I very recently acquired Scott Rao’s new book, Everything But Espresso, and having turned through its pages a couple of times I am struck by what a timely piece it is. I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of the book, and to a large extent the details. The prominence Scott places on correct extraction, brew ratios, even extraction, consistency of methodologies, are all bankable principles – and I will concur with James’ verdict, it is an essential acquisition.
Musings on Coffee Culture From Ireland
Archives for category: thoughts
Putting aside the merits of the 100 point scale, not getting hung up on semantics if you were offered both of these coffees (to drink) – which would you choose?
Which would you choose?
- 80 point coffee with a 90 point roast (68%, 42 Votes)
- 90 point coffee with an 80 point roast (32%, 20 Votes)
Total Voters: 62
Loading ...What does it say about speciality coffee that the SCAE has a very well supported annual latte art competition but no brewed coffee competition?[1]
Barista competition season has had me thinking – has the collective consciousness finally moved on from that unwritten judgment of pouring traditional cappuccinos? Don’t know what I’m talking about?
One of the first “truths” I learned as I became exposed to the world of better coffee was that omni-grind is inherently a nonsense. This seemed entirely logical, how could one grind fulfill the idiosyncrasies of a multitude of brewing methods. I did not offer much resistance to my acceptance of this conventional wisdom. The dogma of relative grind sizes has been widely propogated in the popular coffee lexicon to the extent that even those with the most basic of understandings of coffee brewing will probably be able to recite the ordered list. From fine to coarse it goes Turkish – Espresso – Moka – Drip – Press – Percolator (or thereabouts). Omni-grind was just one more by-product of commercial coffee roasters that we could bash them over the head with (also not sure why we call THEM commercial coffee – as far as I can see all coffee is commercial – I digress).
I think we were hasty to do so.
This post is actually somewhat inspired by a recent rant. I do like a good rant, and Karl Purdy delivered a fine one on the Forkncork forums following the Irish Barista Championships. Karl’s a good guy, and as many are no doubt aware has played a big role in moving quality in the coffee scene in Ireland forward. I completely understand his sentiments, he is one of a very small number of people in Ireland who are keeping pace with international Speciality Coffee standards. By very small number, I would say, count on one hand, with fingers to spare.
His penultimate sentence stuck with me: