Of special mention and also an update to this blog post is the coffee to be brewed for the 2 weekends:

Bean:   Sumatran Aceh Takengon
Wet Aroma:  Clean and intense
Body:   Heavy
Flavors:   Licorice, figs
Acidity:   Tartaric
Aftertaste:   Creamy aftertaste that lingers

Bean:   Ethiopian Sidamo
Wet Aroma:   Floral notes
Body:   Light
Flavors:   Sweet red wine
Acidity:  Citrus, more pronounced upon cooling
Aftertaste:  Florals

The coffees can also be found on Oriole’s website.

Freshly roasted and well-rested specialty grade coffee ground-on-demand, 2 Singapore national barista champions teaching a free-for-all class, award winning French presses. What are you waiting for?

Last words: As you all know, dear readers, Bodum in Takashimaya is also located next to Nespresso, which would most undoubtedly be showcasing their newest Nespresso flavor, the Nespresso Onirio, an extremely floral espresso by their standards, and a blend of Ethiopian Sidamo and Yrgacheffe. This is a call out to ALL Nespresso fans. Here is your chance to appreciate the REAL floral notes of Ethiopian Sidamo in an economically priced French Press. The money you save from this, you can get a good grinder. And please, you want good coffee every morning, you have to put in the effort. Scoop the beans into your grinder, freshly ground coffee in your french press and 4 minutes later, it’ll be worth it. It’ll be better than THE NESPRESSO ONIRIO EXPERIENCE.

I really should be talking about SNBC and the performances, but this machine takes the cake. While other companies are starting to introduce PID’s and taking into account temperature stability to produce a better cup of espresso, La Marzocco (and Slayer) have taken the next step in the evolution of espresso making, the keywords being “PRESSURE PROFILING.” They have complicated the whole process towards making a cup of coffee. I say complicated, not in a bad way, but more like the Star Trek of espresso making, to go where no baristi have gone before – the sky’s the limit. Before pressure profiling, this was what the barista had to do to make a good cup of espresso:

Freshly roasted coffee that was properly rested and properly stored and freshly ground-on-demand and precisely dosed into a heated portafilter without clumping and then evenly distributed to provide a levelled surface for a thirty pound equally distributed pressured tamp and the portafilter locked into a grouphead that had temperature stability controlled by a PID and a machine that gave the double basket of espresso grounds a pre-infusion lasting 5 seconds of 3 bar pressured water before gradually heading into the 9 bar region lasting another 20 seconds and filling 2 heated demitasses below with an ounce of crema rich espresso each.

Enter Pressure Profiling and the barista’s (several) new routines will be:

Freshly roasted coffee that was properly rested and properly stored and freshly ground-on-demand and precisely dosed into a heated portafilter without clumping and then evenly distributed to provide a levelled surface for a thirty pound equally distributed pressured tamp and the portafilter locked into a grouphead that had temperature stability controlled by a PID and a machine that gave the double basket of espresso grounds an infusion lasting x seconds of y bar pressured water and repeating the infusion process another z times to make 2 demitasses of espresso of w volume but unknown quality where w, x and z are greater than zero and y is greater than zero but less than or equal to 12 bars.

Here is a diagram provided by La Marzocco to give you a vague idea of what to expect from the Strada:

The La Marzocco Pressure Profiling Cheat Sheet

Where do we go from here?

“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”

[Extracted from WBC 2010 Competitors Page]