Archive for May, 2005

Posted on May 23, 2005 - by deCadmus

Cupping Coffee with the Pros

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear… I am not a coffee pro. I’m an enthusiast, certainly. An aficionado, even. But a coffee professional? Nope. Not me.

I am not a globe-trotting buyer of green coffee. I’ve made exactly one trip to origin, to visit several coffee producing farms in Guatemala. (As it happened, I actually visited two coffee-producing countries on that trip, but landing in El Salvador was entirely unplanned… And, for the record, not my fault.) I have never placed a contract for greens, and I have never known the heartache of having to tell a coffee grower, “Sorry, this coffee is good, but not good enough.” I don’t know that I could.

I have the great good fortune to work with people who are coffee pros… Some of the very best in the specialty coffee trade. I also have the remarkably good luck to be able to spend some time with these folks on the roasting floor, and in the cupping room, and I soak up as much information as I can ’cause these folks have likely forgotten more about coffee than I have yet learned.

This all goes to explain why, when I was invited last week to cup a number of coffees with the coffee team I was of two minds. The first of these — my eager to learn and enthusiastic for all things coffee self — leapt to the occasion and said, “Great!” and, “Sure! and, “Love to!” The second — my more introspective and aware of my limitations self — quietly murmured epithets at that eager so-and-so who seemed to be in control of my vocal cords.

This second self had already taken in the scene: the large, round cupping tables are laid out and ready. There are seven lots of coffee arrayed on the circumference of the tables. For each lot there are 10 open bowls of ground coffee. My eager self was just getting around to the math: 7 lots, ten samples each… 70 cups of coffee.

I am by now very familiar with the formal cupping protocol. The madly skilled Barry Jarrett schooled me on the essentials of cupping early in my obsession with the bean [I wouldn't blame you if you clicked away right now to buy a pound or three of his coffee... just bookmark this page first] and I’ve whiled away many happy hours at my kitchen counter exploring the many and delightfully varied attributes of coffee from diverse origins. I’ve lined up as many as five or six coffees, singly, or in pairs or triangles, making for a total of maybe eighteen cups. But seventy cups?

The mechanics of cupping are another matter of concern. That single, sharp, explosive aspiration of coffee from the storied silver cupping spoon… well, quite frequently I aspirate the coffee all the way into my windpipe. Still. After years of practice and how-to tips from expert cuppers. It’s one thing to splutter and cough over inexpert aspiration in your own kitchen [to giggles from herself and amused chuffs from the neurotic golden retriever.] It’s another to demonstrate your lamentable technique in the cupping room. Seventy cups is opportunity enough to make me the first man known to drown in coffee… While standing.

At the root of it all, though — what my introspective self is really muttering about — is this: what if I get it wrong? What if my sensory evaluation deviates substantially from these folks who cup coffee every day? What if, in the course of cupping seventy cups of coffee I simply wear out my ability to discern anything? I grab a silver spoon and tell Mr. Introspective to shut the hell up.

Each bowl holds a measured sample of coffee, each sample ground individually, so that a defective bean might contaminate only a single bowl. Each set of samples, or flight, is labeled with only a sample number, and its origin: Colombia, Mexico, Honduras (there’ve been some quite good coffees from Honduras of late… it’s about time!) Score-sheets are likewise labeled with sample numbers and origins, only. The origin disclosure here can be quite important, as it’s all well and good for a coffee from Sumatra to be loamy and earthy; the same flavors from a Central would be quite another matter.

I’m not told what we’re cupping for — quality control of production roasts, perhaps, or evaluating pre-ship or post-ship samples from contracts — that could bias the results. Just the same, it’s clear from the very light level of roast, these are not production samples; this is all about the greens. And so it begins…

First, evaluating fragrance. Here’s where that spinning cupping table comes into play… Take a deep — deep! — whiff of the dry grounds in the bowl. Got that first sample in your head? Now, slowly spin the table and take in the fragrance of the other samples in the flight. You’re looking for anything different than what was in that first bowl. If you find something, it may be a defect, and certainly it’s a notable inconsistency from sample to sample… Not a good sign (unless it’s from an origin where inconsistencies are part of the game: Sumatra and Yemen come to mind.)

Next, aroma. The cups are filled to the very brim with water just off the boil, and the coffee grounds float to the top, capping each bowl. This is an opportunity to again spin that table and sniff for inconsistencies. A better opportunity presents itself in a few minutes, as you break the crust… using your spoon to push aside that cap of coffee to get the strongest sense of the coffee’s aroma. What’s in that aroma? Spice? Sweetness? Fruit? Flowers? Give the bowl a quick swish to settle the grounds, rinse your spoon in hot water and move on to the next bowl…

As the coffee cools, this is a good opportunity to reflect a bit on the cups, make a few notes, spoon off any remaining grounds, and — in my case — to mentally prepare to make a fool of myself.

Sudden loss of tire pressure. That’s the warning they have on those gates in the airport parking lot… Go the wrong way, run over the hollow spikes with your tires and SPFFT! If you can imagine the sound your tires would make as they suddenly, explosively expel all of their air through a slender tube, then you have a pretty good grasp of the sounds of cupping. ‘Cept this isn’t sudden exhalation… it’s inhaling. The idea is to spray tiny droplets of coffee all over the tongue and soft palate and into the nasal passages all at once, so that all of the tools of taste and smell are brought to bear at a single moment.

This is retribution for all the times my mother told me not to slurp my soup… Spoon some coffee from the bowl, and SPFFT! (Splutter, cough.) Now, what flavors are there? Is it a zippy, acidy cup? How’s the coffee’s body — the sensation between the tongue and the roof of the mouth — weighty? Oily? How’s its finish? Is there a lingering taste? Is it good? Make notes. Rinse spoon. Next bowl… there’s 69 to go. 68… 67…

In the end, I survived. I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, either by spluttering, or by scoring something curiously. Mind you, my tastes are not calibrated to the professionals on the coffee team… These folks are so finely attuned that over the course of a month their cumulative scores for all of the coffees they’ve tasted will deviate by only one or two points. However, while my scoring varied from the pros, the variance was itself consistent. On the whole, you could add five or six points to each of my ratings, and you’d arrive at the numbers the rest of the tasters scored. What they panned, I panned more harshly. What I liked, they liked still more.

Nope… I’m still not a coffee pro. But there’s hope for me yet.

More: coffee | cupping | tasting

Posted on May 21, 2005 - by deCadmus

Apple Blossom Time

About a mile from home at Adams apple orchard in Williston, VT. (That’s Vermont’s famous “Camel’s Hump” looming in the distance.)

Posted on May 21, 2005 - by deCadmus

A lot of pies…

Nine hundred apple trees. That’d make a lot of pies.

Posted on May 21, 2005 - by deCadmus

Bees & Blooms

The apple trees are in full bloom…

And the bees are bumbling around as bees do.

Posted on May 20, 2005 - by deCadmus

The Facts: Coffee, Caffeine, Nutrition and Health

Even before its introduction to the West (and its subsequent baptism by then-pontiff Pope Clement VIII) coffee has been the subject of every kind of vitriol and indignity on grounds religious, social, political and medical. It’s unfair, really… but to be expected; coffee has proved time and again to be an effective, if unlikely and altogether unwitting agent of change.

Still today there remain those with an axe to grind with coffee — more frequently with its chief agent provocateur, caffeine — and who take no small delight in sewing seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt where the health aspects of coffee are concerned. These reports typically offer no sources at all, or perhaps small-scale studies that have been dated for 40 years.

Let’s see if we can’t shed some light on the subject… using multiple, credible and authoritative sources, and send coffee’s naysayers scuttling back under their rocks.
(more…)

Posted on May 18, 2005 - by deCadmus

Times: No Tea at Tea Time?

Are Britons losing their taste for tea?

IT HAS always been regarded as the British answer to everything from tired feet to bereavement. But now the traditional cup of tea is in danger of being overwhelmed by lattes, cappuccinos and herbal infusions.

In the past two years, sales of traditional tea bags have fallen by 16 per cent and loose tea by 9 per cent. The tea market, worth £707 million in 1999, fell to £623 million last year.

Much as the market for coffee here in the States had been greatly impacted by the rise of fizzy drinks, so too in the UK. Here, however, the growth of specialty coffee has come to the rescue of our cup of Joe… across the pond, it’s yet another interloper at tea-time.

Just the same, the prescription reads familiar…

Ellen Shiels, the senior market analyst at Mintel, said: ?There is a need by manufacturers to make traditional tea more of a fashionable beverage. The tea market has become more segmented, trying to be many things to more people.?

Posted on May 16, 2005 - by deCadmus

Briefly noted…

It appears that the template that powers my blog has been eaten by Blogger… I’ll get it all put back together again soon as I can.

Posted on May 16, 2005 - by deCadmus

Coffee Shop Tales

The Beeb is ever so good at that perspective thing. In an article announcing a project to reheat debate of the issues of the day they also wax historical on the role of coffee houses in the UK.

See also: Bloggle’s Penny Universities.

This side of the pond, there’s a market for Coffee House Tales of another sort, and if you’re of the authorial bent, this one’s for you. Coffee House Fiction has cobbled together the Dame Lisbet Throckmorton Fiction Writing Contest… top prize: $500. Fun.

Posted on May 16, 2005 - by deCadmus

O Happy Addiction!

According to a piece in SFGate we are a nation of Starbucks addicts… caffeinated tadpoles swimming upstream for little purpose but to fin from one java fix to the next. Hmm.

The possibility that I am homo starbucticus crosses my mind at 9:10 one recent morning as I join a line that stretches outside a small Starbucks shop at the base of California Street in San Francisco’s Financial District. The shop, 10 feet wide and barely 7 feet deep, can contain only a few customers at a time; the rest — about a dozen — brave the morning chill in the shadows cast by high-rise towers.

Petty jabs at the Mermaid aside [no, there's not a conspiracy to jack up the caffeine level of your cup of joe, really!] I’m not sure I buy it… Surely there’s something more than a simple daily jolt that perks up even the most craven caffeine junkies’ day. Right? Um… Right?

Posted on May 16, 2005 - by deCadmus

Trading Places… In the Coffee House

Home brewers and home roasters have a long-held tradition of swapping the fruits of their labors… it’s an opportunity to get some informed feedback about your own brew (be it hopped or caffeinated) and the experience of sampling other folks’ efforts is very often its own reward.

A while back microbreweries got in on the game, offering “guest-taps” of libations from far-flung places, and now some microroasters and espresso bars are getting in on the game. Victrola Coffee recently offered espresso blends roasted by the gang at Sili Valley’s Barefoot Coffee Roasters and from my old stomping grounds, Broadway Cafe in Kansas City.

This week Victrola’s own Streamline blend will be pulled by the gang behind the bar at 9th Street Espresso in New York. Get it while you can! While you’re there, be sure to get your hands on the very spiffy Espressocraft tamper that wowed the crowd at the SCAA conference in Seattle; it was created at 9th Street.