Today, I want to revisit an old post that is now removed from its original location (Medium).
(Yes, I am moving everything to Steem now.)
I wrote this in 2014, when I got to travel southeast Asia for a while. I used to film vlogs everyday and wish I could be like Anthony Bourdain some day :D. Today, I look back at this and I am reliefed that I no longer chaise something that I am not.
But what am I?!
Remembering the place by its flavours and smells helps to keep it more vivid for longer. While Bali stayed in my memory mostly by its fruits. The aftertaste takes me to only place possible. Coffee. Varieties of either grown in Bali beans or those imported by one of the local ‘speciality coffee shops’ have built a decent palette of relatable bookmarks. Anomali Caffee is a local chain, brewery, distributor and place with sufficient internet to work from. Perfect to stay here for hours. I am one of them.
Place is ideal for daily indulgence. No wonder it climbed so easily to the the top of my list. ‘Seminyak Coffee’ in Ubud was a close second. With much more interesting coffee selection and large shared table accommodating other fellows working as developers, content managers, writers or social media celebs. It was for the first time where I realised that laptops at coffee shops are now the new norm and that there is nothing to be annoyed about. Before that, people were relatively anti-social anyway. I certainly wasn’t the first to start the conversation.
‘Bali Coffee’ an awful drink consisting of a few small spoons of beans grinded to the finest kind of dust possible, an equal amount of sugar and milk is what is a baseline among locals. Nothing to get crazy about if you are a tourist from the modern, spoiled world. When I tried to brew it with myself, I got something that could be described as a watered ashtray. Perhaps I have made it too strong, or maybe the dusty brew didn’t settle down yet. It was not drinkable. It has to do with a fact that people workinf with coffee and cocoa often cannot afford to consume it. So they are resorted to the worst variety.
I quickly became discouraged of future attempts thinking that the product I bought was just of poor quality. I was then reintroduced to artisan ‘Bali Coffee’ at ‘One Fifteenth‘ in Jakarta. It was prepped using syphon method by Indonesian’s 1st at the time Barista, Doddy Samsura. Maybe it was the beautiful setting, maybe the skill of Doddy, but I really got to enjoy it! Sadly 1/15th didn’t have any beans for sale at the time. I was lucky to get a bag at ‘Liberica‘ later. Today I like to brew it using a french press. 15g per serving, allowing it to brew for about 5 minutes before the final push. I also like to eliminate the upper part of foam and lighter hunks floating on the top of the brew to get rid of the acidic notes. What I am left with then is a sweet and sour dark rich brew that gets sweeter with every minute !
‘Liberica’ is the coffee shop I didn’t take any photos of as at the time other priorities took over. It was the last bastion of quality coffee before I got on the aircraft that brought me to place where I could only dream about those coffee chapels. I purchased some other coffees there too, but let me first focus on that one. It is not too be confused with ‘Kopi Luwak’, controversial coffee processed by the Asian Palm Civets. Quite dark colour and strong taste make it difficult to be your friend straight away. The same qualities I used to avoid, over time made me appreciate the kick each cup would generously give out.
The strong flavour made me eager to test various kinds of Aeropress filters with it. While the paper is what I normally use. Surprisingly metal one gave me much better results offering sweeter and even richer flavour. Perhaps that one in particular experiment made me change my mind. I prepared three cups for me, my girlfriend and her mother. I have used Aeropress with all three brews. First one was made using the inverted technique, paper filter and timings I normally apply. The second was exactly the same but with use of the metal filter. The third was prepared with a non-inverted method for the sake of the experiment. The second cup won with all three votes.
I cannot fully separate the sentiment to Bali from the acquired taste to those beans, but nonetheless, I will miss it until I see it for purchase at reasonable price. It is sold quite cheap via the internet but shipping it across the continent makes me reluctant at least for the time being. Indonesian coffee has a bad reputation. It is considered as inconsistent. Currently, when re-editing this post in 2018 I can't say I have seen Bali beans anywhere for purchase.