With all the hot weather we have been having I thought that I would experiment with some cold coffee drinks.

I knew that I wanted something cold and have heard off cold extractions before and thought I would do a bit off reasearch on the matter. turns out it is dead easy to do and absolutely delicious!

Requirements

- French Press style grind i.e. relatively course

- 60Grams of Coffee per litre of water (I made one litre, enought for two glasses :-) )

- A jug to mix everything in

Mix the coffee into the water, give it a good stir and make sure that the coffee is totally disolved into the water.  Put the jug into your fridge. Be sure to let the coffee steep in the water for at least 12 hours before filtering. I used my Aeropress but any paper filter should do the trick.  I just filled up the Aeropress and left it to drip away, took a long time to drip through but was well worth the wait. I suppose that you could even use a Bodum to seperate the grinds if you wanted too. You can then store the coffee extract until required.

Straight up it is a very different flavour to cooled filter coffee, loads of caramels and chocolates with very little bitterness. Absoluely delicious. I mixed it with some ice cubes and condensed milk, Vietnamese Style. Very refreshing and perfect for those hot afternoons.

If you have any off your own hot weather coffee drinks, please let us know them on the link in our forum

Enjoy

JohnB

Hey Folks

Koldserve has just secured a distributorship for the La Marzocco range of machines in South Africa and have just landed a La Marzocco FB80 fresh from the WBC in Copenhagen, Boy is it a beaut, I think that getting this machine out off the Italians may have taken some serious arm twisting. 

George very kindly offered to let us use the machine for our next Jam. Seeing as it is probably the closest that I will ever get to the WBC, I didn't have to be asked twice and jumped at the opportunity. I then started thinking of suitable dates and remembered that we have the regional champs coming up at the end of this month. I thought that it would be too good an opportunity to get a whole bunch off coffee minded people together to drink some good coffee.

Our next Barista Jam session will be at Koldserve in Strydom Park on the 31st of October, starting at 19:00 until late. There will be loads of space and people are encouraged to bring along their own machines as well. I will post maps etc asap but thought I should get this post up in the mean time so as to give people some time to practice :-)

The address for Koldserve is 20 Susan St in Strydom Park

Please RSVP on the forums if you intend on attending so that we can get an idea of numbers for catering.

 JohnB

We are finally going to get some Barista Underground T-Shirts made up as I have found a supplier who does not need us to make 200 in one go :-). Cost is R100 each and they will be made for order only so I am not going to be making any up for stock. If you want one please add your name and the size you require onto the linked topic in the forum so we can put an order together. The shirts will be black, short sleeve and will have the BU underground logo on the front with the web site address on the back. I have also been thinking of getting some coffee mugs made as well with our logo, let me know what you gusy thing of that idea Any questions please let me know.   

JohnB  

SCASA has announced the regional barista champs for Gauteng will be held at the Good Food and Wine show in October/November this year. The regionals are the qualifying events for the Nationals which will be taking place in Jan 2009 with the winner going to the WBC. 6 Finalists have already been choosen at the Cape Town and Joburg events so this is your last chance to qualify for the Nationals if you want a chance off going to the WBC. Regionals will be run La Marzocco GB5 with the nationals being run on the La Simonelli

Date: 30 & 31 October and 1 & 2 November 2008

Venue: Coca-Cola Dome

 If you want any more details  Tanya Price: 021 797 4500 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Hi Guys

A big thanks to everyone who attended the Jam at Bean There, was a fantastic event with loads of new faces there. Sarah and Jonothan from Bean There were fantastic hosts and I thought that the "Coffee Quiz" was a great idea. It was also great being able to make some coffee on their La Marzocco although I saw a few people struggling with their micro-foaming (give me LESS power Scotty). Trevor and Neil introduced a few people to making an espresso on a real machine, not one off those push button french press machine :-). We had a total of 39 people attend the event so we are still growing these events very nicely.

If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve on these events in the future please be sure to add your comments to the thread in the forum. I almost think that it is time that we have some sort of agenda for these Jams so as to keep things on track in the future, any thoughts? 

As to the next Jam, we are looking at having the next Jam at Koldserve, they have one of the WBC Competition La Marzocco machines due in their show room very soon so I think that a trip there may be in order. Dates for this are still to be finalised but I will let you guys know as soon as we are sorted out.

JohnB