 Richard, Richard and Keith. Good afternoon to you both. Better put up the faders here and make sure that you're being heard as well as viewed because we're online as well if anybody wants to tune in on Facebook or on YouTube. Anyhow, good afternoon to you both. Good afternoon to you. Alright, let's start with you, Keith. First of all, tell me what a roaster is rather than a brewer. What do you excel at? What sort of coffee making do you? What do we do essentially? So the coffee roaster is, essentially we source coffees from, say, Africa, Central America. We get them imported but whenever coffee is imported it's green, almost like a dried pea. And then in order to make that something that you can drink we have to essentially cook it and the coffee roaster is like a large tumble dryer. So we roast the coffee and make it so that we can sell it off then to cafes and to shops and to our people to brew at home. That's the coffee roast inside of things and then we head to Australia now. It's going to be a coffee brewing. So we take coffee that I roasted and try and make it taste as well as possible for a panel of judges. That's the world final of the Brewers' Cup in Melbourne. Alright, so there's more to it than you would think? There's a lot more to it than you would think. It's definitely just walking into your, say, local cafe or local coffee shop and you see the barista pulling the shot of coffee. But the other work that goes on either before that or the other side of things are a lot more technical than you might imagine. I mean, this is interesting because you've come through, like you've landed already back in January, you won the Irish Brewers' Cup. So I'm sure there was a right bit of preparation and planning that went into that. Oh, absolutely. It started maybe months before that to get the idea. So first you have to work out what coffee you're going to use because the variety out there is pretty much every country's coffee tastes different. Different varieties taste different and how they've been processed after they've been harvested will make them all taste different. So first of all, pick which coffee you want to use and then work out how actually to roast that because if you cook it to a temperature say a couple of degrees over, a couple of degrees under, it's going to either absolutely ruin the whole thing essentially. That can determine the taste as well. Yeah, ask Richard there. If I press the wrong button on the roaster, I just cost him a couple hundred euro at a time. The margin sort of speaker, are that fine? The best analogy is probably baking. So the same as baking except it's even more precise. So if you can imagine baking something that's very difficult to bake, it's just exactly the same type of thing. It's like if you change it, so everything's controlled by computer and it's based on gas changes and it's quite scientific. But the ultimate thing then is your senses. It must be sensorially very good. So you must taste at the end of the day as well. Are you able to do that in-house? Yeah, so everything's controlled by computer. Our roasters control by computer. Every roast is logged and we go to crazy lengths like testing the moisture levels of beans as they come in. We then log everything sent to the cloud. We then examine it after a roast. We'll taste everything we roast and we even color track every single roast so we can tell the exact color of brine. So it's pretty scientific but then the whole point of this is to make it as tasty as possible at the end of the day. Absolutely and be happy with the finished product. And you've obviously carefully sourced the coffee beans. Yeah, so at the minute we use import agents. So we have agents in Switzerland, Berlin and Australia who do the groundwork for us who actually walk the farms. And I'd say maybe 70% of the actual coffee quality comes from the beans themselves. And then the other 30% is probably up to us. So the biggest job for us really is probably sourcing. So you can only do so much with what you have. So the old expression of bad things in and bad things out. We have to really find the best farmers producing the best things and get it better. In the coffee world, I'm right in saying there's two signature events. One is the World Barista Championships and then the other is the World Brewer's Cup. And Keith, it's the World Brewer's Cup that you're in. It's the World Brewer's Cup I'm doing, yeah. So the Barista Championships is what you might see as your traditional espresso machine. You see the barista pulling the shots, steaming the milk and doing that. I tried that before when I was over-living in England but I didn't get on too well with it. So I thought this year we'd try and have a go doing the Brewer's one. Because in the Roastery now, we don't keep any milk there. So all the coffee we drink down there is pretty much black. So I thought, well, if I'm using this all the time, then why not have a go and see how far we can actually go with the thing. If you're a coffee aficionado for want of a better description, which would be deemed to be a real coffee? Would it be those that are involved in the Barista Championships or those that are in the Brewer's Cup? Both really, I think. For me, I find that the Brewer's Cup is just a bit more technical because for your Barista Championship, the machine helps a lot with the work. So even your flow rate of the water passing through the coffee can all be controlled by the machine, pressing buttons essentially. But for the Brewer's Cup, it's all up to me then. Everything's measured out to the point decimal of a gram and how quickly or slowly I can pour the water depends and how fast the coffee flows through the filter and depending on how the coffee is going to taste. Same thing as we said with roasting with the brewing. If you're 5 or 10 seconds over or under, you're kind of target time, then it's going to completely affect the taste of the coffee. Say for example, I wanted the coffee to brew for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So say if it brewed for 2 minutes and 20 seconds, it would start to taste a bit more sour. And if it started to go on to make 240, it would start to get over extracted and kind of a bit dark and murky. So it's kind of trying to hit that point and then to be able to do that with 3 coffees at the same time. So for the judges, I have to brew up 3 identical coffees at the same time using the exact same grams of coffee but also pouring the exact same grams of water. So not only does the judges taste it and evaluate it with the sensory, there's also going to be a technical judge standing over the top of you making sure to pour 40 grams of water there or to pour 40.5 grams of water there and that 0.5 a gram could be enough to either win or lose the competition essentially. It's taken a lot of cups of coffee to get to this point. Absolutely. I think it's probably, it sounds a little bit unusual to the non-coffee person and I think one person described as a combination of crufts and a spelling bee is probably the best way. Well, maybe. But yeah, it's a great way to increase, I suppose, our learning and quality control in the roastery. So you're always polishing your skills and I think that's probably the best thing that we're doing along the way. Have our palates become better at, you know, sussing out fine coffee? Yeah, I think you see, to put things in a timeline, it's a little bit like wine. I think 30 years ago, people would know Black Tower and Blue Nun and now everyone knows the difference between their sauvignon and the Chardonnay and their Pinot Noir and their Cabernet. And about 20 years time, I would imagine that people will probably be taking that same level of interest in coffee and it's only a matter of time. So I suppose we like to think we're slightly ahead of the curve and getting people to that area, but slowly but surely people will have a country preference, maybe a varietal preference like they do in terms of wine. But coffee's a little bit more complex because it's even finer. You know, it's a more precise difference between coffees. It's not as exaggerated as wine differences would be, but I think the people will eventually get there where they'll actually differentiate coffees as much as they do wine. And with you, is there a choice of coffees? Most places you go into, it's a coffee and that's the one coffee that's used in whether it's a cappuccino or whatever. With you, are there different types? Can you say to us, can I have Kenyon? Yep, so I suppose our aim in our roastry is to put out a really good blend, which we supply to cafes. So we're supplying around the country and also further afield as far as Goree, so about 35 cafes we supply at the minute. By the way, it's called New Kid Coffee. It's called New Kid Coffee and we're down in Bonnegui. So that's what we focus on, but we also do single origin coffees, which are just slightly more elevated coffees for those who are really into their coffee. So as I say, we focus on the blend, but we also have lots of single origin sort of special coffees that people are really into their coffee to try as well. Well, Keith, the best. With the competitions on, when? So competition, we fly out next Friday. Competition starts then the following Tuesday. So there's three to maybe four days of competition, depending on how I get on. So the first day of it, there's two rounds. There's two parts of the competition, essentially. So the first round is what they call a compulsory round. So it's kind of just to test everybody's general brewing skills. So all 40 competitors will be handed just a random bag of coffee with no label, no information. You'll be given half an hour to take that backstage and first diagnose what's in it, taste it, and try and make the coffee taste as good as you can in that 30-minute period before serving it then to a panel of expert judges. And from then, they will give you a score on that. So that's the first round of it. Then the second round of it is where I'll bring a coffee that I've selected myself, and I'll come on stage in front of a couple of thousand people and give a full presentation on the coffee as to who I am, why I've brought this coffee, why is this coffee special, exactly what you're going to taste in it. In front of a live audience. Oh, in front of a live audience, in front of four judges and maybe two judges standing over your shoulder watching you. Right. And a TV camera stuck in your face. To use it upon, it sounds like it's going to be fairly intense. Ah, yeah, for sure. You have to be doing something, don't you? Absolutely. And I hope to catch you there and to see can you bring the title back to Ireland. There's been a fundraising draw with some great prizes and people can still enter that. There's the hampers and there's a fantastic bottle of wine, couple of hundred euro there and various things. Ten prizes in total or something? Yeah, there's about ten prizes. If you just head on to the counters Facebook page, the latest post will have a wee link there. And yeah, you can win lots of prizes and help get Keith over there to help with all the expenses. Yeah, I can imagine. Well listen, and the best luck in the competition. I wish you well. Richard, Keith, thank you. Cheers. Thanks for having me, John. Cheers. Tourism businesses have a brand new mark of employer excellence. Driven by the employee's voice, the employer excellence...