FBR Cafe: Computing the Coffee Industry with Sebastian Cincotta
Wisps of Winnie Blue smoke from Pitt Street dance by us, Chinese opera in rehearsal grates against our ears as a door brush drags over a sunken door mat not washed in years. We are in the windowless, liminal, fluorescently lit but somehow still dark space of 370 Pitt Street: the tomb of old Sydney arcade capitalism — home to an acupuncture spot, copious amounts of real estate agencies, a few law firms, and our destination: FBR Café. We approach the ominous, green, and officious double frosted glass doors. We reach out to the acrylic door handles - they have a smooth refined facade with their waferred, 3-D print texture on its side. While FBR’s design stands in stark contrast to the warm and cosy setting we would usually expect of a café, the space still feels welcoming and insulated, everything aligned but not machined. We perhaps stepped into a perfect dream of Sebastian (Seb) Cincotta’s world, digital and homely. He greets us with a warm smile, and a vivacious, excited pattern of speech and body language. He shakes our hands firmly, but not in a corpo way. He apologises for being tired and tells us that he has come directly from Gosford on the train after attending a private DJ set. Hugo apologises for that happening (he spent several years of his childhood there) and China asks if the train ride down was nice (they have spent several years on that train line).
From floor to ceiling we are washed in a calming, nostalgic set of greens — mineralic and digital. The floor is divided into large pyrex tiles, bordered with large LED strips - not in a sweaty gamer way but in a more deliberate semi-cyberpunk way. The primary source of lighting in the café is from these floor tiles, enhancing colours, food, and coffee to all look a bit brighter and warmer. Behind the POS is a large CRT TV, humming and flickering with the same logo we found on the door handle. Seb shows us how he has programmed a simple game where the player can move a small sprite over the logo and across the screen. He tells us how he gives customers the controller while they wait, playing mouth agape, entranced by the glow, often forgetting that they had ordered a coffee in the first place. Hugo demonstrates this phenomenon. Every design decision at FBR is deliberate, acting as a way to break down the barrier between Seb and the customer, facilitating genuine conversation and connection over coffee, technology, and any tangent you might find yourself going down.
“I wanted to make a space where people could feel comfortable. And then let down a level of guard because they just think it’s sexy. And then it’s much easier to communicate information to them. Because intimacy is important when you’re trying to teach people things. If they don’t feel like they are connected on some level, they usually have a bit of a barrier.”
FBR Café exists to provide an experience — connection and conversation with each individual customer. The kind of conversation that you have at FBR Café is intrinsically linked to coffee, culture, learning, and technology; one where Sebastian is just as eager to learn from and connect with FBR’s customers as they are to get a coffee from him.
We are sitting now, on wooden seating painted with the same considered green as the walls with a speaker set underneath - we can feel in our eardrums and in the seat beneath us a blend of ambient house, and an oddly cohesive jazz-fusion jungle combo. The music is playing at a conscious volume - not too loud to be distracting or require us to shout-speak but not too quiet that we forget it’s there. Seb speaks to us both directly and sincerely, dividing his eye contact evenly between us; we speak about his relationship with customers, in a space so curated how does he manage such a unique perspective? The barista-customer relationship is one that we came in eager to talk about, but throughout our time at FBR we realised that the very nature of the café functions differently to others we frequent. It’s not often that ordering an espresso will involve seeing and smelling the beans, learning about grind sizes, the different soluble compounds in coffee, all before our order is even brewed.
“I think it’s an important relationship, and it’s how I got into coffee, but I don’t think we run the same way as a regular barista. I think it’s a different relationship. You’re in my space, and I’m going to put on a show for you. And I’m gonna show you stuff and I’m gonna teach you stuff, and you’re gonna teach me stuff and then we have that interaction.”
For Seb, the humanity of coffee is in this performance, one that FBR exists to highlight. It’s a performance that is tailored, and one that will change for everyone. Seb invites us over to the espresso machine, custom plated in green and chrome — LED buttons replaced to match the greens of the floor. He continues to speak to the customer experience lamenting the mundanity of traditional and more industrious ordering systems of ‘order-and-out’ coffee. He prepares an espresso puck. Single origin coffee (ours a Colombian Pink Bourbon from Finco Campo Hermoso, Quindío from Block Roasters) ground with 53mm flat burrs, humidity measured, and dialled-in using a programme he created himself. The basket is weighed twice, distributed with a WDT (Weiss Distribution Technique) tool, and tamped by a PUQ Press, an incredibly calibratable espresso tamping machine.
H: Where do you think the humanness is in coffee?
S: “The entire presentation. I still add my flair to this regardless… The art is puck preparation, then pulling the shot, and potentially the way that I've decided to do it like, for example, my baskets are 15 grams, which is really, really unique.”
As the crema flows from the grouphead, honey-like and tiger-skinned — we question him on his motivation toward coffee and the industry, especially as a computer scientist and physicist. FBR and Seb’s end goal extends far beyond coffee. He tells us FBR isn’t really just a café but an environmental systems organisation. A bijou, double-walled glass cup of espresso in our hands, graciously tossed by Seb with a spoon - after Hugo forgets that swishing an espresso only separates the parts of an espresso rather than combining them. He redirects our attention back to the espresso grinder, and the origin of the bean. Despite his extensive calibration and computer-ification of his grinder, he reminds us that it's still all about taste.
“Numbers don’t make something taste good — Numbers help you make something taste good again.”
Speaking with his hands, drawing straight lines with four outstretched fingers, he explains his scepticism of the usefulness of semi-scientific terms used to describe the brewing process. How over and under-extracted relies on the arbitrarily decided ‘balanced extraction’. “Over and under what?” he questions. “It’s just all fluff.” Holding invisible particles in his palms and fingers, moving them circularly, he explains how the particle size of solubles in coffee is incredibly important to extraction but chasing flavour compounds in coffees with chemical analysis and comparisons of parts-per-million is misguided as attributing ultra-precise measurements to things made by imprecise machines. China (ex-chemistry nerd) visualises the long chains of sugars, fats, acids all breaking down in the coffee as Seb talks. He shows us his syphon brewer, a method that has become FBR’s speciality - something originally chosen by Seb because it is “hectic”. His method of making syphon coffee was created without using any tutorials, crafting his own unique approach through trial and error over a probably very highly caffeinated week.
“I’m just a scientist, I’m actually just a computer nerd who happens to be in coffee.”
The syphon experience is dramatic and personal, Seb takes you through the entire process. The origin of the device, the pressure exchange acting as a filter, and chasing the perfect aggressiveness in a boil for ultimate coffee grounds agitation. Even to the most novice coffee enjoyer (read: China), Seb explains the process in a way that's interesting, informative, and ends with a unique, fun, well-balanced coffee. Seb then invites Hugo behind the counter to share his pour-over. Seb picks out another bean and grinds it. He provides Hugo with a tall glass carafe and a navy-glazed ceramic dripper. Hugo explains his recipe as he brews — Seb watches intently whilst describing how making pour-over mathematical would be “digging yourself a hole”. After brewing, we become lost in conversation for another hour or so. We look at the pour-over through the lights of the floor, talking about things we forgot to record, we have more coffee, nerd out a little more. China finds out that the tactile grout of the counter is custom-made, a paint colour designed to give the whole space four distinct colours, making it feasible to hypothetically model FBR to scale on a Gameboy. We bathe in the sweet green light and feel the music in our sternum.
S: “It looks like blood, I feel like a vampire. It's a very lovely pour-over.”
H: “Yay!”
Hugo’s pour-over recipe; shared with Seb and China at FBR
Ingredients:
16g of medium-finely freshly ground coffee beans
250ml of filtered and freshly boiled water.
Method:
Place your dripper (or funnel in a pinch) atop your cup/carafe and a paper coffee filter inside it. Rinse the paper filter with boiling water, allowing it to drain into your cup to warm it. After it is fully drained, discard the water in a sink.
Place your dry coffee grounds into the filter while giving the dripper a swirl to distribute them evenly, your grounds should be level and flat.
‘Bloom’ the coffee by pouring in 50 grams of water slowly, in a circular motion going from the centre outwards in a spiral shape, over a 15 second period. After pouring, give the dripper another swirl to ensure that all of the grounds are covered in water and wait 30 seconds or until the grounds begin to drain. Your coffee grounds should release a rich aroma and develop golden bubbles as they bloom.
Pour in another 50ml of over 15 seconds, in a circular motion and allow to drain for 15 more seconds.
Repeat step 4 until you have poured all your water.
Allow the filter to drain completely until all of the water has left the coffee.
Allow to cool and enjoy!
China’s Note: Served best with a light from below so you can see that coffee is actually red.
Editors Note: FBR is offering a 10% discount for all PULP readers for until the 1st of September with the presentation of Issue 16 when ordering. Hugo recommends the Syphon coffee, it made him feel like a devious alchemist with an extremely refined palette and cerebral nature. China recommends an espresso of any variety that Seb recommends for you, and to sit in the corner bench for optimal light design viewing.
On August 31st FBR will be hosting a music festival featuring a variety of DJs across several iconic Sydney CBD venues, including Club 77 as well as ‘Cuts-and-Cups’, a cupping (coffee tasting) with sets from DJs every fortnight at their café at Shop 9, 370 Pitt St every fortnight.