August 10, 2020
Cartel Coffee Roasters, from Victoria’s reinvented coastal city of Geelong, has a clear mission in mind: to support coffee farmers and ethical farming practices.
This support for coffee farmers and their families goes far beyond setting up fair pricing. Cartel’s passion for helping farmers, across the world, is aimed at tangibly improving their lives and reinventing the way the industry processes coffee. In addition to their many ethical sourcing accomplishments, the Cartel team have been busy over the past few years! They’ve expanded their business from roasting to cafes (in Geelong and Melbourne) and running brewed coffees out of their roastery site in Breakwater. We can’t wait to see what they turn out next!
“As roasters, green buyers, and coffee hunters, we have the privilege of working with coffee farms across the world.” — Cartel’s Nathan Johnston
This month Cartel is featuring an exciting experimental coffee using beans from Riverdale Estate, a coffee farm located in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The majority of India’s coffee is grown in its southern states where the frequent rainfall during monsoon season makes this region ideal for coffee farming.
Riverdale Estate has been a family run business since 1920, where generation after generation tends to the coffee plants each season. The farm’s picturesque location, amongst the region's beautiful Shevaroys Hills, is filled with giant trees, providing ample shade, and their very own natural water stream.Their coffee cherries go through 48 hours of natural processing and fermenting to help enhance the flavour and bring forth strong fruit notes. The farmers triple soak the cherries so that the underripe fruit floats to the top and are easily removed from the batch. With underripe cherries removed from the batch, the selected fruit is then moved into high grade plastic bags and sprinkled with a yeast mixture to accelerate a fermentation process. Finally, they’re pulped, dried, and exported to Australia where Cartel then works their roasting magic on the beans!
Back in Australia, Papa Malcolm (roaster extraordinaire) warms up Cartel’s trusty Probat Roaster and fills it up with the delicious beans from Riverdale Estate. Once released from the drum, these beans are insanely tasty! Wonderful Poulsard-like flavours of bright strawberries, blueberries and raisins are supported by a chocolatey body and crisp finish. Sounds absolutely delish.
When we asked Cartel what inspired them to create this recipe they said it came to them in a dream!
“This recipe came to us in an odd sort of a dream involving a talking goat. Given its origin in India we suspect that there was some strange mystical powers at work informing us and guiding our hands, as we got the best out of these amazing beans. After a lot of trial and error, we think we nailed it to get the best out of every last drop..” — Cartel’s Nathan Johnston
A huge amount of Cartel’s energy is put towards sourcing high quality, ethically produced coffee beans from around the world. These guys are deeply connected to the origins of where their beans come from. Thank you Cartel for being absolute legends in the industry and creating this tasty brew for us to sip on all of August!
Varietal
This particular varietal is a hybrid of Timor & Ethiopian Tafarikela beans from India.
Flavour Notes
Strong fruit notes featuring bright strawberries, blueberries, and raisins. A chocolatey body with a crisp finish.
Espresso Recipe
- Dose: 20g
- Temperature: 94 °C
- Extraction time: 22-30 seconds
- Yield: 25-32g
Pour Over Filter Recipe
- Dose: 15g
- Temperature: 96 °C
- Extraction time: 3 minutes
- Yield: 270g
Moccamaster (1.25L) Filter Recipe
- Dose: 50g
- Water: 1.25L
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