For such an established spirit, Whiskey has earned a somewhat confused reputation in Australia. Sometimes lauded, sometimes reviled, often the product of huge operations in far off, exotic lands. But in a small factory space in East Perth, the good people over at Whipper Snapper Distillery are making strides in both Australian and International whiskey, all the while putting out a beautiful, approachable product and being transparent about their processes all the way. We stopped by Whipper Snapper to talk to distiller Tim Hosken about the logistics of creating a uniquely Australian Whiskey. Whipper Snapper manage every aspect of production in house, from sourcing grains and corn from around Western Australia, to mashing, distilling and bottling. They hit the market with Crazy Uncle Moonshine, a white grain spirit made of whiskey before it is aged in oak barrels. Tim told us that the decision to release was, foremost, it made sense when intending to make a smooth Whiskey, that the pre-barrelled spirit should be smooth and approachable itself. Beyond this, it helped the young distillery get their name and product out during the two-year period their whiskey would need to sit in barrels. Whipper Snapper were amongst the first Australian distilleries to put out a moonshine, but since Crazy Uncle debuted in 2014 the product has begun appearing in more and more distilleries, both as a versatile cocktail ingredient, and an interesting look into whiskey stripped of the influence of oak barrels. Their first Whiskey, Upshot, is a divergence from many Australian and international whiskies, more similar in style to American bourbon than to Blended or Single Malt Scotch. The decision to include corn in their mash has resulted in a product which is less familiar, but more robust and better suited to Perth’s climate- which is remarkably different to Scotland’s. How To Make WhiskeyMaking Whiskey looks like a complex process, but breaks down into a series of more digestible processes. The staff at Whipper Snapper are very transparent about their process, and offer tours showing and talking customers through the process. To make Upshot Whiskey and Crazy Uncle Moonshine, a combination of local grains and corn are crushed up in what is essentially a giant coffee grinder, and then boiled and fermented to create a beer-like Mash. The Mash is run through their still— a copper column still bought second hand from a distillery in America. As it comes out of the still, the ‘heart’ of the spirit is separated from the ‘heads’ and ‘tails’: the less palatable spirit which runs at the start and then toward the end of the run, respectively. This remaining heart of the spirit is run through the still a second time, then the resulting spirit, over 90% alcohol, is cut down to 43% and let to set in oak barrels for two years to make Upshot Whiskey, or cut down to 43% to make Crazy Uncle Moonshine. Whipper Snapper are in 139 Kensington Street, East Perth. Open every day as a cellar door and able to book tours daily.
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27/7/2017 0 Comments Grape To Glass #3: Mr BarvalMr. BarvalRob Gherardi’s is a small operation, the winemaking aspect of which extends barely outside of his own family. And so the same question inevitably comes up, from where is the silhouetted character in film noir garb in front of the the white alps on their label? Who is Mr. Barval? Mr. Barval wines join Rob’s experience in Margaret River in famous wineries including Moss Wood and Cullens, his winemaking tenure in Barolo and discovery of old world winemaking, and his Italian heritage, growing up in Valtellina. Mr. Barval represents, in both name and winemaking, these three influences, creating the amalgamation of Margaret River, BARolo and VALtellina. Rob GherardiRob was immediately likeable and incredibly down to earth. When I met him, after a brief introduction that I would be writing about him, he immediately began asking me about the blog, photographs, and writing. It was only through conscious effort that I was able to turn the tables and get Rob to talk about himself. But once I did get Rob talking about himself he proved himself a fascinating wealth of both information and stories from his wine journey to his surprising year, which involves an endless summer between winemaking in Margaret River and guiding Day Tours of Wineries in Italy: While working as a winemaker in Italy for a low wage despite a prestigious position, Rob and his wife brainstormed ideas to supplement their income. Realising that, as Rob said, "the children from the winery I worked for were all friends with the children from other prestigious wineries", Rob was able to capitalise on this wealth of contacts to start a company for personal, intimate wine tours. Rob credits this job with supplementing his family’s late summers in Italy for between one and three months a year. It is not all as romantic as it appears, as Rob suggests, “Being a tour guide, much like a winemaker, sounds a lot more luxurious than the reality of the job really is.” His WinesThe hands on approach, use of small batches, and wild ferment with no additives could very easily place Mr. Barval wines amongst the Natural Wines camp which has generated a lot of buzz of late, but whilst his motivation is similar, Rob finds his approach sits much more comfortable under the banner of ‘Old World’ winemaking, and the difference, whilst subtle, is readily apparent in his wines which Rob describes as “Acid focused, elegance over power, delicacy over forcefulness” and "I want my wines to get you salivating, making you want to eat food with them, which, in turn, further enhances the drinking experience” Mr. Barval are certainly the most ‘traditional’ wines we have seen thus far in the Grape To Glass series, but this is in no way to say that they’re not incredible wines. We begun the night tasting the Mistral, a Rhone Valley Blend in style comprised of Viognier and Marsanne, and named Mistral after the cold breeze which runs through the Rhone valleys. The Mistral was incredibly easy drinking whilst still complex and fascinating. The Chardonnay which followed was delicate and lovely. Chardonnay is a divisive variety, but Rob said that his care, delicacy and use of amazing fruit has been enough to change some people's minds. Onto reds, we drank the Rosso blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot. The Rosso was our favourite, with bold, rich, intense flavours, but enough balance to be easy drinking without feeling ‘short’. Onto the Cabernet Merlot, a surprisingly subtle Bordeaux blend owed to Rob’s old world, European winemaking sensibilities. Rob mentioned that he wanted to combat the tendency for West Australian Cabernets to get "bigger and bigger” and this wine is testament to his philosophy. Rob brought along some of his extremely popular, and entirely sold out Nebbiolo. The Nebbiolo is also a deviation from Australian winemaking tendencies, rather than try to replicate the prestigious Barolo style of Italian wine, Rob decided he “Couldn’t make Barolo out of Karridale” but he could create a wine in the style of Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba. The wine is a labour of love, having been hand plunged every four hours for five days, and the simplicity and dedication has resonated with a lot of people, resulting in a very popular wine. Grape To GlassBudburst were excellent hosts and the crowd once again upheld wonderful and fascinating conversation. We loved matching the wines with provided cheese and antipasto.The event space this week was more open, which made for a convivial and exciting atmosphere, and beautiful wines were just the trick to get everyone in a great mood. Pours in Grape To Glass are just a little over 75ml, which is a great amount to be able to get familiar with each wine without having your palette overwhelmed before the tastings are over. We’ve loved being able to compare wines across a winemakers range without feeling rushed as you often can in a wine tour. Giving us enough time to fall in love with the wine, which we think is great. Next in Neighbourhood Event Co.'s Grape To Glass series is Vinteloper at The Shorehouse on July 27th, followed by The Pawn Wine Co. at Rockefeller Deli on August 3rd.
See the rest of our coverage of Grape To Glass. 20/7/2017 0 Comments Grape To Glass #2: Flor MarchéFlor, Spanish for Flower and Marché, French for Market, the name Flor Marché pays homage to owner and winemaker Elizabeth Reed’s winemaking background. Elizabeth started Flor Marché with one tonne of riesling and two barrels of shiraz from the Porongurup and Mount Barker sub-regions of the Great Southern in 2010. For the last 7 years, she has continued to source high quality, single vineyard grapes in small batches to craft her wines. Current varietals include; sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon from Wilyabrup, Margaret River; riesling, pinot noir and shiraz from the Great Southern; and grenache and trebbiano from the Swan Valley. Flor Marché wines are considered, balanced and beautiful. Perhaps most interesting about them is that owner and winemaker Elizabeth Reed does not shy away from transparency. The event’s wine descriptions were detailed timelines of the wine’s coming into being. A refreshing take when so many wineries label their wines with hyperbole or forced impressions. Elizabeth ReedElizabeth was lovely and massively informative. She mentioned that she would always find herself more comfortable back at the winery or vineyard than out promoting her wines in the city but this sentiment did not, however, come across in her conversation, both with us, and the crowd of Grape to Glass. When telling us about her journey in winemaking Elizabeth made clear that central to her is the building and cultivating of relationships, both professionally and personally. Small batch winemaking can very often be glorified as a solo effort, but Elizabeth is forward and thankful to the range of people who have helped her along her journey as a winemaker. The first of these influences was university professor Tom Stannage, an inspirational teacher who Elizabeth said “Made me look deep within to evaluate my career path going forwards,” and ultimately prompted her move from studying Arts to Viticulture & Oenology. Elizabeth feels that she has always been “Very split between the Arts and Sciences, and winemaking has been the perfect embodiment and expression of both.” She offered a quote from her favourite author, Tom Robbins, which she believed perfectly, embodied her beliefs that "The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human”. Further along her winemaking journey, Elizabeth credits winemakers Marco Capelli and Ricard Rofes for influence and inspiration. Elizabeth worked for Marco in Napa, California in 2002, Marco “…taught me to approach wine intuitively and trust my senses of smell and taste rather than rely on laboratory analysis. He remains one of my greatest inspirations to this day.’ Ricard, another winemaking influence, established the Can Blau project with Elizabeth in the Montsant DO of Spain in 2004. The project to select the best fruit from vineyards in the Masroig sub-region saw them working for a number of years to create a wine which has become internationally lauded. Elizabeth and Ricard continue to collaborate on projects, working together to produce wine from the Priorat DO for their Catalitzador wine label. In her current winemaking for Flor Marché, Elizabeth credits the excellent growers from whom she sources fruit, including Eugenio Valenti, an 85-year-old grape grower based in the Swan Valley. Eugenio planted his grapes in 1958, which Elizabeth uses to make her grenache and trebbiano. Such old grapes are a rarity in WA, and Elizabeth is incredibly fond of both the vines and of Eugenio. She is also working with a local potter in Wilyabrup, who has invited her to set up a cellar door in his pottery and gallery space. The two are researching different local clays and techniques to craft locally made amphorae: clay vessels used for wine fermentation. This will be an exciting innovation as the majority of amphorae currently used in Australia are imported from Europe. Her WinesFlor Marché wines are approachable and beautiful, all in the same sentence. They are nuanced, exciting wines which I have no doubt would be crowd pleasing enough to bring to a party or housewarming without hesitation. On top of the four wines included in the tasting, Elizabeth brought up three extra wines: ‘Rizzante’ a riesling Pet Nat, her new release trebbiano, and a naturally fortified grenache. Between Elizabeth’s special additions, we tried her 2017 Sauvignon Blanc, a beautiful, balanced wine with extended skin contact which gave it chalky tannins. Following this the 2016 Grenache from Eugenio’s 60-year-old grape vines. The Grenache had been left on skins for three weeks after fermenting, and had no contact with oak, leaving an expression of just the fruit with nothing else in the way. The resulting wine felt fruity with a little bit of bite. We're told this isn't a tasting note, but to us the wine felt very 'Red'. We think Red is good. We continued on to the 2014 Longley Pinot Noir, a crowd favourite which was balanced, and lively. We finished on our personal favourite, the 2015 Elsie Cabernet Sauvignon. Elizabeth tells us the Cabernet Sauvignon was given structure from a subtle use of French oak. It felt warm and inviting. A quintessential, elegant Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon. Grape To GlassHauling over to North Fremantle, this Grape To Glass brought us for our first time to Habitué. A warm, cozy and welcoming refuge from the cool, rainy night. We met a bunch of fascinating people. nibbled on beautiful appetisers and heard great stories and learned a lot about winemaking from Elizabeth. Again the wines showed up wonderfully in Riedel glasses which we were invited to take home, and in a beautiful touch, this time around the wines were poured by Elizabeth herself and by Neighbourhood Event Co.’s Josh Starick Next in Neighbourhood Event Co.'s Grape To Glass series is Mr. Barval at Budburst on July 20th followed by Vinteloper at The Shorehouse on July 27th.
In an unassuming shopfront just before Whatley Crescent intersects King William Street sits one of the prized possessions of Bayswater and one of my favourite specialty food stores: The Little Cheese Shop is demure in both name and dimension, but the knowledge and dedication of it’s staff, including owners Geoff and Emma, have found them remarkably well lauded. Backing up their great knowledge of cheese with a litany of events, tastings and collaborations, all of which which substantially size up the footprint of the cosy little store. We got together with Geoff to talk about the Little Cheese Shop’s philosophies, cheese, and Perth’s ever changing food scene. “Before we first opened we were local to Bayswater and could see potential in it. Maylands had the structure plan and Bayswater was next. We thought we could set up and be ready as the area starts to find it’s feet in the way Maylands and Bassendean have. Bayswater is a little bit out of the way, but we love that, it means that people who want to come and see us, will come and see us. And so far they have.” Geoff stepped into cheese after a long stint as a chef. He spent the next eight years at Blue Cow, selling cheese to other chefs and during this time noticed that retail spaces were increasingly desiring the sorts of cheeses which could be found on restaurant cheese boards, but the channels to deliver these products were not yet available to them. “I was selling cheese to Chefs during my time at Blue Cow,” said Geoff, "but those products weren’t necessarily able to go out into retail spaces. We saw people were loving the cheeses, but wanted to be able to enjoy and share them outside of a restaurant setting.” Moving on from Blue Cow, Geoff is now able to bring his years of experience not only to his customers, but his network of relationships enable the Little Cheese Shop to source unique cheeses, some of which can’t be found elsewhere. “There are a few products we have which other shops sell, but then there are cheeses we source which are unique and different, and many of which Perth and even Australia have never seen before.” Said Geoff, “The currency of the Little Cheese shop is our expertise and our ability to source new and different products. We’ve built a lot of relationships with eight years in the cheese industry and twenty years as a chef, combining them we’ve found that we can source and offer something really unique. We’re at the point now where no one else in Perth is able to offer our level of expertise” Whilst Geoff’s world is surrounded by cheese, he understands that to most of his customers he is still selling a specialty ingredient, which is why Geoff and his staff understand that their own opinions and expertise are as valuable to the company as their incredible cheeses. Said Geoff, “A lot of people go straight to the cheese, and kind of freak out. Even though it’s a tiny fridge with perhaps forty or fifty cheeses, they’re unlike a lot of what you’ll find in Perth, so those people usually come over to the counter and ask us to talk them through it all. People will come and say, ‘I have a dinner party,’ or ‘I want to cook something for my partner and finish it with cheese, even ‘We’re going to just sit on the balcony and drink a bottle of sparkling, and eat some cheese.’ And we’re more than happy to have that conversation with them” “We have a pretty even split between people who just want a nice cheese with their glass of wine on a thursday night, and people who want say, a platter or a tower— Probably once a week, we’ll have someone come in and ask how we’re doing, say ‘I wouldn’t have thought a cheese shop in bayswater could survive.’ But three years in, we don’t really care— We’ve found our market in the people who are happy to open themselves to something different and unique, and we have such amazing customers, every one of our customers is amazing,” The Little Cheese Shop can be found at 89c Whatley Crescent, Bayswater. They share details about new products and events on their Facebook and Instagram.
11/7/2017 0 Comments Grape To Glass #1: Brave New WineWe’re featuring the Neighbourhood Event Co. roaming winemaker series Grape To Glass, a series of pop up cellar doors in a ton of different small bars and restaurants around Perth and Fremantle. The series runs every Thursday from the start of July until the end of August and last Thursday we kicked off at Queen Street’s The Flour Factory with Brave New Wine, a Denmark winery owned and run by winemakers Yoko and Andries. Brave New WineBrave New Wine begun as a single barrel of skin contact riesling in 2013. Andries called it a passion project and also an antidote to some of the less inspiring winemaking he was performing in his day job as a commercial winemaker. Yoko and Andries continued making the sort of wine which excited them, and for years they made wine at home for friends, themselves, and family. “We source organic fruit, we ferment naturally and we don’t add acid, enzymes or yeast, we don’t fine or filter our wines. I understand why big wineries work differently, there’s a lot which can go wrong in low intervention winemaking, but when they don’t you end up with a wine with a real life and vitality” said Andries. Yoko mentioned that the push to take Brave New Wine to bars and bottleshops actually came sooner than they were expecting. When Andries was made redundant after the commercial winery he was working for was bought out. With two kids and a mortgage, the couple realised it was time to put everything they had into their own wines. Since selling their first bottle in just January of last year, Yoko and Andries have gone on to win the Danger Zone award from Young Gun of Wine for their Wonderland Botanical Riesling. Yoko and AndriesYoko and Andries are unassuming and lovely, they were completely unpretentious about their winemaking process, both in it’s success and challenges— One such challenge being their relative isolation in the world of small batch winemaking. Yoko told me that one of the best benefits to winning a Young Gun of Wine award was the chance to check in with other likeminded winemakers. During the Grape To Glass event they shared stories about many of the aspects of winemaking which would never occur otherwise: from the practical: that, whilst they are always looking to make the sort of wines which they enjoy, it gets progressively harder to turn off the internal critic when drinking their own wine; to the unexpected: how Andries’ hands go completely black during the harvest season; to the completely unexpected: Yoko asking to smell Andries’ legs during times when he’s come back from lengthy winemaking sessions. Their WinesWe drank four of Yoko and Andries’ wines during the Grape To Glass event, and afterwards were invited downstairs to try some of this year’s Wonderland botanical riesling, pulled straight from the barrel on their way up. Brave New Wine wines have a bite to them, there is a huge bouquet of acidity and flavour, which may well take you off guard. After this initial hit, their wines reveal themselves to be quietly beautiful, both easy to drink and fascinating. Several other guests at the night mentioned to me that Yoko and Andries had taken their favourite varietals, and made something completely unique with them. Andries’ use of the word ‘vitality’ certainly comes to mind. The wines are given names as a statement of intention of sorts, the varietal itself taking second billing. As Yoko and Andries are new wave winemakers, they aren’t bound by any rules which state that a certain varietal must be made to taste a certain way, and with such a variety of winemaking techniques available to them, they felt that a name was a much better indication of how their wines would taste and feel, than simply labelling the varietal. We Tried: Nat Daddy, Petillant Naturel — A Petit Naturel or 'Pet Nat' is a wine predating champagne. Rather than adding more sugar and yeast after the first fermentation, this method involves bottling the wine before it has finished it’s first fermentation. This red blend was very much alive. Funky and fruity, with a tart sweetness and bright bubbles. This wine was bottled without any additives of sulphur and the yeast was not extracted, leaving some sediment toward the end of the bottle. This wine felt genuine and funky. Klusterphunk, skin contact Chardonnay — This chardonnay was an ‘orange wine’, or basically a reverse rose: Where a rose is the product of putting red grapes through a white wine process, orange wine is the product of putting white grapes through a red wine process. In this case, whole bunches of grapes were fermented over a fortnight, then put into a basket press with their stalks. The red wine tannins make this wine heavy and chalky. They used only old oak barrels, leaving none of the chewiness from which Chardonnay has earned a divisive reputation. This wine felt delicate and beautiful, the red wine feel pairs wonderfully with the juicy chardonnay. Pi Oui, Pinot Noir — From one of Yoko and Andries’ own managed vineyards, named ‘slim pickings’ after its very first vintage was decimated by crows. They call this wine their labour of love, and having spent four days hand plucking grapes off stems in order to fill a barrel with entirely unsquished, perfect grapes, they are certainly correct on the ‘labour’ part. This wine was an absolute crowd favourite, not too sweet, but bright and savoury and complex. Schadenfreud, Shiraz — In the early days of Brave New Wine Yoko and Andries’ had access to a vineyard producing amazing fruit, but which was being used by it’s owner to make a reasonably unimpressive budget wine. The couple used this fruit to make their much lauded shiraz, and so earned the name ‘schadenfreud’ as a bit of a taunt. They now use grapes from a similarly located vineyard. This wine was the most familiar, it tasted dark, slightly wild, and delicate. Wonderland, Botanical Riesling — Whilst the addition of native botanicals technically disqualifies this as a ‘wine’ this botanical riesling was like a gin martini in wine form. It felt like it was still lightly sparkling, although that may have been from the acidity. It felt incredibly ripe, bright and busy. Grape To GlassThis Grape To Glass event was held at The Flour Factory on Queen Street in the Perth CBD. Afterwards the Flour Factory chef offered a paired degustation dinner, and Brave New Wine was made available by the glass and bottle. Their upstairs event space made for a lovely, intimate setting from which to taste and discuss these wonderful new wines.
We tried four great 75ml samples showing a range of Brave New Wine wines. After a brief introduction of themselves and their wine making, Yoko and Andries introduced each wine in what ranged from anecdotes and stories to intricate and interesting descriptions of their winemaking techniques and processes. We met plenty of lovely wine fans over the night, some die hard Brave New Wine followers, and some adventurous drinkers who just wanted to see what it was all about. The wines all showed up wonderfully in Riedel glasses, which we were invited to take home, and we may have gorged ourselves a little as The Flour Factory’s delightful staff came by with beautiful cheeses and snacks. Craft beer can be a little intimidating. With its enormous bottles and alcohol contents, litanies of new words and adjectives, and bold, unique flavours. It’s easy, too, to see the scenes which emerge around hyped new and sometimes surprisingly expensive products, and to attribute it to some sort of hipster conspiracy. But the craft beer movement is much less about savvy marketing and artificial economies than it is about passionate people falling in love with new techniques and great ingredients. At Caboose in Mt Lawley this May we got talking to Tim Matthews, the head brewer of Colorado’s Oskar Blues. Tim has an encyclopaedic knowledgable for near everything regarding beer brewing and boundless enthusiasm for his craft. I learned more about craft beer in half an hour speaking to Tim than I had anywhere else, so afterwards I was determined to keep he conversation going. We got back in touch with Tim to talk about the history and future of craft beer, and here’s what we found out: It all started with passion for great beer.Tim says that the craft beer movement has been tied with the boom in modern home brewing. “Craft beer has always been about a rebirth of having an intimacy with your beer, both from a brewer and consumer perspective.” Indeed, the emergence of a number of craft breweries in both the US and Australia have formed as the result of brewers honing their skills at home until they had the support and finesse to take their product to market on industrial equipment. Craft Beer is a product of the modern worldThe proliferation of information in a globalised world, along with advances in technology and trade, have been instrumental in sharing not only beer and beer ingredients, but the love of beer itself. Lovers of beer can find a place not only in the global community, but local communities around craft beer form more readily as information about beer has become easier to spread. Smaller breweries now have better access to premium ingredients, better distribution, and better techniques, which allows inspired people to put out more adventurous and exciting beers. One of the more noticeable trends in craft beer recently has been an adoption of canning. Oskar Blues have been producing craft beer in cans since 2002, and were the first craft brewery to do so. Here in Australia, adoption of cans has been slightly slower but the past year has seen Perth’s Feral brewery adopt a canning line, as well as breweries Modus Operandi and Pirate Life starting their trade exclusively in cans. Canned beer is easier to cool, less prone to oxygen or light spoilage, and more portable, but some of the biggest benefits to canning lines start at the breweries, where the unit price drop substantially, allowing more money to be invested back into the brewing. As well as lighter, more compact units meaning more beer can be transported, and complete recyclability making for a smaller environmental impact. The future of craft beer is in farmingTim visits Australia each year to check in on Hop producers, “Being from the States, I have access to an incredible array of flavors from hops, and a lot of our beers engage that flavour. Australian hop growers, however are producing incredibly unique hops; they’ve developed some of the most challenging, intense, and diverse flavors. We source a bunch of these to feature in our Oskar Blues IPA in order to add that color to our spectrum of beers.” Tim and many other new wave brewers have attuned themselves to terroir, a term initially used by winemakers to describe the impacts of place on a wine in regards to climate, weather, soil, region and even culture. Beer is essentially comprised of just four ingredients, Water, Barley, Hops, and Yeast, and each of these ingredients is heavily influenced by its terroir. "Hops are influenced by the day length in early summer and the temperature fluctuations in summer and fall. Barley is heavily influenced by the dirt from which it grows (although a maltster has a huge say in how it is expressed). Water is influenced by the source of the water and the extent of contact it has with the ground on which it flows, along with the content of that ground. And Yeast, still a mystery in many ways, has different species all over the world just floating in the air.” Says Tim. As the world becomes more connected, it is easier than ever to combine products from different places, but Tim argues that there are equally valid reasons for 'an isolated expression of terroir that features components all sourced and used with a small radius.’ In essence, the same way that an artist using artificial pigments in lieu of natural ones has a harder job as their palette is bound not by possibility but only by their own tastes, it will be interesting to see how modern brewers react as the question progressively stops being ‘can we?’ and starts to become ‘should we?’ Tim believes there is room for both mentalities: Keeping everything local, or balancing new and exotic ingredients. Reinheitsgebot is no longer synonymous with qualityWe mentioned that beer is essentially just four ingredients, but some brewers and beer drinkers believe there should never be more than these four ingredients in a beer. The ‘German purity law’ states that beer should comprise only of Water, Barley, Yeast and Hops. It is a 500 year old law in Germany and has served as a guideline for international brewers for almost as long. However, in light of better ingredients than ever before, modern brewing has trended away from the older practices which necessitated such a law. Flavours are now added not to mask bad ingredients or bad brewing, but to add complimentary flavours which couldn’t be achieved with just the four base ingredients. Says Tim: "The spirit of this “purity doctrine” comes out of the need to maintain a foundation since many times in history quality was not being met without it. There will always be interpretations on this but I’ve felt that beer is a fermented beverage from grain. Just like wine comes from grapes and Mead comes from honey. Beer is a base that can be “spiced” in various ways – hops, herbs, fruits, wood, and so forth.” For Tim, brewing will always be about Family and HospitalityEarlier when we spoke to Sam and Toby from Modus Coffee, they stressed the importance of community, connection and earnest hospitality, and for Tim these sentiments were no different. "Oskar Blues was built on family and hospitality,” he said, referring to a company which now comprises Oskar Blues Fooderies, Oskar Blues Soda Pop, Hotbox Roasters, REEB cycles, and the Can’d aid foundation. "We try to have just as eclectic a flavor as the crazy little group we’re part of by sourcing some unique foreign and local flavors and working side by side with the people that grow that flavour." Craft beer, already huge in the US, is growing bigger and bigger in Australia. It’s great to see breweries adopt new practices and beer drinkers opening up to new and exciting styles. Brewers and bartenders at places like Caboose are a wealth of knowledge, and usually more than happy to share. But the most important thing to remember is that craft beer is a movement of passionate people nerding out about a product that they love. Oskar Blues can be found in most stores and bars which specialise in craft beer. Caboose is where we met Tim, took the photos for this article, and drank the beer, it can be found off Beaufort Street, behind the Flying Scotsman.
It’s hard to see how something as simple as wanting to make brilliant coffee managed to get such a bad rap, but after years of working in cafes and roasteries around the world, Toby and Sam of Modus Coffee have set out to make great coffee an informal and inviting experience which anyone can love. Their cafe, which opened in Mt Lawley during the christmas season of 2016, is putting out some of the best coffee in Perth, but with none of the pretension we’ve come to associate with specialty and craft coffee. We reached out to Toby and Sam to talk about what they wanted to do differently when starting their own place, why they’re moving away from the ‘specialty coffee’ label, and why their take on modernity can have such an impact on coffee drinkers in Perth. “We just wanted to serve good coffee in a way which was fun. We wanted to do away with the aprons and just make good coffee for everyday people we thought let’s just make it like our home, like you’re inviting someone to give them good hospitality at home, and it’s so good that it’s worth paying for.” said Sam of the driving philosophy behind Modus, “the way we wanted to differentiate ourselves from other people is to make really good coffee consistently, but not come away as pretentious or puritan. We really wanted to present in a casual, approachable way” The design of Modus is simple without feeling minimalist or utilitarian: Coffee and plates are white, there is little clutter, but every surface is filled, the near ubiquitous Edison lightbulbs of fashionable coffee are nowhere to be found. Indeed, the coffee at Modus is a huge step from the established norms of Perth’s coffee scene, but Sam and Toby told me that these changes to the status quo have been much more digestible when presented without a hint of the the holier than thou mentality which can easily overcome experts of a product rife with misconceptions. Sam said of their approach to coffee “We’re looking at coffee as a beverage rather than putting it on a pedestal. Obviously it’s still an experience, it’s still amazing produce, still seasonal, still has terroir and should be approached with intentionality. But what we’re selling is still a beverage, it’s still something to drink.” and through this belief, Sam and Toby seem to have found a balance which has eluded much larger establishments. At Modus you’ll find all of the hallmarks of the third wave scene, they constantly rotate between interstate and international roasters, a retail shelf offers aeropresses, hand grinders and sets of digital scales, and in the corner of the bar is an EK43, but this is all surprisingly well contained to one corner of the small space. There is a quiet confidence which is rare for people so dedicated to their product. Whilst they will gladly make anything ordered, their small, utilitarian menu offers price points for only black and white coffee. "The more traditional espresso menu changes at every cafe you go to. Every cafe does it differently, and it’s confusing. When you’re not transparent about how you’re making coffee, that’s how you get difficult and complex orders based on how someone made it once and what they decided to call it. We just wanted to simplify the ordering and simplify the price categories. At the end of the day, we’ll make you whatever you want, and we’ll make it the best that we can” Sam and Toby feel that whilst they champion coffee, they find themselves distancing Modus from the ‘specialty coffee’ label, “I think specialty coffee really is more of a marketing term than anything else. It originally signified quality based on the score the coffee had got at origin, from a roasting sample.” Said Toby, "Wine is a great analogue, in that everything that goes into growing that product is what determines the quality of the end result, but there’s a hundred different ways to mess up that result in-between.” And so at Modus it is not about barista wizardry, but rather sourcing the best roasted coffee in the world, and doing the best they can to service that coffee, "It’s about creating transparency. The less you can do to mess with the beautiful fruit, the better we’ll be able to taste everything about where that fruit was grown.” Continues Toby, on both wine and coffee. These may seem like bold statement, but Sam and Toby are able to use their years of combined experience in other cafes to nail down exactly what they wanted to do differently at their own place. “We’re constantly reevaluating and seeing how we can make things better, we try to get everything down to numbers, even ahead of what we hear back from individual customers.” Said Sam. “We’ve got a big emphasis on modernity here, we wanted to see coffee move away from cultural trends and to actively try to do better all of the time” When I asked them about the difference between owning their own place after so much time working in other cafes, they agreed that the work was more or less the same, but they cherish the opportunities to connect with their customers as business owners, which aren’t as possible when working for somebody else.
"I thought the milestones would be more exciting, when you clean the floor of your own place it won’t be so demoralising. But it’s so similar.” Said Toby, “The relationships we can build now are phenomenal, some of the people you can get to know as a business owner. Versus there’s only a handful of personal connections you can make when working for a place. But it’s hard to become friends with a person when you’re being paid an hourly rate to be nice to them.” Coffee in Perth has never been better, but the appeal of cafes has always come from community and connection. Toby and Sam may well be sourcing and delivering the best coffee in Perth, and it’s amazing to see that they are doing so in service, rather than substitution, of that sense of community and connection. The guys have said that they are looking into future ventures which include roasting their own coffee, and opening new places, and we personally can’t wait to see what they do next. 1/6/2017 0 Comments Hot ChocolatesAs someone who champions simplicity in cooking, I have a pretty convoluted way of making hot chocolates. It didn't start out as the mess of labware and coffee equipment, but over the years, I gradually added steps using things I already owned. But at the heart of the recipe have always been two rules: Use good milk and don't burn it. I've always been a fan of heating up the milk rather than pouring cold milk onto boiling water: Nobody likes a watery hot chocolate. Whilst you could just load up the sugar, I prefer to keep the milk sweet by keeping it under 70°C. The easiest way to keep your milk from burning is to use a thermometer, and when I found out that my old thermometer fit perfectly into one of my little erlenmeyer flasks, I thought it was a pretty perfect match— I'm not saying you should buy a flask just for this purpose (buy one because they make great cocktail shakers, tea kettles, and oil infusers), a milk pan or any small saucepan will do. Whilst bringing the milk to 65°C over medium heat on my smallest element, I boil the kettle and scoop two teaspoons of dutch processed cacao powder and two teaspoons of raw sugar into a mug. I pour about 30ml of water into the mug and stir the sugar, and cacao into a syrup. This next step is entirely optional, but to get a layer of froth I foam up the milk in my french press and then use a milk jug to pour a little heart. Since the milk is only 65°C it's important not to lose any more heat, so use some of the remaining water from the boiled kettle to preheat the french press and the milk jug. If this seems like too much effort, just pour your hot milk straight into your mug.
A cool alternative to this last step is to top the hot chocolate with whipped cream, and grate a piece of chocolate over it. Hot Chocolate 250ml Bannister Downs Full Cream Milk 2tsp Dutch processed Cacao 2tsp Raw Sugar 1oz boiling water Heat milk on medium-low to 65°C Mix cacao, sugar and boiling water in cup Pour milk into the cup, stir slightly to incorporate. 5/5/2017 0 Comments The Bee's KneesMay is National Honey Month, and to celebrate we've got a beautiful classic sour variation from the prohibition era. Taking its name from the 20s slang term meaning 'the height of excellence', The Bee's Knees came about the same way as many prohibition cocktails: In an attempt to disguise low quality gin. With modern gins however the Bee's Knees is a beautiful, delicate cocktail with higher, more floral notes than an average 2:1:1 sour. We sourced a beautiful local honey from Honey I'm Home in Maylands to use in our honey syrup. In a pinch, you can use any honey you have lying around, but since it's Honey Month, we think this drink tastes all the sweeter with local, sustainable honey. Honey Syrup
1/2 Cup Honey 1/2 Cup Water Stir honey and water together over low heat until fully cohesive. Let cool on the counter or in an ice bath. The Bee's Knees 2oz Gin 3/4oz Honey Syrup 3/4oz Lemon Juice Shake all all ingredients and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Latte art competitions are loud, cramped, and tons of fun. Exactly what would be expected of an event fuelled by exceptional coffee and inhabited by off-duty baristas. They often involve zany rules, there is sometimes food, and there is fairly frequently beer. But all of these regards, Milk Money hit it out of the park. An event created to raise money for the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative, a body which represents 2000 small coffee producers in Rwanda's Northern Province. All proceeds from Milk Money went to the purchase of a pasteurising machine, which will allow coffee producers to make a tertiary income from milk production during the majority months of the year in which coffee cannot be harvested or sold. Milk Money was much more about community and coming together than about competition. In doing so it may have highlighted some of the reasons behind why we compete in the first place, but on the surface, it was only ever concerned with raising money for a good cause, and with being a ton of fun for all involved. Taking in players in teams of two, the competition itself was split into four rounds: In the first round, pairs competed with regular cups and milk jugs, and were only asked to pick their choice from a pair of oversized shutter shades or a pair of bulging eyeball glasses. A winning team was decided by three judges and the winners moved onto the next round, where they were invited to take a 'mystery vessel' from a box, and one team member had to pour into this vessel while the other held it. Vessels included a dog bowl, a coconut mug, and a muffin pan. The winners of the second round progressed to a round pouring from a giant one litre mug, again while their teammate held the mug, and in the fourth round, they two teams of finalists battled it out pouring milk blind folded. And The Bee Steamers, Josh and Mascha of Humblebee Coffee took out first place. On top of giving proceeds to a wonderful charity which will no doubt benefit Australian coffee in turn, it was beautiful to see an event which celebrates coffee in Perth without pretension but just as the bucket of fun it should be. Specialty coffee, or rather, great coffee, sometimes gets a bad rap. So it's wonderful to see it celebrated in such an inviting and exciting way. Whilst I drank plenty of coffee, other sponsors kept us watered and fed, notably, Feral and Hippocampus sold cheap beer and gin, Marketplace doing the same for wine. Short Order burgers took up space out front, and Micrology kept coffee coming in the form of a delicious Rwandan Batch Brew. Raffle prizes were offered by Milife, Chicho Gelato, Kings of York, Nord coffee, Marketlane, Square One, Oli and Sons, and Clean Slate.
The whole event was hosted as the beautiful Someday Coffee, who not only held everyone but let the participants compete on their new coffee machine. |
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