Month: November 2008

Mocca, Mocca – reminiscent of the original mocha from Yemen, which I am glad to say that my experience of drinking this type of mocca was absolutely amazing and delicious. Alt Wien in Vienna have just started stocking a bio or organic version made up of a mix of coffees from Central America from more than one region, which I guess must be a mix from Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua but they were not divulging. At first I was a little bit sceptical wondering what kind of taste I was going to get and was swiftly rebutted by the smell and versatility of the bean as it was quick to find the right grind. Here ! I’ll share a really quick way to find the right grind, so that you don’t waste loadsa (English cockney slang for lots of) coffee when trying to find the right 23-25 second grind for extracting espresso. See the pic below;

I noticed that the granules should not be completely flat and linear – there should be a little bit of “clumping”. If you grind and the machine spurts out too quickly, then you will get lots of powder everywhere – that’s your first warning. Counter this by making the grind a little bit finer until you see some clumps. I am aware that this is ideal for my less than $300 machine, but perhaps for the $1,000 stuff, this might be different as the granules should be completely uniform to get all those wonderful tastes in a cup of coffee.

As an avid drinker of espresso, although I naturally found the Mocca sweetish, it was not as bold as I would like, but when mixed with milk, it was scrumptious. Also, the smell and the colours are so rich, they just typify coffee to the max, see below for colour but not smell…..

Still on the coffee style, the crema was just amazingly thick and I took a few shots to show you how wonderful it was from the top. The sugar took well over 10 seconds to drop through the crema cloud

This coffee bean refused to sink and I had to remove it before drinking. I think the colours are just amazing and this is the thickest crema I’ve got so far this year.

And of course, as it is ideal with an espresso milk based drink like cappuccino, the velvety smooth micro-foam milk just worked and was visually pleasing to the eye.

Here, I’m just trying something different to make my cappuccino look good before it makes contact with my lips and tummy.

Anyway, if you can find it, try a mocca coffee. They are still very rare and upon my return to Alt Wien to buy another 500g bag, there wasn’t any, sadly to say, but I was promised that more would be in the following week.

Mocca Ciao !