Sugar and milk combat bitterness in coffee. You don’t need it in the good stuff. This, and other bon mots, came flowing from David Donde, first celebrated by coffee lovers at Origin Coffee before leaving and beginning a new adventure at TRUTH.Coffeecult.
David drives an old-fashioned Truth-branded pick-up truck. He also decided to recondition a 1963 cast-iron roaster rather than go for the spanking new. He is quirky that way.
Looking through his hospitality credentials that cover farming free-range chickens, opening The Barnyard Farmstall in Tokai and owning the Post House in Greyton, his move now to small (five coffee varietals as different from Origin’s 100) artisan estate suppliers and roasting small batches at a time, makes sense.
In addition to having coffee prowess he is also a savvy marketer and has embraced social media like Facebook and Twitter to extend his brand. I was impressed when I used Foursquare, the location-based social networking platform that allows the user to see other users nearby at the rare Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee tasting, that Truth had a special offer linked to Foursquare.
According to David, to make the perfect brew you should always use 60g of coffee per liter of water while the optimum brewing time is 2 1⁄2 minutes .
Although one is permitted to claim that coffee is Jamaican Blue Mountain even if only a percentage of the beans comes from Blue Mountain, we’re tasting 100% Blue Mountain Typica, a select type of Arabica beans, from the Clydesdale Estate, founded in the late 1700s. According to the media hand-out, this coffee is grown with extreme care and attention to detail.
The green coffee beans are shipped in 30kg wooden barrels at a cost of R30 000. After roasting, there is only 8kgs left as 20% is lost during roasting.
Although I enjoyed the taste of the coffee, especially its well roundedness for which it is so famous, I’m not happy to pay R60 for a cup of it. Generously, David gave us a R450 bag as a freebie.
With a payoff line: We roast coffee. Properly; his suggestion is that others don’t. I’m in no position to agree or not, but the truth is that Donde has shaken up the HORECA industry with his sound-bite speech and media-friendly energy. Ace PR in the shape of Megan Rubie from Craig Dummet & Company, also helped.
Whether he truly serves a better cuppa there than he did while in partnership at Origin is a matter
of taste.
I’d like to be able to tell you what his flat-white (he claims to have coined the phrase to differentiate from cappuccinos topped with “Alps” of foamed milk) tasted like or, my preference for an Americano with hot milk on the side, but despite being there for more than an hour and fifteen minutes, I had less than a cup to drink.
To tell you the truth, the next time I dedicate time to taste coffee, I want a whole lot more coffee and far less talk. Still, with a stash of some of the costliest coffee money can buy to use at home, who am I to complain?
TRUTH. Coffeecult. Prestwich Memorial, Cape Town. 021-419-2945 www.truthcoffee.com/cult
When Brian Berkman isn’t searching for his caffeine fix, he assists clients with PR campaigns. See www.brianberkman.com or follow BrianBerkmanZA on Twitter.