Photography by: Faris Al Yahya
We know how important coffee is to half of the world. And with the new speciality wave coffee craze that’s been sweeping over the city, we’ve decided to go undercover -sort of- and explore this new and exciting (and rather caffeinated) terrain! What better to start with than Riyadh’s very own roasting houses? This week, we sat with White Foam to see how they made their uber cool tables… and their coffee, of course.
At first, we were leisure coffee drinkers. Each one of us travelled to different places and discovered the variations in coffee tastes, coffee shop atmospheres, and services. We all had different experiences, which we enjoyed, but did not find the right shop in Saudi. So we decided to research what makes a cup of coffee great and began our small roasting efforts till we were able to achieve what we think is delicious and fresh coffee. Then we decided to share our passionate of coffee with everyone by opening our coffee shop. We can write you pages about this subject, yet to put it in the simplest terms: attention to details and passion in every step of the process. This will make anything perfect and just a cup of coffee. It changes with type of coffee we feel like drinking. Yemeni Coffee for cold brew is amazing. For a pure espresso shot Layth loves the Haitian coffee; whereas I prefer Brazilian beans. For drip/brewed coffee, the Mexican beans is still a favourite, even though I lean towards the Yemeni at times. Starbucks. Because they started a good initiative for coffee plantation owners. Hassan: Cold brew, I love our new drink “Breeze” that is made with Yemeni beans and cold brewed for hours. Layth: I often lean towards cappuccino in the morning, a brewed coffee in the afternoon, and an espresso in the evening. Abdullah: I love lattes J Well we mentioned the “breeze” that is made with cold brew; there is also the “4 oz” which is our unique version of a Cortado but with a heavier texture. And now that rainy season is coming, we cannot forget about the European hot chocolate that is made with real chocolate bars. And for all the people who do not feel like staying up all night we have vanilla infused hot milk that we call “White Foam”. The main country would be Yemen, though we import from all over the world. The price rise at the moment mainly affects our imported roasted coffee. The coffee we roast ourselves is more stable at this time due to previous stocks we bought. This is a wide subject. The short answer is yes. The darker the roast, the less caffeine it has. Yet when we talk about concentration then it is more about the preparation method than the roasting. For example, a shot of espresso would have the same amount of caffeine as a brewed cup of coffee if made with the same bean, yet beans for brewed coffee are usually less roasted, and hence have more caffeine in them. A dragon.
