Gabriel Brix places 2nd at the national 2024 SCA Austria Coffee Championship in the Brewers Cup category using Coffea Circulor Kenya Estate Bishop WX

From time to time, we receive engaging emails like below:

"Good morning, I‘m Gabriel from Vienna and I inquired with your Instagram about a potential collaboration for Austrian Brewers Cup (15-17 November, 2024)."

Gabriel's request was intricately specified, hence looking for the following characteristics for the coffee:

• I am looking for a clean, interestingly transforming (yet very stable in terms of sweetness and taste) coffee as it cools down.
• I am looking for a coffee that would be associated with adjectives like soft, floral fresh, juicy or light.
• I am looking for floral and/or fruity notes that would be associated with the colors white-yellow-peach-orange-rose-pink-lilac (= I am not looking for very syrupy, boozy or dark heavy fruits notes).
• I have a preference for salivating acidity like creamy lactic acidity, fresh citrus acidity or juicy malic acidity.
• I think some of your Savage Coffees might be very close to these examples.

Please feel free to propose any coffee or mode of cooperation you see fit!

Several emails and brewed coffees later, Gabriel is on stage to present the choice of coffees. Here is Gabriel's presentation, transcribed from the SCA Austria video-presentation. 

Good morning,

My name is Gabriel and here is a little introduction about me so you can get to know me and my starting point.

After working with coffee for 3 years at the same business in Vienna, I have been able to dig deeper.

I look a little bit beyond I find that in every craft that the important work is done by people that are realistic about their position within the craft. They know when to take a step forward to look at the subject more closely and when to take a step back to look at the big picture.

Let us zoom in and talk about the coffee today. I will brew a coffee for you that that was grown in isolation from other varieties. It was carefully processed based on systematic research at Coffea Circulor Kenya Estate in Kenya and Meru county at 1,500 meters above the sea level.

The coffee was roasted by Ivica Cvetanovski from Coffea Circulor.

This coffee is washed, which is to day it was fermented in water basins for 36 hours, before it was dried in its parchment for 20 days.

From a short distance, we can see all the details: the isolation and careful processing of this great Kenyan variety gives us a very characteristic but clean taste of distinct berry notes and amazing florals. The precise information the roaster have because of the detail oriented and research that project in Kenya, allowed for a very informed roast so this coffee was roasted 16 days ago in a conductive environment, a quick roast, to achieve a 60/40 percent inner to outer bean development ratio.

These are all the things that have made me passionate for this coffee. If we take a step back, Ivica says that this coffee best represents the kind of intriguing coffees that I love to work with over and over again and in the world of coffee I appreciate the ecological, economical and scientific understandings that informed this process.

I'll be right back with you to start my brew.

For today's brew, I'm using a custom water of 110 ppm to best represent this coffee is beautiful acidity structure. The water is at 92 degrees Celsius for optimum complexity in the final cup.

I brew this coffee using ODC drippers and B3 filter papers. When combined these 3 following aspects made a very sweet and rich cup while retaining all of the complexity.

The air pockets in between the filter papers and the beautiful drippers provide great insulation. The evenly spaced contact points all around the coffee bed allow for very even and fast flow. I ground this coffee 20 minutes before to a medium grind size for optimum consistency.

Today's recipe is 17g of coffee to 260g of total water weight.

I started my brews with 60g blooms, letting the bloom set for 45 seconds.

In fact you'll find that with every poor I'm giving the coffee bed 45 seconds, to first be extracted by fresh water, before settling again before I start my next poor.

I followed the bloom with another poor of 60 grams to 120g, Now I am doing another 3rd and 4th pour, of 70g each to 260g of total water weight. This precise brewing structure and 4 pours is supposed to give us a sweet cup while retaining all of the delicate aromatics as well.

While the water is doing its work to extract the best balance of compounds into our cups, let's start talking about the notes of this beautiful Ruiru 11.

For aroma, you will have medium intensity and notes of blackberry, sweet lemon and a hint of cardamom.

The taste will be of medium intensity all throughout. When hot, you will have a first impression of black currant, with a note of sugar cane and vanilla.

When warm, you will have black currant still, but also blackberry.

And when cool, this will change into sweet lemon and Earl Grey tea.

Your will experience this with an aftertaste that is medium to long-lasting when hot, like ripe apricot.

When warm and cool however, the aftertaste will be lingering and long-lasting, and like sugary milk chocolate.

The acidity is going to be of medium intensity all throughout. When hot, it is going to be mostly tartaric like black currant.

When warm and cool, you'll find citric acidity like lemon.

The sweetness is going to be of medium intensity when hot like honey, medium to high intensity when warm and still like honey, and then medium intensity again when cool, like fruit juice.

For the mouth feel, it will be of medium intensity when hot and juicy, medium intensity when warm and jammy, however it will be of medium to light intensity when cool and silky.

Now is the time to let's take a closer look. Please assess the aroma from the server once I hand you the coffee.

(Handing over the servers for aroma assessment to the 3 judges.)

May I ask for the servers back please.

Before I take a step back to look at my coffee career from a different wider angle to keep the important values inside and to know where I now stand in the coffee industry, let's take one more closer look.

I'll serve this coffee to you and handmade custom cups. They are modeled after my learnings from wine glasses. The internal geometry will enhance aroma while drinking to support every individual flavor note. These cups represent a handmade hand, to this labor intensive craft, that brings us to where we are right now.

Please evaluate the coffee once I call my time.

(Handing over the coffee for final assessment to the 3 judges.)

All of this work that I have talked about is supposed to make make us both take a step forward to look more closely at coffee but also take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

(Time.)

Right after the presentation, Gabriel was interviewed by Oliver Goetz, highlighting the usage of water, how it is to use the coffee after 16 days of roasting, emphasizing the classic Kenyan character of Bishop WX and the meticulous sorting and quality of the coffee.

Gabriel's combined selection of coffee and water, resting time and presentation, showcases specifically selection of water to surpass 100ppm to also work in favor of the recommended Coffea Circulor praxis.

We are glad Gabriel found the characteristics of Bishop to be in-line with the identified sensory experience that we provide. Here are the two which showcase the coffee can bear almost identical characteeristics, prepared in a different location, under different circumstances, differenct equipment and last but not least different water properties.

SENSORY EXPERIENCE (Coffea Circulor)

SENSORY EXPERIENCE (Gabriel)

Gabriel additionally also utilizes a different pouring routine, encompassing 4 pours, which still produces an equally compatible sensory experience to our recommended 3 equal pour structure 1:1:1 (One). Following Gabriel's coffee over the first 16 days as it develops, at 16 days, when the competition took place, the 4-pour structure increases the perception of sweetness. 

Bishop WX truly embraces the coffee production at Coffea Circulor Kenya Estate and rosting ideology of Coffea Circulor where the final coffee beverage should carry the impression of fruit juice from freshly squeezed garden fruits.

We congratulate Gabriel to the fantastic achievement at the SCA Austria Brewers Cup and look very much forward working even closer together in the future to arrive.

Image courtesy of SCA Austria, screen images from the Youtube live coverage from the event, 17 November 2024, Austria.