We made one Humdinger of a blend
A big part of our philosophy is that we love to collaborate with people who share our passion for coffee and have an innovative spirit in them. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Jack Wheeler-McMullen from Humdrum Espresso – to fulfill our long time dream of a interesting coffee blend that hits the sweet notes just right.
An idea that had to wait for the right timing
“I’ve really wanted Clandestino to have a blend that is focused on sweetness from day one. When we first started roasting in Noosa in 2010, people’s idea about coffee (including ours) was all about strength, not so much about flavour or sweetness,” explains Jaxon Taylor, who is the owner of Clandestino.
The reason behind this was due to the Italian style of roasting which was abundant in Noosa up until the mid to late 2000’s. “The other thing that was working against this idea back then was that there just were not enough black coffee drinkers around. Milk can make flavours fade out to the point where the coffee itself cannot be appreciated to its full potential. Ideally, you want to come up with a blend that tastes really good black and with milk,” adds Jaxon.“The idea was to start a group movement of coffee drinkers who were curious about trying different things and to get more cafes and skilled baristas on board.” he adds.
A blend that stands up to single origins
One of the best things about our newest creation is that it comes as a two bean blend – it can almost pass as a single origin. This is because you are still able to pick the original flavours of its two components. Back at out Clandestino headquarters, Ryan “Steg” Stegert who is our Head Roaster, talks about how smoothly the whole process went. “I knew the flavour profile we wanted straight away,” explains Steg. “The choice of the two beans for the blend was pretty obvious. We had our two main components already chosen, we just needed to play with the ratio so that they compliment each other perfectly.”
Josh Lazarevski, our Coffee Director whose years of experience as a barista and numerous cuppings of our beans made him the right person to be part of the developing team, adds: “We mixed a medium to high-bodied coffee with a low bodied coffee to give us the balance we needed for our customers”, Josh gives us a sneak peek into how the boys worked their magic, “both our Colombian and Brazilian are high-scoring coffees and compliment each other perfectly.”
The Humdinger has landed!
All we needed now was a strong name. You know how the best things usually come naturally? Someone suggested the word “humdinger” and when we looked up the definition we realised we couldn’t have found a more fitting name.
Humdinger noun | hum . ding . er : a remarkable or outstanding person or thing of its kind.
Humdinger uses seasonal beans. The good thing about them is that you can be sure that we carefully selected the very best beans we could find. But this also means that their availability might be limited. That’s what makes Humdinger just a little bit more special.
We will forever be chasing the optimal flavours of sweetness with its future batches.
