Kostverlorenvaart

It's BachoTeX  time again in the woods along  Bachotek lake.  With workshops on Latin calligraphy, batik, long-stitch book binding and the combination of jazz and popular songs, conversations about smart battery chargers, corruption in present day regimes and tips to wash baseball caps. And coffee, of course. Bachotek Lake Not without basic coffee tools Early morning gathering Talking it over One of the guys Calligraphy workshop By Barbara Wilin´ska Young and old working hard Rechts: Lorien Otten Discussion Harald König Intermission conversation Working outside in the sun Karel Píska Batik At Willi Egger's Long-stitch Binding workshop At Willi Egger's Long-stitch Binding workshop At Willi Egger's Long-stitch Binding workshop (Martha & Lorien Otten, and others) Willi Egger at work Taco Hoekwater Teun Otten Bonfire Bonfire Bonfire Lorien Otten

A remarkable quote from Talor Browne on her recent blog post : Even at the top, there is no known knowledge, only trial and error. Everyone, even Tim, is kind of bumbling along in the dark, looking for the light switch. It bothers me to see people be looked up to so much when it’s all so unknown. The things I do know are: if your raw coffee is delicious, it’s actually pretty hard to fuck it up. Thanks to Matt Perger for linking this in his Barista Hustle newsletter! Marko Luther, a friend of mine and a highly regarded and experienced roaster, writes me: "Nice quote. I couldn't express this better and share Talor's view fully. I had that impression already in 2013 when I talked to Morten and Tim in person at SCAE in Nice.  So there seems to be a clear change in taste on modification of the roasting process, but it seems impossible to grab the exact details of this influence and use these to make a tool that brings out what you are looking for in a coffee.  

The Kávékalmár team, Gábor and Attila , passed through Amsterdam o their way to film a project with PROBAT and they took some time to visit me and try out the LONDINIUM L1-P. Together we visited John, a fellow roaster living nearby who pulled a few espressos on his Strega, then we had espressos from the Rocket at Carina's, more espressos at Screaming Beans from Charlotte and we visited Tije to have some more coffee from his La Pavoni before we checked out Tijes "Shaker Roaster 2.0". This is a short video of roasting the batch of beans that the Kávékalmár guys flew home with later in the afternoon. Some pictures: Gábor and Attila Gábor and LONDINIUM espresso Attila at Tije's place Gábor at Tije's place Gábor at Tije's place Gábor and Tije in Tije's workshop Youtube version of video:

Gábor and his camera man Attila visited Amsterdam on their way from Budapest to the PROBAT factory in Emmerich and even though it was somewhat late in the evening, we shared some home roasted Uganda espresso coffee ground on the COMPAK E8 and extracted on the Londinium LI-P. Gábor brought along a pre-production tamper of the new series he is manufacturing. A true beauty. Making these is quite a delicate affair as the lathe needs to cut through a bunch of tender color pencils. The wood is fragile but  the colored pencil lead is very brittle too. For me, the very few hair sized imperfections just add to the sublime  art deco  elegance of the creation. They will be available from  http://www.naked-portafilter.com