A cover feature with Indonesia’s Mikael Jasin, building on sustainability efforts, creating great café flow, a cold-brew compendium, and much more all in the new issue!
BY SARAH ALLEN
BARISTA MAGAZINE
Welcome to our new issue—the June + July 2022 issue is out now! We’re thrilled to present you with the latest edition of Barista Magazine, which includes a mix of articles to help you operate as a coffee professional in today’s world. That means we’ve got some education and guidance, but also—considering how thoughtful and bright specialty-coffee company owners are—plenty of cultural pieces to keep you engaged in the larger coffee world, such as reports from distant coffee cultures, profiles of some of your most captivating industry peers, analysis of current trends, and much, much more!
Here are some of the highlights from the issue:
Cover Feature: Mikael Jasin
With his experience growing up in Jakarta, Indonesia, and spending his early 20s as a student in Melbourne, Australia, Mikael Jasin has a very interesting perspective on specialty coffee. You see, while Melbourne is known globally as one of the epicenters for exceptional café culture, his home country—though it’s long been an area where coffee is grown and exported—has not been known for producing very good coffee outside of a few small regions including Sumatra. After winning the Indonesian Barista Championship in 2019 and going on to place higher than any barista from his country in the 2019 World Barista Championship (he placed fourth), Mikael knew how serious his responsibility was to the development of specialty within Indonesia. Assuming the mantle of an “agent for change,“ Mikael founded a company dedicated to working with smallholders in Indonesia to improve their growing, harvesting, and processing techniques. He—and moreover the producers with whom he works—have thus far been successful, with nothing but expanded triumph in specialty-coffee circles ahead. Read all about Mikael in this issue’s cover article.
High Maintenance: Your Equipment Questions Answered
We met our longtime friends Alex Lambert and Jason “Double J“ Johnson when they were running the coffee-equipment service center for a major specialty-coffee roaster. When they struck out to open their very own service company, Black Rabbit Service Co., we asked them to pen an advice column for our readers, which we’d call “High Maintenance.“ Part “Dear Abby,“ part Car Talk, part humor, and entirely informative, “High Maintenance“ has become one of Barista Magazine’s most-loved regular columns, and we’re excited to share a brand-new installment of it in the June + July 2022 issue!
The Cold-Brew Compendium
It’s been years since anyone considered cold-brew coffee a trend—we’ve long since known it’s here to stay. Cold brew is prevalent in all parts of the world and is enjoyed via many diverse brew methods. But for a lot of café owners, realizing the true potential of their cold-brew program remains a mystery. In an effort to gather and present the information and tools café owners need to have a successful—read: profitable—cold-brew program, we went to one of the most respected people on the planet: Julia Leach, CEO of Toddy Cafe. In this comprehensive article, Julia debunks many myths surrounding cold-brew coffee, and offers useful and proven information and methodology café owners can easily implement into their own cold-brew coffee programs.
Go with the Flow
If a café has good flow—that is, a well-placed queue, bar, condiment table, and seating—customers won’t even notice it. That’s what you strive for. But if folks walk into your shop and aren’t sure where to go for service, well, that’s a problem. In this article, veteran coffee professional Josh Rank talks with the experts about what should go where, and why. He offers tips for both new cafés wanting to create great flow from the first, and established cafés that could implement new systems. Finally, Josh not only discusses the best options for flow when it comes to consumers, but he goes on to take apart the idea of flow behind the bar as well, to keep your barista staff engaged, efficient, and happy all day long.
Field Report: Poznan, Poland
We timed publishing a “Field Report“ about Poland in the June + July issue of Barista Magazine to the fact that the Specialty Coffee Association’s (SCA) World of Coffee (WOC) event was scheduled to be held in Warsaw in June. And then a terrible war broke out with Russia, raining chaos and destruction on the country of Ukraine. Considering Ukraine borders Poland—and therefore, countless Poles have dropped everything in their efforts to support and safeguard their neighboring country people—the SCA relocated the WOC to Milan, Italy, where it will take place June 23–26. So we planned a “Field Report“ about Milan (which you’ll find in this issue)‚ but we kept our piece about Poland because we feel it’s vital that the developing and impressive specialty-café culture there—and specifically in Poznán, Poland—deserved the spotlight regardless of whether the big European conference will be there. We hope you enjoy learning more about Poland’s dynamic and vibrant specialty-coffee scene.
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