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Caribbean Coffee Culture

Coffee culture is fascinating. Different in Puerto Rico from St Maarten in many ways but essence is the same, that’s my conclusion after aspending 2 weeks in and around  San Juan. They favor more bitter cups of coffee in the Caribbean, IMHO. Dark roasted (French or Italian) blends of Latin American beans, some strengthened with Robusta beans.

The body is always unbalanced, though. Coffee is rarely ground on demand so it spoils quickly in the heat and humidity. In Puerto Rico they favor the espresso and cortadito whereas in Sint Maarten they favor plain filter coffee and Lattes or flavored coffee with syrups. St Martin goes for espressos and cappuccinos but peopel often overheat the milk here.

Pack of coffee beans

It’s just painful to taste all the uncleaned portafilters and old grinds together with the “spoiled” grinds that have been sitting there too long. Such a shame. Keeping up the spirit for a good coffee. Even if one in a hundred.

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Barista Christian Peper on island92 radio

I had an interview with the famous Dr Soc of island92 radio last Monday. We talked about coffee in general and what you can do on the island of St Maarten make a better “cup ‘o joe” in the morning.

Summary:

No matter what ground coffee you are using on Sint Maarten, use a filter coffee maker and

  1. use Volvic (bottled) water
  2. boil the water and let it cool a minute or two
  3. pick a spoon to measure the ground coffee and always use the same exact one!
  4. use between 50 and 65 gram ground coffee per liter of water.
    I recommend starting with 30 gr for 500 ml and see how that tastes.

    • If too bitter: use less coffee, for instance 27.5 gram for 500 ml
    • If too bland: use more coffee, for instance 32.5 gram per 500 ml
  5. pour a little bit of the water onto the grounds and let the coffee “bloom” for 30 sec
  6. pour the rest of the coffee not taking more than 3 minutes for all the water to seep through
  7. let it cool a little bit before drinking

Enjoy!

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Going separate ways

Sadly, Market Garden, the Double Dutch Café and No Pressure Coffee will be going their separate ways as of today. It’s really difficult establishing specialty coffee standards in an area that still consumes large amounts of instant coffee, that was already known when we started our cooperation in March.

But it has proven increasingly more difficult to do so, instead of becoming easier, and that’s why No Pressure Coffee has decided to go its own way and seek a different cooperation.

We thank Market Garden and staff for their patience, effort and the opportunity. We wish them the best in their endeavors for the future with the cafe.

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Technical troubles on a tropical island

At work, our espresso machine broke down. The pump giving the 9 bars of pressure for the groups won’t start. But when manual flushing it works fine. Local coffee machine supplier Autobev says it’s the circuit boards. My guess is they were fried by a couple of successive power outages and a generator that did not kick in properly not timely.

On an island where everything is shipped in or flown in for emergencies, getting spare parts or qualified technicians is a bit of challenge.

We have several choices:

  1. Get full service from local company and have them order parts and do repairs
  2. Order spare parts from US and fly them in to have local company do repairs
  3. Ship machine to US to have it serviced under warranty and then ship it back
  4. Buy a new machine locally
  5. Buy a new machine in US and ship it to the island

Options 1-3 take several weeks, three at best, and there is no espresso in the mean time.

Option 4 could be good but depends on local supplies. On an island that still consumes vast amounts of instant Folgers, Maxwell House and Nescafé Coffee the odds are against you.

Option 5 is good but also takes at least 2 weeks.

We’re still looking at alternatives but lessons learned are:

  • Put equipment with circuitry on surge suppressors
  • Get a backup espresso machine for emergencies while your machine gets repairs
  • Get the numbers of all your equipment’s customer service and hotlines ready for the grab
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Comparing different coffee bean suppliers in the Caribbean

Besides setting up a new espresso machine, I cannot think of anything more exciting for a barista than to sample and taste different coffee beans. Especially if they’re also from different suppliers.

So far I’ve been able to try a single origin Ethiopian Sidamo and Rwandan bean from Malongo, a French roaster in France with a local dealer. I personally like the fresh citrus flavors of Ethiopian coffee but the Rwandan bean made an excellent espresso and customers liked it better, or so it seemed. The acidity of the Ethiopia beans is too far from home for people who are used to dark French and Italian roasts from more or less generic commercial blends rather than specialty coffee beans.

I also sampled blends from Carib Bean Coffee in Antigua. Though I was disappointed to only receive blends from them, they were well balanced and accessible for everyone. Not just coffee fetishists such as myself! I believe their coffee could replace our standard Starbucks beans for milk based coffees easily and make an excellent coffee. I was most pleased with their Hurricane Brew, a medium dark blend, and the Primo Espresso, a very dark roast. That is surprising because I usually shy away from dark roasts for espresso. The beans were roasted fresh and shipping was swift, so their taste was outstanding!

Lately I have had the pleasure of trying a few samples from Batdorf & Bronson, who’s roasting coffee in Olympia, WA. They roast n demand, after your order and ship quickly. So your order is as fresh as it can be, all things considered. Our shipping office sadly did not pack them on a temperature controlled container so I’m guessing it was a bit below their optimal flavors. However, upon opening the 12 oz “Dancing Goat” sample, we where amazed at the wonderful nutty and caramel odors and a beautiful warm saturated coffee wave came over us. After setting the Baratza grinder to the correct setting and weight, I was deeply moved to finally taste an outstanding coffee again on this island! Wow! The richness of the blend, the balance of the sugars, acidity and bitters was awesome. Full body, rich after taste. Hints of nuts, chocolate and other flavors that I simply could not identity quickly enough. Wonderful!

Besides the beans, however, there are others factors to consider. Cost, of course, but also reliability, logistics, reputation and their green bean sorcerer.

  1. Malongo is the closest but has the worst logistics process. Nothing is roasted to order, roast dates aren’t listed and all those things considered it is rather expensive coffee.
  2. Carib Bean Coffee is not on the island but on regular shipping routes, both by air and seas. So delivery could be regular. The blends are better than Malongo and prices relatively better. It’s a regional respected company with a name to loose so they could make a good partner for introducing third wave coffee in St Maarten and the Caribbean!
  3. Batdorf has the best coffee, it’s roasted to order and shipping is speedy. It’s hard and expensive to get a few pounds here in a cooled container, so we’d probably have to order up and minimize transport costs. However, that negates the freshness of the bean because they’ll be waiting in our fridges,.not someone else’s. They are specialty coffee roaster and have made quite a name, so also a great company to partner with if the logistics can be optimized.

All in all very complex but exciting!

Once I have tasted all the samples, I plan on ordering two coffees from each candidate and organize a coffee tasting for the management team of the Market Garden supermarket and a few others. This way, they get to participate in what I’m doing and learn more about coffee, brewing, roasts, flavors and third wave coffee!

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Double Dutch Café enriches Market Garden supermarket

Daily Herald of Sint Maarten features a new article that explores the supermarket Market Garden in Simpson Bay. The store management has created a whole range of healthy ready to eat products around the Double Dutch Café where Christian Peper from No Pressure Coffee is Head Barista.

The cafe provides a low threshold factor to enter the store for a cup of excellent coffee and then tries to entice you to try and buy something from a whole range of food and drinks.

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Sourcing coffee beans, next stage

The story continues…

After choosing two US coffee roasters from the short list of four for Double Dutch Café, we have entered the next stage.

  • Amavida.com (Florida)
  • Batdorfcoffee.com (Washington)
  • Carib Bean Coffee (Antigua)

We’re ordering samples from both suppliers, determine how the ordering process works and how we must handle the logistics of getting the fresh roasted beans from the warehouse in Miami to Sint Maarten. I trust they will deliver them appropriately to Miami but the warehouse must store them in a temperature controlled environment and ship them in the same way.

It will be learning experience for everyone on our side, because coffee is usually not treated with this much care.

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No Pressure Coffee and Double Dutch Café

Proud to announce a cooperation between No Pressure Coffee and the new food corner inside the Market Garden supermarket: Double Dutch.

The Double Dutch Café, also known as the Market (Garden) Café, serves breakfast and lunch with a variety of ready-to-eat products ranging from fresh fruit and vegetable juices or smoothies, to espresso, Cappuccino and Cortado, iced coffees, to sandwiches, overnight oats, fruit salads, rotisserie chicken, sushi homemade soups and Johnny Cakes baked fresh all day long.

No Pressure Coffee provided consulting on the coffee corner in the cafe. Where to place.the espresso machine, which grinders would work for the expected volume, which beans to use, calibration of the machinery and the coffee recipes. 4 local employees where chosen to get elementary training to make the top 3 key popular coffee drinks: espresso, cappuccino and latte. Work book with guides and rules were established fitting for a coffee shop that aims for establishing specialty coffee on the island of St Maarten.

The cafe is competitively priced and features an outside seating area. The new food corner complements the already well-known breakfast and lunch buffets of the supermarket. The Double Dutch food corner also serves the hotel guests who are staying in the Commodore Suites, so there is a steady flow of people and products.

The final layout of the food area inside the supermarket is not yet established so expect to see some changes throughout the year until we settle in what works the best.

Expect more choices among the favorite dishes from around the world in a mix of international foods and snacks.

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Cooperation with Market Garden supermarket

I’m proud to announce that I’ve closed a cooperation with Market Garden supermarket in Simpson Bay. I am providing consulting services to them on their new coffee shop inside the supermarket, the Market Café. Calibration of the espresso machine, which grinders, grinder settings, milk, coffee recipes and some training of the other baristas.

Soft opening is currently underway with full opening scheduled for end of next week. Official opening to be announced in April 2018.

I’m still waiting on another grinder so I have two, one for black coffees and one for milk drinks. But I’ve been busy trying out different recipes for Cappuccino, Latte, Flat White and the iced versions. Lack of proper coffee equipment is one of the greatest challenges on this island. Local suppliers have nothing so everything has been ordered from USA.

Here are some photos of the drinks I made.

Everything is focused on drinks to-go and we use certified biodegradable paper cups for everything. So sadly, you can’t see the coffee and milk layering. Maybe in the future…