For the last 12-18 months, it seems there has been a steady succession of challenges and activities to occupy my focus: the 2009 Irish Barista Championship (judging and coaching), WBC Atlanta (coaching), getting the Uber Project blog off the ground, attending the Gold Cup course (while it only took a day, it maintained my interest for weeks), the Irish Cupping Competition, 3FE opening etc. Though I remain involved in a couple of ongoing coffee-related projects, there has been a recent absence of something meaty, challenging.

Despite a dearth of personal and professional free time, I find myself longing for something to obsess over, something to push me out of my comfort zone. That something I hope, is the 2010 Irish Barista Championships, this time, however, as a competitor.

Not being a professional barista, naturally puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage. My homespun, slow, inefficient, meticulous techniques are now nothing but bad habits to unlearn. My milk steaming honed on steaming tiny portions of milk with small aperture steam tips, equally now lacking in value. I have short time to attempt to carve a functional competition barista out of the remnants of years of relatively casual home brewing.

Among my hopes are that this process will not be too harrowing or economically draining. I plan, not to decorate my routine with fancy cups, jugs, linen or crockery, if for no other reason than I cannot afford the expense (who can these days?). I hope to gain new insight into the minutiae of espresso preparation, and perhaps to find a new appreciation for a beverage that ignited my interest in coffee, but in recent times has played second fiddle to filter coffee for my affections.

I know for certain that I can afford to work on my presentation skills. While I have ample experience presenting scientific material, it doesn’t require engaging your audience in the same manner.

Perhaps it will also give me opportunity to get around to some espresso experiments that I had been meaning to do for sometime, but kept putting off.

Probably, above all, I want to present some great coffee and have fun with it.

Already at this stage, I am greatly indebted to a number of people, coffee professionals, from these shores and abroad. They know who they are, and I am amazed and touched by their remarkable capacity for generosity. I shall save the thanks for a later date, but know that without their kindness this wouldn’t be possible.

For now though, there is so much to do, in such a short period of time.

Ok, so I got a gift of an aeropress at Christmas, something which I already own. I can no longer bear to see its boxed visage in the kitchen.

So to remedy this situation I am asking that people respond in the comments with suggested captions for the below image.

The best one (picked by me) gets the aeropress (and maybe a surprise).

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.

]]> http://theotherblackstuff.ie/thoughts/stats-of-excellence/feed/ 10 http://theotherblackstuff.ie/machines/bacchi-to-the-future/ http://theotherblackstuff.ie/machines/bacchi-to-the-future/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:45:16 +0000 David http://theotherblackstuff.ie/?p=964

This is a ropey video I threw together. Apologies in advance.

Stovetop espresso is no longer a misnomer.

Thanks to Colin for the loan. Didn’t mention on the video, but it tasted good, clean, no hints of burnt flavours that you might associate with a moka pot brew.

More info here, here and here.

This is a ropey video I threw together. Apologies in advance.

Stovetop espresso is no longer a misnomer.

Thanks to Colin for the loan. Didn’t mention on the video, but it tasted good, clean, no hints of burnt flavours that you might associate with a moka pot brew.

More info here, here and here.

]]>

Amaro, a word literally meaning bitter in Italian, is also the name of a digestif that prominently features that flavour. Recently at a friend’s house after some dinner, two bottles of Amaro were produced. One, a kind of supermarket-grade generic brand, the second a more obscure, local, artisan effort. The difference was stark. The first produced a kind of mishmash of flavour accompanied by a dull, pervasive bitterness. The second had much more clarity of flavour, was quite floral, vibrant, and at the very end, as the liquid left my mouth a single note, like a line across my tongue of bitterness emerged. It didn’t swamp my tongue, instead it felt deliberate and well-defined.

At this highest end of speciality coffee we are running scared from bitterness. Coffee in general is bitter. Give some black coffee to someone not accustomed to drinking it and I’m certain “bitter” will be a description that comes readily to mind, regardless of the quality of bean or preparation. In drinking lots of very very good coffee I notice  this inherent bitterness less and less, it is something you get used to, and it forms a baseline of expectation. On a bean to bean basis, it is a different matter. Bitterness can be derived from bean defects, low quality coffee, it can come from roasting issues, tipping, scorching, over-roasting, burning. Overextracted coffee also tends to have more pronounced bitterness. These are bad kinds of bitterness.

Controlled bitterness, balanced in context, and endogenous to the bean, not derived from mishandling is something we should not be afraid of. I remember a discussion pre-WBC Atlanta with Colin & Steve about whether we should use bitter chocolate as a description for the Machachamara. Ultimately we were wary of drawing a negative connotation by using the word bitter, so it was omitted. This year, the Progresso from Huila that Square Mile and Supreme carried had a big smack of bitter choc in there, in a good, characterful way though, like the second bottle of Amaro it seemed really deliberate.

Look through the cupping descriptors from a Cup of Excellence jury and you will see an awful lot of chocolate, sweet fruits, honey, caramel etc. The tone of the descriptions and the coffees being selected at the highest level is very dessert-like. Walk down the baby-food aisle in your local supermarket and you will see a similar selection of descriptions, instead on tiny little jars, with pretty pictures on the outside. Are we infantilizing coffee?

In coffees from India and Sumatra there is certainly a more challenging spectrum of flavours: wood, earth, tobacco etc. These coffees though are viewed as the poor cousins of the well manicured El Salvadorian, or the genetically superior Ethiopian. This, despite the anecdotal observation that consumers readily identify with these coffees, while struggling to muster excitement for some of the darlings of coffee geekdom. I must admit, though, I struggle with a lot of Sumatran / Indian coffees. I find them challenging. I rarely order them or reach for them, without some premeditated thought on how it would be good, important, or palate expanding. That said, one of the coffees that surprised me most in 2009 was the Sidikalang Natural from Indonesia. They seemed to achieve a very Indonesian interpretation of the Ethiopian Natural, very fruit forward, over ripe, somewhat funky, with traditional Indonesian flavours, but relatively clean, and eminently quaffable.

Even the subject of Ethiopian Natural processed coffees (Arichas/Beloyas/Wellegas) has surprised me at how divisive it appears to be.  I won’t rehash my near apoplectic lust for these coffees, suffice to say I think they are outstanding, accessible expressions of what flavours can be inherently possible in coffee. I had assumed near ubiquitous affection for them until some of the Intelli guys started describing them as “gross” on twitter. While I fundamentally disagreed with their assessment, I could see where they were coming from.

I remember years ago the first time I tasted a fermenty natural processed coffee (it was Yemeni). My initial thought was salami, it jumped out at me. There were other flavours going on in there too, but the contribution of the processing  to create a flavour reminiscent of aged meat, held my attention. More recently at a coffee tasting, a well-versed food journalist (Ernie Whalley of Forkncork) identified that same flavour in an Ethiopian Natural (Supreme Roastworks Guji Sidamo). While I was focused on the abundant peaches and apricots, and even though the processing was light years ahead of the (borderline dirty) Yemeni, he immediately focused on the ferment flavour. That isn’t to say he found it unpleasant, but it was certainly prominent for him.

Ferment, on the cupping table is commonly viewed as a defect. Certainly you can reach a threshold where it dominates the cup, and it can be indicative of poor processing, but the Bagersh Naturals never came close to that level.  The ferment was controlled, and the payoff was a redefining of the term fruitbomb. But I think their rejection in some quarters (Nick Cho also gave them a lash of his tongue) perhaps highlights an ultra focused, zealous pursuit of the clean, the sweet, the dessert-like. I like a tasty washed bourbon from El Salvador as much as the next guy, but dare I say, after a point they become boring in their pristine uniformity.

Coffee quality, with the exception of annual blips due to climactic variations, is only heading in one direction. Sometimes the lines do blur between character and defect. Diversity of flavour profile remains one of coffee’s greatest assets, and I would hope that we are not sending out a message to producers that ultimate cleanliness and sweetness should always be sought at the expense of more challenging qualities.

I think the updosed underextracted brewing phenomenon was a symptom of a similar disease. Those brews were as far away as possible from the underdosed, overextracted mess that commercial coffee became in the last 50 years. These brews pushed high notes to the fore, they were clean, punchy, and relatively low on bitterness. Most, when presented with the alternative, will now accept that these brews lack complexity, and while interesting, and capable of highlighting certain aspects of a coffee, are less satisfying.

Similarly, the apparent championing of the children’s birthday party flavours could be viewed as overly reactionary to poorer quality coffees of the past, where character and defect were uneasy bedfellows. These coffees are extraordinarly clean, abundantly sweet, but in a way sometimes almost sterile, as if an almost complete lack of character is emerging as a positive quality in its own right.

Even by my own rambling standards this has been a festival of waffling. So to sum up with brevity: the road to defect may well be paved with gold.

Some lighter blog fair this time. As the annual gift giving orgy is a mere [insert number] days away, there’s an increased level of discourse about what to buy. I’ve seen a lot of “what espresso machine should I buy for under €100?”, “anywhere sell that civet coffee?” etc. An awful lot of money will be poorly spent on shit (sometimes literally) coffee gifts this Christmas. So I thought I’d put together ten items, covering a variety of price points, of things that I would be happy to give or receive.

1. Coffee Subscription: It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Many roasters do this now, they send out, typically, a bag of beans every month, for 6 months or a year. Between my Square Mile, and Hasbean subscriptions, I’m never really without coffee. In around these, I’ll pick up whatever takes my fancy, depending on my whims, but these are my bread and butter, so to speak. Hasbean also offers a weekly In My Mug videoblog subscription (1 bag a week, with an online video which goes into some depth about the particular coffee), which, of the Hasbean subscriptions tends to be the more geeky, more palate-expanding. Square Mile, Hasbean, and (I think) James Gourmet Coffee will all service an Irish audience on that front. Hopefully 2010 will see some of the Scandanavian roasters present that kind of offering (with reasonable shipping across Europe).

2. Cups/Mugs: J-Ho touched on this during his infamous videoblogging splurge. Cups/mugs do make a difference to the overall drinking experience. While it might not really affect how the drink tastes, some cups are more inherently pleasing to hold and slurp from. Ever since April, since I sat in Octane in Atlanta, sipping a French Press of Idido Misty Valley from one of their unbranded diner mugs, I’ve really liked the satisfying unexpected weight of the mug, and the pleasing crook of the handle. While, Octane don’t sell the mugs, I do also quite like the Intelligentsia branded ones, which you can buy here. Less, beefy, more elegant and modern, are the Lux Delux mugs. I’m actually hoping Santa has a couple of these for me this year. A lot of design elements went into them, that have been discussed previously, I just think they look cool.

3. Far-flung beans. This can either be palate expanding or geek-satisfying. It’s Christmas, right? Feck it! Ignore those crazy, scary shipping costs, there are many fine international roasters, from whom, we isolated on Europe’s western periphery rarely have the pleasure to buy from. Intelligentsia, Terroir, 49th Parallel, Ecco, Barismo, Tim Wendelboe, Supreme Roastworks, all offer international shipping – it’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the point, order something special from somewhere special.

4. Hand Grinder. These are perfect gifts – gift sized, gift priced. Though, unless you are looking for them to double as a gym workout, they are best suited to only grinding enough for one cup at a time. I’m really quite enamoured with Hario’s Skerton hand grinder, despite an obvious flaw (no lower burr carrier). The materials of the body (plastic and glass) are appropriate, and easy to clean, the burrs, ceramic, are also washable (mine survived someone carelessly putting it through a dishwasher cycle). The grind uniformity, I have to be honest, can be less than ideal, but nonetheless, for a hand grinder, for €45 (from Coffee Angel), it’s excellent, comparable to some €100-€200 electric grinders, and I won’t insult it by comparing it to a whirly blade “grinder”. Porlex/Kyocera also offer hand grinders, which I believe have been similarly well received (I prefer the look of the Hario burrs though).

5. A quare brewer. Quare*, as in queer, as in strange (not flamboyantly homosexual). Something new and interesting is what’s called for here, something that will deliver almost as much fun in the brewing as satisfaction in the final cup. You see, a french press is not quare, they are ubiquitous, dare I say mundane (mundanely excellent at brewing). A chemex is quare, one with a handle is extra quare. A V60 dripper is quare. A siphon/vacpot is quare (if infuriating). An Eva Solo is quare. An Abid is quare. Just be sure to get plenty of filters (if required) to go along with whichever one you opt for.

6. Geek technology. Having spent many of my blog posts in the last 6 months discussing extraction, it would be remiss of me not to mention gadgets to measure it. A cheap TDS meter from eBay will get you started, if you have money to burn, an Extract Mojo is the deluxe option. This is hardcore geekery, so know your audience, they might not be too impressed in being presented with a small electronic device that looks like a home pregnancy test.

7. A tamper. Ok, I’ve purposely left espresso orientated things off this list (until now). I’m mostly bored by espresso these days, maybe one day a month I get enthused. Nonetheless, the custom, panda engraved, Reg Barber tamper I got a present of last christmas was an excellent gift. Plus you can just go around menacingly holding it on Christmas day, whether you are in the vicinity of an espresso machine or not. It’s hard to go beyond Reg Barber for me. Avoid clicky, gimmicky ones.

8. Books. This really depends on the level of geek. If you are J-Ho, you’d probably like to receive Coffee Technology, by Sivetz and Desrossier. A budding home barista might like, The Professional Barista’s Handbook, by Scott Rao. I really enjoyed Michaele Weissman’s God In a Cup, a light, and at the time current read (not sure how well it’s aged), probably the coffee equivalent of a Dan Brown book. Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality remains, in my opinion, a nice geeky, reasonably in-depth mini-tome, which can be dipped in and out of during your daily constitutionals (who wants to borrow my copy??). I didn’t really enjoy The Devil’s Cup, but some think it has merit.

9. A teflon portafilter. I’m breaking my espresso rule again, but this one is really worth it. Until recently, outrageously expensive. Now a mere £48 might be all that is separating you from the joy of electric green teflon. For now, only available in E61 and La Marzocco sizes (maybe with some DIY modification will fit the likes of a Silvia also).

10. A digital scales. This is one of those presents that could be borderline insulting, like buying your wife/mother an iron. It doesn’t matter how good the iron is, or how much time it might save her, it’s just not a good present. Scales are boring. You’re unlikely to rip it out of the box, get caught up in the excitement and start to frantically weigh things all around you. Nonetheless it is pretty much an essential and often overlooked piece of coffee equipment, and you can get some nice looking ones too if that is your thing. You want to get one that at the minimum is capable of 1g increments, 0.1g is even better. It should also be capable of weighing at least 2-3kg.

*Quare : adj. adv. (intensive) great; in the phr. ‘queer and . . . ‘queer = very (e.g. ‘He’s queer and mean’ = ‘He’s very mean’ < E dial. queer adj. origin obscure. ‘He’s a queer yoke (q.v.) that fella I can’t figure him out at all’; Roche, Poor Beast in the Rain, I.1, 76: “Joe. . . .’We were queer and lucky not to be sent up the river that time boy’”, Stoker, The Snake’s Pass, 199: “‘That’s a queer thing for him to say!’ said Norah to her father. ‘Murdoch turned on her at once. ‘Quare thing — no more quare than the things they’ll be sayin’ about you before long’”, Kavanagh, ‘If You Ever Go To Dublin Town’, 143: “O he was a queer one”, Roche, A Handful of Stars, I.l, 14: “Tony. ‘I’ll tell yeh one thing Conway he’s trainin’ queer hard for it’”. Since about 1700 the common HE pronunciation of ‘ee/ea’ as ‘ai’ (e.g., queer, quare) has become a salient characteristic of the dialect, as witnessed in this anecdote given by Dr. Johnson (entry in Boswell for 27 March, 1772, cited in Bliss, Spoken English in Ireland, 209): ‘When I published the Plan for my Dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it grait’. Now here were two men of the highest rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely’.

Oh dear. I was involved in a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle over the last week. I think the Twitter medium compounded the agro, the limitations of Twitter really stifle any serious discussion or elaboration of points. Everything ends up being a soundbite. A little bit of hastiness on my part didn’t help either, in fairness. I think, and hope this post might add some clarity to the points I was trying to make.

It all started with Karl Purdy asking for suggestions for some “epiphany” coffees to present to some willing local journalists. The idea was to show them what flavours are possible in coffee, what the highest level of speciality coffee is like, and to promote some discussion in the yet developing Irish coffee community. He had done a somewhat impromtu tasting of Hasbean’s Wahana trilogy with some journalists, wine experts and some local enthusiasts and the feedback was really positive. Suggestions came back, Tekangu from Tim Wendelboe, Esmeralda from The Coffee Collective, and I offered to swap a bag of my recently ordered Guji from Supreme Roastworks in exchange for piggy-backing the TW and TCC orders.

When the coffees arrived, I was really quite shocked to find the Esmeralda from The Coffee Collective was almost two weeks post roast when it was shipped, and already about 9 days old on the day we ordered it. The Esmeralda was by far the most expensive coffee, €34 a bag when shipping was included (250g bag). I’ve ordered coffees from dozens of international roasters over the past couple of years, and this was by far the oldest a coffee has ever been shipped to me. The fact that it was also one of the more expensive, made it doubly disappointing.The other coffees were shipped the day or the day after they were roasted.

So I had a minor case of verbal premature ejaculation on twitter. On reflection, I was too quick to express my disappointment. Karl got in contact with Peter Dupont from TCC, whose one line response at being informed of our disappointment was “have you tasted it?”. The conversation evolved into an explanation that (a) Peter believed the coffee would be at it’s best 2-3 weeks post roast (!!!) and (b) they nitrogen flush their coffee, which prolongs the shelf life. I had tasted it, I brewed some the day it arrived. It was pretty good. Two days later, however, it was starting to taste relatively flat, muted and dull. This is consistent with my experiences of nitrogen flushing, once the bag remains sealed, the preservation appears to work very well. Once opened, perhaps there is a tendency to deteriorate much faster.

In any case, as a customer, I want to receive the coffee as soon as possible from roast date. It allows me the biggest possible window of enjoyment, of experiencing the most the coffee has to offer. I generally have anything from 3-8 different coffees on the go at any one time, 250g might last two weeks in my rotation. I don’t want to have to consume it all in 2 days, for fear of missing the peak flavours.

Of course, as pointed out by Rasmus Helgebostad, and confirmed by Klaus Thomsen, the Coffee Collective just don’t have the volume of Esmerelda sales to roast that coffee more than once every two weeks. That is a commercial / practical reality and I understand and appreciate that. There is an easy solution, however. Terroir, the excellent Massachusetts based roaster, George Howell’s company, have what they call limited edition roasts. On their website, they publish when these coffees will next be roasted. If you order one, it won’t be roasted and shipped until that date. Everyone’s happy.

To be completely honest, from the caliber of roasters I typically order from, I would be surprised to be sent anything more than a day post-roast. 99% of the coffees I have received in the last couple of years have conformed to this. I think it’s an expectation, a minimum expectation of modern speciality roasters. If it’s not going to be the case, it should be abundantly clear – especially for a coffee of that price.

Anyway, the purpose of this wasn’t to try to besmirch The Coffee Collective. I wouldn’t have spent the €34 if I didn’t have faith in their abilities. Between them, Klaus, Peter, Casper and Linus, have a colossal, enviable assembly of knowledge and skills. I remember greedily scavenging a bag of their Aricha competition espresso at the WBC in Atlanta. I brewed every last bean. It was superb. I get the impression that wholesale business is their mainstay, perhaps online retail sales just fit in around that…

Somewhat related to all this is a thought that has been rattling around in my head for a little while. It is to do with criticism within the coffee community, or more to the point, the lack thereof. It’s very easy to say when something is great, you see that a lot, but very often when things aren’t at their best, people tend to go quiet (speaking generally here). They tip toe around the subject, perhaps privately confiding their impressions. I don’t necessarily think it’s a healthy attitude. The “one big happy family” thing is nice, but it’s not helping raise standards and consistency. That leaves us with enthusiast community criticisms, which can be fleeting, contradictory and often have a low signal to noise ratio, and the near uniformly positive CoffeeReview. Honestly, I don’t see this changing in the short term, but in other comparable industries (wine, whiskey, beer) there are abundant sources of relevant, detailed, critical reviews. Are people in these industries always at one another’s throats? Do we need a new class of individuals in the coffee community, between consumer and industry? Or does it matter?

Anyway, away from these thoughts, on a happier note, the Tekangu we had is probably the best coffee I’ve had all year. In a year of amazing Kenyans (Tegu, Kanjathi, Gethumbwini, Ngunguru to name but a few), this one somehow managed to peek out above the rest. Paul Stack described it best, saying it was like opening a jar of jam (fruits of the forest I’d say). If last year was the year of the Ethiopian Natural (it certainly was for me), this has to be the year of the Kenyan.

I wholeheartedly recommend anyone who is yet to try it, order a bag, while it’s still around. You won’t regret it.

http://webshop.timwendelboe.no/

About a year ago I went to London, primarily to attend a Square Mile “Taste of …” event, but I also used it to do a tour of some of the recommended coffee shops. I left impressed and jealous in equal measure. As the interim year passed, my envy increased with the reports, the pictures, the videos, the newspaper clippings. The London map, it seemed, was becoming increasingly speckled with exciting, new, quality-driven cafes. This year, my superficial reason at least was to attend an Ultimate Bartista Fighter event, a latte art throwdown with costumes, again at the Square Mile roastery.

In the time between landing in London and the evening’s festivities I made my way to Dose, The Espresso Room, Lantana, Kaffeine, Nude, and Present (that’s present as in “let me present something to you”, not present as in “let me give you a present”). Taylor St Baristas was too busy, and Taste of Bitter Love had closed by the time I darkened their door.

Four of the six I did get to served me Square Mile’s Autumn Espresso Blend, which I hadn’t had until the first of the day in Dose, and which by the end of the day, I felt I knew intimately. Lantana and Nude being the exceptions that served coffee from (I think) Monmouth. I gave everywhere a fair crack of the whip, ordering a single espresso and a short milk drink (cortado, gibraltar, flat white etc), and contrary to my mixed experiences of the previous year (most notably in Sacred), these were near universally excellent. If you blindfolded me, I don’t think I could tell the drinks from Dose and the Espresso Room apart, while Kaffeine maybe just eeked a fraction more body out of the espresso blend (which seemed to be quite light in nature). The shot from the Victoria Arduino lever machine in Present was perhaps my favourite, shorter, stickier, more intense.

Lantana, sandwiched between the Espresso Room and Kaffeine, served a much heavier (in terms of mouthfeel and body) shot, with a sweet orange note, perhaps lacking the clarity of the Square Mile blend, but was nonetheless very pleasing. Nude, served the least satisfying shot of the day, coming across as slightly bitter in comparison to some of the others. I am nitpicking though, as it was certainly drinkable, even enjoyable, and their milk in the accompanying Flat White was superb. If any of these cafes opened tomorrow in Dublin, they would raise the bar.

My Simpsons’ reference at the top, is not a snipe at the prevalence of the Square Mile blend, though the lack of a guest coffee at Dose on the day did magnify the scant variety. Rather it is an observation at the absence of any filter coffee on the menus. You have this group of cafes, and several others I could not visit, who are incredibly quality focused, passionate, inspiring, and they all, with the one exception (that I am aware of) of Monmouth, serve only espresso based coffee drinks. No french press, no chemex… nothing. You can forget your Kiamabara AA by hand poured filter cone, never mind Finca La Fany or Sidikalang in the press pot, don’t even think about Kilimanjaro Natural in the aeropress

I don’t know if it’s the much lauded Antipodean influence. I think that it’s a bit of a cliche and a also bit patronizing to suggest that Aussies and Kiwis don’t have palates that expand beyond espresso drinks. Maybe the customer needs to demand it, maybe it’s one of those “commercial reality” things that I don’t really get. What I do know is that next June, London becomes the centre of the coffee universe for Caffe Culture, the SCAE, the WBC and the other coffee competitions. The industry will decamp, luminaries will descend. London’s cafes will become the world’s cafes. How does London want to show the world what it considers to be the very best in coffee in 2010, what it considers the very best the UK has to offer in 2010?

I went to London. They have strange people there, with strange customs.

As always best to follow the link to Vimeo, watch in HD and fullscreen.

Special thanks to my wife, the lovely Marie, for the early birthday present of the lens used to shoot the video