Today, we are introducing our guest barista Arseniy Tarasow of Yellow Place Coffee in Kyiv who we met during a recent visit to Ukraine and who was so kind to put together a recipe for brewing the super tasty Gataba Remera from Rwanda that was roasted for our recently shipped [5/18] box by the guys at The Visit in Berlin.

Basic setup:

As in any good kitchen or bar, you want to be sure to have a few key items at your disposal that will aid you in preparing a delicious cup of coffee.

These include:

• Scales (with or without timer)
• A good quality burr grinder such as the Comandante Grinder
• Your favourite brew method (Kalita Wave, V60, Aeropress etc)
• A clean vessel for brewing and decanting
• A timer (can be on your phone)
• Filtered water
• A pouring kettle but a regular kettle will also do, however, it requires more precision

When working with whole beans, it’s crucial to make sure to always freshly grind your coffee just before preparation because it quickly loses its aroma and old coffee ends up tasting stale and hollow.

Now, ready? Let’s brew!

Kyiv might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of any given specialty coffee scene but the Ukranian capital is full of great cafés and talented baristas who are doing their utmost to not just catch up with western capitals like London, Amsterdam or Berlin but also create a very unique local coffee culture that reads Ukraine through and through.

One such place is Yellow Place, a friendly and welcoming coffee bar inside the fabulous Good Wine store where Arseniy and his colleagues serve fine coffees from the likes of The Barn, Five Elephant and a great number of local Ukranian roasters.

When I offered him a bag of coffee from another Berlin-based roaster, he got very excited by the prospect of brewing up some coffee by a roaster he had not worked with before.

After grinding 20g of coffee medium-coarse, he led the vessel to his nose and took a good sniff of the gorgeous aroma emanating from the grounds before saying: “Smells really nice. Tea-like with a strong scent of red berries.”

He then prepared the Kalita Wave by rinsing the filter and loading it with coffee. “We have a special water remineralisation system developed by a local company called Ecosoft that adds minerals and calcium back into the water,” Arseniy explained while adding 60g of water at 93°C for a 30-second bloom.

Then, he restarted his pour to reach a total amount of 310g of water with a total brew time of 2:40 minutes. Once the coffee had finished dripping through, he discarded the filter, swiveled the coffee around inside the vessel and poured himself some.

“It’s really clean,” he said in between sips. “Balanced, lots of stone fruit and very juicy. Just how I like my Rwandan coffees.”

Arseniy’s recipe for filter:

Kalita Wave 185: 20g of coffee ground medium coarse. Freshly boiled water (ideally treated) at 93°C for a 30 second bloom with 30g. Then add remaining water to reach a total of 310g. Total brew time: 2:40 minutes.

The Visit’s recipe for filter:

Kalita Wave: 14g of coffee ground medium coarse. We use 248ml of water at 93°C to have 208ml of beverage in 3:30 minutes. A pre-infusion of 40ml for 30 seconds with a light stir of the coffee slurry to help the bloom phase of the brewing process.

The Visit’s recipe for espresso:

18.5g of coffee finely ground. Extraction time: 30 seconds with 8 sec. pre-infusion. Yield: 32g.

Did you also receive this coffee from our box? Add your recipe below and let others know how you like to prepare this stunning coffee from The Visit.