Five Things you should know about Coffee

Thanks very much to David Walsh of The Other Black Stuff for providing this weeks Five Things. Some great nuggets of advice here. Who doesn’t love coffee? Grab a mug of The Other Black Stuff and read on:

To write 5 things about coffee is a challenge in deciding on what to leave out. Coffee enthusiast, blogger, geek, obsessive are all terms that would probably describe me accurately enough. Coffee is a huge, amorphous subject, the science, the culture, the diversity. I chose 5 things which reflect my desire – to raise the bar on the consumer end, increase awareness of the importance of quality in coffee, increase expectations. Where the consumer goes, the retailer must follow.

1. Freshness is king. Well assuming you first have good coffee (that’s the farmer’s job) and it’s well roasted (the roaster’s job). After that it’s your job to brew that coffee as fresh as possible. Coffee is a bit like bread, once exposed to air, it deteriorates rapidly. Just like bread, intact the whole coffee bean stays fresh longer, once ground, like cut bread, the lifespan is much shorter. Intact we gauge coffee freshness in days and weeks post-roast, once you start talking about 1 month or 2 months post-roast you have lost the battle. Once ground, coffee freshness is measured in minutes. If you ever stand near a grinder while coffee is being ground, there is an intense burst of aroma, if you leave that coffee for an hour and come back the aroma will be flat and muted. Whether brewing for espresso or French press / filter, to get the most flavour in the cup, you need to grind as close to the time of brew as possible.

2. More than espresso. Despite the shortcomings of many offerings by cafes in Ireland, there has been an improvement in the quality of coffee offered when compared to say; 15/20 years ago (think big pots of coffee sitting on hot plates all day long). This improvement has been linked largely to the espresso machine, and the resulting prevalence of cappuccinos, lattes, americanos etc. While those drinks can be great (if done well), they do not reflect a large proportion of the speciality coffee world, and can not deliver many of the subtle, delicate tones from the worlds top coffees. Think single malt scotches or fine wine, delicate and nuanced with a depth and complexity of flavour. Coffee also offers these qualities, reflects terroir, and the brute force brewing of espresso has a tendency to distort these flavours, amplifying some, and missing others. So, for example, Stumptown Coffee Roasters offer 8oz of Panama Esmeralda Geisha for $95, putting that into an espresso machine would be akin to putting Lucozade in your 18 year old Talisker (a slight exaggeration perhaps).

3. Temperature of milk. Milk and coffee is a good combination done incredibly poorly by and large. To a certain extent the retailer’s hands are tied because the customer insists on a piping hot drink. The problem with piping hot milk is that at 70C the proteins in milk denature (basically they change structurally), and the naturally sweet taste of milk changes to something less pleasing. Many will associate a drying, astringent sensation across their tongue with their morning latte or cappuccino, and often the addition of cocoa, sugar or sickly syrups is necessitated to combat this. Keeping the milk cooler (no more than 65C), frothing slowly (to keep the bubbles imperceptibly tiny) and only steaming once (no topping up of steaming pitchers please), results in a milk, and a resulting drink that is in every way more delicious. It requires a change of mindset though on both the part of the consumer and the retailer.

4. Provenance. Ask someone what their favourite coffee is, and they might say Kenyan, or Colombian. Ask someone what their favourite wine is, and it’s unlikely that they’ll say just Chilean or French, they will probably be able to tell you the name of the producer, the grape, the region and maybe even a year. As a commodity product, coffee from many farms in a region would be sent to cooperatives or central processing stations, and good and bad coffee would become mixed, creating a homogenized “Kenyan” or “Brazilian”. At the top end now though there has been, and continues to be a drive for ever increasing provenance in speciality coffee. The first level is of course country, the second is region, like the Naranjo region of Costa Rica or the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia. Individual farms come next, like Finca La Fany in El Salvador (Finca is Spanish for farm), or El Quetzal in Nicaragua. Some might think that this level is the logical end point, but there is a drive to further subdivide the farms into what are known as micro-lots, sometimes by location within a farm, by varietal of coffee bean, or by processing method used. It may seem overly precise, but returning to our friend Panama Esmeralda Geisha (Country – Farm – Varietal by the way), this years auction was split into ten batches or lots, the top priced lot received $105 a pound, while the lowest priced lots only cost about $6 a pound ($6 a pound is still a high price), with the premium being paid to the most outstanding microlots.

5. Not hard or (that) expensive. Assuming you can get your hands on good, fresh roasted coffee, the biggest investment you need to make is in a decent burr grinder. You can of course sink a lot of money into espresso machines, and many do, hoping to replicate or better commercial offerings, not to mention the magpie like draw of a shiny new gadget (I am all too guilty of this). The learning curve is steep though, there are many rules, techniques and concepts to master with espresso. For bang for your buck and quality in your cup though, a good grinder, a French press, a thermometer and a digital scales (accurate to 1g) is one of the best investments you can make.

Some great tips and advice there from David. I love the comparison between the coffee bean and bread. This makes it easy to understand the importance of grinding the bean as close as possible to brew time.

Thanks again David & best of luck with The Other Black Stuff. I’ll be keeping an eye on it for all things coffee!

[Update: A page dedicated to people that help me with the weekly Five Things is here.]