Let's Talk Coffee Issue #1

Issue #1

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Let’s avoid bad life with good coffee.

It’s not more than 4 months we first came across Good Life Coffee. One of our friends from Helsinki, Finland came to Copenhagen and brought a pack of Good Life Coffees. We instantly loved the design and after tasting the coffee, we knew that Good Life would be our first Finnish roaster. Grab a coffee, make yourself comfortable and let us introduce you to Samuli Ronkanen from Good Life Coffee.

Samuli’s interest for coffee began in 2007 with a terrific espresso shot made by a friend. Before officially starting Good Life Coffee roastery in 2014, he participated in Aeropress World Championships, Nordic Barista Cups and other coffee events as an enthusiast, while trying to figure out how to make good coffee. And he succeeded.

So Samuli ... what is your approach and goal in roasting?

My goal is to make clean, balanced and interesting coffee that is easy to brew.

What’s about green coffee sourcing? seasonality, transparency, sustainability?

All of the above is important. However, in the future, we want to build the sourcing towards relationships with the producers instead of shopping around good coffees. Almost all of our coffee is sourced by Nordic Approach and we will continue to deepen that relationship in the future as well.

How is the Finnish coffee scene?

The general interest for quality coffee is growing, but still, we are a little bit behind compared to other nordic countries, like Norway or Sweden.

What’s does avoid bad life stands for and what does it mean for you?

The slogan has different meanings to everyone and that’s great! It’s not meant to be just one thing. What it means for us is that we improve everyday life with one good coffee cup at the time. When we do our part right that one cup stretches all the way from our customers in the café, to the producers at the origins. My role is to make that happen.

Any suggestion for our subscriber how to brew the coffee?

All the usual methods and equipment should work fine. For filter we usually start with 60g coffee / 1000g water ratio and depending on the amount you need, just scale from there.

We hope you guys will enjoy the coffee and that it actually does make your life better. Let us know how you brewed it and what worked for you on Let’s Talk Coffee on Facebook.

Viktor Dobai @wiiiiktor Mikki Möglich @moeglich

Exploring a world of coffee.

Nariño is located in the far south-west of Colombia bordering Ecuador, and is in general one of the most challenging, but also most interesting places to work. This coffee comes from a small farmer that are a member of Café Occidente Cooperative. Café Occidente Coop in Nariño was founded on March 1, 1977 with only 50 members, located principally in the municipalities of Sandoná and Pasto. Today, it has 18 different purchasing points and eight farm supply stores in 12 municipalities of Western Nariño. In opposite to other regions in Colombia they can have extremely dry conditions during the harvest time, and humidity in the area can be low. This together with really high altitudes definitely affects the flavour profiles and make them different from any other Colombian coffees.

way.The farmer will have a small beneficio, a small manual or electric pulper and a fermentation tank. They pulp the cherries in the afternoon.

The coffees are going straight from the pulper in to the fermentation tank. It can sit there from one to two days, depending on the temperature. Higher temperature will speed up the fermentation process, and lower temperature will slow it down.

Some producers do intermediate rinsing with water, that can also help them control the process.

They normally stir the coffees in tanks or small channels before they remove the floaters. For the ones without channels it’s common to wash the coffees in the fermentation tank and skim off the floaters before it goes to the drying.

The coffee from Narino is generally fully washed, meaning pulped and fermented the traditional

Eyer Botina Nariño, Colombia

Apple, apricot, grapefruit and lemon Variety: Caturra Altitude: 900 meters Processing: Fully washed Cupping score: 86 Origin type: Cooperation

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Mahembe is a privately owned washing station, owned by Justin Musabyiama who is also growing his own coffee trees. Justin has grown up in the local area and after moving away for some time decided to come back home and invest in the community he was from by building a wet mill on his father’s coffee plantation.

At Mahembe they have very strict routines for cherry reception and sorting, cherry delivered by farmers must be sorted by the farmers themselves, if this is not done sufficiently there are staff who will do further sorting. The cherry are placed in a tank prior to pulping where floaters are removed.

of the mucilage. The coffee is then wet fermented for 10-12 hours. After this the parchment is graded and washed in channels, it is separated into two grades based on density before being soaked under clean water in tanks for 16 hours.

The parchment is initially taken to pre-drying tables, which are under shade, and where while the parchment is still wet, a lot of hand sorting is done as it is much easier to see defects at this point. The parchment is dried on African drying beds for up to 21 days, the parchment is covered by shade net during midday intense sun, during any rain and at night.

The climate through most of the season in Rwanda is relatively cool, which assists in controlling the fermentation process. A Penagos eco pulper is used here to remove the skin, pulp and 70%

Mahembe PB Rwanda

Delicate, citric acid Variety: Bourbon Altitude: 1900 meters Processing: Fully washed Cupping score: 85.25 Origin type: Mill

This is where I drink my coffee.

Oslo is the home of some of the finest roasters in the world. This is a short introduction to three of the places I usually frequent.

Tim Wendelboe Our featured roaster from last December. Boy, the Layo Tiraga was good. This man needs no introduction, the living legend and the Yoda of the world of specialty coffee. This tiny coffee shop delivers some of the best cups of coffee there are. They offer a selection of coffees brewed on the Aeropress, two kinds of espressos and a selection of milk based drinks. This is where I go when I want Kenyan coffee.

All three are located in the trendy part of Oslo called Grünerløkka within walking distance of each other. These are only three of the many excellent coffee shops in Oslo, feel free to reach out to me if you want to know more.

Bo Nyborg @bonyborg

Solberg & Hansen Located at Oslo´s indoor food market you´ll find the concept store of Norway’s biggest and oldest specialty coffee roaster. They offer three different coffees brewed on Kalita Wave or espresso if you´re into that. You won´t find milk or sugar here as Solberg&Hansen want to showcase the beauty of the bean and milk/sugar just hides the natural taste. The other thing that makes Solberg&Hansen stand out is that they carry a wide range of beans. From the super exclusive micro lots and CoE coffees for the hardcore coffee geek and the everyday coffee for the people who just want a good cup of coffee.

Supreme Roastworks If you´re lucky your coffee will be brewed by a world champ, this is Odd-Steinar Tøllefsen’s shop. They offer coffee brewed on V60, batch brew, a selection of milk based coffees and espressos. If you´re hungry they offer a selection of pastries and sandwiches. This is my go to place when I got the cravings for natural processed coffees.

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Let’s talk some more on Facebook.

For us coffee has always been about sharing. Different experiences with different roasters. What works for you? And how can I learn from that?

And of course, what do we all think of the feature roaster of the month?

That’s why we’ve launched this brand new community called Let’s Talk Coffee.

Let’s Talk Coffee will be a big compilation of Live Hangout’s, Video content, written content, meet-ups and discussions in a closed Facebook Group. For now it’s exclusive to Bean Bros. subcribers - if you’re still not a part of it, get on Facebook and join the conversation.

fb.com/groups/ letstalkcoffeeco Looking for contributors As we’re developing Let’s Talk Coffe and adding more interesting articles, photo shoots and interviews, we need more contributors. If you would like to know more and join the team, shoot us an email at: contributor@beanbros.co

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