May 2017 Newsletter

Continuing on from last month's newsletter, this month's effort is about what happens when my coffee finally arrives. The absolute first step is to get a sample of the green coffee out of the actual delivery and roast it. I then cup it against the pre-delivery sample, to make sure that it matches. Very rarely there can be differences, due to damage during shipping or in one case supplying old crop coffee instead of the latest lot.

Presuming everything is OK, it's then off to the roasters. I hire time at a couple of well established roasteries, both of which have 15 kg capacity gas fired Probat roasters. Having worked out the roast profile I want at the sample stage, it's just a matter of matching it on the Probats. I roast in small batches, 10 kg at a time (you only get 8.5 kg out after moisture loss) so there's quite a lot of work involved.

Then when I get the coffee back to the office it's stored in sealed tubs ready to pack. One thing that many of our customers don't think about is that every single order is freshly packed to specification. We simply don't have any coffee pre-packed, it's all out of the tubs, onto the scales and into the bags. Another thing is that we roast more-or-less to order, my schedule for any given day depends on the orders we received the day before.

The filled bags are then packed in the appropriate satchels, with the tracking stickers from the satchel stuck to each order. Couriers then arrive to pick up the day's production and we start the cycle again, as the satchels head safely to their destinations.

That's what used to happen. Since the start of this year the "service" that Australia Post has been providing has slipped quite a bit. In particular Express Post, which is supposedly guaranteed overnight delivery, just hasn't been working. Worse than that, complaints to Australia Post have been met with indifference. The "Guarantee" states that in the event of late delivery a free replacement satchel will be provided; to date, not one has been offered or supplied.

As a result of this I've also complained to my local Federal MP, as I figure action at a political level is the only way things will improve. I urge my customers to do the same if they encounter similar problems.

A couple of my industry peers have twitted me over my coffee tasting descriptions, describing them as a bit terse. When the average tasting notes read "Floral and tea rose upfront. Gentle balanced acidity and a heavy silky body. Spiced apple and cinnamon notes move into a dark chocolate and honeycomb finish." That's for our Nicaraguan coffee.

This month's special is

Sumatra Wahana Rasuna
$54.00/kg

…and my terse description is "very heavy body with dried fruit and spice flavours and a sweet brown sugar finish, more or less a liquid hot cross bun." It makes a fantastic espresso, really sweet and spicy with thick crema.

Finally, some customers have asked why I don't set up an Autofill credit card function on the order form. Put simply, this requires a non-bank server storing your credit card details, and (in my opinion) opens you up to hacking. There have been several high profile examples of this happening.

As long as your card details never appear on our servers there's no chance of them being stolen from us.

Until next month
Alan