OLD KUCHING: CARPENTER STREET PART 4. BLACK BEAN COFFEE



H
idden away at the edge of Carpenter Street, you might be wondering why such a small café might be full (It’s not just because they only have three tables). Being a café located in the part of town where cafés are usually designed as “tourist bait”, selling expensive foreign coffee equivalent to black watery dirt and faking their way into unsuspecting hearts with their “local” decor, Kuching-ites may feel wary in trusting just any café. Besides, who could blame them?

If you can suspend your scepticism and stop by to soak in the stained columns, white coated walls and charming setup, this shop which epitomises Classic Kuching might just entice you to grab a seat. If you have, you might have also been enticed to grab a cup of coffee. Once you’ve had your coffee and taken your first sip, congratulations! You now understand why so many stay and why it’s worth the wait even when this place is full. You now understand that this is not just any “tourist bait”. Quite the opposite. You’re experiencing the real deal of what Local Sarawak Coffee is like.

Opened in 2001, Black Bean has managed to take local Liberica coffee beans to new heights by steering away from the norm of promoting Arabica beans. Arabica beans have rightly so been the Coffee species of choice, yielding a large array of different flavour and aroma profiles. What Liberica beans do provide though is a different matter. Not better, but different. What kind of different though? The good kind of different.


Unlike beans that we are used to that are pre-roasted and packed for us, Black Bean is one of the two prominent cafés that roast their own beans. What in-house roasting does is present us with a flavour that is exactly the way the owner intended for us to taste. It is the attention to detail from the way these beans are personally picked after acquiring them from a local plantation, to the way it is roasted to form the flavour you are picking up with your palates.

Now the way you’ll want to pick up these flavours starts from a single cup of espresso which is the base for our favourite coffee drinks. The water to coffee ratio in the espresso here is estimated to be 1:3 so it makes for easier drinking and upon first sip, you will want to take a whiff of your coffee before spraying it on your tongue by said sipping.


Before we continue, I might add that it takes years to pick up all the notes from your cup of coffee and though I do not have the experience, I can do my best tell you what most of us who are not coffee aficionados might pick up.

You will be able to pick up hints of berry and nutty aromas while the flavour spraying your tongue will carry an earthy and mildly dark chocolaty flavour. It must be noted as well that this espresso is a blend of Liberica and Robusta and the latter brings about a pleasant bitterness that we are so fond of in our coffee. This is only possible due to the care that is taken from the roasting process all the way to manually pulling the espresso unlike many cafés you might encounter. You will not find many places in Kuching that not only do this, but proudly serve beans that make up 2% of coffee produced in the world.

There are many things that could have gone wrong with this cup, but for all the things that could have gone wrong.. What Black Bean has done by no easy feat, is create a good cup of coffee.

Now because the base of your coffee is done right, we know that we do not have to worry too much about how the rest of our coffee choices will turn out.



As for these choices, you may choose to add brown sugar which is a good additive if you like something a little sweeter while adding a fuller body, or even milk that Black Bean does well to add enough of said flavour and body that you require to enhance your coffee experience.

Iced Latte 
Iced Cappucino
Cappucino 
Latte
Regardless of what you choose to add, I will never go so far to say that these additives will contaminate your coffee experience, but done well like in Black Bean, these will enhance what you enjoy most with your coffee and trust me; Black Bean is one of those rare cafés that does it well.

 Black Bean is open from Monday to Saturday and from 9:00am to 6:00pm.

 You may find them using the following Google Map Location found below and if you have liked reading this post, please like, share and comment to share your views! Much Love!

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2 Responses to “ OLD KUCHING: CARPENTER STREET PART 4. BLACK BEAN COFFEE ”

  1. masterinoffpage23 October 2018 at 21:23

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  2. The Yum List2 July 2019 at 20:08

    Thanks for the introduction.

    ReplyDelete