Your everyday COFFEE…
Coffee Bootcamp
Training Course on how to make coffee perfectly.
Vogue-ish flavours
Putting a little fashion and style into coffee.
Sump Coffee Espresso Tonic
Brewing with the Scott man from Sump Coffee.
Celebrity of coffees
The most expensive coffee in the world!
How to become a barista?
For the first time in South Africa, Ciro Coffee Academy now offers a range of Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) certified courses at all their training centres, to ensure training is of the highest quality and meets global coffee education standards. The SCAE is well recognised for providing advanced and respected coffee training qualifications and sets the industry benchmarks for education in the coffee industry. The courses on offer form part of the Coffee Diploma System of the SCAE and will be issued to trainees once 100 credits have been achieved through the different modules.
Barista Marck Barter sets up his mobile Detour Espresso Bar along Chapman’s Peak Drive every morning. Photo Ado Wessels
Coffee Bootcamp
The ultimate coffee training course must be Ciro’s 7 day trip to a coffee farm in Tanzania. It includes the planting of coffee beans, harvesting, hand sorting, cupping as well as smallholders’ activities and auctions.
The cost is around R44 000 a person and includes all flights, meals, accommodation and educational journey and usually takes place during November if there is a minimum of 10 people.
Vogue-ish flavours
Coffee is actually fruit, the beans are seeds of red berries that grow on trees and according to Jenn Rice in a Vogue article, the combinations of citrus and coffee or soda and coffee actually works. Coffee can contain hundreds of different flavour notes depending on the region and elevation where they are grown.
By adding a splash of lemon can magnify more subtle, natural citrus notes in the beans. As for coffee sodas specifically, it’s becoming more common to roast coffees in a way to highlight the bean’s brighter tones and when an Americano is mixed with soda water, you may just get a bubbly morning buzz.
Sump Coffee Espresso Tonic
Look for coffee with a citrus profile, Scott Carey recommends. He reckons this drink works only with washed coffees from Ethiopia.
Ingredients:
Bottle tonic (Carey prefers Fever Tree Indian Tonic)
32ml of espresso (of Ethiopian origin)
Method:
Add tonic and espresso in a glass of ice. Float the shot on top of the tonic, to avoid a glass that mimics a “shaken can of cola”.
Celebrity of coffees
Kopi Luwak is mentioned several times in The Bucket List and is the most expensive coffee bean in the world because of its production method. The palm civet eats the choicest ripe coffee beans berries and their digestive juices partially break down the bean. Upon pooping it out, the “deposits” are collected, cleaned, and sold as Kopi Luwak beans.
BUT the quirky story of farmers in South East Asia following the cat poop trail is no longer true. Nowadays, the civet cat spends its life not wandering the coffee plants in the dark of the night, innocently snacking on its favourite coffee treats, but in a small, cramped, wire cage, where it is fed coffee beans incessantly before having its poop scooped out the cage at the end of the day, only to repeat the whole sad process again the next.
Chocolate-coffee cake for the chocoholic in you
Try this delicious chocolate-coffee cake recipe as featured in Food & Home. It’s full of flavour and lovely and moist.
Recipe by Ronelle Hart and photograph by Annalize Nel
Ingredients:
230g self-raising flour
240g castor sugar
30ml – 45ml (2 tbsp – 3 tbsp) cocoa powder
5ml (1 tsp) instant coffee granules
3 eggs, separated
15ml (1 tbsp) vanilla essence
125ml (½ cup) sunflower oil
125ml (½ cup) boiling water
5ml (1 tsp) baking powder
250ml (1 cup) fresh cream
5ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence
60ml (¼ cup) icing sugar, sifted
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line the base of two 22cm round cake tins.
Mix together the flour, castor sugar, cocoa and coffee granules.
In a separate bowl, mix together the egg yolks, vanilla essence, sunflower oil and boiling water. Then add to the dry ingredients and mix well to combine.
Beat the egg whites and baking powder together to stiff peaks. Fold carefully into the batter.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake tins and bake in the oven until a skewer inserted into the centre of each comes out clean, 20 – 30 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.
Make the icing by beating the cream, vanilla and icing sugar together to soft peaks. Once the cakes have cooled, spread a layer of the icing over one cake and sandwich the two together. Ice the top of the cake, leaving a trowelled texture.
Classical encounters
Watch how these Ayrshire cows love Mozart.
World’s strongest coffee
South African based coffee company, Black Insomnia, launched ‘the World’s Strongest Coffee’ with Amazon Prime. The medium roast sweet and nutty flavoured coffee contain a minimum of 702mg of caffeine per medium cup while Robusta contains about 397mg and Arabica 244mg of caffeine each.
Have your espresso and eat it
Flat Brew Coffee Spread is the new way to enjoy your espresso. Spread it on toast or eat spoonsful out of the jar, as you would do with peanut butter or Nutella! It’s a blend of Arabica coffee, cocoa butter, a little sugar and cream. Don’t let the jet black colour put you off.
The top 10 coffees in the world
It’s a matter of debate which coffees should be called “The Best Coffees in the World” but here is an interesting selection as found on espressocoffeeguide.com/top-10-best-coffee-in-world
1 Tanzania Peaberry Coffee
2 Hawaii Kona Coffee
3 Nicaraguan Coffee
4 Sumatra Mandheling Coffee
5 Sulawesi Toraja Coffee
6 Mocha Java Coffee
7 Ethiopian Harrar Coffee
8 Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee
9 Guatemalan Antigua Coffee
10 Kenya AA Coffee
PS Honourable Mention: Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee
Coffees from Jamaica’s Blue Mountain region are indeed often named the “Best Coffee in the World”, but when it comes to price vs. quality, it’s an overhyped coffee.
15 things that irritate baristas
1. Complain that your drink was made incorrectly but refuse the barista’s offer to remedy this. Mistakes can happen, especially during rush hour. Tell them and they will fix it.
2. Leave your coffee on the counter. The crema will dissipate and the flavour of your espresso will change. So, enjoy your drink quickly after being made.
3. Ordering a bone dry cappuccino is a pain to make. It’s just as time consuming and it’s wasteful as the barista will still have to steam quite a bit of milk.
4. Milk burns easily, so when asking for an extra hot drink, you are asking the barista to scald your mouth. If you are doing this because you have to travel a distance, rather go to a coffee shop closer to your destination.
5. Make a comment about your coffee being over-priced. The barista usually does not decide on the prices and they are proud of their craft, respect it.
6. Talk on your phone while ordering. People in the service industry deserve your attention. Whoever is calling you can wait another 5 minutes.
7. Don’t ask them what drink is good, they do not know your taste.
8. Don’t you remember my order? Checking in a couple times a week doesn’t guarantee any of the baristas will remember what you order. You have a better chance of making a good impression — and of a barista remembering your drink — if you’re courteous, tip well, and don’t ask obnoxious questions.
9. Stop asking them. If you ordered your drink made with skim milk, soy milk, almond milk, or any other kind of milk, there’s no need to interrogate them when they hand over your drink. The same applies to decaf.
10. Don’t order a complicated, time-consuming drink like Frappuccinos for you and your friends during rush hour. Your order will probably take a long time to make and will slow things down for everybody behind you, too.
11. Can I have an ‘expresso’? Whatever you’re going to order, make sure you can pronounce it. (And yes, it’s espresso, not expresso.) Learn how to pronounce the name of your drink, whether it’s an espresso or a macchiato.
12. If your child spills a drink or drops a pastry, do your best to clean up the mess yourself but don’t act entitled. And don’t forget to apologise if you have to ask a barista for help in cleaning up the mess.
13. Leaning over the bar to repeatedly ask the barista whether your drink is ready yet. Not only is it rude but it’s unnecessary.
14. Don’t reply back with your order when the barista greets you.
15. Do not pour hot coffee in the rubbish bin, the barista will have to clean up the runny mess.
Check the periodic table of coffee - impressive
You can find all the major coffee varieties in history through modern types, including one whose origin has not been named yet!
Weird coffee traditions around the world by Ondela Mlandu for Getaway
Many people can’t survive without a cup of coffee in the morning – but how you serve that caffeine can be very different based on where you are. Here are some coffee traditions from around the world: which do you think is the weirdest?
Capsules versus pods
Coffee pods and coffee capsules are not the same some experts say. Capsules are plastic containers with an aluminium foil seal and ground coffee inside and either part of an open or closed system; open allows for a broader range of product to be use in the machine, closed are like Nespresso capsules, you can only use one brand that’s compatible to your machine. Coffee pods, also known as coffee pads, look and work the same as a teabag, except they are round in shape.
