All things must pass. . .

And thus it is with the Kopi Luwak – both literally and figuratively.

Saturday marked the end of an amazing fortnight that commenced with roasting the coffee on March 15, a first cupping on March 21 and a second and third cupping on the 28th.

The one thing is that you need drink this coffee knowing that nothing ever lives up to the hype. Kopi Luwak is a pleasant Sumatran coffee, mild but with a long lingering (and quite intriguing) aftertaste.

As a social experience it was even more enjoyable – and the more so because I knew that the whole series of events was going to provide dollars to support the Autism Association’s Early Intervention Centre.

This is a cause near to my heart and I am grateful to the therapists at the centre for the work they did in assisting Junior Grendel Number One. Early intervention to build social and language skills, and to develop strategies that families themselves can use is essential in building up areas where the developmental delays of autism have left gaps.

I am not sure yet how much was raised but it is a good amount and very much appreciated.

Kamran and Louise of Fiori coffee have done a terrific job in putting together the event and I know that I really enjoyed both the coffee and the interaction with a broad range of people who were interested in trying the Kopi Luwak.

Yesterday I also got to drive the 3-group espresso machine in the Fiori Roastery to prepare the affogatos for each session. I love making affogatos and preparing 30 in just a few minutes really gives you a workout when you haven’t tried it for a while.

I’ll be getting back to Perth coffee more generally now – but once again, thank you very much if you came and supported the fundraiser, and thanks to Fiori for doing such a great job in setting it all up.

Friday Night Music

I have a colleague at work who's partner is - tubist? tubar? tubarotolist? tubafinist - whatever, he plays a Tuba and while this is a Sousaphone I am of the firm belief that once a brass instrument gets to a certain size it is a tuba.

Anyway - this looks pretty hard work:

Coffee - is there no end to its uses?

Via Peter Martin's blog I found this recipe for using coffee to develop film.

 

With just the addition of some vitamin C Powder and some washing soda you can create a developer and fixer to develop your films - apparently its quite a trend.

 

I think it must be time to find my old Patterson developing tank and fire up the Canon T50 with a black and white roll!

 

Coffee - I swear it can do anything!

 

 

 

Yesterday's Feeding Profile

"You have used 1101 out of your net daily budget of 1500 calories and have 399 calories remaining. 36% of the calories are from fat, 25% from protein, 39% from carbs and 0% from alcohol." 


Damn - obviously I am deficient in alcohol and should drink more.

Good Coffee

Good coffee is at its best when drunk in good company.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a slow morning drinking coffee with some of the most interesting and friendly people in Perth who had all come along to the fundraiser for the Autism Association's Early Intervention Centre.

I thought the highlight of the day would be the Kopi Luwak which was our last coffee to taste, but in fact the highlight was meeting the people I shared a table with, chatting with the other guests and listening to Kamran from Fiori share his passion for coffee.

The Kopi Luwak was great - and my favourite coffee of the day. This came as somewhat of a relief as I had a certain level of nervousness about how my roast would turn out.

Best of all was seeing how everyone else liked, or did not like, the various coffees that we sampled. I know the representatives from the Austism Association had a great morning and I know that they would want me to pass on their thanks again to Kamran and Louise of Fiori and Tom of Entendre for putting together an outstanding event.

Their generosity, passion and openness is very much appreciated.

Stay tuned though - we did not use all the coffee! There is to be another event next Saturday, and while it is likely to be fully booked with the flow-over from yesterday's waiting list, there may be a spot or two if you ask.

Contact Louise at Fiori Coffee. I'll be heading along to help out (rather than sit and drink coffee, and I know that if there are any other interested coffee aficionados out there willing to help wash glasses with me then they'd be welcome.

Let me know via my blog if you can help.

Below are a series of photos from the morning:

Friday Night Music (Not!)

No music tonight - just this rather appropriate scene from "The Bucket List"

The Belt Tracker

I have a sturdy leather belt that I have owned for the last 6 years or so - long enough to have had to replace the buckle. It is a good quality belt that hasn't frayed along the edges, the leather still has a good sheen and has held its colour.

I have worn the belt most days, and when I bought it I was using a notch mid way along. Over time the buckle has shifted both backwards and forwards with equal elation and dismay on my part.

Today I stopped into a keys/leather/gifts omnistore in West Perth and had them add three new notches.

This was to prevent the happy embarresment of my jeans falling down around my ankles - 'happy' because this means that I have now 'broken' this belt. I no longer need to fit it - it needs to fit me.

I was never unhappy about my weight, but I will confess to being very happy about the loss of mass I have sustained lately - my knees thank me also.

The best part is that I have not had to curtail coffee drinking along the way.

I am using the first of the new notches and now have another two to work towards. I think by the time I reach the third new notch a new pair of jeans will be required.

Kopi Luwak in Perth

The West Australian has been giving some pretty good coverage to the Kopi Luwak fundraiser for the Austism Association that is on tomorrow.

All sold out - although people are welcome to come by and sniff the aroma!

It is going to be interesting to see how it roasted - I've tasted a small sample afew weeks back roasted in the Genecafe, but this will be the first try from my roast.

Dearth of chocolate. . .

There seems to be a shortage of ethical chocolate. I've been diligently scouting to provide an update on pre-Easter chocolate purchases but I have found the shelves loaded down with the standard items with not an ethical egg to be seen.

Last year even the big supermarkets had such eggs in stock but we seem to be out of luck this year.

I have a few more specialty stores to try - and I'm hoping that Tracy of Barker and Hale will discover a few but she has already reported a shortage.

I live in hope however, and Easter is still a few weeks away. If you find a shop stocking Fair Trade eggs, please let me know so that I can list them here before Easter.

Roasting Kopi Luwak in Perth

It is done, no incidents or dramatic moments, just a quiet Sunday morning roast.

There was exactly 600 grams of Kopi Luwak for this roast. 

The beans are a light greeny-grey colour and quite clean in appearance.

Date: Sunday 15 March, 2009
Time: 08:00
Ambient Temperature: 22.6°C

Heat Gun Setting: 430°C

I checked and cleaned the roaster, rolled the bench down onto the footpath so that it would catch the light Easterly breeze and poured in the beans.

I would like to present this anterlude in the roasting process. . .

At eight minutes the beans have passed through  lime green colour and are moving to yellow-tan.

About 1 minute into first crack and the beans are a medium brown.

Cooling the beans - they look pretty good - nice and even in colour and surprisingly a lot larger than I thought they would be.

I found a wide range of foreign objects when de-stoning, but all very small. A small round seed can be seen in the middle - I wonder if these stones, and the seed, were also eaten by the 

Luwak?

There was just over 500g of roasted beans (the scale fluctuated between 504/505g) which means the coffee lost about 15.8% of its mass during roasting. About standard in my experience.

I bagged the beans in two bags - 253g and 252g.

It was a good experience roasting this coffee, not so much for what it is, but because it forced me to focus on my roasting and concentrate on the process, the sensory experiences and the details. I really wanted to get it right! 

The Challenge of Workplace Coffee

Normally I maintain a strict separation between work and hobby, but today, for the purpose of making a particular point I will trespass gently into the office for a brief moment. . .

One of the hardest accomplishments in coffee making is getting a decent cup of coffee at work.

Some offices supply a basic arrangement of tea bags and instant coffee-based soluble stuff, but neither is appealing.

Some go a little further and have a 'machine' that makes coffee for you. This is somewhat less appealing than option number one which at least may have involved fresh milk.

Others provide an automatic espresso machine, but I have yet to find one that can make coffee to a standard I am willing to drink on a regular basis. A very few offices have a proper espresso machine, good grinder and fresh beans. Or at least I have heard of such a place - I have yet to see it.

I work in the public sector where the rule is that you bring your own. So I did - I bought a small grinder, a plunger and I bring in my home-roasted coffee or coffee from a local artisan roaster.

This seems to be the best option for getting good coffee at work.

Although I love the richness of espresso based coffee - the purity of flavours that can be obtained from a plunger is a constant surprise. I would recommend a plunger as the best option for most offices - quick and easy to clean and the training to make good espresso coffee is far less technical that learning the ins and outs of an espresso machine that not only requires a range of techniques for various stages but also must be properly maintained and cleaned.

Our office now has about half-a-dozen plungers to keep up with demand in the immediate area around my office. Where we used to go through around 250g a week, we are now up to 500g and beyond.

Coffee has now become part of the culture and a daily opportunity to exchange social and professional information - it delivers value above and beyond its commodity cost.

While advertisements suggest the contrary, instant coffee-based preparations actually have an isolating effect - people get a cup when they feel like it rather than when the communal plunger is prepared.

I am in the process of instituting a coffee 'outreach' to other work areas that we exchange information with. By meeting for coffee once a week we should establish much closer communication links and a regular opportunity to negotiate in a more casual setting.

By bringing the coffee, our team will initiate a 'sharing' process. This is not a 'warm and fuzzy' thing but a deliberate approach to build organisational links that will add value to the work done in my unit.

Its also a great opportunity to explore coffee.

Friday Night Music

I can't embed the video for this clip tonight - embedding has been disabled for this one, however it can still be watched at YouTube.

This was big when I was young and one of the 'forbidden' video clips of my youth. Hence I still love it today - and if you like Annie Lennox, click on through. . .

G'ummint Money

The fiscal stimulus package arrived in our bank account this morning and just in the nick of time.

Junior Grendels Number One and Two are not permitted to watch much (if any) commercial television, but we do record ABC kids to play back when they just need a quiet sit.

Unfortunately our Panasonic video recorder died and had to be replaced.

So like a good citizen I hurried off today and primed the economy a little.

Tomorrow I am going out to a cafe and prime it a little more.

I never knew economic responsibility could be this much fun.

To roast!

This weekend I am roasting Kopi Luwak.

 

I'm not quite sure whether to be nervous or not. I have a backup roaster ready, but I keep feeling as if I should call up Alchemist or one of the other Perth CS roasters to bring a third set of gear - just in case.

 

Kopi Luwak paranoia. Everyone needs it.

Pandan

Thanks to a thoughtful gentleman who lives up my way I was able to acquire a pandan plant tonight. These plants have to be carefully cultivated - something which takes real skill given the Perth climate.

Pandan leaves form the basis on a number of dishes from South East Asia and are comparatively difficult to grow in Perth so I shall have to lavish attention on it.

Friends and colleagues who are familiar with the use of Pandan have already suggested a number of delicious recipes, but the plant is still young so they may have to wait a year or two.

I'm also intrigued by its aromatic qualities and will have to see whether it can be paired with coffee in some way.

I'd love to end up with something that can be used in a signature drink and fresh pandan leaves have quite a remarkable aroma.

I am hoping that if I can nurse it through the winter I can get it to the stage where it 'pups' shoots that I can use to propagate further cuttings.

A little cross-promotion

I've added two new recipes today on Gastronomology - a shared blog project that Mrs Grendel and I are using to store and share recipes we discover or create.

I've been playing with Basil this weekend and made a very nice batch of fresh pesto. And like coffee, there is no comparison between fresh and off-the-supermarket-shelf.

Great Chocolate News

This is not news about great chocolate, this is great chocolate news.

Cadbury, one of the world's largest chocolate companies was founded by Quakers and has a long history of philanthropy and ensuring very good working conditions for all those who work in their factories. In many ways they were ahead of their time in ensuring a decent quality of life for their workforce.

Quakers, including members of the Cadbury family were also deeply concerned about the slave trade in the 18th century and helped bring about its abolition in Britain.

It has been a stain on this history that Cadbury have for a long time failed to respond to slavery issues connected with the production of cocoa.

However, Cadbury have announced that by the end of 2009 their Dairy Milk Range will be FairTrade certified. For the time being this will be the products prepared and sold in the UK and Ireland but this will also hopefully lead to a global committment to Fair Trade sourced cocoa for all their products. 

Dairy Milk is Cadbury's largest selling range of chocolate and forms the bulk of their cocoa purchasing. This has come about as a result of an ongoing consumer campaign organised by anti-slavery movement Stop the Traffik.

This is very big news and will place significant pressure on other chocolate producers such as Lindt, Nestle, Mars and Hershey to follow Cadbury's lead.

The chocolate industry agreed in 2001 to ensure that all exploitative practices were removed from all parts of the supply chain for cocoa, but until now very little has been done by the largest companies to force suppliers to abandon such practices as using indentured child labour in cocoa plantations.

It is only with direct action by the biggest companies that such practices will cease as they have the buying power to force compliance.

Without action by the other big four companies, many children will continue to be trafficked in debt bondage to work in plantations.

Cadbury have once again taken the lead and should be congratulated, even though their action has taken some time.

Cadbury chocolate has not yet received FairTrade certification - which is a shame this close to Easter. Later this month I'll follow my practice from previous years and post a list of ethical chocolate labels that guarantee that their cocoa was sourced from plantations that do not use exploitative labour practices.

I look forward to being able to enjoy Cadbury's FairTrade chocolate later in the year.

Thanks to Mark Edwards for the news tip.

More information can be found in the Cadbury Press Release and comments from the bloggosphere here and here and at Stop the Traffik
 
Image Source: Wikipedia - Cocoa Pods

Friday Night Music

Via Miss Cipher's great blog I found this clip of the Axis of Awesome proving a point about pop music and chords in a most amusing way:




And this clip by Rob Paravonian makes a similar point using Pachelbel's Canon:

'Nutty Nuggets'

Yes, the Kopi Luwak event at Entendre is soon upon us with the 21st of March marked already on my calendar along with another very critical date one week earlier - on Saturday the 14th I'll be roasting the beans at a secret location with a backup roaster warmed and ready to roll - just in case.
This will give the beans a week to mature. We'll be preparing the kopi luwak in a plunger - the purest way to taste the intimate essence of civet cat. . .

Kamran pre-roasted a small sample to make sure it was all the good things it needed to be and described it as a very mellow coffee with a fascinating aftertaste.
The amount of coffee we'll have on hand should allow us to spread it to a reasonable crowd if we are careful.

I have never tried it either - so Kopi Luwak will be a unique experience for me through both the process of roasting, and tasting the coffee we make from the beans.


Incidentally, the day following March 14 is known as the Ides of March - the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated on the steps of the Roman Senate. Nothing at all to do with coffee but someone called me a 'geek' today so I feel I must do my best to live up to the compliment. . .

Image Source: Wikipedia - Palm Civet

A Single Perfect Egg

I had gastic banding sugery three weeks ago. For someone who loves good food as much as I do this was a hard but necessary step.

So, my goal now is not 'quality rather than quantity' but 'quality rather than quality and quantity' which had been my previous approach to food.

The post-operative recovery period involves lots of foods that can be sipped through a straw - believe me when I tell you that no matter what combination of liquid flavours you can combine, food texture suddenly becomes a potent and wistful memory.

Fortunately I am now able to eat 'real' food again with the exclusion of certain things - like bread. Above all, I have been craving eggs and over the weekend I made scrambled eggs which tasted like heaven. The amount of food that I can eat before I feel 'full' is very small so even a single egg is satisfying - but now I want perfection. If one egg is all I can have then it better be a bloody good one.

This morning I stopped before sunrise at West End Deli where the chef prepared a single, perfect poached egg, served on its own on a plate with just a little salt and some pepper for company.

Superb.

This was preceeded by a short macchiato prepared by Ryan who has been perfecting a new blend of beans for the cafe and it was a real gem.

West End Deli have established an amazing reputation for quality and this morning's single perfect egg - simple, but wonderful, was quality incarnate.

Beating the recession with coffee

I've heard a couple of people comment of late that they are going to be cutting down their daily consumption of coffee in order to save a little extra money each week, and given their consumption patterns, for them at least it is probably not a bad idea.

In fact I think they need to have a personal revolution and cease purchasing 'grande' size coffees from McCafe and move to a regular flat white at an independent, specialty cafe.

Why?

Well quality beats quantity every time. If coffee is going to be something special you allow yourself to have occasionally then it really should be a very good coffee.

Better to have a well blended, full flavoured and smaller coffee once a day than three enormous, and supremely undistinguished, McLattes.

By purchasing smaller, but better quality coffees you make your money work harder. Firstly specialty coffee is local coffee - all but a tiny portion of coffee drunk in Australia is from imported green beans, but the value-adding of roasting and packaging of coffee is a valuable economic contributor and smaller roasters have proliferated in the last decade providing many jobs and far superior quality to the bulk roasters overseas who ship the pre-roasted beans to our shores.

Smaller roasters are also much more likely to be engaged in Fair Trade or Relationship coffee which sustains the growers who will be hit hardest in an economic downturn.

You could look at the analogy this way - It is Friday night and the family is having a rare treat - take-away food. During a recession the giants such as McDonalds and KFC are perceived to be a cheap option and generally do fairly well, where other independent operators may not do so well. However, to feed your family of four at KFC can cost up to $50, whereas the local gourmet Pizza shop can usually do it for $35-40. The difference is not only in the cost to you but also in the value to the community. The pizza shop will likely use local produce (the one near us certainly does) and they value-add to this to deliver a more satisfactory product (not to mention more healthy) at a lower cost.

That said - supporting ANY business during a recession is a good thing, but you can target your slightly-ever-more-so hard earned dollar more effectively if you think about it. Going to places that value-add to products on site is one way of doing this.

Most importantly - its your money, you should expect quality in return for handing it over the counter.


(many thanks to Christretto for the conversational elements that built this!)

Farewell Matt

Matt Laffan died on the weekend. Many people on the West Coast may never have heard of him, but I remember seeing him on Australian Story years ago, and then a couple of years later with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope.

Matt was born in the same year that I was, but he was born with a rare genetic condition and was not expected to live beyond his first week.

He lived 38 years and achieved immense things in that time as a lawyer, disability advocate and passionate support of rugby union.

It is sad that he is gone and I'd like to pass my condolences to all who were close to him.

Australia is a much richer place for the time he was with us.

If you would like to learn more about Matt, and why he is such a significant Australian, visit his website.