Tag Archives: coffee

THE COFFEE COLLECTIVE

 

Wanting to track down the spirit of Copenhagen; we boarded the first flight from Frankfurt and let Copenhagen’s Metro spit us out at Torvehallerne. By 10am we had a COFFEE COLLECTIVE espresso pulled on Kees van der Westen‘s prototype, the SPIRIT espresso machine,

and a V60 Kieni in our hands.

 
But that was not enough. We wanted to get to the roots of COFFEE COLLECTIVE. So we jumped on the next bus no. 5A and  headed to Jægersborggade 10.

We felt like we were stepping into someone’s small kitchen with a giant PROBAT roaster and La Marzocco GB5. It was so unexpected and felt like a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland, where everything else appears small and just the coffee big.

 

The atmosphere was fantastic, with Jens Lekman singing on the ipod and the Panama Esmeralda brewing for us on an inverted aeropress. 16g of the Geisha Variety, 170g water off the boil and 2 min later, we had a delicate, floral brew with the typical bergamot and apricot flavour profile produced by the Peterson family at Hacienda La Esmeralda. It was worth every bit of the DKK 50.
There was a continuous line of people waiting for a coffee, and the staff were relaxed and always with a smile. It felt good to be here. To end our coffee day, we ordered an aeropress of the Kenyan Kieni, with the aeropress producing a bolder and fruitier cup than the Kieni we had had earlier as a V60 pourover. It was pure deliciousness and simply wonderful to spend a Sunday at home with the COFFEE COLLECTIVE.

Another MUST and just across the road from COFFEE COLLECTIVE, is MEYERS BAGERI at Jægersborggade 9, 2200 Copenhagen N. The flours used are organic, cold-climate grain from the Nordic region.

 

Their Hindbærsnitter, a kind of Linzer bar, is out of this world, and we wished we could eat our way through the selection of breads and other pastries. It wasn’t difficult to come to the conclusion, that what really makes us happy, is a good coffee and a good bakery. And, of course, a Lufthansa crew to get us there!

 

Bring your own brew

Some things really bother us. Being at a restaurant with fantastic food, but really poor coffee is one of these things. It does not seem to fit, that someone can be so passionate about the ingredients they use in the food they serve, yet fail dismally when it comes to coffee. This got us yearning for that unusual and exciting cup of Yemen Mocha Harazi we’d had earlier in the day, and brought up the question, if a restaurant is unable to serve-up excellent coffee, should one be able to bring their own and pay a kind of corkage? Brewage? That Mocha Harazi was still stunning cold, with a beautiful creamy-flowery-yeasty-nutty-stone fruit-winey flavour, even more noticeable as it cooled. This coffee, or another, where care has gone into the selection of the green beans, the roasting of the coffee, the preparation, and the serving, would have been a perfect finale to a simple, beautiful lunch.

“Gosto de cafe”, photo courtesy of Peter Maurer

Tim Wendelboe in a day

Sitting in Frankfurt and waiting for the night flight back to South Africa, with no chance of a good coffee anywhere in a radius of at least 300km, the decision to fly to Oslo and Tim Wendelboe became ever more appealing. Then I saw a Mirage of what seemed like a Strada, and jumped onto the next plane heading due north towards Oslo.

Tim Wendelboe’s espressobar is dominated by the 12k Probat roaster and is otherwise minimalist with just limited seating. Unfortunately the Strada wasn’t in operation, but Tim Varney pulled an awesome shot of TW espresso on the La Marzocco FB80 to kickstart my Tim Wendelboe experience. This was followed by a Kenyan Mugaga on the Clover, topping my day with an Hacienda la Esmeralda on the pourover.  I loved its honey-like sweetness with notes of jasmine and bergamot coming through on this tea of coffees.

At Tim Wendelboe’s, Oslo

Thanks to this spur of the moment decision to fly to Oslo, for a limited period we are able to offer Tim Wendelboe coffees at Doubleshot. We currently have the Geisha Hacienda la Esmeralda on the pourover and Tim Wendelboe espresso in the hop from Thursday.

Hacienda La Esmeralda on the V60 pourover

On the coffee table and to enjoy coffee with Tim Wendelboe long after our TW coffee is finished….

confessions of a coffeelover

on milk…

We’ve been experimenting with milk again. Our favourite to date comes from the Jerseys on the Packwood Country Estate near Fisanthoek, just 20km from Doubleshot! The milk has a butter-toffee richness when it meets the winter espresso from Espresso Lab.

Happy Jerseys (pic via Packwood Country Estate)

Penny University, London

Last Saturday, Square Mile Coffee Roaster’s of London, opened their first coffeebar called PENNY UNIVERSITY. We would have loved to have hopped across to London and PENNY UNIVERSITY before returning to Doubleshot, but for now we will have to suffice our thirst by reading all that is tweeted and written. For an interesting write-up, see Oliver Strand’s “Ristretto / London’s Penny University“.

Penny University. No milk. No sugar. No espresso. (pic via NYT)

V60 pour over

One of our favourite acquisitions on our trip, was the V60 brewer and Buono kettle, each with an innovative design and allowing for great full cone brewing. So we’ve added an item to our simple coffee menu, POUR OVER coffee. This week we are offering Espressolab Microroasters‘ Ethiopia Abaya Yirgacheffe and the Serra do Bone organic Brazil. To catch a glimpse of the art and experience of the POUR OVER, drop by our coffeebar or take a look at this vimeo from Intelligentsia Chicago’s Monadnock shop here. We are loving the POUR OVER!

The V60 pour over at Intelli, Venice

So we found a great cappuccino!

Cappas at Intelli Venice