tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38042289471968943112024-03-06T12:01:42.101-08:00Coffee ContrarianKevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-2042174341624538482019-09-16T14:47:00.001-07:002019-09-16T14:58:17.554-07:00Go Get Em Tiger - Serious Fun in LA<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles Babinski & Kyle Glanville, GGET co-founders</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A few years ago I got an email from one Charles Babinski, asking me about roast styles and my work at Starbucks and Allegro. This was a guy who clearly cared about coffee history, and who knew that lasting innovations tend to come from those who have already mastered their craft. I didn't know much else about him and his business partner Kyle Glanville, but that just reflects my ancient curmudgeon status, as both of them have been key movers and shakers in West Coast specialty coffee for a long time now. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I encourage anyone who wants to be inspired by state-of-the-art coffee retail to read <a href="https://www.tastecooking.com/go-get-em-tiger-didnt-just-raise-bar-changed/">this recent article</a> which captures the unique combination of passionate excellence, care for the customer's experience and <i>joie de vivre</i> so perfectly embodied in the company's fun-loving name. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">While both founders got their start at leading Third Wave roasters (Victrola and Intelligentsia) they're certainly not members of the rebel-against-Starbucks/how light can we roast this? sect whose undrinkable coffees are so depressingly easy to find. The roasts I've seen from them have all been extraordinarily balanced, reminding me of the best California craft roasters from way back (San Francisco's legendary Freed, Teller & Freed and Pannikin in San Diego in particular). And yet the best of Third Wave practices is also front and center, with exemplary sourcing from small producers and far more credit to (and information on) farms and farmers than was ever the case a decade or two ago. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It occurs to me that one of the really good things about Third Wave coffee is its multifaceted impetus towards <i>transparency</i>. At its best this means transparency in trade practices and pricing, giving the farmer credit by sharing his or her story, emphasizing the taste of place that only single origin coffees moderately roasted can provide, and so on. On the other hand, most newer Third Wave places I've been in offset such admirable clarity with great <i>insularity</i> in the way they relate to their customers. At its most extreme one finds places that don't offer milk or sweeteners at their condiment bars, brew "fresh-squeezed" coffee that isn't roasted dark enough to even cup test through their espresso machines, and in general seem to view their customers as merely an unfortunate but necessary inconvenience to be endured as long as their money can be used to fund the next "direct trade" origin trip. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Go Get Em Tiger is so much the opposite of that approach, even though the two principals know exponentially more about coffee than 90%+ of their competitors and could easily justify a bit of arrogance if they so chose. Instead the model here seems to be two-way transparency, with Charles and Kyle infectiously sharing the joys of the cupping room and origin travel while eagerly engaging with and listening to their customers. It's a mandala in which every stakeholder in the complex journey of coffee is honored - and no one forgets that at the end of the day it's the customer who makes the whole thing possible, meaning that value matters as much as excellence and consistency in the cup and kindness from the staff are far more important than coffee quality.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here are a couple of especially delicious new crop coffees I recently tasted. These are just phone photos but I hope the beauty of the classic full-city roast and the care they take with their descriptions shines through. The Ethiopian is indeed a "fruit bomb," while the Guatemalan is the epitome of elegant balance - simply as good as it gets. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Check out the </span><a href="https://gget.com/coffee"><span style="font-size: large;">innovative coffee visuals</span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> on GGET's web site and then get lost in their educational videos and online store. Charles Babinski writes and talks about coffee with a fun-loving eloquence and unpretentious passion that is as rare as it is refreshing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Go Get Em Tiger has quickly grown to 7 stores, with more on the way, and interestingly is 100% focused on sales through its stores and online - no wholesale. That is truly the road less traveled in building a brand, but it is the right one if you care about quality and want to be in charge of your own destiny. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I look forward to visiting these folks next time I'm out in LA, and have put them at the top of my list of recommended mail order sources. </span><br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-33029902254630090232019-08-12T17:15:00.001-07:002019-08-12T17:47:59.375-07:00Sublime Artistry in Albuquerque : Cutbow Coffee<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cutbow Coffee owner Paul Gallegos amidst the tools of the trade</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A summer house sit in Albuquerque has afforded me the opportunity to finally pay a visit to Cutbow Coffee, run by the humble, affable and vastly knowledgeable Paul Gallegos, who roasted for Peet's for decades. Cutbow was in fact recommended to me by Starbucks co-founder and long-time Peet's owner Jerry Baldwin. There's no one whose recommendations I trust more than Jerry's, but I must say my high expectations were greatly exceeded by the reality of what Paul and his team have wrought in less than two years in business. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Understated packaging and don't miss the humorous "pairings"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cutbow is clearly first and foremost a neighborhood hangout, with carefully made espresso drinks, great drip and French Press coffee, pastries and the usual wi-fi addicted habitués, but the beautiful 50 kilo roaster and heavenly smell of just-roasted coffee lets you know this is a serious place to buy beans. And from the caliber of the customer service to the cups the coffee's served in, it's clear that the standard Jerry Baldwin always said needed to be applied to everything ("is it as good as the coffee?") is taken very seriously at Cutbow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">You might expect a guy who roasted 70 million pounds of coffee during his 28 years at Peet's to roast everything the way they do, but instead Mr. Gallegos sources, blends and roasts with the intuitive freedom of what wine writer Matt Kramer calls "signatureless" winemaking (in this case, coffee-making), in which the degree of roast is a product of engaging with each green coffee with all 5 senses. Instead of a formula, the Peetsian ideal of achieving as much luscious body as possible without sacrificing acidity, aroma and varietal nuance is achieved through a "beginner's mind" approach of letting each new coffee speak for itself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had fleeting exposure to (and training from) roasters with such skills during the early days at Starbucks, but Paul's three decades of deep practice of his craft under the tutelage of Mr. Peet, Jim Reynolds, Jerry Baldwin and others gives him a depth of sensitivity and appreciation far beyond anything a person like myself, who bounced between Starbucks and Allegro rather than staying put learning from the best, could ever hope to fully appreciate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Photos of roasted coffee are notoriously hard to get right, but here are three I took with my phone that give a sense of some of the range at Cutbow. The Ethiopian is roasted exactly as we used to at Starbucks in the early 80's (and thus much lighter than the nuance-less Scolari torching they apply to everything today), and the Sumatra is likewise deep but not dark. The seasonal Stone Lake blend is one significant notch lighter, reminding me not of Peet's, but in both its flavor and roast degree of the reference-standard Mocha Java from Freed, Teller and Freed's, San Francisco's original specialty coffee roaster (founded in 1898) where a certain one-time employee named Alfred Peet perhaps learned as much about coffee as he had in Europe. Stone Lake is truly a <i>rara avis </i>in today's coffee landscape: not only is it a true full city roast, but it's also a masterful blend that really does offer more complexity, nuance and balance than any single origin coffee. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ethiopia, Sumatra, Stone Lake Summer Blend (left to right)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Part of the Peet's tradition is taking equal pride in single origin coffees and blends, and Mr. Gallegos has learned this lesson so well that one of his innovations is offering single origins that in at least two cases are themselves blends! The current Ethiopian offering is a combination of two spectacular naturals, while the Sumatra, which is simply the best Indonesian coffee I've ever tasted, is an artful post-roast blend of an excellent "regular" Mandheling with a classic Aged Sumatra. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Given the thorough transformation of Starbucks stores into a moron's version of Baskin Robbins and the even more undrinkable $30 a pound lemon juice on offer (with a free side of attitude) at hipster Third Wave outlets everywhere I mostly avoid even visiting retail coffee shops anymore and content myself with home-roasted beans from Sweet Maria's. You can imagine then that walking into Cutbow was for me a form of time travel, taking me back very specifically to my first visit to Starbucks Pike Place in 1977, where I was overcome with a desire to buy a half-pound of every coffee and take it straight home. The sense of total commitment to excellence and the confidence that aroma and taste will correspond exactly and be an authentic expression of place is something I haven't experienced anywhere else since that time, with the one treasured and noteworthy exception of George Howell's <i>The Coffee Connection</i> back in its early 90's heyday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It would be hard for anyone who didn't know Starbucks in its early, pre-espresso bar, pure roaster-retailer days to fathom, but it was once such an intensely and obviously product-driven place that an article in the <i>Seattle Weekly</i> quoted a customer as saying "one of the things I love about this place is they're so passionate about coffee that I sometimes wonder as I walk through the door if I'm qualified to shop here." It was nice for an old dog like me to feel that kind of gratitude and goosebumps again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-5711673822284617572018-07-29T06:10:00.001-07:002018-07-29T06:39:44.443-07:00What it means to love and serve coffee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't have much reason to post on this blog anymore, and blogs themselves have arguably become the eight track cassettes of the internet in our age of Twitter-attenuated attention spans, but I didn't want this remarkable (for being 30 years overdue!) tribute to an old friend and mentor to go unacknowledged. If it ends up being the last post on this rancorous blog I'll be very happy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/one-americans-quest-to-teach-italy--the-motherland-of-espresso--how-to-do-it-better/2018/07/26/a5363724-9035-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html">This article</a> in today's <i>Washington Post</i> captures a little of the visionary approach to coffee of my old friend and mentor Kent Bakke, but it honestly only scratches the surface. What I love about the piece is that it does capture in its own modest way the pure <i>bhakti</i> (to use the Hindu yoga term) energy of Kent's relationship with coffee. That he has had success in the business almost seems like a happy accident given the palpably obvious fact that for him coffee is a devotional practice, a form of service and a source of joy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I rejoined Starbucks in 1987, having previously worked there in the pre-Howard Schultz era (1984-1985), one of my responsibilities as the company's Coffee Specialist was to choose commercial brewing equipment for our impending rapid growth. I'd seen Mr. Bakke here and there at the old wooden aircraft hangars of the original Starbucks roastery at 2010 Airport Way South where I myself roasted coffee but never had the pleasure of spending extended time with him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">All of that changed in 1989 when Kent was my guide during my first trip to Italy, during which I visited not just the La Marzocco factory but the far larger one of arch-rival Rancilio as I did a deep dive into espresso technology, culture and lore. These were the heady early days of espresso being offered in the 12 extant Starbucks stores, and I vividly remember taking a prototype 16 oz, paper cup with me to reluctantly show to La Marzocco founder Pierro Bambi in order to explain to him that we needed not only unprecedented (by Italian standards) milk-steaming capability but also to be able to fit one of these obscenely gigantic paper cups under the espresso machine's portafilter. To my amazement instead of having me thrown into an Italian jail Mr. Bambi only asked me to promise that we would use at least 5 shots of espresso in that gigantic cup so that customers could still taste the coffee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Far more important than the education in coffee Kent and Mr. Bambi provided was the education in its cultural context, and here the memorable lessons are beyond counting. Among those that come to mind: a "typical" two hour business lunch in the hills of Tuscany at a restaurant that used to be Leonardo da Vinci's grandmother's house. Tasting homemade prosciutto, olive oil made within sight of us and Brunello de Montalcino made with zero regard for the tastes of international critics - a crash course in <i>terroir</i> that would inform everything I did in coffee. Visiting the craft roaster Piansa in Florence, hearing how they buy and blend and realizing we Seattle upstarts still had everything to learn about Italian coffee. I could write a book about this, but Kent is the one who ought to. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">During those heady early days of the Starbucks expansion Kent and La Marzocco not only moved heaven and earth in order to accommodate our growth but also served, increasingly, as a reality check for and sorely-needed reminder of the prototypically Italian values and passions that had made most of us fall in love with coffee in the first place. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I knew several people at Starbucks in the late 80's and early 90's who went literally years without a day off in order to get stores built. 90 hour weeks were not uncommon. "We exist to provide a retail experience for our customers which is the exact opposite of the lives we ourselves lead in order to make it possible" became an in-house middle-management ironic lament. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My frequent visits to see Kent, John Blackwell, Brenna Worthen, Pat Loraas and other members of La Marzocco's astonishingly talented crew provided me with healing (and indeed probably life-saving) reconnection with the values I had learned from Kent on our first trip to Italy together. What became clear then was that greatness in coffee comes from taking the time to relish it with one's senses fully engaged - that the world of the coffee roaster and barista are not far removed at all from those of the great chefs, painters and sculptors whose creativity is so emblematic of Italy. A great espresso, like one's first taste of real Genovese pesto in its native context in Genoa, or first spoonful of hazelnut gelato at Vivoli in Florence, should simply stop discursive mind in its tracks and leave one awash in gratitude for just that moment of being alive. Kent Bakke has provided me (and so many others) with more such moments than I ever believed possible. </span><br />
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Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-34106256895755892532018-05-26T13:04:00.003-07:002018-05-26T13:39:03.777-07:00The Chemex Slayer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I try to keep up with the coffee and coffee maker selection at mainstream retailers now that we're back in the U.S. and while in Wal Mart today I picked up this Bodum 1 liter pour-over for $20. I'd seen the smaller pint size version at a Starbucks display but wouldn't have touched it since [the bane of all attempts at single cup/small batch drip brewing] the contact time between grounds and water would've fallen far short of the required 4-6 minute range. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This brewer comes with a stoutly-made, ultra fine-mesh permanent nylon filter. The pot I just brewed using a liter of water and 61 grams of coffee took exactly 5:30 to brew using standard drip grind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here's a photo of the unit with the included Bodum 7 gram scoop (which I recommend replacing with a CBC 2 Tablespoon scoop, or better yet a gram scale) and a nifty top to keep in warmth and aroma and help with pouring. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8YIslQUIkMc0PtnoM6XVC9tMCOuUsk74mo896YdenA8UXlRUgMWfn9Ta0cKKO-03OuBgO5_85KboNDIHSUppcyRop0B8MiSAdEtbBgSRcYOmdLD5iu-uZbj9pjvHkutylBkeR4SnLmo/s1600/561327-Zoom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk8YIslQUIkMc0PtnoM6XVC9tMCOuUsk74mo896YdenA8UXlRUgMWfn9Ta0cKKO-03OuBgO5_85KboNDIHSUppcyRop0B8MiSAdEtbBgSRcYOmdLD5iu-uZbj9pjvHkutylBkeR4SnLmo/s400/561327-Zoom.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Personally I think the Bodum looks much nicer than the clunky unit below with its Depends-size paper filter. Note that the Bodum uses a cork (or in some models neoprene) collar to avoid contact with hot coffee, whereas Chemex, knowing full well there's no chance your coffee will be anything more than tepid after the mega-filter strips out most of its flavor, goes with wood (which has the added "benefit" of ensuring a retail price with serious snob appeal). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm not really wild about brewing into glass given its fragility and so-so heat retention, but at $20 this Bodum brewer costs less than half of my preferred manual setup (see photo). Plus no paper filters to buy with the Bodum, vs. ten cents a pop for the obscure #6 size the Nissan thermos brewer requires. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkWd-Whn47b1f2zYhbl25GXrgIcLojDyMTTfASjGiOxbZUQz8CPZBA36Mz9OoiWKMyLvhPxWZPiKtEmOwNYuWt4FRTWxwNc5yvVYZxKqlYEf_IE9OuDThBPu3OajFFifdHKSz7dqtTDGc/s1600/Unknown-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkWd-Whn47b1f2zYhbl25GXrgIcLojDyMTTfASjGiOxbZUQz8CPZBA36Mz9OoiWKMyLvhPxWZPiKtEmOwNYuWt4FRTWxwNc5yvVYZxKqlYEf_IE9OuDThBPu3OajFFifdHKSz7dqtTDGc/s400/Unknown-2.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Throw in a $25 best-in-class Bodum blade grinder (also at Wal Mart) and a $5.88 Bosch-valved can of the rather excellent coffee below and you've got a world-class home brewing set-up - including the coffee - for less than the price of one 8 oz. bag of cinnamon-roasted Panama Gesha at your local third wave roastery. Pretty darn cool. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a p.s. I also noted with delight that at the opposite end of the price spectrum Bodum has finally introduced an electric vacuum pot that gets the grounds and water contact time right, with a full four minutes once grounds and water have mixed before the vacuuming begins. Looks like a pretty good value at $200, though the Behmor Brazen (see last photo) has come down in price to $169 now and is certainly far more practical on a day-to-day basis. Still, that's the price of 10 Bodum pour-overs, so I'd probably ultimately rather keep it simple and spend the other $180 on coffee. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">EPEBO VACUUM BREWER<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-86979532841609949432017-06-27T06:46:00.001-07:002017-06-27T06:46:26.260-07:00Batdorf & Bronson Part 2: A Walk on the Wild Side<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's morning cup couldn't be more different from yesterday's Costa Rica La Minita del Sol Tarrazu, yet both coffees are outstanding exemplars of their particular styles. One of my heroes, wine importer Kermit Lynch, would probably say they both "reek with <i>typicité," </i>while most professional cuppers would say the Ethiopian just reeks - period - of exactly the kind of funky, fruity ferment they go to such lengths to avoid in their buying.<br />
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During my nearly three decades in the coffee trade I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way to taste coffee with consumers and whenever I included a choice lot of either Ethiopian Harrar or Yemen Mocha it was the overwhelming favorite of most tasters - even alongside top Kenya auction lots, the best Guatemalans and clean but perfumed Ethiopia Yirgacheffes. The winy complexity and room-filling aroma of these coffees really is incomparable.<br />
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To be clear, there <i>is</i> a decisive difference between "fruity" and "rank ferment" and this lot of Ethiopia Gedeb is stunningly fruity but not fermented. That said, a fastidious fan of washed coffees (of whom there are many in the coffee trade) would say that due to the nature of dry-processed coffees one is playing with fire here, as it only takes one bad bean for a pot (or ground pound) of coffee to be thoroughly ruined.<br />
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Among my many mentors who abhorred natural-processed coffees two in particular come to mind: George Howell and Bill McAlpin. Just about the first thing George did when he got a large sample of Erna Knutsen's beloved Yemen Mocha Mattari was to roast it up, sort all of the quakers (unripe, light-colored beans) out and brew the sound beans and the quakers separately, pronouncing the former uninteresting and the latter undrinkable. As for Mr. McAlpin, I'd wager there wouldn't be a printable word in his description of a dry-processed Ethiopian like the one I'm drinking this morning, considering his answer to <i>New York Times</i> writer Florence Fabricant many years ago when she asked him about the then new-to-market dry-processed specialty coffees from Brazil. The exchange (all via phone) went like this:<br />
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"Mr. McAlpin, what do you think of the unwashed Brazilians?"<br />
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"I think they're great - as long as you're not talking about coffee."<br />
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Twisted humor aside, this particular Ethiopian, which (like yesterday's La Minita) I'd rate in the mid-90's on a cupping form, is an outstanding example of a truly dramatic improvement in coffee quality from that country for which leading specialty coffee importers and passionate buyers at leading Third Wave roasters deserve tbe credit. The use of Grain Pro bags, improved sorting of cherry, use of Kenya-style raised drying beds and expedited shipping from origin have pretty much done away with the all-too-common situation from years past where a pre-shipment sample FedExed from origin tasted fantastic while the same coffee on arrival at its U.S. port was a baggy, woody shadow of its former self. For at least the past 5-7 years, thanks to roasters like Batdorf & Bronson and home roasting supplier Sweet Maria's I've been consistently able to drink dry-processed Ethiopian coffees that are far better than anything from Ethiopia or Yemen in past decades. That's not true, by the way, of washed coffees from either Ethiopia or Kenya, which despite being beautifully processed and full of citric acidity are almost invariably lacking in the particular kind of fruit (lemony Apricot and jasmine in the case of Yirgacheffe, blackcurrant for Kenya) that used to be their signature.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ethiopia Gedeb, Full City+ roast<br /></td></tr>
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It's not every coffee company who had the "bandwidth" to source a washed coffee as refined and subtle as the La Minita while also offering a natural coffee as funky and outrageous as Ethiopia Gedeb, which surely is a direct link to the taste of coffee as Kaldi the goatherder and his peers first experienced it thousands of years ago in coffee's motherland.<br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-41443371873078270992017-06-26T14:56:00.000-07:002017-06-26T15:02:37.465-07:00La Minita del Sol at Batdorf & Bronson: Old School at its Finest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This morning I'm drinking a cup of <b>Costa Rica La Minita del Sol Tarrazu</b> from Batdorf & Bronson. The first word out of my mouth after the first sip was "magnificent," and my wife Erin remarked "I haven't heard you use that word to describe coffee in a long time. Come to think of it, I've never heard you describe a coffee using that word."<br />
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As usual with La Minita, the greatness comes from perfect balance and ripeness, not show-stopping weirdness or intensity. The cup is the very definition of <i>sweetness </i>- as professional tasters use the word mind you (a perfect symmetry of acidity, flavor and body) rather than the popular meaning of simple sugariness.<br />
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If memory serves La Minita was first introduced to the market in 1987, meaning that this year marks three decades of consistent excellence. This is something that really deserves to be celebrated and appreciated in the specialty coffee trade. Perhaps it has been (at least among La Minita's many loyal customers) but I haven't seen any fanfare in the coffee press.<br />
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I was working at Starbucks when this coffee made its debut, and I think it was Tim Castle who sent us samples of it to cup. At the time our gold standard for Costa Rican coffee was Finca Bella Vista, and we bought a considerable amount of their production (Starbucks later went on to tie up the whole crop, much to the annoyance of Jim Reynolds at Peet's and many others), along with several other screamingly acidic Costa Ricans offered by our Hamburg-based green coffee brokers.<br />
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It fell on Mr. Castle and Bill McAlpin, the brilliant and often delightfully cantankerous owner of La Minita, to re-educate my palate to the virtues of fully ripe coffee cherries, as it turned out that in most cases the blazing, unbalanced acidity so doted upon in the Starbucks and Peet's world was due to picking cherry that was slightly unripe. No surprise that green coffee with acidity to burn would be doted upon when that's what you're going to do to the coffee in the roaster, but letting fully ripe coffee express itself through gentle, precise roasting was a lesson I had to learn from Mssrs. McAlpin and Castle, aided and abetted in no small measure by George Howell.<br />
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Enough time has elapsed that I'm quite sure I don't remember more than a small number of the ways that La Minita blazed the trail for what was to come, but here are a few:<br />
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1. The coffee was offered at an outright price (if memory serves it was $3.00 a pound - and remember this was 30 years ago!) reflecting the work that went into it. What a novelty this was in a world where most top coffees sold for a differential (premium) of 20-50 cents over "C."<br />
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2. It was the original <i>specialty</i> coffee because its asking price and position in the marketplace was based on doing everything required to achieve perfect cup quality, rather than on extraneous factors like rarity, exclusivity or country of origin (think Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain: rare, expensive and utterly forgettable in the cup). Mr. McAlpin's sales pitch, whether at the farm or when offering you a sample of La Minita espresso at a trade show (no milk or sugar in sight) was invariably the same: "here, taste this."<br />
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3. Like Bill McAlpin himself, La Minita was fanatical about quality while also being about as un-PC and iconoclastic as is humanly possible. From the outset the farm was a showcase for the obvious fact that quality and quantity aren't mutually exclusive, producing considerable quantities of flawless coffee through attention to detail and clear standards. No "heirloom" varietals here but rather the <i>caturra</i> and <i>catuai</i> types that had already proven to be ideal for La Minita's Tarrazu <i>terroir. </i>Sustainably produced to be sure, with worker welfare and state-of-the-art agricultural practices, but without the slightest interest in certifications like organic or fair-trade which are as unsustainable as they are irrelevant (not to mention being a distraction from the pursuit of quality) in a Costa Rican context.<br />
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In today's specialty coffee market novelty and weirdness - think $100 a pound microlots made from oddball cultivars like Gesha whose flavor characteristics are more reminiscent of flavored tea than coffee - the only thing you're less likely to find than a coffee like La Minita that slays with subtlety and balance is the classic full city roast. As you can see from the photo of La Minita above that, too, is alive and well at Batdorf & Bronson, who've had a particularly close and fruitful relationship with this coffee for nearly thirty years.<br />
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A friend currently working there who like me has spent perhaps too long in the business reminded me that back when I was at Starbucks Batdorf was made fun of for roasting too light, while today many of their Third Wave competitors say they roast far too dark - when the reality is the default roast there - classic chestnut brown with no second pop and no oil (i.e. Full City) has remained the same for decades. For this particular coffee - at least for drip or Aeropress preparation - I'd describe full city as being truly "signature-less" roasting, using that term in exactly the way it's used in the wine trade: a degree of process that simply tries to let the <i>terroir</i> and the grower's work speak for itself without adding any style notes from the roaster-cum-winemaker.<br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-21249221230861328372016-05-21T09:56:00.001-07:002016-05-21T10:00:02.104-07:00Mocha Memory Lane<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mocha Harazi coffee, Yemen</td></tr>
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<a href="http://blog.royalcoffee.com/yemen-mocca-sanani-bobs-salient-travelogue/">This lovely post</a> by my old green coffee importer friend and mentor Bob Fullmer of Royal Coffee was great fun to read over my morning cup of dry-processed Yirgacheffe (thank-you <b>Sweet Maria's</b>). Bob, among his many talents, is <i>the</i> original coffee origin travel blogger - dating back to when such missives had to be handwritten on legal pads or typed and mimeographed.<br />
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Bob does a great job of talking about the realities of importing coffee from a place as difficult as Yemen. On the consumer end, I will certainly never forget walking into Starbucks Pike Place in 1977 - years before you could buy a brewed cup of anything in their stores - and being captivated by an aroma that seemed to be a combination of blueberry, wild strawberry, chocolate and wine, then seeing the employees behind the counter furtively sipping coffee from a plunger pot. It was newly-arrived Arabian Mocha Sanani, and the sip they offered me changed my life and started me on the path to working in coffee.<br />
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Fast-forward to the early 80's and Starbucks, thanks to the marketing genius of co-founder Gordon Bowker, was offering educational marketing to its wholesale customers in the form of pieces like these:<br />
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As Mr. Fullmer points out, the availability of Yemen Mocha, due to trade embargoes, political strife and demand from Saudi Arabia, has always been iffy, forcing American fans to often do without for years at a time. Starbucks, as you can see from the pieces posted above, did its utmost to offer Mocha when available, and when it wasn't there was the inimitably-named <b>Revolutionary Mocca-Java</b> (RevMo in roaster speak), which combined carefully-chosen lots of Ethiopia Harrar (most often the <b>Horse </b><b>Harrar </b>from another legendary Royal Coffee supplier, the late and much-missed Mohammed Ogsaday) with Estate Java.<br />
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The name for this blend might seem to be some sort of celebration of socialism to those unfamiliar with the nefarious ways of the coffee trade, but as Jerry Baldwin pointedly said "what's <i>revolutionary </i>is that [unlike just about any other roaster at the time] we tell you what's in it." Contrast that kind of painstaking authenticity with what my old boss at Allegro Coffee, Roger Cohn (whose grandfather founded <b>Superior Coffee </b>in Chicago) told me about <i>their</i> Mocha Java blend: "we did buy some Yemen Mocha once in awhile and I think we put 5 pounds in a 500 pound batch just so we could show Accounting there was some usage." Things weren't much better at Allegro itself at that time, which supplied an ersatz Mocha Java blend to supermarkets that was comprised of some particularly bad lots of Ethiopia Djimma and non-Estate Java that tasted like petroleum. All we roasters could do was write our own truth-in-advertising name for the blend on the roast log to piss off the boss: <b>Mucho Jiva</b>. Sadly there is still a lot of <i>that</i> blend available in many a supermarket.<br />
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While I stand by my characterization of much if not most of what leading Third Wave roasters have done as regressive rather than innovative, one area where they and the network of wonderful green coffee importers all of them - <i>especially</i> those who crow loudest about "direct trade"- depend upon have made huge leaps forward over the past 20 years is in the packaging and shipment of green coffee, and nowhere has this made a more pronounced difference than in deliveries from Ethiopia and Yemen. Gone are the days when buyers like myself, heartbroken at tasting dazzling preshipment samples of coffees that became baggy, musty shadows of their former selves on arrival, refused to buy coffees from these countries until they'd arrived in the U.S.<br />
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GrainPro bags and faster shipment with better temperature control are one aspect of this improvement in quality, but the other is certainly much better processing of dry-processed coffees in particular in Ethiopia. Yemen, meanwhile, is as troubled as ever and its coffees just as rustic and inconsistent as they were 35 years ago - meaning that for the better part of the past decade or more anyone who wanted to buy a really stellar stand-alone coffee in this style, or to assemble the best possible Mocha Java blend, would have been better-advised 9 times out of 10 to go with a choice dry-processed Ethiopia Yirgacheffe or (less frequently) Harrar.<br />
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The superiority of these coffees has not gone entirely unnoticed at <b>Peet's</b>, which has offered choice lots of Queen City Harrar and/or dry-processed Yirgacheffes under the Ethiopia Super Natural moniker in recent years, but while they've seen fit to use that coffee to turbocharge their recently introduced Big Bang Blend, their Arabian Mocha Java reflects some sort of fall-on-your-sword dedication to authenticity, combining baggy Yemen Mocha (also on offer straight) with Estate Java when far better (and cheaper) options for both the African and Indonesian components are available. Starbucks, meanwhile, recently offered a 21st century version of the old RevMo blend briefly in stores in 3 states, but otherwise the only chance to connect with that company's roast style and green coffee sourcing standards as they were "back in the day" is to pay double or triple Third Wave prices for the occasional choice lot at the Reserve roastery in Seattle or online.<br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-2759642989867794252016-05-16T13:23:00.000-07:002016-05-16T15:24:09.980-07:00In Praise of Plushness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We recently moved to Tucson, Arizona after contemplating doing so for several years. It's great to be back in a real city after too much time spent in small towns both here and in Mexico.<br />
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I'm hoping to do something with coffee retail here and have been looking into the local scene in more depth than has been possible on previous reconnaissance visits, and while Tucson would never be confused with Portland or San Francisco when it comes to coffee sophistication the bandwidth of what's available at retail isn't all that different.<br />
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Starbucks of course is everywhere and very successful. There's an old-line roaster who roasts about the same as they do but enjoys a strong following mostly because Tucson, much to its credit, is fanatically strong (even more so, I'd say, than the aforementioned West coast cities) about supporting local businesses. And then there are the Third Wave places, immediately identifiable by hipster airs, stale light roasts sitting on the shelves at high prices, and (above all) by roasts sitting in their espresso grinder doser-hoppers that are too light for the cupping table, let alone pressurized brewing.<br />
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Nowhere to be found, it would appear (except<i> chez nous</i>) are coffees in what not long ago was considered mainstream specialty coffee territory: full city to full city+ roasts. From Pannikin to Kobos, The Coffee Connection to Schapira's, these are the kind of fully ripe, balanced roast expressions that gave rise to appreciation of great coffee in America in the first place, and they've now become rarer than hen's teeth as what's available at retail is either Folger's-sour or Charbucks burnt. As with our politics, the middle seems to have disappeared almost entirely.<br />
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This is particularly unfortunate because over the past few years brewing methods that showcase coffee that has its flavor and body as fully developed as possible without sacrificing acidity and aroma (that's the definition of Full City) have done nothing but improve. First was the <b>Aeropress</b>, which I've praised extensively elsewhere, and more recently the <b>Espro Press</b> has thoroughly redeemed and revitalized the much-maligned (in Third Wave circles anyway) French Press, offering all of the body of plunger pot coffee with none of the grit.<br />
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For those unfamiliar, here are a couple of photos of the Espro (both 1 liter and 10 oz. travel mug size):<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1 liter double-wall stainless Espro</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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As for coffees, photos of roasted beans are notoriously difficult to pull off even with a good camera and I have only the one on my phone to rely on, but here are three home roasts of great green coffees from <b>Sweet Maria's</b>. The very imperfect photography gives them a somewhat darker cast than they should have. None of these coffees entered second pop.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Dry Process</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kenya Auction Lot</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sumatra Lintong</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Many years ago at Starbucks a few of us in the roasting department (who were wisely prohibited from getting anywhere near the marketing folks) cut-and-pasted a parody of an ad by our arch-rival Stewart Brothers (<i>aka</i> Seattle's Best Coffee and now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Green Menace Herself) showing one of their roasts but with the caption "There's No Such Thing As A Healthy Tan." Looks like it's time to bring the slogan back. <br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-47207738147090427412015-10-06T16:00:00.001-07:002015-10-06T19:50:09.392-07:00Consolidation: Peet's Buys Stumptown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh35bpJ5BUQcJ22juOWWMmIveLEnokcKYkruorxanNHZAA2XjOJp5orznUCfGR0tkhKFT-o6OopmFbGymBk13JCo7MSGtNy3deTsLJ6QN-MLCnKYDJy0iLepqRNlYHe6z7APY3AMTiLdI/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh35bpJ5BUQcJ22juOWWMmIveLEnokcKYkruorxanNHZAA2XjOJp5orznUCfGR0tkhKFT-o6OopmFbGymBk13JCo7MSGtNy3deTsLJ6QN-MLCnKYDJy0iLepqRNlYHe6z7APY3AMTiLdI/s400/Unknown.jpeg" width="398" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">While the illustration above pretty well sums up what many in the trade think Stumptown has done, the only thing that surprises me about this news (you can read more <a href="http://dailycoffeenews.com/2015/10/06/peets-coffee-tea-acquiring-stumptown-coffee-roasters/">here</a>) is that it's taken this long. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Dare we hope that Portland and environs finally gets some coffee that's actually seen the inside of a drum roaster past first pop? Probably not, but joking aside Peet's scale and tremendous sourcing expertise, access to capital and infrastructure will be huge plusses for Stumptown. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Of course cold brew is the main reason given for the buy, but what one <i>wishes</i> Peet's would get out of this, in carefully reviewing Stumptown's marketing of its coffee, is a reminder of the focused, product-driven and passionate company it itself once was and could be again. Unfortunately the legendary Berkeley-based firm has utterly and totally lost its way, going from a product-driven purist of the highest order to a faltering, unfocused marketing-driven machine with said marketing reflecting no discernible strategy or position. In selling <i>their</i> souls they didn't even get a good price and went out with a whimper not a bang. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The procession of boneheaded moves in recent years at Peet's is beyond counting, but includes acknowledging third wave farm-to-cup positioning by disclosing the name of exactly <i>one</i> farm (San Sebastian in Antigua) on its menu board; halfheartedly offering a couple of medium roasts and exactly one light one after three decades of "deep" roasting; utterly abandoning even the pretense of having the quality of the non-coffee items sold match that of the coffee; and most recently trashing one of the best whole leaf tea brands in American retail history in favor of flavored crap under the Mighty Leaf label. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Here's hoping they do indeed leave Stumptown alone as they've said they'd do (of course Starbucks said the same thing about The Coffee Connection and we all know how that turned out). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Stay tuned for further mergers and acquisitions. </span><br />
<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-7819229441883932142015-10-06T08:02:00.005-07:002015-10-06T08:02:50.043-07:00Caffè Terzi, Bologna<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VEtTPbYOfSKoOZnW9wDIp6zJZIE107UgsbYf_-PzI_UFCwnSg_pYCko0eGyT5_v6SAloLx8qRnZht4NOXfaM5jxqZFgbon48B-kmXbegYHVYskpCPLrenPBWE_u-2tdeo5ekUS3zbxI/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VEtTPbYOfSKoOZnW9wDIp6zJZIE107UgsbYf_-PzI_UFCwnSg_pYCko0eGyT5_v6SAloLx8qRnZht4NOXfaM5jxqZFgbon48B-kmXbegYHVYskpCPLrenPBWE_u-2tdeo5ekUS3zbxI/s400/Unknown.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One of the producers of the video below sent it along to me and I thought it was worth posting for several reasons - not the least being that if your only exposure to espresso in the U.S. is either the mega-chains or Third Wave places you'd have no idea of the sensibility that underlies espresso in its native land. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The gentleman featured in this clip unquestionably knows his coffee and his art, and how refreshing to see beans in the doser-grinder hoppers that are neither oily and incinerated or (<i>a la</i> Stumptown, Water Street and the sorry rest) a Folgers shade of sickly tan, but instead optimally developed for the brewing method in use. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The next thing you'll notice if you pay close attention is that the ~7 gram dose for a single shot going into the portafilter looks like nothing compared to the overfilled triple baskets in use stateside, and after you're done being shocked (or in my case delighted) by that you can see the master barista brewing shots into demitasses already containing the proper amount of sugar, which is actually <i>required</i> (as Dr. Illy taught us long ago) to bring the coffee into balance and reveal all of the flavors present. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most of the trade in the U.S. looks down on Italian espresso as something it has long since transcended, when the reality is the most knowledgeable practitioners of blending, roasting and brewing there have forgotten more about excellence in coffee and cuisine altogether than the self-styled leading lights in the U.S. will ever know. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd8bmx1NPLI&feature=youtu.be">Caffè Terzi</a></span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-4857567027529700452015-08-26T15:06:00.001-07:002015-08-26T19:41:57.747-07:00A Tale of Two Coffee Makers<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fresh off the presses from <i>Sprudge</i>, the coffee hipster's <i>National Enquirer</i>, come two posts in succession about coffee makers. Far be it from these guys to notice any irony about the juxtaposition, so allow me...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The first is an interview with the creator of the <a href="http://ratiocoffee.com/">Ratio</a>, an admittedly beautiful appliance that for a mere $580 (or $640 equipped as shown with its <i>de rigeur</i> Able filter) brews <i>almost</i> as good a cup of coffee as you can with a hot water kettle and a Chemex. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The second is a lovely <a href="https://vimeo.com/137090060">Vimeo profile</a> of Alan Adler, inventor of the Aeropress, which costs $29.95 on Amazon. It brews a much better cup of coffee than any drip brewer, electric or manual, makes extra-strength coffee that while it's not espresso is certainly delicious in a cappuccino or caffe latte, and is the ideal travel coffee maker. Plus you can buy <i>twenty </i>of them and still have enough money left over to buy a bag of obscenely overpriced Third Wave beans to brew in it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I highly recommend checking out the Ratio coffee site and its videos, reading the <a href="http://sprudge.com/the-ratio-eight-a-luxury-class-coffee-maker-comes-home-84437.html">interview</a> with the inventor if you're a glutton for punishment, and then contrasting the lifetime supply of precious pretentiousness you just ingested with the humble warmth of Mr. Adler. Derivative drip dreck for $600 or versatile originality for $30....geez, I just can't decide. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If the Ratio videos and website style seem eerily familiar, it's because they're clearly using the same PR firm as <a href="http://digg.com/video/artisan-parody-timmy-brothers-water-makers">The Timmy Brothers</a>, whose priceless video can be seen at the link. </span><br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-4934565802776692462015-08-14T20:28:00.000-07:002015-08-14T20:33:06.169-07:00Is it The Onion or is it Sprudge? Who knows? Who can tell the difference?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's truly impossible to discern reporting from humor when your entire website is self-parodying, but the hipsters at <i>Sprudge </i>have certainly offered us coffee gold with <a href="http://sprudge.com/build-outs-of-summer-uncle-leroys-coffee-anchorage-alaska-82552.html">this</a> gem of a post. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Pan-roasted coffee in Alaska on a bus makes at least as much sense as what's on offer from the site's better-known sponsors, but what I especially loved was the photo above. If my eyes don't deceive me that's gotta be Allegro Kenya Grand Cru (or is it Water Avenue whatever?) blended half-and-half with Peet's French Roast. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ebony and Ivory? 2nd wave-3rd wave coffee peace treaty? Surely this is what's next. I'll await the IPO and infusion of venture capital money (not to mention the "Black & Tan Nitro Cold Brew") with bated breath. </span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-35916879223646505172015-08-13T15:21:00.004-07:002015-08-13T15:43:16.607-07:00Full City Roasts: An Endangered Species?<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I just returned from a trip to Northern California and Western Washington to see friends and family. We were in our old hometown of Boulder, Colorado on both ends of the trip where I had occasion to <i>try</i> to find coffee worth drinking at the local Whole Foods (with no success despite - or rather because of? - it being the home of Allegro Coffee). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Everywhere I traveled this trip the coffee choices seemed to be either screamingly acidic, underdeveloped cinnamon-city roasts from Third Wavers or carbonized stuff from Peet's. Thankfully there was finally an exception when we got to Seattle: Cafe Carmelita from Tony's in Bellingham, which is not only advertised as a medium roast but comes complete with an Agtron number (67) to prove it. It's a lovely blend. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sweet Maria's has an excellent roast color chart (I'll post the photo below, but the <a href="https://legacy.sweetmarias.com/library/content/using-sight-determine-degree-roast">detailed description</a> is well worth reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What I'm seeing in the hipster places are mostly roasts in the #8-10 range, and of course Peet's and Charbucks, with the exception of their token (and silly) new medium and light roast efforts are all in the #14-16 range. That leaves the entire world of balanced, nuanced, fully-but-not-overly developed coffees pretty much unrepresented at retail, unless you're lucky enough to stumble on just the right, rare Blue Bottle, Counter Culture or Tony's offering or, on the darker end of the spectrum, an old-school Northern Italian espresso blend (~#'s13-14) from the likes of Mr. Espresso or Illycaffe. Of course there are other regional roasters (Broadway Café and Roasting in Kansas City comes to mind immediately) still offering balanced coffees, but based on the Agtron numbers I'm seeing in <i>Coffee Review</i> for every such roast that's out there there's either a new player doting on the "tea like" flavors of their cinnamon-roasted direct-trade Yirgacheffe <i>or</i> an old-line roaster like the aforementioned Allegro abandoning balance in favor of trendiness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I noted with interest that Tom at Sweet Maria's (as reliable and unbiased a guide to roasting and to coffee in general as I've ever read) lists the bean temperature correlates to Full City (#11) and FC+ (12) as 444 and 454 degrees F. respectively, and it reminded me of a roasting seminar taught by Agtron's Carl Staub I attended many years ago, during which he referred to 450 degrees as "the death of fruit." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I think that's accurate for coffees intended for drip or vacuum pot brewing, but espresso extraction reawakens and emphasizes acidity so strongly that optimal roasts - at least if the blend contains a fair amount of dense, high-acid coffees - can go slightly darker. What goes unsaid though is that cinnamon-to-city roasts are <i>underdeveloped</i> and just as imbalanced as the murky Starbucks stuff everyone is so determined to rebel against. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It seems like much of what's going on these days is that a roast that's only fit for evaluation purposes (#9) is not only being offered for sale and brewed in pour over bars but also routinely finds itself into espresso machine doser-grinder hoppers. This is something truly unprecedented, and it's unprecedented for good reason: drinking such coffee is an exercise in masochism. We've arrived at a retail landscape that, in fruit terms, offers nothing but green bananas or black ones useful only for banana bread: fully ripe has disappeared. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">With bland and burnt now thoroughly explored, it will be interesting to see if the next (Fourth?) wave brings an interest in nuance and balance...the very things the best second wave companies, from Schapira's to Kobos to Freed Teller to Illy - tried to teach us about so deliciously decades ago. Here's hoping there's more to progress than applying a Folger's roast to good green coffee. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-85001579647210260702015-07-08T17:35:00.000-07:002015-07-08T20:45:40.202-07:00Retail Coffee Prices and Value<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://dailycoffeenews.com/2015/07/07/retail-price-from-these-blue-chip-roasters-rises-to-21-94-per-pound-in-2015-q2/">This</a> new post in Roast Magazine's <i>Daily Coffee News</i> caught my eye, and I thought the <a href="http://www.transparenttradecoffee.org/#!ttcoffees/cjg9">link</a> within it to a group calling themselves Transparent Coffee Trade was of perhaps even greater interest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The first article lists a composite average retail coffee price among so-called Blue Chip Roasters of $21.94 per pound, while the <i>Transparent Coffee </i>site shows that the (very) few roasters in their roster, most of whom charge retail prices well above the $21.94 per pound average, are remitting about 18-25% of their selling price to their growers.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9lyjPewNVRPnQxmTipz7vBcRX2H285tWazUoNh_CODcTBajE6asQMN4qG8raMbsoUOhLZOb5P3gZxTKt_thezpFQhWC7VdzmP-lQaQusGNC4VtaBgD3j-vvORhZLAZzwXIOPWiHFkAIA/s1600/054a02_6e90481d22434a6eac09f757398b5258.png_srb_p_841_379_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9lyjPewNVRPnQxmTipz7vBcRX2H285tWazUoNh_CODcTBajE6asQMN4qG8raMbsoUOhLZOb5P3gZxTKt_thezpFQhWC7VdzmP-lQaQusGNC4VtaBgD3j-vvORhZLAZzwXIOPWiHFkAIA/s640/054a02_6e90481d22434a6eac09f757398b5258.png_srb_p_841_379_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, the current New York C market spot price is $1.25, Fairtrade (F.O.B.) is $1.60, top-quality green in tiny (home roaster sized) quantities from <i>Sweet Maria's</i> is around $5-8 per pound, and the small roasters featured at <i>Transparent</i> are reporting paying green prices in the $3.20-4.40 range. (Interestingly - at least to me - the company in their listings paying by far the highest percentage to farmers, a group called <a href="http://www.farmersto40.com/collections/ourcoffee/products/finca-el-peten-coffee">Farmers to 40</a>, is paying 40% of their selling price to growers but selling at around $14 a pound - albeit for coffee of obviously uninspiring quality).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Clearly there aren't enough data points in any of these articles to draw any conclusions, but they do make me want to raise a few issues that I don't see getting discussed very much.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One of the most obvious things is that consumers are certainly being asked to pay the price for inefficient buying on the part of small roasters. Setting aside true exotics like Geshas (which are excluded from these surveys anyway) or top-quality Kenya auction lots where there is a direct relationship between cup quality and the green price paid, any specialty roaster buying full containers and committed to paying farmers well above their cost of production ought to be doing just fine with average F.O.B. prices in the $2-3 range for the bulk of their volume, heading well north of that for small quantities of exotics such as East Africans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Add in ocean freight, customs, exporter/importer profit, 25% for shrink during roasting and a generous dollar per pound for state-of-the art vacuum packaging in Fresco bags (uncommon except among the larger players) and most roasters should be making double their roasted-and-packaged cost at $10 per pound, or triple that at $15 - which happens to be the average selling price from, for example, Peet's mail order, which certainly buys excellent coffee, has a shrink rate to end all shrink rates, roasts to order and packages superbly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a home roaster buying mostly expensive Kenyas and Yirgacheffes and a smattering of top Centrals and Indonesians from <i>Sweet Maria's - </i>and paying UPS freight rates - I still have a roasted cost of well under $10 per pound for coffees that are at least as good as the top Third Wave folks are selling for triple the price or more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Going from the still-abstract level of price per pound to actual beverage coffee, my wife and I most often brew a 1 liter pot of coffee and share it over the course of a morning. That means I get seven pots (at 65 grams per liter) out of a roasted pound - meaning that if I were paying the "Blue Chip Roaster" average price of $21.94 per pound our coffee habit would cost us $3.13 per day, or $94 a month.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That's nothing compared to a couple with a daily cappuccino-and-pastry coffeehouse habit but it certainly isn't cheap - and it goes a long way towards explaining the immense popularity of good-not-great whole bean coffee (in this case from Lake Atitlán in Guatemala) for $6.65 per pound as found at <a href="http://www.costco.com/Kirkland-Signature%E2%84%A2-Guatemalan-Lake-Atitlan-Whole-Bean-Coffee-3-lb.-Bag-2-pack.product.100039961.html">Costco</a>. Now of course the mega-growth area in Costco and other big box stores is single serve, but Peet's K Cups are selling for 54 cents each there at the moment and Starbucks Via Instant can be had for about the same price - meaning a consumer could enjoy a full quart of brewed coffee made by these very expensive, packaging-intensive methods for less than $2.50. That doesn't even buy you a single mug of cinnamon-roasted pourover swill at your local Piercings-'n-Beans outlet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Studies like these two are focused on what percentage of coffee's selling price ought to go to the grower rather than looking at price pie charts that include <i>all</i> of the stakeholders in the transaction - including the consumer. Rewarding farmers is obviously important, but so is delivering value to the consumer. Costco and its key suppliers, from JBR to Starbucks, Nestlé and Green Mountain certainly understand this but there's not much evidence of such sanity on the boutique roaster side of things - which goes a long way towards explaining why the Blue Bottles and Stumptowns get all the fawning press coverage in the world while selling such small volumes of coffee that, at the end of the day, they're just microlot noise in a container-load universe. That's also why most of the PR is about canned or bottled cold brew, insanely expensive microlots of interest only to staff and the press, the latest in ridiculous latte "art" competitions and the rest. Talking about the actual taste and value of coffee is bad business - or at least not the business many folks want to be in.</span><br />
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Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-63277888479124407852015-03-26T08:29:00.004-07:002015-03-26T20:07:46.973-07:00The death of a genius and the strange fate of tea in coffee chains<span style="font-size: large;">I just learned of the death of the wonderful Steve Smith, the product wizard at <b>Stash Teas,</b> inventor of the <b>Tazo </b>brand and more recently the co-founder (with his lovely wife) of <b>Steven Smith Teamaker</b>, yet another amazing venture that pushed the quality envelope for teabag tea into uncharted territory. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2015/03/steven_smith_tea_tazo_stash_st.html">Here's</a> the link to a lovely profile of Steve and his work in <i>The Oregonian</i>, and here's a photo of Steve:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've written a couple of previous posts here detailing the sad history of tea at Starbucks and my own lengthy involvement. Because I was the last tea buyer during the "whole leaf" era I had the pleasure of hosting Steve in the cupping room on numerous occasions. We were such kindred spirits that the old phrase "brothers from another mother" comes to mind: off-the-charts creative types with boundless product passion who idealistically believed that product-driven, product-informed marketing would (or at least should) win the day, even in the corporate world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If it hasn't happened already, the history of tea at Starbucks ought to make for a classic case study at Harvard Business School or the like. You have a product-driven company that offered the very best coffee, tea and spices at a time when fresh examples of any of these products were otherwise unavailable. Then trade with the People's Republic of China opens up and your city is the first to benefit, opening the door to offering such legendary teas as Hao Ya Keemun and Yin Hao Jasmine for the first time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fast forward to 1987 and your company is acquire by your director of marketing, whose sentiments about tea are summed up by his advice to customers at his newly-minted <i>ersatz</i> Italian coffee bars: "if you want tea, you can go to China." The loyal tea customer base is sent off to Upton Tea or driven back to Peet's, since (again quoting Mr. Schultz) "if <i>they</i> want the connoisseurs, they can have themem." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Still, the tea category and those pesky customers who insist on drinking <i>both</i> coffee and tea wouldn't go away, and rather than leveraging its long history in tea the powers-that-be at Starbucks begin to court other brands, starting with Republic of Tea and then buying Tazo, which brought Steve Smith - who was to tea what Gordon Bowker, the marketing genius co-founder of Starbucks - was to coffee - into the fold. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There was nothing particularly high-end about Tazo but the teas were and are excellent for their price points and the blends, given that they were Steve's, were original and often spectacular. The combination of Steve's capabilities with Starbucks' limitless access to capital ought to have meant that Tazo could become whatever it needed to be to redefine the tea category, but Steve ended up leaving Starbucks, spending a year in France letting his non-compete run out in fine style and then creating yet another new world in tea with his Steven Smith Teamaker brand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Starbucks meanwhile seems to think that the Tazo brand has run its course, and has moved on to squandering money on the "Gloria Jean's Coffee Beans" (think Redneck alliteration accompanied by the stench of flavored coffee) of tea, the silly <b>Teavana</b> brand, with Howard now as star-struck by <a href="http://coffeecontrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/doing-for-tea-what-they-did-for-coffee.html">Oprah</a> as he once was by Kenny G. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps the "evolution" in logos says it all:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here you have the Siren motif that inspired the the warm brown of the 1971 original logo. Brown is of course the color of coffee, but green is the color of money and disparaging "the brown look" of the Starbucks stores and packaging began with a vengeance in 1987 as the <i>Il Giornale</i> (the name of the Mr. Schultz's pseudo-Itallian espresso bar chain) logo was merged with an increasingly de-sexed Mermaid over time. As you can see, tea and spices were excommunicated quite early on, but it took until 2011 to remove coffee from the company's identity altogether (though any passion for said product had of course died many years earlier). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Given the millions of dollars squandered on tea companies and brands here Peet's really does offer an amazing and laudable contrast. Tea has always received equal billing and emphasis in their stores, as a matter of conviction and passion going back to Mr. Peet himself. The whole leaf selection at Peet's is better than ever and both their regular blends and limited edition offerings are exceptional, reflecting the great talent and impeccable palate of buyer Eliot Jordan. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Other than Peet's, the epitome of a "second wave" roaster-retailer, I'm not aware of any coffee store chains with national ambitions that are doing a serious job with tea (unless you count Intelligentsia, whose <a href="http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/product/tea/organic-keemun-mao-feng-250-gram-bag">Kilogram tea</a> line seems to exist solely to show that it's possible to charge even more usurious prices for poorly selected tea than one can for under-roasted coffee). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd be sorely tempted to say that we need more Steve Smiths, but he was one of a kind and an impossible act to follow, except perhaps by this poem by one of the ancients:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Having picked some tea, he drank it,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Then he sprouted wings,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>And flew to a fairy mansion,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>To escape the emptiness of the world....</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">~Chiao Jen</span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-31535784887357671642015-02-03T09:17:00.000-08:002015-02-03T09:17:50.921-08:00Guest post in Royal Coffee News<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">From the beginning of my time working in the coffee business in 1980 Royal Coffee in Emeryville, California was one of the most important green coffee suppliers, but as usual in this trade the business relationship was just the tip of the iceberg of the value of the connections made. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bob Fullmer and Helen Nicholas, along with the late, great (and I do mean great!) Pete McLaughlin provided, in retrospect, not just coffee but a great education, for a fanatically product-driven person like me, in the necessity and urgency of expanding the definition of "quality" to really include the farms and farmers who make it possible. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Early on Royal was well-known, thanks in part to Bob's father, for its strength in Indonesian coffees, but in short order they grew to be the most complete "candy store" around, with a bevy of spot and forward offers from all parts of the world. Among the many highlights: Bob Fullmer's travel diaries (Hunter S. Thompson, eat your heart out); the phenomenal Harrars of Mohammed Ogsaday; the incomparable Fino Rojas coffee and its legendary grower; learning to love Mexico and Panama through Helen Nicholas's infectious enthusiasm for their people and culture (with coffee as almost an adornment, rather than the sole focus). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fast forward to the present and an email conversation with Bob and Helen's son Max (prompted in part by posts on this blog) led to an invitation to contribute to their newsletter, and a great post in the previous edition of it about sample roasting provided the perfect opportunity. The link is <a href="http://links.royalcoffee.mkt6539.com/servlet/MailView?ms=MjIwNzEwNTAS1&r=ODg5MTc0MzU3MzES1&j=NTAwMjM2NTI5S0&mt=1&rt=0">here</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There's a nice piece by Max Nicholas-Fullmer on the Ethiopian crop situation, my missive below it, and - for me the highlight of the issue - Kevin Stark taking my suggestions on progressive roast tastings and putting them to innovative good use. Obviously these are challenging times for coffee and for our planet, but at Royal anyway it's clear the future is in good hands. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-44191739390824702592014-11-06T14:04:00.003-08:002014-11-06T14:08:50.798-08:00Seasonal Teas for Coffee Lovers<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Panyang Golden Tribute</td></tr>
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I've been really appreciating being back in the U.S. full-time after several years spent living mostly in México - not least because of the easy availability of truly great coffee and tea.<br />
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On the coffee front, <a href="http://www.sweetmarias.com/">Sweet Maria's</a> continues to be a reliable source of good-to-great green coffee for me to roast at home (pretty much the only choice as far as I can tell for anyone who wants classic full-city roasts), but as has been the case for decades now I still drink tea every other morning, both because I love it and because the more subtle and varied nature of tea helps to keep my tasting chops sharp for everything else.<br />
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While "seasonality" in the Third Wave coffee world is mostly an excuse for selling what you like rather than offering consumers a reasonable range of choices, in tea it really does mean something, and this is the time of year when most of the really exciting winter-weight teas arrive in the U.S.<br />
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There's so much emphasis in the press on green and white teas for their antioxidant content and health benefits that the kinds of teas that work well with Western cuisine - and that would appeal to coffee drinkers looking for a change of pace - are hardly mentioned. In doing tastings for consumers over the years I've consistently found that coffee drinkers who are - or who aspire to be - tea drinkers as well are usually most impressed with teas that have enough heft and density to be an easy transition from coffee. Here's a brief sketch of some top value current seasonal offerings from <a href="http://www.uptontea.com/">Upton Tea</a>, far and away the best overall source for full leaf (which is to say real, not tea bag or instant) tea in the U.S.<br />
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<b>Ceylons</b><br />
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Teas from Sri Lanka remain under-appreciated (and thus undervalued) in the U.S. There's a tremendous diversity of styles, with most of my favorites coming from lower elevations and from districts such as Rahuna that produce teas with heavier body, though there are plenty of exceptions.<br />
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<b>TC42 Idulgashinna BOP</b>: From one of the best (and oldest) organic producers in Sri Lanka this value-priced tea offers classic Uva district briskness with plenty of body to stand up to milk and sugar. A classic "tea tea" to get started with.<br />
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<b>TC70 New Vithanakande FBOPF</b>: Always one of the country's very best producers, offering teas with a complex aromatic and flavor profile that offers flavor notes of orange, maple and sweet spice complemented with intense, almost Assam-level tannins for a stout cup. This particular lot is priced for regular consumption, but to see what they are capable of (and just how great Ceylon tea can be) do spring for a small packet at least of the sister lot TC87.<br />
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<b>TC07 Season's Pick FBOPF</b>: This is an outstanding, dirt cheap tea that's part of an estimable series ("Season's Pick") of very high-value teas Upton originally started sourcing for its restaurant customers. For literally pennies per cup you get a deep, round, honeyed tea that's perfect for the coming shorter days.<br />
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<b>China Blacks</b><br />
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Almost invariably when I've taught "Tea 101" classes to groups of coffee drinkers the great black teas of China have been the crowd favorites. There's an autumnal, foresty complexity to the aromas of these teas not found in any others.<br />
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<b>ZY82 Yunnan Golden Tips Imperia</b>l: my favorite of a bunch of good-to-great Yunnans on Upton's list, this not-cheap tea offers the classic complex Yunnan flavors of apricot and peach offset with peppery spice, butter caramel sweetness and a wild mushroomy earthiness. A bit of sugar brings out the flavors, and it can certainly handle milk if need be.<br />
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<b>ZP60 Panyang Golden Tribute</b>: this just-arrived high end tea is one of my all-time favorites, with enough depth of flavor and opulence of body to please a dyed-in-the-wool Sumatra coffee drinker. It's as good as black tea gets.<br />
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<b>ZP22 Panyang Select</b> is a junior sibling to the Golden Tribute, priced for everyday consumption and much simpler in flavor, but far better than many Keemuns costing twice as much or more. There's a definite smoky note, good body and plenty of sweetness. In between this lot and the top end Tribute is another stunning tea, <b>ZP91 Panyang Congou Supreme</b>, which offers room-filling aroma and tremendous complexity of flavor, including a lovely note of fresh apple I find partiuclarly appealing at this time of year.<br />
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<b>Assam</b><br />
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Teas from the Assam district are <i>the</i> classic winter-weight teas, traditionally used as the backbone for Irish and Scottish Breakfast blends. Teas from the top estates really deserve to be drunk unblended, and in recent decades have begun to fetch stratospheric prices, especially from tea-crazy Germany and other sophisticated markets.<br />
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While the original Assam cultivars came from Yunnan (the motherland of tea), several sophisticated producers have long since developed gorgeous, golden-tipped varieties that offer an intensity and complexity of flavor that make their teas well worth the relatively high prices they often command.<br />
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These are the Peet's Sulawesi (or Aged Sumatra) of teas, virtually <i>requiring</i> the addition of milk and sugar for most drinkers, at least at first. I have fond memories of cupping several tables of new crop Assams with Jim Reynolds, the original coffee buyer for Starbucks (and then Peets for many years) in the mid 1980's. We just used the standard 2.25 grams per cup but even for us, hard-core coffee tasters used to dark roasts, the tannins in a couple of tables full of Assams had us feel like our tongues had sprouted fur coats. Still, on a February morning with snow falling outside there's nothing I'd rather drink than one of these dark beauties.<br />
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<b>TA21 Mokalbari East GFBOP</b>: A high-value tea from an estate that has been producing teas with a particularly ferocious malty intensity for decades. The value-for-money here is off the charts.<br />
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<b>TA51 Mangalam FTFFOP1</b>: One of the most famous Assam estates, and certainly one of the most consistent. If you've never tasted a classic Assam, this is the place to start. Strength and smoothness are balanced here, and the leaf is so pretty it almost seems a shame to brew it.<br />
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<b>TA57 Harmutty TGFOP</b>: This new arrival has plenty of malty intensity but with more balance than the Mokalbari plus an enchanting note of wild cherry, or perhaps Amarone wine. Excellent value, too.<br />
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<b>TA97 Halmari TGFBOP1</b>: It's well-known among professional tea tasters that BOP grade Assams often out-cup the larger leaf sizes, and this is a perfect example. Over-the-top aromatic intensity but classic Assam through and through, and living proof of the wisdom of the old Mae West adage that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECcfNL58beOCKJZf4VtdI9IZ72OBkwiTnpeVu8HRFGUrVmJ6cUa-PBFaG-RPiPfP2WO_Ui05c_Hmy-uDSe20q7zH9lHldIXGR4BYGuPtwsw_f-Bq9ftq-fo5LJMibq6EwFMwIc8A1fLU/s1600/TA51-@DFL-DRY+LEAF+IMAGE.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECcfNL58beOCKJZf4VtdI9IZ72OBkwiTnpeVu8HRFGUrVmJ6cUa-PBFaG-RPiPfP2WO_Ui05c_Hmy-uDSe20q7zH9lHldIXGR4BYGuPtwsw_f-Bq9ftq-fo5LJMibq6EwFMwIc8A1fLU/s1600/TA51-@DFL-DRY+LEAF+IMAGE.GIF" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mangalam Estate Assam</td></tr>
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-22858129938623243062014-10-05T13:59:00.001-07:002014-10-05T14:00:28.058-07:00The Science of Crema at Nestlé<br />
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Peter Giuliano was very kind to share this article and linked video from last year's SCAA Symposium (the video is 16 minutes long and worth every minute you spend watching it):<br />
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<a href="http://www.scaasymposium.org/britta-folmer-how-crema-impacts-the-consumers-perception-of-coffee/">Brita Folmer on Crema</a><br />
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Dr. Folmer's talk is a rare and really wonderful glimpse into defining, measuring and achieving high quality in coffee using the full complement of scientific and technological tools available. Sadly I doubt this talk will be viewed by those who most need to see it: specialty coffee folks who think that having a "passion" for quality, or over-paying for small lots of green coffee from farms you've visited, has something to do with actual quality, when it does not.<br />
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Think about all the theories about espresso and <i>crema</i> you've heard: it's the sign of truly fresh coffee; you need <i>robusta</i> in the blend in order for it to really last; it protects the aroma of your shot while drinking it; it needs to pour <i>towards</i> the rim of the demitasse and stay intact to be a good one - on and on. Then look at this video, which looks at what <i>crema</i> actually is, what consumers and expert tasters expect and perceive it to be, and how good <i>crema</i> can be part of not only straight shots of espresso but the drip-strength <i>caffe lungo</i> that dominates the market in much of Europe (and which deserves a much wider audience here).<br />
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There's so much to learn from, and to be impressed by, in this excellent presentation, but for me the most important aspect of all is how seamlessly this company integrates the technical aspect of coffee chemistry and the perspective of expert tasters with the needs, wants and preconceptions of its customers. The consumer hardly factors in to most discussions I hear among American microroasters: instead it's talk about how much we (behind the counter) like such-and-such microlot, how much we spent on the latest Rube Goldberg brewing contraption, or how we roast the coffee to <i>our</i> ideal profile based on what we find at the cupping table. That's coffee-as-hobby; this talk is about the coffee <i>business. </i><br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-57170858465775985452014-10-05T13:36:00.001-07:002014-10-05T13:36:01.905-07:00A retro rejoinder in Seattle<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nicaragua (left) and Guatemala from Fundamental Coffee</td></tr>
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Two old hands in coffee - one of whom I had the pleasure of working with during my Starbucks years - have just opened a microroastery in Seattle called <a href="http://www.funcoffeeco.com/">Fundamental Coffee</a>. It's very early days yet for them, but I must say I'm delighted to see fresh, deep-roasted coffee in Seattle again.<br />
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The situation in Seattle over the past decade or more has truly become a case of "coffee everywhere, but nothing fit to drink." I can think of only two exceptions: <a href="http://lighthouseroasters.com/">Lighthouse Roasters</a> up on Phinney Ridge, along with the rightly legendary Joe Kittay at The Good Coffee Company down on Post Alley (no web site, of course). Other than these guys, there's a veritable ocean of cinnamon-to-city roasted, screamingly acid, scandalously over-priced AND very frequently stale coffee from a bevy of Third Wave know-nothings, offset by a Starbucks on every street corner selling stale, incinerated beans from nowhere in particular if you can even find the whole bean coffee amidst the milk, flavorings and foods.<br />
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I tasted three of the six coffees currently on offer from Fundamental: their Humbucker Blend and a Guatemala Antigua Acate Estate, and a Nicaragua Matagalpa. The Humbucker is seriously darkly roasted - think Peet's rather than Starbucks in its prime, but there's a whole lot more going on in the cup than roasty power, with deep dark chocolate, great balance and body that's nothing short of oceanic. It reminds me a bit of Peet's Top and Garuda Blends and even more of Starbucks Gold Coast Blend when we invented in in the late 80's. It would make magnificent espresso.<br />
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The roast on the Guatemala was also quite Peetsian, and I didn't think the coffee quite handled it, but I was drinking it through the Aeropress and as drip and I have no doubt it would've shown me a lot more in a La Marzocco. My favorite of the bunch was the Nicaragua, roasted one significant notch lighter (putting it in the Starbucks-of-old [pre Scolari roasters]) range and offering luscious body supported by crisp acidity and considerable complexity of flavors.<br />
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While the coffees here and the roasts are clearly in the Peets and Starbucks lineage, what really took me on a trip to memory lane was <i>freshness</i>. When I first started working at Starbucks in 1984 we roasted coffee three days a week and delivered it to the stores the next day - in increments as small as two pounds - in order to guarantee every bean was sold within a week of roasting. The aroma in my house when I opened the bags from Fundamental was <i>exactly</i> that of every Starbucks store (or Peet's Vine Street for that matter) during the many years before a commercial espresso machine made its way into the stores.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDeBtJKhxSkQ1xD1YcsnpMDai_Die29Y5f1UzFjMMIe4_fUGwYrdjntx0kLvfB_Xxb6MphNibTHI072a9ng72k9fU7jyp6huLy52HQ4MZ6t312Q-CvTUDvtBcCRowAptK-4F4chOuNCYI/s1600/IMG_0691.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDeBtJKhxSkQ1xD1YcsnpMDai_Die29Y5f1UzFjMMIe4_fUGwYrdjntx0kLvfB_Xxb6MphNibTHI072a9ng72k9fU7jyp6huLy52HQ4MZ6t312Q-CvTUDvtBcCRowAptK-4F4chOuNCYI/s1600/IMG_0691.jpg" height="149" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Close-ups of the two degrees of roast</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Check out Fundamental's web site - their blog in particular - and you'll get a very clear sense of their focus and the great depth of experience, product knowledge and passion supporting their perspective and product offerings. Note also their concern about delivering value-for-money from the outset, and their eagerness to engage their customers as partners in the business. These are coffees meant for the naturally soft water, grey days and pressurized brewing methods (from French Press to espresso) that were perfected in Seattle long ago, when the Starbucks mermaid was brown and had breasts, the coffee beans were fresh, and the scale of the business was human. It's my kind of retro.<br />
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<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-61764159852719411682014-09-02T16:48:00.002-07:002014-09-02T16:48:23.357-07:00Mandatory Third Wave coffee bar equipment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5qad2d2xrUSDM5vXcjjWPdhT5k9Bb23dpBM9JQ068tScWd5QJxCv_QAx5XW3S8PqASlNoGV6M8LeL3yzPVjWOyhjlkYX4_fwqu4eHUzNBgCGc9hBX1MXiu04pKAuZ32hMshonuP7Loeg/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5qad2d2xrUSDM5vXcjjWPdhT5k9Bb23dpBM9JQ068tScWd5QJxCv_QAx5XW3S8PqASlNoGV6M8LeL3yzPVjWOyhjlkYX4_fwqu4eHUzNBgCGc9hBX1MXiu04pKAuZ32hMshonuP7Loeg/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a></div>
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There's a <a href="http://boingboing.net/2014/09/02/brew-coffee-19th-century-style.html">great video</a> out that shows the classic Balance Vacuum Coffee Maker in action. It's meant to look old-timey and fun and succeeds on both counts, but the first thing that struck me in watching it is that the brewing process shown is actually <i>less</i> tedious than watching your local barista brew a Hario pourover and the result is ever-so-much better: an actual <i>pot</i> of coffee, not a mere cup, that's <i>hot</i> instead of tepid.<br />
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Now the last time I was in an Intelligentsia store Doug Zell facetiously apologized for not having a Fetco installed (and of course the coffee would've been much better - and the wait in line infinitely shorter - if he had), but I think, in penance for the innumerable cups of under-extracted, papery and obscenely overpriced coffee made while you wait wait wait that <i>all </i>of the groovy Third Wave chains ought to brew on nothing but these ever-so-retro vacuum brewers.<br />
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That way - finally - I'd be able to get a cup of coffee that doesn't suck, from a brewer that does.<br />
<br />Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-69035403453525956992014-08-21T11:49:00.000-07:002014-08-21T11:55:08.842-07:00You've gotta be sh$%!*ng me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRfQitKtgb5luPnCTuOPeeykR1M-NPcgh1fkYlLwwWu7zfGxgG4PgnJvelUgVLT2bJm7CennQCrzJ2y7hPYbMHxafOu3Cq_RIG7bhVT0ifawZXaG_WnujjZ126Ra5jo6aaeUF0vJAlAn4/s1600/blackivory-1_slide-f4cfe17e962c646273b9f197e4a345734cf91fd9-s4-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRfQitKtgb5luPnCTuOPeeykR1M-NPcgh1fkYlLwwWu7zfGxgG4PgnJvelUgVLT2bJm7CennQCrzJ2y7hPYbMHxafOu3Cq_RIG7bhVT0ifawZXaG_WnujjZ126Ra5jo6aaeUF0vJAlAn4/s1600/blackivory-1_slide-f4cfe17e962c646273b9f197e4a345734cf91fd9-s4-c85.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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Thanks to long-time reader of this blog Patrick Booth for sharing <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/20/340154271/no-1-most-expensive-coffee-comes-from-elephants-no-2">this story</a> from NPR, about an entrepreneur who's decided that the way to improve <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak">Kopi Luwak</a> (the notorious "recycled" coffee made by collecting beans that have been eaten and shat out by the palm civet) is to supersize things by feeding coffee to elephants and collecting what comes out the other end.<br />
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Kopi Luwak was perhaps excusable when it was a rare novelty made from beans found in the forests of Indonesia, but it has long since morphed into a hideous (on many levels) enterprise involving keeping the hapless civets in captivity. It was - and is - in George Howell's incomparably precise and concise summation, "coffee <i>from</i> assholes<i> for </i>assholes."<br />
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I wish I could come up with an equally witty summary for this new project, but "Enema & Ivory" sung to the old Michael Jackson tune just doesn't cut it. Perhaps what's needed is an insistence from consumers that, in the interests of animal welfare, they'll only buy elephant shit coffee from <i>free range</i> pachyderms. Then at least there's a fair chance of these noble beasts flattening their handlers-cum-bean-collectors into the ground, thereby putting an end to the enterprise and vindicating Darwin once again.Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-10340163665252896392014-08-01T14:02:00.000-07:002014-08-01T16:25:58.155-07:00"The Future of Iced Coffee" leaves me cold<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcp9yxzgRMZDYxYvIS1jPhybMY80nmq_75Gg9jfgEaWzBgc4RFLZ2xRI2tYkKfznYaPUtVVAznUW64FQqCR__0A6kkXjtPVDNpLTGIOjV2vojJ6saxfm7fSeHIqzTdKpOiQrdhcQ_guBQ/s1600/BLUBTL_02_V2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcp9yxzgRMZDYxYvIS1jPhybMY80nmq_75Gg9jfgEaWzBgc4RFLZ2xRI2tYkKfznYaPUtVVAznUW64FQqCR__0A6kkXjtPVDNpLTGIOjV2vojJ6saxfm7fSeHIqzTdKpOiQrdhcQ_guBQ/s1600/BLUBTL_02_V2.jpg" height="207" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If this be coffee, give me.....coffee?</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-future-of-iced-coffee/375114/" style="font-size: x-large;">This</a><span style="font-size: large;"> well-written article in </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">The Atlantic</i><span style="font-size: large;"> has been recommended enthusiastically by a couple of people (Peter Giuliano and Mark Inman) I have a lot of respect and affection for, but I think their enthusiasm is either misplaced entirely or a result of greatly diminished expectations for specialty coffee altogether. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Sprudge</i> entitled their link to this article "Can the Next Starbucks Actually Sell Good Coffee?," which speaks volumes about the level of ignorance of specialty coffee history that prevails on the internet. The product the <i>Atlantic </i>article is about is a coffee-and-chicory based milk-and-sugar drink in a milk carton, produced by a marketing-driven company (Blue Bottle) that is to coffee retailing what Patron Tequila (a brand started by hair stylist John Paul Mitchell) is to authentic small-producer tequila. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Starbucks on the other hand was a superb roaster-retailer from 1971 through 1984, during which time it sold not just good but often truly great coffee. It was a product (not marketing) driven company from top to bottom, which of course made it ideal for the masterful job of co-optation and prostitution done by Howard Schultz from 1987 onwards. Blue Bottle, on the other hand, was marketing-driving from the beginning - it has no soul to lose. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The appropriate frame of reference for discussing Blue Bottle's milk carton coffee would be a comparative tasting of that product with bottled and canned iced products from Starbucks, Illycaffe and the like. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fresh brewed iced coffee prepared Japanese style, as championed by the aforementioned Mr. Giuliano, is the only iced coffee beverage I know of that captures, to a considerable degree, the aroma and flavor of excellent origin coffees. As a summer complement to core offerings of hot, freshly-brewed coffee it makes all kinds of sense. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Blue Bottle New Orleans Iced Coffee</i> on the other hand, is in the same category as the other aforementioned bottled coffee products, and only one small step away from Nescafé flavored coffee creamers, Irish Creme flavored beans and other such swill that are all still very much part of the (meaningless but measured) "specialty" coffee category. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Traditional New Orleans coffee, to begin with, starts with mediocre to out-and-out defective coffee beans incinerated (French Roasted) to mask their defects. The loveliness of that starting point is then compounded by adding roasted chicory root, a foul-tasting coffee extender, after which copious amounts of milk and sugar are added in order to make the brew drinkable. Apparently Mr. Freeman is hoping that "New Orleans style" will evoke just the right happy associations in the consumer's mind, but that particular kind of coffee marketing is the province of somewhat larger companies (surely we haven't forgotten that the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup?). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over twenty years ago, during the heady early days of explosive growth at Howard Schultz era Starbucks, I had the pleasure of hosting the superb food writer Corby Kummer (of <i>The Atlantic</i>) at the Starbucks roasting plant in Seattle for tasting and lengthy discussion. Even then (this was the early 90's) I could see substantial erosion in the level of knowledge of, and passion for, the taste of unadulterated origin coffees among both our customer and employee bases, and when Corby said "but surely Seattle has the highest level of coffee connoisseurship in the country" I replied that that was equivalent to seeing a table full of women at a cocktail party drinking daiquiris and assuming they were all Vodka connoisseurs. The current <i>Atlantic</i> article is about exactly that kind of "connoisseurship," despite the fact that the quality of the coffee required for the product in question is utterly mediocre and the taste for sugary, milky coffee it both satiates and cultivates is anathema to the appreciation of the flavor of real coffee. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If we have gotten to the point where industry leaders enthusiastically embrace "premium" coffee-based beverages that directly undermine the cultivation of a consumer base capable of appreciating (and paying for) the subtle aromas and flavors of great single origin coffee there's no hope. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the very least, I shouldn't be the only one with an industry background pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes - or rather, that there's (almost) no coffee in this "coffee." </span>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-76129744839407034112014-05-01T07:03:00.000-07:002014-05-01T07:03:09.976-07:00"Doing for Tea What They Did for Coffee:" Threat or Promise?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-dmg9-P-V0aw1AZys-r8K9l7TysD0Z2kv36oM3mKGonV6G9ij0BQlnh9JnorBXqJMCsJS8UxU3b2VsJUvXvEkq1HuKS8QB43FFp7fg3DTyt55-XzD8UbjWLNALHG4lhT67ktv2I6auNs/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-dmg9-P-V0aw1AZys-r8K9l7TysD0Z2kv36oM3mKGonV6G9ij0BQlnh9JnorBXqJMCsJS8UxU3b2VsJUvXvEkq1HuKS8QB43FFp7fg3DTyt55-XzD8UbjWLNALHG4lhT67ktv2I6auNs/s1600/images.jpeg" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In <a href="http://coffeecontrarian.blogspot.mx/2013/08/upton-tea-alone-at-top.html">this</a> post from awhile back I gave a bit of the back story of tea at Starbucks, which went from fabulous whole leaf single origins and blends to discontinued category during my time there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Only a few years later the company, after toying with acquiring Republic of Tea, instead bought Tazo out of Portland, largely on the strength of the creative brilliance of Steve Smith - someone I greatly admire. The back story for that can in part be found in <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2004075585_tazo16.html">this article.</a></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpt4RknPwVh8Hv33jgLp1ThPtiVCVqVCmKjRehhMO6Mhfn9Wtp5q17rlm_kHsz5UHQrt6xxH5-z8Uvml5xOehBNybmvtmOlAhtBXiIifhnPaPhSdl80_VhKb-Ocxo3lt0S15EpiZ_khdc/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpt4RknPwVh8Hv33jgLp1ThPtiVCVqVCmKjRehhMO6Mhfn9Wtp5q17rlm_kHsz5UHQrt6xxH5-z8Uvml5xOehBNybmvtmOlAhtBXiIifhnPaPhSdl80_VhKb-Ocxo3lt0S15EpiZ_khdc/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The good old days: no espresso, great coffee, Hao Ya Keemun and Namring Darjeeling, and saffron for your paella</span><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fast forward to today and we have stories all over the press, including <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarathau/2014/04/30/why-the-oprahstarbucks-brew-could-revolutionize-the-business-of-tea/2/">this</a> piece in today's <i>Forbes</i>, about the joining of Starbuck's more recent tea acquisition, the Teavana chain, with the substantially more formidable brand that is Oprah Winfrey. Today both Starbucks and Teavana stores are awash with Oprah Chai Lattes and gift sets, and anyone who knows Howard's tastes can easily imagine some of the additional products and co-branding opportunities surely waiting in the wings. Chopra Oprah chai incense? The Color Purple Lavender Earl Grey? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bad jokes aside, those who care about the actual taste and aroma of origin tea probably ought to take very seriously Teavana/Starbucks promise (or threat), to "do for tea what they did for coffee." We already have a "specialty" tea business that, even more than specialty coffee, has almost no representation of the actual taste of the unadulterated thing itself, and is instead awash in chemical flavorings ("natural" or otherwise) and scents. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Appropriately the core product in the Oprah Teavana line is <b>Teavana Oprah Chai</b><i>. </i>Now the transformation of Indian chai - the lowest-grade of non-exportable tea heavily doused with spices and sugar for local consumption - into a "gourmet" beverage for wealthy white folks (sorry, Oprah) is itself the perfect example of what Agehananda Bharati called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect">"the pizza effect"</a> in which a humble product accorded no particular status in one country is exported to another, re visioned as an upscale or special thing, and then re-exported to its host country which then proudly claims to have invented it in its new and prestigious guise. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bharati himself cited the Hare Krishnas, Transcendental Meditation and yoga as perfect examples of the pizza effect, and Oprah with her enthusiasm for the likes of Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra has clearly been a masterful modern exponent, albeit unwittingly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Less amusing, and more to the point, is the simple fact that any sound, strong black tea will do as the base for this premium-priced tea product, just as any sound, dark-roasted <i>arabica</i> coffee will suffice as the base for the upscale beverages going out the door at your neighborhood Starbucks. In both cases there is a pervasive training or conditioning of the palates and perceptions of millions of consumers to associate premium pricing and value with products that are in fact mediocre in quality, and whose consumption over time almost guarantees that, in the unlikely event a great cup of actual origin coffee or tea crossed the customer's palate they'd spit it out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Third Wave Tea anybody?</span><br />
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<iframe border="no" id="iframe" src="//ws.pricedetect.com/s/background.html?dom=www.blogger.com&pdcnl=PD2" style="background: white; border: 0px; bottom: 0px; display: none; height: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: fixed; right: 0px; width: 0px; z-index: 0;"></iframe><iframe border="no" id="iframe" src="//ws.pricedetect.com/s/background.html?dom=www.blogger.com&pdcnl=PD2" style="background: white; border: 0px; bottom: 0px; display: none; height: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: fixed; right: 0px; width: 0px; z-index: 0;"></iframe>Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-42916800643163682712014-04-04T20:15:00.001-07:002014-04-05T15:09:02.317-07:00The seasonality fail <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1322335512"></span><span id="goog_1322335513"></span>I was just in Seattle for a week and spent much of my time tasting coffee at leading roaster-retailers in the area.<br />
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One of the most striking things I noticed (this being late winter/early spring) at (to be specific) Zoka, Stumptown and Millstead, was that the only single origins promoted and brewed were Central American coffees. Given the time of year, this means these coffees were all approaching past-crop status: close to a year old. Adding insult to injury, much of the pre-bagged roasted coffee on offer was not only past crop but stale, with roast dates on some bags three weeks or more in the past<br />
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"Seasonal" offerings would have included October-November shipment Colombias from Huila, perhaps an outstanding Peru, and maybe dry-processed Ethiopians and Yemens or late-season Sumatras where acidity and freshness aren't the most important flavor elements.<br />
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As far as I know the only roaster in America who who can claim that old green coffees are still "seasonal" is George Howell's <i>Terroir Coffee i</i>n Boston, since he freezes green beans in hermetically sealed bags to extend their shelf life. The fact that there's zero correlation between actual seasonality and what's on offer in theoretically coffee mad Seattle just underlines the "all hat, no cattle" reality of much Third Wave coffee marketing.<br />
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In the interests of not making this into yet another purely critical post, I'll share a bit about ways to make good use of high-quality Central American coffees over their life cycle, since it would seem that this knowledge is not being passed on to newer roasters in any systematic way.<br />
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Using an excellent high-altitude regional Guatemalan coffee from Huehuetenango as an example, we'll figure March/April shipment and thus May/June arrival in the U.S. The coffee will be at its peak of aroma and flavor at that time and will be delicious at any number of roasts, from city+ through espresso, but peak flavor expression for drip or vacuum pot brewing will be in the city+ to full city range.<br />
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Assuming regular daily tasting of one's production roasts, some fading of acidity will likely be noticeable by September/October, which calls for a very slight darkening of the roast to optimize what remains (more body, fewer top notes). By November or so it will be time to stop offering the coffee as a single origin, which should be fine as new crop coffees from places like Papua New Guinea, Colombia and Peru can replace it. It'll still offer much pleasure and deep flavors of bittersweet chocolate and peppery spice when used in an espresso blend, whether that blend is in the Italian style (Vienna+ roast) or taken darker still in the deep-roast tradition of Peet's and Starbucks.<br />
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This progression of use over time: pure and unblended and lightly-roasted when at its peak, blended when past-crop woodiness sets in, and incinerated in dark roasts at the end of its life cycle, works well for pretty much all washed Central and South American coffees. The ideal of course is to plan one's buying so that new crop coffees from other regions can replace fading ones from another, but this also requires deep and ongoing efforts to educate one's employees and customers about the true nature of seasonality, which as I pointed out at the outset of this post isn't going to happen when those who tout seasonality and freshness are in fact offering the exact opposite.Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3804228947196894311.post-28419507301574856512014-04-01T15:24:00.002-07:002014-04-01T15:24:26.724-07:00Which one is the April Fool's Story?Candidate Number 1:<br />
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<a href="http://sprudge.com/geisha-coffee-nanolot-from-the-worlds-highest-coffee-farm-intelligentsia-you-fancy.html">http://sprudge.com/geisha-coffee-nanolot-from-the-worlds-highest-coffee-farm-intelligentsia-you-fancy.html</a><br />
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And Number 2:<br />
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<a href="http://sprudge.com/first-look-gwyneth-paltrow-launches-goop-coffee.html">http://sprudge.com/first-look-gwyneth-paltrow-launches-goop-coffee.html</a><br />
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Now I'll grant you the date does give it away, but if anything I'd say the April 1 item sounds like it has serious commercial potential.Kevin Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02151736463964404979noreply@blogger.com1