Oriole Coffee

By Colin Loh

Termed by some as being "one of the best coffee universities around," Oriole Coffee is no stranger to technology. Oriole Coffee never ceases to be on the forefront when it comes to leading the pack with high tech toys. Just recently, Oriole Coffee became the proud owner of the first La Marzocco Strada EP in Asia. This blog post marks the first of a series devoted to examining how Oriole Coffee integrates technology to help bring more bang to the consumer's buck.

2010. Enter Vince Fedele and the ExtractMojo.

The ExtractMojo is a small hand-held refractometer which measures the coffee's refractive index and determines its concentration, which can then be compared against an Universal Coffee Brewing Control Chart. You can read more about this technology on Gizmodo. Naturally, Oriole Coffee's Chief Geek Officer, Keith Loh had to have it.

I spoke to Keith and he remarked excitedly, giddy as a schoolgirl that "now there was a tool to empirically assess the extraction levels of the way that I was pulling my shots and it probably allowed a consistent way to measure quantitatively instead of qualitatively what I was doing. I've attended many cupping classes and tasting classes and the one thing I realized is the diversity of opinions when it comes to taste and flavor. After understanding about brew strength and extraction yields, there was finally a tool that could actually produce these results on a repeatable and measurable basis easily through just one small device."

Keith further elaborates that "We've been using the Extract Mojo for almost 2 years and I feel it's time to unveil that the Extract Mojo is the secret little weapon we have, or the secret little tool that has helped us to understand what we were doing. It comes full circle because we're about to launch our VST baskets across all our outlets. In fact, we've actually been rolling out the VST baskets at all our outlets for almost a month now. And we've been backing up our results with the Extract Mojo as you can see here from our chart. The trickiest one and the one we left to the end was the Strada EP, of which we should be rolling out as we speak.

Keith adds “This is ultimately the means to an end, and not the means itself, the end being the entire product experience, and not just the coffee. When you sit down, how fast you get served, how it looks, how it’s presented, its price and how fast it’s being served to you – the product experience.”

This is the final grouping test we did for the Strada EP on the 22 gram basket. And as you can see, they're so close that I don't think we could've achieve such tight grouping with normal baskets. So, it's nice to see that the Extract Mojo has proven that as we move along, we will continue to use technology to improve our consistency and let it work as a feedback loop to maintain our protocols, or to advance our protocols as we increase our volume."

Last but not least, Oriole Coffee's resident coffee roaster John Ting adds, "It changes how you looked at espresso extraction and makes you rethink all that you have learned, bringing you back to basics."

unripe cherries waiting to mature

Some of you may have already noticed that we have a new coffee on the shelves. A coffee that gives you a juicy mouthfeel, notes of cane sugar, sweetness of oranges and honey, clean lingering finish.

Majority of El Salvador’s total coffee production is of the bourbon varietal, one of the most desired coffee varietals. It is harder to grow, more susceptible to disease and provides a lower yield than some other varietals, but it also produces some of the finest coffee in the world .This coffee is 100% Red Bourbon and is an example of one of El Salvador’s finest coffees. This shade grown coffee is exceptionally creamy and sweet. The cup leaves a mouth full of creamy caramel.

Baskets of Fully Ripe Cherries

Finca La Fany located in the altitudes of 1400- 1600 meters above sea level. Within the Department of Ahuachapán and in the municipality of Apaneca Ilamatepec Mountains region which translates to ‘River of Winds’; and this is by no coincidence! The winds in this region are very strong, so very tall Copalchi trees have been planted in a grid or waffle like shape to protect the coffee trees from strong winds.

 
Finca La Fany has been producing coffee in El Salvador since 1870, and has belonged to the same family from generation to generation. Situated on the Santa Ana Volcano, the farm provides work for 24 families in the community in a biological corridor that stretches for 28 hectares from Mexico to Panama and is full of Bourbon and Pacamara coffees.

Fantastic view of the farm

Rafael and his wife Carmen Da Silva have been running the farm for the last ten years, and are the fifth generation of their family to be producing coffee. Rafael is a keen agronomist and takes great care in looking after the farm.

Only just recently, the Da Silva’s installed a wet mill on their property which now gives them much greater control over the coffee from harvest through to export; a very exciting development.

Beautiful and delicate when brewed as a pour-over, sweet and creamy when enjoyed as an espresso.

We have gotten our hands on a very limited lot of coffee from Fazenda Lambari, located in the region of  Minas Gerais, Brazil. This farm is certified by the BSCA, which means that the farm meets the criteria of Quality, Social Responsibility, as well as Ecological Responsibility.

Fazenda Lambari is located in Poços de Caldas, in the far south of the state of Minas Gerais on the Serra da Mantiqueira. On this farm, coffee is grown at 1,100m, accompanied by two well defined seasons: one rainy and dry. With an annual average temperature of 19^oC and 2,000 mm of rain spread across its long summer.

The microclimate of this region favors a concentrated flowering and therefore uniform maturation during the dry winter when harvesting takes place. The great difference between day and night temperatures combined with “patio” drying makes a unique coffee. In this region you even find Bourbon plants that may well be over 100 years old.

This naturally processed coffee is of mixed varietals of Acaia, Bourbon & Catuai from the crop of 10/11. Cupping notes of this coffee on its own: buttery mouth feel, flavours of butterscotch & almonds, clean & refined.

Creating a blend using this coffee as a base, completing it with a fully washed coffee from Sidamo Valley, Ethiopia, our latest seasonal blend displays floral notes in the front palate, rich & creamy mouth feel, hints of almonds and ending with a dark chocolate finish.

This will be featured for a limited time only as this is a very sought-after coffee. Do try it and give us your feedbacks on how you think of this.

So you love espresso? So do we, the guys and gals at Oriole! Many of you might think that the espresso machine is the single key piece of equipment to a great shot of espresso, but that’s not exactly true.  The humble and inconspicuous, over-worked and oft over-looked grinder is just as important.  Many purists argue that the most important piece of equipment in any coffee brewing situation would be the grinder simply because it allows for the freshest possible coffee to be brewed, giving you control of extraction of flavour and soluble solids from the beans.

True freshness in coffee can only be achieved by complementing freshly roasted coffee with ‘Grind-On-Demand’ – grinding only what you need just prior to brewing. The grinder intricately controls the rate at which coffee & water come together to create the ‘black gold’ in any brewing method.

The milling of the coffee beans between the blades breaks down & fractures the cell walls so as to increase the surface area for hot water to mix with the soluble materials in coffee. Why are grinders important in this equation? It controls the individual size (more about uniformity later) of each coffee particle, and thus, determines how much time and how much surface area is made available to the brewing water.

The sizing of coffee grinds is commonly known as a grind setting. Grind size directly affects the contact time between coffee & water.  Quite simply: the longer the brewing method, the coarser the grind, the shorter the brewing method, the finer the grinds. (A point to note is grind setting varies between coffee to coffee, roast to roast. There is only a guideline, but no definite grind setting that works for all coffee on any single brew method.) Espresso is the shortest and most intense of coffee brewing processes. Therefore grind sizing greatly affects the final quality of the espresso brew.

Some key points below before you jump into buying your next grinder.

Temperature

Fact: roasted coffee is very delicate and sensitive to heat. Heat makes the coffee swell and affects the consistency of the grind size for a given setting. This results in uncontrolled variations in extraction results which affect flavour and the list goes on.

Coffee grinders generate heat through 1) the friction caused by the blades as they cut through the coffee beans, 2) Heat generated by rotation of the grinder motor.  These factors contribute to exposing coffee to unnecessary heat even before brewing the coffee. Good grinders generate less heat and can cope with higher volumes.

In the next part of this blog, we will discuss on Doser Or Doserless?  Flat Burr vs Conical Burr.

Excitement. Fun. Anxiety. Entertaining.

This is the 3rd Latte Art Throw Down event held by Oriole Cafe & Bar since 2009. It was past 7pm and the few of us(organisers) were eager to see competitors popping up, but non yet. Slowly, 1 or 2 new +  familiar faces started to surface as the time approached 7.20pm on Tuesday (27th July2010). Instantly, the corner for challenges got flooded with enthusiast, competitors,  supporters, onlookers and people from coffee joints all over Singapore. ( I must say that the event was much more interesting than anyone could expect) Anyway, we welcome anyone who wish to compete, so it was pretty awesome to have 24 participants this round, which allowed a change in the competing format, which is – the Knock-Out system. The competing rounds were determined based on the numbering lots each participant has picked for him/her-self