Making His Mark – 2011 World Latte Art Championship

Our very own Singapore National Barista Champion has made his mark on the global coffee scene! Ryan has made all of us here at Papa Palheta very proud, coming in at an amazing third place among the 31 countries that participated in the 2011 World Latte Art Championship in Maastricht, Netherlands.

After winning both the Barista and Latte Art Championships here in Singapore, Ryan’s love for the art of coffee spurred him to fly halfway around the world for the Latte Art Championships where he impressed the judges (and us watching the live streaming back home as well!) with his skill and style. Watch Ryan in action

Thank you all for your continual support of us here at Papa Palheta as we work towards enhancing the specialty coffee scene in Singapore, and for celebrating our successes with us.

The Steeping Room – Ending with a Sweet Note

Venue: The Steeping Room
Blk 261, Waterloo Street, 2nd Floor Unit 30
Date: 30th-31st July
Time: 11:00AM – 6:00PM

It still feels like an impossible feat to pull off; an unconventional way of showcasing coffee, but we did it anyway. A true love for the bean; a love affair with coffee. The founders relish every memory of this little space conveniently located along Waterloo Street within Singapore’s art district. With the support of the ever growing specialty coffee community and friends in Singapore, we are glad to have been a part of this platform that included not just Papa Palheta roasters and baristas, but also other members of the coffee community to showcase coffee as it is, in its purest form.

There are so many people to thank for this unbelievable stint over the past 3 months.

Melissa, Chloe and Leon for driving this idea for the sake of coffee.
Shiou Hee and Elita for generously allowing us to curate this idea in the space and also helping with design and renovation.
Susan for curating the lovely and charming furniture.
Ivan Lee for the uber cool collaterals.
Ivan Kuek for the marketing and tweets.
Sarah and Luke for their blog features.
Toby for the Clover.
SCA for their support.
Harry for his support.
Shin Hao as Guest Barista.
Lanz as Guest Barista.
Shawn as Guest Barista.
Darren as Guest Barista.
Steve for his overseas acquisitions for us.
Andre for volunteering.
Fang, Peijing, Stephanie & John for giving us other Specialty Beans.
Our coffee roasters and farmers for believing in their beans.
Our Baristas for being so passionate about the brewing.
Last but not least, our supporters and customers.

We would like to invite you to the closing of The Steeping Room this weekend – The final weekend where we will feature some of the most rare and sought after coffee in the world:

PANAMA Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha
&
El SALVADOR Peaberry “Aida’s Grand Reserve”

See you there!

Update: Japan Tsunami Fundraising efforts

In an effort to do our little bit for the people in Japan, we managed to collect a total of SGD$1,137.86 in the last 2 weeks of March from the coffee tips, bean sales and kind gestures from the friendly peeps who walk through our doors. It included SGD$250 raised from Ryan’s signature drink sales during his guest barista appearance at Loysel’s Toy. This amount will go towards GlobalGiving’s Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Fund.

Thank you again for your purchases, tips and kind donations that will go a long way to help the Japanese people back on their feet.

Lending a hand to our friends in Japan

The world watched in horror as waves of Tsunami swept the coast of Japan with devastating effects last week. As Japan continues to cope with the aftermath of the biggest natural disaster in it’s history, coupled by the additional dangers of a radiation leak, the folks at Papa Palheta have decided that we should do our part and extend a little helping hand to our Japanese friends.

With immediate effect from today, 18 March 2011, we will be putting aside $1 for every bag of beans sold, and 10% of all our tips to the Japan Earthquake And Tsunami Relief Fund set up by GlobalGiving. This will run on until the end of the March and hopefully we will be able to collect an amount to contribute and help the survivors of this calamity. We ask you to spread the word around and help us to achieve the goal of making a contribution that will make a difference to the survivors.

Introducing Loysel’s Toy

Today officially marks the day in which our sister cafe, Loysel’s Toy, has been open for 6 weeks. And we feel it’s probably a good time to finally let the curtain down on this open secret “officially” on our site, no thanks to The Business Times and Sunday Times springing a surprise on us over the weekend by having little write-ups about the place before this announcement. That said, if you have visited us in the last couple weeks, you probably noticed some minor changes to Papa Palheta as we seek to re-focus ourselves as a specialty roaster/retail shop, in light of the introduction of this cafe that we have painstakingly built over many months in 2010 by the tranquil Kallang Riverside Park – we will write more about that journey in a separate post. In the meantime, if you have not visited us at Loysel’s, here are some photos for your preview and do drop by to say hi as we continue to brew a good cup of coffee for you, but this time round, you get to complement your coffee with something else to fill your stomach too.

New Beginnings

It has been 16 months since Papa Palheta opened its doors with the aim of bringing on a next wave of specialty coffee to the local coffee scene. We wanted to create something that would be 100% coffee-centric, different, targeted and yet welcoming and approachable. We wanted to bring a side of coffee that had until now been tremendously underrepresented in a commercial environment. We brought pour over coffees to the forefront and shared with many coffee lovers alternative methods to brew a delicious cup of coffee using just fresh beans.

Something is brewing…

For the longest time ever, we have been sharing with you about our new coffee setup somewhere near Lavender/Kallang. In the coming weeks, we will aim to roll out the red carpet and welcome everyone to another place in Singapore where you can sit and enjoy your cuppa, and at the same time, take in the very relaxed outdoors. To ensure we get the place ready, the team will be spending a little more time over there cleaning up, training new staff, making sure the equipment work when they are supposed to, and hundreds of other small details!

As such, our new operating hours will be changed to the following from 11/1/11:

New Year’s Eve and Day updates

We will be closing early on New Year’s Eve at 5pm but open again from 9am to 9pm on New Year’s Day. Due to the holiday, January’s coffee tasting will be postponed to a later date and will not be held on the 1 Jan 2011.

On a related note, there are 3 days remaining for you to do your bit and help us raise funds for the GlobalWater project. Every little helps and we are counting on you to help us reach our target!

Happy Holidays,

From us all @PapaPalheta

New blog, new sponsors

We had planned to move our blog over to the new WordPress platform in the coming year but decided it is probably a better medium over our Facebook page or Twitter to announce our latest exciting news to give back to the community.

Some of you may already know that we have decided to put aside part of our take-ins for the month of December to raise funds and support Global Water’s work and help water/sanitation/hygiene projects in developing countries.