The Wild Drink Blog

Today was an awesome day. I met Hugo at 1pm and we headed down to the Eden Project, picking up Fifteen trainee Andrew on the way. At Eden we met up with Tom & Phil from Origin along with a few photographers, then we headed over to the ‘humid tropics biome’. The guys got busy with the picking and I did a few pictures for the local papers posing at picking cherries.

Once again we found that the cherries weren’t very dark and seemed to whither after hitting a deep red, there were no purple cherries. I think we picked about 2kg of cherries, roughly twice what we got last time. Thanks to all who helped pick, I really appreciate it.

There should be a couple of articles on the project in the local papers and we had a media agency there who were intending to get the story in nationals as well, if anyone spots the article please let me know. I also did an interview on Pirate FM this morning which we heard in the car on the way back! Most of the stuff I said was focussed toward educating people in the origins of coffee and all the work that goes into providing us with good beans, as well as the barista’s duty to use their beans to their full potential.

We then decided to head back to Fifteen and have a go at roasting the greens that I had processed from the last harvest. Tom had brought his Hot Top roaster with him and after warming it up we put some greens in there and crossed our fingers!

Hugo, Tom, Phil

If I remember correctly we hit 1st crack after around 9 minutes but we were slightly concerned that the beans weren’t browning enough, they just seemed to be cooking and staying green! Our fears were quashed however, they suddenly changed colour and expanded and the other guys got scared so we let them out! I was concerned that too light a roast might highlight the inevitable flaws in the coffee.

Some chaf, I would call this a medium roast, no oil.

Result! Regardless of what ever it tasted like we had made coffee out of cherries that were picked by us in the UK! The beans had expanded a considerable amount. Excited like kids at Christmas we got straight on to cupping it.

Now both Hugo and I have a bit of a cold at the moment so I knew cupping for me was a bit of a waste of time but we did it anyway with the hope that we’d get some idea of the profile. Maybe when i’m feeling better cupping will yield more interesting results, but I couldn’t pick up much on the nose other than ‘vegetal’ and tasting showed no major problems but nothing really stood out for me either.

At this stage I was just glad that it didn’t taste like poo and that it actually looked like coffee when we added water. I got the feeling that the guys wanted more so I suggested we might try an espresso despite obvious freshness of the coffee. Our curiosity was too much to take, so I cleaned the grinder, adjusted it for espresso and put my Cornish grown, processed and roasted coffee in there. Eyes shut the coffee ground into my portafilter and I lovingly distributed and tamped it, straight in the group head and instant extraction…

Now make no mistake, we were convinced that this espresso would taste like crap. Having had first hand experience at messing up roasts and of course reading about the uncertainty and risk when processing coffee I found it extremely unlikely that we would get anything more than a cup of black wee with plenty of astringency balanced by tongue tearing acidity and watery body.

And how wrong I was… (sorry picture a bit blurry)

It did extract slowly, dripping for the most part, but there was good hazelnut crema, it looked thick, it looked like an espresso (well, maybe a ristretto). Extraction stopped after about 30sec we probably had 15ml in the cup, I had the privilege of tasting the first ever espresso from coffee grown in the UK.

I’m not going to lie and say that this was the best espresso (ok, ristretto) that i’ve ever tasted, because it wasn’t. It was astonishingly good though for what we were expecting. There was body to it, it had a good grip to it from the acidity, the vegetal character that I picked up in cupping was there and good as well, it was even clean on the finish leaving no nasty after tastes! I/we were utterly amazed that it was so drinkable, far more drinkable than the butchered attempts at espresso served in some shops.

Drinking the espresso was by far the highlight to the whole experience for me. Thanks a lot to the guys for helping me and to the folks at Eden for the time and effort put in to the project. We roasted another small batch and I have kept them to de-gas for a few days until I try the next shot, I might have a go at aeropressing it.

Link To Metro Story

This Is Cornwall Article