News Articles by Shaughan Dunne
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Do Good, Feel Good
Well, this was supposed to be a story about a little coffee nursery in the Highlands of Bali, but a few different events have conspired to convince me to take a slight left turn. Bear with me; it’s still a coffee story at heart, just one with a slightly philosophical detour!
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From Small Beginnings
I can still remember my first meeting with the farmers of Tri Karya quite vividly. We met them under the lean-to of a ramshackle little roadside shop a few miles past Bedugul. The rain was pouring down outside and I watched as Santosa made the customary small talk that precedes any “business meeting” in Bali. With some ceremony, they handed over a small plastic bag containing the most motley assortment of green beans I’ve ever seen. With my best poker face I said I would take it back to Australia for further assessment.
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Sea Circus Charm
My first contact with the Sea Circus crew was a quick email with the message “to ring Charlie about a cafe in Bali.” The mention of Bali quickly piqued my interest, and I jumped on the phone. Expecting a male voice on the end of the line, I was a little surprised when Charlie actually turned out to be Charlotte! Originally from the UK, Charlie (think a curly-haired Kate Winslet) found her way to Bali via Australia, where she developed a passion for coffee after spending some time with our friends Nolan Hirte and the Proud Mary crew. Along with her business partner Josh Herdman (Hugh Jackman crossed with Chesty Bonds), Charlie decided that the Seminyak scene had an opening for an intimate, fun venue and the long, testing gestation of Sea Circus began!
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Who the Hell Are You?
Five Senses Coffee has a long history of using psychometric testing both formally and anecdotally in our work environment. It sounds a bit like something you might find at the local branch of Scientology, but it’s actually a relatively simple and incredibly powerful way to “measure” and categorise peoples’ personality types. Many different versions of the testing have evolved, largely for commercial reasons, but they all have the common thread of attributing a primary personality trait with a secondary, complementary trait to each person tested.
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It Feels Good to be Green
Sustainability is a critical component of any business. A business should be able to survive the departure of the owner (either voluntarily or by the “bus theory”), any unforeseen changes in market conditions, and of course, be environmentally sustainable.
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Choosing the Best Coffee to Suit Your Brew Method
For most of our relatively short coffee history, Australia has worshipped at the altar of espresso coffee. Espresso has been the base for the majority of our caffeinated beverages and will continue to be the dominant player for many years to come. However, what we have started to see is a steady growth in cafes offering alternative brewing methods and this is a trend that is also starting to catch on in the home environment. With some really well designed devices like the Clever Coffee Dripper, as well as affordable domestic grinders like the Baratza range, there’s a whole gamut of new coffee options to explore.
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Open Your Kimono
Networking was one of those hot management buzzwords from a few years back. All of a sudden people were going to any event imaginable in an effort to find that key contact that was the magical ingredient to business success. Personally, I thought it was all a bit contrived and though networking never went away it was replaced by new terms and trends. I particularly like “open kimono” – to be open and frank in communication.
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Directions in Direct Trade
The 10 days I recently spent in Bali got me thinking about direct trade and what the term really means. Whilst there is no standard definition that works for all the people, all the time, the term was originally used to describe the action of roasting companies going direct to origin countries to source coffee, usually with some social benefit.
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Breaking through the ceiling
It’s Friday and you find yourself fronting the bar at a smart inner city bar with some work colleagues. Despite being a dedicated VB man at home, you begrudgingly step up and pay $9 for a pint of unpronounceable Belgian beer made by an obscure group of monks. You take a tentative sip and your palate is swamped with flavours.
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The new (long) black!
The long black is a drink that gets a bad rap and I’m here to go in to bat for it. It tends to be the drink that your father orders when you take him to your favourite café, and it suffers from a bit of an image problem. Before we go too far, let’s look at how to make the perfect long black.
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The 80/20 Principle — more reward for less work!
Many years ago I stumbled across a book in a public library called ‘The 80/20 Principle’ which claims that it can help you get bigger returns on your efforts by applying a universal concept called ‘the Paretos principle’. Named after Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, its basic premise is that for most events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In essence, it’s saying to concentrate your scarce resources (time) on the areas that have the most impact.
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Out with the old, in with the new
What a year! Most of us in Australia managed to get through the GFC pretty much intact. Maybe the dream boat or holiday in Tuscany has been put on hold for another year, but generally business is tracking along alright.
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Bali baristas in town
It’s no secret to anyone who follows our stories and blogs that the people and culture of Bali hold a special place in our hearts. We first ventured up to Bali in 2007 and since then, we’ve taken many trips to build upon the direct trade relationship that we started with the farmers on that first visit.
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Proud Mary rocks the streets of Collingwood
Roll back the clock to 2006 and Nolan Hirte was running a successful café and had won the WA Barista Championship. He had made a big impression at the national barista finals in Adelaide and any café he was involved with in Perth seemed assured of success. The logical thing would have been to open his own café and watch the money roll in.
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Our Bali coffee is officially on the water!
We’re very excited about this Direct Trade shipment from Bali. After a three year ‘apprenticeship’ in understanding the region and the people, we think this year’s crop will be the big pay off! Special prize to anyone who can pick out the 250 grams of coffee that was picked by our Bean Counter (that joke just keeps getting funnier!), Jason Gray.
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The crema dilemma
For a long time crema has been viewed as the definitive sign of great espresso. This has never sat very well with us at Five Senses, as we have often tasted magnificent coffees with fleeting, delicate crema and some not so magnificent coffees with crema that lasted forever.
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Training in paradise
We added a new dimension to our annual harvest trip to Bali this year by doing some barista training in our base town of Ubud. A speculative email to the good people at Casa Luna got the process started. With a posse of Australia’s best baristas in the group, I thought it would be great to do some training between our trips out to Kintamani to work with the growers. It kills me that so many origin countries don’t use their own coffee, and import stale product from far off Mediterranean countries.
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Vinyl; record breaking coffee
Aaron Pyne has been something of a fixture on the Perth CBD coffee scene over the last few years. With stints at Tarts, Lincolns and Zekka on his resume, we were always keen to get Aaron into the Five Senses family. When he began looking for a coffee partner for his new site Vinyl, we jumped at the chance!
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On the road
Some of you may be aware that each year, coffee tragics from around the globe gather somewhere in the US for the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual expo. This is the biggest event on the specialty coffee calendar and this year, the expo was even bigger, as it was combined with the World Barista Championship. The host city this year was Atlanta, Georgia.
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It's all in the cup
One of our mantras at Five Senses is ‘it’s all about the result in the cup’. After the last couple of weeks I’ve realised the cup itself may be just as important. Let me explain…
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Storing your coffee in your cafe
For many people, coffee is still thought of as a dry good that doesn’t need any specific attention in regards to storage and handling. Obviously, this is a long way from the truth! In changing people’s perceptions, I try to get them to think of coffee as a fresh food product, and then things start to make sense to them.
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Some like it hot
As a professional barista, you will have well and truly mastered the basics of producing great espresso. You’re probably itching to take on a new challenge and take your coffee to even more sublime heights.
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Fun with a filter
Long term readers will remember me banging on about different brewing methods in my critically acclaimed, but often misunderstood, ‘The plunger is back!’ story last year. Australian coffee is dominated by espresso-based drinks (ie from an espresso machine, not necessarily drunk as espresso). Some of the world’s best, and often most expensive, coffees have finely nuanced flavours which are totally overwhelmed and lost in espresso.
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Ideas for a big 2009
One of the many challenges facing café owners is keeping their business fresh and moving with the times. Let’s face it, running a busy café is hard work, and it’s very easy to get ‘internalised’ and stop seeing your business as your customers see it. Here are a few ideas to look through — see if you can embrace at least a couple to keep you and your business fresh.
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Bali Gold, Part 3 — the beans arrive
Our new Direct Trade Balinese bean has arrived, and there’s been a lot of excitement at the roastery as we’ve tested and tweaked the roast profile, cupped, sipped and slurped our way to caffeine heaven and finally, given it the tick of approval for distribution to the coffee-loving-masses.
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Going for gold in 2009
When you think ‘Gold Coast’, great coffee doesn’t immediately spring to mind. This weekend, however, is an exception. The pick of the nation’s baristas and specialty coffee professionals have descended on the sunshine state, with four titles up for grabs in the Australian Barista Championship.
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Coffee kings head east
Three local men are packing their bags and shining up their espresso machines as they prepare to represent WA at the 2009 Detpak Australian Barista Championships, being held at the Gold Coast Exhibition and Convention Centre from 30 January to 1 February.
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A new dosing tool from Scottie Callaghan
It’s always exciting when something truly original, and driven by the needs of the barista, emerges in the specialty coffee industry. Scottie Callaghan’s brilliant dosing tool ticks both boxes.
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Introducing the Anfobur
Every industry or field of work has an elite group of people known as ‘lead users’. The lead users are the guys who constantly search for new and better ways to do things. It’s their endless quest for continual improvement that drags the rest of the industry forward.
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World Barista Champion enjoys his Synesso
From world recognised coffee guru David Schomer to current World Barista Champion James Hoffman, all the experts are lining up to lend their support to Synesso’s world class espresso machines, particularly in respect of the engineering tricks which deliver thermal stability not seen in any other machine …
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Looking Good in Tights
When our new recruit, Mark Chandler (WABA Trainer Extraordinaire) told us that his step-daughter, Emma, had won a place at the Royal Ballet School in London, we weren’t all that surprised. After all, Mark was renowned for his nifty footwork on the basketball court in his younger days, and rumour has it, that these days he carves up the dance floor at dubious nightclubs around town.
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2008 Australian Barista Champs Weekend — Part 2
The biggest weekend in the Australian specialty coffee scene has just finished. With countless hours of training and preparation culminating in just one shot at success in front of the judges at the Australian Barista Championships, excitement ran high. Held on 3-4 May at the Docklands in Melbourne, the Championships are the high point of the national specialty coffee year.
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2008 Australian Barista Champs Weekend — Part 1
You can almost feel the tension in the air as the cream of Australia’s barista talent jet into Melbourne for the 2008 Australian Barista Championships. Various groups huddle in the corners of prominent cafes, discussing last minute tactics and evaluating the opposition, while nervous baristas check their competition blends are ‘peaking’ at the right time. It’s a veritable hive of activity and tension.
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The plunger is back!
Folks, it’s time to delve into the recesses of the kitchen cupboards. Push past the long forgotten bread maker, the pasta machine that you used once before relegating to the back of the cupboard and dust off the trusty plunger that served you so well, before it was replaced by the shiny espresso machine.
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WA heads to the Australian Barista Champs
After such a successful WA Barista Champs event it came time for the nationals. Held last weekend (28-29 April) the event was hosted in Adelaide, with a strong contingent from WA flying over to compete.
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