Category: Brewing

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Appreciations to our beautiful coffee from Juan Lisaraso, Cusco-Peru!

The coffee from Juan Lisaraso, from Cusco-Peru, was one of the four microlots that arrived to our roastery last January. After my first cupping (coffee tasting) of it, it tasted so good already that I knew this coffee would amaze me and impress me even further with each updated and improved roast of it. Not only did its taste impress me, but also the region and farm where it comes from, let me tell you more about it:
Cusco, is the capital of the Incas – the empire that dominated almost all of South America, which is also home to one of the seven wonders of the world, Machu Picchu. As well as coming from such an inspiring and beautiful region, the farm that these beans come from also has a story worth telling. Juan Lisaraso has been cultivating coffee since he was a child, his parents owned the farm previously and he had taken over with his wife and children. The family run farm is not only a great coffee producer but they also take care of an endangered species of bear, called the spectacled bear, a bear that populates the Andes of South America. The name was given to them due to their facial markings that make them look like they are wearing spectacles! I have only learned about this species of bear recently, but as quickly as I fell in love with the coffee – I also fell in love with these cute animals! Here at Cafetoria, we loved them so much that we have made plans to donate to a conservation Institute in Peru who take care of them.

The coffee from Juan Lisaraso, is quite a rare and difficult varietal to find nowadays – Typica. This has made our experience of it even more magical and unique. The time Ivan brought the first sample roast of it, is a memory I won’t forget so quickly. Together, we cupped the four micro-lots that arrived on the same day to our roastery. Two of them being from the Cusco region and the other two from Puno. From the first sip of each coffee I picked out Cusco as my favorite. I could feel on my tongue the playful and bouncing acidity that I have always enjoyed in coffee. The vanilla like sweetness swelled in my mouth, this taste has stayed with each improved roast of Cusco and it’s the thing I love most about this particular coffee. Even though this coffee had scored lower than the other three, there was something wonderful and inspiring about it. It felt like a journey from the first sip to the last drop.
I have often described coffee taste with colours – it helps me focus further on the flavours and so: yellow, pink, orange and red have always been in my mind when tasting Cusco. Changing, developing and evolving over time but always growing more saturated, bright and more sophisticated with each roast. If you have tried this coffee at our cafe or bought it for at home and have been brewing it, I’m sure you’ve been just as impressed with it and I hope it took you on a journey of flavours that it always takes me on. If you feel like you have not reached its full potential, I’m here to help with a little brewing guide, as I truly want everyone to get the most out of this coffee.
My Brewing tips for Juan Lisaraso’s coffee:
My favourite brew method has always been with the Hario V60, so I will guide you how I brew this coffee and get the most wonderful flavours out of it! I always start with the basic recipe, 18g of coffee to 290g of water, this makes two small cups, but if you are like me and consume more coffee than most, this is only enough for one. I recommend using 92 degrees for the water as this temperature brings out the desirable vanilla-like sweetness. I recommend grinding fresh, if you don’t have a grinder, we can always grind the coffee for you at any of our cafes – just ask. The grind size should be medium-coarse. Pro tip: I always rinse my filter paper with hot water! This gets rid of undesirable paper or chemical tastes in my final cup.
Now, you’ve got your V60, your recipe, your water heated, your paper rinsed, your coffee ground – what’s next? The brewing! The first step is what we call a pre-infusion, or what some people call a “bloom”. For this step, I do a double-pre infusion, this means I add 8g of coffee to my brewer, wet the grounds just a little bit, add the rest of the coffee and thoroughly wet the rest of the grounds (go up to roughly 65g). The blooming process should time at around 30 seconds. Then I start my pulses! The first pulse, we discovered works best if you go in bravely and pour vigorously and a substantial amount. Roughly up to 170g – then wait for it to drain a little, but don’t let the coffee bed dry up. The aim is to have my brew between 2:30 – 3:00 minutes long. With this in mind, I often end up doing two more pulses. If you follow all of these steps you should end up with the most mouth-watering cup of Cusco!
Hope you enjoy and have as an amazing experience with this coffee as I have had!
Signing off,
Gabi.

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Summer is here and our Summer coffees too!

I am writing this post during a rainy Friday of a Finnish Spring! Anyway, the Sun was shining during early days and that was enough to get inspiration about the content of this post!
When thinking about Summer coffees, here at Cafetoria we think about bright coffees, light roasted, with sweet and vibrating aftertaste and fresh notes of fruits and berries. Thus, drinking a cup of a Summer coffee for us at Cafetoria would be like enjoying a cup of juice!  We know that some coffee drinkers do not like to find “weird flavours” on their cup but a cup of coffee that resembles COFFEE. If you are that type of coffee person, we have some interesting proposals for you at the bottom of this post.
For this Summer 2020 we encourage you to try the following refreshing coffees:

Kenyan coffees, compared to the Peruvian ones, have a more complex aftertaste. This subtle “explosive” aftertaste is what I always look for in the coffees. Kenyan coffees can be, however, a bit too complex for some people who would rather prefer a more approachable and “down-to-earth” coffee. Here is where our Peruvian coffee complements quite well the Kenyan. Both Peruvians cause on the consumer the same effect as a candy does for a child. They enchant the drinker with a more simple but addictive message of sweetness. So if you are looking for a coffee which you can drink several times per day, the Peruvians will do a good job.
Interestingly, the coffees listed above are from recognised coffee farms. Our Kenyan Karimikui AA placed 2nd at the Helsinki Coffee Festival 2017. Peru Perlamayo, from our Compadre Juan Heredia, placed 5th place at the 2019 Cup of Excellence (this coffee is from the same Finca but obviously not from the same lot, as otherwise we will certainly price it much more!) and, finally, Las Cortaderas placed 30th place at the 2018 Cup of Excellence. Unlike Perlamayo, this lot of Las Cortaderas belongs to the same lot used during competition.
Last, but not least, our Summer Wind is another beautiful coffee which we just launched some weeks ago. This blend was created with the idea of offering a fruity coffee yet balanced and with a subtle aftertaste. This nice medium roast coffee will delight you with its subtle flavours of berries, tangarine and milk chocolate. A pleasant summer coffee that will satisfy all demanding coffee drinkers!
And now, for the conservative ones ……
For our conservative coffee drinkers, we can suggest you some coffees with clear notes of chocolate: Gran Palomar light roast, House Blend and Rwanda Mahondo. Specially on the two first coffees, you will find nice notes of chocolate and pleasant sweetness!
Decafs coffees for this Summer? Yes we have!
Our organic decaf coffees, chemical-free, are becoming the favourites of all coffee drinkers who have chosen freedom to drink coffee anytime! We have two beautiful suggestions for Summer. First, our Ethiopia Sidamo will delight you with notes of flowers and cherries and will give you a sensation of drinking a nice cup of tea. If you want something more like coffee, our Decafe will be a nice, easy going coffee with notes of chocolate and a nice carob-like sweetness.
BREWING TIPS

Some light roast coffees out there requires special grinding and preparation settings to get the best result. Our Summer coffees, however, perform very well with any kind of brewing tools. Some standard coffee machines such as MoccaMaster does a good job producing consistently good cups although due to high temperatures used, the fruity notes are not strongly present. And here is where those manual pourover methods can be so satisfying. For getting the vibrant after taste, try brewing it with Hario V60. We use a medium coarse grinding and 18g, 300g of hot water between 90C and 93C. In Aeropress you will also get a nice and smoother profile, though you will miss a bit the vibrant aftertaste.
Have a good Summer!
Juanca Oré / RoastMaster at Cafetoria

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Cupping the best Peruvian coffees, what a great day!

Last Sunday 18.11 we arranged a cupping session to taste the best coffees of Peru, the winners of the Cup of Excellence – Peru chapter. Some coffee colleagues, B2B customers, friends, the Consul of the Embassy of Peru and the 2 lucky winners of our lottery joined this event.  It was a fun event but also an eye-opening one because the flavours of Peruvian coffees greatly surprised to all of us.
Traditionally, Peruvian coffee is known by its chocolate and sweet notes, medium body and high acidity. However, many of these coffees were very complex with sensory notes similar than those found on Kenyan or Ethiopian coffees. We were able to identify in many lots flavour notes such as grapefruit, cherry, camomile, peach, nuts among others. Definitively the quality of the Peruvian coffees have improved a lot during the last 15 years.
Coffee preference is quite subjective and tight also to cultural influences. For this reason we arranged a blind cupping session so the participants did not know which coffees they were tasting. To make the things more interesting, as you can see from the below list, we added a coffee ranked in the position 22th of the competition and one “outsider” which was our own Peruvian coffee Gran Palomar. The list of coffees included:

  • Rank #2: La Palma (89,85 pts)
  • Rank #3: El Romerillo (89,58 pts)
  • Rank #4: Candelaria (89,43 pts)
  • Rank #5: Santa Sofia (89,28 pts)
  • Rank #6 Rayo el Sol (89,2 pts)
  • Rank #7 La Naranja (88,65 pts)
  • Rank #8 La Reserva 88,45 pts)
  • Rank #9 Nueva Tierra de Canan (88,23 pts)
  • Rank #10 El Shimir (88,2 pts)
  • Rank #11 Joyas de Alied (87,62 pts)
  • Rank #22 El Huailulo (86,14 pts)
  • Gran Palomar (our own Peruvian coffee)

To have some conclusions we asked each participant to choose their 3 most favourite coffees and their 2 lowest favourite coffees. After tasting the coffees we revealed the origin of them and the results were actually quite interesting, although not surprising.  The favourite coffees in the session was the #4, followed by #2 and #5. The most surprising result was that our Gran Palomar was the 5th most favourite coffee! Incredible isn’t it? My opinion is that Gran Palomar offers more approachable flavour notes such as nuts, honey and chocolate. This is perhaps the reason why some people chose it. Participants that were more involved in the coffee sector did not choose our coffee but decided to go for more complex coffees.  In my case for example, I chose, as my favourite ones, the #3, #4 and #10 because of the complex berry notes of those coffees. As for the “less favourite” coffees, you could think that most of the people would choose coffee #22 and Gran Palomar, right? Interestingly not! The less favourite coffee was coffee #7 (La Naranja) and the second less favourite coffee was our Gran Palomar!
Personally I think that the quality of the coffees from those winning farms are outstanding and the ranking is just there for the auction. Yet, it is good for quality purpose to quantify quality but let’s not forget that organoleptic factors are not absolute and each of us has our own winner coffee!
By the way, the auctions of the Peru Cup of Excellence was yesterday. My beloved Coffee #3, El Romerillo was purchased by an Australian company. The lucky ones were able to offer 18,000 USD for this coffee (40 USD/kg).
During today and the following days you can come to our Café in Töölö and ask for a cup of coffee prepared with one of these winning lots. My recommendation: ask a cup of coffee from El Romerillo (#3) or Candelaria (#4). About El Romerillo, I love those clear notes of grapefruits, red currant, peach, cherry and Aguage (a tropical fruit similar to lychee).
Saludos,
Juanca
Coffee Roaster at Cafetoria roastery Oy
2007 Finnish Cup Tasting Champion
SCA Barista trainer
DI Telecommunications

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Win a place to cup the Best Coffees from Peru!

Dear coffee lover,
Would you like to taste and enjoy the best Peruvian coffees, the winners of the Cup of Excellence competition? Yes? Then register here before 16.11 and you could become one of the winners to join this private cupping session! We will announce the winners this Friday 16.11.18

Since 2003, together with my wife Mia, we started the promotion of Peruvian speciality coffees in Finland. People loved our coffees, but they were also surprised that Peru, the Land of the Incas, was indeed a coffee producing country. Things are different nowadays and that’s why we are so joyful and enthusiastic to share with you the flavours and complexities of the best Peruvian coffees! These winning lots will be sold through an online auction at the end of November and coffee companies from all around the World will bid as high as they can to get those precious beans. Last year, the winning lot was purchased for more than 200 USD per kg.
Venue:
Where: Cafetoria roastery Café & Shop: Runeberginkatu 31. 00100 Helsinki.
When: 18.11 at 10:00. Session will last about 1.5 hours.
Good luck on the lottery and  hope to see you there!
Saludos,
Ivan Ore (Juanca)
Founder & Coffee Roast Master of Cafetoria roastery Oy
SCA Certified Barista trainer
Finnish Cup Tasting Champion, 2007
DI Telecommunications
email: ivan.ore@cafetoria.fi
www.cafetoria.fi

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How we brewed our awarded filter coffee at HCF 2017

Two months before the Helsinki Coffee Festival we received an invitation from the organizers to participate in “The Coffee of the Year” competiton for the categories of “Best filter” and “Best espresso”. The invitation was offered to all Finnish coffee roasteries who joined the festival, in total 15 coffee roasteries. In this competition we did perform decently well achieving the 2nd place on the filter coffee category and 4th place on the espresso category!
As for the for the filter coffee we, Levi (Barista) and Iván (roaster) struggled a bit which coffee to choose from our assortment. We though first to submit our Beans & Roses which has an amazing complexity but finally we decided to use our Kenya Karimikui AA since we were recently obtaining extraordinary results thanks to Ivan’s never ending roasting optimizations.
Our Kenya Karimikui AA has really nice notes of red berries and Bubble gum, creamy and sticky and with a unique fermented acidity. Depending what temperature and brewing method is used, we could get notes of mature cherries of more delicate raspberries. In both, Hario V60 and Aeropress, we get really interesting fermented aftertaste. However, to balance a bit more we decided to use Chemex. With this  coffee maker we can make this coffee super clean and highlights the fruitiness and subtle acidity.
After the good feedbacks from the Festival event, we are happy to see that our roasting style and flavour philosophy is well appreciated by Finnish consumers.
Now we want to share with you our awarded Chemex recipe with Kenya Karimikui. We also recommend you to mix with ice (iced coffee) to get a very refreshing summer coffee drink.

Chemex recipe
–45g Coffee
-Grind corser than filter coffee
-92c temp of the water
Prewetting with 100g water and wait 50sec. Then pour in spiral the water from outside to the center, drowning the coffee that can float and then stay in the center pouring water until you arrive to a total of 630g of water. Stop brewing at 4 to 4:30 min.
Baby Chemex recipe:
-23g coffee
-Same grind and temperature as earlier recipe
Repeat the process but in the prewetting you use 50g of water and wait 30 seconds. Use in total 340g of water. After 2 to 2:30 minutes your coffee should be ready.