Coffee Seminar, by Leslie Williams

Home Roasting of Coffee, by Leslie Williams

Back in the early 1990's when I first decided to explore the world of quality coffee I turned to the culinary bible that is the Cooks Encyclopedia by Tom Stobart. Stobart is nothing if not perfectionist on coffee as on all other things, and claimed that buying ready-ground coffee was a bit like buying ready-ground black pepper. According to Stobart, your coffee beans should be roasted fresh every day ­ just as Boer farmer's insisted of their wives!

Clearly this was something I had to try but it was only recently I managed to get my hands on some top quality green beans from the Cup of Excellence auctions.

Every year the Speciality Coffee Association of America organise the Cup of Excellence Awards (http://www.cupofexcellence.org) whereby small farmers from selected countries submit their coffee to be judged by some of the world's best tasters. The top coffees are then sold in an Internet auction. These auctions give the (generally miserably poor) farmers a chance to make a name for themselves and their region and to get a better price for their coffees.

To give you some idea of the boost this auction can be for farmers (who receive 85% of the auction price), standard coffee usually costs about 90c. per pound, while the Cup of Excellence winner's coffee will sell for between 10 and 12 dollars per pound.

A little bird told me that Bewleys have quantities of the winning Guatemalan and Nicaraguan coffees from recent auctions. These coffees are of amazing quality and to attempt to blend them would be a major crime, so expect them to be sold as single origin beans and I recommend snapping them up whatever they cost.

I managed to get my hands on some green beans from the Guatemalan Cup of Excellence winner and have been experimenting with roasting them on my old cast iron le Crueset frying pan. They have a wonderfully warm earthy flavour with a herb-like aroma and hints of mace or nutmeg in the flavour, excellent acidity and good body.

The key to home roasting is to keep the beans moving constantly (they burn very easily) and listen for a crack followed by a slight pop. It takes about 20 minutes of almost constant shaking and stirring but the house fills with wonderful aromas. You will need to blow off the chaff that comes off the beans as they brown and you will need to allow the beans to cool before you grind them.

The only place I know where you can buy green beans in Ireland is from the Irish Coffee Club (see Home Brewing article) who have a range of top quality speciality coffees including the likes of Jamaican Blue Mountain (wonderful coffee but around 30 Euro per 250g).

While I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that you roast fresh every morning, I do suggest that you at least have a go, if only to better understand the process. If shaking a pan for 20 minutes sounds like too much work I am told a popcorn maker can do a good job also. Oven roasting is less predictable and much prone to burning.

I will also admit that a proper roasting machine will probably do a better job but that is somewhat beside the point. The key is not to think of the effort involved, but of the satisfaction you will get and the kudos you will receive from your dinner guests when you tell them you roasted the coffee yourself!

As a PS, I should mention Kopi Luak, partly as it is traditional to do so whenever speciality coffees are discussed. Those of a delicate disposition should stop reading now.

Kopi Luak beans are from Indonesia and are swallowed whole by weasel like creatures and then gathered from their excretions. Production is of course tiny and they sell for around $300 per pound. This passing through the digestive tract is said to help flavour the beans!! Something that is rarely mentioned however is that the weasels eat low quality Robusta beans rather than Arabica (much, much higher quality), so for this reason alone I advise you not to bother.

Leslie Williams

Home Brewing

With all the talk of espressos and skinny, no fun, macchiatos (a de-caffinated espresso with a dollop of low fat foamed milk on top) it is easy to forget that most of the coffee we drink is brewed at home.

Espresso is of course only one way to brew coffee and is not actually recommended for the finest quality beans as you will lose some of the subtleties of flavour.

The key to getting the best flavour from top quality coffee is down to a number of factors but ultimately the aim is to get as much coffee flavour from the beans as possible. Essential to the flavour of a cup of coffee are the oils in the coffee bean, which are emulsified when hot water is poured on top.

Cafetieres/Plungers are better than filter methods as the filter will inevitably absorb some of the oils. The plunger method allows all the oils to emulsify fully and produces a better tasting cup of coffee. Note; it is best to turn the kettle off just before it begins to boil as boiled water has lost some of its oxygen as well as the fact that boiling water will destroy some flavours.

Roasted coffee beans begin to go stale within a few hours of roasting and within minutes of being ground, but the good news is that there is a new online coffee company, the Irish Coffee Club (http://www.irishcoffeeclub.com), who will deliver top quality beans to your home within a day or two of roasting.

I tested it out recently and ordering took less than three minutes on a Wednesday evening and by Friday morning I had spanking fresh coffee delivered in my letterbox. The whole house smelled of fresh roasted coffee for hours after I opened the parcel.

Brother and sister team Stephen and Nicola Murray specialise in top quality single origin beans (unblended) from all over the world such as Monsoon Malabar, Hawaiian Kona and Guatemalan Strictly Hard Bean. They will even deliver free to your door if you live or work in Dublin 1, 2 or 7.

You can also choose your roast for the beans and whether they come ground, whole or green for home roasting ­ see Home Roasting article.

I tasted my way through most of their range for this article and found the general quality to range from excellent to almost perfect. Note: for variety sake their range changes occasionally so not all of the beans mentioned below will be available all the time.

My favourite by far was Indian Mysore, which is a full-bodied rich and earthy coffee with a sweet ethereal aroma with hints of spice and chocolate.

Next I would probably pick the Guatemalan, which had a creamy supple flavour and texture with good body and acidity. The most unusual to my taste was the Monsoon Malabar, which had lovely mellow tones and firm acidity but also had a subtle smoky nuttiness that might not be to everyone's taste. The Sumatra I found quite a mellow drink with a subtle nuttiness but with firm acidity and a reasonably full-bodied flavour. The Old Brown Java left the least impression on me, though it also had good body a rich taste and clean acidity.

The clear advantage Irish Coffee Club have is that they can buy in small quantities and roast to order. The likes of Bewleys and Robert Roberts simply could not provide this type of service and the freshness factor with their coffee will always be dependent on the turnover of the retailer that sells their coffee.

Leslie Williams

Seven Wonders Coffee Shop

The Irish Financial Services Centre has a large range of places for lunch but little that is indigenous to the area. Sure you will find good quality sushi in Aya, tasty meatballs in the Swedish Food Company, top-notch panini in La Corte, and of course over-priced sandwiches in O'Briens Sandwich Bar. All of these are perfectly acceptable, even excellent, but are hardly original given that they are all versions of eateries to be found elsewhere in the city.

One original is the small but ambitious Seven Wonders beside the National College of Ireland and behind the Clarion Hotel. This tiny juice, bagel and sandwich bar has some of the tastiest food in the area while remaining relatively inexpensive compared to the competition. Eat at the counter or under an umbrella outside or take away to one of the public seating areas in the IFSC to watch the stockbrokers go by in their Prada and Gucci.

All the juices, smoothies, sandwich and bagel recipes were devised on site by the Proprietor Billy Walsh, a youthful 25, and his Peruvian Business Partner Ursula De La Jara.

Billy's name may be familiar as he was Ireland's representative in the World Barista Championships in Boston earlier this year and also provided this site with photographs of Latte Art for a recent issue of Megabytes (see above photo and Coffee Madness - Megabytes Vol 4, Issue 3).

Juices range from the healthy Iron Man - Apple, Spinach and Orange - to the decadent Tropical Dew - Mango, Strawberry and Orange - and there are 10 from which to choose. On my recent visit I chose a Lady Berry Smoothie (from a choice of 15) which was a rich purple colour and was light, crisp and very berry tasting with Raspberry flavours dominating slightly over the other ingredients of Strawberry, Banana, Frozen Yoghurt and Milk. Other combinations include everything from melon to pineapple to mango.

Seven Wonders offer sandwiches, rolls and wraps but they specialize in bagels. Seven Wonders' Bagels are proper boiled bagels imported from the UK and fillings again range from the classic to the slightly more exotic. In the interest of research I ordered a Club Bagel and a Cajun Chicken Bagel, but of course was only able to finish just over half of each.

The Club was the classic crispy bacon and chicken, with Brie, caramelized red onion, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise served on a toasted sesame, poppy and garlic and onion bagel. That is a lot of ingredients but this worked wonderfully with the sweet onion offsetting nicely the rich bacon and mayonnaise flavours. I rather wolfed this down and licked the drips from my fingers - a crucial aspect of any decent Club sandwich I believe, whether served on a bagel or not. The bagel itself was firm and shiny and not at all bread-like, unlike certain other bagels popular in this city, which I find rather too chewy.

The Cajun Chicken Bagel was also good with a combination of Cajun flavoured chicken, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on a toasted cheese and jalapeno bagel. The jalapenos in the bagel added a certain piquancy to the creamy Cajun and mayonnaise sauce and the flavours of the ingredients combined well, if not spectacularly.

The quality of the ingredients in both bagels, particularly the chicken, bacon and the caramelized red onion, seemed higher than is usually the case in Irish food outlets.

(An aside: while I suppose we should be grateful that sandwiches in Ireland have improved somewhat in the past few years, if only we could persuade everyone back to real butter rather than the various hydrogenated vegetable and soy fats that are so ubiquitous and taste-free, but I suppose this is simply asking too much.)

Of course I had to have a coffee to follow and decided to choose a Caramel Macchiato which could also serve as a dessert. This was a rich smooth foamy creation with a distinct taste of coffee, caramel and creamy steamed milk. I cheated and asked for a double shot of espresso to get an extra coffee hit as in reality I knew this would be more of a caramel flavoured latte than a true Macchiato (a Café Macchiato is single shot of espresso served in an espresso cup with a small amount of steamed milk usually in the ratio of 80% coffee to 20% steamed milk). The nomenclature disparity is the fault of American Coffee Shops not Billy I hasten to add.

As has been explained here before the art of the Barista (coffee maker) is crucial to good coffee and I noticed that Billy had his digital timer out to ensure his machine was performing correctly. A good espresso should brew in around 25 seconds (not less than 20 and not more than 30) to ensure the not too much or too little flavour is extracted from the coffee beans. I asked to see, and the espresso for my Caramel Macchiato was timed at 23.5 seconds.

Seven Wonders is highly recommended for a cheap and cheerful Lunch or elevenses and particularly for a reliable cup of coffee, and makes a welcome change from the other offerings in the IFSC.

1 Lady Berry Smoothie - €2.95
1 Club Bagel - €4.45
1 Cajun Chicken Bagel - €4.45
1 Caramel Macchiato - €2.60 (includes 40 c. for the extra shot of espresso)
Total: €14.45

Seven Wonders, Tel (01) 6720212
Excise Walk, IFSC, Dublin 1
Beside National College of Ireland and behind the Clarion Hotel.

Leslie Williams