COFFEE POTLUCK with Vania Ling

COFFEE POTLUCK

with Vania Ling

Love me says food, and food we love.

Especially Vania. In fact, it’s her passion. Her vision is to uncover new ways to approach the entire food experience, from a multisensory and community-based perspective, and it’s this that brought the two of us into the same space. This, and my long-time friend, Kris Wu, a renowned barista in the Vancouver scene, who insisted that we link up while I was in town (more on Kris later).

Like many Vancouverites on a spring afternoon, Vania and I met up for craft beers at a local café/brewery (33 Acres Brewing) near where she was dropping off supplies from a recent event.

““Coffee is a bit of a passion project. I think it’s relatively young and small… While living in Ireland, I realized that I didn’t want to work the bar, but that there were other ways to bring value to the industry. I’m interested in how coffee gets to where it’s going, who’s consuming it, how it brings people together.””

Vania also inspired me to take a quick visit to Seattle as it is a huge reference for what’s happening in Vancouver. Advice I took wholeheartedly.

Conveniently, the next day Vania was hosting her 2nd monthly coffee potluck at East Van Coffee Roasters, and I was more than happy to tag along, ziplock of beans in hand, to participate in knowledge sharing and caffeinated encounters. We were fortunate enough to have coffee expert, Nic Witzke, on hand to give a quick pre-presentation on Water and Coffee before the cupping.

““Water can be hard or soft, but minerals are important for pulling out the coffee from the beans.” ”

He spoke more on topics of pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and the role of bicarbonate conjugate partners, but it’s been a while since chemistry class, so I won’t try to explain what all of this means. Nic did it very well. The take-away is that the mineral breakdown of the particular water you’re using is super important for how coffee is extracted and makes a huge difference in the taste.

That being said, let’s taste some coffee!

FOOTNOTES

Thanks to local roasters, Elysian Coffee, Moving Coffee, and Phil & Sebastian for putting their coffees on the table!