Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Lately it seems the opinions of individuals with a rather cantankerous disposition to speciality coffee in the US have been gaining prominent positions in well read “online magazines”. I thought this trend had waned, but yesterday a new article on Salon.com emerged, bringing this class of comment once more to the fore.

It isn’t that these people hold these opinions that is unusual, many many people hold similar opinions, rather the issue seems to be that these apparently reputable (I use the term loosely) publications seem so eager to give voice to these opinions, that they seem so eager to throw barbs at the speciality coffee community.

What the are you doing to piss off all these publications?

Would anyone care if Todd Carmichael was ranting off on his own personal blog, or if Giorgio Milos was being patronising on some coffee forum? The opinions expressed are not unusual. Many many people hold those same opinions. It is beyond tedious to try to rebuke these criticisms, because they have already been discussed ad infinatum – 5 or more years ago. We may as well go back now and debate whether we should give women the vote.

The key difference here is, Esquire.com, Salon.com and The Atlantic Monthly are read by an ass load of people (well, I’m not sure about the last one – I’m assuming). They are forums that I’m sure a lot of truly knowledgeable, leading light kind of coffee people, of which the US has no shortage, would be all too happy to have available to them.

According to his mini bio on the Atlantic monthly Giorgio Milos “is traveling the US through 2010, hosting illy Master Barista Series events at leading cafes and gourmet retailers”. In other words he’s spending 2010 selling illy in the US. So his articles on The Atlantic amount to little more than advertorial content. One of the ways he is selling, or at least trying to sell more illy. Would you expect him to go around praising the competition?

Similarly Todd Carmichael, develops a brand identity for himself as the anathema of the stereotypical hipster douchebag barista culture. He has much to gain. His company website is linked at the bottom of every post. You can’t buy that kind of advertising. When the speciality community got up in arms about it, it only created a hit frenzy on the Esquire site, cementing, for now at least, Todd’s position as someone who can draw hits. [notice no links in here]

I guess he also fits into Esquire’s editorial style. Loud machismo with no substance.

Are these types of magazines usually so eager to give voice to thinly veiled advertisements? Typically they require to be paid for such content. My only other conclusions can be (a) they don’t like you or (b) they get a sufficient plethora of hits from the article to justify it (hits which the speciality coffee community have provided in the ensuing discussions). Perhaps a combination of both.

Which brings me back to my earlier questions – what are you doing to piss off all these publications?

Perhaps the lesson to learn from this, is not about balance of taste, as Mark Prince suggested, not about the merits and evolution of tradition as James Hoffmann suggested, rather about perception. A negative perception seems to exist in some quarters (in the US) towards “speciality coffee”, towards those emerging trends, and evolutions in which we would hold great pride. I don’t know why this is the case, but I think it is a fair conclusion.

This antipathy is giving large forums to otherwise pretty anonymous individuals to garner personal gain from casting aspersions at the community.

In turn we have fanned the flames with over the top reactions to frankly, hackneyed, tired, boring criticisms.

Enough already.

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.

Scott also raises for me, some thought provoking though more debatable topics, such as coffee bed geometry, and the merits of post brew inspection of said bed, and brew diagnosis. The tenant of his point is that there are certain actions you can take to affect the end bed architecture, that will improve the evenness of drawdown, which will impact the quality of that portion of the brew (though not necessarily making up for problems with other parts of the brew).

It is hard to argue with his logic.

This train of thought brought me back to rewatching THAT video, and to rereading THAT divisive but very interesting thread on Coffeed.

One of the points that comes up was whether the grinds at the bottom of the cone were overextracted relative to the grinds at the top of the cone. Though this seems self-evident, especially when a lot of the top grinds are out of the equation at an early stage, has anyone shown real evidence of this?

Methodology

To show some real evidence of this, using an Uber Boiler set to 92C I prepared 8 pour over brews (actually 9 as there was 1 duplicated with a Buono kettle). Using a Chemex, a V60, a Donut dripper, and a Melitta dripper, I prepared 2 500g (brew water weight) / 30g (ground coffee weight) brews with each, the first a continuous center pour with no manual agitation (ala the SqM video), the second using a series of small pours with stirring at the beginning and end (ala the book).

When these brews were completed I immediately retrieved used grinds from the filter papers, split approximately in half, resulting in two samples from each brew (a total of 16 samples) – representing the top grinds and the bottom grinds.

These were spread out on ceramic saucers and dried in a 50C oven for 30mins.

6g samples of dried grinds were weighed, and rebrewed with 100g of boiling water for 10 minutes to extract remaining solubles.

Beverage strength of these rebrews was determined with a Reichert R2mini Refractometer (aka the Extract Mojo refractometer).

For illustration purposes, soluble yields are normalized (ie graphs represent the ratio of top to bottom – with the higher yielding sample always being one).

Comments on the methodology

• Apart from the V60 center pour / no agitation test, which was performed twice, all of these are n=1, and as such are not statistically significant, or to be considered definitive. I would encourage others to replicate these experiments.
• 92C was chosen somewhat arbitrarily, as it was the temperature being used by 3FE to brew Hasbean’s Finca La Fany via Chemex. This was the coffee used for the experiment.
• Ideally a higher number of samples would be taken, as I am certain extraction imbalances are likely to be gradiential rather than binary.
• Boiling water was used without any regard for brewing convention and taste, instead merely to readily extract a large proportion of the remaining solubles.

Results

I will present the results on a brewer by brewer basis.

I expected the V60 brew to deliver a relatively even extraction, due to the perception that substantial brew water leaves the brew via the sides as well as the bottom, also it seemed to me plausible that the center pour no agitation method could produce an even extraction if the brew water path was through an equidistant bed of coffee along all surfaces.

My results indicated (and this one was done twice – and the results agreed) that the V60 with this methodology produced the greatest discrepancy between top and bottom. I retrieved 4 times more solubles from the grinds at the top of the cone, than the grinds at the bottom of the cone, when rebrewed.

Using the stirring methodology, greatly improved this, to the point that I retrieved only marginally more solubles from the top grinds. The ratio here was 4:3, instead of 4:1, still uneven but greatly improved.

I expected the Chemex on the other hand to produce the most uneven results, with all of the brew water channeling through the point of the cone, with little side drainage.

The first Chemex brew (similar to James’ video) produced a brew greatly more even than the same V60 brew, while not as good as the stirred V60 brew. In the case of the Chemex, I found the stirring I performed to negatively impact the evenness of the extraction.

The Melitta cone, was probably the star performer on the day, producing an unstirred brew slightly more even than the Chemex brew, and only slightly less even than the sitrred V60. In the stirred Melitta brew, however, the two samples were almost indistinguishable, and certainly within the margin of error of the Reichert mini refractometer, and my experimental methodology.

The Donut, a brewer I used a lot prior to dropping it on the floor and breaking it produced the most even unstirred brew. Oddly, however, unlike the other 3 brewers it produced a brew in which more was extracted from the top, than the bottom. When stirred, however, it produced a brew slightly less even, though markedly different in that now the bottom was more extracted.

Discussion

I would stress that these are n=1 findings (apart from in one instance), and should not be used to definitively call one brewer superior to another. What I would confidently take from this, perhaps, is that cone shaped brew basket geometry produces and uneven extraction in general, and that stirring can impact both positively or negatively the end result.

The V60, which I will confess has been my brewer of choice of late, on two separate brews, one with the Uber and one with a Buono kettle (at home) produced the most uneven extractions. Certainly, in the process of preparing all the brews on 3FE’s Uber, and tasting small samples of each, I remarked that the V60 brew tasted the worst, jangly, hollow even. This would not have been in keeping with my general opinion on the device.

The Donut, I find quite intriguing, as its geometry is the most unique (in this group). It could be most accurately called a truncated cone, or thought of as somewhere between a cone and a cylinder. Some say it is a pointless brewer (ahem), and I would agree with that – as such the bottleneck effect on the path of the brew water would appear to be less dramatic than any of the other brewers (although the choice of one central hole in favour of several dispersed  perhaps diminishes this). There are so many possible factors that might  explain the results I observed, with this brewer that for me to single some out would be close to idle speculation. So I won’t.

The humble Melitta cone held its own on the numbers front at least, and when stirred produced the most even extraction. Its hard for me to say why I hold little affection for the Melitta cone, perhaps not least because I cannot seem to get filter papers for it that don’t taste like sawdust. Certainly though in terms of geometry it would seem to stand a better chance than the cone shaped V60 or Chemex beds at producing an even extraction.

The question, which naturally proposes itself amidst all of this is whether an even extraction is truly the most desirable outcome of brewing some coffee. Peter Giuliano’s steak analogy on the Coffeed thread, suggests an alternative is possible. While the cooking of steak probably has more in common with the roasting of coffee than the brewing of it, and I don’t think anyone advocates uneven roasting, Peter’s point is a fair and reasonable one.

Scott Rao somewhat addresses this in his book, suggesting that because grinders produce a wide range of particle sizes anyway, that the complexity of multiple extraction levels will always be achieved, even in an otherwise “even brew”. It is unclear if Scott is merely eliminating the complexity argument as a potential criticism for his proposed methodologies, or if he believes the complexity of an extraction spectrum is desirable.

For my part, having compared a lot of brews made with sieved grinds and non-sieved grinds, I remain in favour of evenly extracted brews made from grinds all of the same size (or as narrow a size distribution as possible). I think we have acquired the taste for what our grinders can produce, and somewhat for what our brewers can produce. This is what coffee should taste like in our mind, it is the baseline from which we judge everything. We have , I propose, acquired a taste for unevenness of varying degrees. I would propose an experiment where non-coffee drinkers are given a preference test to determine whether they would choose the sifted brew over the non-sifted kind. My money would be on the former.

But I digress.

My bottom line is that I see no rational reason why we should choose an uneven extraction. Let’s not get hung up on defending our corner, our methodologies, by proclaiming unevenness “a feature”, whether due to grinder, or brewer.

It’s not a feature, it’s a bug.

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?

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?

Let me rewind to Copenhagen ‘08, a simpler time. John Muli, the Kenyan barista champion, poured traditional cappuccinos. However, he made a really clear point of saying to the judges that it was an active choice to do so, and that he was actually very good at latte art.

That he felt it necessary to justify it speaks volumes about what latte art has meant, and maybe still does mean. It was one very visible symbol of inclusion, a third wave hallmark, almost like a secret handshake. It was something WE did, and THEY didn’t etc.

It seems to me the waning of the fascination with latte art is perhaps coinciding with the upswing in popularity for filter coffee. We are spending more time and energy now actually bigging up the coffee, terroir, nuances. We are getting excited about “the coffee” unlike the last decade or so where it seemed an inordinate amount of time was spent glorifying milk.

Even the prototypical 5/6oz cappuccino is, when looked at objectively, a milk drink. Coffee flavoured milk. So much time and effort was spent on the minutae of microfoam (I too was that soldier), and on from that latte art, ever more intricate latte art.

Of course latte art is by no means obsolete, nor is it worthless. When I want some coffee flavoured milk, I’ll admit I do like it to be visually appealing, personally I’m a kind of heart / tulip guy – simple, not too difficult to achieve a pleasing symmetry. However, I really have to draw the line with wave hearts, swans, dragons, double, triple rosettas etc. They are ugly. Always. Regardless of how much skill is involved. That they even exist seems an aberration, an excessive amount of technique misdirected.

What does it mean that the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe has an annual Latte Art competition, yet no brewed coffee competition? I think it is starting to appear anachronistic, and like a lot of misdirected effort.

[1] It is of course an inevitability that a brewed coffee competition will materialize. The World Aeropress Championships (in its 3rd year) and even Ireland's BrewHaHa (in its first year) speak to this rising tide. Whether in these guises, or a hybrid or something new, no doubt in the next couple of years it will happen.

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.

I accept that espresso is unique and requires a very specific grind consideration. To be perfectly honest I have next to no interest in Turkish or Percolator, so I will refrain from expending further wordage on their merit. That leaves us with Moka, Drip and Press. In the last week I have brewed to acceptable extraction percentage (and taste) with all three of these brew methods using the same grind setting on my grinder.

To all intents and purposes my grinder had become a producer of omni-grind… an omni-grinder.

The question that presents itself to me is why did we come up with this preconceived notion of relative grind sizes for different brewing methods. Why do we assume for instance that French Press requires a different (read: coarser) grind size to drip?

Another piece of conventional wisdom that I think contributes to this, and that I take umbrage with is the prescription of 4 mintues brew time. I’ve yet to be convinced that a 19% extraction in 2:30mins is inferior to 19% in 4 minutes, though the arguement has been made by some. I’m open at least to at some point in the future being proven wrong on that point. However, trying to reach this 4 minute mark can place certain mechanical restrictions on the grind size that go beyond considerations of extraction (and taste). Such as…

The flow rate (or percolation) of brew water through a bed of coffee during drip brewing is inversely proportional to grind size. In order to get to that 4 minutes, depending on the shape and other physical characeteristics of the brew basket, might require that we make adjustments to the grind.

A mechano-physical consideration with regards to the french press is the permeability of the filter mesh, and the resulting sludge. Logic suggests that a coarser grind will result in less sludge. I wouldn’t question a right-thinking mind would assume that the mesh was designed with a certain size of grind in mind, and that using this combination together couldn’t result in a cup with such an obviously displeasing flaw. Such seemingly reasonable conclusions are unfortunately largely false. While the magnitude of the sludge can be impacted to a degree, short of post-press filtration it is always present (even in my experience with administration of scoopy-scoopy). There are diminishing returns in pursuing the coarse grind route with french press, and it becomes difficult to marry it to the 4 minute dogma short of significant agitation.

Somewhere along the line it also became popularized that so called “full immersion” brewing (steeping) is more efficient at extraction than drip. Grinds in a french press tend to sit for most of the contact time in a static manner (sometimes forming a partially floating layer on top of the brew water). Though the osmotic potential of the brew water is initially quite high it is always declining. The lack of agitation also means that local concentrations of dissolved solute surrouding the grinds is comparably higher than the overall concentration as there is insufficient kinetic energy to rapidly even this out. This adds up to a relatively inefficient system on face value.

Consider a drip brew on the other hand. Fresh brew water is added throughout the brew (save the final drain) and dissolved solute is constantly leaving the system, maintaining osmotic potential. Add to that a small but not insignificant degree of agitation due to the pouring (and the kinetic energy due to the percolation) and in theory at least would suggest that there is the potential for greater efficiency of extraction.

In real terms this concurs with my typical brewing parameters. Not only have I used the same sized grind for drip and press, but my drip brews tend to complete final drain between 2:30mins and 3mins, while I tend not to plunge the french press until 4 minutes. When I drag the V60 brew out to 4minutes using that grind it results in a distinctly overextracted, bitter cup.

I doubt I am the first person to make these observations, but perhaps it is worth suggesting that people avoid being mislead by what amounts to a folklore, that we waste less time trying to fit our brews to what we blindly believe to be “correct” parameters, and perhaps that we pause a moment before the next time we rush to scoff at the mention of omni-grind.

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:

And to the all the so-called expert f&w journalists out there, would you please accept that there is still some things to learn – quite a lot actually.

This applies to everyone, not just journalists. Expertise in a way is relative. There are points when I would have perceived myself as having some level of coffee expertise, and when I look back now, it is with abject embarrassment. I knew pretty much nothing. What I thought I knew was a combination of some truths, plenty of lore, a dash of conventional wisdom, and more utter nonsense than I would have thought possible. Even now, I feel that if I were studying for a degree in coffee, I would be only out of the first class in the first semester of the first year.

I’m entering into platitude territory here, but it is as true for coffee as it is other fields – the more you learn the less you know.

Part of the responsibility for the slow rise of quality in Ireland is of course charged with the audience, though much also lies with those of us who want to proliferate these ideas and our ability to communicate better coffee.

I’m not entirely sure what kind of demographic makes up the readership of my blog, I suspect to a degree I am preaching to the choir. However, if you are reading this, and work in coffee (in Ireland, but would apply elsewhere), as a retailer, or roaster or at any step contributing towards producing coffee, I would ask that you consider this question:

Can my coffee be better?

Again we come back to relativity. The answer to this question depends on the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had – that’s your benchmark, against which you compare everything else. So I would suggest making sure your benchmark is set at a good level. This is your practical assignment. Go to 3FE for an espresso or a filter coffee, or get Karl to make you a cappuccino at Coffee Angel, even grab a cheap flight (volcano permitting) over to London and visit a few of the many excellent coffee bars there.

Having done this, and it is a most important step, ask yourself:

Can my coffee be better?

If you find that it can, and you are perhaps somewhat surprised, do not worry. There’s no magic involved, no trade secrets, and there has never been such ready access to all the information required to get there as there is now. The most important thing is that you want to get there, and are willing to learn. Also feel reassured that to get to this realization you probably possess an enormously valuable tool for this journey, a palate.

If you find instead that your coffee actually rocks having made this comparison, please drop me a line via the contact page, or leave a comment. I would love to taste your coffee.

I’m writing this now, reflecting at home after the semi finals of the Irish Barista Championships (with no intention of posting this until after the competition). I’m pleased to report I’ve made the final 6, but disappointed with nearly everything else. Some early small, unnecessary mistakes threw me so much that I made a spectacular series of mistakes. It felt as though the wheels were about to come off at any point and some inner sub-conscious force propelled me forward. It wasn’t the performance I planned, and it certainly wasn’t the performance the coffee in particular deserved.

I guess in way it was an incredibly concentrated learning experience.

Either way, tomorrow I hope to deliver the performance I had planned, to construct the drinks to the level I know they can be. If I can achieve that I don’t care if I finish in 6th. There’s nothing worse than knowing they could be better, and the blame is entirely yours.

To tomorrow!

Looking back on those words now, I am much happier. Having gotten up there once, the second time was much closer to what I wanted. Perhaps I relaxed too much, going over time pretty substantially (25 seconds). Nonetheless, the most important thing for me was to serve Tim Wendelboe’s Panacoffee (Finca La Milagrosa) the way I intended. The technical side of my scoring was not really of the same standard as the coffee.

Its been a crazy six weeks since I threw my hat into the ring. I’ve learned an enormous amount, certainly it has been a very worthwhile experience. I won’t lie, at times it was quite frustrating, tedious, it even seemed like some kind of crazy masochistic ritual.

I have to thank a load of very selfless people who helped me. Karl Purdy of Coffee Angel loaned me a La Spaziale S5 and a heavily modified Mazzer Super Jolly, to practice with and use in the competition, completely free of charge. Amazing generosity. The ever magnificent Paul Stack sent out one of his Marco crack-technicians to plumb it in.

Tim Varney and Tim Wendelboe presented me a selection of amazing coffees, any one of which would have been a great choice. Anyone who reads this blog probably knows the high regard I hold their buying and roasting of coffee. To put it simply, I have never had a coffee from Tim Wendelboe’s that I thought could have been roasted any better.

Tim Varney is also owed a debt of gratitude for talking me down off a ledge with some of my earlier competition music choices. Good call.

Paul Radin, whom I have yet to meet, of CoffeeHit.co.uk sent me a mammoth timer equipped BNZ Conical. Until about 2 days before the competition I was planning to use 2 coffees, then I realised the machine table space at the IBC was going to be practically non-existent (1 meter across), so I opted to leave  the BNZ and a second coffee at home (I found the Mazzer a hair more consistent with timed dosing, albeit twice as slow).

I want to thank Hector Vargas, the farmer from La Milagrosa. I spoke to Hector a little on email, talking about what they do on the farm. Got some amazing insights to their operation. Really like this line from his email:

“The name La MILAGROSA its because of the constant good results or miracles that we have had with our coffee since the begining, thanks to God. I can say that it is a MIRACLE, that our coffee takes place in Panama, is roasted in Norway and it is served in Ireland.”

My father who did the (raw) milk runs from my Grandfather’s farm in Mullinavat (about a 200 mile round trip), and also constructed me a knockbox surround.

My best friend Fergus, who sat through many run-throughs and became a general dogsbody on the final day.

Mostly to my wife, who put up with 6 weeks of disruption to our house, with countless run-throughs, discussions, advice, she in essence became my manager… and she doesn’t even drink coffee.

Big congrats to Colin. Super guy, super barista. I know he’ll do an amazing job in London.

I’m sure I will have more to add later. For now, over and out.

Craft, for me, has become a bit of a dirty word. It should be a positive word. It should indicate a degree of skill and care, the mark of a skilled professional in tune with his task. However, it seems to have gained a somewhat widespread use in coffee circles as a defensive argument against the adoption of more scientific control of parameters, whether brewing or roasting. While I accept that certain individuals can achieve good degrees of consistency through acutely tuned combinations of their senses, a greater majority seem to use the craft argument as a convenient opt-out.

Take brewing for example: we have all seen the huge rise in popularity of brew to order filter coffee. It definitely has the “craft” vibe. Done well, it can be excellent, not only in terms of theater, but also in cup quality. However, it requires a huge amount of attention to detail that is not always achieved or even appreciated.

A typical workflow would be – take hot water out of some sort of boiler (outputting at what temperature? – is it consistent?) – into a second receptacle (maybe a Hario Buono Kettle) – preheated or no? – how much does the temp drop by in the kettle (5 degrees? 10 degress?) – how long does it sit out until you brew? What’s the temp at the kettle spout? Is your filter cone ceramic or plastic – how does that affect temperature? – what’s the temp in the bed?

Even assuming the boiler is outputting 100C water (which is unlikely), by the time the heat is sucked out of it in the intervening steps you’d be lucky to be brewing in the 80s. Add to that, dosing water by eye, and inconsistent duration and dispersion of pour, equates, without too much of a jump in logic, to a hugely variable end product. The result of so called craft.

I’m not here to defend the much maligned auto drip brewer, but a good one delivers consistent temperature, consistent water dose and consistent brew time. Do these factors actually matter to us, or do we just pay lip service to them, instead opting for the touchy-feely perception of craft? The Uber Boiler for instance looks to address these, of course, by putting all of these parameters in front of the barista. There isn’t to my knowledge a coffee shop that has yet to adopt one for full time use (ahem – correct me if I’m wrong Mr Stack), but is even the Uber Boiler a step too far from the reductionist aesthetic for some?

I do get the whole perception argument. The visual feast of a supposed expert doing everything by hand, all this meticulous work, culminating in one cup made especially for you appears worlds apart from the unseen machinations inside a Bunn, Marco, Fetco etc. While in some cases it may truly deliver on the promise, more often, I would wager it is to a large extent, just that, a perception.

Take another example, the feeding frenzy on Coffeed after the unveiling of Bunn’s new brewer (the Trifecta). After a couple of middling reports (with little indication as to whether the coffee was brewed correctly – anyone check extraction / dose etc?) the brewer was roundly obliterated. The aesthetics didn’t fit the craft sensibilities and it didn’t produce something stunningly new. Some (not all in fairness) missed the point. The concept does not seem geared towards producing something that tastes different per se, moreso that it would address a couple of problems:

1. stale brews from auto-drips after 20mins (so – per cup brewing) and
2. the lack of speed and repeatability of per cup brewing.

If the Trifecta can deliver an equatable cup to its auto-drip brewer which takes 4-5mins and is doomed to diminish over time in 1 minute – then surely that is mission accomplished? It may well turn out to be inadequate in some ways, time will tell. The immediate reaction to it, however, speaks volumes about priorities and perception in speciality coffee.

On the roasting side, and here I am on much shakier ground in terms of my knowledge of the area, I have heard similar arguments directed towards the Loring Smart Roaster. Again, it seems to be the introduction of automation that is most irksome to some, supposedly detaching the roaster from the process. I would argue that also seems to miss the point, which is economy, and potentially a cleaner cup profile due to less smoke in the roasting chamber.

Based on the Loring roasted coffees that I have tasted (from Maruyama and James Gourmet), though they have been excellent, I couldn’t conclusively say if the latter holds true without side by side assessment with the same coffee. Nonetheless, is there a perception that ostensible push-button roasting diminishes the role of the roaster? I would say that perhaps it frees up the roaster to refine how that roaster is programmed, and also to rigorously QC the output – achieving consistency? Delivering a better product perhaps but deviating from romantic portrayals of the roaster.

Certainly, whether in roasting, or more likely retail it is nothing revelatory for me to conclude that inordinate consideration is often given to the perception of something rather than the delivery of it. The entire field of marketing is built on that idea. I would like to think that these considerations could be made after having determined how to deliver the best cup. Then again I am a naive fool. Of course, a change in these priorities probably rests on the ability of the consumer to discern past the aesthetics. I am sorry to say to my fellow consumers, in this I have little faith.

I’m giving up predicting things. My predictions for the Brazil CoE, frankly, did not correlate well with reality. So this addendum will focus on simple observations, while clairvoyance will take a backseat.

One part I felt I gave short-shrift were the descriptors. Because of the tedium of having to go into each individual farm page to retrieve the cupping descriptors, my sample size was relatively low. Now having acquired a nice little script to compile all the cupping descriptors, my sample size has increased to

1,281

coffees – the number of coffees that have gone to auction since 2003 (no cupping information available on the site prior to that year). Having the complete post-2003 set, gives us a chance to look at some trends since then, and also some interesting observations like

109

The most words used to describe a single coffee. This honour goes to the number 2 coffee in the 2008 Colombia auction – La Gloria. Oddly the 4 highest all come from the 2008 Colombia auction, where even the last placed auction coffee had a massive 60 descriptors.

1. La Gloria (Colombia 2008 #2) – 109
2. Villa Loyola (Colombia 2008 #1) – 104
3. El Libano (Colombia 2008 #3) – 93
4. El Encanto (Colombia 2008 #4) – 89
5. Burmera Mig (Rwanda 2008 #1) – 85

In fact the amount of descriptors used has been increasing since 2003, apparently peaking in 2008. However, 2009 saw a dip across the board.

I’m not sure if there was a concerted effort in 2009 to simplify matters, though sometimes descriptions can be too simple like the

2

coffees that received the joint lowest number of descriptors – 1 each. Both of these coffees appeared in the 2003 Brazil CoE, where the jury appeared to be stuck for words, or perhaps someone got tired of typing them up (most likely)? Coffees #38 and #42, Fazenda São Marcos and Sítio Primavera, respectively are described merely as floral and spicy. Further words may have created a clearer picture, unlike

Artistic

(Serra do Rola Moça – Brazil 05) which is one of many words that were used only once that leave me none the wiser. I’m also not entirely sure how a coffee can be naughty (Santa Elena II – El Salvador 03) or unshakable (Los Delirios – Nicaragua 04). While I find descriptors like plumeria (Guayacanera – Colombia 05), nasturtium (Finca Carrizal  – Costa Rica 07) and persimmon (El Portillo Oscuro – Honduras 05) to be specific to the point of obscurity. I can only assume that sweet ditch chocolate aftertaste (Finca Santa Lucia – Nicaragua 04) was a typo, while big phat cup (Burmera Mig – Rwanda 08) was surely a product of the CoE’s misguided keepin’ it real campaign.

At the other end

of the spectrum in a group of 1,281 coffees, the word sweet was used 1,195 times. Its near ubiquity makes it in essence redundant. Although 88 times it was accompanied by the adverb very. Does this mean the other 1,107 times it was used, were just referring to averagely sweet coffees? Chocolate was the second most popular word, used 821 times. Here’s a pretty word cloud generated from all descriptors collected, showing the most popular words.

Although it is somewhat interesting to bundle all the descriptors into one bucket like this, perhaps more interesting is when we separate them out into groups and look at them. If we separate the descriptors by country it is possible we may get some indication of elements of

Terroir

specific to, or at least more common in, individual countries. I am reminded of Tristan Stephenson’s effort at proposing a coffee flavour map, which, while a nice idea, was too easy to pick enormous holes in. Here, perhaps, we can make some humble observations in that spirit.

As we already said, sweet is the most commonly used descriptor, in fact in Guatemala and Nicaragua its average use is more than once per coffee (1.12 and 1.10 respectively). However, in two countries, Bolivia and Rwanda, it is not the top descriptor. In Bolivia it appears on average only 65 times out of 100 coffees. Conversely, and perhaps coincidentally, in Bolivia and Rwanda the descriptor orange appears 65 and 91 times out of 100 respectively, while in all the other countries it ranges from between 15 and 32 times out of 100.

The descriptor clean is another interesting one to focus on, it appears most frequently in Guatemala – 40 times per 100 coffees, in the other American countries it ranges from 20 to 32 times per 100 coffees, in Rwanda – 4 times! That is to say, that in the entire, solitary Rwandan CoE, which auctioned 23 coffees, the word clean was only used once.

Perhaps an indictment of that aspect of Rwanda’s CoE coffees, but several positive attributes were more frequently associated with the Rwandan coffees. Maple occurred 11 times more frequently in the Rwandan sample than in an average of the other countries, toffee 10 times, heavy 6 times, and tea 5.5 times more frequently. Floral, was the most common descriptor from the Rwandan CoE, it appeared 25 times, despite there being only 23 coffees (it can appear as both an aroma and a flavour note in fairness).

Perhaps the timely addition of a summarizing

Table

will convey these figures in a more readily consumed format.

Make of that what you will. Note Rwanda was omitted from the calculations of the other countries, as it being a strong outlier would skew the data. So when, for example, we see that grass is ten times more common used to describe a Guatemalan coffee, it is ten times more likely than the average of all the other American coffees.

To complete this exercise, and believe me, at this point this is really starting to feel like an exercise, I will compare descriptor frequencies by year. This throws up another multitude of at first

seemingly interesting

though on reflection probably not really, statistics.

Oak was used 3 times in the 2003 El Salvador CoE, specifically toasted oak. Oak did not reappear in a single auction until Brazil 09, where it appeared once.

Layered or multi-layered appeared 4 times in 2004 (3 of those in Honduras), yet not again a single time until Bolivia 09.

In noticing that Belgium appeared twice in 2004, in the El Salvador CoE, as Sweet Belgium Chocolate, I found that (apparently) in error the number 3 and 5 coffees have exactly the same descriptors. Data entry fail.

Positive was used 4 times in 2005, once each in Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras and Nicaragua, and once again in Guatemala 06, at no other time has it been used.

Sophisticated also appeared 3 times in 2005, and at no other time.

Sauvignon has been used only 3 times, ever, 2 of which were in Colombia 06, the other Honduras 06.

3 coffees merited Meyer lemon in Bolivia 07, the only other time it was used being Bolivia 09.

The number 1 and 2 coffees in El Salvador 07 were described as celestial, no other coffee has been described as that.

Fruit basket and extra (as in extra fruity, extra long finish) appeared 3 times each, only in 08. Extra was limited to Brazil 08.

Malic is a descriptor that seems to have really captured people’s imagination recently. It first appeared in 2008, popping up 6 times. It was used 25 times in 2009! Suddenly, everything is malic.

So

what does all this show? Do I have to draw a conclusion? Conclusion are dangerous. Descriptors are a funny business, it’s really about perception, Certain judges probably like certain words, or pick up certain things more easily. One man’s persimmon is another man’s plumeria, one man’s Meyer Lemon is another man’s normal lemon. Maybe it does take 109 words to sufficiently describe a coffee, maybe Rwandan coffee is relatively dirty.

Maybe everything is becoming increasingly malic.

Sweet.

*as with the last post - the word cloud was generated with Wordle. Also like to thank Fergus Moloney for his help with scripting to get all this data somewhat manageable.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The Cup of Excellence is now in its third decade of existence. That, while technically true, is also quite misleading, given that last summer was its tenth anniversary. Nonetheless, that is a striking amount of time for a competition that kicked-off humbly in Brazil in 1999, with the number one coffee receiving what would now seem a very modest $2.60 high bid, while other coffees received only a fraction above the commodity price of the time. The competition has matured enormously, spread to 9 countries (including one-night stand Rwanda), and record prices for those countries have been set and broken in the process.

The transparency of the system, and its archival data allows us to ask some questions, see if trends emerge, and maybe if any new insight can be gained.

Have prices changed over time?

This seems obvious, prices of speciality coffee across the board are increasing (or so we are led to believe). While there are year to year variances, average Cup of Excellence prices* are trending upwards in every country, apart from one, Bolivia, where (inflation adjusted) prices appear to be trending downwards.

The inflation rates in Bolivia weren’t out of line with any other country, yet even with inflation adjustment prices in every other country maintained an upward trend. Is inflation adjustment just a trick? Is it important/valid? For me it gives a better idea of the worth of the price given to the farmer (changes in dollar value would also be of interest here, but perhaps that is an exercise for another day).

Has the recession influenced prices paid?

I’ve heard it bandied about that speciality coffee is recession-proof. Average prices paid in 2009 were down from 2008 in Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Bolivia rebounded from an (inflation adjusted) all time low in 2008, the Brazilian auction is yet to happen, while prices for latecomer Costa Rica continue to increase.

This suggests at least some correlation between the recent economic downturn, which many would claim peaked in September/October 2008 (the first auction after that was Bolivia 08). Having said that prices also fell in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil and Honduras in 2005 (in every country bar El Salvador that there was also a 2004 auction), so we don’t have a strong argument here. So what other factors might be influencing prices?

What relationship exists between quality and price?

Another metric we can examine is the cupping scores. Although there is a bottom cutoff of 84 points, the distribution of scores above that could give us an indication of changes in annual quality. For instance, lets take our example of Bolivia once more.

Both mean and median scores have trended downward in Bolivia, with the mean giving an overall picture, while the median, which has decreased more rapidly suggesting, that of the coffees at auction in Bolivia, year on year a greater proportion are receiving relatively lower scores. Do mean and median cupping scores dictate the price paid? If this is to be valid for the apparent decline in Bolivian prices then all other countries should exhibit increasing mean and median cupping scores. They do not. The scores in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia appear to be trending strongly upwards. In Brazil, Honduras and Guatemala a specific trend is unclear, while in Costa Rica the scores appear to be declining.

Ok, a bit of a bust there. What if we look broader? In the graph above showing the yearly average prices for different countries you can see that some countries do better than others consistently. For instance Guatemala has received the highest average price every year since 2006, while El Salvador has received the lowest or second lowest amount since 2007. Maybe a comparison of the cupping scores between countries will tell the tale here.

Note here, that in 2003 in El Salvador coffees above 80 and below 84 were allowed to go to auction, hence the outlying number. Guatemala, while commanding higher prices between 2006 to 2008 appears to be distincly middle pack in terms of cupping scores (while just being pipped to the top place in 2009 by Bolivia). In fact in both 2006 and 2007 El Salvador scored more highly on average. The graph also suggests that 2007 and 2008 were red-letter years for Colombia, similarly 2006 for El Salvador, while scores in 2009  across all countries are closer than ever. Does this suggest that countries are reaching a unity in terms of quality? Perhaps just that teams of judges across different competitions are better calibrated? It certainly doesn’t tell us why average prices seem to be so high in Guatemala.

So do any of these statistics make a stronger argument?

Yes. I’m no economist, but this economic model is one I’m relatively aware of.

Supply and demand. This plots shows the number of bags up for auction for each country each year. This much more closely reflects the average price graph from above. El Salvador had the biggest number of bags in auction for the last two years – it had the lowest price. Honduras had the second biggest auction this year, it had the second lowest price. While we don’t know the Brazil prices yet, Nicaragua had the next biggest auction and the next lowest price. Guatemala has consistently had the smallest or second smallest auction since 2005.

Look how nicely Honduras’ prices correlate to auction size.

So while we talk and talk about the Cup of Excellence being about quality, it is also very much about prestige and branding. While the quality in El Salvador may be higher on average than Costa Rica (at least going by average scores of which Costa Rica’s were the lowest in 09), in 2009 Costa Rican coffees received on average $3 more than those from El Salvador. The crux is of course that a lot speciality coffee people want to carry a coffee from Costa Rica, and may be willing to pay a bit extra for a coffee that carries the brands CoE and Costa Rica, regardless if there is better value elsewhere. I don’t think these kind of observations will come as any great shock, the Esmeralda brand has been built on limited supply driving up big prices. It would however be interesting to see what trends might emerge if auctions became more uniform in terms of size. I suspect based on my observations that prices would become increasingly dictated by quality (of course I know that prices within any one auction are generally score driven, but I speak broadly here).

What about the record breakers?

Ok, so we’ve talked about the average prices, but as much if not more attention is given to the high priced coffees, the coffees that break records. Do these coffees also correlate inversely to lot size or positively to cupping score, or even to average price? Overall, no there was no consistent correlation between the price of the highest priced coffee. Obviously, to a certain extent these number one coffees are all scored relatively highly, but you cannot say that a certain score guarantees a particular price. For instance why does a 93.60 score in Guatemala in 2007 gain $19.50, while 93.68 in 2008 gains $80.20. Bidding wars obviously come into the astronomical prices, but I wanted to see if there was something more imagination-capturing about these coffees.

For this I chose all coffees that have broken the $20 mark (14 coffees) and I’ve compiled their cupping notes. For those years I’ve also chosen a middle of the pack coffee and compiled their cupping notes. The idea would be to see if certain words are more frequently associated (or not associated) with the high priced coffees.

+$20 coffees

Mid-priced coffees

First of all, there were a lot more words used to describe the high priced coffees. Both groups associate with chocolate, cherry, orange, clean, creamy, caramel  and sweet more or less equally. Apple is a term used to frequently describe the mid prices coffees, but rarely the high priced coffees. Conversely complex and floral are frequent descriptors of the high priced coffees but rarely the mid priced ones. Indeed “complex” was a term that seemed to jump out from the high priced coffees just by cursory reading.

To complete this I chose a third group, first placed coffees under $20, in countries that have gotten +$20, either directly preceding or following a +$20 year.

Floral and complex also appear in these scores, but to a lesser extent, while long  and honey appear more frequently. Apple once more makes little impact on these coffees, suggesting again that it is a descriptor more common among mid-scoring coffees, though perhaps that it doesn’t affect final price. I think the subjective nature of these descriptor makes using them for this kind of analysis quite difficult. Perhaps comparing two distinct groups, like first placed and mid placed coffees it is somewhat easier to make distinctions, but separating first placed coffees delimited by a somewhat arbitrary figure… shaky ground methinks.

prediction time

Ok, so the auction for the 2009 Brazil coffees is next Tuesday (Jan 19th). I’m going to stick my neck out and make some predictions based on my observations.

The average price will be greater than Honduras ($4.66) but less than Nicaragua ($6.20), based on the size of the auction.

My prediction = $5.43

The top price, and this is where I feel much less certain, will not break $20. While complex and floral are used to describe the number 1 coffee, so are apple and long.

My prediction = $12-$14

Wish me luck.

*My average price calculations were obtained by generating the sum of the products of coffee price by lot size divided by total auction size. Put simply - the average is weighted depending on the size of the lot.
Word clouds generated with Wordle.

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