This is my new coffeebar in my new house.

This is my new coffeebar in my new house.

This is my new coffeebar in my new house.

Learnings from bartenders…

My friend and colleague Mikael Ekman www.cocktail-cocktail.nl
is our Dutch bartender champion.
Last year he even became 2th of the world.
It’s really nice to hear his story�s. they are very similar with our barista story’s. I talk a lot with mikael about recipes, presentation and taste combinations. I can recommend it to everybody. We can learn a lot from bartenders.

They are competing much longer then we do. They have seen it all, and they did it all. The big difference between a barista competition and a bartender competition is that our sensorial judges see who’s making the signature drink, and what’s used for ingredients.

The sensorial judges in the bartender competition are judging in a separate room. So they are 100% independent. I think we have to try this in our barista competitions. The reason is that our sensorial judges know who the competitor is. Know his/her history, see how he/she works and �most important� know if he/she is a favorite… I think this has nothing to do with taste, color and optical presentation.

To come back to Mikael�He bought this beautiful Air streamer. He rebuilds it to a unique mobile cocktail bar. And because Mikael does a lot of work for Douwe Egberts, he prepared the air streamer to be used as a mobile espresso bar.

I haven�t seen such a unique mobile espresso bar before, if you did, please sent me a picture?

Jeroen

Three weeks ago I got a nice young coffee plant.
Actually this plant is 2,5 years old? Last week I gave her a bigger
Pot. I hope she will grow a bit faster now�
I also got some fresh cherries. I putted them in good ground.
When I checked this morning (after 3 weeks) I saw some little strikes coming.
So hope fully this is the beginning of my own plantation�

If you have any tip or tricks, please let me know?

Jeroen

Three weeks ago I got a nice young coffee plant. A…

Three weeks ago I got a nice young coffee plant.
Actually this plant is 2,5 years old? Last week I gave her a bigger
Pot. I hope she will grow a bit faster now�
I also got some fresh cherries. I putted them in good ground.
When I checked this morning (after 3 weeks) I saw some little strikes coming.
So hope fully this is the beginning of my own plantation�

If you have any tip or tricks, please let me know?

Jeroen

Friday morning art…

I did not now that we had reindeers in the Netherlands, but look what happened this morning during my weekly jam with Michel Buis. Our Dutch latte art champ…

The foot pedal

This is the footpedal. Kees v/d Westen installed it on the Mazzer. I’ve tried it and it’s realy easy going. Now u can use one hand to hold the portafilter and the other hand to dose the ground coffee. Once you feel that there is enough coffee in the portafilter just take your foot of the pedal.
I will ask Kees to give us some more technical info about the installation.
You can watch Kees amazing work on www.keesvanderwesten.com

Picture from the tuned mazzer

This is the Mazzer grinder owned by Donar.
As you can see Donar changed the bunker into
a funnel. The grinded coffee falls direct into the
portafilter now.

troubles with pictures…

The pictures of the grinder are still in my camera…
I have some troubles to upload the pictures to this blog.
I’ll do the best i can to share them with you a.s.a.p.

good weekend,
Jeroen

New grinder activated by a foot pedal!!

This week I spoke to Donar Theunisse.
He is our regular Dutch barista champ.
You may remember him because of the grinder he used
during his performance in Seattle.
He used the Mazzer grinder with a plastic pipe instead of a hopper.
He also changed the bunker into a direct dosing station.

But…. Here is the news. Kees Van Der Westen (yes, from the Mistral and the Mirage) upgraded this mazzer. He tried to make it easier to handle and therefore he used his famous foot pedal. The same pedal he used for steam wand on his espresso machines .

Tomorrow I will go to Donar and have my first meeting with this grinder.
Of course I’ll make pictures.

So stay tuned, there is more to come…

Jeroen