I’m extremely proud of this Yellowbird, as I was involved in the process leading up to the creation of the blend. I have been working at Oriole Coffee as a barista, webmaster, and a roast apprentice under the excellent tutelage of barista champions Keith and John. Like what Steve said, I couldn’t have come to a better coffee university. As a roast apprentice, I’ve been roasting for Oriole Coffee for the past half year, and I’ve learnt more in that short span of time than I’ve gathered in all my 4 years as a home roaster.

Today, I pulled a few shots of this Yellowbird, a 20th December roast and 6 days old. The tasting notes that we got on a La Marzocco GB5 MP were “notes of piped tobacco, rich & intense mouthfeel, bright sweet prunes, hints of umami in the mid palate, lingering notes of pomelo in the finish.” On my Quickmill Anita, I had sweet smoke, hints of umami, and hint of grapefruit in the finish. From here on, I could tell the difference between a Quickmill Anita and a LM machine, the slight lack of complexity in the shot. But no bitters. On a GB5, the new mac yellowbird (as I like to refer to it) yielded the fragrance of shisha and the flavours of sweet tobacco, a definite savoury umami, hints of sweet dark prunes and subtle lemon drops beginnings which gave way to a lingering finish of pomelo or grapefruit. And the looks? Mottling and red brownish specks peppered the surface. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Toby’s Estate Singapore opened its doors on 7th October to the public. The address is at 8 Rodyk Street #01-03/04, Singapore 238216.  Toby’s Estate Singapore is fronted by Alvaro Sanchez as the head of operations (formerly from Boncafe and Society Group) and a relatively well-known coffee personality Suhaimie Sukiman, 2nd Runner Up, Singapore National Barista Championships 2010, 2011 (formerly from CuppaChoice) as the cafe manager.  SNBC 2011,2010 #3 Suhaimie has brought along with him at Toby’s Estate quite a few other familiar faces as well. We have Terence Tan, Singapore National Barista Championships 2011 #4 (formerly from Joe & Dough), Nizam (from Black), and Andy (from Jewel and Starbucks).

As you enter the premises of Toby’s Estate, you are greeted by a huge wall mural depicting exactly what every Third Wave cafe is all about: nitpicking the coffee journey from the bean to the cup. A humungous Loring drum coffee roaster attached to a towering exhaust system lies on the right, and a much-humbled Probatino sample roaster is almost hidden alongside it.  And almost akin to an army canteen, it’s space, space, space. And a very long bench. With a coffee tree growing out from the middle of the bench. On the left, there are nicely back-lit retail shelves with bags of roasted coffee, keepcups personalized with Toby’s Estate logo, Cafetto cleaning products for your coffee machines, Chemex brewers, entire lines of Hario products, Toby’s Estate tea and drinking chocolate. Despite the many jute bags of green coffee lying on the pallet by the side of the roaster, the air is very clean, for a sufferer of sinuses like me.

The espresso machine is a Kees Van Der Westen Mirage Triplette Classic. Alongside it, rests 1 of 2 Clover machines in Singapore. The 2 Clovers spent their history in Intelligentsia Coffee, and I’m quite sure along the way, Deaton had something to do with them being brought into Toby’s Estate Singapore. Toby’s Estate kept one of the Clovers, and sold the other to Loysel’s Toy. Good things are meant to be shared, it seems. Kudos to Toby’s Estate. There are 2 Mazzer Roburs here, along with a Mazzer Mini to grind decaf beans.

On espresso, Toby’s Estate Singapore is serving Rodyk Blend and Guatemala Antigua Los Volcanes. I had the Rodyk blend, but coming from the dentist, my mouth was numb and I tasted only brightness in the espresso. My 2nd cup  was a Cafe De Colombia Cup of Excellence roasted by owner Toby Smith and made by Andy on a V60.  I could taste distinct blackberries. The 3rd cup I had was a Brazil Fazenda Rainha made from a Clover by Nizam. Pecans came to mind as I sipped this very clean cup of Clover.

The CGSG core group was here today too, with the exception of Kai Seng. Steve, Adhe and Sam had espresso, cappuccino and a pour-over. Melvin and Diane had the Guatemala Las Volcanes from a clover and a Chemex. Floral, nutty, and sweet.

My take on Toby’s Estate is that their real gem lies in what Suhaimie calls The Slow Bar, thus named because coffee extraction on The Slow Bar would take longer than the 25 to 35 seconds it takes for an espresso-based drink.  The Slow Bar looks like a science lab filled with Chemex flasks sitting atop digital weighing scales, Hario Syphons, a rare Clover machine, a Tiamo cold brewer, and a Vivreau water filtration system, with sparkling, still and hot water dispensers.  The Vivreau system, as explained by Alvaro, supplies the entire line of coffee machines with filtered tap water. Customers can sit at The Slow Bar and marvel at the different processes coffee can be extracted to the eventual cup in front of you.  There are power outlets every few meters and free wifi so customers can lounge with their devices. There is also alfresco tables outside should customers want to sit by the river.

My verdict:  Clean. Comfort. Clover. Coffee. Coming back.

My work day starts at 7.00 am. I open up the Republic Plaza outlet of Oriole Coffee Espresso and Brew Bar together with my colleagues. I get to calibrate coffee that is roasted the week before by a chap who was the Singapore National Barista Champion 2 years running. Never mind the machine I’m pulling espresso on, named by Gizmodo as the barista’s wet dream machine, the La Marzocco Strada EP, the first of its kind in Asia, and the equally stupendous beauty of a grinder, the Mazzer Robur. I get to calibrate espresso on 1 of the 2 supplied naked portafilters. I record tasting notes of the daily brew, having written down words like “sandalwood”, “granny smith apples”, and “blueberries”. I juggle between pulling shots from each of the 3 PID’d groupheads, maintaining a consistent syrupy mousetail pour, taking turns dosing up to 3 portafilters or hopefully making brilliantly foamed milk the likes of glossy white paint, hopefully delighting customers and myself when I should draw a decent looking rosetta leaf or heart, my trainer all the while stressing the importance of the taste of the milk based drink rather than the art, and should anything go wrong with the pour from the use of experimental VST baskets designed with cutting edge technology I’ve only previously read about from coffee newsgroups, then the …. get this, the R & D team made up of not 1, but 2 Singapore National Barista Champions pay us a visit with their bag full of intricate equipment not limiting to syringes, refractometer, a coffee metering iPhone app that can’t be found on the App Store. They spew forth terms like Total Dissolved Solids, Solubles Concentration, Extraction Yields, and take numerous readings using eye-droppers full of coffee, all the while punching in numbers into their iPhones. End of the day, they do make a difference. And the customers. They KNOW and appreciate the effort. My colleagues? They talk more coffee than I do, and make drinks as if they were going about their routines during the barista championships.

Do I mind being a barista trainee at Oriole Coffee? Are you kidding?

Naked pour from a La Marzocco Strada

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.

As far back as I can remember, I have been quite lucky and have always managed to turn my passion into a job. I’ve done this with comics and toys for 14 years. Now, I’ve elected to do the same with my other love, coffee. Walking away from a barista trainer position at Shangri-la Hotel Singapore and The Line buffet restaurant certainly hasn’t been easy. In the 9 months, I have worked alongside service staff and pastry chefs and I’ve made quite a few friends. Also, there are some regular guests at The Line with whom I’m extremely pleased and honoured to have met their acquaintances. But I’ve replayed this scenario many times over in my head, and I keep coming to the same conclusion. I would rather resign than compromise on the quality of coffee. And there are these other words that still echo in my mind. These words were in the form of an extremely inspirational email sent from James Hoffmann aka jimseven:

“I don’t think you made a bad decision. It is unpleasant to compromise constantly on what you do for a living, especially when it is something you love. I believe strongly that there is always a need and desire for passionate people in any industry, so I don’t think you’ll struggle to find something else. Getting to do what you love is a great goal for a job, rather than to be paid to turn up somewhere and robotically go through the motions to get a paycheck.”

Flashback to events before this whole resignation deal while I was attending the first day of SNBC 2011, I was approached by the hotel’s F&B Trainer, Ryan Chan, who passed on the message that the F&B Director wished to incorporate The Line Restaurant’s barista station into the staff cafe for a day as part of Shangri-la Hotel’s 40th Anniversary celebrations. I was (and still am) extremely thrilled and honoured at the idea. This would mean I’ll be the barista for the entire staff of Shangri-la Hotel Singapore for the lunch hour for a day. I could not think of a better way than this to thank Shangri-la Hotel for all the fun I’ve had working for them.

Back to present day. I’m putting the finishing touches on my Quickmill Anita and my Compak grinder. It seems I’ll be getting to showcase the both of them during lunchtime tomorrow, 12th April 2011 at the staff cafe. The home barista machine setup meets the big boys. My trusty Quickmill and the modified Compak grinder in a cafe setting. By the way, the Compak grinder has been modified to accept single serving doses and not having to grind the entire bag of beans for convenience factor, or otherwise known as the principal reason behind my resignation. I’m thrilled to say the very least. Other than getting to thank them, this is a chance to bring my colleagues closer to good espresso and hopefully to discourage the notion of adding all sorts of syrups to the coffee to get rid of the bitterness.

The venue will be at Our Cafe, Shangri-la Hotel Singapore from 10.30 am til 2.30 pm on 12th April 2011. The coffee of the day will be the Shangri-la Blend. The espresso machine will be the Quickmill Anita. The grinder will be a modded Compak K-6. And the baristi are from The Line Restaurant, Colin Loh and Peter Li.

This is dedicated to all my colleagues; both former and present at the Shangri-la Hotel Singapore. It’s been a privilege. And a whole lot of fun.

And a shout out to all of you to not ask for syrups in your cappuccino! At least not for the capps served at Our Cafe on 12 April.

I posted this on my facebook page. Many of you readers here would have read it. I would like to thank all of you for your support and your well-wishes. Part of my inspiration comes from the many people and the participants in the barista championships like SNBC or WBC. So many of you are propelled to take up the challenge each and every year, thereby raising the bar in the overall standards of coffee both here in Singapore as well as on a global scale. I feel I would not be doing my part just by blogging about it and sitting on the sidelines. Thus, herein lies my contribution.

I will be taking part in SNBC 2012 if I’m lucky enough to be employed by a cafe. Which also brings up another thing. I’m available for hiring. :)

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.”

For those heading out to Singapore National Barista Championships, running alongside Tea & Coffee World Cup Asia today and tomorrow, you can skip the lengthy one hour wait I had to endure just by bringing along your business card, which will substitute as your name tag. I, unfortunately am a lowly barista trainer and wouldn’t warrant a card at my hotel. And for those who are signing up for classes like roasting or cupping, please queue up in the SPECIAL EVENTS queue. I queued in the VISITORS queue and was told to re-queue after queuing for an hour. Are you kidding?

The number one highlight of this entire event will be mentioned in the next post after this one. I’ve only watched 3 performances yesterday, the remaining time spent trolling the numerous booths. The first was last year’s Champion from Oriole Cafe, Keith Loh. Keith was using single origin Kenyan Gethumbwini, which is also one of my favourite and first roasts, also a favourite of jimseven who utilised it and won World Barista Championship 2007. Winey, blackcurrants, I can just taste it. I have a video of Keith’s performance which I will edit later tonight. I had the privilege of tasting the alpha stage of his signature drink during this past Chinese New Year in February. His signature drink is named Gethumbwini Sunrise. Keith’s main goal here is to redefine the taste of espresso by removing the undissolved solids in the cup and replacing these with his own custom oils/fragrances. He achieves this by filtering out the “undesired” parts of the espresso with Hario v60′s and then adding chilled water (looks like 2:1) and finally spraying some lemon oils into the cup and rubbing the oils onto the rim of the cup.

Speaking of jimseven, this signature drink reminds me of jimseven’s first video blog, which caused somewhat of an outrage in espressodom. It led me to 2 experiments, which you can read about in the following links.

Espresso sans Crema Test

Americano sans Crema Test

For the balls (sorry, for lack of better words) Keith has, he truly deserves the brand spanking new machine (the actual number one highlight of SNBC 2011). He’s gone and redefined espresso as we know it. Take out the defining blackcurrants in Gethumbwini, add in the lemons. It should renamed Getlemonbwini. An extremely risky effort, which I’ve been telling him since February, but I really hope he wins this year and gets to take this performance to a world stage. Unnerving, mind-blowing.

The 2nd performance I watched was Suhaida from Marina Mandarin Hotel. She used a blend of Costa Rica SHB and Sumatra Mandheling, and her signature was supposed to use a reduction of honey and figs, but her equipment broke down, and she quickly changed her signature on the fly to a pourover over honey and figs. She’s inspired me to enter into the race next year. During her interview with Victor Mah, the president of Singapore Coffee Association, Suhaida mentioned that the state of hotel coffee is improving. I’m definitely heading to Marina Mandarin for a sip. Her colleagues were extremely supportive, ranging from the GM to the F&B Directors and the staff.

The 3rd performance looked to be another contender for the Final 6. Ryan Tan from Papa Palheta. He’s a Singaporean working in one of the cafes in Australia. His signature was a reduction of fruits and nuts?? But it was his performance that was eye-catching. He had attention to every detail and was cleaning up as he went along. Impeccable! It was a pleasure watching him perform his routine.

Today is Day 1 of the Singapore National Barista Championships 2011 at Suntec International Convention & Exhibition Centre, Hall 401. It will be held over 3 days til 23rd March 2011. I’ve already taken leave and will be attending all 3 days. The defending SNBC 2010 champion, Keith Loh will be defending his title and will be the 1st performance. They all drew lots, from what I heard. SNBC 2010 1st Runner Up John Ting is returning this year as a judge, while SNBC 2010 2nd Runner Up Suhaimie Sukiman will be performing tomorrow. One of the highlights this year will be World Barista Championships 2008 1st Runner Up David Makin’s appearance as a judge.

The official SNBC 2011 espresso machine this year is the Expobar Diamant. Thankfully, this machine is PID’d and is a technological marvel. I hope to play with it and blog more about this later. Last year, the baristi had to play with unstable machines that ran either too hot or too cool. With the PID controlling the grouphead temperature, the baristi have less to worry about and can concentrate on impressing the judges with their coffee renditions.

Also running alongside SNBC 2011 is Tea & Coffee World Cup Singapore. Probat is conducting a coffee roasting class which I and fellow CG’ers have signed up for. I will update this post with links and photos later as I’m blogging with my iPhone now.

[Extracted from WBC 2010 Competitors Page]