Golden Bean News – by Sean Edwards, Managing Director Golden Bean/Café Culture International
We all get excited when a new product hits the cafe scene and as owners we get on the band wagon and often make good profit.
What we sometimes don’t see or consider is the thousands of hours of R&D that has gone into the design of the product, to get it ready for the industry.
Plant milk is the new trendy kid on the block in cafes.
Plant based milk make up for over 20% of all beverage sales and these numbers are growing as the consumer is looking at healthy lifestyle choices. Plant milks are designer milks, that don’t occur naturally as a finished beverage.
They all have to be formulated and manufactured! Plant milks for cafes are even harder to perfect because they have to act and react like dairy milk when they are steamed by the barista on the espresso machine.
There is a massive race at the moment by plant milk companies around the world to perfect an ultimate designer plant milk. We have seen the rise of Soy and Almond milk, now we are seeing Oat, which is making a huge mark on the cafe scene.
I recently had a discussion with Senior Food Scientist, Andrew Penton from Sanitarium, who has been formulating successful plant milks like So Good and barista milks for the Alternative Dairy Company.
Andrew has lived up to the challenge to perfect the right formulation, specifically for the cafe coffee service. One point Andrew stated was that we are really putting the cart before the horse.
Coffee should be designed for plant milk, not the other way around. I asked him to explain and we discussed the high acidity levels in roast profiles, that most modern cafes are using, will react in a negative manner to the espresso shot. You will see curdling and separation with these high acidic coffees added in the coffee making process.
There is a fine line of what you can add to the plant milk like vegetable gums and oils to make the plant milk robust enough to handle steaming and to blend with acidic coffees. Soy milk has always been hard to get right, whereas Almond and Oat are naturally more creamier and closer to dairy in their make up.
This thought has opened up a new category for our Golden Bean Roasters competition where we will get coffee roasters to design a coffee profile that will work with all plant based milks.
The roaster will have to create a designer blend that has a low acid content but have enough flavour to cut through the natural taste of plant milk.
We have partnered with the Alternative Dairy Company to use their popular Oat milk for this years judging criteria at the Golden Bean. We are currently sending out samples to our competing roasters so they can start the process of designing a winning plant milk paired coffee.
We have been working with a number of roasters, both here and in the US and sharing tips and success.
Talking with Dr Ainsley at Peak Coffee Australia, he has chosen an Ethiopian based blend in which he is darkening his roast profile to reduce the acidity but will instill the fruitiness of the natural process in coffee.
Gary Wall at Bastion Lane in Uki NSW has already created a commercial coffee called ALT which he has perfected with the results so far. He does a slow roast with this blend similar to decaf roasting which seems to be the winning combination.
Head Judge Scott Angelo for Golden Bean 2019 Australia and North America, has been experimenting with a coffee designed for plant milk and is currently recording data around his findings in which he will share with the Golden Bean Roasters network later in the year, a huge benefit before the competition in November.
We would love to communicate with other roasters in the industry who are experimenting in this space, as this milk category is here to stay.
