The Hario Siphon

The team at Coffee Shrine supply a range of coffee making equipment for the home and office, and recently started stocking Hario siphons. I have never had the opportunity to play with a siphon and so I jumped at the chance to borrow one when they offered. I read up on technique in a number of places, including the recent instructable at Five Senses Coffee. Feeling well armed with knowledge and blissful lack of experience I put together the siphon and the Hario hand grinder and started to make coffee.

Actually, it took a few more tries before I got something that approximated what was described to me as a good quality cup of siphon coffee.

The final attempt though was something awesome. I was using an Ethiopian Limu that I had lightly roasted two days before and it was full of stone fruit and had an almost tea-like tannic quality. It was very refreshing and quite different even to the pour-over I had made with the same beans.

The Hario kit is a beautiful set of equipment. I love glasswear, and particularly laboratory glasswear. At teacher's college we had to learn to make our own pipets and other basic glass tools, but always I luster after the rows of beakers, conical flasks, retort stands and bulb flasks that stood in rows in the lab prep room.

The Hario gear took me right back into that world and I spent a blissful weekend trying slight alterations to the various recipes I had.

I was also very surprised by the hand grinder. My experience with manual grinders has not been good but I found that the ceramic burr Hario had grinder was effective and consistent and that the process of grinding enough coffee did not take too long. It actually added to the experience overall.

A big thanks to the guys at Coffee Shrine for letting me borrow their kit, it was great fun to play with.

The pictures below will hopefully tell the story better than my words can!

It happened again!

Only a day or so after bemoaning the all to soon passing of a great apricot flavour in a coffee I go out today with Alchemist (a fellow CoffeeSnob) to Elixir - and try a Yirga Cheffe that they had as a single origin and there it is again - more peach than apricot but still that sharp tangy stonefruit and utterly delicious flavour.

This time I know what the bean is however!

It is the Koke Coop Yirga Cheffe roasted by Five Senses who have coaxed out everything that is good in this bean. Jonny at Elixir poured a shot of this for me and then the power went out in the whole suburb - I thought I'd jinxed their machine but it was not I how shut down power to Nedlands today! The coffee is amazing and I know they only had a tiny amount left in their hopper so I would be surprised if there is any left but even so it was great experience trying this coffee roasted professionally and prepared by a master.

It is also a great relief to know this is not just a fluke occurrence but a quality that is cropping up in specific Ethiopian coffees - each time I have experienced this it has been distinct and enjoyable - not something I would use with milk as on tis own the character is too much fun.

Lowdown Highlights

Well, I may not be the best coffee blogger to discover Lowdown, nor will I be the one to take the best photos or write the most descriptive prose, but I know one thing - I am the first coffee blogger to discover this inner city treat.

I noticed it during the fit-out as I walked through the arcade to a meeting and peered several times through the shutters to watch what was going on. One of the first things that I noticed was the presence of a very unique item in a Perth cafe - a Fetco CBS 2021, a temperature calibrated coffee brewer. In a city full of espresso machines this thing appears to be unique.

Actually it seems as though some of the frenetic pace of perth coffee has altered of late and a number of cafes have expanded beyond espresso in their coffee offerings. This is great in my opinion as it allows other aspects of coffee to be explored and will actually contribute to improving espresso through a better understanding of coffee generally.

Back to Lowdown though:

Lowdown is a new addition in Cloisters Arcade and exemplifies the broader acceptance of 'other than espresso'. Offering a house blend from Fiori and a changing single origin, Lowdown is one of the first (if not actually the first) contemporary Perth cafe to offer brewed coffee which they are serving as long black coffees, as a chilled black brew and as the base for their iced coffee.



Owned by Sarah, Claire, Mark and Adam Lowes the cafe is a family business (can you tell that Mark and Adam are brothers? Mark is married to Sarah and Adam to Claire keeping the whole arrangement very neat indeed and providing plenty of help to manage the business.

I had already eaten breakfast but the food was very tempting and almost everything there is made by Sarah including some fantastic looking Hungarian offerings such as the Hungarian cherry cake.

My coffee tally hit four with two long blacks, a ristretto, a chilled long black to which I added an extra treat from another innovation they have introduced - half and half milk. That is, half milk and half cream in a chiller jug that you can pour yourself. They also make milk available in a similar jug and it was great being able to tweak the coffee by adding the milk/cream combination little my little as I drank the coffee to alter the experience.

The coffee from the Fetco was very clean and quite reminiscent of to body obtained from a clover. It was one of the best bodied filter coffees I have had for some time and it certainly highlighted to fruit driven PNG Kimel peaberries.




The ristretto was a delight and brought out the unique characteristics of their custom Fiori blend with caramel, berry and stonefruit apparent as it cooled.

Today was their very first day trading and already they had attracted lots of passing trade who were likewise intrigued by the Fetco. From its Edison reproduction light globes to its warm timber fittings, Lowdown is a very comforting addition to the arcade.

For those wanting a full experience of the new venue, Fiori have arranged two 1 hour coffee appreciation sessions at Lowdown where participants will be tasting three specialty coffees including the Monkey picked coffee. These are this Friday (9 April - with maybe one place remaining if you are lucky) and next Friday 16 April where there are several spots still available.

All funds raised will be donated to Be Kids Australia. The cost to attend is $15 and bookings are essential. These can be made by emailing Louise at info@fioricoffee.com.




Who: Lowdown
What: Great Coffee - with the added brewer bonus and very nice food on offer
Where: Shop 16A Cloisters Arcade, 865 Hay Street Perth (access also via St Georges Terrace)
Hours: From 7 am to 5pm (yay - coffee after meetings that finish at 4pm!).
Contact: Website, Email or (08) 9226 3041
When: 7 April 2010
Accessibility: Excellent - no issues with floor levels and counters and lighting and noise levels were acceptable.

Elixir, Coffee Specialists - Claremont

Juan Ponce de Leon, a Spanish exlorer born in 1474, led the first Spanish foray into Florida in search of gold, slaves and the reputed 'Fountain of Youth'. He found swamps and alligators and no magic vitality-restoring elixir.

The fortunate sandgropers who inhabit this state don't need an imaginary fountain of youth for our elixir. We HAVE Elixir - or to be more accurate Elixir Coffee Specialists in Claremont.

Now not just anyone can credibly call themselves 'coffee specialists' in Perth these days. Or rather they can, but they risk rolled eyes and snarky comments on coffeesnobs if they are not the real McCoy.

This is a scenario not even remotely possible for Elixir in Claremont. If there was ever a team I would trust to make great coffee it is that headed up by Jonny Nease and Justin Kenny.

Their coffee is sublime and Jonny manages to find the right notes of the blend as well as the single origins with apparent unerring ease - it is obvious however that behind the effortless-seeming approach there has been a lot of work and for the first time in a long time I have had to resist the urge to lick the last drips from the eggshell blue Croatian coffee cups.

The cafe is a pleasure to visit, the coffee amazing and the food superb.

Elixir is a great addition to the growing lineup of great cafes in Perth and have pushed this style of coffee further out from the CBD.

The team have acquired a 6Kg Giesen roaster - a heavy metal presence in the rear of the store that is not yet in production, but soon will be. They do not appear to be in a rush to roast and intend to let that stage happen when it is ready. In the meantime they are making their Five Senses roasted beans sing delightfully.

Blue is the new white - when it comes to espresso!

Justin Kenny

Jonny works the Hydra magic

What a product - there is so much dimension to that flat white that it is like a bas relief

Who: Elixir, Coffee Specialists
What: Top notch coffee and a small but superb selection of food
Where: 45a/145 Stirling Hwy, Nedlands WA 6009 (entrance off Robinson St -beside Chelsea Pizza)
Hours: From 7.30am.
Contact: Website, Email , Twitter or (08) 9389 9333
When: 6 April 2010
Accessibility: Excellent - I will also check back with Elixir and ask about their toilet facilities as I did not check those for accessibility.

Pour Over II

Still loving it - and have actual decent photos now!

Pour Over

I’ve never been a huge fan of pour-over coffee, but then my sole experience to date has been the standard fare of ‘dripolater’ machines that slowly torture already stale ground coffee with a slow trickle of over or under-heated water to deliver a brackish, muddy, acidic brew.

I do have a small manual gold foil filter that came free with a pack of Harris coffee – but results from this have been mediocre at best.

I am today however a big, big fan of pour-over coffee.

At work we have a grinder and several plungers that are used throughout the day – our team is only five people, and yet we are nudging 750 grams a week of coffee consumption.

Last weekend, Crema roastery up in the hills was clearing stock and had on sale some Bodum pour-overs – the ‘Bodum Dripper’ . Kamran (who was up there for the day) rang me and asked if I would like one, and I’ve never been a hard sale on gadgets for coffee.

We’ve been using it all week and I have to say that these are a real gem. I was wary about the single origin Bunum Wo that I bought – in the plunger it is great but has a powerful kick, and I thought the pour-over might just boost the kick.

I should not have been concerned – Magic, pure bloody magic, a nice clean cup, with good body for the style and really allows the qualities of the bean to shine through.

I’ll post up some pictures of the whole kit - (the only ones available online have that aweful 'fake' opaque coffee they seem to love for photographing), but pour-overs these can be bought for a good price – and with a nice even medium coarse grind they provide a wonderful alternative for making office coffee – or for making coffee when you have guests who like something other than espresso.