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Meet The New Mazzer Robur S Grinder

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mazzer robur s london coffee festival

mazzer robur s london coffee festival

The London Coffee Festival 2018 has come and gone, but the memories remain—and so does all the hot new gear we tested at the show. One product we were excited to hear more about is Mazzer Robur S, a high performance coffee grinder that follows, yet completely re-invents, the current Robur model.

Mazzer are hardly newcomers to the coffee world.  Founded by Luigi Mazzer in 1948, the now 70-year-old historic Italian brand the brand exports more than 70% of its production nearly a hundred countries around the world. Mazzer grinders are used and loved by top baristas and roasters around the world, and often paired with espresso machines by La Marzocco through a longstanding partnership.

mazzer robur s london coffee festival

The new Robur S presented at LCF 2018 is an electronic grinder-doser (available in two versions, both automatic and electronic on demand) with conical grinding blades and slow speed rotation (420 RPM – 50 Hz). The ideal home for Robur S is a busy coffee shop with high consumption.

What’s new? The new grinder improves dose consistency and reduces coffee retention by 52% compared to the previous model. It is capable of operating at high speed, grinding five grams of coffee per second without over-heating. A special cooling system with double fan keeps the coffee safe from temperature exposure, preserving maximum aroma.

mazzer robur s london coffee festival

Robur S makes it easier to set the grinder to your preferred grinding size with stepless micrometrical grinding adjustment and a new system for the disk, called Memory Track. The system allows users to rotate the disk to the preferred number and lock it in place to index grind setting. Additionally, Robur S features an easy system for changing out the burrs, allowing for quick and easy cleaning of the grind chamber without losing your grind setting.

A new digital control panel allows users to set the grinder and access data stored in the software. Time settings include single, double, and triple doses; dose countdowns to monitor the stocks; a programmable pre-tap pause function to level down the coffee in the portafilter, stats on grinding output data; and maintenance alerts (for example, when the burrs are due to be changed). All this data can be easily viewed on the display or on the connected apps.

mazzer robur s london coffee festival

Indeed, one of the most interesting innovations of the Robur S is its inbuilt Wi-Fi connection, which allows baristas, roasters, and service teams to access grinder data remotely and store it in a cloud database. The Robur S app will be unveiled in the next few months.

Robur S is a major example of the ongoing renewal at Mazzer. In 2016 the company expanded its facilities, nearly doubling the production area to meet with market demand. They’ve also heavily invested in innovation and R&D, hiring young engineers, developers, and support staff in a bid to keep the brand at the forefront of the coffee industry.

High performance, attention to detail, and product reliability are at the core of Mazzer’s operations. “We are involved in the whole production process. Every single metal component we use goes through our quality control process,” says Cristina Scarpa, Marketing Manager at Mazzer Italy, who I spoke with at length during the London Coffee Festival.

mazzer robur s london coffee festival

Mazzer has also made a commitment to investing in green energy: about 40% of appliances are produced using renewable energy sources (saving 307 tons of CO2 yearly) thanks to a photovoltaic system installed at the Mazzer factory near Venice.

Do you want to know more about the new Mazzer Robur S grinder? You will find Mazzer at coffee trade shows worldwide in the coming months, ahead of the global release of Robur S at the end of October 2018.

Giulia Mule is a Sprudge.com contributor based in London. Read more Giulia Mule on Sprudge

Mazzer is an advertising partner on Sprudge Media Network. 

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Source: Coffee News

Many Take Away Cups Are Recyclable, So Why Do They End Up In Landfills?

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Waste from disposable coffee cups are an issue. We all know this; it isn’t news. But perhaps what is most perplexing about this problem is that many of these cups are actually recyclable. A new article from BBC News breaks down how the problem isn’t necessarily the cup itself, but how it is disposed of.

The article notes that a staggering 99.75% of the estimated 2.5 billion (in 2011. That number is believed to be higher now) disposable cups in the UK end up in a landfill. But many of the biggest producers of these cups—including Starbucks and Costa—have cups that actually are recyclable. So what’s the problem then? The snag comes in where these cups are thrown away.

Because disposable cups are a mix of paper and plastic, it takes a specialized facility to properly dispose of them. So if you throw away a cup in recycling at Starbucks or Costa (which doesn’t really make sense; take away cups are for taking your coffee away from the coffee shop), they will be taken to the appropriate recycling plant. But, if you throw your cup away in a bin at home or on the street or just about any place that isn’t where the coffee was purchased, it will most likely end up in a landfill.

To combat this, many companies are creating compostable cups, but this comes with its own set of challenges. If, for instance, a compostable cup ends up in the recycling, it could contaminate, rendering the entire batch of recycling useless and destining it to a landfill.

So what can we as consumers do? The easiest solution is to bring your own reusable cups, like this lovely Sprudge KeepCup. The article notes that many coffee shops even offer discounts for those bringing in their own cups, so not only are they better for the environment, they will eventually pay for themselves. Short of that, we can all be more mindful about making sure our waste is appropriately disposed of; put recyclables in the recycling bin and waste in the waste bin. Mixing the two can undo the work of other mindful disposers.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

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Source: Coffee News

Black Coffee Is Coming April 24th

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We’re just a few short days from Black Coffee, a new live podcast event from creative director Michelle Johnson in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available here, and today we’ve got some exciting additions to the programming to announce!

The event takes place on Tuesday, April 24th from 6-9pm at the Clinton Street Theater, a classic cinema and live theater venue in the heart of Southeast Portland, Oregon. Ticket pre-sale is now available. Hosted by Michelle Johnson, Ian Williams (Deadstock Coffee), and Gio Fillari (Coffee Feed PDX), this event centers the voices and experiences of Black coffee professionals and enthusiasts alike, all with unique perspectives that span intersectional identities and roles on the retail end of the value chain. Special guests include D’Onna Stubblefield (Counter Culture Coffee), JUST ADDED Ezra Baker (Share Coffee Roasters), Zael Ogwaro (Never Coffee), Adam JacksonBey (The Potter’s House), and Cameron Heath (Revelator Coffee Company). The main event at Clinton Street Theater will feature a live DJ performance by |Fritzwa|.

We’re excited to partner up with several sponsors for this event, including La Marzocco USA, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Oatly, and The Ace Hotel Portland. Ticket proceeds will be donated to our charitable partners, Sankofa Collective and Brown Girl Rise. We are thrilled to have this event supported by NXT LVL, Portland’s partiers for social justice—read more about their involvement with the event here.

Black Coffee tickets are $10 pre-sale, $15 at the door. We’re offering a limited number of VIP tickets that include an invite to the after party, and a special “come down” event the following morning. A little update regarding the afterparty: due to demand this event has been moved to the Society Hotel, featuring DJ VNPRT, natural wine selections by Sprudge Wine, and dessert catering from Kee’s Loaded Kitchen.

We hope you can join us April 24th in Portland! But if you can’t make it, don’t worry—we’re planning on creating wall to wall coverage of the event, including a special podcast presentation to follow. Follow Sprudge for more details.

#blackcoffeePDX

Read Michelle Johnson’s statement of intent for the event here

Read more about NXT LVL’s partnership with the event here.

Original poster art by Taylor McManus (@tmcmanusillustration)

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Source: Coffee News

New Gear Watch: The Rancilio Specialty Launches At London Coffee Festival

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rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

Over the long weekend of April 12th-15th, the international coffee industry and tens of thousands of its biggest fans gathered in Shoreditch, London for the 2018 London Coffee Festival. A four-day event now in its eighth year, the festival brings together established companies and smaller independent brands alike to present their products to more than 30,000 baristas, roasters, CEOs, entrepreneurs, associated media, craftspeople and coffee lovers of all stripes. I was on the ground at the London Coffee Festival to check out the hottest new tech coming on the market later this year.

Rancilio Group has been producing traditional espresso machines and grinders at their factory in Parabiago near Milan, Italy for over 90 years. The London Coffee Festival 2018 marked their official debut into the specialty coffee market with the new Rancilio Specialty.

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

Rancilio Specialty is a stainless steel espresso machine featuring three independent groupheads with dedicated displays, an insulated service boiler with programmable water change, and steam levers each with two powers levels for different jug sizes. Thanks to a multi-boiler system and “Rancilio LAB patented technology,” baristas can accurately manage water temperature profiles during the shot brewing process, which, according to Rancilio, affords them the ability to control acidity and bitterness. What they call “Thermal Stability technology” allows baristas to program bespoke brewing profiles using a range of 5°C to precisely dial in the flavour characteristics of coffee blends and single origins—if one coffee tastes great at 86°C, whilst another prefers a flat 90°C, the Rancilio Speciality can handle it no problem.

The most interesting feature of Rancilio Specialty, one that I’m sure baristas will be most excited about, is the touch screen interface. The screen allows users to regulate the machine, program groups and steam levers settings, save recipes, add notes, and set up cleaning operations. Rancilio Specialty also stores all the details of last 30 cups of coffee brewed, hence allowing users to easily monitor the machine’s performance and helping support training for new baristas.

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

The decision to delve into the specialty coffee market came after the launch of Rancilio’s Classe 11 machine a few years ago. “About a year and a half ago, we gathered a team of top baristas from the specialty sector and started working on creating an espresso machine for them,” says Valerio Locati, R&D Engineer at Rancilio Group. “One of the things they asked for was to make the interface easy to use by reducing the number of clicks required to find the main functions.” And so because of this, the most important settings such as group settings and preset recipes can be found on the first page of the display.

Rancilio Group also took care to address sustainability as part of their machine design; it’s an increasingly large focus in the specialty coffee industry here in London and around the world. The Rancilio Speciality’s main boiler is insulated to reduce energy consumption; the micro-boilers for individual units can be switched off manually or programmed to switch off automatically. Equally important was the R&D team’s goal to create a user-friendly and ergonomic machine. To that end, the design of the brewing units, the positioning of the steam levers, and the ample working area guarantee the barista supreme comfort, precision, and operating speed to optimize the work flow.

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

Rancilio Specialty is full of other cool functionalities, such as an LED illuminated work surface, a USB port for recharging smartphones and scales, cool touch steam wands, a control panel with back-lit icons, and a removable drip tray with height adjustment for all cup sizes (80, 100, or 120mm). Under the machine is a 90mm deep compartment that can be used to store the filter holders, scales, and other working tools. The cup tray can be set up to five different temperature levels to guarantee stable and even heat in any season and environment inside and outside the cafe.

What may seem like small things can really make a difference in improving the day-to-day workflow and performance of a coffee shop, making for an impressive, barista-focused first entry from Rancilio into the specialty coffee market.

Rancilio Specialty was first presented at Host 2017 in Milan, but the machine’s official launch took place at the 2018 The London Coffee Festival. Rancilio Group will take the new machine to other coffee shows this year, but you saw it here first on Sprudge.

rancilio specialty london coffee festival england

Giulia Mule is a Sprudge.com contributor based in London. Read more Giulia Mule on Sprudge

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Source: Coffee News

Introducing The Sprudge Editorial Advisory Board

By Coffee, News

Hey there Sprudge reader! Thanks for clicking this link, and thank you, as always, for reading our website. A good 95% of what we report about on Sprudge takes place far outside our own organizational sphere, but from time to time we’ll keep you posted about what we’re up to as a media network, and today is one of those days. If internal talk of #SprudgeLife is not your jam, we understand fully—you might instead prefer this emotional treatise on the state of the Americano, or an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, or a coffee guide to Kyoto—but if you’re still with us, thank you, let’s get down to it.

Sprudge Media Network is excited to announce our 2018-2019 editorial advisory board. It is a broad, wide-reaching, and highly informed group of individuals that come from all steps of the coffee chain, from producers to entrepreneurs to working baristas, roasters and educators, encompassing a diverse spectrum of experiences and viewpoints across the industry. It leans young; there aren’t a lot of suits. It’s a group that has graciously agreed to help better inform our small independent media company over the next year, and we are really over the moon about it (if you’re wondering).

So let’s meet them! This is your 2018-2019 Sprudge Media Network editorial advisory board.

David Buehrer (Greenway Coffee, Houston)

Jenn Chen (Acaia Coffee + independent consultancy, San Francisco)

Marta Dalton (Coffee Bird, Guatemala+London)

Liz S. Dean (The Wing, New York City)

Gilbert Gatali (Independent, Rwanda)

Michelle Johnson (Chocolate Barista + Barista Hustle, Melbourne)

Tony Konecny (Yes Plz, Los Angeles)

Tymika Lawrence (Genuine Origin, New York City)

Joe Marrocco (Cafe Imports, Minneapolis)

Diana Mnatsakanyan-Sapp (Undercurrent Coffee, Charlotte, NC)

Hugo Neuproler (Independent, Vancouver BC)

Becky Reeves (Oatly, Austin TX)

Trish Rothgeb (CQI + Wrecking Ball Coffee, San Francisco)

Akaash Saini (Equator Coffees, San Francisco Bay Area)

Bronwen Serna (The New Black, Singapore)

In the coming weeks you’ll get a chance to learn more about our board as we update and feature each of them on our “About” page—look for more soon, watch this space. We’re working every day to make Sprudge the best coffee website it can be, and today’s announcement is a public part of that process. We hope it makes our website better and we thank you for your time and readership.

-Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman

The post Introducing The Sprudge Editorial Advisory Board appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Indigenous Trans People Find Refuge On Colombia Coffee Farms

By Coffee, News

In the coffee farms along western Colombia, indigenous transgender people are finding places to work and a safe haven to express themselves. A new article in National Geographic details the work of photographer Lena Mucha as she follows these workers in the fields, the dormitories, and the city.

As the article notes, many trans people don’t find acceptance in their communities and are “often punished or forced to leave their villages, even if they have families and children.”

“I know in Colombia being transgender is quite heavy,” Mucha says. “It’s a very conservative country. LGBTQ [awareness] is something that’s coming slowly and in the bigger cities, like Bogota. When it comes to villages and indigenous communities, they see it as a disease that comes from the white man. There’s no understanding of why this can happen and that it’s normal.”

This has led many to find refuge working on coffee farms, where after the work is finished, they are able to “dress as they’d like during their free time without punishment or harassment.”

Mucha’s work captures candid moments of these women’s lives on and off the farm. The photos are beautiful and moving and have a way of expressing the complicated emotions that must be involved in finding a place to truly be yourself, but having to leave everything you know behind to get there.

The full collection of Lena Mucha’s photos can be found here.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

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Source: Coffee News

Peak: The First Water Filter Pitcher Designed For Coffee

By Coffee, News

Coffee lovers, meet Peak, a new home water pitcher designed for coffee brewing. This new project from Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood (of Colonna Coffee and Water For Coffee famedebuted at the 2018 London Coffee Festival, drawing a weekend’s long packed booth of curious onlookers, neck-craners, and gongoozlers. Colonna-Dashwood helped design this device and was on hand to take punters through the paces at the fest; a corresponding Kickstarter campaign is now live.

The Peak pitcher is comprised three-part disc system with a simple goal: to make water for coffee better. The pitcher’s filters work to remove impurities, while also treating water with necessary minerals and solids that help extract a quality cup of coffee.

Peak discs (via Kickstarter)

Until Peak, there hasn’t been a gravity-fed water pitcher filter designed specifically for coffee brewing. As water quality varies wildly from region to region, Peak pitchers will be packaged with a water testing kit for users to determine their specific treatment needs. The pitcher will have a dial at the top to adjust the amount of treatment the Peak provides.

The dial (via Kickstarter)

If you’re anything like us, all this pitcher talk is leaving you with some lingering questions. And so amidst the hum and buzz of the London Coffee Festival, I sat down with Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood to grill him with some piping hot queries. An abridged transcript of said grilling is below.

Hi Maxwell, thank you for speaking with me about Peak. I have questions. For starters, would you say this is the very first water filter designed for coffee brewers?

That’s an interesting question. I would say yes.

But why are you saying “yes” with a cocked eye?

Well, I say it with a cockeye because, while I know the other water jugs have not been specifically designed for coffee, I also know people have become receptive to the idea those other jugs are now being marketed as benefiting coffee. And, I’m not saying they don’t have benefit on tap water for coffee, but I don’t think they do as much [as Peak] and I don’t think they were envisioned and designed specifically for coffee. So I would say ours is the first where its sole purpose is coffee, yeah.

How is this different from the other filters out there?

The existing filter jugs are really, really simple. With a mixture of carbon and resin, they try and get chlorine out and drop the hardness. Regardless of the quality of the water that goes in, they all go through that in the same way. You’re not able to adjust it, to adapt it to the type of water.

So ours, first of all, allows you to adjust how your water is treated, and that happens at each stage of the process. The first chamber that all the water goes through is carbon. It doesn’t matter whether you want harder or softer water, everybody wants to get rid of chlorine and organic compounds and nasty stuff, and that’s what the carbon does. And for every chamber we’ve created like a little maze inside so the water enters one side and has to work it’s way through the maze to get out the other side, which basically is a more foolproof way of treating the water.

Then the other two chambers, that’s what the bypass is all about. It’s a bit complex but basically you’re going to have a capped ion resin that gets the bicarbonate down. The problem you get then is you get a pH drop. This happens not just with jugs, it happens with systems in cafes so we’re adding another resin that helps balance the pH back up.

This is going to drive up the cost a bit compared to other jugs, but it’s also going to give you a more intense treatment and more control over your treatment than other products on the market.

So what do those filters cost?

So this is a very good question, and that’s the one everyone wants to know. If you run a cafe, you know that you set your filter up based on your water hardness and the life of the filter depends on that, right? But obviously people who buy jugs just get told “good for two months,” or one month or whatever. So our goal is that we’ll get 100 liters of filtered water through the setting for the hardest water, and if you’re working with softer water to start with, you’ll get more life. This will all be outlined in the product booklet.

So Peak won’t necessarily come with a set “two months of use” guideline per filter? 

That’s right. The other interesting thing about water jugs is unlike systems in cafe, they’re open to the air and what that means is they can have bacteria build up. So, the EU regulation is you must say two months once it’s been used for freshness. So you’ve got two lives, you’ve got actual physical capacity to soften the water, or treat the water and then you’ve got a freshness life, so we will say the two months, but this is the volume.

And you know, we looked at things like indicators to tell you when it’s done and it all started to turn this product into like a £100, £200 pound product. So we’ve tried to bring it down and make it really simple, quite analog. We might do more complex versions in the future, but we just wanted to make it really accessible to start.

Thanks, Maxwell!

The Peak is available to pre-order now on Kickstarter starting at £20 for the starter kit and £80 for 12 replacement discs (each disc will last about two months or 140 liters of water).

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe ImportsAcaiaAssembly CoffeeOatly UKFaema, and Loveramics.

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Source: Coffee News

3 Cheeky Coffee Cocktails From The London Coffee Festival

By Coffee, News

Another year at the London Coffee Festival, another round of inspired coffee cocktails. This massive festival—30,000+ attendees this year and counting—encourages guests to drink freely and mightily as companies hand out coffee-forward booze beverages throughout the day. And the true nexus for bibendum at the London Coffee Festival is La Marzocco‘s annual True Artisan Cafe, bringing together more than 20 coffee roasters and cafes for a series of three-hour shifts, pulling out all the stops along the way for a series of inventive signature drinks.

“True Artisan Bar was created to give our partners and customers the opportunity to spend time with consumers,” says UK La Marzocco Manager Paul Kelly. “The signature drinks and cocktails show creativity and passion that they don’t get the chance to showcase in their cafes.”

With a live DJ setting the mood, the whole atmosphere is positively club-like. We tried heaps of ace booze here, but these cheeky cocktails stood out among the rest.

Summer Is Coming – Coffee Collective

For three short hours, Copenhagen’s Coffee Collective took over the La Marzocco True Artisan Cafe at the 2018 London Coffee Festival. While there, the team pulled shots on the Modbar espresso machine and made a light, kicky coffee cocktail they call “Summer Is Coming.”

Using a light-alcohol coffee liqueur the crew created with Trolden Distillery in Kolding, Denmark, the Summer Is Coming is a bright and refreshing cocktail with a bit of orange zest, espresso, and tonic served on the rocks. Look for a spotlight feature on the liqueur collab betwixt Coffee Collective and Trolden in the coming weeks right here on Sprudge.

Coco Colada – SoHo House

While on queue, I overheard SoHo House‘s UK Coffee Quality Control Manager Coco Deeb tell a guest, “If you come back in 20 minutes, we’ll have the best coffee cocktail you’ve ever had in your life! It’s called a Coco Colada.” Naturally, I needed to know more.

The frozen drink was created by SoHo House UK Bar Manager Erden Kayalar and blends coconut, fresh pineapple juice, cocoa nibs, cold brew concentrate from UK’s own Sandows, espresso roasted for SoHo House by Origin Coffee Roasters, and Bacardi rum infused with cocoa nibs.

Diving in a bit deeper, I learned the coconut component was itself a blend of Coco Lopez cream of coconut, coconut water, coconut milk, and Angostura bitters.

It’d be near impossible to replicate this drink at home without a lot of time and a fully operable granita machine, but the kind folks at SoHo House suggest blending cold brew, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, and Bacardi Carta Oro.

Iced Cafe Fracais – Grind

Shoreditch’s very own Grind classed up the place with bottles of Grey Goose vodka. What tastes better than an espresso martini? If that martini has a bunch of half and half in it! The Iced Cafe Fracais is a shaken cocktail of cream, vodka, espresso, and sugar.

The cocktail is surprisingly balanced, not too sweet: like a boozey coffee ice cream. And that’s what we’re really always looking for, isn’t it? We overheard a passerby exclaim, “This is yummy!” before going back for seconds. Slow down, we’re not on the moon yet!

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe ImportsAcaiaAssembly CoffeeOatly UKFaema, and Loveramics.

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Source: Coffee News

Rehabilitation Through Coffee At Heilige Boontjes In Rotterdam

By Coffee, News

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof
Imagine being convicted of a crime, sent to jail, serving your sentence, and then being released back into the world to find work. Would you take a job in a former police station, with holding cells intact and graffiti of past detainees still etched on the steel doors? This is the scenario some Rotterdam residents are finding themselves in. Whether you call it an ironic twist of fate, dark comedy, or proof of Northern Europe’s cool-headed, constructive criminal justice system, this social enterprise is called Heilige Boontjes. Locals can appreciate the double meaning: heilige boontjes is the Dutch expression for “goody two shoes” and translates to “holy beans.”

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Established three years ago by a cop and a social worker, Heilige Boontjes has been helping economically and socially disadvantaged individuals by training them to work at a coffee bar. The majority are young ex-cons who have been selected for the program by city authorities. Pulling espresso shots, clearing tables, or ringing up orders, they are meant to develop skills deemed necessary to return to school or secure long-term employment, ultimately reintegrating into society.

Following the success of its first cafe, Heilige Boontjes opened a second, more centrally located space in September 2016. Now its flagship cafe and roastery, the stately white and blue-trimmed building was a police station from 1945 right up until 2016. That history adds another remarkable layer to the story, though the property’s main draw was its mere vacancy, says Rodney Van den Hengel, head of reintegration at Heilige Boontjes.

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Showing Sprudge around on a visit there in autumn 2017, Van den Hengel starts by outlining the Netherlands’s general prison population: “You’ve got the bad, the mad, and the sad,” he says. “The first group makes a real business model of criminality; you won’t get them in here. Then you’ve got the mad; these people have real mental problems: schizophrenics, psychopaths, those with OCD—we’re not equipped to counsel them. So we don’t take in these two groups, but we’ve got the remaining 70 percent.”

He explains that the “sad” category often includes delinquents who have committed larceny and done so while suffering from substance dependence, poverty, and/or peer pressure. By the time participants arrive at Heilige Boontjes, however, some sadness has been channeled into proactivity. “These kids, they have to say to us, ‘I want to change my life,’” Van den Hengel says. Incarcerated for four years in his early 20s, the 46-year-old speaks from experience. As he puts it: “I used to be the kid that we try to help here now.”

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

He readily recounts his own turning point. “My mother was dying when I was in jail,” he says. “She got a massive heart attack. And I would have to wait 23 hours a day to go out to make the call to ask: ‘Is she still alive?’ So it fucked up my mind. I went really mental in there. You’re sitting in a room three meters long, two meters wide. These security guards would be walking around your cell door, bashing the keys on your door. Then I made a deal with good or God, however you call it. I said: ‘You leave my mother alone; I will clean up my life.’ ”

Behind bars, his self-education began: he read the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, Buddha’s writings. When he was free, he enrolled in a program to address his cocaine and heroin abuse. Afterward, having found a home in Rotterdam, he was given not welfare, he emphasizes, but a job. Decades later, as a professional social worker, Van den Hengel helped diminish a Rotterdam chapter of the Crips by creating labor opportunities for the gang members.

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Suddenly, he witnessed how “a whole group accesses money without using criminality.” “That sparked something in my head—that you don’t use counselors to solve problems,” he says. “You have to use commerce.” He stuck to that belief when Rotterdam police officer Marco den Dunnen sought his expertise to design some scheme that could keep local youth out of crime. Although Van den Hengel says that Den Dunnen “was really into coffee” while he was “drinking shite,” the two came together and wrote a project plan.

Soon after, Den Dunnen became Heilige Boontjes’ director. He is supported by a board of volunteers, as well as investor Dick de Kock, famous for having cofounded the Netherlands’s most influential specialty chain, Coffeecompany, and the person Den Dunnen credits as “our coffee mentor.” In its first year, Heilige Boontjes saw 10 participants complete the program. Last year there were 20, which became the annual target. Van den Hengel is unaware of cases of recidivism among graduates so far.

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

He describes the rehabilitation as taking place in three stages. “The first phase is just like: ‘Shut the hell up and go work. You don’t have to tell us about your problems because we’ll see them show up in the work,’ ” he says. During this period, participants receive assistance in managing their income and securing housing and health insurance. Once “skills and personal problems are in tune, we go a step further,” he says of the second phase, which might lead to work as a roasting assistant or a busser. For the third and final phase, participants are taught how to be a barista. “And it’s not an easy training,” he adds.  

On several visits to the flagship, right around its one-year anniversary, some half-dozen workers rotating shifts were racially diverse young men and women. Though most were unavailable to be interviewed or photographed for this article, they conveyed plenty in their barside manner. They all seemed professional and conscientious.

Heilige Boontjes relies on a three-group La Marzocco Linea Classic and two Mahlkönig K30 Vario grinders for the house Sumatra and the house Ethiopian-Brazilian blend. These coffees are sold by the bag, as are two single origins and a Brazilian-Colombian-Guatemalan blend called 010, for Rotterdam’s area code. One of the most popular drinks is a Moccamaster-brewed bakkie pleur, which is a colloquialism for “a cup of coffee” (and more fodder for Dutch city rivalry—Rotterdam and The Hague both claim coinage).

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Besides roasting for its own customers and some business clients around the city, the company won a contract to supply middle-segment coffee to the city council. The order is so huge that it is handled off premises by a larger roastery. Yet Van den Hengel is quick to clarify: “It’s not our wish to make lots of money. It’s not our wish to drive Maseratis. Our wish is to make the best coffee possible.”

The sense of humor that Heilige Boontjes has about itself is on display too. Labels on the house brand’s soap bottles read: “Wash your hands in innocence.” Crime is not a joke, but the playfulness has a disarming effect. The bookshelves are rainbowed with spines of Agatha Christie novels. Guests have various seating options, from the cushy leather sofa near a wall inscribed with “boontje is ons loontje” (roughly: “beans are our means”), to utilitarian communal tables, ideal for groups ordering breakfast or lunch. The omnipresent staff portraits are by Léon Hendrickx, a photographer recently acclaimed for capturing drag queens in and out of drag and creating a series that conjoins his subjects’ two separate images to become an intimately acquainted couple.

Upstairs is the roasting wing. Guard-like, the Giesen W1M stands outside the corridor of holding cells. These units are currently used for storage: one cell contains the sacks of green beans, which are supplied by Trabocca; another holds buckets of fresh roasts; next door, cupping spoons. Across the floor is the luchtplaats, essentially a smoker’s cage, functional to this day though no longer requiring a push of the red security button to let a break-taker back in.

Heilige Boontjes Rotterdam Netherlands Karina Hof

Spending much time on this level is Robin Scholten. He was among the program’s first graduates and began as one of three roasters at Heilige Boontjes. “They saw that I was the most consistent—in Holland we call it being Pietje Precies [‘Precise Petey’],” the 27-year-old says. “I took it very seriously and they said, ‘Well, if you keep growing in that way, you’re going to be the master roaster.’ ”

Today the title is his. Lately, he has also been coaching a junior colleague in roasting. Asked if he ever foresaw coffee in his career, Scholten is straightforward. “I was a drug dealer. I was a crook,” he says. “But a couple of things happened, which I prefer to keep private, and that’s why I came here: to work on myself. Now everything is good. It’s a balanced life.” As for the familiar job setting, “Aaah, it’s good,” says Scholten. “These younger people wouldn’t have wanted to be in a police station in the past. But now they’re working in one, toward their future.”

In October, Heilige Boontjes received the Hein Roethof Prize, issued biannually by the Dutch Centre for Crime Prevention and Safety to an organization that creatively and effectively deals with a social security issue. In November, it won the 2017 Tinnen Ananas award, recognizing Heilige Boontjes as nothing less than Rotterdam’s most hospitable enterprise.

Heilige Boontjes is located at Eendrachtsplein 3, Rotterdam. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge

The post Rehabilitation Through Coffee At Heilige Boontjes In Rotterdam appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Agnieszka Rojewska Is The 2018 London Coffee Masters Champion

By Coffee, News

There were four, then there were two. Then there was just one. That one is Agnieszka Rojewska, a freelance competitor from Poland, the 2018 Coffee Masters champion at the London Coffee Festival.

On paper, Rojewska was supposed to win. She’s a four time national latte art champion, has won national barista championships more times than I can count, and was a finalist at last year’s New York Coffee Masters. This was hers to win. On paper. (She may have even been the not-so-quiet pick of the Sprudge team.) But things never play out like they are supposed to. Rojewska had a self-described “rough” first round, placing her in the middle of the top eight cutoff at the end of the first day with a second, larger day still left to compete. But Rojewska held on to the sixth place spot, earning her way to the next round. And after that, it all went according to plan.

Agnieszka Rojewska (right) blind folded during the cupping challenge, with judge Freda Yuan (center) and MC Lem Butler (left).

Rojewska first had to square off against Network Cafe’s Daniel Horbat in the semi-final round. She got off to a fast start by correctly reordering four out of six coffee cups—the highest score put down all weekend in the discipline—before putting up eight of 10 drinks in the Order round, one less than Horbat. But Rojewsak ultimately prevailed and made it into the Finals round to face Rob Clarijs of Dasawe Coffee Roasters and Beanspire.

In the Finals, Rojewska fell behind early to Clarijs after he successfully named the origins of two coffees on the cupping table to her zero. But with the Latte Art round—Rojewska’s best discipline going by her résumé—shortly to follow, she was still very much in it. And indeed, after taking a two to one victory in Latte Art, it call came down to the Signature Beverage round.

Judges Tim Wendelboe (left), David Donde (center) and Freda Yuan look on.

Rojewska’s winning drink was a take on a gin and tonic, using gin (of course), a tonic syrup—consisting of the zests of a lime, orang, and grapefruit, brown sugar, quinine aromatics, and cold water—and 150ml pour-over of her Ugandan coffee from the Mzungu Project and roasted by Gardelli Specialty Coffees, carbonated and then bottled. Judges would then pop open the bottle with their Palace Guard bottle openers, pour enjoy the provided glass, and enjoy.

Then came what may arguably the hardest part: the waiting. Rojewska and Clarijs had to sweat it out for some 30 minutes before the announcement was made. But once the name of the £5,000 prize check was revealed, there could be no mistaking that the winner was Agnieszka Rojewska.

Rojewska photographed in Shoreditch, London.

It will thrilling to see Rojewska, a barista that we have personally seen on a World stage compete multiple times across a variety of events never to cross that ultimate finish line, finally hoist a much hard fought and well-deserve trophy over her head. On paper it was hers to win. But now it’s on carboard. A big check-sized piece, with “Agnieszka Rojewska” and “£5,000” written on it.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe ImportsAcaiaAssembly CoffeeOatly UKFaema, and Loveramics.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network. All photos by Zac Cadwalader for Sprudge. 

Much more coverage of the 2018 Coffee Masters tournament from London Coffee Festival is available at Sprudge Live. 

The post Agnieszka Rojewska Is The 2018 London Coffee Masters Champion appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News