In the latest issue of Coffee Lovers Magazine, I interviewed Jason Prefontaine, owner of Slayer Espresso. He gave a huge amount of wonderful insight into his life experience with coffee, deep concepts with espresso, and the development of Slayer.
He also shared with us one of his favorite memories….
So when we were developing Slayer, and when we had the first frankenstein prototype of this machine (we had various other machines before). Leading up to my trip to Seattle, I had just spent my last month in Calgary, working with one of my baristas, coaching him for the Canadian National Barista competition. Over this last month, I had drank this blend of coffee every day. Every day – I had drank this coffee, on this Aurelia [espresso machine], in every conceivable way possible. I’de used refractometers, I had done everything in my ability to make this coffee taste as good as it can. It was a two or three bean blend – one of them was an Ethiopian Idido Misty Valley. I had tried this blend…every way possible – knew how it tasted.
So I went to Seattle and brought this coffee with me. And…how do you dial in on a Slayer [at the time]. No one has ever pulled a shot on this machine in their life. So I go to try to figure this out and I used the same concepts as I would dial in on a lever. I get this coffee dialed in, and pull this shot and….
Man, the crema, it just looked amazing, the tiger flecking just looked amazing. I swirled it, and smelled it, and the blueberry that came off this coffee blew my mind. I took one sip, and I just…literally started freaking out. I had never in my life tasted coffee like this, that had so much body, that tasted like there was !@#$ing blueberries in it man. Like, I had never tasted it like this before.
I drank that coffee, ran outside, lit a cigarette, and phoned my brothers in Calgary. I said ‘dudes you will not believe what I just tasted.' I went on to describe the coffee, because they as well had tried this coffee many times. I think within a couple of weeks we came back to Seattle, brought that coffee again. The very first Slayer video I ever made was us guys sitting around tasting this coffee – it's actually a pretty funny video to watch.
I will never forget that day and tasting that coffee.
Read more about the issue here – or better yet, go download the magazine and enjoy the full interview and story.
Oh and that video Jason mentioned…here you go:
https://vimeo.com/2396930