Omar and the Marvellous Coffee Bird, sticking to what they know they do best…

Posted By admin, September 05,2018, in Featured roaster

Featured roaster – SEPTEMBER 2018

Omar and the Marvellous Coffee Bird are back this September to show us what they’ve been up to since their last feature with us almost two years back.

Roasting away in Melbourne’s teeny bayside suburb of Gardenvale, Omar’s mission is to get people excited about coffee. They place utmost importance on the quality of the beans they proffer, uninterested in compromising on this core value.

Owners Dean Atkins and Andy Gelman have travelled extensively to producing countries to learn about the complex coffee supply chain; Brazil, Sumatra, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Kenya and Ethiopia. From these travels, they’ve learnt that using an importer with relationships in each origin is the best way to get the most consistent and highest quality products while ensuring that producers are also happy with the business relationship.

“As a small roaster, we don’t have the resources to ensure quality and ethics and deal with the complex logistics involved in importing/exporting coffee. There are people doing great work in every facet of the coffee supply chain, so why try and do it all ourselves? This way we get to focus on our part of the coffee chain; roasting and serving.”

Andy backed by Jeremy Bethell and Shaun McGeachin in the roasting department are focussed on extracting the complexities and subtleties that the origin, growing conditions, and processing methods bestow on the bean. They try to avoid influencing and overpowering a coffee’s flavour profile with roasting flavours. “Under roasted coffee has a profile that is thin and acidic, and over roasted coffee is bitter and heavy. We try and have a balance between sweetness, acidity and body.”

The guys believe their simple ethos and business structure sets them apart from other roasters. “We buy great coffee and try not to screw it up. The people who buy the raw coffee are involved in the roasting and serving. This way nothing gets lost between roaster and consumer.”

This month, Omar and the Marvellous Coffee Bird are treating both our espresso and filter drinkers to the same single origin picks roasted both ways:

Espresso & Filter drinkers

You’re tasting their Brazil Fazenda Serrinha, a natural processed coffee with deliciously rich flavours of chocolate, caramel and nuts.

Fazenda Serrinha is located in the southern part of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil in an area known as Cerrado. Coffee is grown here at elevations of 1,000 to 1,200 meters above sea level, which is high for Brazil. The area has consistent rainfall and a relatively flat terrain, making it a great region for coffee production.

Explorers, you’re also tasting their Ethiopia Tade GG, a washed coffee with complex, sweet and floral flavours of citrus and blueberries.

Tade GG is a beautiful estate in Shakiso, Oromia. The owner, Tesfaye Bekele is a trained Agronomist and processes coffee with care and attention. He grows his own coffee trees as well as buying cherries from local farmers. When processing, lots are separated by the altitude at which the coffee trees have grown. Raised drying beds are covered with a black mesh that allows coffee parchment to dry evenly and slowly. Everything about this estate screams ‘quality‘. This cup doesn’t disappoint.

How do you rate Omar and the Marvellous Coffee Bird’s picks this month?