consistency.

At the touch of a button, Übermilk delivers consistent micro foam milk at the ideal temperature. This product streamlines barista workflow, reduces café training time, and decreases milk waste. It further allows baristas to concentrate on perfecting espresso shots and latte art, while allowing them to better engage with customers.

Barista Group exclusively distributes Übermilk in Australia and New Zealand.

For more information, contact Barista Group on info@baristagroup.com.au or visit www.baristagroup.com.au

LACIMBALI M23UP The LaCimbali M23UP – the latest release by LaCimbali – has just hit Australian shores, and is set to be in high demand throughout 2020.

LaCimbali has released the M23UP as an upgraded model to its M27. Key features include a reliable and high-performance thermal system, barista lights for well-lit work space, button pads with LEDs, and an ergonomic filter-holder.

LaCimbali has made the decision to focus on the finer details in this release, satisfying the barista experience and creating brand loyalty among those using the machine.

LaCimbali’s patented Ruveco Teck is present in the machine, making the M23UP one of the most reliable, simple, and sturdy machines on the market.

The LaCimbali M23UP is available through Service Sphere.

For more information, visit www.servicesphere.com.au/blogs/news/2020/Mar/2/news_139

IMF 60-KILOGRAM ROASTER IMF and its Australian agent Will Notaras from Roastquip will exhibit an IMF 60-kilogram roaster at the 2020 Melbourne International Coffee Expo.

The IMF 60-kilogram roaster uses a built-in afterburner and recirculating heat technology, which save up to 47 per cent in gas consumption compared with roasters fitted with a separate afterburner. It also lowers greenhouse gas emissions, making the IMF more environmentally friendly.

The 60-kilogram roaster also includes an integrated destoner, loader, continuous chaff extractor, and automatic programmable logic controller program with manual override. The IMF has a precision temperature stability of one-degree accuracy, making it one of the most consistent roasters on the market.

Roastquip says IMF is one of the biggest selling roasters in Australia, with more than 50 plants operating around the country.

IMF and Roastquip will be on stand #124 at MICE2020.

For more information, visit www.roastquip.com.au

KEEPCUP THERMAL Introducing KeepCup Thermal, the first barista-standard reusable cup, now available in stainless-steel.

The cup features a new material design, with the same attention to detail that makes KeepCups the preferred reusable cup in cafés the world over.

Double-walled and vacuum-sealed with a press-fit lid and drafted for easy pouring, KeepCup Thermal is great to drink from, lid on or lid off.

It fits under group heads and replicates standard volumes for espresso-based drinks, and is designed and hand-assembled in Australia.

KeepCup is a certified B Corporation and member of “1% for the Planet”, donating one per cent of global revenue to environmental causes.

KeepCup Thermal is made to last for dependable drinking pleasure on the go.

For more information, visit www.keepcup.com.au

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LIBERTY KOMBUCHA AND SIPS SPARKLING Riverina Fresh is renowned for an award-winning range of milks and dairy products specifically tailored for café applications. It has now partnered with Melbourne-based Cool Cool Beverage Co to bring the next generation range of independent, premium craft drinks served in iconic designed 330-millilitre cans.

Liberty Kombucha is a premium-crafted kombucha. Made by brewers using a traditional, slow fermentation process, the result is a genuinely ‘better for you’ booch with a fresh and balanced flavour. Liberty Kombucha is made from 100 per cent brewed kombucha and all-natural ingredients.

Sips Sparkling Water is an Aussie first and an answer to the global phenomenon in flavoured sparkling water. Crafted with native Australian ingredients and paired with natural, classic fruit flavours for a delicious take on bubbly water. Zero calories, zero sugar and zero sweetener make this the ultimate ‘better for you’ drinks range.

For more information, contact 1800 993 081 or visit www.riverinafresh.com.au

BRITA PURITY C QUELL ST Brita protects coffee machines against corrosion with innovative mineralisation technology.

With more than 50 years of experience in water filtration, Brita knows that the perfect coffee starts with the perfect water. Professional, targeted filtration is key to consistent coffee excellence and achieving the perfect brew. The Brita Purity C Quell ST is designed to achieve outstanding results, no matter the composition of the local water supply.

The Brita Purity C Quell ST has five different filter sizes. It stands for a reliable reduction in carbonate hardness, and therefore in substances leading to limescale deposits. It reduces unwanted taste and aroma elements and particles, thereby ensuring optimum product quality and long operational life of the coffee machine.

For more information, visit www.brita.com.au

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LIVING COFFEE Paul Bassett was inspired to join the coffee industry after a trip to Italy when he was young.

In 2003, he won the World Barista Championship in the fourth year of the competition, making him the first Australian to do so.

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KNOWLEDGE LEADER

The trailblazer Australia’s first World Barista Champion Paul Bassett reflects on his career in coffee, pursuit of flavour, and the global growth of specialty coffee.

P

aul Bassett is the only person alive who can boast having a World Barista Championship (WBC) title, television series, and Asian coffee chain to his name.

“If you told me as a child, ‘you’re going to have 100 stores named after you in Korea’, there’s no way I’d have believed you,” Paul says.

His interest in hospitality and flavour was embedded in him from a young age.

Paul grew up living above his parent’s French contemporary restaurant in New South Wales, where he would often help out after school.

“Having all the taste and tactile – the sensory awareness – of a kitchen around me as a kid, in those formative years, was highly influential,” Paul says. “My father was also an amazing chef. He had a strong influence on my character. We’re quite perfectionists and pursue special tastes.”

While Paul committed to a career in hospitality and worked in several cafés as well as restaurants, his attention didn’t turn to coffee until a holiday to Italy opened his eyes.

“I was about 19 or 20 and realised I wanted to specialise in a particular area.

I was considering wine or becoming a chef,” Paul says.

“The moment I landed in Italy and went to my first espresso bar, I was captured by the romance of the culture, the way espresso is part of their daily lives.

It was so regional too. Seeing this taste variation from region to region is what really pulled at my heartstrings.”

When Paul returned to Australia, he opened the Yellow Pages and called every coffee company he could find, looking to get his foot in the door. After a short stint with the Australian importer of Italian roaster illycaffe, he took a job with Toby Smith during the formative years of Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters.

“Back then, it was still a very small business, roasting out the back of Toby’s mother’s house in Woolloomooloo. I learnt as much as I could,” Paul says.

“I’ve had many influences during my career, but that is where it all started.”

Around this time, coffee competitions gained traction in the industry at a grassroots level. Paul competed in the first official Australian Barista Championship in 2001, not placing as high as he’d hoped.

“I didn’t take them too seriously at first. Once I’d competed, I got a feel for it and got to know the people,” Paul says.

“Being highly competitive and extremely interested in the pursuit of quality and how taste can be improved, I naturally gravitated towards that world.”

He won the following year and placed seventh in the 2002 WBC in Norway. This experience gave Paul a better idea of what the judges were looking for and applied this when he competed again and won in 2003.

“Success is a poor teacher. I paid attention to what the guys in the top places were doing, so I knew what I needed to do when I came back. It was very much a case of knowing that, then going above and beyond it,” Paul says.

“I went in with that mindset and a real level of commitment. I was also working with a great team around me, everything from my best mate who was a performance psychologist, to people on the green and roasting fronts, looking at the performance and delivery of that.”

Paul titled his signature beverage the Bacino. An espresso was poured over the top of a chocolate ganache in a glass with a rim dipped in honey and cinnamon sugar. This was served with an orange wedge on the rim. Paul won with a score 20.5 points ahead of the runner up.

“Looking back at my performance, I won quite convincingly. I think it was the level of detail I went into that shone through on the day. You can see that in the year’s following, where the bar raises year on year,” Paul says.

“It’s quite humbling when someone with their own specialty coffee business comes up to you and says ‘you inspired me to follow this path’. What’s great about the WBC is that it pushes the boundaries of quality and encourage people – even those not competing – to explore coffee’s potential.”

In the 17 years since he competed, Paul

says the biggest change in the competition is the coffee being served and what the competitors and judges hope it achieves.

“The coffees back then went further in terms of roast development. They were medium roasts with nuances of caramelisation and sweetness coming through. This was in cohesion with the intrinsic characteristics of the coffee,” he says.

“Now it’s more about tasting and expressing the purest nuances of the coffee, and less of the roast characteristics. They’re roasting lighter profiles but still looking for full development of flavour.”

Winning the WBC opened many doors in the industry for Paul. These included filming the 2004 television series Living Coffee and working with Sunbeam to improve consumers’ inhome coffee experiences.

Paul also took the opportunity to start his own roasting business, Bassett Espresso, in late 2003, which has built a strong and tightknit community in New South Wales.

“I’m really happy that I’m working with a great small team of people, whether they be employees or café owners, who are equally as passionate about coffee as I am,” Paul says. “We’re all in pursuit of the same goals, share the same values, and get to go out there every day and do something we love and share it with other people.”

Bassett Espresso is not the only business to bear Paul’s name. Not long after winning the WBC, Paul received an email from a Japanese company asking him if he would like to collaborate with their brand ambassador, a World Patisserie Champion.

Paul met with the company, which eventually led to the launch of two Paul Bassett named cafés in Tokyo. The success of these stores encouraged Paul to look into other markets with the right partners. Such an opportunity came up in 2009.

“I was introduced to Maeil Dairy in Korea who saw the potential of the brand, taste of the coffee, and premium space

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17

KNOWLEDGE LEADER

More than 100 Paul Bassett coffee shops operate across Korea and Japan.

that it could sit in,” Paul says.

“It was opportune timing to start there.

We could really make a difference and improve the quality in Korea.”

There are now more than 100 Paul Bassett cafés across Korea. Paul’s role is to act as the “brand conscience”, being responsible for quality assurance and most decisions related to its coffee. Paul says the brand has built a strong awareness and perception among customers

in the local market.

The most obvious difference Paul notes between the South Korean and Australian market is the popularity of commercial coffee chains in Asia, whereas he says Australians are more likely to follow certain roasters than stores.

The two markets also have divergent taste preferences. Acknowledging this has been key to the success of Paul Bassett.

“When you enter a new market,

understanding the cultural idiosyncrasies is really important,” Paul says.

“There is a far greater acceptance of high-acid coffees in Australia. One of the things that helped us build momentum in Korea was the style of coffee we were doing. The low-to-medium acidity, fullbodied, sweeter espresso gravitated towards Korean palates.”

Now firmly established in two Asian countries, Paul is looking to spread the Paul Bassett brand to other markets, starting with the Philippines.

“We have a great opportunity there to leverage the success we’ve had in Korea and replicate that in other markets,” Paul says.

He adds the focus will be on countries with emerging coffee cultures, like Korea in 2009 and Australia when he picked up that phonebook 20 years ago.

“The Australian coffee industry has changed so much. Some of the biggest growth was in the mid-2000s, when there was strong movement and interest from a consumer level. Since then, it’s been on an upward trajectory,” Paul says.

“It’s nice to have been part of that movement and share something I’m so passionate about.”

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CELEBRITY CHEF

Dining with Diana Diana Chan talks to BeanScene about Malaysian kopitiams, the time she won MasterChef Australia, and debunking the myth about the complexity of Asian cooking.

FINANCE TO FOOD Diana Chan is an accountant by profession who grew up in Johor Bahru, Malaysia and moved to Melbourne at the age of 19. After four years working in Deloitte, Diana wanted to pursue her passion for food and competed in the ninth season of MasterChef Australia – and won.

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T

he aroma of Malaysian spices wafting through the door of Diana Chan’s house is tantalising. She’s kneedeep in preparations for her dinner party with Australian culinary icons and MasterChef family members including Matt Preston, Anna Polyviou, and Khan Ong. Her kitchen bench is laden with traditional Malaysian dishes in the works, such beef rendang, a hong bak, black pepper crayfish, sambal prawn, tempeh goreng, and cucumber salad.

There’s just a few hours left until her guests arrive, but Diana’s not the least bit worried. She experienced pressure far greater when she appeared on the 2017 season of MasterChef Australia and defeated Ben Ungermann by one point in the grand finale.

“I’m used to cooking under pressure. Preparation is key,” she says.

“MasterChef was an experience of a lifetime. It feels like ages ago. The difference is now I get to cook the things I want to eat every day, rather than for the cameras. But it was so much fun and so exciting – I’d do it again for fun.”

Life changed dramatically for Diana after winning the popular reality cooking show. Her corporate career at Deloitte became increasingly difficult to juggle with event appearances and travel demands, leading her to choose food over finance.

“I don’t regret my decision because I love what I do. I’m living and breathing my passion every day,” she says.

“Could I have made a food career without winning MasterChef? Perhaps, but I don’t think I would have. Starting out in food here without a name is really hard. You need a lot of investment and money to back yourself or have a really great idea that’s different and stands out, otherwise you’re just the flavour of the month. We’re very fickle here because we’re spoilt for choice – not just for our incredible food, but our quality coffee.”

Diana has a healthy obsession with coffee. She was just seven or eight years old when she recalls growing up in Malaysia and watching people drink “village coffee”.

“Kopitiams, which are little coffee shops on virtually every corner in Malaysia, mostly at massive intersections, use local beans. They serve it jet black. It’s similar to Turkish coffee in that it’s really thick, but not necessarily strong, just dark in colour,” Diana says. “Malaysians drink it with condensed milk so it’s sweet, or they drink it black with a little bit of sugar or Kopi C, Carnation milk [evaporated milk] without sugar, which is technically a healthier version of condensed milk.”

Growing up, Diana’s mother wouldn’t

let her drink coffee, always saying “it’s not good for you”. It was only when she moved out of home at age 16 or 17 that her rebelliousness kicked in and Diana got her first taste of the jet-black, village drink.

“I love coffee. I look for a full-bodied flavour and a roast that’s not too acidic.

I like black coffee like long blacks and espresso because the focus is only on the coffee. But if have a milk-based coffee, I tend to have it with almond milk,” Diana says. “For me, Melbourne has the best milk coffees.”

“IT’S ALSO THE AMBIENCE, THE MUSIC, THE VIBE, AND THE MYSTERY OF THIS HIDDEN LANEWAY LOCATION YOU STRUGGLE TO FIND. THAT’S THE MAGIC OF A GOOD MELBOURNE CAFÉ.”

Diana travels frequently to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia and has seen the rise of western cafés popping up. She says its progression is thanks to the young generation who travel to Australia to study, absorb the café culture, and return home and apply what they’ve learnt to their own cafés.

In her own home, Diana has a Nespresso machine she never uses.

Instead, she buys ground beans from her local café and roaster around the corner called Ground Yourself, which she uses for filter coffee first thing in the morning. In the afternoon, she’ll treat herself to “proper coffee” from favourite Melbourne institutes including Patricia Coffee Brewers, Brother Baba Budan, St Ali, Monk Bodhi Dharma, Padre, and Axil Coffee.

“Eight out of 10 places you visit in Melbourne will deliver good coffee and the ultimate café experience. Take Patricia’s for example. It’s a hole in the

wall next to a dumpster. It fits 10 people at the bar, if that. It’s very minimal. It doesn’t have a focus on food – except delicious butterbing biscuits and free soda water on tap, which makes it even more cool,” Diana says. “There’s no seating, only standing. Everyone is there to have a good coffee or have a catchup over a good coffee. They do variations of coffee and milk well, but it’s also the ambience, the music, the vibe, and the mystery of this hidden laneway location you struggle to find. That’s the magic of a good Melbourne café.”

In Turkey, Diana says its magic is found in the cup.

“Every household I visited had a proper Turkish coffee machine and served the black, bitter, filter coffee in beautiful decorated little espresso cups.

I loved it so much. I’ve honestly never been to a place that drinks more coffee than the Turks. They have about seven cups a day, I’m not kidding. I only manage two.”

Diana says the most expensive coffee she’s ever paid for is an $11 almond latte in Hong Kong, which is apparently normal for the Asian city.

“The culture there is more tea drinking. Coffee is a novelty, so there’s not many cafés. The ones that do serve coffee charge a premium. I was shocked it was so pricey but at least it was good,” she says. “Melburnians also pay top dollar for coffee, but we don’t want anything sub-par.”

Growing up in Malaysia, food was anything but sub-par in the Chan household, with Diana’s parents and grandmother talented cooks who believed in abundant, healthy food.

“Food played a big part in my family.

I come from one of those crazy food families,” Diana says.

“My mum was a working mum. It didn’t matter how late she came home – she would always cook dinner for us. It wasn’t just about the sustenance of it. She would shop every day to get the freshest produce, so we grew up eating good healthy food. Mum cooks really seasonally, so she’d make typical Malaysian dishes from bone broth to rice and curries. Family dinner was also a chance to catch up on our day. We would sit around the dinner table and debrief.”

Thanks to her family’s food appreciation instilled from an early age, Diana is passionate about sharing her food obsession, which she was fortunate to share through a 10-part SBS Food series, Asia Unplated with Diana Chan.

Each episode highlighted one Asian cuisine and one guest chef – some familiar faces and some not, ranging from chefs

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CELEBRITY CHEF

Gary Mehigan and Adam D’Sylva to the Japanese chef down the road from Diana’s Asia Unplated with Diana Chan unpacks the flavours of Asia and shows viewers how simple Asian cooking can be. house, and her childhood friend.

“I am very proud of the show and its intention to break the stigma that cooking Asian food is complex. We had a great calibre of guests and the content was good. It celebrated non-fussy Asian cooking – you don’t have to have 500 million sauces, just 10 base ones to make something unique,” Diana says.

“It was amazing to share my understanding of the origins of Asian dishes and impart a bit of my knowledge to the viewers.”

Diana is hoping to produce a second season of Asia Unplated and is already excited about the extensive array of events, travel adventures, and new range of frozen dumplings set to hit the shelves in 2020 – “because Aussies are obsessed with dumplings”, Diana says.

“2019 was good to me, and hopefully the good run keeps going. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.”

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FEATURE NEWS

Starting a movement Ona Coffee has launched the #giveupthecup campaign with a plan to cease its use and distribution of single-use cups. The roaster encourages other coffee businesses to do the same.

T

he takeaway cup has long been used as a symbol in the coffee industry, representing the last link in the supply chain as crop reaches cup.

But its environmental impact is becoming impossible to ignore.

With a growing number of reusable alternatives or cup-swap programs available, Ona Coffee Founder Sasa Sestic wonders why single-use cups are needed at all.

“For many of us, when we go to our local café, we order a takeaway cup and move on with our busy lives, [but] the [environmental consequences] of singleuse products has been a contentious subject in both public and industry sectors for several years,” Sasa says.

“The effects of climate change are real. With the bushfires and other environmental disasters across Australia, we feel that now is the time to act.”

Ona Coffee launched the #giveupthecup campaign in February, revealing its plans to stop using singleuse takeaway cups in its venues and wholesale distribution.

In 2019, Ona Coffee supplied more than 2.7 million takeaway cups to its customers across Australia. While this is just a fraction of the more than one billion disposable cups thrown away every year in the country, Sasa hopes other businesses will join Ona in giving up the cup.

“Although Ona Coffee is only supplying a small proportion of the takeaway cups used in Australia, our goal is that, by acting together and having everyone in our industry supporting this initiative, and also individuals, we can make a change,” Sasa says.

“We want to set an example and show that reusable cups can and should be the standard in Australia. It’s time to

#giveupthecup.”

Ona Coffee will open its first flagship café in Melbourne in April without singleuse cups. Ona Coffee General Manager Tom Beaumont says the café launch serves as a perfect starting point.

“We don’t want to create a problem and then unwind it. We’re in a great area in Brunswick where environmental awareness is high and the reusable market is already strong,” Tom says.

“We don’t feel there’s business to lose, and this is also a coffee experience destination. We’re encouraging people to drink from reusables and we’re also encouraging people to take some time out and experience amazing coffee inside the venue.”

Ona Coffee Sydney and the roaster’s Canberra cafés will follow suit.

“We hope the campaign inspires people and will use our own venues as role models to show that a café can still

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FEATURE NEWS

be successful without single-use cups,” Tom says.

“The next phase is to stop distributing single-use cups and provide reusable options for our wholesale customers.

Cafés have the opportunity to respond to community concerns and create sustainable practices together.”

REUSABLE REVOLUTION

Reusable cups and swap programs have increased in popularity in the last few years.

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A number of reusable alternatives have popped up in recent years to encourage a shift away from disposable cups. Ona Coffee intends to work collaboratively with these companies to ensure its wholesale customers can access a variety of options.

“KeepCup was an innovator in this space early on and there are plenty of other businesses and cafés that are acting sustainably,” Tom says.

“They’re all partners in this process and we share the same philosophy.”

Cup borrowing systems have been implemented across Australia, where customers can purchase cups or put down a deposit, then bring back cups to be swapped for fresh ones.

Popular reusable cups include KeepCup, Sttoke, and Frank Green.

The HuskeeSwap program allows consumers to buy HuskeeCups outright then exchange them for fresh cups when returning for coffee. This mitigates workflow disruption for the café, which can serve sit-down orders in HuskeeCups as well.

With GreenCaffeen, coffee drinkers download an app, sign up, then pick up a reusable cup from a participating café. They can then take the cup to any participating café, and if it’s within 30 days, it’s free to use.

For a small subscription fee per month, customers can sign up to The Cup eXchange cup borrowing system, which uses QR codes to track its reusable cups.

ReturnR lets customers put down

a refundable $6 deposit at a café to purchase their coffee in a stainless-steel cup. This can later be returned for the deposit, swapped for a new cup, or even exchanged for a different container.

“You can take a cup back and replace it with a stainless-steel bowl for a takeaway lunch meal. It’s a currency. It’s not only the takeaway cup industry that’s changing, it’s takeaway packaging as a whole,” Tom says.

“This more diverse reusable market is great for the customer. They might buy a resusable cup – but if they leave it at home, they can use a returnable cup instead. There are plenty of options and they complement each other.”

Before phasing out disposable cups completely from its distribution, the roaster will distribute single-use cups bearing the #giveupthecup hashtag and carrying the message “no more single use cups”.

“A lot of people don’t know that coffee companies make money off takeaway cups. This is a decision to act sustainably at root level, even though it will affect our bottom line,” Tom says.

“But if you’re a roaster forecasting profits from takeaway cups for years to come, you’d be foolish. There are more and more success stories coming from cafés who are not supplying singleuse cups. When we have enough of these, the landscape will change even more quickly.”

ONA AT A TIME

French Basket in New South Wales is an early converter to the single-use-free movement. Owners Jacobe Marsh and Lucille Varnier made the decision while planning their second café in Dee Why, which opened in February.

“I’m from Byron Bay and living sustainably has been instilled in me since I was a kid,” Jacobe says.

“When the opportunity came to start

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a second café, we had to make up our minds on how to do it. It’s a beachfront position, rent is high, and we weren’t sure if it’s a good idea, but we stuck to our guns. People shared our efforts through Instagram and social media, and we’ve had people saying they’ll support us because we’re takeaway-free.”

At the first French Basket in Mona Vale, Jacobe and Lucille chose to slowly phase out single use cups instead of wasting those already in stock.

“We have a lot of tradespeople come through that want to be in and

out quickly. It gave us time to heavily promote the switch and give our customers plenty of notice,” Jacobe says.

Both venues stock HuskeeCups and encourage people to take part in the HuskeeSwap system. Since opening a year and a half ago, Jacobe estimates the Mona Vale store has sold upwards of 700 HuskeeCups. Dee Why also offers “ugly” mugs in the hopes that people will return them.

“Quite often along the coast you see bins overflowing on the beaches and rubbish blowing down the street. If there’s

less single-use cups being used, it’s going to make it a lot cleaner,” Jacobe says.

He hopes that #giveupthecup will encourage more cafés, even those not affiliated with Ona, to make a permanent change.

“Ona is a leader in the coffee industry.

Other cafés respect Ona, and them launching this will cement it for others to come onboard. The more people that go reusable-only, the easier it becomes for everyone,” Jacobe says.

“We’re seeing crazy fires changing peoples’ lives and erratic storms washing up plastic on beaches. 2020 will be a big year for pushing environmentally friendly and sustainably operating businesses.”

SUSTAINABLE MISSION

#giveupthecup is one part of Ona Coffee’s wider mission to improve its sustainability, with plans to address every by-product of the business.

“Ahead, packaging is on our agenda with new and creative ways to solve this issue,” Tom says.

“Our belief is that prevention is better than diversion. We’d rather remove the problem altogether than put a Band-Aid on it.”

In the meantime, Sasa encourages other coffee businesses to act progressively and #giveupthecup.

“I understand that it is not an easy process, and that we can’t just stop serving single-use cups overnight. A movement like this will require support from industry, café owners, and, most importantly, the individuals that are ordering and drinking coffee,” Sasa says.

“How incredible would it be if instead of leaving this problem for future generations to deal with, we took ownership and made a difference now?”

Ona Coffee is working with a number of alternatives in the move from single use.

For more information, visit www.onacoffee.com.au/sustainability or follow #giveupthecup on social media.

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

Back to the future As Danes Specialty Coffee celebrates its 25-year anniversary, Managing Director Paul Jackson reflects on the evolution of Australian specialty coffee and how the past is destined to repeat.

A

fter Italian immigrants brought their love for espresso to Australia in the 1950s, coffee quickly became ingrained in Australian culture. According to World Atlas data collated in 2017, per capita, Australia ranks 42 in the world for coffee consumption. Despite not placing among the highest consumers, Australia has developed a reputation as being a global leader of specialty coffee and an influential trendsetter in the Asia-Pacific.

One company that has contributed to the growth of Australia’s specialty coffee industry is Danes Specialty Coffee, which is this year celebrating its 25-year anniversary. Danes Managing Director Paul Jackson says modern trends gaining popularity are driving the coffee industry back towards traditional espresso bar concepts.

“Coffee was meant to be short, black, and fast. That’s how Italians invented espresso, with the espresso bar an institution embedded into their culture.

You would take ‘una pausa’ [a pause] for a strong, dark shot of coffee with a buttery pastry, enjoy a chat with the barista, then move on,” Paul says.

“When the specialty coffee wave hit Australia around 25 years ago, takeaway coffee was a minimal percentage of coffee sales. Most people dined in.”

Over time, fast-paced lifestyles and a demand for on-the-go products have fuelled the takeaway coffee industry. As technology progressed, large Styrofoam cups were developed and later replaced by plastic and paper cups.

An unforeseen repercussion of this was the massive amounts of waste these single-use cups would generate.

“Today, we are increasingly aware of the negative effect our takeaway habit has on the environment. Over a billion single use cups are thrown away each year in Australia. Many end up in landfill or the ocean and will not break down in our lifetime,” Paul says.

“We’re now seeing a shift in the use of takeaway cups across the specialty coffee

Danes celebrates its 25-year anniversary in 2020.

industry. Customers are demanding more sustainable solutions from cafés, roasters, and milk suppliers.”

Danes listened and acted, developing its own plant-based cups in 2019.

“There’s no better single-use cups out there on the market that are more environmentally sound,” Paul says.

“The Australian takeaway market isn’t going to disappear overnight, but the movement towards sitting down and drinking in is undeniably happening.”

Instead, he expects the eco-friendly mindset to push the coffee industry back towards a traditional Italian espresso bar culture.

“The next evolution is to revert to the original Italian way. Stop, order, sip, dash. We’ll avoid single-use cups altogether, in a throwback to slower, simpler times,” he says.

“It’s a full circle evolution, with consumers going back to some simpler choices that reflect a change in

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

society’s values.”

Although consumer trends are changing, Australia’s highly competitive specialty coffee industry means roasters are constantly pushing the limits of flavour and quality, including Danes.

In 2018 and 2019, Danes celebrated its quarter-century birthday early, winning the Australian International Coffee Awards Champion Roaster and achieved multiple gold medals for its coffees.

Its Mocha Gold won the Milk Coffee Blend category at 2018 AICA and Danes’ Ascension won the 2019 AICA gold in the espresso category.

In order to convey these awardwinning flavour profiles to customers, Danes takes pride in being transparent and engaging with its communications.

To do this, Danes includes a brew guide and flavour pentagon on its packaging, a guide which visually illustrates the coffee’s balance of body, flavour, sweetness, aroma, and finish.

The roaster also separates its coffees into three distinct “flavour tribes” to characterise its beans: chocolates and caramels, nuts and spices, and fruits and berries.

“Across the whole bean-to-cup supply

chain, customers are pushing for greater transparency. The knowledge gap between customers and roasters is getting smaller,” Paul says.

“Together, these elements provide a clear, simple vocabulary to quickly and easily define the subtleties of our coffees.

Our flavour language is accessible for all levels of coffee knowledge.”

While the sustainability revolution and a greater level of transparency is changing the way Danes operates, another key evolution Paul has witnessed during his career is the rise of dairyalternative milks.

“One of the most disruptive changes in the specialty coffee industry in the last five years has been the rise of non-dairy milk alternatives. From acrid black coffee back in the instant coffee days to the huge milky mugs people drink now, we’re looking at alternatives to traditional dairy milk,” Paul says.

“It’s customers themselves who are leading the way, as many seek fresh plant ‘mylks’.”

Danes has embraced this trend, partnering with Inside Out, an Australian almond milk brand that started selling smoothies at the Bondi Beaches’ Danes has partnered with Inside Out to produce Almond Milk for Baristas.

Farmers’ Markets.

According to Grant Freeman, Business Development Manager at Inside Out, non-dairy milk currently accounts for 20 per cent of volume in the specialty coffee sector – a figure that is growing each year.

“IT’S CUSTOMERS THEMSELVES WHO ARE LEADING THE WAY, AS MANY SEEK FRESH PLANT MYLKS.” “This is driven by a few key factors.

Being lactose-free, it’s friendlier on the gut, it’s suitable for a vegan diet, and is often considered an all-round healthier choice. As the category becomes more mainstream, it’s predicted that consumers will increasingly demand fresh, high-quality dairy alternatives,” Grant says.

As dairy-free milk is often paired with coffee, Inside Out has created its products to complement espresso, rather than overpower it.

“Working with Danes and other industry experts, we identified that existing ultra-high-temperature offerings overpowered coffee, which is why we developed Café Originals – a quality range that can texture and complement distinct flavour profiles,” Grant says.

“We can confidently say we have created both an almond and oat milk which don’t compromise on taste and that are also made the right way, using a high percentage of Australian almonds and all the right ingredients.”

With sustainability and dairy alternatives influencing the future of the coffee industry, Danes’ Paul Jackson says its integral for roasters and others in the industry to stay in touch with consumers.

“Consumers are pushing sustainability and dairy alternatives and ultimately we’re led by them. They have the right to speak – their habits will determine our path,” he says.

“As cafés and roasters, it challenges us in the specialty coffee industry to show leadership in these areas.”

For more information, visit www.danes.com.au

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

To infinity & beyond Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters is exploring the unknown with a new range of single-serve coffee bags, making specialty coffee more convenient and accessible to a broader audience.

S

pecialty coffee is no longer solely the domain of the café.

As general knowledge of coffee grows, consumers look for new ways to enjoy café-quality coffee anywhere. Nich Rae, Head of Coffee at Toby’s Estate, says roasters are looking at new ways to serve their coffee to customers outside of a specialty café.

“One of the biggest changes we’ve seen in the market is the perception of convenience coffee and single-serve as approachable formats for a specialty roaster,” Nich says.

“You see a lot of the industry moving towards that single-serve, convenience market. We wanted to do the same but in the right way and to make sure we weren’t compromising on quality.”

Nich’s role is to ensure coffee is at the centre of all of Toby’s Estate’s decisions and the heartbeat of the brand. Rather than going down the traditional route of coffee pods or capsules, he thought the roaster should experiment with something new. This came to fruition in February, when Toby’s Estate released its first line of single-serve coffee bags.

“It was the quality of the coffee that stood out to us about the bags. What really blew us away was the aroma and the

amount of acidity we could get from the product,” Nich says.

“Those two elements play a huge role in specialty coffee and is what got us excited to push forward and explore what we could do.”

The coffee bags work similarly to tea bags, simply needing to be steeped in hot water, dunked for 15 seconds, then left to brew for the desired strength.

Toby’s Estate partnered with American company Steeped Coffee to produce the

coffee bags.

“We were in Boston last year at the 2019 Specialty Coffee Expo, walking around and visiting different stands.

We came across Steeped, drank some of its coffee on show, and the team ran us through the shelf life and process of making the bags,” Nich says.

“It definitely caught our attention, so we took a few samples back with us to Sydney. We carried out testing over several months to make sure the quality

Toby’s Estate’s single serve bags come in two variants for black and milk coffee.

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

maintained like they said it would. It did, and this gave us an idea of what coffee would work really well.”

The single-serve bags are available in two varieties: the milk-oriented The Next Frontier and Forbidden Planet, made to be drunk black. Nich says the best feedback Toby’s Estate has heard from customers is that the coffees – particularly Forbidden Planet – taste how the tasting notes describe: milk chocolate and strawberry.

“For us that’s super exciting and exactly what we wanted,” Nich says. “With The Next Frontier, it keeps a strong presence in milk, so people are getting enough intensity to be happy with the drink.”

Both coffees use custom blends and profiles tailored to taste great in the singleserve format. The Next Frontier features coffee from Brazil, India, Colombia, and Guatemala and is roasted close to an espresso roast. Forbidden Planet uses coffees from Brazil and Myanmar and a lighter roast.

After it’s roasted, the coffee is sent to Steeped Coffee, where it is ground and nitro-sealed to preserve the coffee’s freshness and quality.

“By nitro-sealing it, when you open the bag, you get that nice smell of fresh coffee

“THE QUALITY ROASTERS HAVE STARTED BRINGING TO SINGLE-SERVE IS CHANGING PEOPLE’S WILLINGNESS TO EXPERIMENT IN THAT MARKET AND IT WILL ONLY GET BETTER AS MORE JOIN IN.” which really sets you up for the experience you’re about to have,” Nich says.

The bags themselves are biodegradable and the outer packet is made using compostable and renewable materials. This addresses the waste sometimes associated with single-use and single-serve packaging.

This was particularly important to Toby’s Estate given the intended use of these products as quick on-the-go options.

“People have less and less time, but they still want to enjoy their coffee during the day. The quality roasters have started bringing to single-serve is changing people’s willingness to experiment in that market and it will only get better as more join in,” Nich says.

He adds the compelling part for Toby’s

The Next Frontier features tasting notes of dark chocolate and toffee.

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Estate is that the target audience of the single-serve coffee bags is really broad.

Instead of catering to a group of people, it fills a niche in the market.

“We want anyone to be able to experience high-quality coffee. We still want people to go out and have their coffees at their cafés, and that’s still the highest quality of coffee you can get.

There’s also people who prefer to brew their coffee at home,” Nich says.

“This coffee is for when you’re short of time, or going camping, on the run, or catching a flight and want to take some coffee with you. Even if you’re in an office and don’t have time to run to the café. The market is huge.”

The products follow a space exploration theme, reflecting the ideas of travelling, looking to the future, and going where no person has gone before.

“We wanted to make something that we could go long term, so we needed a theme that we could replicate over time and wouldn’t fall away, but also have a little fun with it,” Nich says. “It’s something exciting and new to us, so we felt space exploration fit that well.”

Like many aspects of the coffee bags, creating the theme was a collaborative effort among the Toby’s Estate team.

“For us, it’s important to have multiple points of view on everything we do,” Nich says. “That’s why we were able to make the right decisions when choosing this style of coffee and which beans to use all the way to how it’s presented.”

With the single-serve coffee bags now launched and out in the atmosphere, Nich says the next stage is to shoot for the moon.

“I think the next step will be looking at doing this with a single origin, but we’re not just going to move from product to product. We’re really happy with the quality so far and want to make sure we keep doing it right and that our customers understand it,” Nich says.

“We want people to have access to high-quality coffee and it makes life a lot more convenient if you only need hot water.”

For more information, visit www.tobysestate.com.au

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

Bigger and better Mocopan’s commitment to quality, consistency, and its customers has led to unprecedented growth with no signs of slowing down, thanks to the expansion of its Preston roastery.

Mocopan has capacity to roast 2500 kilograms of coffee per hour.

W

hen Agostino Monici, Sergio Coperchini, and Vic Panatieri formed Mocopan Coffee in Preston, Victoria in 1954, it’s doubtful the Italian immigrants could have predicted how large the coffee roaster would become. Mocopan has continued to play a key role in the Melbourne coffee scene for more than 60 years.

“It’s amazing how many people we meet that have at some stage partnered with Mocopan along the way, or whose family has worked with Mocopan at some point during their coffee journey

as well,” says Steve Wrightson, Sales Director, Australia and New Zealand.

“We’re really proud of our heritage and how it’s stood the test of time.”

About 20 years ago, the roastery relocated from Plenty Road to a larger roastery around the corner on Albert Street. By 2017, the site was running at full capacity, and the need to expand arose again.

“We were bursting at the seams.

Over the last 10 years, we have seen an increase in our volumes by 250 per cent.

We’ve been successful at both winning new customers and growing with current ones,” Steve says. “That put us under a lot of stress in terms of capacity.”

The opportunity arose for Mocopan to take over its neighbouring warehouse.

Over the last three years, the roaster has relocated its production to the new site and converted the original space to storage and warehousing.

Alongside Mocopan, the Albert Street roastery roasts fresh coffee for a number of large Australian coffee retailers.

“The Mocopan café business is really strong. We supply more than 500 cafés across Australia and that continues to grow, particularly in Brisbane and Tasmania,” Steve says.

“We have, for a long time, partnered with some of the largest and most innovative coffee retailers in Australia.

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

“THE INVESTMENT IS NOT JUST ABOUT CAPACITY. IT’S AN INVESTMENT IN ACHIEVING HIGHER QUALITY STANDARDS ON A CONSISTENT LEVEL.” Together, we have experienced significant growth for a number of years.”

Steve says despite its size, Mocopan upholds its commitment to consistency, freshness, and quality. Mocopan’s emphasis on these values and collaboration has helped the company form new partnerships.

“Last year also saw our first venture into supermarkets in the Australian market. We worked with Coles on the Urban Coffee Culture launch, which really contributed to our increased capacity demand,” Steve says.

While planning its expansion, Mocopan looked overseas to see how the roastery could maintain its quality and consistency at an even greater scale.

“We held a discovery tour around the

A conveyor connects the two sites, delivering packaged coffee from production to warehousing.

world, visiting some of the best roasteries and packaging innovations throughout Europe. Italy and Germany stood out to us in particular,” Steve says.

“That became what we wanted to implement at the new facility. The investment is not just about capacity. It’s an investment in achieving higher quality

Mocopan has increased its volume by 250 per cent in the last 10 years.

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standards on a consistent level.”

Due to the investment and expansion in operations, Coffee Operations Manager Peter Stathos says the company’s goals are now being achieved with even greater efficiency.

“We’ve been able to invest in faster lines and new technology, so while we’re producing the same volume – if not more – it’s taking less time,” Peter says.

This new technology runs throughout the production process, beginning in the factory’s green bean management room.

Mocopan invested in a new colour sorter to ensure quality even before roasting.

Post-sorting, the green beans are funnelled to storage silos, where they wait before being fed to one of two Brambati roasters. Mocopan has installed a new 600-kilogram batch drum roaster – one of the largest in Australia – and moved its 300-kilogram roaster from the previous site. Across the two, Mocopan has the potential to roast more than 2500 kilograms of fresh coffee per hour.

“We’ve also been able to also invest in new technology and software within the roasting equipment and how we roast.

The software is much more advanced and provides greater control over our roast profiles,” Peter says.

“It’s also improved our sustainable practices and gas consumption. Being more efficient and producing the volume

in less time means we’re not operating as long and reducing our carbon footprint.”

Once roasted, packaged, and boxed, a spiral conveyor carries the boxes up to and across a bridge connecting the manufacturing and warehousing facilities.

Standing in the Mocopan storage warehouse feels like being a kid in a coffee-coated candy store. Seemingly endless aisles of pallet racking reach the rafters, carrying boxes upon boxes of roasted coffee. Despite the large volume of coffee kept onsite, Peter says it doesn’t stay long.

“We are obsessed with ensuring coffee lovers across Australia are drinking the freshest coffee possible,” he says.

“This goes hand in hand with tight quality control from our operations to quality assurance teams. We pride ourselves on consistency.”

Mocopan has introduced several automated processes to the new production plant, all with the aim of improving consistency and efficiency.

This ranges from the roasting software recording profiles and mechanical packing lines to automated sampling processes.

“Automation has made us more efficient and gives us speedier response times with things like quality checks,” Peter says. “There’s a perception that when you automate, people lose jobs, but that hasn’t been the case with us.

We’ve been able to not only grow and become more automated, but retain our workforce at the same time.”

Steve adds that Mocopan’s people are at the heart of the business and vital to

“WE ARE OBSESSED WITH ENSURING COFFEE LOVERS ACROSS AUSTRALIA ARE DRINKING THE FRESHEST COFFEE POSSIBLE.”

the company’s future.

“We have some really great talent in our business that have taken ownership to make sure we’ve hit our milestones with this project,” Steve says. “The pace of change over the last two years is unprecedented.”

The expansion is almost complete and Steve says Mocopan Coffee now has capacity ready to last until at least 2032.

“We’re focused on strong and long-term growth in Australia and New Zealand, but we also have global aspirations,” Steve says.

While Mocopan Coffee maintains its values of freshness, quality, and consistency, Steve says the trademark of its success has been a relentless commitment to its customers.

“Our model is built around partnerships,” Steve says.

“Anyone can have a relationship with their customers, but to have a partnership means having a level of trust, which is built on joint long-term aspirations, with our roastery and our coffee at the core.”

For more information, visit www.mocopan.com.au

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INDUSTRY PROFILE

Quarterly spotlight SoCo Roasters is providing unique and high-quality coffees to its cafés through its quarterly single origin program.

W

hen SoCo Roasters introduced itself to the coffee community at the 2019 Melbourne International Coffee Expo, its goal was to deliver great coffee.

It did this with its Society Blend, a blend of Zambian and Colombian coffees, with distinctive dark chocolate and cherry favours. In the year since, SoCo Roasters has firmed its footing and is using its platform to introduce the best single origin coffees to cafés through its quarterly program.

“After launching the SoCo brand in Melbourne in 2019, we now supply

nationally and the single origin program complements our core Society Blend,” SoCo Roasters Marketing Manager Burcu De La Cruz says. “It allows the café to serve coffee in a different way, like brewed as filter, and offer a wider range.

We always look for different unique tastes and explore different regions to find the perfect variety of flavours.”

SoCo’s current single origin is from Tirra Estate in the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica. The coffee features a creamy body with a delicate mandarin acidity. Its tasting notes include apricots and stone fruit upfront with a sweet caramel finish.

The Tarrazu region is a rural community known throughout the world

SoCo Roasters is highlighting unique coffees through its single origin program.

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for its traditional values and leadership in growing fine coffees. The Coopetarrazu cooperative, located in the heart of Tarrazu, promotes environmentally sustainable farming practices in the community. The group has implemented a Coffee Culture Quality of Life Sustainability plan to track its environmental impact and implement better practices. This creates a culture of environmental respect among its members and their children.

Through this plan, Coopetarrazu offers free seeds and soil analysis to its members, allowing farmers to undertake reforestation and understand how topography and surrounding ecosystems impact their soil. This empowers farmers to adjust their practices according to specific soil needs.

Coopetarrazu also educates the youth of the community on the tracking of birds and insect populations, and the important role these species play in coffee production and ecosystem maintenance.

The cooperative also provides on-site housing to support seasonal migrant workers and organises festivals throughout the year celebrating their indigenous cultural heritage. To SoCo, these traditions are as important to share as the coffee itself.

“Every region and every farmer comes with a unique story. We aim to share the everyday interesting stories of these producers and promote them at every opportunity,” Burcu says.

SoCo launched its quarterly single origin program not long after the brand was introduced last February. The growing roaster has so far highlighted coffees from Zambia, Ethiopia, and Colombia.

Burcu says when seeking coffees to highlight as a single origin, SoCo Master Roaster Giuseppe Cianchi looks for those that stand out from the crowd.

“We try to involve the whole supply chain process from the grower to the café, with regular visits to different origins to source unique flavours we can bring back to the community,”

Giuseppe says. “This allows coffee drinkers to appreciate that specific distinction from that particular region.”

With such valuable and limited coffees, it’s important for SoCo to treat them with the utmost care. A limited amount of coffee is purchased from each small local farm. The coffee is roasted “to perfection”, meaning there are only minimal roasting trials before the team settles with the one that it thinks is best.

The single origins are roasted for espresso and filter preparation, providing cafés with multiple avenues to serve the coffee. Like SoCo’s Society Blend, extraction time will determine the taste.

Longer extractions will bring out more of the flavours, while shorter extractions highlight the acidity.

The quarterly nature of the single origin program means that SoCo can guarantee the coffee’s uniqueness during that time of the year and availability. It also provides the roaster with time to showcase these coffees and select the best beans possible to share next.

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“WE AIM TO SHARE THE EVERYDAY INTERESTING STORIES OF THESE PRODUCERS AND PROMOTE THEM.” To help cafés make the most of the coffees, SoCo offers tasting cards which outline the flavours of the coffee, and depict its sweetness, body, bitterness, and acidity in a flavour wheel. Recipes or targets, information about the origin and producer, and processing methods are also featured.

So far, SoCo’s single origins have included washed and natural processed coffees, two methods providing a different coffee experience. Its current Costa Rican coffee, for instance, is a natural, meaning the coffee has been dried while the cherry is still on the bean, giving it a fruitier flavour. SoCo is also looking at different methods, such as the honey process, which will bring even more sweet and fruity flavours to the surface.

With the story behind the coffee of utmost importance, SoCo is developing a second blend that focuses on the improving the working conditions of its producers. The blend will be Fairtrade Organic certified, ensuring the livelihoods of its farmers is secured through that renowned and accountable organisation.

“We really want to highlight the sustainability of this blend and where these beans come from,” Burcu says.

SoCo aims for the blend to reach the market in the second half of 2020. In the meantime, SoCo intends to continue growing its single origin program, sourcing from producers it knows grow good coffee, along with new and untouched regions.

“Single origin is growing due to its quality and particular taste.

We see this continuing and will accommodate with more coffees and multiple offerings. This gives our cafés options as they become more interested in the origins of their coffee and the roasting process,” Burcu says.

“About one in three cafés in Australia have a second grinder for single origins and the number is growing.”

She says it’s important SoCo continues to innovate, developing and seeking new tastes and coffee profiles to accommodate interest and demand from cafés.

“We will continue to bring out unique single origin flavours and travel the world to ensure we are pleasing the taste buds of Australian coffee lovers.”

For more information, visit www.socoroasters.com.au

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NOW

FEATURE NEWS

Road to recovery After Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season, small businesses, the coffee community, and the government are banding together to rebuild.

N

ew Year’s Eve is the biggest widespread annual celebration of the year, but for many Australians the build-up to 31 December 2019 will be remembered in a different light.

As the new decade approached, the spectre of an unprecedented bushfire season loomed over the nation, leading to a raging debate on whether many festivities should even proceed.

Fast-forward to the end of February and research published in the journal Nature Climate Change stated 21 per cent of Australia’s mainland forests, totalling more than 18 million hectares, had burned.

For many cafés and small businesses, Australia’s worst bushfire season in recent memory has been devastating.

Despite the destruction, the road to recovery has begun, and locals are working with authorities to restimulate economies and communities.

“Governments traditionally have taken a top-down approach to rebuilding, but the outcome of events like Black Saturday show that while bottom-up approach may take longer, the end results will be stronger,” says

Sharon Raguse, Manager of Economic Recovery, East Gippsland Shire Council.

“One strategy we are undertaking is to ensure local businesses and local suppliers are being used for recovery, whether it’s consulting, business coaching, procurement of contracts, traffic management, or anything else.

That way the business stays within the community.”

On a national scale, the full extent of the destruction is immeasurable. To date, 34 people have died, countless animals have been killed, and the damage toll stands in the billions of dollars.

“I daresay that most of these businesses have 60 to 100 per cent of their summer income impacted. From Cape Conran all the way up to Eden, New South Wales businesses rely on the nature-based, tourism market,” Sharon says.

“We’re using this as an opportunity for people to rethink their business models and diversify their incomestream. That way their businesses will be more sustainable in the future, as they will be able to even out the seasonal peaks and troughs to become more resilient.”

For people at ground zero, homes,

businesses, and in some cases, their lives were under immediate threat. Karen Lott, Owner of Spout Eden, a café and local produce store in Eden NSW, was

Karen Lott, Owner of Sprout Eden, has created a community pot to support victims.

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FEATURE NEWS

forced to sleep in the flat above her café as her house was at risk.

“It was apocalyptic – it felt surreal.

The sky was pitch black at 2pm in the afternoon. All you could see were emergency vehicles and people wearing masks. Some people chose to camp in their cars by the water, but they were ordered to leave there as well,” Karen says.

Sprout Café, which serves Ona Coffee, has acted as a hub for emergency service workers in the area. Among other initiatives, the café created a community pot where contributions are put towards providing free coffee to fire-affected individuals.

“Our roaster, Ona Coffee, has been extremely supportive of local businesses.

Sasa Sestic and his team personally visited us, they gave us credit to purchase coffee, and contributed a very generous amount to our community pot,” she says.

“Another great initiative has been signing up for ‘It’s My Shout’. You can register products online and people can donate to pay them forward. I’ve got coffee registered at $5 and meals for $20.

I’ve been forward-paying all of these purchases, so the funds stay within the community.”

One of the major disruptions to tourism and businesses over the period has been the profound damage to infrastructure, such as bridges and roads, which has limited the amount of traffic coming through.

“When the fires came into the area, they closed the highway for two months on the dot. There was no-one coming in or out. It’s reopened now and it’s quieter than normal, but it’s picking up – anything is better than nothing,” says Gary Hartas, Owner of Gingers Creek Bush Resort.

With tourism and business dashed, many café owners and other small businesses have been overwhelmed by the generosity of their local communities and the wider coffee industry.

“My coffee roaster, Holy Goat Coffee, gave me two boxes of coffee. I’ve had loads of help like that, people donating things which has allowed me to remain on my feet,” Gary says.

“If I didn’t have loyal local customers and the team from Holy Goat Coffee who were willing to support me, I would have been in danger of closing down.”

Australia’s coffee industry has been instrumental in aiding relief efforts and is responsible for countless donations. Cafés and roasters of all sizes have contributed to fundraisers and initiatives over the summer months.

“St Ali immediately pledged $1 for every coffee sold in the week following the worst of the fires, raising over $18,000.

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John White, Mayor of East Gippsland Shire, inspects the damage at Sarsfield.

We also set up a raffle, giving away an evening for 10 people in our café with food and drink provided, raising an addition $3000,” says Michael Cameron, Communications Manager at St Ali. “We were involved in a weekend relief concert providing coffee through our coffee cart business and have raised additional funds through a special coffee release gifted to us by producer Aida Batlle for this specific purpose. We’ve also sent coffee and supplies to affected areas like Mallacoota Beach.”

Veneziano took a similar approach. It also pledged $1 per coffee and 20 per cent of retail sales from 4 to 12 January, raising $13,156, and organised other fundraiser events to boost donations.

Many other roasters and cafés around the country have also marshalled relief efforts and donations. Industry Beans donated 10 per cent of all coffee sales towards bushfire relief in January and Everyday Coffee took the unique approach of creating a Bushfire Relief espresso blend, with 100 per cent of sales donated.

“It was truly encouraging to see so many people involved in the coffee

industry jump into action to help. There was a groundswell of support for those impacted by the bushfires. It definitely made us feel proud to be involved with this industry,” Michael says.

From the government’s perspective, the situation has been extremely challenging, but options for emergency funding have been rolled out across the country.

To aid impacted businesses financially, the Federal Government announced top-up grants of up to $50,000 tax-free and low-interest loans of up to $500,000 for businesses that have lost significant assets or had a major reduction of revenue.

Businesses that apply for 10-year loans of up to $500,000 aren’t required to pay interest for the first two years and following that period will pay a small figure, 0.8 per cent interest, for the remainder of the loan’s life.

Under the Disaster Recovery Payment scheme, individuals and families in need of funding are also eligible for a one-off payment of $1000.

For the East Gippsland Shire Council, the bushfires follow three years of drought. Given the damage successive

FEATURE NEWS

“ANOTHER GREAT INITIATIVE HAS BEEN SIGNING UP FOR ‘IT’S MY SHOUT’. YOU CAN REGISTER PRODUCTS ONLINE AND PEOPLE CAN DONATE TO PAY THEM FORWARD.”

environmental disasters had caused, the council took a decisive and quick approach to its recovery strategy.

“We were very quick to put a survey into the field to understand what the immediate impacts were. The data we gained has been invaluable in informing our decisions. We have a real desire to

ensure the community’s needs are being placed at the centre of the rebuild,” East Gippsland Shire Council’s Sharon says.

A strategy has been to work with various agencies to construct four working groups focused on four key pillars: economic recovery, natural environment, build environment, and

social environment.

While the coffee industry and government are doing their part to assist, picking up the pieces of the nation’s most devastating bushfire season on record will undoubtably take time.

“We can’t move quickly enough to explore every lever to assist in the short to medium term. The next three months are critical and there’s a real sense of urgency around rebuilding,” Sharon says.

“Ultimately, we want to look at the bigger picture to ensure that in five or 10 years, we are in a stronger position than where we started.”

For more information and to support bushfire affected communities, please donate www.redcross.org.au, www.bushfirerecovery.gov.au or www.itsmyshout.com.au

INDUSTRY PROFILE

The world cup Carlo Barbi, CEO of Club House, explains how adopting a flexible approach to manufacturing has elevated the family business to new heights, and why porcelain cups enhance a coffee’s flavour.

W

hen it comes to flavour attributes of coffee, variety, terroir, roast profile, blending, and brewing technique are some of the common influences. However, the vessel that the coffee is served in is often an afterthought.

Vessels in the coffee industry have come under the spotlight recently, with an industry-wide push for sustainability leading to growing scrutiny on single-use takeaway cups. Porcelain cups, however, have been a staple in foodservice for decades.

According to Carlo Barbi, CEO of Club House, this is no coincidence, due to their influence on coffee’s flavour and aroma.

“The International Institute of Coffee Tasters has found that porcelain traps the coffee’s aroma and maintains the drink at the best temperature to optimise its flavour,” Carlo says.

“In Italy we don’t traditionally use paper cups. Porcelain is always considered the best way to serve a coffee.”

Carlo says there are many advantages of serving coffee out of a

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porcelain cup that you don’t get from plastic or glassware.

“To start with, it is a very good conductor of temperature. It’s important to heat the cup to somewhere between 50 to 60°C which can be achieved by putting the cups on top of an espresso machine,” Carlo says. “This means when you pour your coffee, which is hotter, it cools to around 60 to 65°C. Once the coffee and cup reach the same temperature, it remains stable for a few minutes for the consumer to enjoy.”

While a cup’s temperature impacts the coffee inside, its shape also plays a role.

Carlo says espresso should be served in a 70-cubic-centimetre cup. A 25-cubiccentimetre espresso shot fills the cup, and about 40 to 45 cubic centimetres remains empty.

“This means the drink is visually pleasing as it has a good visual balance.

More importantly, though, the aroma becomes trapped inside the cup. If you serve an espresso in a cup that’s completely filled up, then the aroma will fade before the customer drinks it,” Carlo says.

“The interior shape is also as important. An oval shape at the bottom

of the cup guarantees the fluids circulate correctly during coffee pouring, creating a nice distribution of the crema.”

In addition to influencing the taste, porcelain’s propensity to conduct heat and withstand thermal shock makes it ideal for use in the hospitality industry.

Carlo says cups that are going through constant cleaning cycles need a high level of thermal resistance or the rapid change

Club House produces more than eight million pieces per year and exports to more than 40 countries.

in temperature can cause damage.

“Our products are extremely costefficient for cafés as they rarely need to be replaced. Our cups can withstand temperature changes of 200°C,” Carlo says. “Porcelain also has an extremely low absorption rate, so liquid doesn’t filter inside.

This also makes it extremely good from a hygienic point of view. Our cups can be washed thoroughly without being damaged as the water doesn’t seep in.”

According to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) porcelain is extremely dense and absorbs less than 0.5 per cent of moisture in encounters. ANSI classifies it as impervious, which is why it is used in bathroom, shower, and tableware designs.

While porcelain as a ceramic material provides many benefits in foodservice, Club House sees flexibility and design as its main points of difference.

Carlo took over as CEO of Club House from his father in 2003, who started the company in 1992.

“When we began to target the coffee industry about 25 years ago, we started from nothing. We had to create a unique selling point as at the time, there were already a few producers in Europe,” Carlo says. “The key thing we realised was how limited most catalogues were. Customers were only able to choose from very few shapes of cups.

Evolving the business to be flexible was a large part of our success.”

The business originally produced porcelain, wooden, and stainless-steel products for department stores but, over time, narrowed its expertise to focus on porcelain coffee cups.

“The department store business stagnated, but once my father started working with Lavazza, he saw a huge opportunity in the coffee industry. He decided to stop focusing on other products and concentrate fully on porcelain cups,” Carlo says.

Since making the decision to concentrate

exclusively on the coffee industry, Club House has grown exponentially. It now produces more than eight million pieces of porcelain per year and exports its cups to more than 40 countries, including Australia.

Club House’s cups are produced exclusively in China, at a single facility which the company has been working with for more than 20 years and operating under Club House’s management.

While a majority of the process is automated, Carlo says it’s important to have elements of the assembly chain that remain manual. This allows smaller quantities and customisable options to be created on demand.

“When we started, the norm was for manufacturers to have maybe 20 styles and shapes of cups – we have more than 500 now.

Every item we create has a different mould and we have the expertise to develop a new shape or design very easily,” Carlo says.

“For some other producers who have a more automated manufacturing system than us, it can be very complicated to make customised items. But we have an extremely flexible process that can be adapted for different customer requirements.”

According to Carlo, market demands vary considerably from country to country, which suits Club House’s flexibility.

“In Italy, a 70-cubic-centimetre espresso cup is by far the most important size. In other places though, the trends vary dramatically.

The flat white is a very popular beverage in a lot of places, so for those we sell a lot of 200-cubic centimetre cups. There are also more niche markets like Holland, where a lot of people drink a double coffee which requires a 140-cubic-centimetre cup,” he says.

“As well as our main catalogue, some customers will make a specialised order for a small quantity of uniquely designed cups.

Thanks to our flexible processes, we can do lots as small as 10,000 for customised shapes and 250 to have your logo onto our standard cups.”

After production, most of Club House’s products are sent to the company headquarters in Castegnato, Italy. The headquarters features a 5000-square- metre warehouse, office space, show room, logistics centre, and a research and development centre.

With the company currently manufacturing products that are used around the world in cafés, bars, and restaurants, Carlo says he is optimistic about growing the brand further and will be using trade shows to gain exposure to new markets.

“This year is very exciting as there is a huge opportunity to grow. There’s a lot to look forward to,” he says.

For more information, visit www.clubhouse.ch/en

TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

A new perspective Italian roasting manufacturer Brambati is implementing Ecodesign into its manufacturing processes to reduce its environmental footprint from the inside out.

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n the international coffee industry, sustainability has become a major focus across all levels of the supply chain. The push for a greener future has manifested in many forms, including an increase in demand for reusable or recycled cups, businesses choosing to adopt solar power, and the development of more biodegradable products.

For coffee roasting businesses, due to the nature of the heavy machinery involved, finding methods to reduce energy use and emissions can be challenging.

As such, Italian coffee roasting equipment manufacturer Brambati is taking an introspective approach to improving its machinery and manufacturing processes called Ecodesign – a movement founded on the notion that all people and businesses should contribute to a sustainable future.

“Ecodesign is about product improvement and innovation that is made with the intention of caring for the environment. We decided to analyse existing, established projects that we had with the intent to apply modern solutions to them,” says Fabrizio Brambati, President of Brambati Spa. “We found that we could create more environmentally sound solutions to some of the older processes and machines we were using, even though they were already working satisfactorily. The result of taking this approach has made our machinery more sustainable, while also reducing production costs,” Fabrizio says.

Brambati was born shortly after World War II and began manufacturing coffee roasting equipment about 40 years ago. Over time, the company expanded to begin manufacturing equipment used in the pasta, confectionary, plastic, and chemical industries.

According to Fabrizio, as a company with deep roots in the manufacturing industry, it is important to continually review its processes.

“The greater initial effort the company goes to, both economic and temporal, the greater the reward. The more we invest into Ecodesign, the lower the energy

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Brambati is reviewing its internal processes as part of its Ecodesign movement.

consumption, emissions, costs of operation, and number of spare parts that go to waste,” he says.

“This all adds up to less environmental impact and the pleasantly surprising fact that doing things sustainably is actually economically beneficial.”

Among the key examples of Ecodesign and its ability to reduce waste is the manufacturing of levers known as “swinging arms”, 23-kilogram pieces of metal used in Brambati’s grinding equipment.

The swinging arms were made in lots of 18 from 670-kilogram metal sheets.

During the production process, 256 kilograms, or 38 per cent of each metal sheet, would go to waste.

After adopting the Ecodesign approach, Brambati made a slight modification to the swinging arm’s design, increasing production capacity to 20 swinging arms per metal sheet. This reduced 46 kilograms of wasted metal each time.

“Technology has evolved over time and so has our awareness about the way emissions and waste impact the environment. It’s important we harness this evolution of technology and use it to

help us become more efficient and less wasteful,” Fabrizio says.

Brambati is implementing its Ecodesign mentality into its small mechanical parts too. This includes anti-vibrators, also known commonly as cylindrical mounts or bobbin mounts. These are small vulcanised pieces of rubber and steel used in machines to suppress vibration, shock, and noise.

“In traditional anti-vibrators, the steel and rubber are fused together. It can be very difficult and expensive to separate one from the other to recycle,” Fabrizio says.

“We have reviewed our anti-vibrators with Ecodesign to use rubber sheets that detach easily from the steel. This means once the anti-vibrators are at the end of their life, recycling becomes far easier and cheaper.”

In addition to reviewing its internal processes through the lens of Ecodesign, Brambati has invested into its research and development to offer environmentally beneficial options for its roasters.

“We have objectively evaluated our manufacturing methods and roaster designs to explore possible alternatives that offer the best ecological solutions,” Fabrizio says.

Its catalogue of roasters spans from

specialty coffee style roasters that process 20 kilograms of beans per hour to commercial high-capacity machines that can process up to 3000 kilograms per hour.

Its most popular styles of roaster are the KAR and BR series, both of which can now be purchased as an ECO model. This means the roaster is supplied with a high-efficiency after-burner, which reduces emissions and odours created during the roasting process.

“We tried to implement a more sustainable option into our current range of roasters, so we developed the ECO model. The roasters operate at the same level of performance, but emissions and energy consumption are reduced,” Fabrizio says.

Brambati’s KAR series are more traditional style roasters, while the BR series are fully automated and give customers more control over the roast.

“The BR model roasters are very sophisticated. The machines use state-of-the-art technology. The user has a lot of tools, both during the roasting and later in the post-analysis phase, to understand which parameters to intervene and adjust to achieve the desired quality of the final product,” Fabrizio says.

“This fine-tuning can be performed in real-time during the roasting process or later, during the post-roasting analysis phase. Only a fully integrated system allows this level of flexibility.”

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), coffee roasting generates carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds like methane.

To minimise the impact its roasters have on the environment, Brambati has developed an eco-friendly model for its customers with the option to install a catalytic converter to their roaster.

A catalytic converter is an exhaust-control device that became popular in the American automotive industry in 1975, after the EPA imposed stricter regulations on car emissions.

Catalytic converters have become popular in manufacturing and other industries, with Brambati harnessing the technology to reduce the fumes released from its roaster’s exhaust during the roasting process.

Brambati’s commitment to sustainability earned the company a Silver Certificate in October 2019 from EcoVadis, an independent company which evaluates sustainability and the corporate responsibility in global supply chains.

“Brambati is focusing on Ecodesign and will continue to do so because we believe that sustainability and respect for the environment is a path that needs to be taken immediately,” Fabrizio says.

“We should all be aware of how real and important these issues are.

This is why personally, as users and consumers, and professionally, as a manufacturer of machinery and plants, we at Brambati are reducing our environmental footprint internally and through our products.”

For more information, visit www.brambati.it

Brambati’s KAR and BR roasters are available in emission-reducing ECO models.

TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

Shooting star With MICE2020 on the horizon, espresso machine manufacturer Wega is preparing to launch its newest and most exciting product into the Australian market, the Wega Nova.

The Nova is desgined to be ergonomic and assist a barista’s workflow.

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or most companies, the best place to showcase new products and innovations is at trade shows, as the events naturally attract industry decision-makers and generate widescale media coverage.

Italian espresso machine manufacturer Wega Macchine per Caffé will utilise the upcoming Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) to launch its newest product into the Australasian market – the Wega Nova.

“We consider the Australian and, more specifically, Melbourne coffee market to be one of the strongest and most advanced in the world,” says Riccardo Ferraris, Communication Manager at Wega.

“We have always showcased our latest espresso machines at MICE and used it as a springboard to introduce our products into the Australian, New Zealand, and South-East Asian markets.”

MICE will take place from 3 to

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6 November 2020 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The show regularly attracts more than 11,000 attendees and aims to connect equipment manufacturers, suppliers, café owners, roasters, and enthusiasts, making it the ideal launchpad for new products.

“It’s such an exciting exhibition. It is active and alive, with exciting events, presentations, and a fantastic vibe. It is great for any visitor wanting to learn about the coffee world and its intricacies,” Riccardo says.

“The World Barista Championships and World Brewers Cup will draw extra attention this year, so it’s extremely important to represent out brand at the expo.”

Wega’s star attraction at MICE, the Nova, is designed with a unique shape with cutout corners to optomise ergonomics and functionality. The machine’s open, angled face means

baristas can maximise space on their bench or workstation to improve productivity.

“Defragmentation is the key word for this machine. It has a classic shape that opens up a barista’s work area, meaning they can create ergonomic workstations with plenty of room,” Riccardo says.

“During the research and design process, our team studied all the finer details of a barista’s workflow to ensure it is able to best enhance a barista’s daily work routine.”

Wega Nova’s low profile is also designed to encourage baristas and consumers to interact.

“It gives the barista the feeling that they are not cut off from the customers on the other side of the machine. It’s designed for the modern coffee shop where interaction and communication are valued,” Riccardo says.

“It has a modern and attractive

COFFEE WORKS EXPRESS WILL ALSO EXHIBIT THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS AT MICE2020 Astoria Core 200: A minimalist machine with a contemporary design that blends tradition and technology.

Astoria Storm 4000: A competition-grade machine designed to grant the barista total control of manual dispensing of mono-origin coffee and to memorise brewing curves.

Mazzer Robur S: Electronic grinder with conical grinding blades and slow speed rotation designed for high coffee consumption.

Mazzer Kony S: On-demand grinding with electronic dose adjustment. Designed for medium coffee consumption.

Mazzer Major V: Features Internet of Things technology and Grind Flow Control system to increase the barista’s control over each cup.

Mazzer ZM: Designed for specialty coffee, grind adjustments can be made electronically within units of microns, so the grind setting is understandable, accurate, and repeatable.

aesthetic. It looks sharp and futuristic but also retains an elegant, classic style. It’s a beautiful machine.”

The Wega Nova is available in a two- and three-group, with each grouphead covered in light-emitting diode downlights.

Furthermore, Nova’s integrated cuplifting mechanism assists users to position coffee vessels of all shapes and sizes. The platform’s height can be easily adjusted for baristas to switch between using takeaway cups, reusable cups, espresso cups, or any other size.

The Wega Nova is fitted with modern and advanced technology to achieve consistency and high-quality espresso.

“The aim for any modern espresso machine is to produce consistent and great tasting coffee. The Nova has cutting-edge technology which helps the barista to achieve this every time,” Riccardo says.

“Our Australia-based partners do an excellent job in making the Wega brand visible at these sorts of events. In the past they have represented out products proudly,” Riccardo says.

“This year, although the Nova will be the key attraction of our display, we will also present the Wega Urban. It is a perfectly designed machine for any café or restaurant. It has our multi-boiler technology range, an easy-to-use steam

Guest Ro

aste r

Our new Guest Roasting program allows businesses across the world to share our love of coffee, featuring our range of house blends, single origins and special reserve coffees.

Driven by a commitment to quality, our team will work to ensure that you experience coffees that both you and your customers love.

We look forward to sharing our passion with you.

Pro

tap for faster milk foaming, service boiler boost for intensive work periods, and the opportunity to pre-set optional functions to control the machine.”

While the Nova will be released on Australian soil at MICE2020, the machine was released to international markets towards the end of 2019 to rave reviews.

“We have received great feedback from our European clients about the Nova. To date things have been vastly positive so we are looking forward to introducing this to Australia and generating interest in a new market,” Riccardo says.

For more information, visit www.cwe.com.au

gram

For more information, visit onacoffee.com.au/guest-roasting @onacoffee

TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

Tamp of approval Puqpress automates the coffee tamping process using advanced technology to solve a simple problem and take pressure off the barista.

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ackup rigs are huge ships that weigh tens of thousands of tonnes.

Once set up in the middle of the ocean, these behemoths raise themselves above sea level using long and sturdy stilts that shoot down to the ocean floor.

Not many people would think to take this powerful technology and apply it to coffee. But that’s exactly what mechanical engineer Laurens Pluimers did in 2011 with the Puqpress automatic tamper.

“Laurens’ job was to design the stilts for these rigs, so basically he was responsible for stabilising the entire ship.

He could see a comparison between stabilising a boat and stabilising a coffee bed,” says Tjeerd Schravendeel, Chief Marketing Officer at Puqpress.

“It went quite fast in Australia. It’s a very mature market where everybody knows what a great coffee is, and where such a big part of the industry serves a highquality cup,” Tjeerd says.

“Cafés sell a lot of coffee and it’s obviously a very important product to them. If a Puqpress will make their team more effective, they feel it’s something they need.”

Despite this, Puqpress saw some friction when it reached the market, at a time when automation was almost taboo in coffee.

“The tamper was like the ‘holy grail’ for the barista. It was such an icon of the craft that no-one in the industry could imagine it was not the best way to do the job. It needed an outsider’s perspective to see how tamping could be improved,” Tjeerd says.

“As Laurens was new to the specialty

The Puqpress automatic tamper is designed to look at home on an espresso bar.

Since its launch, Puqpress has become active in 47 countries. It took a while to catch on globally, but Australia was one of the first countries to embrace the tamper.

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coffee industry at the time, he just noticed that tamping is quite labour-intensive.

It’s a weird task that requires heavy force with high precision and a soft touch. A

“WE STILL PRODUCE EVERYTHING IN HOUSE AND EACH MACHINE IS MADE BY HAND.” machine is just more capable of doing this repeatably than a human and Laurens was convinced that automating this part would actually improve the craft.”

Tjeerd adds every person who has worked behind the bar knows the stress of hospitality.

“The line starts to form, printers rattle, and it keeps going. You have all these variables, people want their coffee in different temperatures, types of milk, the list goes on,” he says. “The more pressure there is, the harder it becomes to maintain quality. Now you have a little friend at your side that does the heavy labour for you. So that’s less fatigue not only in your arm, but mentally too.”

Tjeerd says that’s where it becomes interesting.

“People working with coffee do it for a reason, because they like to make beautiful things. They have an eye for detail and are basically advocates for quality. If we can help these guys to do their work more focused and relaxed, that quality will improve, which is the big win for us.” he says.

“We’re believers in semi-automatic solutions, mainly because customers are influenced by a lot more than just their mouth when ordering coffee. A good coffee in the morning, crafted especially for you, has some sort of Disney-feeling to it. So finding the sweet spot between craft and efficiency is a thin line.”

While Puqpress has proved popular

with the specialty market, the automatic tamper has also resonated with larger coffee chains, like McCafé and Retail Food Group.

“These guys are doing an amazing job if you look closely at it. If you are able to serve consistent quality with a group that large, it is just admirable. McCafé adopted Puqpress because they could see it means everybody tamps the same. When baristas switch shifts, there isn’t a sudden change in quality, and far less need to dial in the grinder to their own hand,” Tjeerd says.

“Sometimes, making coffee is one of many tasks staff are responsible for, and it needs to be done quickly. If there’s high turnover in staff, it becomes difficult to control and explain these things with each new staff member. These companies know that consistency is king when it comes to awesome coffee making, so they have to do it. Now that is one less thing to think about.”

The success of the automatic tamper has let the company broaden its portfolio. The fourth generation Q1 caters medium-volume venues while the Q2 is designed for high-volume cafés. The Puqpress Mini will be launched during 2020, providing an alternative for low-volume coffee shops that still want to serve consistent quality easily.

Puqpress will also expand its line of under-the-grinder models, aiding workflow and freeing up space on the bar. At the 2020 Melbourne International Coffee Expo, the company will release models compatible with the Mahlkönig E65s and E80 and Fiorenzato F64 and F83.

“We still produce everything in house and each machine is made by hand. That’s where Laurens’ engineering background really helps,” Tjeerd says.

“When we designed the Puqpress, we thought about the entire lifecycle. It’s easy to build and to maintain by our technical partners.

There’s an extremely low fault rate which enables us to give a two-year factory warranty, which we think is just the right thing to do.”

While the Puqpress would go on to revolutionise coffee tamping, that was not Laurens’ goal when he built the machine.

“The first Puqpress was used in Laurens’ brother’s café. There was a pretty girl working there who complained to Laurens about her sore arm from tamping all the time. He wanted to impress her and the next day came in with a machine half a metre high that tamped automatically,” Tjeerd says.

“It was big and bulky, but it worked brilliantly. The girl was happy because her arm wasn’t sore anymore, all the employees liked working with it, coffee was tasting the same from different baristas, and the bar was moving faster.

“I still think it is pretty funny that Laurens can literally lift boats that weigh more than 10,000 tonnes out of the water, but decided to build a career out of tamping coffee beds.”

For more information, visit www.puqpress.com Puqpress reduces strain on the barista, both physically and mentally.

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TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

Cleaner roasting Loring roasters have connected with the Australian and New Zealand coffee industry, thanks to their emphasis on control, carbon footprint, and quality in the cup.

S

ince emerging in the coffee roasting market in the 2000s, Loring has developed a strong reputation across the globe for its efficiency, quality, and sustainability.

Loring Australia Representative James Banman tells BeanScene these traits have resonated particularly well with the Australian and New Zealand markets.

“Five years ago, there would have been just a few Loring roasters in Australia.

Now there’s a large community popping up in each major city,” James says.

“The Australian and NZ markets have been strong for Loring. It’s because of the focus on quality coffee in the region overall and because coffee roasters care

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about sustainability in their businesses.”

Loring machines use a single burner to roast coffee and incinerate smoke.

This removes the need for an external afterburner, reducing gas usage and emissions.

NZ’s Havana Coffee Works purchased its Loring – the S70 Peregrine – three years ago, due to the appeal of roasting high-quality coffee while reducing its carbon footprint.

“We decided we were better off with something that was further into the future than what the industry standard was,” Havana Master Roaster Joe Stoddart says.

“To be progressive and carry on doing business into the future, sustainability has to be a core pillar of your company. Not

only has Loring improved our energy usage and reduced gas emissions by 70 to 80 per cent, it means we’re treating our green coffee, hard earned at origin, with respect. Every batch is a better quality that our customers can enjoy.”

Despite being capable of the same batch size as Havana’s previous roaster, Joe says the 70-kilogram roaster has enabled them to produce a third more coffee in the same amount of time. The machine’s roast profiling technology has also proved beneficial to Havana, which roasts up to 20 different coffees in a season.

“We can produce exactly what we want to produce. We roast single origins exclusively, and really want to enhance the natures of those coffees,” Joe says.

“We can program the Loring to roast however we want it to and can rely on it to accurately follow those profiles. Then it can capture and repeat any batch you roast. Thanks to Loring, I always say, ‘our limitation is our imagination rather than our potential’.”

Loring manufactures roasters in several sizes. Its smallest roaster, the S7 Nighthawk, landed in Australia in 2019.

One of the first businesses to install the S7 Nighthawk was Floozy Coffee Roasters in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Floozy Owner and Roaster Kmac says after roasting in collective spaces for a while and experimenting with different machines, she knew she wanted to roast with greater flexibility.

“If someone needs coffee last minute, we can easily add it to that day’s production. We also feature at a lot of cafés as a guest roaster, which can mean different volumes week to week.

Loring gives us the opportunity to be more dynamic,” Kmac says. “The other important thing is, when you roast on a Loring, sitting there all day, you don’t feel as fatigued as you do with a drum roaster because it’s putting out less heat.”

The S7 Nighthawk’s lack of gas emissions made it easier for the roaster to be set up in Kmac and her partner Hal Gibbs’ city café Besties, rather than in an industrial area.

“We’re in the middle of the city, so there’s no way we could get away with not having an afterburner,” Kmac says.

“We have the Loring in the shop with the espresso bar, so customers can see it and

Havana Coffee Works in NZ uses the Loring S70 Peregrine roaster.

Loring roasters use a single burner to roast coffee and incinerate smoke.

be involved in whole process.”

Installing the Loring has also allowed Floozy to improve its consistency. Kmac says a large part of this is due to using Loring’s Roast Architect software to develop automatic roasting profiles.

“Being able to play around with your profiles that way kind of reminds me of setting recipes with a [La Marzocco] Strada EP,” she says.

“We still manually roast all of our microlots because we like to be in control, but for our milk coffee blends, it’s much easier to tweak profiles through the technology rather than manually.”

Once a profile is established, Kmac says she can rely on Loring’s automatic roasting to follow it to a tee.

“There’s often a level of distrust when it comes to automation in the coffee world, but the consistency between roasts is amazing,” Kmac says.

“The most important thing is the quality we think it provides, and our coffee has been tasting better than ever. When we were deciding on which roaster we wanted, our favourite coffees were roasted on Lorings, which sent us down that direction.

We haven’t looked back.”

Like Floozy, Everyday Coffee in Melbourne embraced Loring when it decided to leave its co-roasting space and establish its own roastery in 2018. Owner Aaron Maxwell says Loring’s big talking points of sustainability and automation can overshadow its understated perks.

“Workflow wise, the Loring is a lot more efficient than a drum roaster. I like the way it is able to regulate temperatures between roasts. Starting with similar temperature before roasting every time is huge,” Aaron says.

“Another thing I noticed early on was how quick it wanted to roast. The best thing I could do was get out of my old habits from drum roasting and let it.”

Even small features of Everyday Coffee’s S15 Falcon contribute to its workflow.

Aaron says the green bean vacuum lift with an incorporated scale makes it possible for him to queue up the next roast while the first is still going. He’s also seen the benefits of low-emission roasting firsthand.

“We have another roaster two doors up from us who use a drum roaster and we know whenever they’re roasting because of the smell outside,” Aaron says. “The same can’t be said about us.”

Loring roasters use a greater degree of convection heating than drum roasters to roast coffee. This means a majority of the heat is transferred from the air to the bean, instead of from the drum. Aaron says this roasting method brings the best out of the coffees Everyday Coffee buys and sells.

“We aim to showcase the origin, varietal, and individual flavours of every coffee we roast,” he says.

“With the Loring, our coffee is cleaner, sweeter, and brighter, with more acidity present – all things we’re happy with and drew us to it in first place.”

James Banman says he is excited for even more of the coffee industry to embrace the future of roasting.

“2019 was a tremendous year in Australia and NZ,” James says.

“We are thrilled to see more and more coffee roasters taking advantage of the capabilities that Loring can bring to their businesses.”

For more information, visit www.loring.com

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CAFETTO BARISTA PROFILE

Shin’s success Shinsaku Fukayama of St Ali approaches latte art with the same discipline he brought to snowboarding, and hopes to share this with the wider coffee community.

I

Shin Fukayama placed fourth at the 2018 World Latte Art Championship.

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t often takes people many years to master a discipline. For Shinsaku “Shin” Fukayama, it took less than five years to go from drinking his first coffee to performing on the 2018 World Latte Art Championship stage.

“I had my first coffee when I was 29 years old. I didn’t drink coffee when I lived in Japan and had never made one before either. My father bought a small coffee machine and made me a cappuccino,” Shin says. “I asked my father, ‘what is a cappuccino?’ and he showed me a YouTube video of latte art, how to make basic patterns. I thought it was really cool and wanted to learn more.

“First, I googled ‘which country has the best coffee in the world?’ and I found Australia. Next, I googled ‘which city has the best coffee?’ and found Melbourne.

Afterwards, I googled ‘which coffee shop is the best in Melbourne?’ and it took me to St Ali.” Shin arranged a working holiday visa and made the trip to Melbourne to dive headfirst into his newfound passion.

“I met Salvatore [Malatesta, CEO of St Ali] and told him I was looking for a job. He asked me ‘what can you do?’”

Shin says. “Because I was a chef and had that kitchen background, I started as a dishwasher, way back in 2014.”

After a few months, Shin graduated from the dishwasher to the espresso machine.

“At first, I didn’t know a thing about making coffee, especially the ratio and recipe, how to make it consistently, and how to work efficiently,” Shin says.

“Ben Morrow – the 2016 Australian Latte Art Champion – was training me. He taught me how to make a basic heart and introduced me to latte art competitions. My first competition was a latte art smackdown in 2015. It didn’t go well.”

His next competition was the 2016 Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA) Southern Region Latte Art Championship, where he placed second on his first attempt. Shin also placed second in that year’s ASCA Australian Latte Championship. In 2017, he placed runner

up in both competitions.

In 2018, however, Shin went in with increased drive and dedication. He finally achieved the results he had been hoping for, winning the 2018 Southern Region and Australian Latte Art Championships. When his name was called at nationals, Shin threw his arms in the air in triumph.

“I cried. My wife cried. My friends cried. It was my dream and it came true,” Shin says.

“It was intense. Every day I would go to practice once I’d finished work. It was hard to create new patterns. When I competed the first time, there was no pressure. The second time, there was a bit of pressure, and the third time, there was a lot more.”

Shin says the key to winning was simple: preparation.

“I practiced every single day and meditated to keep my head straight,” he says. “I was a lot more confident. I believed that I could win, which helped with the nerves on stage.”

Latte art was not Shin’s first foray into competition. In his youth, he was a professional snowboarder until a serious injury put an end to his career at 22 years old. Despite seeming very different, Shin says snowboarding and latte art have plenty in common.

“Before competition, you have to make a plan of how to win and overcome nervousness on stage. If you become nervous, it doesn’t work,” he says. “You need to practice a lot, work on your mentality, even go to the gym. It all builds your confidence.”

In the leadup to the 2018 World Latte Art Championship in Brazil, Shin continued his routine of meditation and practice every day to ensure he had his routine down pat. With so many shots pulled and jugs steamed, he maintained his equipment with Cafetto cleaning supplies.

“We use Cafetto because it is such a consistent product,” he says. “It’s easy to use – just Cafetto and a backflush – and I’ve never needed another cleaner.”

In Brazil, Shin made it to the final round of the competition, where he placed fourth in the world.

“I felt amazing, just awesome. It was really weird being in Brazil. Before coming to Australia, I watched the World Latte Art Championship on YouTube,” Shin says. “I didn’t realise when I started making coffee that I would be there myself so quickly. It was very emotional and an amazing experience.”

Despite the fantastic result, Shin faced his share of challenges performing on foreign soil.

“At the national championship, we can control everything. We know the

“YOU NEED TO FAIL OR YOU CAN’T PROGRESS. BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW WHY OR YOU CAN’T FIX IT. “ water and we know the milk. There’re no variables onstage,” he says.

“The world championship is a different situation to nationals. The competitors are a lot stronger, because everyone is a champion, and there’s more pressure. You’re representing your country and company.”

The biggest surprise to Shin was the ultra-heat treatment (UHT) long-life milk he had to use in the world championship.

“We use full-cream fresh milk at St Ali and I’d never had any experience with UHT milk. I didn’t realise they’d provide,” Shin says. “It’s so different. The milk foam separates so quickly and it’s really hard to pour latte art like that. If I could go back, I’d practice more with different types of milk.”

For the time being, Shin has stepped away from competitions, instead training new baristas and future championship hopefuls. Shin says the most important lesson to teach them is that they can’t succeed straight away.

“You need to fail or you can’t progress.

But you need to know why or you can’t fix it. When I failed while I was training, I thought about it and wrote why down and

how I can do better,” he says.

In August, Shin plans to temporarily return to Japan to set up a new coffee shop and business, St Ali Japan, in his hometown of Osaka.

“I want to bring Melbourne coffee to Japan. Here, the coffee tastes good at every café. The quality level is so high, and I really like Australian customer service.

It’s so friendly and focuses entirely on the customer,” Shin says.

“In Japan, the coffee is stronger. They drink darker roasts because they prefer it a bit bitter, they don’t like sourness. There’s also a lot of filter coffee, but espresso is becoming more popular, especially milk coffees.”

He says his hometown – where his father first showed him how to make a cappuccino – is the perfect place to start.

“Tokyo is growing, especially in specialty coffee, but Osaka is moving much slower,” Shin says. “I think that slowly, the coffee culture is changing, and I really want to contribute to it.”

For more information about Cafetto, its support of industry members, and latest product range, visit www.cafetto.com beanscenemag.com.au

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ESPRESSOLOGY

When passion trumps paper Espressology’s Instaurator takes a trip down memory lane to his first encounter of the World Barista Championships, and describes the lessons learnt along the way.

Martin Hildebrant from Denmark receiving his third-place award at the 2000 WBC. He won the next year in Miami.

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competitive nature is a healthy trait. It can motivate you to be curious and inspire you to reach heights you never thought possible. I learnt this firsthand back in 2000 when I went to hire a new barista trainer.

I advertised for the position and narrowed the candidates down in my fasttrack way and arranged appointments with the three best applicants. When they came into the training room, I chatted with them in a relaxed, conversational way to try and get an understanding of what made them tick: their interests outside of work, their ambitions, where they saw themselves in a few years or five or 10 years’ time. I then explained to them that obviously, because they were going to have to train others in how to make coffee, they would need to be competent baristas themselves.

I asked if they would mind doing a little practical demonstration that consisted of making four coffees in a limited time with only a few minutes to set up. They of course agreed because they wanted the job.

I was amazed at how this simple demonstration separated the wheat from

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the chaff. There was one particular guy who amazed me as he just kept going for almost 10 minutes and still couldn’t make one satisfactory coffee. What stunned me wasn’t that he was not able to demonstrate the necessary skills, so much as his ability to have no embarrassment about his inappropriate lack of skill. He pretended right up until he walked out the door that he was actually perfectly skilled for the position. It was a great insight into the human ability for creating not just words that do not match up to actions, but actions that don’t match up to stated ability.

I had drawn a blank. None of the people I interviewed were good enough for the job.

At about this time though, I heard about a barista competition that was being staged by a coffee brand in Australia known as Piazza D’Oro, which was owned by Douwe Egberts, a very large European firm. Piazza D’Oro was a trailblazer of this kind of public barista competition in Australia. I was immediately curious to understand what it entailed as it was open to everyone.

I tried to encourage a couple of our baristas to enter, even though one of the stipulations was that the contestants had to

use Piazza D’Oro coffee. The competition was interesting and seemed to be based as much around general coffee knowledge as practical barista skills, with the judges interviewing the contestants as well as analysing their coffee-making ability.

I was intrigued by the way the competition worked and how it seemed to inspire people to do a good job. I knew this was something I desperately needed to do across every one of the 70 stores I was charged with helping to grow. One of the flaws in this format seemed to be that it was run and branded by a company and didn’t allow for different coffees that reflected the barista’s own preference. It would have been a bit like the Formula 1 but all the drivers having to compete using only one brand of car. As a branding exercise, it was no doubt very good and visionary for the time, but as a format, it was always going to be limited.

There, however, I met George Sabados, a young, rather charismatic guy who emceed the competition. His performance at the competition was a CV display in itself. He demonstrated the very skills and abilities I was looking for, and I managed to persuade George to start working with me as my first barista trainer. To this day, I believe George is still one of the best trainers I have ever came across.

I pondered the different competition formats I’d witnessed and the need to combine the coffee dedication of the Australian competition format, with the theatre and entertainment of the signature drink component of the American format I’d seen at the Specialty Coffee Association expo. I happened to look through Coffee and Cocoa International magazine, one of only two international coffee trade journals at the time. I saw an advertisement for the inaugural 2000 World Barista Championship to be held in Monte Carlo.

The six finalists at the 2000 WBC from left: (top) Erla Kristisdottir, Robert Thoresen, Martin Hillebrandt, (bottom) Zelmir Bajic, Thomas Polti and George Sabados.

I enquired immediately and found out that the format seemed to combine the two elements I had long been thinking about.

As it happened, no one else from Australia had enquired about this competition. So, as I was the only person who had taken the time to enquire, I was told it was free to enter a barista on behalf of Australia if I could get there in time. I consulted with my wife, and she very big-heartedly agreed that we could pay for the trip out of our own personal savings. And so I booked and paid for tickets for George Sabados and me to fly to Monte Carlo.

The format for the competition was pretty simple: make four espresso coffees, four cappuccinos, and four signature coffee drinks that could include any nonalcoholic additional flavourings. The whole performance was to be within a 15-minute timeframe – just as I had tested those trainer candidates.

With minimal practice and some preparation in the form of me purchasing and testing some backup ultra-heattreated milk, we prepared to set off from

Sydney airport with 10 litre-packs of milk in my suitcase.

Before our flight departure, we went to get a coffee from the café that had the best reputation for coffee in the airport. It served Grinders Coffee. The brand was owned and run by the Italian-born founder Giancarlo. He had started his business about five decades previously, roasting and serving coffee in Lygon Street, Melbourne, and was in the vanguard of those great Italian post-World War II immigrant coffee entrepreneurs who helped transform Australian culture from beer-swilling to latte-sipping.

This one outlet in Sydney International Airport was an amazingly good example of how to break into a new market. By being located in the airport through which lots of influential people constantly travelled, and by doing a good job, the word of mouth and demand for his coffee grew rapidly. It was guerrilla marketing by default. George and I enjoyed a really good old-school, smooth, rich, classic Italian-style espresso and then boarded our plane.

We flew to Monte Carlo with a brief layover in Paris. There at the competition, it seemed apparent to me that George was probably the most advanced barista at this inaugural

World Barista Championship.

However, he ended up fourth after his uncharacteristically nervous performance.

The fallback plan of having tested and brought over backup UHT milk was actually a good idea. As it turned out, the finals were held on a Sunday and most of the shops in Monte Carlo were closed on this Sabbath day, so it was almost impossible to get any of the fresh milk that we were used to using.

Unfortunately, about nine of the 10-litre packs of UHT milk had burst on the flight over. So not only did we have just one backup litre of milk, my suitcase had spent much of our stay in our hotel room constantly being washed in the shower. It was the only way I could think of to try and get rid of the sour, curdling nine litres of milk that had leaked all through my suitcase.

On the flight home, in spite of being bitterly disappointed at our misfortune over not winning, my competitive instinct had been aroused, and I resolved to somehow win this world competition.

The exposure to this larger world coffee stage inspired me enormously, and supercharged my thirst to learn.

By the time of my return, with the possible exception of the espresso coffees that George and his other seven competitor baristas had made while we were away, it turned out that the humble coffee I was served by the barista at Sydney airport was one of the best coffees I enjoyed on the whole trip. This was a rather startling revelation to me as to how much the appreciation for good coffee had grown in Australia. It was not clear then to what extent this would continue, but this growth has not slowed in the intervening decades.

It has actually increased exponentially on the back of tens of thousands of small coffee entrepreneurs who have all passionately and with varying degrees of success, set out to satisfy their curiosity and the ever more sophisticated demand by Australian consumers for great coffee. * This information is an edited extract from Instaurator’s book The Coffee Entrepreneur.

For more information, visit www.espressology.com/shop

Instaurator published his first book, The Espresso Quest, in 2008. With his second book, The Coffee Entrepreneur, he turns his attention from the art to the business of coffee.

The Coffee Entrepreneur is available on Amazon, Kindle, ibooks, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

For more information, visit www.espressology.com/shop

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MICE2020

A champion to be crowned BeanScene speaks to National Barista Champions ahead of the World Barista Championships to preview the competition and discuss their expectations of Melbourne’s coffee culture.

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rom 24 July to 9 August 2020 the eyes of the world will turn to Tokyo, Japan for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. The Tokyo games are sandwiched between two other Olympic events, the 2018 Winter Olympics, which took place in PyeongChang, South Korea and the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will take place in Beijing, China.

Playing host to three consecutive Olympic events is testament to the AsiaPacific’s growing global influence – and the coffee industry is no exception.

The Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) will take place from 3 to 6 November 2020 and is Asia-Pacific’s largest dedicated coffee expo. This year, the event will feature two of coffee’s most prestigious competitions, the World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup. “MICE has consistently grown over the years and this edition is set to be the biggest and most exciting expo yet,” says Lauren Winterbottom, Show Director at MICE. “We’re thrilled to be hosting two of the coffee industry’s premiere international events. Australia has a rich coffee culture and a history of strong performances in competition, so it’s fitting that the world championships will come to MICE in 2020.”

The World Barista Championship (WBC) will pit more than 50 national champions against each other to prepare four espressos, four milk drinks, and four original signature drinks in a 15-minute presentation.

South Korean Jooyeon Jeon emerged victorious at last year’s competition and in 2020 another barista with South Korean heritage will travel to Melbourne to compete for the WBC, but to represent Brazil.

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Boram Um was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, after his grandparents immigrated to the city from South Korea.

His coffee journey began in 2011, when his father acquired a coffee farm in the area and has since established a career in coffee.

“Since opening Um Coffee Co in 2016, we have won prizes for the best coffee shop in the city in 2017 and 2019.

I am a qualified Q-Grader and along with my brother, operate four stores and a coffee school in São Paulo, where we hold Specialty Coffee Association certified courses,” Boram says.

He adds that in the past he had incentivised baristas at Um Coffee Co to compete at a national level to hone their skills, but over time decided there were benefits to entering himself.

“After watching my baristas compete for three years at a national level, I felt that competing myself would help to bring more experience and education to my team. I had never tried my skills as a competitive barista before, so everything was new and exciting,” Boram says.

This year’s WBC will include baristas with varied experiences and backgrounds.

While Boram progressed from his first national tournament, Japan’s Taka Ishitani has a long history of competing. This includes reaching the semi-finals of the WBC in 2018.

“I’ve entered Japan’s national barista competition 14 times. The experience is invaluable, but I feel the WBC is a completely different level,” Taka says.

“The competition is highly motivating for me, I’m passionate about building relationships with coffee lovers all around the world. While it was frustrating not to have gone all the way in 2018, I will be excited to stand on that stage again.”

World Coffee Event certified judges will adjudicate the WBC. They will

evaluate each performance on a range of factors, including beverage taste, cleanliness, creativity, technical skill, and the overall presentation.

The 15 highest-scoring competitors and a wild-card winner from the Team Competition will progress to the semifinals, with the top six from the semis advancing to the final.

“Nervousness will be the biggest

challenge when competing. Countless hours of practice and travelling overseas will culminate into only a 15-minute presentation. There is only one opportunity,” says Martin Shabaya, National Barista Champion of Kenya.

“I believe my greatest strengths are my technical and sensory capabilities.

I also pride myself on customer service and creativity. I’m privileged to come from a coffee producing country so it will be really special celebrate my producers and increase their exposure.”

Other competitors agree that performing under the pressure of the live audience and judges poses the greatest challenge.

Ukranian National Barista Champion Oleksandr Benytski is hoping to leverage his experience of representing his country at the World Latte Art Championships in 2017 to aid his confidence on-stage.

“It’s important to have a deep understanding of coffee preparation, coffee drinks, and strong technical skills, but also the ability to present to the judges,” Oleksandr says.

“I consider it important to try to teach them something new. This can apply to coffee production, beverage-preparation,

“MICE HAS CONSISTENTLY GROWN OVER THE YEARS AND THIS EDITION IS SET TO BE THE BIGGEST AND MOST EXCITING EXPO YET.” technology, or taste perception.”

For many baristas, travelling to compete for the WBC will be the first opportunity to experience Melbourne’s renowned coffee culture.

“Australia is very far from the Ukraine, I never thought I’d have the opportunity to visit Melbourne, but I’ve heard a lot of positive things. The flight might be the most difficult challenge I’m facing for the competition, it a 36-hour journey that includes three transfers,” Oleksandr jokes.

For Brazil’s Boram, the opportunity to visit Melbourne’s café scene will be part of the overall experience of coming Down Under.

“I have heard only the best things about Melbourne’s coffee culture. MICE is the largest coffee expo in the Asia-

Pacific so it will be great to see some of the trends emerging from the region,” Boram says.

Kenyan barista Martin adds that his view of Melbourne’s coffee culture is summed up in one word, “sophisticated”.

“I am excited to meeting the world’s most inventive and technical baristas.

Consumer awareness is also so large in Australia, it influences and inspires the rest of the coffee world,” Martin says.

“I know MICE brings the best of the best exhibitors from across the entire coffee supply chain together. I am really looking forward to it.”

The Melbourne International Coffee Expo is taking place 3 – 6 November.

For more information, visit www.internationalcoffeeexpo.com

The World Barista Championship will see more than 50 national champions compete in front of a live audience at MICE2020.

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Dairy alternatives ALTERNATIVE DAIRY CO THE ALTERNATIVE DAIRY CO BARISTA ALMOND MILK

The Alternative Dairy Co Barista Almond Milk is made locally using only Australian grown almonds for a tastier blend.

The team at The Alternative Dairy Co worked closely with baristas, café owners, and nondairy-milk consumers to create this popular barista almond milk that textures and stretches to perfection.

The Alternative Dairy Co uses gently roasted almonds to achieve a balanced flavour when mixed with espresso. This light toasting is key to crafting a delectable coffee milk with no signs of bitterness.

As well as taste, this milk alternative meets a wide range of consumer needs. It’s veganfriendly, low in sugar, dairy-free, lactose-free, gluten-free, sustainable, and locally sourced and produced.

For more information, visit www.altdairyco.com/barista-hub and for enquiries, please email enquiries@altdairyco.com THE ALTERNATIVE DAIRY CO BARISTA OAT MILK

The Alternative Dairy Co’s new Barista Oat Milk is now available around the nation, with some top baristas calling it the best match for coffee yet.

Expanding on its soy and almond milk ranges, The Alternative Dairy Co’s Barista Oat Milk is made using only Australian grown oats to create a deliciously creamy blend that will appeal to plant milk devotees and dairy fans alike.

It was trialled by St Ali Coffee Roasters and Glee Coffee Roasters ahead of its launch, to ensure the low-sugar, carrageenan-free oat milk exceeded all expectations in terms of taste and texture.

Oat milk is the closest tasting alternative to dairy milk.

Its naturally sweet and creamy flavour has driven global demand, with category sales up by 425 per cent in the past 18 months.

For more information, visit www.altdairyco.com/barista-hub and for enquiries, please email enquiries@altdairyco.com

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BONSOY BONSOY SOYMILK

Not only do baristas have to look the part, they have to work under pressure too. Nine bars of pressure, to be exact. Not to mention the steam.

But it can be fun as long as everyone turns up and plays their part. All milk is not created equal. Not everyone can handle the heat. Bonsoy won’t change its flavour profile when heated. With quality ingredients and certified organic soybeans, Bonsoy is non-GM and vegan. It’s the perfect canvas for latte art and creamy coffee because it stretches further.

It’s no wonder Bonsoy’s signature golden cartons are a beacon for quality around the globe.

For more information, visit www.bonsoy.com BONSOY ALMOND MILK

Pair your beans with our nuts.

At Bonsoy, it’s important to be healthy, not crude. Its all-natural almond milk uses roasted almond paste. With a light flavour profile that holds when heated and a natural nutty almond fragrance, it’s a perfect pairing for whatever you’re blending. And it loves to froth. It’s 100 per cent vegan with nothing artificial.

For more information, visit www.bonsoy.com

CALIFIA FARMS CALIFIA FARMS DAIRY ALTERNATIVE RANGE

Califia Farms makes dairy-free plant-based beverages that are good for people, good for the environment, and just plain good to drink.

Califia believes that food must be returned to its original nourishing purpose. It does this via the power of plants and by championing values inspired by Queen Califia – the mythical namesake of the brand’s home state of California, who pursued a life full of health, renewal, and love.

Dedicated to creating low-to-no-sugar plant-based products that are also delicious and sustainable, the Califia Farms range in Australia includes Unsweetened Almond milk, Unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk, Chocolate Coconut Almond Blend, XX Espresso Cold Brew Coffee, Mocha Cold Brew Coffee, Mocha Noir Cold Brew Coffee, and Oat Barista Blend.

For more information, contact australia@califiafarms.com CALIFIA FARMS OAT BARISTA BLEND

The newest innovation from Califia Farms is its Oat Barista Blend, a delicious oat milk made with whole rolled oats, with no added sugar or gums.

Working closely with the barista community to ensure maximum taste and function, the new Oat Barista Blend is creamy and rich, and perfectly complements the natural, robust flavour of coffee. It also steams without splitting, allowing baristas to create delicate foam for impressive latte art.

Califia Farms is available now to cafés and coffee shops.

For more information, contact australia@califiafarms.com

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MILKLAB ALMOND MILKLAB ALMOND

Milklab Almond has been especially formulated to marry with specialty coffee. Milklab has collaborated with Australian roasters, Q Graders, and baristas to develop milks that complement the intensity of espresso and also texture and stretch with any coffee type.

Milklab Almond is packed with premium almonds to create a genuine fresh almond milk flavour that performs just like dairy milk. Milklab’s mission is to source the best ingredients possible and trial different blends to ensure the perfect pour with its unique recipe creating a milk that not only complements the intensity of espresso, but also allows the coffee flavour to shine.

For more information, visit www.milklabco.com MILKLAB COCONUT

Milklab Coconut is a premium product that was designed to allow coffee flavour to cut through and is perfect for both hot and cold beverages.

Milklab’s unique recipe means the milk complements the intensity of espresso, but also textures and stretches with any coffee type. Milklab recommends using Milklab Coconut to create their signature drink: the Bountiful Hot Chocolate. It’s a winter favourite with the creamy mouthfeel of Milklab Coconut marrying perfectly with chocolate to deliver a delicious Bounty-like beverage. Milklab proudly designed this milk and validated it with experienced baristas and coffee professionals to ensure it’s perfect for coffee.

For more information, visit www.milklabco.com

VITASOY POUR TO SCORE

Introducing Pour To Score, Vitasoy’s new incentive program inviting café owners the chance to redeem great prizes with the purchase of its Café for Baristas range.

Made perfectly for the trade, Café for Baristas works like dairy, so baristas can make the perfect cup every time with plant milk that lets the beans be the hero.

To start collecting rewards with their purchases, café owners can register at www.pourtoscore.com, and enter the unique code on specially marked cartons of Café for Baristas soy, almond, and oat milks to start collecting.

The more tokens collected, the more prizes can be redeemed.

Pour to Score runs from 2 March 2020 until 31 July 2020.

For more information, visit www.pourtoscore.com CAFÉ FOR BARISTAS OAT MILK

Vitasoy’s Café for Baristas Oat Milk is made using Australian grown whole oats. The final product is naturally free from dairy, lactose, and soy, and contains no added sugar, artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives. It’s also a good source of calcium and low in saturated fat.

Developed in partnership with local baristas, the product is designed to pair with the specialty coffee culture in Australia. It’s easy to work with and textures like dairy milk – perfect for frothy cappuccinos and latte art, has a mild and balanced flavour, perfect fat content and proudly supports Aussie oat farmers.

But don’t just take our word for it. The only real way to become an oat milk convert is to try it for yourself.

For more information, and to try the new range, visit www.vitasoycafe.com.au.

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FIRST CRACK

Analyse this The Syncfo 4 in 1 Coffee Analyser combines four functions in one small package, making it easier for roasters to achieve replicable roasts.

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sk any coffee roaster their main goal and almost all will tell you that it’s consistency.

But developing a roast profile that’s replicable can be difficult, especially if you don’t know every possible detail of the bean preand post-roast.

This usually means roasters will need several pieces of expensive equipment to capture everything from moisture and density of the green bean to its colour score and temperature after roasting.

However, Barista Group General Manager Joe Chalhoub says this data analysis can all be done with one small machine, thanks to the Syncfo 4 in 1 Coffee Analyser.

“The Syncfo is really the first product in the world that combines these four functions, providing precision analysis and measurements of moisture, density, temperature, and even colour,” Joe says.

“If a roaster likes the way their coffee is tasting, these objective numbers create a winning formula and will improve the overall roasting methodology.”

Joe says it’s particularly beneficial for roasters who are just starting out and still need to develop multiple profiles.

“Roasting is a rabbit hole. It gets very tricky and there are so many variables to control,” he says.

“If they don’t know measurements like bean density, they’re basically roasting blind. Other factors like moisture – generally speaking nine to 12 per cent is optimal – can vary from one month to another due to packaging and handling, so roasters need to adjust accordingly. Syncfo enables new roasters to build their knowledge bit by bit.”

At a lightweight 2.3 kilograms and featuring a magnetic charger, the Syncfo is portable and can be setup wherever is convenient, reducing the amount of time it takes to test coffee post-roast.

“Some roasteries are so huge they have to walk more than a hundred metres to measure a sample. Now they can do it anywhere at the roastery thanks

to the mobile capability of the device,” Joe says.

“Usually, a colour analyser on its own is larger and heavier than the Syncfo and it only measures one thing. The Syncfo does more with a smaller footprint.”

A straightforward user interface means the analyser is also easy for anyone to operate.

“You just need to select a function, insert the sample, and it gives you an immediate reading. It’s very straightforward and doesn’t need time to warm up,” Joe says.

Roasters are not the only target market for the Syncfo. The unit Syncfo Professional version is able to analyse coffee dry cherry, parchment, green bean, roasted, and ground forms. It is useful for producers, traders, and in research and development labs, coffee courses, or even specialty cafés that want to track the roasts they’re supplied.

For its functionality and contribution to coffee, the Syncfo analyser won the Best New Product award in the Technology category at World of Coffee 2019 in Germany. Joe says he – like the Best New Product award judges – is excited for more roasters to discover what Syncfo can do.

“If a roaster makes five profiles and profile number three works, it helps them to explore other origins with a similar density and moisture,” Joe says.

“We’re all striving for consistency in this industry. Replicating a roast can be tricky but knowing these factors will help.”

Barista Group is the Australian distributor of the Syncfo 4 in 1 Coffee Analyser. For more information, visit www.baristagroup.com.au or call (02) 9896 4808

The Syncfo 4 in 1 Coffee Analyser won Best New Product at World of Coffee 2019.

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CAFÉ SCENE

Joe Frank is owned and operated by the Crea siblings, who named the café after their father and grandfather.

JOE FRANK CAFÉ 246 High Street, Ashburton, Victoria, 4000 Open Monday to Friday 7am to 3:30pm Saturday and Sunday 8am to 3pm (03) 9193 0169 Long ago, three siblings, Fabian, Massimo, and Romina Crea, were washing dishes for pocket money in their grandfather’s hotel kitchen and then aunty’s café. It seemed inevitable that one day the three would forge their own careers in the hospitality industry.

“My brother and I started working in our aunty’s café Santucci’s in the late 90s. We learnt a lot – everyone had to cook, make coffee, serve, and clean. That gave us confidence to open the second Santucci’s, followed by Son of Tucci and Mr Tucci,” says Fabian, Co-Owner of Joe Frank Café.

Joe Frank Café is named after the siblings’ father Joe and grandfather Frank.

It was opened in 2019 when the space in Ashburton became available leading the family to seize the opportunity.

“We did everything to make Joe Frank Café happen. It has great light, is cosy inside, and the courtyard has a real ‘wow’ factor. There is also plenty of space for our mum, Franca, to bake,” Fabian says.

Joe Frank Café prides itself on offering wholesome food, traditional cakes, and great coffee. The café serves Veneziano Bond Street as its house blend.

“Bond Street is a real crowd-pleaser.

Its flavour profile suits the changing seasons – think vanilla, blueberry, and peach,” Fabian says.

“We have a longstanding relationship

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Joe Frank’s courtyard sits up to 50 people.

with Veneziano. We saw massive growth potential in their company, and we wanted to grow with them – their goals were similar to our goals. They also offer incredible support and facilities.”

The team uses Wood and Co Coffee Roasters as a guest roaster for its black offerings.

The café serves up beverages using a customised La Marzocco Strada and boasts Mahlkönig EK43S and Mazzer Robur S grinders.

“We set out to create an environment where, the moment you walk through that door, you’re greeted, seated, and looked after,” Fabian says.

“Ashburton is very much a family-

oriented area and it has a strong community feel. We ensure our customers are treated like family and feel welcomed.”

For its food offering, the café serves up a mix between breakfast and lunch classics, and creative Italian-inspired dishes.

“Our menu is based on wholesome, simple food that’s done really well. We offer generous portions and have great chefs.

The most unique offering, though, is mum’s cakes. She hand-makes traditional Italian cakes based on recipes that have been passed on for generations,” Fabian says.

“At Joe Frank we have built an incredible team. We base the café on providing excellent service, food, and coffee. Those are the three pillars we live by.”

“The philosophy from day one has been to focus on organic, free-range produce that is treated the right way.

Everything has to be sustainable, from our cups to our ingredients,” says Andrew Derham, Owner of Three Beans Eagle Street. “We are really pleased to have received such a strong response from the people in Brisbane. When we came to this city, nobody knew us, we were the new kid on the block. But once they tasted our food and coffee, they kept coming back.”

Three Beans uses Gabriel Coffee exclusively as its roaster and serves a

versatile house blend that aims to appeal to a broad customer base.

“The house blend has a chocolatey flavour and ticks all of the boxes. We also produce our own black blend with washed and unwashed Ethiopian beans made specifically for long blacks,” Andrew says.

Three Beans utilises some of the most modern and advanced equipment in the industry to serve its coffee including a La Marzocco PB, Mythos and Mahlkönig EK43 grinders, Übermilk, and a Puqpress.

“A lot of people identify with technology nowadays so it’s important to be up to date. It helps to deliver quality coffee with speed and consistency,” Andrew says.

The café also has a comprehensive food menu featuring a range of lunch and breakfast options. All eggs and chicken used are RSPCA-approved, and the free-range bacon and ham is selectively sourced.

“We serve vibrant food and aim to create a positive atmosphere to match says. We take customer service seriously and try to build relationships with our customers. Things like remembering their names and having a smile go a long way,” Andrew says.

Maxie Coffee is equipped with a La Marzocco PB three-group and a Mahlkönig EK 43 grinder. When the shop is closed, Sam uses her equipment to run barista and latte art training courses.

“We provide training from a foundational level all the way through to advanced techniques. A lot of people who are looking for jobs in hospitality do the training, so we share practical tips and let them practice on our professional-grade equipment,” Sam says.

“The courses are scheduled every fortnight, but spots are so in demand that

next week, I’ll be doing three nights in a row. We are the only ones in the area doing this sort of training.”

She hopes to continue to grow her training program.

“Seeing my staff and students nourish their skills and blossom is the most rewarding thing about owning a café.

I really get great satisfaction from it,” she says.

“Down the track, I want to share my knowledge and teach people the ins and outs of setting up a coffee shop from scratch.”

Three Beans prides itself on ethically sourced, nutritious food.

THREE BEANS 145 Eagle Street, Brisbane, Queensland, 4000 Open Monday to Friday 6am to 4pm Saturday 7am to 1pm (07) 3148 9484 In 2006, Three Beans set out on a mission to create delicious food and coffee that was ethically sourced, nutritious, and sustainable. The concept was a success and after experiencing rapid growth in its native New South Wales, Three Beans crossed state lines in 2018, launching its Eagle Street store in Brisbane’s CBD.

MAXIE COFFEE 1/26 Channel Highway, Kingston, Tasmania, 7050 Open Monday to Friday 6:30am to 3pm, Saturday 8am to 1pm 0411 028 962 The greater Kingston area has one of the fastest growing populations in Tasmania.

Despite its growth, Sam Whang-Randall, Owner of Maxie Coffee, says until recently, the area’s specialty coffee scene was virtually non-existent.

“Tasmania’s food and coffee industry has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. I wanted to get out of the city and Kingston had no specialty coffee shops. It was the perfect opportunity,” she says.

Maxie Coffee is a beverage-focused café, although it does offer locally-sourced pastries as well.

“Focusing on just specialty coffee was a gutsy move, but I thought this market was ready for it,” Sam says. “Tasmanians mainly order milk-based drinks, but I’ve also noticed a trend for stronger coffee. I usually get between five and 10 triple shot orders per day, a lot more than I used to when I worked in the city.”

Maxie Coffee serves Single O’s Paradox as its house blend. It rotates its single origin offering on a regular basis, sampling coffees from a range of roasters.

Sam Whang-Randall runs barista courses for all skill levels at Maxie Coffee.

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CAFÉ SCENE INFUSION ON CLARENCE 171 Clarence Street, Sydney, New South Wales, 2000 Open Monday to Friday 7am to 4pm Closed Saturday and Sunday Clarence Street in the heart of Sydney’s CBD is a bustling hub of activity, full of offices, businesses, and hotels. With so much activity in the area, the massive volume of foot traffic has paved the way for one of the city’s most competitive café battlegrounds to emerge.

“It’s the hottest coffee spot in Sydney and has grown quickly. Just about every specialty roaster in the city has a presence within a 100-metre radius.

I’ve counted more than 50 cafés now in close proximity. It’s great for competition and helps us to continue to elevate our offerings,” says Paul Jackson, Managing Director at Danes Specialty Coffee.

“Infusion’s coffee line up reads like an Australian International Coffee Awards (AICA) playbook – Mocha Gold for milk coffees, Ascension for black, and a rollcall of must-try single origins.”

Mocha Gold won the Milk Coffee Blend category at 2018 AICA for its chocolatey notes and rich mouthfeel.

Ascension is described as fusing a lemony citrus Kenyan origin with a fruity Ethiopian and took home 2019 AICA gold for an Espresso Blend.

“The coffees we serve have amazing flavour profiles. Infusion is our flagship store, so we push the limits and experiment to ensure we are creating an unforgettable experience for our customers,” Paul says.

“Our new Signature Menu showcases our evolving pool of origins. There is always a new flavour to discover on this special

Infusion is located on Clarence Street, in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.

menu – as a filter, espresso, or piccolo.”

Danes has partnered with Inside Out, an Australian producer of dairy-alternative milk, to supply Infusion with a wide range of milk alternatives including oat, almond,

Infusion offers muiltiple AICA award winning coffees for its house blends.

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and coconut milks.

“Inside Out provide a premium range of fresh alternative milks using cold pressed Australian almonds and oats, offering a clean, fresh taste, crafted to perfectly complement coffee,” Paul says.

Danes has embedded its passion for sustainability into Infusion and encourages reusable cups, but also serves takeaway orders in its signature environmentally friendly cups that were developed in in July 2019.

“We were the first to partner with Green Caffeen in the city. As for our reusable cups there are no better cups for the environment available on the market. We’re aware of what’s important to consumers and continue to lead our efforts in all areas for the environment,” Paul says.

“You can find these eco-cups at Infusion on Clarence and at all Danes’ partner cafés around Australia.”

The café focuses on high-quality, fresh ingredients to complement its specialty coffee experience and offers dine-in options, as well as takeaway.

“Customers can sit in and graze from Infusion’s menu of beans, have a bite and a bowl, or grab food and a coffee to go,” Paul says.

After competing in multiple National Barista Championships and working as a sales representative in the coffee industry, Long Nguyen developed an ambition to bridge the gap between specialty coffee and mainstream consumers.

Out of this dream Café New Chapter was born, in Wellington, New Zealand.

“In the specialty coffee community, we talk about and appreciate specialty coffee, but a lot of people in the public don’t understand the story behind it and how much passion goes into every cup,” Long says.

Long sources his coffee from Rocket Coffee Roasters. He changes the house blend regularly and rotates his single origin offering.

“Rocket Coffee Roasters is one of the most famous specialty coffee roasters in NZ. It’s a boutique roaster that produces great coffee,” he says.

“At the moment I’m using a 50-50 blend of two Colombian beans, but recently I was

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using a 60 per cent Guatemalan and 40 per cent Colombian. We change the blend often so customers always have a taste of the best coffee bean in harvesting season from all around the world. That means our coffee tastes consistently good.”

In addition to traditional coffee beverages, Long serves a range of coffee cocktails which blend single origin coffees with creative and unique flavours, including the Sunrise, a cold brew mixed with hibiscus soda and mineral water poured over ice.

“We’re probably the first ones in Wellington to do it. People were quite conservative at the start but now, on a hot

eveloped in conjuction with the BeanScene magazine website, The Long & Short of It news EDM is dedicated to keeping the coffee industry abreast of the latest relevant news as it breaks, in addition to providing an electronic interface for the viewing of BeanScene magazine content. To keep up to date with fresh, informative and relevant content, register your details at www.beanscenemag.com.au

day, we sell quite a few,” Long says.

The café uses a La Marzocco Linea PB espresso machine serve coffee and two grinders, a Victoria Arduino Mythos One and a Mahlkönig EK 43S. Café New Chapter is located next to the Wellington train station, one of the busiest areas of the city. The shop space is designed to create a welcoming yet rustic and industrial environment.

“When we created the place, we kept sustainability in mind. We reused a lot of floorboards and have 2.5-metre flowers hanging off the ceiling. It’s gorgeous,” Long says.

Photo creditL: Matt Osborne

CAFÉ NEW CHAPTER 5 Bunny Street, Wellington CBD, Wellington, 6012 Open Monday to Friday 6:30am to 3:30pm Closed Saturday and Sunday 0472 5919

Long Nguyen is on the mission to bridge the gap between specialty coffee and regular consumers.

CAFFEINATED

CONTENT DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX

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TECH TALK

Maurizio Marcocci is the Director of Service Sphere.

Bulk up Maurizio Marcocci of Service Sphere looks at how bulk brewing equipment has improved as customer expectations increase.

Bravilor Airpots store coffee at the ideal temperature for long periods of time.

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few years ago, the words “filter coffee” would conjure thoughts of bitter, black, and American sludge served from a pot that had been sitting on the diner, café, work, or kitchen counter for several hours.

But times have changed. The quality Australian cafés are serving has become very high and many are embracing filter brewing and its ability to bring out the best of coffee using only the basics: water and beans. Now, bulk or batch brewing equipment is making this possible in larger doses.

Our friends at Veneziano Coffee Roasters see this firsthand. One of its

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flagship cafés in Richmond uses batch brew to serve a variety of micro-lot single origin coffees every day.

“It is a great way to serve a lot of coffee quickly, the flavour is great, and it gives a different experience for people to try,” says Pete Licata, Veneziano’s Research and Development Consultant and 2013 World Barista Champion.

“It means faster drink service, consistent experience more easily, and a diverse selection of coffee experiences for our customers.”

Bulk brewers are a growing part of the Australian coffee industry, and manufacturers like Bravilor Bonamat have made great strides in improving the quality of the coffee these machines

produce. In Bravilor’s case, this involves developing machines with long lasting and high-quality materials and components. Other manufacturers have looked at new ways of brewing coffee.

“Specific variable controls and stability are being pursued, which is a reflection of the desire for better accuracy across coffee brewing equipment lately,” Pete says.

With advancements in brewing technology comes a greater variety of models and equipment to fill different needs, which we at Service Sphere see growing by the day.

QUICK FILTER

Quick filter machines like the Bravilor

Bonomat Mondo series elevate drip coffee to the next level. An obvious benefit of this system is that coffee can be made anywhere with a power source, without needing connection to water mains. This is particularly good for small venues looking for a coffee option, or larger operations where coffee isn’t a focus, like small restaurants or offices.

For businesses with limited bench space, like most cafés, a system like the Bravilor Bonomat TH might be the way to go. This filter machine brews coffee direct into a Bravilor Airpot Furento unit, keeping more than two litres of coffee at the same temperature and quality for hours on end. It may sound simple, but what separates these units from pots of the past is the materials used to build them. Stainless steel inside and out, these pots are perfect for holding in heat and aroma.

an ideal aroma.

Less knowledgeable coffee shops can pick one of three settings for mild, regular, or dark roasts, each developed with the Specialty Coffee Association’s Golden Cup Standard front of mind.

But since every coffee is different, more experienced roasters and baristas can create and save their own recipes to create a unique cup of coffee.

ROUND FILTER

If you need a lot of fresh filter coffee brewed in a relatively short time, round filter bulk brewers are the machines for you, brewing large quantities of coffee into separate containers. This style of coffee often gets a bad reputation, but with the right coffee, brew, and equipment, there’s no reason it can measure up to its smaller siblings.

The Bravilor B Series does this thanks to its container monitoring factors that impact quality. This provides consistency not otherwise possible at such a large batch size. This is perfect for catering companies, sport venues, or hotels and conference centres.

Operation and upkeep are kept easy with a digital display, total and day counters, descaling system, and optimum security provisions.

Adjustable brewing time allows for optimum extraction. A built-in timer and coffee-is-ready signal means the user doesn’t even need to be in the room to brew coffee.

THERMAL BREWERS

While quick and round filter brewers build on machines of the past, thermal brewers look to the future. These brewers are suitable for any location, but especially those where many people come and go all day, such as self-serve venues, specialty cafés, and convenience stores.

The Aurora from Bravilor is a great example. It brews filter coffee into a portable dispenser – up to five litres – with the operator able to control almost every facet of the brew process. This ranges from setting water temperature to programming pre-wetting time for

The Aurora brews coffee to the Specialty Coffee Association’s Golden Cup Standard.

Usability is key to batch or bulk brewers.

“Once it has been dialled in, it is very easy to teach someone to make batch brews over and over throughout the day,” Pete says. “I have seen numerous cafés overcomplicate their method and try to make it more difficult than it really should be.”

Turning to the brewing process, manufacturers have introduced different systems to make improvements.

Some have introduced a shower brewing system to better control the length of time water is in contact with coffee. Others have reworked the brewing process all together or made improvements to functionality.

Bravilor’s research and development team has implemented a no-valve brewing system, with the only valve existing in the machine for the hot water tap. This reduces the number of service calls needed over the machine’s lifetime.

Demand for black and filter coffee is only growing as customer palates become more refined and brewing equipment becomes more advanced. In turn, the stigma around batch brewing has disappeared.

Visually, units are made to look sleek

and appealing. The Aurora and TH look like they belong on a coffee bar, so cafés and high-end venues can have it proudly set up front of house. Its small footprint and detachable dispenser means it can be kept wherever is most convenient.

“When done properly, batch brew creates a flavourful coffee that can be enjoyed black,” Pete says. “The typical serving of batch brewed coffee is larger and often has more caffeine than a single espresso serving, in case customers are worried about getting enough.”

Compared to an espresso machine, it’s not just the coffee quality and taste that’s different with a bulk brewer.

Machines are often “simpler”, meaning less maintenance is required and if something does need fixing, it’s usually easier.

Speed is another big plus. With coffee already brewed, high-quality Bravilor airpots on the bar are the way to go.

“As long as the coffee is brewed up and ready to go, it does improve service times,” Pete says. “When it comes to batch brew, the idea is to give greattasting coffee quickly, consistently, and painlessly.”

This means less work during rush hours for the barista, faster service for the customer, and more time for interaction between the two.

For more information, visit https://servicesphere.com.au/

The Bravilor Bonomat TH brews coffee directly into an airpot.

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ESPRESSO YOURSELF

Jibbi Little of Jibbijug is the 2019 ASCA Pauls Professional Australian Latte Art Champion.

Flying unicorn Jibbi Little gets creative with a winged unicorn pattern that takes the imagination to new heights.

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t’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year since Ross Quail called my name as the winner of the 2019 Australian Latte Art Championship.

For my next pattern in BeanScene, I wanted to offer something creative, fanciful, and that reaches for the skies.

The unicorn pattern features five rosettas, each relatively short and requiring a lot of fine control to pour correctly. It’s also important to nail certain elements like the symmetry of the wings and the subtle curve of the mane and neck.

Dragging is the other key technique for this design. It may sound simple, but you want the legs and neck of the unicorn to curve as shown in the photos for maximum appeal.

Drawing the neck, face, and horn in one movement will take some

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practice to perform well. Try to visualise it almost like pouring the number 4, leaving a space in the centre for the eye.

Latte art is always growing and changing. Even with my own designs, I am constantly thinking of new ways to add more detail to existing patterns. With this design, I also wanted to provide a canvas that you can work with to create your own flourishes.

There are many ways to pour a unicorn, with plenty of optional features to add character to the design. I’ve added wings to my unicorn to provide more detail in the centre of the cup. Otherwise, the thin body of the unicorn could appear too simple.

When I draw it now, I like to add a tail, or clouds in the bottom left corner of the cup. You could do the same or find other ways to put your own stamp on the design.

1.

With the handle at three o’clock, pour a seven-leaf rosetta from the centre of the cup to two o’clock and drag back along the left.

3.

Pour a slightly curved six-leaf rosetta from the centre of the cup for the mane, a five-leaf rosetta across the bottom of the first three rosettas for the body, and a five-leaf rosetta along the bottom of the cup for the ground.

5.

From the front of the body, drag the front leg, curving inwards halfway down. Pour the inner front leg over the top of it.

7.

At the top of the neck, pour outwards towards the second wing then return to your starting point, leaving space in between as an eye. Pull upwards for the horn.

2.

Leave some space to the left for the neck and mane, and pour a seven-leaf rosetta out to 10 o’clock and drag back along the right.

4.

From the outer tip of the body, drag a curved line to form the back leg. Drag another line just before it to form the inner back leg. These should end beside the ground.

6.

For the neck, pour upwards from the body, along the curve of the mane rosetta.

8.

Between the head and first wing, drop a small amount of foam for the moon.

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TRAINING TACTICS

Babin Gurung is the New South Wales Barista Trainer at Mocopan Coffee.

Café DNA Mocopan Coffee’s Babin Gurung on why consistency of products and services is one of the key factors to operating a sustainable business and how automation can help.

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onsistency is a constant topic in our conversations, mainly because there is very little margin of error when working with a product such as coffee.

In recent years, we have seen a boom in automation in coffee making to help us achieve just that. In the February edition of BeanScene magazine, we talked about how automatic tampers such as PuqPress is becoming part of standard café setup.

This time, let’s explore how we can best utilise newfound technologies at different stages of the production line to help run a more efficient café.

STAGE ONE

The first stage of our coffee production line is preparing shots. The two main variables to this are dose and extraction time. A

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slight change in one or both variables can dramatically alter the flavour profile of your coffee (refer to my article ‘What makes a coffee strong?’ in BeanScene August 2019 for more on how flavours are controlled).

Since the introduction of electronic grinders, controlling dose has been easier.

But electronic grinders only control grind time and not the actual weight of ground coffee. Hence, baristas rely on scales to verify the accuracy of the dose and adjust manually when necessary.

Acaia scales are a popular choice and come with many features including a built-in timer, which comes in handy for manual brewing. Rhino scales are a great alternative and are more budget friendly.

As reliable as these scales are, it is an extra step for baristas and can slow down the production line, not to mention the bench space they occupy. The solution:

Übermilk produces ready-topour steamed milk.

grinders with built-in scale. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds because Victoria Arduino have come up with the Mythos 2 grinder which does exactly that. Mythos 2 – Gravimetric weighs your dose in real time and gives you the accuracy and efficiency you need in your workflow.

There is even a function to increase the grind speed which not only grinds faster, but has also been found to produce some interesting flavour change.

The second variable of the equation, which is equally if not more important, is extraction time. Extraction time can fluctuate throughout the day, but lot of it is due to environmental factors such as humidity, moisture, and temperature (see Dr Monika Fekete’s August 2019 BeanScene article ‘Cause and effect’) for more on the effects of temperature. As a barista, you need to keep a close eye on extraction time and continually adjust the dial. New generation grinders are very responsive and one line on the dial gives you two to three seconds of extraction time. Using this as a guideline will help you maintain your grinder efficiently. Some new grinders have built-in heating and cooling units to maintain a steadier temperature of the beans giving you more controlled shots.

One other tool that has found its way into cafés across the world is a coffee distribution tool. Coffee distributers are simple in design and help baristas achieve an even spread of coffee in the group handle before tamping. The idea is to promote even saturation of flavours once the water passes through the coffee. As effective as hand distribution technique is, using tools such as the OCD developed by Sasa Sestic of Ona Coffee is a much more consistent and quicker way of distributing coffee evenly, giving you a more uniform result in your extraction. Pair this with an automatic tamper and you are one step closer to achieving your perfect shot.

Victoria Arduino Black Eagle, you have the option to get your coffee machine with built-in gravimetric technology that weighs your shots every time and stops at a preset amount. This is a much simpler way to keep track and maintain volume of your shots.

STAGE THREE

Third stage of our production line is milk frothing. As a trainer, I spend lot of time with my students going through the fine points of controlling froth and getting consistency around texture and temperature. It is an acquired skill and needs lot of practice. Using techniques discussed in the ‘Perfect pour’ article in BeanScene December 2019, can certainly help baristas get there quicker. But for smaller cafés, this can be challenging as they can’t afford to train their staff for long periods of time. For high-volume cafés with minimum staff, milk frothing can slow down the workflow.

Built-in self-frothing units aren’t new in the coffee world. Any standard coffee machine can be fitted with a milk frother that can get the job done. But the main reason this attachment hasn’t captured the

market is because of the milk quality. Even though temperature is consistent, getting froth and texture right is a challenge. Over the last few years, we have seen a dramatic improvement in this technology with brands such as Übermilk cornering the market. Although they run on completely different technologies, both act as an aid to help baristas make coffees with speed and precision. The Juggler milk tap dispensing system is another device built to optimise workflow and control milk portioning, giving cafés long-term return.

Cost is a factor when investing in equipment such as these, but as the technology refines and becomes more accessible, cafés could benefit from automation around milk frothing as well.

So, there we have our ideal café setup.

But are we close to achieving perfection in the way we make coffees? I don’t think so. As we dig deeper into the world of coffee, we have found more questions than answers. But for an average café trying their best to run a profitable business in this highly competitive market, speed and consistency can give them the edge – and having technology on your side most definitely helps.

STAGE TWO

At this stage, we are monitoring volume of our shots. Thankfully, volume is far less temperamental and if you can manage to keep dose and extraction time constant, volume usually isn’t an issue. Volume is based on your recipe and can be easily adjusted on the machine. But once again, if you don’t want to leave anything to chance and want to find a way to accurately and consistently measure your yield, you will need to weigh out your shots using a scale every time. Putting a scale on the drip tray is not very practical as it takes up space and you run into the risk of damaging your scale. The Stem Stand, once again developed by Sasa Sestic, is designed to work with your existing scale. It acts as a platform to place your cups while leaving the scale on the benchtop. With the

The Mythos 2 uses gravimetric technology to grind coffee by weight rather than time.

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R&D LAB

Dr Monika Fekete is the Founder of Coffee Science Lab.

A sensory overload Dr Monika Fekete dissects sensory pathways and how taste molecules bind to receptors, one at a time, to give us the ultimate sensory experience in the cup.

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Figure 1. Three main sensory pathways combine in the perception of coffee flavour.

Credit: Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.5) with modification

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offee is not only a feast for the senses, but one of the most complex beverages we consume, from a chemical point of view. Dissecting this multi-sensory experience in order to identify distinct flavours in your brew can be a difficult task, even if you have worked with coffee for many years. Understanding how the human body receives and processes chemical signals through smell and taste can be helpful towards getting a grip on those elusive flavours.

First, what is “flavour”?

Flavour is perceived through a combination of three main sensory pathways (see figure 1): • Basic tastes: Taste (gustatory) perceptions in the mouth caused by non-volatile chemicals in coffee or other foods.

• Aromas: Smells are a mixture of volatile chemicals that we perceive through our olfactory system. We can detect aromas through the nose (orthonasal perceptions) or through the mouth (retronasal perceptions).

• Chemical “feelings”, such as heat or texture, are the result of chemicals stimulating trigeminal nerve endings in the mouth, which communicate with our somatosensory system.

The distinction between taste and aroma has fascinated researchers for a long time. At the end of the 19th century, American psychologist E B Titchener stated in his best-selling textbook An Outline of Psychology that “taste has four qualities and no more. Smell seems to have a very large number of qualities”. Titchener was referring to bitter, sweet, sour, and salty tastes, to which a fifth basic taste,

umami (savoury), has been added since.

Almost everything else we think of as a taste, such as “this cake tastes like hazelnuts”, is in fact aroma perceived through the retronasal pathway.

Taste sensations come to us mainly through our taste buds. Most taste buds are found on the tongue, but there are also some dotted around the roof of the mouth and the back of the throat. Taste buds are located within three main types of structures: • Fungiform (mushroom-like) papillae at the front of the tongue • Foliate (sheet or fold-like) papillae at the sides of the tongue, and • Circumvallate (tower-like) papillae at the back of the tongue.

Taste papillae make the surface of the tongue much larger, making room for a great number of sensory cells that

can come into contact with the nonvolatile chemicals in coffee or foods.

Their structure is designed such that they direct liquids and food particles towards the taste buds. For example, the circumvallate papillae have a moat-like valley around the “tower” in the centre that allows liquids to collect and flow towards a set of taste buds below.

Zooming in to an individual taste bud (shown in Figure 2) we find that it’s made up of at least five kinds of sensory cells, arranged like orange sections around a fluid-filled funnel (the taste pore). Each taste bud connects up with a taste nerve and a trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for transmitting the “chemical feelings” of temperature or texture mentioned above. The messages sent through these nerves tell our body to get ready for digestion or alert it to

THE TONGUE MAP: FACT OR FICTION? Shortly after Titchener published his conclusions about the four basic tastes, German psychologist D P Hanig developed the tongue map by asking volunteers where they could taste sweet, sour, salty, and bitter sensations. The resulting original illustrations (see Figure 3) were intended to show the perceived intensity of the tastes: the taste can be felt wherever there is a dot, and the closer the dots, the more intense the taste. This has been misinterpreted later to mean that sweet is only tasted at the front, bitter at the back and sour on the sides of the tongue. More current research shows that Hanig concluded correctly that bitter (and also umami, which he didn’t know about at the time) are perceived more intensely at the back of the tongue. There is little difference for sweet, sour, and salty.

Figure 2: Each taste bud is packed with receptors that, together, can pick up all basic tastes.

alters the receptor membrane’s structure – the key opens the lock. This subtle change in structure starts a chain of reactions that ultimately send a message to the nerve endings at the base of the taste bud, which in turn, send signals of the taste sensation to the brain.

Identifying flavours such as sweet, sour, and salty and their levels of intensity in odourless, transparent liquids, is one of the hardest exercises of the Q Grader training program.

This task becomes especially difficult when the flavours are mixed together.

We have all experienced how flavours can interact and mask each other. Soft drinks don’t taste excessively sour, even though they are often very acidic, just like lemon juice. The sourness is counterbalanced by lots of sugar or sweetener. This happens because of the way taste receptors communicate

with each other.

Type 2 cells (bitter, sweet, or umami taste receptors) send their signals to the nerve endings through type 3 (sour taste receptor) cells, which then tell the brain if the food has bitter, sweet, or umami tastes, as well as sour. In addition, type 1 cells (salty taste receptors) can turn off type 2 bitter and sweet taste receptors.

Bitter and sweet receptors can also turn off the other, depending on the concentration of flavour molecules present. This explains why adding some sugar to your coffee can decrease its bitterness. However, a pinch of salt would be more effective.

Next time you sip on your cup of coffee, think about the complex ways the individual components of this intricate mixture communicate with your senses. It’s an experience worth savouring.

Figure 3: The original tongue map from 1901.

(adapted from “Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes”, D.P Hanig, 1901)

dangers, such as poisons or extreme heat.

There are five known types of sensory cells. Type 1, 2, and 3 cells are active taste receptors. They all have hairy tips (microvilli) where they can interact with the chemicals in coffee or food.

Type 1 cells are mainly responsible for picking up salty taste. Their membrane is punctured by an ion channel that can sense sodium.

Type 2 cells can have receptors for sweet, bitter, and umami tastes (possibly a separate fat taste receptor as well).

Each Type 2 cell only responds to one of these tastes. Type 3 cells respond to sour and possibly also salty tastes.

Taste receptor cells need to be regenerated every week. This is why Type 4 precursor cells sit at the base of the taste bud, ready to transform into type 1, 2, or 3 taste receptor cells. Type 5 cells are supporter cells that serve as scaffolding for the other sensory cells.

Imagine you are sipping on a cup of coffee, with the liquid swirling around your mouth. Can you isolate just one particular flavour molecule? That might sound like an impossible task, yet this is exactly what taste receptors do. Each receptor is tuned to a group of chemicals they can grab out of the mixture that they come into contact with. One receptor interacts with one taste molecule at a time. Just like how a key fits into a lock, the taste molecule binds to the receptor. By doing so, it

Credit: CNX OpenStax / CC BY (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

R&D LAB

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ASCA

Kieran Westlake is the President of the Australian Specialty Coffee Association.

Braving the storm ASCA President Kieran Westlake shares steps to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 on cafés and small businesses.

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he Covid-19 pandemic is on course to be the most destructive economic issue since the Global Financial Crisis, due to its unprecedented nature and scale of the outbreak. This is especially true for individuals and families living week to week, as well as businesses that are reliant on face-to-face customer transactions, like cafés.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, how do we protect our businesses and our people? The first step is to secure your family’s safety, then that of your livelihood: the business.

Before taking action, we need to establish a vital mindset: communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Unless we make our circumstances known, our network of suppliers, customers, and creditors cannot be expected to divine the pressures we may be facing. This isn’t weakness, it is an act of strength. With this in mind, we can press on to practical steps.

COSTS

A lack of revenue doesn’t kill a business. It’s the costs and the lack of capital to pay them that does. Unless your business is flush with cash reserves for six months of bills, this will be your most important action item.

Contact your landlord. Your landlord has to consider that if your tenancy ended today or next month, the likelihood is low that a new operator will want to take up the vacancy for the same amount of rent. Find an arrangement that will allow you to continue to occupy and trade from your business premises.

Contact your creditors. If you

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find it difficult to make repayments, you should contact your financial firm straight away. Many have a dedicated financial hardship team that you can speak to. You can ask for any reasonable change to your credit contract that may help you to repay your loan. Your financial firm should work with you to help overcome your financial difficulty.

Reduce your fixed costs. Can you refinance your equipment finance costs to a lower weekly or monthly cost? Can you scale your phone and internet costs back by changing your plan? Call your electricity and gas suppliers for a better deal or consider changing them. Can your landlord help you negotiate a better deal? These are questions to consider.

Labour costs. Your people make your business what it is, but your business ultimately needs to survive if it is to provide a livelihood to both employer and employees. Talk to your people and brief them on the situation and what that means for them.

Stock levels. Use what you have on hand and don’t order more unless you have to.

REVENUE

We have our high impact costs strategies executed, so how do we now focus on protecting, growing, or supplementing revenue in a downturn for a potentially extended period of time?

Pre-paid services. This means your loyal, regular customers pre-purchase your goods or services in bulk and for use in the future, typically with a discount applied upfront. This means you get vital capital into the business and they get to support their favourite businesses.

Sales channels. Pivot or strengthen sales channels not linked

to “face to face” transactions. Look into selling your coffee products online, meal delivery services, and promoting takeaway.

MARKETING

We also need to market our products and services and get the messaging right. We have the strategy, now we need the execution.

Social media is a cost-effective way for small businesses like cafés to market.

You can target current customers, build look-a-likes of our existing customers, target them in close geographical proximity, and communicate our story effectively.

Our target audience’s viewing time of these platforms is likely to rise during any form of social distancing or isolation, so this further improves our marketing efforts.

Just because revenue is down, doesn’t mean we skip the investment in the strategies that will have the most impact.

Promote how all consumers can help their favourite cafés and small businesses.

Again, we have to tell people why and how to help. If we don’t, we can only blame ourselves for staying quiet when we may have a fanbase willing to support us in our time of need.

The next few weeks or months could prove challenging, but the health and sense of community of the Australian coffee industry means we can make it through.

Sign up for our FREE newsletter at www.australianspecialtycoffee. com.au

NZSCA

Emma McDougall is the Communications and Administration Co-ordinator of the NZSCA.

Tamper Tantrum Movers and shakers offer insights into the state of the New Zealand coffee industry with international flavour.

I

t’s been a while since the last Tamper Tantrum, so Ozone Coffee Roasters thought ‘why not kick one off again?’, this time in New Zealand. The main instigators, Natalie Clausen and Steph Noble from Ozone Coffee Roasters, hatched a plan to make a work trip for their Director of Coffee, Stephen Leighton, into an event for the wider coffee community.

Steph says they were really keen to facilitate an event that involved more than just their own team talking with Stephen.

Thus, Tamper Tantrum New Zealand came to be at Ozone’s Grey Lynn eatery and roastery.

From there, the speaker list grew to include World Barista Champion 2017 and Hasbean Coffee Genral Manager Dale Harris, Director of Raw Material Richard Corney, Mojo New Stores and International Development Project Manager Kim Boyd, and NZSCA Events Director Emma Markland Webster.

With an electric group of speakers, the overarching message was that, as an industry, we need to look after producers, take lessons from the farm, build durable systems, and be pleasant to people.

Richard concentrated on the fact that Timor Leste is the nation most reliant on income from oil, with 85 to 90 per cent of all export income derived from the fossil fuil. With the country’s main oil reserve running dry, coffee has made up 85 per cent of export income since 2002.

He said the importance of coffee as a cash crop for people in the rural regions and its place as an alternative export income earner cannot be understated.

Richard implored that “the industry needs long-term support by roasters, importers and private sector investment to ensure coffee can be a sustainable and profitable cash crop for Timor Leste”.

“WE NEED TO REMEMBER THAT SPECIALTY COFFEE IS NOT JUST ABOUT FLAVOUR OR QUALITY. TO ENSURE LONGEVITY FOR OUR INDUSTRY, WE ALL MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY IN MAKING SURE OUR SUPPLY CHAIN IS SUSTAINABLE FOR PEOPLE AND THE PLANET.” Dale built on this concept by stating that “there are two challenges facing coffee, and neither of them are about insufficient extraction”. As an industry, we need to concentrate on “the economic sustainability of coffee production and specialty coffee environmental viability of coffee farming and our way of life”.

“We need to remember that specialty coffee is not just about flavour or quality.

To ensure longevity for our industry, we all must take responsibility in making sure our supply chain is sustainable for people and the planet,” Dale said.

Stephen then looked at biodynamic philosophy at farm level and how we can implement its teachings throughout our businesses. Always one to inspire thoughts and action, Stephen stated “biodynamics is a load of rubbish and that is why we should use it in our business”. Ideally, his vision is to create a harmonious ecosystem within our cafés.

Kim spoke about the dreamy part of coffee: opening a café. “In reality, we all know it takes a lot of hard work,” she advised. “[It] starts before the doors open.

The [more] time you take doing your research and development pre-opening, including the boring stuff, the higher

chance of success you will have.

“The best advice for if you don’t know how to do something [is] learn it before you take the huge leap to doing it yourself.

Work for someone else and learn from others’ experience.”

Emma loves a good rant. “Although we all love coffee, don’t let your purist tendencies get in the way of offering great hospitality. Without our customers, we have nothing. Don’t alienate them by withholding the things they need to make their coffee experience amazing. If that means having a sugar in their coffee, so be it.”

Following the event, Steph reports that “at least five people [named above] threw tantrums, but no one got hurt”.

On future plans, she says, “we would love to host another and our doors are always open. We love any excuse to hang out and hear from our coffee peers and to share a beer or a whiskey sour”.

The next Tamper Tantrum may even be held at Ozone in London.

For more information on the New Zealand Specialty Coffee Association, or to join, visit www.nzsca.org

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E-SCENE

Every edition we highlight BeanScene’s digital coffee community, hearing from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram followers.

For more information, visit www.beanscenemag.com.au ‘Like’ us on Facebook/BeanSceneCoffeeMag

ANDREW SHOLAKIS After spending 10 years in the coffee industry as a barista and working for a local coffee roaster, last year has marked the start of what I hope will be my own exciting chapter in local business. I opened Volume 2 Café, located in the heart of Abbotsford in Melbourne, along with my business partners George and Andrew.

Combining our diverse skills and passion for coffee, we’ve been able to create something pretty special that stands up against the best in the city.

While we are still in our infancy, the response has been overwhelming and we are quickly building a strong following within the local community and abroad. We look forward to seeing you soon at V2.

ROBERTO MORAS

Growing up in an Italian family, my love for the bean started at an early age. When I was young my grandfather would sneak me sips of his espresso when my parents weren’t looking and over time this led to a full-blown passion. As a teenager, I researched coffee to understand it on a complex level and I found myself becoming perceptive about different flavours, the quality of the roast, and what constitutes a good crema. During this time I learnt to critique coffee and was never shy to provide feedback to local baristas at one of my regular haunts.

At home, a Nescafé with a few sugars is my guilty pleasure, but otherwise I enjoy a caffe latte among friends. I’m a data analyst now, but up until recently I worked at the Dirty Apron Café in Clifton Hill. It was a great place to work and a real community hub. I love the way coffee brings people together and encourages interaction, it’s a real social lubricant.

Follow us on instagram.com/beanscenemag

CATHY MACRI

I founded Two Siisters Pantry with my sister Maryanne and two daughters, Deana and Tayla. With a wealth of experience in the hospitality industry, the two sets of sisters have worked hard to take inspiration from everything they have learned throughout their careers to ensure a unique and memorable experience for every customer.

Two Siisters Pantry is a celebration of family, friends, good food, and highquality coffee. We believe life shouldn’t be taken too seriously and the solution to the world’s problems can be found at the bottom of a coffee cup.

The coffee industry in Australia is growing rapidly and people are embracing it. With the vast amount of milk options offered nowadays, drinking coffee has become an enjoyable way of life.

WE WANT YOU! Have a coffee passion you’re dying to share?

We’d love to see it. Email a 150-word bio about your love of coffee, your favourite coffee moment, and a little about yourself with a high-resolution image (1MB or greater) to BeanScene Editor Sarah Baker: sarah.baker@primecreative.com.au Follow us on @BeanSceneEd

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beanscenemag.com.au

Same difference.

Everything you do with milk, you can now do with oat.

AUSSIE GROWN & MADE

Finally a plant milk that works like dairy.

When it comes to taste and foam quality, no other plant milk comes close to Vitasoy CafĂŠ for Baristas Oat.^ With a mild and balanced flavour, and perfect fat content, it lets the beans speak for themselves. ^Based on our results from an independent blind trial with select baristas.

Full cream dairy milk used for the coffee above, Vitasoy CafĂŠ for Baristas Oat used for the coffee below.