Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine September 2016 | Page 80

78

Explore | Interview

INTERVIEW
YOSHUA TANU:

A TASTEFUL
PASSION
Interview by Emanuel Hayon
Photography by Hendra Wiradi Wahab

Yoshua Tanu tells Colours
about how he became a barista,
and his passion for the
complex flavours found in
Indonesian coffee.
For Yoshua Tanu the perfect cup of coffee
has a nuanced blend of flavours resulting
from a concise and measured process,
beginning with the selected beans, the grind,
the precise temperature of the water, and
timing of the brew. Watching him prepare
a cup of coffee is like equal parts science
and art. And it is clear to me why he’s widely
known as the best barista in Indonesia with
two Indonesia Barista Championships
(2014 and 2016) under his belt.
“We always make coffee at just the
right drinking temperature to be enjoyed
immediately, because if you leave it for too
long, the flavour changes,” he says to me as
we sit at Common Grounds, his popular café
in Indonesia with locations in Jakarta,
Bandung, and Surabaya.
He prepares two cups of full-bodied arabica
from Toraja in Sulawesi for us to enjoy as
we kick off our discussion of coffee. I was
stunned – not only by the beautiful wellbalanced profile of my coffee with lovely
undertones of ripe fruit and dark chocolate
– but a lso by the breadth and depth of
Yoshua’s coffee knowledge.
Surprisingly, he wasn’t always passionate
about coffee.
It wasn’t until after he completed his degree
at UC Davis Graduate School of Management
that Yoshua returned to Indonesia to open a
café with three of his friends. Each time they
wanted to add something new to the coffee
menu, they would have to taste test it against
15 other alternatives to make sure they were
selecting the best possible bean. Yoshua and
his friends were hooked.