Chicago Coffee Festival 2007

Visited: 25/02/07

Chicago Coffee Fest

Up until the Chicago fest I’ve been drinking shitty starbucks coffee in Indiana. I have tried a lot of coffee at the festival among one of the best Intelligentsia, Metropolis, The Roastery and Zoka coffee.

I would have to say that Roasterie definitely stood out above the rest. They air roast their coffee which is something I’ve never tried before. They had a 3 group mistral. Their espresso was very complex in flavour. Very sweet with distinct chocolate notes, very light in acidity. The finish was very sweet and taste lingered for a long while.

I had some outstanding coffee from Intelligentsia but not from their stall at the festival, but from one of the city stores (Millennium Park). There was not much on the nose, some light chocolate notes, the espresso was a little earthy, I don’t really remember it that well as I had few different coffees before hand, but it certainly made an impression. At Intelligentsia I also tried something I have never tried before. They had this interesting brewing machine (Clover) from what they described the extraction was a cross of vacuum pot and a plunger, they served this unbelievable coffee from Bolivia. It was really mind bowing. The flavours were insane, my first impression was strong sweet lemon tea and then the flavours change into floral, berry like tea and it tastes soooo damn good! I really don’t know how to describe it any better than that it was really really interesting!!! This extraction method is ideal for breaking down fine features in single origin coffees, the machine is sophisticated with accurate brewing temperature controllers.

Metropolis left a nice impression also, I don’t have my tasting notes as I was coffeed out at that stage. They were pulling shots out of FAEMA E61 LEGEND well conditioned machine, spectacular to look at.

I will move on to the coffee machines, there was this Rancilio history museum stand with really old original hand crafter machines, which was amazing. I took lots of pictures so be sure to check them out. I got to play around with new WEGA machines, new POLARIS with a running screen display thingy and also got to see new VELA model. I got told that Andrea from Coffee Works Express has ordered a few, so they should be coming to Australia soon.

In conjunction with the festival there were also 2 competitions running: Millrock Latte Art Comp which Chris Baca from Ritual Coffee (San Francisco) won and the Great Lakes Regional Barista Comp with Matt Riddle won for the 2nd time in a row. I got to hang out with Matt a bit, he really is a top bloke.

My weekend at the coffee festival was unbelievable. It has inspired me to go to Long Beach, California for the SCAA Coffee Meet. I am really looking forward to that. I believe that I will be representing WEGA at their stall as their barista on hand.

Kiril

ALL THE PHOTOS ARE IN HERE

Paul Bassett Blend (Winning 2003 Word Barista Championship Replica Blend)

Blend: Paul Bassett Winning 2003 WBC Replica Blend
Roast type: Medium
Grinder: Mazzer Kony
Machine: Marzocco Linea
Overall: 8.8 / 10.0



PB Blend Review,

Paul Bassett has finally released his 2003 world championship replica blend for sale. I have purchased it from the paulbassett.com and have decided to review it in form of espresso. I bought a 500g bag on 12.12.06 and got it via express post the next day, incredible! The roast was really fresh only 4 days old and that was indeed overwhelming. Enough history lets get to the business end of espresso.

This is my very first review so I am going to break it up into sections so it is easy to follow.

First impression:

As soon as I opened the vacuum-sealed bag a very pleasant aroma hit my nose, A very distinct coco almost candy, fruit like aromas have quickly spread in my kitchen. The roast was toast brown in colour and the beans have just started to release the oils, which is ideal for a 4th day after roast coffee.

Dose:

After few extractions I have worked out that the best dose for this particular blend. I have worked out that by dosing just under the line in an 18 gram filter basket would give me the best results. The blend was designed to be full-bodied and very sweet.

Extraction:

The perfect extraction start was restricted for first few seconds and slowly becoming more liberal. (see video) On the video you will notice that I am pulling an approximately 20 second shot. My theory of extraction lies in colour change of this coffee, in this instance a 15 mil shot. It was very intense in flavours and rich in crema. I have diluted it in a form of a long black to pick out the fine sensory and enzymatic features of this beautiful blend.

Acidity:

The acidity was velvet like and was very delicately balanced. The velvet like acidity was more of a texture, this is due to the well-balanced blend and roast profile.

Body:

The espresso itself was really sweet due to the roasting style producing medium to full body shot. The sweetness of the body was reflected by choice of green beans that combined the blend and also the cooling time which most likely would have been under 4 minutes. By the looks of things the beans would have been packed immediately after the blending.

Sweetness.

Very sweet, achieved by green bean selection and roast profile

Sensory:

Very distinct coco, berry, toast and caramel smells. The berry however was the dominant sensory feature. I found that the blend itself was driving for sweet smells to than reflect similar enzymatic profiles into the cup.

Cup profile:

As expected coco and candy fruit were very dominant, as suggested by my sensory evaluation. The flavour really stood out. Fruit sweetness as well as caramelised sugars were very distinct as well as candy fruit and berry.

Finish:

Clean cup finish.

Overall

An outstandingly well balanced

Thanks for reading my detailed review I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed evaluating this blend. If you have any questions feel free to email me sqrl@internode.on.net

Kiril

Rancilio Silvia Boiler Tapping

This is the boiler element in my machiene here you can see the extraction rod and temperature measure probe in the grub screw - shows me the temperature at point of extraction

here is a close up of the probe goign into the shower head element

The look into the boiler itself ... there is a spiral element that heats the water. You can see the white dots ... i dont know what that is but its some sort of buildup ... so i plan to clean it out .. they scrub off ...

ok on this picture you can see the location where i put the PID, the display shows set temperature and current temperature. Once within a few degrees it starts to pulse the boiler keeping it +/- 3C, AWESOME!!!!

I havent taken this picture ... so i credit who ever did ... as you can see here ... the inside on the brass boiler (on the left) and the extraction element rod ... and righ under it is the black grub screw (just above the shower screen) well i have a probe there .. and one in the boiler (still working on that one)

some of my latte art , hahahah ... SOAK IT UP!!!

Ok here you can see the drilled hole, at that stage i was shitting my pants hoping that everything went fine, i have used 2 drill bits one small one and then a bigger one. As you can see the boiler is nicely clamped, last thing you want is the boiler to move around when you drill!

This is a brass boiler so putting a thread into it was really easy ... on this occasion i am using 1/8 BSP thread and carefully and slowly winding the thread in. Make sure that its straight otherwise it will leak, and that’s the end of your boiler!!!

Oh, make sure you descale your boiler before you drill, you cant really see but the spiral and brass element is much cleaner ... the white shit on the walls i scrubbed with an old toothbrush later on. On this picture you are looking straight through the threaded boiler ... haha once again at that stage i was thinking to myself "what if it doesn’t work" - Be sure to was all the brass shavings out of it

Ok this is the length of the probe that went into the boiler ... its fair long as there is hold water at the bottom of the boiler and the hot water on the top ... so u want the best of two world!!! The response time to the PID is really good, so no worries there. The probe was custom made for my purpose!

Ok ... FINITO!!!! there it is all in place ... on the top of the pic you are looking at the PID ... i might insulate it, but the heat transfer is not all that much so i might not worry about it ... we will see ...

There is the side look to it ... as you can see on the PID there is the Set temperature (in green) and the actual temp (in red) ... the PID pulses the boiler when its in range, like i said the response time is pretty good .. so when temperature starts to drop it knows to turn on before it hits the minimum value.. there is still some temperature loss through out the extraction but the PID brings it back pretty quick!

This is my home setup .. there you can see the Jolly next to the silvia!!! Jolly-Silvia what a golden combination. I also have a little isomac grinder to play around with different beans and doing crazy experiments. Ohhh golden bag espresso blend by RIO COFFEE .. NO SUBSTITUTE!!!!

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Sorry for the crappy quality photos used my phone to snap the photos ... if you want to use these somwhere else please refference back to this page ... better still send me an email and ask for permission.

sqrl@internode.on.net

If you missed the discussion find it here

http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/190190

(c) 2005, Kiril