***TO THE EDITOR, PLEASE DISREGARD THE EARLIER WRITEUP AS YIRG BY HELEN PICTURE IS NOW CORRECTED***

Time to update on Xen Coffee after my last one six months ago

Overall, I thought Xen Coffee was quite settled last time I visit but it continued to deliver continually improving cup quality. Xen also sends Helen Chow to compete in the World Siphonist Championship 2010 in Tokyo on September 24, 2010. Here’s more detail of the competition, http://www.scaj.org/e/event/wsc2010.html

Let talk about my latest experience first and the one I don’t want coffee lovers to miss. I had a special offering today at Xen, the world famous Panama Esmeralda Especial. Unlike those expensive coffees like Jamaica Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, etc, this is the coffee that really shakes the world of Indie café. Googling the web and you see what's it all about.

Xen served the Naranjo lot of this coffee. Roasted much lighter than its regular offering, the cup explicitly delivered the impressive berry/lemon like tasting note with a sweetness riding on top that I can still feel it at least 15 minutes after I finished the cup. A unique floral/jasmine note to boot too. While the intensity of the taste was not up to Mario Carnaval lot that is available from the world famous Portland, Oregon based Stumptown Coffee Roaster at twice the price and I had it at one of this city’s most fanatic cafés on the HK Island side, the Naranjo lot served at Xen Coffee continued to impress me to its very last drop with all of its complex and memorable tasting notes. If one wants to see why coffee enthusiasts love acidity in their coffee, this Esmeralda will serve the purpose, maybe a bit too well you will be spoiled so much so that even you don’t like acidity, this is still the coffee to try while it lasts.

On another front, the things that surprised me is that the overall cup from Helen Chow which was very different from what I had from Dixon, Xen coffee master, and Chris, another barista, at Xen. Helen's overall tasting profile was much more forward but not much nuances I can sense while Dixon's and Chris's had a similar cup profile, cleaner and subdued overall with some tasting notes sprinkle here and there you need to look to find it out. This somehow hints that there’s something more than espresso for Indie coffees.

My Yirga Cheffe from Helen was a totally new experience to me. This Yirgh was very unique in that it had a very forward note of lemony tone so much so that I thought they gave me Kenyan. Some of the winey/floral note was there but was not easy to detect. It's not too acidic and undrinkable but it caught me by surprise like one have a liquid medicine with orange color, expecting an orange flavor but it turns out to chocolate flavor with no single hint of orange. Quite an interesting cup and a significant deviation from other two baristas which made consistently more balanced cup of the same coffee.

Helen told me that Xen’s customers now appreciate the floral notes in the coffee and no complain so far during her usual weekday shift on the acidity. To me, it's how far Hong Kong people came along on their coffee journey that a coffee with lemony tone like this receives no complaint at all from customers even I myself who should be considered an "acid freak" still think this may be a bit too much for the local taste profile. Boy, the palate of Xen's customers is so advanced. Way to go!

For another special offering, Kona Extra Fancy, The cup was somehow as promised, a delicate cup with some mild chocolate/caramel sweetness. However, when it's cool down, the dark roasted profile took over the tasting note of the cup and those earlier notes were kinda gone. So, it's better to drink this cup hotter than cooler.

On the food front, its breakfast set was quite nice though overall tone was pretty Chinese than western. The scrambled egg was so smooth with added cream and surprisingly the thick toast was tasty enough for bread of this kind. I enjoyed this set and won't hesitate to order it again next time.

To end this note, I like to note that somehow I feel I am more critical to filtered coffee than espresso. I think it is due to the fact that I myself brew only filter coffee at home and my familiarity to this brewing method took it toll on filtered coffee I had outside my place. Not that I'm that good but I feel like I can sense it more. This is quite similar to quite a few "reliable" hands I know of on espresso. This guy mostly lost words when you ask them which cafes are good, as they've never had much coffee outside due to the great cups they have at home. I can assure you that these guys pull much better cup at their places with relatively simple gears vs. other cafes, including Indies too, more than 90% of the time. So read my note with a grain of salt and let me know your opinion. Both for and against are more than welcome.

Another visit to Xen Coffee almost six months after my last time there

I can say now its operation settled in nicely. I felt Dixon, the barista and owner, was much more relaxed and it’s shown through his great hospitality during my visit there.

Also, the empty shop in the picture was somewhat misleading. The shop was filled up soon after I took all these pictures and was fulled on my afternoon visit (5PM) for its waffle.

Talking coffee, my Guatemala tasted much better than last time, even though this is not my ‘cup of tea.’ Its nice acidity helped balanced out the monotony of smoky and darker roast prominently shown during my previous visit.

Part of it was due to the change in the sequence of the brew. Dixon now dumped the ground in the upper part of the siphon and let the water rise vs. the prior order of filling up the upper chamber first before dumping the ground. I myself subscribe to its prior order as I believe it yields a more solid temperature profile. Nevertheless, the current setting seemed to work well for Xen’s coffee. I guess it was partly due to a darker roast profile. Check the bean to see how ‘shiny’ or ‘oily’ its surface shows.

Xen now offers a house special waffle with fruit, cream and chocolate syrup. It was quite nice though I prefer a simpler version, just a real light grade maple syrup and waffle. Also, the waffle was quite soft in texture which should fit well with local taste profile. The croissant I had with coffee in the morning tastes more like bread than the flakiness I associated with this type of pastry.

I asked Dixon a favor to brew my own favorite, Nicaragua La Esperanza, roasted by hkcoffee.com. Initially, I wanted to see how it performs in the siphon brew, having been very familiar brewing this coffee myself for a while.

This is a surprise; I couldn’t recognize the cup.

Instead of a familiar sweet acidity, (think fruit juice), I can only taste the darker roast profile similar to other coffees I had at Xen. When the cup cooled down, the acidity only improved a tiny bit. I can only sense the nice acidity on the aftertaste which was good but really fainted.

I double checked the bean this morning via French press and paper drip to see how it performs as tiny batch roasting from hkcoffee.com sometimes went wrong. There it was, the familiar sweet acidity like citrus juice was still in the cup.

Why? The only thing I could think of is water. Xen uses an elaborate water filter which tends to strip everything out of water while the poor man setup like mine, a filtered tap water with Brita, should allow most of the mineral and stuff to stay.

This is actually a classic argument whether one should use ‘pure’ water or water with something. I typically subscribed to the latter one as, from my own experience, the mineral and things in the water makes coffee taste better. You could google and find recommendations on mixing spring water with distilled water for better taste coffee. Remember, water in the majority of the coffee cup. Nevertheless, I did not expect this much difference in the cup.

Is this an issue of too good a thing? Not really. We can further argue about the quality of water in Hong Kong and the need to be more vigilant on the issue. I guess this is a personal issue and, for me, I prefer a simple filtered tap water. You are your own judge then.

Also, I would like to thank Dixon who still keeps the SCAJ 2009 lanyard for me. I hope you have a great time for SCAJ 2010 and bring back some great idea for the shop.

I ventured out of my way today for a cup of filtered coffee as I typically will make it myself if the coffee is not espresso. The choice is obvious, Xen Coffee for a Vac Pot brew
The overall experience was great, particularly the hospitality from both of its proprietor. They even recognize the cups I had last time there..
Also, I like to thank him for giving me a meaningful souvenir from his trip to events organized by Specialty Coffee Association of Japan (SCAJ) which, under the influence of too many caffeine today, I forgot to take it back…
Back to what’s in the cup, I was actually surprised that I can hardly distinguish the character of Nicaragua and Guatemala. Only after Guat cooled down a while (5 minutes, I guess, after it was served), I can finally sense the famous smoky flavor Guat was typically associated with. Neither was the fruit juice tone of Nicaragua from the beginning to the last drop.
IMHO, this is mostly due to its darker roast profile that most third wave roasters avoid in order to showcase its origin flavor. Nevertheless, it seemed to go better with the food offering there than if you just want to drink the coffee by itself.
Also, almost no acidity in its coffee due to darker roast profile. It was dawn on me why Xen chose to roast it coffee that way after I attended a seminar/tasting session organized by hkcoffee.com on Saturday. At the meeting, one of the participant said the coffee he had was too “sour” and just average. My take on the same coffee was that it’s good but not great vs. the great days at famous cafés in HK. Being an "acid freak", I would actually like to have more acidity in that cup. Such a diverse opinion should be the reason while Xen wants to play it safe by roasting darker. Only if someone would showcase the “better” side of acidity to coffee drinkers in Hong Kong.
The Earl Grey Crème Brûlée/mousse cake I had was not my cup of tea but it served well to reduce the effect of caffeine on my stomach (it’s the second and third cup of day within 15 minutes after I had a cappuccino expertly prepared by the 1st HK GBC Tracy Kwok which was good as usual).
Of course, a café can’t be everything for everyone and I respect Xen's decision. While it’s not up to 100% of my expectation, I would say that Xen is definitely a place to drop by if you want to have a decent cup of filtered coffee and don’t mind its price tag.

As much as I like Espresso machines - I also carry a soft-spot for Siphon Coffees. In particularly, African coffees and certain Single Origin coffees possessing very subtle sophisticated characters thrive under this extraction method. It can also be very educational as a mean to learning everything about world coffee offerings! There's certainly a slight 'catch' : you see, certain coffees just don't work with this method. Such a preparation method also can and often do extract the wrong undesired flavours as well as the right ones, since Siphoning is actually quite low-tech even though the anti-vacuum process might make one think otherwise - its quite gimmicky in a way, it has much more shortfalls and less controllable possibilities than an Espresso Machine. (Clover Machine aside although Starbucks seems set on doing all it can to stop its proliferation: so that direction is considered a dead end.)
Normal Siphoning requires certain conditions to be fulfilled and plenty of Trial-&-Errors. There's not so much theories about it - it either works or it doesn't and you only get to find out with the resulting cupping, when its infront of you on the table! :
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***Ethiopian Yirgacheffe -
When this arrived, it was instantly aromatic with a darkish red appearance. This carried detectable tannins and grips the edge of your tongue, not unlike a Red tea - the well known berries character and lively floral bouquet associated with the famous African bean were all present in the cup. Brewed and extracted out confidently and accurately.
Don't even think about drinking this with milk. Its meant to be drank as it is and the existence of this particular bean is enough reason for brewed or siphoned coffees to exist. It gets better and livelier as it cools too, developing an tangy citrusy end note. EXCELLENT!

***XEN Special Blend -
This was presented with a more soil-like character and is an 'alarming' contrast to the above example. I personally didn't enjoy this cupping and blend as it was monotomous in presentation, the savoury earthiness backdrop was easily drowning away all other pleasant flavours. One would say it wasn't 'bright' enough nor was it 'bold' either, it was in the middle of nowhere and the cup just wasn't alive. You could also argue it doesn't carry any undesirable sourness but either way, it didn't work with added cream later when I decided to boost it up a bit by experimentation. It just wasn't aromatic, had no spiciness or nut or cocoa, seemingly lacking perceivable note-worthy characters. Perhaps it would benefit with a less intense roast just like the Yirgacheffe, or if they carry the right equipment, try to bring it to City+ Roast over an extended period subtlely by careful temperature control - so it might just maintain some original fruitiness in the final product! As it is, it can be rather dull and despite trying this twice, nothing had changed much.
NOTE: I guess Blends just don't work as easily with Siphon compared to a Single Origin, as the numerous possibilities thrown into the equation multiplies in complexity with each additional variable, unless you somehow get it JUST RIGHT! Good luck with further experimenting!

***Earl Grey Tea Cake -
This cake was slightly hard than moussey like but the flavour was really good - I enjoyed it and it reminds me of the Cafe Corridor's cakes or the ones bought from La Rose Noire Bakery in Central.

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REALLY LIKE THIS SHOP, SOME COFFEES ARE GREAT, THE 'ORGANIC FAIR TRADE' IDEA ARE THE WAY TO GO NOWADAYS - YET ONE FEELS THEY NEED TO ACT AND IMPROVE THE SIGNATURE 'SPECIAL BLEND' QUICKLY TO BE MORE CONVINCING. ITS CURRENTLY JUST NO MATCH TO THE JAPANESE CAFE 'BLENDS' SUCH AS UCC AND POKKA, ETC. THE 'CORIOLIS' EFFECT IS PROVEN TO BE INCONCLUSIVE AND I CAN SAY WITH CERTAINTY - ITS NOT EVEN THE CORE OF ANY PROBLEMS FOR NOW.

After I brewed myself a so so filtered coffee for couple of weeks, it’s wonderful to have a good filtered coffee for a change. However, the catch was the place I got the good coffee. It’s Xen Coffee.

Until this time, I approached this café on a rather negative light no matter how much I tried to be objective. The reason was, along the way, I encountered something more like advertising, ie posts for Xen Coffee with some sort of empty rhetoric, ie how good this place is without things to substantiate and without denying the advertising nature of the post. In addition, it’s my opinion that the proprietor did not know how to press the magic button but chose to stress on its easy to handle marketing side, ie I’m a politically correct café which uses Fair Trade beans, freshly “brewed”, blah blah blah. Some would say that HK market is not “READY” for a full scale of really good coffee. To me, it’s a miscalculation on the proprietor side and I could only pray nobody will follow this route ever again though I believe there will be one soon. I initially want to give place the last chance and close the book for this café forever. Boy, I was wrong!

Nevertheless, while I like to declare that the above notion is a thing of the past for Xen, I could only go as far as “much improved.”

Again, I have its Set B with Fair Trade Ethiopia YirgaCheffe. The proportion of coffee and water was now much closer to what was supposed to be vs. a watery black water I had last time. You can now enjoy the flavor of Yirgh and the clarity which is likely the reason Japanese fell in love with vac pot. The bean was not fresh out to me liking. The owner indicated that it was roasted last Monday but from the blooming, I think it’s at least 2+ weeks old beans. No distinct lively flavor associated with this coffee but it was quite drinkable.

I was pressing the barista for freshly roasted coffee earlier and he tried to tell me that the roasted bean needed to be rest a bit. Nevertheless, he came back with a Nicaraguan coffee with no background, ie don’t know the area or the farm it came from, etc. It’s a fair trade bean though. I asked for a cup of the bean and what in the cup told me that it was actually ready for consumption in my book vs. 6 rest days the owner suggested/practiced for this bean. For the cup, the roast profile was full city but I think it was too prominent and the additional two more days of rest wouldn’t help, IMHO. Come to think about it, there is some consistency among coffee roasted by famous home roaster Hottop. All of previous coffees I had from hottop was good but quite dark it covers all the nuances of coffee origin, particularly the acidity. Nevertheless, my sample size is still to small to make a final conclusion.. So, just some note then. I think the roaster should try apply some roasting curve to its bean and roast lighter to allow the origin flavor to shine as the vac pot brewing method was famous for its clarity which accentuates nuances of coffee flavor.

The dull grinder was not in use and the famous budget grinder for espresso Feima 600N was employed. The cup clarity now was prominent and this is the sort of cup quality vacuum pot lovers are looking for. For the brewing technique, barista waited for the water to fully come up to the top before she added the coffee ground, avoiding the overextraction that causing unnecessary bitterness to the cup. Kudos to these changes.

The food offering was worse than last time. The texture of the scone was so heavy it resembles fruit cake you get during Christmas time. The decoration and the location were not good at all but nothing can be done on these points unless one moves away from this Manly which was not designed to host a nice café, IMHO. The friendly owner and barista partly made up of these weaknesses but not totally compensated for all.

In all, if you really like siphon coffee and only interested in the coffee itself without much care for the setting and location, here’s finally the place to enjoy vac pot coffee.

In all, you could visit this siphon bar if you are in the area.

Xen Coffee sports three single halogen lamps to heat up its cloth filtered vac pots. For the grinder, the café uses Kenwood Burr grinder you could find in most department store a while back and I think Jay uses it. The bean in the grinder jumped quite a bit toward the end of the coffee, which, to me, seemed to indicate a dull burr which may negatively affect the cup, ie inconsistent grind size and powder.

Its coffee lineup includes two blends and six single origin beans including Java, Colombia, Sumatra, Blue Mountain, Ethiopia Yirga Cheffe (Yirg), and Guatemala Huehuetenango. The last two beans are fair traded coffees and locally roasted which should imply its freshness. The local Fair Trade Company arranges for the roasting and provides the bean and I doubt whether Xen Coffee knows who roasts their bean and exactly when it was actually roasted.

I don’t know the freshness of other beans. For the other customer, I didn’t hear the grinder and just saw the coffee ground being dump into the siphon .

For my cup, I asked for whatever bean which they believe were freshly roasted and was suggested Yirg. My cup shows the winey tone, a hallmark of Yirg, and some sign of lively cup though it's not very obvious like fresh beans I brewed myself at home.

The coffee was brewed way too light for my liking, reminding me of a Chinese tea, ie Pu-erh (Mandarin) or Bolay tea (Cantonese). From my experiences with Yirg from both hkcoffee and justjave, Yirg can be much more intense in flavor and less water while brewing should allow Yirg to show itself much better.

Locating Xen Coffee needs some patience. While it may be easy to spot the Manly Plaza, locating Xen Coffee inside the plaza isn’t due to the labyrinthine layout.

To me, it was relatively pricey for a cup of coffee, HK$32. I had afternoon tea set B which includes scone and its fixing for another HK$14. The scone was just OK.

All in all, I see the shop has a potential if they could manage to offer locally roasted bean in all of its coffee lineup. They could adopt the strategy I heard in the US that lots of cafés boast they used bean from progressive roaster like Intelligentsia, Stumptown and Counter Culture.

I believe this is how Xen Coffee could set itself further apart from others by saying it proudly presents locally roasted beans from local Indie roasters such as hkcoffee or Just Java as freshness is the key to a flavorful coffee.
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After my search for siphon coffee at initial cafe, I followed 辣子's footprint and decided to visit this 隱世咖啡室 on a special day, May 9th.

May 9th is World Fair Trade Day, I had a cup of Guatemala at "You pay what you want" pice... nice!

I thought it'd be very crowded on this special day. Apparently, folks in Hong Kong are not big fans of Fair Trade. Anyway...

Here comes my 2nd cup of siphon coffee. I read from the coffee beans menu, these organic coffee beans are from Yigarcheffe in Ethiopia. The city roasted coffee beans are relatively small, not long berries, I guess it's the higher-caffiene Robusta.

Smells fresh and the first taste conifrms my guess... very refreshing and mind clearing... must be the strong dose of caffiene. The reddish brown color of Yigarcheffe could be mistaken as red wine. After 2 straight cups of coffee, my stomach was gently asking me to feed her with something. I looked at the sandwich menu and found a variety of choices, but Panini was what caught my eye.

I couldn't quite be able to make up my mind and started talking to the barista for a recommendation on any house special. "Tuna with Ham" Herbs Panini sounds right to me, and I ordered super big all natural smoothie to help wash down the Panini. Take a look at the photos, you can imagine it's quite a satisfied afternoon.

Both Guatemala and Ethiopian Coffee are good!