How SlowCoffee changed my life

Hello!

It's time for my second blogpost and I was thinking the subject should be my turning point in coffee, the SlowCoffee experience.

Last year in september, my good friends from Baristashop.nl gave me the message of the latest filtering techniques. Well, actually they are already quite old but it was returning to the coffee houses all over the world, so why not in my store. I bought myself an aeropress, a 3-cup chemex, a plastic hario one cup filter and a clever dripper. I also bought differect kinds of filters, brown and white ones to try which were better for the extraction. I didn't want a french press, I already used those and I wasn't impressed. I worried about the taste of the coffee, because the grinds were in contact with the coffee constantly. Later I realised that I could easily pour it over in a little pitcher but back then I wasn't that clever ;)

I started experimenting with my own house blend that I used on a daily basis for the franchise, and it was a very dark espresso roast. You could imagine how it would taste like, it was dark, bitter, burnt and just tasted awful. It's a great blend for an espresso in generally, but for this type of fiddeling with coffee it was unsuitable. Thats why I just forgot about the slowcoffee gadgets and put them aside for a little while.

Later on, I realised that I was probably using the wrong kind of coffee for it. So I ordered the book from Scott Rao 'Everything But Espresso' to learn more bout extractions and how they behave in the different filtering techniques. My eyes were opened right away! Terms as TDS, extraction yield, brew ratio, various calculations and also how to handle the grinder and what the water quality dows to your brew invaded my mind. I also learned that you must use lighter roasted beans to get the best extraction and so I started to order single origins from roasters.

Almost immediately I could taste the difference, so I orderd more and more. At one point I was just ordering beans to try them for myself and making just slowcoffee with them for myself. I was amazed by the results.

At this point I realised that after almost three years in the coffee shop business I was missing out on the good stuff, so I did the SCAE-baristacourses and started to develop my tatste for coffee. I participated in the first Dutch BrewersCup and Aeropress Championships, attended the Belgian Aeropress Championships and worked as a volunteer at the SCAE World Of Coffee in Maastricht at the BrewBar. I developed a tatse sense and I was growing in my skills.

During the SCAE Level 2 exam, I had to make coffee in a different way then using the espressomachine. The examinator took a shot of me when preparing a chemex. Sadly, it is in Dutch but I think you get the idea ;)