Mokha 1450, the Dubai based luxury specialty coffee brand known for its innovations and unique coffee experiences, used the World of Coffee Dubai 2024, which concluded yesterday, to premier its latest creation- a crystal clear coffee. This new invention was created by the brand’s Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Certified Trainer, Joseph Gitonga, to showcase a collaboration with Victoria Arduino, for the roll out of the new Black Eagle Maverick Coffee machine with Pure Brew Technology.
According to Mr. Gitonga, “the new Maverick coffee machine represents a World’s first, as it is the first espresso machine that has an innovative group head that can be used to brew coffee, tea, or any infusions one can imagine, and as such we were inspired to curate a world’s first coffee experience that would entice the coffee industry’s best and brightest minds on the largest platform possible, The World of Coffee Dubai 2024”.
The crystal-clear coffee was created through an exceptionally expensive and labor-intensive distillation process. The company first experimented with normal distillation, which took several hours to produce a few milliliters, with flavors that were unique but were quite delicate and almost imperceptible, because most of the flavonoids were destroyed due to the heat. However, after much thought and experimentation, the company found that cold distillation proved to be the key to success.
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While still quite expensive and time consuming, cold distillation resulted in a much better product, though still only 10% of the original coffee used. However, the flavors were much stronger and produced a unique pairing of volatile compounds that gave it a very unique and intriguing flavor profile, according to a chemical engineer consulted during the process.
The company had the product tested by the Dubai Municipality out of mild concerns that the caffeine content could be quite high, but the results showed that there were only trace amounts of caffeine, which did not surprise the aforementioned chemical engineer, who further explained that, as caffeine is not a volatile compound, most of the caffeine would be lost during the distillation process.
The creation of the crystal-clear coffee was only the first step in the creative process for the Mokha 1450 team, as the purpose was that of showcasing the new Black Eagle Maverick, by using the machine to create a unique mocktail with the coffee, which Mokha 1450 has designated – “DSV1 Coffee” as the base of the mocktail.
As the flavors of the DSV1 coffee was quite delicate, paring the coffee with other ingredients would be difficult, furthermore stirring or shaking the DSV1 coffee with ice diminished much of its flavor.
The solution the company found was that of using the pure brew technology on the maverick to brew a very bespoke and highly sought after silver needle white tea that would be chilled quickly and paired with the DSV1 coffee with other ingredients in proportions that would allow the exceptionally distinct and unique flavor notes of the DSV1 coffee to shine through.
The ensuing Mocktail was premiered the second day of World of Coffee at the Victoria Arduino stand, on 22 January 2024, with a master class presented by Jospeh Gitonga and Mokha 1450’s CEO Garfield Kerr. Mr. Kerr engaged SCA certified coffee experts watching the presentation with the raw form of the DSV 1 coffee and asked that they try to identify the aroma notes and guess what was inside while Mr. Gitonga prepared the mocktail.
While most identified the notes correctly, – vanilla, fruitiness, sweetness, and dry leather with dominant pipe tobacco notes, they were all confused by the coffee notes as the liquid was crystal clear. Mr. Kerr explained that it was important that the final product be crystal clear, as it had to create some cognitive dissonance in the recipient of the beverage who would be tasting a distinct coffee beverage, but one that did not in anyway look like it could be coffee, let a lone a complex coffee beverage with numerous tasting notes.
Asked for comment, Mr. Kerr noted that he was first “intrigued by Victoria Arduino’s Black Eagle Maverick with Pure Brew technology during a presentation in Milan last year, as the company’s CEO Marco Feliziani and his team highlighted that they employed an innovative approached to the design of coffee machines by projecting what the future of coffee would look like and designing for that.”
As cold beverages were predicted at the time to be a main driver of the coffee industry, the company designed a unique and first of its kind espresso machine that could not only create exceptional espresso-based beverages, but also brew coffee, tea, and infusions that all could be used to create unique mocktails. At Mokha 1450, we have a coffee lounge that specializes in creating bespoke coffee mocktails so the fit with Victoria Arduino is quite a natural one.”
As for what’s next for the DSV-1 mocktail, the company will offer tastings for a few of its loyal clients and VIP guests, while continuing to experiment with other variations of the mocktail as well as ways to produce more of the coffee in a cost-effective manner.
