Crafted Coffee Company

Luciano Marcolino on the Shakes and his Espresso Bar.

2011-06-20T18:07:00.001+12:00

As we are only too aware many business' in Christchurch were effected by the recent spate of shakes in Christchurch. One of those who has been hit hard has been 3 times New Zealand Barista Champion and Crafted Coffee Wholesale customer Luciano Marcolino and his espresso bar.

Alongside his wonderful wife Melissa, Luciano has built a very successful cafe on Moorhouse Ave, just outside the Red Zone. On February 22nd things changed for Luciano and his Team and they have been forced into a tumultuous period as they try to re-establish the business.

They not only have to deal with the immediate financial hardships that having no business means, but helping their staff find jobs and battling with insurance companies has become a full time operation for the Marcolino family.

They have dealt with this situation incredibly well and are fighting hard to get open in a new site that is going to be amazing. We will defiantly keep you posted with updates as opening day gets closer and closer for Luciano and Melissa.
Interview with Luciano Marcolino (mp3)

WBC Wrap up and Return home.

2011-06-16T13:41:00.000+12:00

I am now returned safely home after what was the best WBC I have ever had the pleasure of being involved in. The whole event was simply electric, the competitors amazing, the judges and volunteers devoted and the resulting winner was a win not just for El Salvador, but I think for the whole industry.

How the tables have turned from the years where producing countries were at a perceived disadvantage for WBC. I am certainly not saying that it is easy, not by any stretch of the imagination, but seeing the success' of so many producing countries Baristas onstage is a true testament to the success of the WBC.

WBC wrap and back to NZ (mp3)

WBC Bogota Day 4, Judges Calibration and Competitors Meeting.

2011-06-02T16:41:00.000+12:00

The time is nigh and in just a few hours competitors will be hitting the stage! A few pics and an audioboo, hoping to do a few interviews tomorrow.

Listen!

Head Judges Calibration, WBC Bogota

2011-06-01T12:15:00.000+12:00

Today has been both very busy and exciting. We are so fortunate in the WBC to have such an amazing team of Judges who make this competition possible. Today was a very intense day of calibration that I think worked out being very productive and a great build up to the general Judges calibration tomorrow.

I have not been able to catch Hide this after noon but he is returning from his origin trip so will make sure we get some pictures of that through.
Listen!

AudioBoo

2011-05-31T13:54:00.000+12:00

I am going to try and do a few of these, see how they go!
Listen on audioboo.fm!

Build up to Bogota

2011-05-31T13:38:00.000+12:00

The bulk of the New Zealand Team has arrived in Bogota for the World Barista Championships. We are here to support Crafted’s very own Hide Kono (Head Barista and Roaster) as he represents New Zealand at the event. This year there are 53 countries competing and it is going to be a monster event.

All of the team and equipment arrived safely into Bogota which is always a relief and it would appear that all of the coffee has travelled pretty well.

I will try and keep up the postings here, but things are pretty manic leading up to and during the event for me. I am currently sitting in the room we will be holding the judges calibration in tomorrow awaiting the arrival of more gear so we can complete set up. This has meant that I haven’t had a chance to get out into Bogota yet so hopefully a bit of time will free up for me over the week.

I am also going to start posting up some “AudioBoos” that I think will enable me to post more often. As things start to take shape and get interesting I will throw up some pics.

To keep up on the action please follow us on Twitter (CraftedCoffeeCo), check back here and also here will have links for all the live feeds etc.

Paper.li

2011-02-21T23:26:00.000+13:00

There is always a massive flow of information coming through the interweb. At Crafted we rely incredibly heavily on the internet,scarily so.We use it for much of our back of house systems, but the place we use it the most is for gathering and sharing information. Coffee is one of those few truly global products and it never sleeps. There are leaps in techniques, news on events, blog postings and videos flooding through the web. These are often communicated and shared through online social mediums. Frankly I am over Facebook. Its difficult to find a better way to waste a day,trawling through screeds of rubbish, competitions, surveys and conversations about what someone had for lunch.

We focus the largest amount of our time sharing and reading up from Twitter because it is to the point and highly functional. It is great to get a snippet of information, or a link to an article. The only problem is that occasionally one can get flooded with links and not have the time to actually chase them up while they are current on the timeline. Introducing paper.li ! This is a great way to see all of the hottest links from people of our news lists and the people we follow on twitter.

We hope you enjoy our Paper.li page. If your keen to know what we are up to and reading about, do follow us on Twitter as well.

Thanks

Focus on Coffee

2011-02-20T11:37:00.001+13:00

Coffee is an incredibly complex drink that has as many interpretations as there are people who make it. As Roastery and Cafe owners we function in an incredibly tough market, but among those business’ that succeed there is an underlying theme of quality. One of the facts about coffee is that there is never a truly achieved pinnacle, one can never completely conquer the coffee mountain. The things we know about coffee are always evolving and the hope is that we are all constantly improving. It is abundantly clear that many minds working together have the potential to move ahead faster, make greater leaps, than those who choose to work in an insulated environment. We have seen coffee people working together before in environments like competitions, but it is such a competitive market place that true cooperation and collaboration requires faith in the greater good, in a belief that a combined approach will yield more advancement than a singular train of thought and in a confidence that a business and its people must be honestly open for this method to succeed.

This is why I am really excited to see CoffeeCommon launch itself this week. It is a collaboration of knowledge and skills from some of those most accomplished in our industry. It shows a clear unity and focus that I am sure will help drive the industry forward.

Sharing of knowledge like this will end up in one place, better coffee to the customer. Well done guys.

A few pics from El Salvador

2011-02-19T16:02:00.006+13:00

I have made it one of my missions to get to visit our farms and beneficios as often as possible throughout the year. This can at times become a rather daunting prospect, especially with the cafe and roastery growing so quickly thanks to all of your support, but simply put, I have made it a priority and I have a team I think are pretty incredible.

After I judged the Cup of Excellence in 2009 I made a trip over to visit our friends in El Salvador, but the timing wasn't great as a bit of rain had just fallen making most roads impassable. With the help of Julio I made it around lots of places, but vowed to return again during this years harvest.

My brother got married on Jan 7th, then on the 8th I stormed off to El Salvador to see harvest and review some of the projects we had discussed with our friends from Cafeco. We already have a couple of containers of San Emilio booked, but want to try and find some new coffees at the same time.

After 35hrs of travel I arrived at the airport and Julio and I headed off to our first visits. This time of the year makes for long days in the coffee world, and so the week was a massive one. I have shot hundreds of pictures, hours of video and screeds of notes that I am trying to present in a readable and cohesive manner, but thought I would start with a quick overview of the trip in these pics.

Over the next few weeks I will run through some of the more detailed points in individual posts. I have to make a special mention of Julio Medrano, Andreas Boderman and the team at Cafeco for hosting such a pesty guest. They have been amazing to work with, and the coffees are even better! I must also thank all of the other Farmers, Finca's and Beneficios who hosted me over the week. Some we only managed to quickly dive in and out of as my time in El Sal was cut down to 6 days after the need to head to Dublin for the World Coffee Events Summit arose immediately afterwards.

Anyway, here are a few pictures...

Where is the year going?

2011-02-16T14:42:00.002+13:00

2011 is well and truly underway. The summery days of January's holiday are now again resigned to the folders of our "Christmas 2010" photo album. Of course that means that there is lots happening here at Crafted, and that is something we are excited about.

I am well aware that my blogging has been somewhat irregular to date. We have so much going on that I find myself starting dozens of postings, but by the time I get close to finishing them there is something new I need to cover. I prepared a posting from some of my trips, then realized that by the time I passed 3000 words, it is no longer a blog posting, rather a novel (and probably only interesting to us nerds here). So, here's my resolution. I am going try and post every 1-2 days. They will just be short postings, so to cover some of the big things like origin trip may take a few postings and be ever so slightly incoherant, but they will be there!

Please follow us on Twitter as well as I do manage to keep that running consistently and often post lots of links to interesting coffee articles.

Thats long enough for today, lets see if I can follow up tomorrow!

The sleigh bells are jingling again!

2010-12-15T02:43:00.005+13:00

Like everyone else I cant believe where the year has dissapeared to. Christmas is just a couple of weeks around the corner, the Coffee "C" Markets are going crazy ($2.18 as I type this), competition season is starting to heat up again, lots of new coffees and brew gear are on the water coming to us and we have launched some new subscription products!

New things are happening so quickly at Crafted and it's always a challenge that we love. We have been looking for better and easier ways to get our coffees out to you and so we have just added to the previous subscription packaged we started. We now have a "Roasters Cup 2 Weeker" and an "Espresso Blend" subscription package. Both of these we have had lots of requests for so we are excited to get them on the shelf for you.

One of the major projects we are working on at the moment is the introduction of Education classes. These will cover a broad range of topics, some classes will be free, some will have a fee, some group and some one on one. I cant wait to have these sorted and ready for you at the end of Jan.

I am gearing up for my next trip in January as I head off to the US, El Salvador and Dublin. I am visiting a few of the farms that we are working closely with in El Salvador, and in partcular, San Emilio. I will be there right at the peak of harvest so I am looking forward to learning more about how our coffees are processed and being more involved in that.

We are also introducing a range of Iced coffees into the cafe at Crafted. These are super tasty and have taken a lot of work to get to the point where we are happy to share them with you. Tey will hit the menu right at the start of next year. Make sure you give them a go!

We have slowly started working towards some o the competitions that are being run next year, and I believe we will have at least one serious contender in most of the competitions. The comps are always exciting and make us push the limits of what we know and have to learn about coffee.

We have a new Wholesale account opening their doors in the new year as well. Fat Cats in Rangiora is owned by Anna and Daryl Hills, Rangiora locals and we are sure they are going to do an amazing job in there and we look forward to woring closely with them and their team.

If you are interested in working with us for your wholesale coffee supply please feel free to call us (03 3484833) or drop me an email carl@craftedcoffeecompany.co.nz

Make sure you either get in to see us or check out the deals we have online to make your Christmas shopping as easy and stress free as possible!

HoHoHo....

Chef's Position Available!

2010-11-17T18:17:00.000+13:00

Hi. A big part of our operation here at Crafted is in the Cafe. We prepare and present coffees that we are really proud of, but food is also a big part of the Cafe. Al has taken an opportunity too good for him to miss in Australia and so we are now in the hunt for a new Chef!

Our kitchen gets pretty busy. We produce a breakfast and lunch menu, cabinet food (salads, sweets and bread products) and we also work with Catering so you get to cover a broad range of work.

Chef is required to take control of the kitchen, from stock through to menu with the support of the rest of the team!

We are ready to get you in straight away so if you have any questions or would like to send in your CV please do so to carl@craftedcoffeecompany.co.nz or check out the ad on TradeMe http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-me-jobs/Hospitality-tourism/Chefs/listing-332863721.htm?key=1167290

Cheers.

Birthday Bash and Subscriptions!

2010-11-14T09:50:00.002+13:00

Thank-you so much to everyone of you who has come through and supported us over our Birthday! We had an awesome day on Friday. Heaps of classes (We will be rolling them out as a regular thing soon), lots of money raised for the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal, Latte Art Throwdown (Well done to Louie (Luciano's), Mark (Mojo ChCh) and Chloe (Luciano's)) for taking out the top spots.

What I am really excited about is the launch of our new 3 Month Subscription Packs. These are an awesome deal and I am excited about being able to share some super coffees with our subscribers. We have had a great uptake on them over the first few days and lots more interest. The current subscription is for our "Roasters Cup Coffees" which normally sell for $16/ 250gm, and even at that price they are gold. We are talking about Cup of Excellence, Micro Lots and our special Direct Trade Project coffees. Each pack that comes out has a description sheet about the coffee, farm and our cupping notes. The subscription is available online only and is a steal at just $14/ week for the 12 packs... and thats delivered to your door every Friday! Check it out in the webshop. It also makes a great gift.

We have another exciting week ahead with some Brazils starting to arrive (fingers crossed!), NZBC workshops in Christchurch plus working hard on some other events we have planned soon. I am also locking in my dates to head up to El Salvador and Guatemala for Harvest in January. I am super excited about that as I have never seen a central harvest before.

We'll get some pics online this week from the birthday on Friday.

It's our First Birthday!

2010-11-06T14:15:00.007+13:00

This week we are incredibly excited to celebrate our first Birthday. We have had an amazing first year at Crafted. We have sourced dozens of new coffees from around the globe, visited countless farms and farmers in 9 countries, been through 1 Volcano, 1 Hurricane & 1 Earthquake, been to coffee competitions throughout NZ and in 4 countries including supporting our own Hide Kono to a very proud 2nd in the NZ Nationals, welcomed new wholesale customers onboard with more coming on next month, the opening of an espresso bar at Scotty Browns Bikes on Bedford Row, countless public cupping sessions with customers, we have grown from 4 to 8 full-time staff and I could go on! What I am most proud of is that we have grown a team of professional coffee people who love working with coffee and sharing it with all of our customers.

This Friday (Show Day 12th Nov) we would like to celebrate this milestone with you, and take the chance to say thanks. All day we are holding cupping sessions, brewing classes, super deals on Brewing Gear and a BBQ Menu running as well as all our normal menu. If you are interested in coming to any of the classes please send me an email so we make sure they aren't over full carl@craftedcoffeecompany.co.nz . There is no charge for any of the sessions.

Coffee Sessions and Lessons

10am Introduction to Cupping- This is how we taste all of our coffees before we buy them, once they arrive and after we have done our production roasts. We work through 4 different coffees exploring their differences and the basic of cupping techniques. (1 hour)

11.30am Slow Brewing- Do you want to know some of the secrets behind a great Plunger/ Chemex, Siphon or V60 brew? Here is a chance to taste coffees through the different brewers and pick up a few tips to get the most out of your coffees! (1 hour)

1.30pm Espresso at Home- We can help you get better coffee out of your machine at home! How best to use your domestic machine and grinder plus some simple milk steaming techniques. A simple introductory course. (1hour)

3pm Roasting- A simple introduction into Roasting coffee. We will do some sample roasts together as well. Do you have what it takes? (1 hour)

All of these free courses will have very limited numbers sorry, so first in first served. Please email so we can get your name down asap. carl@craftedcoffeecompany.co.nz

We have managed to come through the Christchurch earthqauke remarkably unscathed at Crafted, but we are only too aware of the thousands of Christchurch families who are doing it tough. To do a small part to help we will be donating 100% of our coffee sales for the day to the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal. This includes any retail coffee that we sell on Friday which will be packaged in our brand new branded retail bags arriving on Monday!

All this week and next we will be running a draw for our new Coffee Subscription which will be launched online and in the shop on Friday. The easy way to enjoy our very best coffees at a great price, every week. Enter simply by purchasing any coffee online and on Sun 21st we will announce which lucky customer will be recieving 250gm of our Roasters Cup Coffee on their doorstep every week for 3 months for free! If you have already subscribed we will either refund you or give you another 3 months for free!

On Friday night, starting at 6pm we will be hosting a Latte Art Throwdown. This is a really informal, exciting way to meet other baristas and coffee people and see what your skills are like! One shot, one jug, one pour... what are your skills like??!! Above all these competitions are purely just fun. It doesn't matter if you are a seasoned barista or just like coffee, open to all customers and coffee people. Just bring along your $5 entry fee and the crowd will jeer you into the rest! All of the money from entry fees will also go to the Red Cross Appeal. First prize will takeaway not only Pride and Glory, but also a 2 Cup Hario Siphon! Second Place wins a V60 Pourover and Filter Pack. We will a some finger food and a few drinks available for you. Feel free to bring along your own.

We would love to to see you come down and join us on Friday or any day for that matter! We are incredibly grateful for the support we have been so fortunate to receive from you all during the past year and can't wait for the next years adventures to roll on!

Thanks and see you all soon!

Quake and Shake!

2010-09-09T12:46:00.004+12:00

Just a quick posting about the Quakes that have been rocking Christchurch, our home, since Saturday.

At 4.35am the whole city was rudely awakened to a violent Mag 7.1 shake. To be honest it wasn't the most enjoyable way to start the day. For my family and I our old house shook and rolled but held together fantastically, none of us were hurt (it is a complete miracle that there have been no deaths from the quake in Canterbury) and Crafted survived almost unscathed. It only took moments for pictures and stories to start flooding in through twitter and over the radio. Over the past couple of days, the more information and stories we start to see and hear, the larger I am realising the impact of this quake will be.

I called around the Crafted team to see how they were all fairing after the quake on Saturday morning. We had no power at home, and after a shake like that I thought we may get the cafe open a little later in the day but frankly opening was the last of my concerns at that point. I got hold of Alistair (Chef) at 6.20am, he was already at work and trying to reassure me that everything is fine. All the Siphons and Chemex brewers that were sitting on the edge of the benches sitting exactly where we left them on Friday night! 2km away the CBD is decimated.

Alistair lives in the port of Lyttleton on the other side of the Port Hills. There are only a couple of ways into town from Lyttleton, the first over the top of the hills, the second through a 1km long tunnel. When he tried to leave Civil Defence had blocked off the hill roads because they were unstable and had had some slips. He went to go through the tunnel but was advised against it but decided to give it a go. I don’t know about you, but there is no way I would have the guts to drive through that tunnel just over an hour after a shake like that. He was insistent on getting things open on time. I then got hold of Hide, about 7 am, he was already on his way in an hour early to get things tidied up and ready for trade. The rest of the team made it in on time and we ended up having a massive day. Since then the whole Crafted Team has been working super hard to stay open under some trying circumstances. Yesterday three of us were on the machine with a screen full of orders, we got rocked by a 4.6 and no one missed a beat. Hide didn’t even break the pour in his rossetta. It may seem silly and small to some of you, but trying to keep some normality in these surreal days is important.

It really makes me quite emotional and proud to have a team of people pulling together like this. One of our friends Chris Meyer who owned the Federal Cafe in town, just opened 5 months ago, had his building condemned and demolished, everything inside was lost. Just 3km away we are unscathed. I caught up with Chris yesterday and he is understandably upset, but what impressed me is his determination to deal with it and rebuild. We will keep you posted on how Chris gets on. There are many others in our industry who have had a really hard time, with many more to come, but the community feeling in this little town is stronger than ever and I am sure we will all come through this and remember not only the scary and tough times, but all the positive stories of success that will emerge from a City and its people rebuilding their lives. Rest assured Crafted is running at full swing and we have some more great coffees coming up soon!

Here are a couple of interesting links:

Pictures:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4095395/7-1-earthquake-photos

Quake action Replay:

http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/

Webshop up and running!

2010-09-01T19:57:00.009+12:00

We are really excited to see our webshop go live today. We have had fantastic support through the shop with our retail coffee and the webshop gives us the chance to share our coffees with those of you all around the country who have been contacting us to hurry up with getting it live (sorry!).

We will always have our espresso blend up in the shop, plus the single estate coffees that we think are "on fire" at the moment.

What we are super excited about are our "Roasters Cup Coffees". These coffees will be the super special coffees that we come across during our travels to find the other coffees. They will include some Cup of Excellence coffees, micro-lots and any other goodies that we can get our hands on.

As with anything as good as these coffees will be they will have a higher price tag, simply because they cost us a lot more. Don't let that put you off though as they are always well worth it. Each of the coffees from the Roasters Cup comes with an information sheet giving run down on the coffee, farm, area, roasting etc and give you a chance to discover more and more about our coffees.

By the nature of most of these coffees being micro-lots, there is often only very small amounts of these coffees so make sure that if you see something that looks like the type of coffee you'll be into, that you get your order in.

The first of our Roasters Cup is the Mountain Top Coffee Bin 35. We are starting with this because it has been one of my favourite coffees for a long time. I will do another separate posting tomorrow specifically on this coffee and farm. Hide Kono (Roaster and Head Barista), Luciano Marcolino (NZ Barista Champ & Wholesale customer) and myself (Balding Barista) we up at the farm in Febrauary so we have lots of pics to share!

Hide (left) and Carl up at Mountain Top earlier this year.

Stay tuned and make sure you check out what we have to offer on the shop. The list of goodies available will grow over the next few weeks as we get some of our brewing gear up online as well. We also have some new coffees on their way arriving steadily over the next few months.

Welcome to the Crafted Coffee Blog!

2010-08-02T12:30:00.005+12:00

We have had a crazy first few months and are now really into the swing of things. As we move through the year we have lots of events, trips and learning happening. We want to use this blog as a place to share some of things with you.

The first few entries that we will be making will be catch up postings. A few of them might be a bit longer... just dont know how to edit them down very well! This year we have been involved with so much, including, Australian Nationals, NZ Nationals, WBC, Latte Art Comps, Cup of Excellence plus Origin trips to Australia, North Sumatra, Guatemala, El Salvador and Sulawesi to visit the farmers, farms and mills that we deal with. I have a million pictures and want to share some of the experiences I have had along the way.

With your support this has been an incredible year and we want to bring you into the picture as much as we can and let you know what makes us so excited to be able to be involved in specialty coffee. Please feel free to give us feedback and comment on any of the posting we make.

Thanks.