In Praise of Plushness

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.

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.

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.

Nowhere to be found, it would appear (except chez nous) 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.

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 Aeropress, which I've praised extensively elsewhere, and more recently the Espro Press 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.

For those unfamiliar, here are a couple of photos of the Espro (both 1 liter and 10 oz. travel mug size):

1 liter double-wall stainless Espro

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 Sweet Maria's. The very imperfect photography gives them a somewhat darker cast than they should have. None of these coffees entered second pop.

Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Dry Process

Kenya Auction Lot

Sumatra Lintong

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 (aka 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.

Consolidation: Peet's Buys Stumptown

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 here) is that it's taken this long. 

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. 

Of course cold brew is the main reason given for the buy, but what one wishes 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 their souls they didn't even get a good price and went out with a whimper not a bang. 

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 one 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. 

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). 

Stay tuned for further mergers and acquisitions. 

Caffè Terzi, Bologna

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. 

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 (a la Stumptown, Water Street and the sorry rest) a Folgers shade of sickly tan, but instead optimally developed for the brewing method in use. 

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 required (as Dr. Illy taught us long ago) to bring the coffee into balance and reveal all of the flavors present. 

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. 

Caffè Terzi

A Tale of Two Coffee Makers

Fresh off the presses from Sprudge, the coffee hipster's National Enquirer, come two posts in succession about coffee makers. Far be it from these guys to notice any irony about the juxtaposition, so allow me...

The first is an interview with the creator of the Ratio, an admittedly beautiful appliance that for a mere $580 (or $640 equipped as shown with its de rigeur Able filter) brews almost as good a cup of coffee as you can with a hot water kettle and a Chemex.

The second is a lovely Vimeo profile 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 twenty of them and still have enough money left over to buy a bag of obscenely overpriced Third Wave beans to brew in it. 

I highly recommend checking out the Ratio coffee site and its videos, reading the interview 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. 

If the Ratio videos and website style seem eerily familiar, it's because they're clearly using the same PR firm as The Timmy Brothers, whose priceless video can be seen at the link. 

Is it The Onion or is it Sprudge? Who knows? Who can tell the difference?

It's truly impossible to discern reporting from humor when your entire website is self-parodying, but the hipsters at Sprudge have certainly offered us coffee gold with this gem of a post. 

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. 

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. 

Full City Roasts: An Endangered Species?

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 try 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). 

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. 

Sweet Maria's has an excellent roast color chart (I'll post the photo below, but the detailed description is well worth reading. 

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 Coffee Review 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 or an old-line roaster like the aforementioned Allegro abandoning balance in favor of trendiness. 

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." 

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 underdeveloped and just as imbalanced as the murky Starbucks stuff everyone is so determined to rebel against. 

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. 

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. 

Retail Coffee Prices and Value

This new post in Roast Magazine's Daily Coffee News caught my eye, and I thought the link within it to a group calling themselves Transparent Coffee Trade was of perhaps even greater interest.

The first article lists a composite average retail coffee price among so-called Blue Chip Roasters of $21.94 per pound, while the Transparent Coffee 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.

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 Sweet Maria's is around $5-8 per pound,  and the small roasters featured at Transparent 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 Farmers to 40, is paying 40% of their selling price to growers but selling at around $14 a pound - albeit for coffee of obviously uninspiring quality).

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.

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.

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.

As a home roaster buying mostly expensive Kenyas and Yirgacheffes and a smattering of top Centrals and Indonesians from Sweet Maria's - 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.

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.

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 Costco. 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.

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 all 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.