Liv and David wins Coppa di Nesta

We are very proud that our good Colleague Liv Akne Andersson and her friend David Ågren on Sunday 23rd won the Barista Competition - Coppa di Nesta - in Malmö, Sweden.

You can read more about their performance on Dan Stenquist blog or on Riktigtkaffe.se soon!

Our congratulations to Liv and David!!!

Our New Coffee Shop

On Monday the 1st of December we will open a Coffee Shop on Algade 20 in Roskilde!

We are very excited about this location since it is in the main street of the second largest city on Zealand (Sjælland) known for its rock festival. Also this is the city where Peter grew up and most of his famliy still lives around there.

But maybe the biggest scoop in this new project is that we have had the luck to get Karen Dysted on board!! Karen just spent the last three months in Kenya working to optimize Dorman’s cafés in Nairobi and visiting coffee farms and mills. We're confident that with Karen's coffee skills and charm this will be a very special place with a fantastic atmosphere.

We look forward to inviting the people of Roskilde in to our new coffee shop.

TV News

Casper turned the eyes of Denmark to coffee tonight:

DR 1
TV2 Lorry

And I guess the cat's out of the bag... we're planning to open up a second location!

TV on the Radio on Casper

Today the media woke up to the news that Denmark won the European Team Challenge. Of course they called Casper up straight away and wanted interviews (seriously, they did!).

Politiken had the news on their front page this morning.

Then later TV2 Lorry came by our roastery to film and interview Casper. The segment should be aired tonight at 19:30.



About half an hour earlier Casper will be a guest on national TV station DR1's Aftenshowet.

Tomorrow the early birds will be able to listen to his soft spoken voice on Denmarks Radio P3 Go'Morgen P3.

What a wonderful opportunity to make more people aware of quality coffee!

We hope you Turn On, Tune In... but avoid dropping out ;-)

Team Denmark wins SCAE’s European Team Coffee Challenge 2008.

So I just returned from the big espresso trade show in Trieste, Italy.
I as a member of The Danish National Barista Team I did not get to see much of the show as I was competing in the European Team Coffee Challenge. The Danish team battled against teams from Russia, UK, Austria, Italy, Estonia, Iceland and Ireland and came out victorious. Hurray...

During the days there we participated in several workshops and competitions. All though the quality of some of the workshops was not very high and some pretty bad arranged (only in Italian!!!) all in all the Team Challenge was a great competition. I really like when you get to meet other baristas from all over europe and share ideas about coffee.

As said the competition is build up by several smaller competitions including coffee and spirits, cooking with coffee, roasting, blending and brewing coffee in different ways. In one of my favorite competitions the teams had to brew two cappuccinos with latte art on an old vintage La San Marco from the 1920’s and two on a modern espresso machine. It was really nice to have the opportunity to try out the old equipment... that thing only brews with a pressure around 1,2 bars.. what an honour.

The Danish team is:
Signe Støttrup Jensen from Sigfreds Kaffebar in Århus, winner of the danish latteart competition in 2008
Søren Stiller Markussen from Growers Cup, Danish barista champion and 6th place at WBC 2008
Mikkel Pilegaard Madsen from Sigfreds Kaffebar in Århus, 3rd place danish barista championship 2008
And me Casper Engel from The Coffee Collective, Danish and World Cup Tasting Champion 2008

A great thanks to all the other teams who made these days so wonderful and fun.
Hope to see you all again soon.

Read more about the competition on: www.scae.com

Idido - Aricha Microlots

We're thrilled to finally invite you and all your friends to the launch of our new coffee:

Idido Mill
Aricha Microlots 2, 6, 8 and 20
Yerga Cheffe
Ethiopia

Friday November 14th 2008
15:00 - 19:00

We'll present two different roast profiles of the Idido; a light roasted and a dark roast (espresso).
The Idido will also become a part of our new espresso blend.

We'll cycle through the different microlots in due time, indicating the current lot on the bag. Exclusively on this day you will be able to try all of the four lots at the same time!

Back in November last year Peter visited the Idido mill on his trip to Ethiopia.
Read Peter's field trip reports: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3.
You can also see all his pictures on Flickr.

The Bagersh family have been producing coffee for generations. The oldest son, Abdullah, had often heard his grandfather tell how the coffee used to be more aromatic in the old days. Today, gourmet coffee is often washed coffees, where the coffee cherries have been de-pulped within 24 hours after harvest. Abdullah, however, began experimenting with the traditional Natural method, in which the whole coffee cherry is dried over a period of time. This method is almost any where else only know as an inferior method giving dirty coffees with lots of defects. Through the last 7 years the Bagersh family have optimized the Natural process at the Idido mill in the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia. The drying takes place on 'raised beds'(see picture below) and all during the drying proces cherries are carefully turned over and sorted by hand. When the cherry has dried in to what looks similar to a raisin, the dried husk is hulled off and the beans separated. In the very carefull way this is done at the Idido mill the post-harvest processing reminds us of the post-harvest processing of the Amarone wine. We truely belive that the flavour of this coffee is at least as outstanding as that of great Amarone wines!

It's a wildly aromatic coffee with an intense strawberry and bergamot aroma. In our two different roast we bring out this aroma in unique ways. In the (very) light roast the intense aroma is the dominating overall characteristic of the coffee. Even when just opening a bag of whole beans there's no doubt - the aroma reveals it's the light roasted Idido coffee.
In the darker roast its very interesting as SO espresso shot in which a similar strawberry-like aromatic experience hits the nose even way before the cup is close! Prepared this way the coffee also excels as having an extreme smoothness and tingling acidity.

We have worked a lot on getting the right balance in our espresso blend. Of course the sweetness and smooth oily body of the espresso is just getting better with the Idido supplementing Daterra and Finca Vista Hermosa. We wanted to keep the chocolaty taste balance and marzipan notes which has been characterizing our espressos so far. But at the same time we wanted to add the Idido in a way where the Strawberry aromas could work as subtle top-notes which would be brought out only by careful barista work. Therefore we had a bag brought in by air two months ago. In the meantime we have have been trying out lots of roast profiles and blends. This work has taking some time since we wanted to let the coffee rest at least 10 days (in gasflushed valvebags) before tasting. Also we preferred to taste the coffees before noon to have the best working tastebuds and we wanted to taste it as straight espresso and not having more than approx. 6 shots in a session! We believe by now we have reached an espresso which is ready to be presented - and we are looking very much forward to getting your response!

So Friday the 14th we'll let you taste the coffees for free in our coffee shop. Come and join the fun!