Oriole Cafe & Bar

We have moved!

2009-10-14T21:49:00.000+08:00

Our new home:

OrioleCafe.wordpress.com

See you there!

This week’s roast at Oriole…Sweet columbian!

2009-10-07T21:31:00.001+08:00

Roast Date: 29/9/09

Tasting Notes

Dry aroma: Toasted bread on the dry aroma

Wet Aroma: Carmelised muscovado, orchids

What a nice diversion! Finally we’ve got some great Colombian back into our blend. It’s been a loooong wait but all is worth it. On first pull we were getting overtly bright notes. But alas we down dosed, fined it up and set the brewhead temp at 93.6C. Once we really allowed for expansion the sweet notes finally came bursting forth. It really put a great big smile on our faces and a spring in our step.

Recommended as:

Espresso:

Sweet chocolate and burnt caramel aromas. Lively citrus and lime acidity overlaid over dark herbs and ginger root flavours. Syrupy thick textures with very long and distinctly dark chocolate and nut finish. Frankly we’re amazed at the the current state of this week’s roast. Perfect for espressos now till hopefully another 6 days, afterwhich we should see a reversion to just sweet chocolates.

Macchiato:

Suprisingly intense and sweet hazelnut flavours sprang forth with only a light touch of foamed milk. Amazing how cream changes the nature of coffee! Highly recommended…

Part 2 - Lost in SF

2009-10-02T10:51:00.016+08:00

It's nice to forget about the real world...to loose yourself in the blue bottle...had a nice chat with ben...of syphons and 17ft ceilings...it was extremely memorable. Thanks to ben for that berrylicious ethiopian siphon and to emilly for that chocolicious cap.

The Buena Vista Cafe...

I just had to do the tourist thing. Although I must say the irish coffee did put a spring in my step for the rest of the sun drenched day...is it true they make 2000 cups a day?

But the ritual of dosing, tamping, levelling, pulling, sniffing, drinking (repeat indefinitely) just doesn't get boring, does it? Everytime you get the shakes...how many times have you said " never again...?".

then you smell the probat's waft and suddenly something switches off. God my memory span must be that of a goldfish.

Was it four barrel or four boars? Whatever it was the vibe was grounded good. Of special mention was the sumatran, totally unexpected,...what a treat!

Part 1 - lost with caffeine in the city of angels

2009-09-28T10:50:00.018+08:00

customized toe-rings, super sized-burgers and the flip-flops of venice beach. was it a mirage? an unreal oasis? a mirage of my withdrawal symptoms?

Curiosity pulled me away from the boardwalk and into the intelligentsia of addicts. Where baristas take you on one-on-one...melissa did me a machiato. Spotted the four leafed clover and almost jumped over to rub it for luck. Somehow there was a haze in the place as there were mirages of synessos and robur E's everywhere...the buzz was oh how do they say it in california? "FAR OUT MAN!"

And so I braved the !@@##%$ LA traffic and made it to a lake shining in sliver and that black powder. To a world of mist fans, mosiac bars and very tall baristas. That sweet black cat had a twin, and all was well and buzzing. ..until my bladder came a calling, that is.

Cupping on the 02092009

2009-09-02T22:25:00.000+08:00

Hi all, today we have Vic joining us on our weekly cupping of our coffee. Before i go into more details on the tasting notes by Keith, Vic & myself, i would like to inform everyone that we have made some modifications to our Oriole Blend.

Before all of you start screaming 'NO!'... i would like to assure you that although the blend has been changed from Colombian, Guatemala & Panama to a Blend of Mexican, Peruvian & Panama, the flavours and all other attributes has been retain. The reason why we are changing certain coffee in our blend is because we are always in search for coffee that are 'IN-SEASON' Coffee that will bring our the best flavours in our Blend. So be assure once again that your are in good hands.

Back to our cupping session today. This is Vic's 'Virgin' attempt at cupping. He got Oily musky aroma, nutty and earthy in the body. Bitter sweetness in the after-taste. Pretty good descriptors for a first attempt.

Keith, with his usual wonderful palate, describe the fragrance as musky, wet wood, lemon peel. Aroma at break with blueberries, lemon, salty. Dark herbal, gulamelaka, cinnamon, cardamon in the flavour. Orange like acidity, almost close to orange peel. Medium body with bitter choc after-taste.

And I got Chocolate in the fragrance, earthy & musky aroma, more inclined to lemony acidity, earthy body like a good Indon coffee. overall a balance coffee.

Well, done blogging about our cupping session for today.

Some Interesting Latte Art

2009-09-01T23:15:00.012+08:00

Here are some pictures that were taken sometime ago when we were all mucking around..but can't remember when! I was trawling around the computer and thought I'd post it before I accidentally deleted it! We know that one looks like a dragon, and the other's a panda , but the verdict is still out on the other.

Swan, squirrel or goose?

My Coffee Trip

2009-09-01T17:59:00.009+08:00

Travelling to a friends wedding next week and since I'll be in San Francisco and LA I might as well hit all the top coffee joints there!

I'll be in LA first so first on my hit list are the juggernauts Coffee Klatch & intelligentsia silverlake coffebar. I'll also be trying to stuff as many coffee beans as I can...maybe I'll ship them back. In fact, I'll have to ship them back as I'l be travelling on to Napa, half-moon bay and then to SF.

...and in SF I'll be visiting Peets, Blue Bottle, Ritual,

And I'll also be making a pilgrimmage to the birthplace of what most regard as the standard for irish coffee: The Buena Vista

Last but not least, god-willing, I might be able to sample some Hacienda La Esmeralda. I've found a source but will update this blog if it comes to fruition...

p.s. - to all reading: please forgive the disastrous layout and editing of this blog. I'm still very VERY new to this and am trying to make everything neater and more legible.

What others have been saying...

2009-08-25T23:24:00.002+08:00

There's been a lot of chatter about us on hungry go where, so I'd thought I'd include this link for convenience...

http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/oriole_cafe_bar/

Some delectable dishes

2009-08-25T21:14:00.003+08:00

Just in case anyone thought that Oriole was all about the coffee, although sometimes that's all I think about. We've got some nice items on our food menu too. In fact we've got a full-sized kitchen with a great team of chefs serving almost a thousand customers a week...

Unfortunately I could only find these few pics of some of our items...but better some than nothing!

More to come...

Ethiopian Sidamo

2009-05-26T17:52:00.001+08:00

Just received a batch a freshly roasted Ethiopian sidamo. Full florals, toasty, woody and wild berries off the nose. Floral nose leads to citrus, orange peel sweetness in this medium bodied and full length find. It's 5 days old so it'll be fun to see how this bean progresses. We've roasted it to just before 2nd crack and the roast colour is looking very pretty.

We think that these flvours truly shine with our new introduction of plunger pot coffee. It's also beautifully fragrant with milk in our piccolo lattes. Currently we're not serving it as espressos cuz we think the flavours a a wee bit too intense on the perfumy side. We'll see as this bean mellows up if it'll pull well on single shots.

more to come!

New gadget addition at our coffee counter

2009-05-14T18:09:00.000+08:00

To all the geeks out there I htink we've got singapore's 1st milk pitcher rinser. From espressoparts, this milk rinser works a dream and really speeds things up. Clean, hygenic and saves water. tree huggers rejoice!

Chilli Chocolate Mocha

2009-05-08T16:39:00.001+08:00

Hey hey this drink was Keith's competition concoction. Many people have been asking for it ever since the papers mentioned that we were planning to put it on the menu. We'll we've finally got off our butts and it'll be on the menu next monday.

John's summer blossom will be coming up next..but please don't hold your breath...we're working on it..

What the media have been saying

2009-05-08T16:26:00.001+08:00

Here's some other coverage of ourselves, albeit some in mandarin:

New milk pitcher rinser

2009-05-08T16:21:00.000+08:00

New gadget recently acquiredfrom the SCAA expo. A milk rinser from espresso parts. Now let's see how looong it take for us to get off our A***S and get it plumbed in. stay tuned...

bluberry muffin and rose hips

2009-04-27T12:44:00.000+08:00

got some beans (ethiopian yirgacheffe) from the japanese team at WBC. Pulled some wondewrful shots today. On the first pull we got wonderful balance. one would expect overpowering floral notes. but this one was just really nice and balanced. with sweetness right to the end(flowers and blueberry sugar). it was slightly oily but wow the shots were unexpected. pity we only got 150gms. sigh.

Pictures from the WBC

2009-04-27T09:01:00.000+08:00

Boy was it an awesome week in Atlanta at the WBC.

We learnt so much, went to some cupping classes, tried some amazing coffee.

Here's the first installment of pics from my camera. We'll be uploading some from john's too later, once I get around to him!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oriolecafeandbar/

Latte art

2009-04-26T17:23:00.000+08:00

Here's a random one. This shot was taken some weeks back. The latte art was done for a magazine shoot (Can't remember now) and I piggybacked the shot on my camera too. We don't usually make such large cups(this one was a 12oz cup I think, we usually use a 6-8 oz cup for Caps).

This is fun. I'm getting the hang of blogging.

some reviews

2009-04-26T15:38:00.000+08:00

here's a few links to reviews on us:

http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/oriole_cafe_bar/

http://www.soshiok.com/articles/11685

http://shiokhochiak.blogspot.com/2009/03/oriole-cafe-and-bar-espresso-to-satisfy.html

Inaugral blog!

2009-04-26T08:48:00.000+08:00

Phew it took us long enough to start this!

Here we go:

Oriole cafe has been buzzing non-stop since we opened this year in Jan.

here's a link of pics, in case no-one's seen it yet.
http://web.mac.com/lohkeith/iWeb/Site/Oriole%20Cafe%20%26%20Bar.html

Ok now I've got to compose my thoughts before I write the next note...

peace
keith