Coffee roaster Carrie Evans is excited Excelso has won more prestigious awards. Photo/Andrew Warner
Award-winning company Excelso is a fine blend of roastery, cafe and philanthropy, writes Monique Balvert-O'Connor
The taste of coffee has just got more sensational in Tauranga, thanks to a couple who brought good coffee to the Bay back in the '90s.
Excelso coffee roasters Carrie and Jeff Evans have just this week introduced nitro cold brew coffee, which is as good as drinking ... well, a beer.
The comparison has to be made as nitro has been likened to serving Guinness on tap. That's after the coffee grinds have sat in their cloth bag, steeped in water, before being served cold, complete with bubbles that take a while to settle.
Nitro coffee, served at their Excelso premises down (self-named) Coffee Lane in Tauranga's Third Avenue, is the latest in a host of good stuff happening in Carrie and Jeff's world of coffee.
This year the company is celebrating both its 21st birthday, and the results of the 2015 Huhtamaki NZ Coffee Awards. Excelso received official affirmation it is doing plenty right, taking out gold, silver and bronze at the awards, entered by around 300 NZ coffee roasting companies.
The gold was for best organic coffee, silver for the best single origin category, and bronze for the best espresso. While the company has won prestigious awards before, winning so many at once is a new experience.
Carrie, Jeff and team responded to the news of their success with a fine blend of pride and joy.
"It was so exciting," Carrie enthuses. "We have been working on our entries for a long time with all the staff involved - taste testing and voting, deciding which categories to enter, which blends/origins and how best to roast them to produce a quality product worthy of winning. To win gold, silver and bronze was amazing."
It has come at a time in Excelso's history when many things of significance are happening.
Just last year Excelso introduced (slow) cold drip coffee to its repertoire - it is served and bottled on site and offers another coffee drinking experience.
About to hit the streets is their coffee cart, which will offer both hot and cold coffee. The espresso machine and fridge will run off LPG, with batteries running the grinder. The cart is expected to be a popular inclusion at gourmet markets and other events.
As the company has come of age, so too has its approach to sustainable initiatives.
Takeaway cups are 100 per cent compostable, and recycling and reusing is practised wherever possible. Coffee sacks are recycled, pallets removed by customers, coffee grounds and chaff are collected and used in customers' gardens, compost or worm farms.
"We have halved our rubbish going to the tip this year through such practises.
"We have a sustainability goal of no paper cups in the landfill so sell 'keep cups' as well as our compostable ones. If people come in with our keep cups we give them a discount on their coffee."
At the Excelso premises, a blackboard with a chalk drawing of a tap tells of another fantastic Excelso endeavour. The tap's accompanying words say "turning coffee into water" and record the number of people who have clean drinking water thanks to customer purchases. The back story has its roots in Cambodia. Carrie, Jeff and their daughter Josie (Excelso's manager) enthuse over this initiative, called the Well Project, which focuses on providing clean drinking water in Cambodia. Last year a blend called Good Coffee was added to their offerings. Proceeds from this go towards well projects in Cambodia, with one bag of the blend bringing one person clean drinking water for five years. The money is distributed via an organisation called Good Trust, and every dollar goes directly to Cambodia to dig the wells.
"About 400 people now have clean drinking water for life in Cambodia (and a greater life expectancy) thanks to our efforts, and the efforts of our coffee drinkers," Carrie says.
The wells are primarily in impoverished areas where the infant mortality rate is high. Next year, Carrie and Jeff are going to see for themselves. The Good Trust has been given the GPS coordinates of the wells being dug.
"We're going to remote areas. We've been told to prepare for some really bumpy driving and many hours in a vehicle," says Carrie.
Meanwhile, still in the Bay, the Good Coffee blend is heading down the road to Te Puke. A new cafe, called The Daily, will serve Good Coffee exclusively. Each coffee sold there will equate to one week of clean drinking water for one person. The Daily will become the first cafe to sell this coffee blend. Excelso also sells gift boxes, with coffee and related products - proceeds also go to the Well Project.
Also keeping the Excelso team on its toes is the increasing interest in barista training and education around different brewing methods that can be used at home. Popular too is the Flight of Flavours, a one-hour opportunity to taste and compare different origin coffees with the roaster.
With a life so steeped in many exciting aspects of the coffee world, it's hard to believe Carrie never used to like coffee, and that Excelso's Tauranga coffee launch was not an immediate success story. When Canadian Carrie met Kiwi Jeff, she didn't even drink coffee. He, on the other hand, was always on the lookout for a good coffee in Sydney, where he was then based.
The young couple moved to Canada and started a family, but in 1992 decided to move back to NZ for the lifestyle it could offer their two children.
"When deciding what to do, coffee was the obvious choice for Jeff. We looked at the coffee culture in North America and what Jeff had to learn. Eventually he ordered his roaster and had it shipped to New Zealand.
"We set up a cafe in Tauranga, put the roaster in and began roasting on the premises. Hardly anyone seemed to understand what we were trying to do. People from Europe were interested, but not the general public. It was too soon," Carrie recalls.
"But we stuck with it," Jeff tells, "because of a passion for coffee, so we changed our focus from the cafe to just roasting.
"It was hard work changing people's attitudes towards coffee. Not every cafe had espresso machines 20 years ago, it was the day of filter machines and stewed coffee. "And in people's homes it was instant coffee or tea. The dynamics of Tauranga have so changed.
There were only about 12 coffee roasters in New Zealand then; now there are about 300," Jeff says.
These days an increasing number of people are heading down the Third Avenue hill into industrial land to find the Excelso enterprise. Some days the cafe is bursting at the seams - coffee is served with a selection of cakes from the cafes that Excelso supplies with coffee.
And these days Excelso is very far removed from the times of team two. Staff numbers have grown to include not only Josie, but Bjorn Waling, the coffee roaster; Denise Taffard, the barista trainer; Thomas Liverett, the barista and soft brew expert; Damir Kolonic, barista; and Tom Hill as apprentice barista.
Meanwhile, Carrie's discovered a love for coffee. She takes her slow drip coffee without additives and her nitro as it comes. Coffee Lane is her happy place.
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