In our never ending quest for the perfect cup at Yahava, we travel the world. Not only searching for the best green beans but also the best roasters and the best of cafe culture.

Recently we travelled through Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and London, looking, tasting and talking coffee - OK and maybe a little vodka!

The highlights of the trip were a visit to Dillanos Coffee in Seattle, Stumptown Coffee in Portland and spending some serious time talking coffee with a senior manager of Costa Coffee in London.

Dillanos Coffee impressed us as a great team of people - passionate about roasting only the highest quality Specialty Coffee. Their roasting plant was somewhat larger than ours but their processes and sources were similar and we had a nice exchange of ideas.

While in Seattle we also visited Starbucks new concept store - 15th Ave Coffee & Tea, as well as their original Starbucks Coffee Tea & Spices store still trading in Pine Place - opened in 1912.

Their new store (15th Ave) was quite a contrast and had no real branding, their uniforms were t shirt and jeans and the furniture was a mix of second hand and new. They serve Espresso, Filter, Plunger, Pour over filter and Clover made coffees!

Things got even more interesting when we drove down to Portland to meet with the guys at Stumptown Coffee. Here we found a huge amount of knowledge, particularly of green coffee. With the owners of Stumptown spending more than 6 months a year out in the coffee fields of central and southern America and Africa.

Their understanding of growing and processing and its effects on the finished product is profound. We found their approach to roasting very much like that of Yahava with small batch roasting happening at multiple sites. All in the pursuit of freshness.

As shown in the photo's they use old Probat Roasters and hand finish their coffee 10 kgs at a time just like we do. Like us they love their Costa Rican, Panama, Mexican, Peruvian and Ethiopian coffees. It was here that we also tasted some of the best coffee, made in a similar fashion to a flat white. A lot of information was shared before the day was out.

We were by now starting to understand some of the differences in the coffee cultures. In America many people still drink filter coffee and it was not unusual to find cafe's offering the options of coffee made on the espresso machine, in a plunger and a filter. The Americano (basically a long black or flitered black coffee with the option of a touch of cream) is very common and in fact is a nice way to drink coffee. I have to say generally I really struggled to get a nice tasting well made coffee at any store, cafe or diner in the US or Canada unless it was an Americano.

London? That was ... well... interesting! Costa and Starbucks have seemingly over taken every street in the city. Almost squeezing the life out of the "little guy". Yet if you look hard enough there are signs of life, Monmouth Coffee, a cafe called Flat White. These and others like them will grow as customers begin to demand quality over quantity and once they realise that their local cafe can become an important part of their community. A meeting place as much as an eating place.

What did we learn?
We discovered that we are heading in the right direction here in Australia with our cafe owners generally having done a fantastic job surviving against corporate coffee companies. We confirmed the growing renaissance of the local roaster - supplying fresh produce to a local market. We also confirmed that at Yahava, we are on the right track in so many ways and learnt that there is so much more we can do.
Watch this space!

John Batty
The Koffee Analyst