Ishan is our most accomplished competition barista. He is a truly inspirational coffee professional who continues to inspire people around him. The first time we encountered the force of coffee that is Ishan Natalie, he had already been on the competition scene for a number of years. He was very comfortable on stage, but the thing that has always stood out about Ishan is that he’s genuinely, always interested to hear about you, and in your coffee journey (and food journey!). Always curious about techniques, constantly looking for improvements and innovations in flavour, body, mouthfeel, finish…Ishan is obsessed with the minute details of things that make for a better experience when it comes to coffee and food. He joined the Starbucks SA team in January 2016 and is currently one of the senior leaders within the business, with multiple direct portfolios – Lead in Central Operations, Product/Category and Coffee Excellence, inspiring the next generation of passionate coffee humans.
Brew it like a Champion
My brew and recipe to share is a ‘Bee House’ pourover drip, using a coffee gifted to me from a dear South African friend Dean Mackay, (@roaster_dean), who is working as the Roastery General Manager for Hermanos Colombian Coffee Roasters in the UK. I’ve played a part in his career, and I met up with him recently in the UK. He gifted me a range of their current coffees, and the one I am brewing currently is their Nubia. The Nubia is a natural process coffee from Bruselas, Huila, Colombia, of a Caturra Chiroso varietal. It has notes of Strawberry Jam, Dragonfruit, Fig, Mango Chips and Dark Chocolate. I love natural process coffees but this coffee has brighter, more complex notes than a standard natural, making it perfect for Summer. I am enjoying this coffee as hot, iced, and cold brewed. It has mind-blowing aromatics packed with these sensory notes and is a light and complex cup packed with flavour. I enjoy this style dripper with natural process coffees, as it is a hybrid extraction and sensory profile of both a V60 and a flat bottom filter. It delivers more sweetness, roundness, and mouthfeel than a flat bottom dripper, but slightly less acidity and complexity of that of a V60.
Recipe
My favourite brew ratio is 1:16.5 (coffee:water) for drip on a lighter roast, with a finer grind size to get 4-5 minutes of brewing time – this gives me a perfect strength, great balance of nuances and better depth of sweetness with a creamy mouthfeel. Using filtered water just off the boil, with an average 7PH, and TDS of around 150, I do a 40 second bloom, and then keep a steady slow pour of water in a circular motion moving from the middle of the bed of coffee outwards, back in, repeating until I have the desired volume. To finish off the drip and get an even extraction, I swirl three times clockwise, and then three times anticlockwise so that the bed of coffee is level for water to pass through evenly.
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