Molekylær gastronomi-workshop 27. april: Mjød

Det sies at mjød var vikingenes drikk, deres utgave av øl. Dermed må det vel være noe rotekte norsk? Er det ikke da litt paradoksalt at de færreste nordmenn har et forhold til mjød, og at det først den aller siste tida er blitt tilgjengelig i handelen? Og hvordan smaker egentlig mjød?

Finsk mjød, Sima, og frityrstekt traktkake, tippaleipä, er en
tradisjonell kombinasjon på Valborgsmesse (foto: Wikimedia)

Og enda mer overraskende er det kanskje at mjød, i en nær alkoholfri variant, har solid fotefeste i den Valborgsmesseaften?
finske kulturen og lages i de tusen finske hjem hvert eneste år fram mot kvelden før 1. mai,

Molekylær gastronomi-workshopen denne måneden handler om prøvesmakingsteknikk. Grunnen til at vi har dette temaet er å forberede den påfølgende, og sesongens siste workshop (25. mai) der vi skal bidra med data til et forskningsprosjekt ved Københavns Universitet om whisky (mer informasjon om dette blir kunngjort 18. mai).

Skal vi prøvesmake må vi nødvendigvis ha noe å smake på, og da har valget falt på mjød siden våre finske venner nettopp i disse dager brygger denne drikken i stor og liten skala. Mest sannsynlig blir det smaking av tre ulike typer mjød der to er hjemmelaget med røtter i nyere finsk og norsk tradisjon. Samtidig vil det bli gitt en kort innføring i temaet mjød.

Ingen forkunnskaper en nødvendig, og workshopen er åpen for alle som er interessert. NB: begrenset antall plasser (ca. 20 personer).

Vel møtt!

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Tid: Onsdag 27. april kl. 18.00-20.00
Sted: Fru Svendsen kunst kulturkafé i Ørsta. Adresse: Kyrkjegata 25 (kart her).
Påmelding: Meld deg på med e-post til ef(at)hivolda.no. Da får du beskjed ved eventuelle endringer
Som vanlig: deltakelse er gratis

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2c - seminar on profile roasting

In this post I summarise the last seminar I attended at the Norwegian Barista Championships this spring. It was hosted by former world champion barista Tim Wendelboe and focussed on coffee roasting. The following is what I understood from this seminar.

Profile roasting, or roasting profile

As a coffee drinker, I find it interesting to get to know the various roasters' profiles, or roasting personalities so to say. I believe each of the four Norwegian roasters I've gotten to know best have their own rather distinct style. The smallest, Madelynn coffee, have a fairly dark roasting profile resulting in more chocolatey and "brown" aromas with less acidity (and perhaps fruitiness) compared to the other "extreme" among the four of Tim Wendelboe. The coffees from Wendelboe seem to me as extremely clean and rich in acidity, but with slender body. Kaffa roasters, on the other hand, are on the lighter side of roasting but with more full-bodied coffees compared to Wendelboe (some of Kaffa's natural/dry processed coffees are among my all time favourites, I must admit). Finally, Solberg & Hansen being by far the largest speciality coffee roaster in Norway, produces such a wide variety of coffees and roasts that the wide variety might be said to constitute their profile, rather than a specific roasting ideal.

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2b - seminar on coffee defects

In this third post from this spring's Norwegian Barista Championships I summarise the most interesting seminar I attended. It was hosted by former world champion barista Tim Wendelboe and focussed on tasting defects in coffee.

I attended two seminars by Tim Wendelboe during this year's event, and of the two the one mentioned here was definitely the most rewarding for me personally.

WORKSHOP/SEMINAR: Flavour defects in coffee

(by Tim Wendelboe)

I always tell my students that if a recipe warn them not to do this or that, they should deliberately try doing it at least once (e.g. don't get egg yolk in the egg whites when whipping meringue, don't open the oven when baking sponge cake etc.). If you don't know how things look or taste when they're failed, it's difficult to have any reference for what's successful. So, go ahead - be disobedient! Tim had indeed done so and collected coffees with various defects in which he brewed cups of defective coffee. The cups were brewed as he would have brewed any other coffee; to the best of one's ability. Not only so, he had also done his best effort to single out the various defects so that we could taste each type of defect separately. Elegant, interesting and very enlightening. The defects we got to taste were:

Faded coffee
(this paragraph has been re-written subsequent to a comment)

at least two reasons for this. The first is past crop vs. new crop. Past crop = coffee that has been stored for some while (e.g. last season's crop) before roasting and sale. This is a typical problem if you are served, say, a Costa Rica coffee this summer because the harvest season is August-December. The second reason for fading is a processing defect if temperature has been too high during drying (e.g. using closed greenhouse-like drying houses with too little airflow). The characteristic of faded coffee is on my palate more subtle and not that critical a defect, but results in lower fruitiness and more woody flavour. The acidity might still be there, but the fruit is more or less gone. So if you get a bag of great Kenya or Panama coffee out of season, don't be surprised if you can't taste all they claim it does on the description on the bag. Also, this defect is easy to get your hands on, even among speciality dealers. Get your hands on a bag of Indian Monsooned Malabar or some Old Brown Java Coffee from Indonesia. These coffees are deliberately aged at the green bean stage to develop a flavour which one would consider being a defect in most other coffee.

Unripe beans
many inexpensive coffees are being uncritically strip picked resulting in a mixture of overripe, unripe and ripe beans; everything is picked at the same time and nothing is thrown away. Characteristic defect flavour would be peanut, old nuts and unpleasant acidity. I would add that unripes also would give a pea-like or grass-like flavour (picture by courtesy of www.coffeeresearch.org).

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2a - the seminars

In this second post I summarise shortly the first three seminars I attended during the Norwegian Barista Championships this year.

As mentioned in the previous post, the championships were not only competitions but also a number of seminars and exhibitions (the full programme is given in part 1). The seminars I attended, and thus am able to give some personal reflections upon are described below and in a following post.

SEMINAR: Extract Mojo – Analysis of coffee extracting using refractometer

This 1.5 hr seminar was given by invited contributor David Walsh working with R&D at Marco beverage systems in Ireland (although their web site is a commercial one they've published quite a lot of educational material such as articles and ppt slides). The presentation was in fact much more than a presentation of the Extract Mojo, and the session was a very clear and systematic presentation of coffee extraction in general. Questions discussed and explained were e.g.

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 1 - general overview

Three days in Ulsteinvik at the Norwegian west coast: Loads of top quality coffee, ample possibilities to learn new things about coffee, interesting seminars, and meeting lots of very nice people. Below follows a report seen through the eyes of a coffee amateur: the things I found most fun, interesting or intriguing.*

I came to this event without many expectation, mostly because I didn't know what to expect. I was quite optimistic because the organisers had made a great effort to promote the event to the general public (see previous post).

Norwegian Barista Championships: Cup Taster competitions is opened up for amateur participants

This year, the Norwegian barista championships is held in Ulsteinvik on the western coast. In addition to lectures, exhibitions etc., several competitions are held. Among the most interesting things is that the cup taster championship is now open for non-professionals. Also, I talked to the host for this year's competition: Kaffikari.

Last week, I went over to Ulsteinvik to have a chat with Kari Janne Andersen, proprietor of Kaffikari coffee bar & kitchen and got some excellent coffee/espresso as well (her espresso is among the very best I've had). I wanted to know a bit about this years Norwegian barista championships which are held in Kaffikari's hometown, Ulsteinvik. More about the other competitions below, but first a few thoughts by Kari on the upcoming competitions and what makes this year's event different.

fooducation: What are your thoughts about reaching a larger audience through this year's competitions. Is that a goal? Why?

Kari: Previous years, the competition has been held in rather secluded places; the offices of a producer in an industrial area, inside the Norwegian gastronomic institute and such places. One of the unique features about this year's competition is that it is held in an open venue which invites a non-specialist public in a whole new way.

fooducation: Was this your idea, or...?

Kari: The initiative is thanks to the Norwegian branch of SCAE, Speciality Coffee Association of Europe. SCAE is responsible for the competitions, we are the hosts and were fortunate to attract the interest from SCAE and that way were able to get the championships here.

fooducation: What's special about the place Ulsteinvik?

Kari: There are some practical/logistic benefits because it's easy to get here by plane. Also, there's just a short walk between the coffee bar and the hotel (venue for the competitions and lectures). It's got both the benefits of being somewhat rural but at the same time being urban.

Dancing the structure of a molecule + scent vs music revisited

Some time ago I caught a glimpse of a headline about some researchers "dancing their natural science projects", more specifically a biochemist dancing the structure of certain biochemical compounds. I thought the idea was rather far-fetched and didn't give it further thought. After seeing it just recently I find myself being so very wrong... Second part of the post contains a few recent thoughts about a project on scent vs. music.

Have a look at the video below. In the start of the video I didn't see the point, but after a while things started to dawn on me.

Lipids Dance! from Kerstin Wagner on Vimeo.

After watching the video I realised that this did indeed illustrate behaviour of the molecules in question in a very vivid way. I'm of the opinion that one should look for as many possible ways of describing and explaining a phenomenon as possible. If a student tells you they don't understand what you're saying there is seldom any help in repeating the same words one more time. You need to find new words, some other metaphor, another mental representation.

"Anyone for aN 'espresso?" - Machine made coffee seen through transparent glass

A short summer reflection: I've never thought about looking through a cup of espresso, or lungo, or americano, until this holiday. To my surprise the lungo is not always homogeneous (it shouldn't have been, however).

At the house we are exchanging for this summer, in the middle of Paris :), there is a Nespresso machine. At home, we have an rather ordinary/mainstream espresso machine, whereas Nespresso claims to give you a good cup of espresso or lungo without all the hassle: insert one of the many varieties of ready made coffe capsules, press the button, and you get a good(?) cup of espresso without the need for grinding, cleaning etc.

Very easy odour adaptation experiment

Matmolekyler published last month an incredibly easy and straightforward experiment for illustrating the phenomenon of odour adaptation.

Adaptation is the phenomenon in which you stop noticing an odour/aroma when you've been subjected to it for a while. This is, amongst other, used as a motive for varying aroma components throughout a meal. Have a look at "Jullovsexperiment: Hacka ditt luktsinne" (Google translated version: "Christmas holiday experiment: Hack your sense of smell"). In this case, Malin Sandström, proposes to use coffee and cinnamon.

I'm on constant search for experiments that give personal experiences with food and science. In my eyes, the sheer ease of this experiment is maybe the greatest advantage, making it very acessable for anyone wanting to experiment with these phenomena.

Heston Blumenthal and Peter Barham have also described this in one of their Kitchen Chemistry episodes (Discovery channel):

"Our brains, it seems, respond much more to changes in which molecules are in the nose and mouth than they do to what is actually there, for example - if you chew a piece of gum, the flavour will disappear after a few minutes, as your brain gets "bored" by the aroma in the nose - but there is virtually no reduction in the amount of flavour molecules in the nose. However, if you simply change the input from your tongue, by, for example - taking a sip of sweetened water - the full flavour will be instantly restored"

Peter Barham (Discovery Channel)

What to teach/learn

• Gain experience with aroma and sense of smell
• Experience the phenomenon of adaptation
• (Experience that flavour experience is both taste and aroma)

Post-comment
I tested the experiment with our students and it worked perfectly! The student with the cinnamon even commented: "the odour fades away while I'm smelling it". Great fun. A colleague has been doing this experiment for several years using (synthetic) almond and rum essences. However, the intensities of these are somewhat uneven, and one swamps the other. Coffee and cinnamon works perfectly :)

A short note on taste/food as a impulse to making music

Spurred by a recent comment a previous posting about chemistry and music, I thought I'd leave a few thoughts about chemistry/taste/scent/aroma vs. music; most of all just to have them written hem down, really.

At the moment I haven't come any further with this apart from day to day musing. The main idea is that as a large proportion of taste is in fact aroma; what is perceived through the nose receptors rather than the tongue. In our "improjazz" band Quest (www.questmusic.no and myspace music) we've used both visual arts (photography) and text/poetry as impulse to making improvised music. These are both impulses received by our senses (visual and auditory). However, taste and aroma are very powerful impulses in association making. Just imagine how the smell of a dish that you've not tasted since you were a small child, or the perfume of the grandmother you spent a lot of time together with as young, may set you right back to situations years back in time in a way that few other impulses do. To me this happens especially in smelling and/or tasting food I had a lot of as a child, or had in a special situation.

So, my thoughts these days circle around the possibilities that lie in using smell as impulse for me as a musician to create music, in the same way as hearing a poem or seeing a photography/painting/picture. I suppose this leans towards some sort of performance art, although other arts than music aren't my field of expertise in any way.

Finally, one interesting thing I came across through Martin's khymos blog was Aroma jockey. This relates very closely to the thoughts above, but to me it seems like he uses recorded music. I'd love to see where this could lead in cooperation with live musicians.

Erik