The Wild Drink Blog

Will Thornborough invited us up to John Drysdale’s Cafe Kondi today for a barista jam. So myself, Hugo and Jack (Luke to Hugo’s Obi-Wan - i’m more of a Han Solo…) got in the car and took the perilous drive out of county up t’north… *shudder*

After a quick breafast stop where we bore witness to some milk being boiled repeatedly, we eventually made it to Bristol at around 12.30. I’m sorry that i’m so bad with names and I didn’t catch everyones so if you’re not mentioned it isn’t because I don’t like you. Present among others were Matt from Beyond The Bean, a dude who poured some pretty good latte art under pressure and three guys (well one was a girl - Samantha) from Extract Coffee Roasters who brought along some nice coffees too.

We started the afternoon with a touch of competitive latte art action, I wasn’t particularly enamored with the steam wand on the Faema Diplomat which can be summarised with two words: short, powerful - also useful for describing dwarves. Hugo and Jack got on with it ok but my pours were very much varied through the course of the day.

Here’s a picture of the UKB Champ looking thoroughly superior as he casts his experienced eye over Will’s pour…

As it turned out we had a very large collection of coffees to hand (collective term? - troop, horde, implausibility??) so set about cupping them. I’m struggling to remember everything we tried but here we go… Kenya Gethumbwini, Guatamalan Fedecocugua, Ethiopean Wild Limu, Dominican Rep Montana Verde a couple of coffees from ‘Two Day Coffee roasters’ (who guarantee your coffee was roasted within the last two days), including an El Salvador CoE called ‘Alaska’ which was nice, and finally the ‘Weapon’ Blend from Extract.

I was actually quite impressed with most of the coffees we tried particularly the Guatamalan but the Geth was very interesting due to the changes in flavour as it cooled. We also tried a couple of bits and pieces through the espresso machine including a Peruvian ‘El Guabo’ which as a SO was suprisingly well balanced.

As discussed on the way home, tasting new coffees is a double edged sword which leaves you with a great feeling of having tried something new along your journey, coupled with a feeling of being as confused as ever!

Thanks to John for loan of the cafe for the day, next Jam will be coming up soon and might be hosted by a well known Cornish cafe…