Bar 9 Adelaide - Coffee boutique 'sneek peek'

Those of you that have followed the progress of Bar 9 will know that it has been a (very) long time coming. There has been delay after delay after delay - and believe me, it frustrates me a lot more than it frustrates you. Money keeps going out, time keeps ticking on, and opportunities keep going by. To put it bluntly, I have enough.

This has prompted me to finally open the doors, come rain hail or shine! Bar 9 is developed enough, in my opinion, to be serving the very best coffee in South Australia, so why not just open up and start living up to that claim. And that's exactly what I intend to do.

So on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday* next week I'll be opening the doors and serving coffee. Please note however, that the cafe isn't completely finished, and there will be no food available (not enough power to run the necessary equipment). But we will have some amazing coffee for you to come in and try. There will be no specific prices, just pay by donation - or by what you think the coffee was worth (this could be dangerous ;p).

Depending on how busy we get we'll be serving drip/pour over, syphon, ice-brew and of course, espresso. So if you have and interest in coffee (or perhaps know someone who does), it will be a great time to come in and experience some amazing flavours that can exist within the bean.

If you're a local, a coffee enthusiast, a friend or simply curious as to what all the fuss is about please the time to pop in and say hi. I'll be in there from 7am and stick around till 6pm*.

Also, any barista's out there who want to lend a hand, or just pop in and pull some shots feel free.

I look forward to seeing you all at the first official 'sneak peek' of Bar 9. Please Digg, blog, re-tweet and pass on in any other method (even just talking!) to as many people as you can.

Many Thanks

Details:

Bar 9 "open for coffee"

Mon, Tue, Wed 7am till 6pm*

91 Glen Osmond rd, Eastwood SA

*Unless we run out of coffee first

How to brew without power?!

Just a bit of an update before I post some exciting news. Everything was all set to go ahead with a 'soft' opening, followed by the official opening a week later. This is, however, before the power blew out last Sunday.

We didn't just blow a fuse either - we messed up the etsa box good and proper. Consequently there was no power that day which posed two problems. 1) how were we to have a coffee. And 2) how were we to get power back to the site and get the cafe open.

So to address the first problem, we had a butane burner for heating water (thanks to the syphons) and about a dozen or so ways of brewing coffee without the need of a pump or anything else electrical. However, there was no way to grind the coffee. No hand grinder, and obviously no way to power the usual grinders.

Discouraged though not defeated we put our thinking caps on. Anya has the brilliant idea of bagging up some coffee and beating it with a stick (there was no hammer handy). And I grabbed a pair of pliers and proceeded to 'crack' each bean, one at a time, until there was enough to make a cup of coffee. We then brewed the stick beaten coffee in a plunger and the pliered coffee in the Aeropress.

I'm not sure which one I preferred but I can honestly say that both cups were decent. Sure, no spectacular elixir mimicking the nectar of the gods, but still an entirely palatable cup of coffee. Just goes to show you that good stuff in (great quality coffee) mixed with a basic understanding of how to brew, equates to good stuff out.

This then leads to the second problem, no power and how that's going to effect the opening. Fortunately the sparky came out early the next day and got things up and running. Unfortunately I have to selectively power the site until an upgrade of the entire electrics of the site can occur (looking at about a month).

Fortunately with a few tweaks here and there I've been able to salvage together just enough power to get the grinders, coffee machine, fridge, dishwasher and hot water running. IE/ I have (just) enough power to make coffee. Which leads me to my next exciting piece of news.

When are you bloody opening?!

Well after receiving this question what seems like a million times, we may (fingers crossed), be able to answer that soon. The final pieces of the plumbing map should be completed this week, which means that the Synesso will be pulling shots soon!

This inevitably means that I'm spending more and more time at the shop so if you happen to be passing by and see a few heads bobbing around feel free to pop in and grab a coffee or two! We've usually got some exciting beans laying around waiting to be consumed.

Thanks to everyone who follows this for your interest and patience. There have been too many unexpected delays and hiccups to warrant mentioning, but we're are finally getting there. And sorry I haven't been finding more time to keep this regularly updated.

For more recent updates please follow the twitter account BarNine, as it's a little quicker and easier to maintain.

So now to the suggested game plan - Assuming all goes to plan (which has happened around 2% of the time ;p), plumbing will be completed this week. Next week I'll spend 'prettying' up the place getting ready for a soft launch the week after. I'll post details for this later but basically we'll open up just for coffee (no food or cakes etc), to warm into the neighbourhood and have a chance to have a bit more a chat with everyone. The official launch should commence the week after (baring no unforeseen delays!!).

So thanks again for all your patience, and to everyone who's had the chance to pop their head in so far (I really appreciate the feedback) - and rest assured that we're more anxious than you are to get open and start serving you some amazing coffee!