Using your new ABID:

Take freshly ground coffee, ground on a filter setting.

Leave the ABID on the counter on it’s coaster. It shouldn’t leak

Use about 18g of coffee this is around 60mls or two heaped tablespoons.

The size of filter paper is not that important, but for best results, insert filter paper and rinse it with your freshly boiled water, swirl to thoroughly wet the paper, disposing of the water, in order to remove any bleach or paper taste from the filter.

Add the coffee.

Pour over a little water no hotter than 95°C. This is easily achieved by letting the kettle boil and stand for round a minute. The average kettle loses 7°C every minute. Not using cooler water will cause a bitter flavour.

Allow it to swell the coffee and after a few moments pour in more water. We recommend using a total of 250mls of water, but don’t use more water than your cup holds.

Wait 3-4 minutes. It is worth timing. Longer increases flavour and body, shorter enhances perceived complexity.

Place the ABID on your cup and the coffee will come out on its own

Enjoy.

Dump the filter and rinds in the bin or in your garden (makes good compost)

Dishwasher safe, but a brief rinse will do or if using immediately again, don’t bother, just tip out rinds and go again.

For more help:

021-4192945

www.truthcoffee.com

Info@truthcoffee.com

Filter coffee machine? pity about the heating element ruining the coffee as it drips through, and with a very few exceptions, little control of brew strength.

Cheap home espresso machine? great except they don’t work. To make things worse optimising them involves purchasing a grinder costing waaaay more than the toy machine you bought and stuck in a cupboard

Moka pot? good especially when a grinder is involved, but you need to know how to use it in anger. Complicated, messy and involved.

Plunger, Again as with the Moka pot a little technique is involved, and many complain about the coffee solids coming through as residue in the cup.

What to do, what to do?

Try the ABID dammit. Cheap, around R150, easy to use and you can control brew contact time. too little contact between water and ground coffee and dull watery underextraction is the brew of the day. Too long and bitter mud is the joy produced. Abid solves that allowing you to accurately decide when to stop brewing (we have best results as with plunger of 3 minutes.)

Simple technique: Put it on the counter, insert a filter paper, put in just under 20g of coffee. fill with 250ml of just off boiling water (95°C is perfect). set a timer to 3 minutes or tap your fingers in a suitably irritating drumming fashion on a table… then place on a cup to allow the coffee to flow out automatically.

to wash up, tip into garbage, rinse with water. Done

It is microwave and dishwasher proof , but who cares?

buy here

Brewing…

He concisely describes the first 3 waves with the third being the one we are TRUTH.fully living, but I find it very interesting how we and the better, more well-known guys, especially abroad¹ have been getting “keeping on track” so to speak.

We have been promoting the Abid per-cup drip filter experience (read more about them here) and falling more in love with them. The main thing that resonates in his blog with us here is that we love coffee and are still in it because we love it and love having fun with it and where ever this ‘wave’ leads us I just hope that we continue to have fun and enjoy the coffee along the way.

Zane

“But why Zane? How could you? You keep going on about caring etc etc but now you tell us this.”Their is a very good reason for this. The reason is because, and quoting the coffee genius James Hoffmann², Fair Trade is “the absolute minimum necessary to get people to stop questioning how you source, or pushing you to do better. Not enough.”³.

VERY briefly how I see it, there are two prevalent ways of trading coffee. The standard way whereby one regards coffee as a New York Stock Exchange Dollar value; you primarily look at and regard your self with coffee figures. And this is where Fair Trade tries to ensure a fairer price by ensuring that those who comply etc etc will get 15cents (US) per pound above the stock exchange price.

The second is “known” as the direct-trade or relationship coffee model. Basically, it is about cutting out unnecessary middle-men where possible and locate the source of the coffee whether it be a coffee co-op (several farms or a regions collective coffee supply that is collected together) or single-estate / farm in order to build a relationship with the farmer to team together. The emphasis here is not just on money but on quality and paying a good price for a good product, and looking at ways in which one can assist farming communities develop⁴. Benefits include paying the farmer(s) directly which means more money going straight to the farmer (or at least more direct). In general, most companies who purchase coffee this way have not paid less than twice that of the New York Stock Exchange price.

There are numerous potential problems with Fair Trade but, if you are interested, I can e-mail you two really good articles about Fair Trade (although they are slightly too harsh on Fair Trade and what it is and has done even if merely with regards to changing mind-sets and/or creating awareness). One reason that irritates me personally though is that if you have two farms next to each other and they are both Fair Trade certified, and the one farmer plants his crop and ignores it until harvest time while the other takes care of his farm as though it were a member of the family – i.e. producing much better tasting coffee in theory – once processed and sold, both farmers get the same amount of money per pound. Sounds slightly more like Unfair Trade to me.

A second reason: in a video blog I watched recently⁵, a very good observation and interesting point was raised with regards to the selling prices of general “run-of-the-mill” coffee and Fair Trade around Central and South America last year. For most of these countries, due to a huge drought in the general region, coffee was selling at quite a lot higher than, and at times double that of Fair Trade due to a lower yield and higher demand. Now what happened to the guys “locked in” to selling at the “better” Fair Trade price? Apparently what happened was that a lot of the farmers where sneakily selling there stuff off to other buyers to get the extra money and in deed they should. But this doesn’t happen all the time and Fair Trade pricing is often giving back more.

So, a late disclaimer just to clarify my feelings, I am not against Fair Trade if the farmer actually gets more than if they had to “sell out” the stock exchange way (i.e. what they claim they do) and this does happen quite often – my heart is for the farmer too. If I feel that the green coffee I receive is far more amazing than the “run-of-the-mill” stuff then my green coffee costs should reflect it. Both third-world farmer (and processor) and Western-world roaster can benefit from a really good product, why should it be just the end buyers who benefit? So if you are buying Fair Trade and it’s changing the lives of those farmers more so than before Fair Trade certification then great.

Interested in direct-trade or relationship coffees? Find out more from www.sustainableharvest.com.

Zane

“But why Zane? How could you? You keep going on about caring etc etc but now you tell us this.”Their is a very good reason for this. The reason is because, and quoting the coffee genius James Hoffmann², Fair Trade is “the absolute minimum necessary to get people to stop questioning how you source, or pushing you to do better. Not enough.”³.

VERY briefly how I see it, there are two prevalent ways of trading coffee. The standard way whereby one regards coffee as a New York Stock Exchange Dollar value; you primarily look at and regard your self with coffee figures. And this is where Fair Trade tries to ensure a fairer price by ensuring that those who comply etc etc will get 15cents (US) per pound above the stock exchange price.

The second is “known” as the direct-trade or relationship coffee model. Basically, it is about cutting out unnecessary middle-men where possible and locate the source of the coffee whether it be a coffee co-op (several farms or a regions collective coffee supply that is collected together) or single-estate / farm in order to build a relationship with the farmer to team together. The emphasis here is not just on money but on quality and paying a good price for a good product, and looking at ways in which one can assist farming communities develop⁴. Benefits include paying the farmer(s) directly which means more money going straight to the farmer (or at least more direct). In general, most companies who purchase coffee this way have not paid less than twice that of the New York Stock Exchange price.

There are numerous potential problems with Fair Trade but, if you are interested, I can e-mail you two really good articles about Fair Trade (although they are slightly too harsh on Fair Trade and what it is and has done even if merely with regards to changing mind-sets and/or creating awareness). One reason that irritates me personally though is that if you have two farms next to each other and they are both Fair Trade certified, and the one farmer plants his crop and ignores it until harvest time while the other takes care of his farm as though it were a member of the family – i.e. producing much better tasting coffee in theory – once processed and sold, both farmers get the same amount of money per pound. Sounds slightly more like Unfair Trade to me.

A second reason: in a video blog I watched recently⁵, a very good observation and interesting point was raised with regards to the selling prices of general “run-of-the-mill” coffee and Fair Trade around Central and South America last year. For most of these countries, due to a huge drought in the general region, coffee was selling at quite a lot higher than, and at times double that of Fair Trade due to a lower yield and higher demand. Now what happened to the guys “locked in” to selling at the “better” Fair Trade price? Apparently what happened was that a lot of the farmers where sneakily selling there stuff off to other buyers to get the extra money and in deed they should. But this doesn’t happen all the time and Fair Trade pricing is often giving back more.

So, a late disclaimer just to clarify my feelings, I am not against Fair Trade if the farmer actually gets more than if they had to “sell out” the stock exchange way (i.e. what they claim they do) and this does happen quite often – my heart is for the farmer too. If I feel that the green coffee I receive is far more amazing than the “run-of-the-mill” stuff then my green coffee costs should reflect it. Both third-world farmer (and processor) and Western-world roaster can benefit from a really good product, why should it be just the end buyers who benefit? So if you are buying Fair Trade and it’s changing the lives of those farmers more so than before Fair Trade certification then great.

Interested in direct-trade or relationship coffees? Find out more from www.sustainableharvest.com.

Zane

I went to a lecture on greening our pastures at the Graduate School of Business last year. The talking head said that one of the easiest and biggest green things we can do is stop buying little plastic bottles of water. Then there is “the plastic bottle in the sun will kill you scare” and of cause pre-pubescent girls beginning their periods because of the oestrogen PTFE bottles are supposed to infuse into the water.

When we discovered eco pure water we knew what to do immediately. Glass flip top bottles, seven stage filtration, and voila.

Refillable glass, eco friendly, sadly not cheap, but you get what you pay for. Multi-stage filtration, UV, clay, carbon, the works! The water is chilled at the last moment, saving more planet.

The water is available in still and sparkling, small R7 large R15 and the bottles themselves are R30 and R45 respectively

Yfrog – kzjr – Uploaded by jon_maliepaard.

Single-origins, naked porta filters, La Marzocco GB5, micro-textured milk, rosetta latte art, relationship-bought, refurbished 1960′s Probat roaster, mouse-tailing, dry-processed arabicas, Reg Barber tampers, double-shots (only), medium-roasted, floral-notes, sugar + coffee (real coffee) = work of the Devil, grind-on-demand, etc. etc.

Excited? Drooling?

We are looking for a self-motivated¹ coffee-passionate person or two to join us at TRUTH. coffeecult. If that sounds like you or a friend of yours, come have a coffee on us and lets chat². Ask for David or Zane.

On Tuesday I had the privilege of roasting my first batch of coffee (with some guidance and direction from David of course) on our amazing refurbished Probat roaster and I assure you, it was quite intense. I have watched a good friend of mine roast a number of times in the past and have chatted to her about how much there is to know and feel around roasting “the correct way” well² and…it seemed rather complicated (you rock Cuth).

On Tuesday I confirmed my assumptions that roasting is both an art and a science, and both are vitally important. There are a lot of variables like humidity that you cannot change, and several things you can (such as dropping or increasing the temperature inside the drum of the roaster at certain times) all in trying to choreograph the perfect roast.

I am already regarded as a coffee geek³ I suppose and realise that I am definitely well on my way to adding roasting to my list of coffee geek-itudes.

So, I’m off to one more roast for the weekend.

See you soon.

Zane  ”Can’t-wait-to-fire-up-the-roaster-again” Mattisson

———————————————————————————–

Myth 1:

You have to drive and fetch your own roasted coffee beans for home-use.

TRUTH:

We can deliver free of charge to you within the city bowl, or for a nominal fee to the surrounding areas.

Myth 2:

I love getting out the office for a quick cuppa but can (almost) never find parking.

TRUTH:

Okay, for most places in the city bowl area this is true. I’ve often found myself driving around and around in search of the endangered and exotic parking space. HOWEVER, we have several customer parking bays surrounding us (at the Prestwich Memorial site), so drop by soon.

Myth 3:

It’s not really worth driving ALL the way into town to visit TRUTH on a Saturday morning JUST for a cup of coffee.

TRUTH:

Disown the fool trying to sweet-talk you away from your enlightened coffee-conversion…even if it’s your Mom. Disclaimer: Mom’s rock.

Sorry if you were expecting me to go off on a tangent about how to hug your tree in a friendlier way or reduce your carbon footprint (which I can if someone would like).

Zane

* More myths and TRUTH on the way.