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2010-03-28
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Another visit to Xen Coffee almost six months after my last time thereI can say now its operation settled in nicely. I felt Dixon, the barista and owner, was much more relaxed and it’s shown through his great hospitality during my visit there. Also, the empty shop in the picture was somewhat misleading. The shop was filled up soon after I took all these pictures and was fulled on my afternoon visit (5PM) for its waffle.Talking coffee, my Guatemala tasted much better than last time, even though
I can say now its operation settled in nicely. I felt Dixon, the barista and owner, was much more relaxed and it’s shown through his great hospitality during my visit there.
Also, the empty shop in the picture was somewhat misleading. The shop was filled up soon after I took all these pictures and was fulled on my afternoon visit (5PM) for its waffle.
Talking coffee, my Guatemala tasted much better than last time, even though this is not my ‘cup of tea.’ Its nice acidity helped balanced out the monotony of smoky and darker roast prominently shown during my previous visit.
Part of it was due to the change in the sequence of the brew. Dixon now dumped the ground in the upper part of the siphon and let the water rise vs. the prior order of filling up the upper chamber first before dumping the ground. I myself subscribe to its prior order as I believe it yields a more solid temperature profile. Nevertheless, the current setting seemed to work well for Xen’s coffee. I guess it was partly due to a darker roast profile. Check the bean to see how ‘shiny’ or ‘oily’ its surface shows.
Xen now offers a house special waffle with fruit, cream and chocolate syrup. It was quite nice though I prefer a simpler version, just a real light grade maple syrup and waffle. Also, the waffle was quite soft in texture which should fit well with local taste profile. The croissant I had with coffee in the morning tastes more like bread than the flakiness I associated with this type of pastry.
I asked Dixon a favor to brew my own favorite, Nicaragua La Esperanza, roasted by hkcoffee.com. Initially, I wanted to see how it performs in the siphon brew, having been very familiar brewing this coffee myself for a while.
This is a surprise; I couldn’t recognize the cup.
Instead of a familiar sweet acidity, (think fruit juice), I can only taste the darker roast profile similar to other coffees I had at Xen. When the cup cooled down, the acidity only improved a tiny bit. I can only sense the nice acidity on the aftertaste which was good but really fainted.
I double checked the bean this morning via French press and paper drip to see how it performs as tiny batch roasting from hkcoffee.com sometimes went wrong. There it was, the familiar sweet acidity like citrus juice was still in the cup.
Why? The only thing I could think of is water. Xen uses an elaborate water filter which tends to strip everything out of water while the poor man setup like mine, a filtered tap water with Brita, should allow most of the mineral and stuff to stay.
This is actually a classic argument whether one should use ‘pure’ water or water with something. I typically subscribed to the latter one as, from my own experience, the mineral and things in the water makes coffee taste better. You could google and find recommendations on mixing spring water with distilled water for better taste coffee. Remember, water in the majority of the coffee cup. Nevertheless, I did not expect this much difference in the cup.
Is this an issue of too good a thing? Not really. We can further argue about the quality of water in Hong Kong and the need to be more vigilant on the issue. I guess this is a personal issue and, for me, I prefer a simple filtered tap water. You are your own judge then.
Also, I would like to thank Dixon who still keeps the SCAJ 2009 lanyard for me. I hope you have a great time for SCAJ 2010 and bring back some great idea for the shop.
張貼
