Archive for the ‘Coffee’ Category

Posted on July 9, 2008 - by deCadmus

Coffee Notes from All Over

• Super-size me? Not any more. Doug Zell and the gang at Intelligentsia Coffee are ‘just saying no’ to Big Gulp portions of brewed coffee, as they discontinue their 20-oz. serving size. Is it about the bottom line? Doug says no, it’s not that at all…
  

  “Drinking our coffee is not like drinking jug wine,” said Intelligentsia Coffee founder and Chief Executive Doug Zell on Tuesday. “We’re focused on intensity of flavors and providing coffee in the way it tastes best. And it’s not in that size.”

  As a coffee snob, I think it’s a good call… coffee does not want to be slurped in giant takeaway cups. As a commentator on the business of coffee, I worry about the timing: folks are minding their pennies these days, and “value shoppers” may migrate to someplace where they feel they get more caffeine for their buck. ‘Course, that might be offset by an increase in same-day sales… folks who used to buy a Venti to last them the morning may visit twice for two twelve ounce cups. Maybe.

  P.S. Speaking of Zell, have you seen his Amex ad? He’s the new Mr. Big, man.

• Rwanda preps for its first Cup of Excellence! Rwanda is rightly celebrating one coming out party after another… last year it hosted its first Golden Cup competition, and this year it’s joining the ranks of the prestigious Cup of Excellence program.
  

  “As the host country of the first Cup of Excellence competition in Africa, Rwanda will set the stage and create the benchmark for the rest of the quality coffee-producing countries on the continent where coffee was born,” said Susie Spindler, Cup of Excellence director. “The farmers of Rwanda have worked very hard to produce exquisite coffee. We are pleased by the support these farmers have received from even the highest levels of their government and think this competition will have thrilling results.”

  If you’ve been reading here for any length of time you know that I’m extremely happy about the rise of Rwandan coffee — and the consequent lifting-up of the Rwandan people. More, the recognition is well-deserved… through hard work and force of will, Rwandan coffee growers and processors just keep raising the bar on their own performance. Good on them. And congrats to friend-of-Bloggle Stephen Leighton [HasBean], who will be one of the jurists for the first Rwanda CoE. Lucky guy.

• Cold-brewed coffee is hot. It’s the sweaty season (not you: you don’t sweat, you glisten), and folks all over — even in the northern climes — are discovering a whole new way to drink coffee.
  

  Cream and sugar is fine — for children. Once you start messing with the temperature and natural flavor of coffee, it’s a slippery slope ending in frothy, icy, sickeningly sweet concoctions.

  You see, I’m fussy about coffee. I’m the purist sipping a steaming hot cup, even in the dog days of summer.

  Then, one particularly sweltering day in Chicago last month, I broke down and had an iced coffee at a local Caribou Coffee; a large with a vanilla soy topper and one packet of raw sugar, to be precise. I was stunned. This velvety smooth, deeply refreshing, richly satisfying beverage was nothing less than a revelation in caffeine delivery.

  Not so long ago cold-brewed (or “Toddy“) coffee was strictly a B-list brewing method, save for a select set of the javaratti, who knew a cold-brewed concentrate is the ideal foundation for iced coffee.

  Me, I’m still holding out for the Coffee Snob Cold Drip Coffee Maker. Naturally.

Posted on July 8, 2008 - by deCadmus

Can Howie Get His Groove Back?

If you’re a Wall Street analyst, you might note that year over year, Starbucks’ valuation has slipped about 40%. If you’re one of several thousand Starbucks employees you may soon find a pink slip in your pay envelope, as the company moves to close 600 stores, eliminating some 12,000 jobs. If you’re an independent coffee house owner, you may be sitting there with your jaw hanging slack, just trying to wrap your head around the idea that, when Starbucks closes 600 frickin’ coffee shops, the move shrinks its overall footprint by a mere 8 points. And maybe if you’re a Starbucks customer you’re just so over that whole Starbucks thing. Sure, Starbucks was the epitome of hip for a while, but then they became, well… McDonalds:

Twenty years ago, it was love at first sip. Like every prisoner of love, I went from downing one cup a day to three or more. How, I wondered, had I gone more than 40 years without a midafternoon break or even a “for no reason” indulgence?

Today those memories are like bitter, stale grounds. These days the breaks aren’t fewer but are often enjoyed somewhere else. That early Starbucks mojo is no more. My disillusionment set in about three years ago, but the company’s ballyhooed “Starbucks experience” died even earlier, killed by a growing bureaucratic culture.

Ouch.

Maybe it *is* about the bureaucracy. There is, of course, a very real danger when you grow to the scale of Starbucks — or McDonalds — and your stores light up every other street corner, shopping mall and airport concourse. At some ill-defined point on your meteoric growth chart you may cease to become the sum of whatever got you there — whether that was a curiously strong cup of brewed coffee, a made-to-order espresso milkshake or  a Happy Meal — and instead morph into a massive real estate holding company that also brews coffee by the gallon pot.

Or maybe it’s something else. What with mortgage meltdowns and gas prices at four bucks and change, a spiraling economy has customers feeling the pinch, caught between guzzling a latte or putting another gallon of fuel in the family hauler. Call it — as financial self-help author David Bach has — the latte factor:

The Latte Factor® is based on the simple idea that all you need to do to finish rich is to look at the small things you spend your money on every day and see whether you could redirect that spending to yourself. Putting aside as little as a few dollars a day for your future rather than spending it on little purchases such as lattes, fancy coffees, bottled water, fast food, cigarettes, magazines and so on, can really make a difference between accumulating wealth and living paycheck to paycheck.

Oh sure… financial gurus have been offering like-minded advice for decades… but those were years that lacked the incentive of four dollar gasoline and upside-down mortgages, too. Maybe folks are actually heeding the collective wisdom of the financial set. Maybe they don’t have a choice.

More likely what’s got Starbucks on the rocks is a bit — or a lot — of both factors. Which isn’t to say that Howard won’t be able to right the good ship Starbucks… but I’d wager the course corrections are far from over.

And while Starbucks is thrashing, other shops –small chains and indies alike — may be able to carve out some new opportunities for themselves, provided they’re able to keep their focus on the fundamentals: making great coffee and satisfied customers, one cup at a time. 

Posted on June 23, 2008 - by deCadmus

Is Cream a Coffee Pollutant?

There are millions who wouldn’t think of coffee without abundant cream and sugar. (Hello, New England!) And there are a precious, precocious few who would consider condiments of *any* sort anathema to the coffee experience. For them, the NYTimes offers this point of view:

Coffee purists would never, ever add dairy to their coffee, and they would sooner drink General Foods International’s instant Hazelnut Belgian Café than add soy milk. After all, we’re now in the age of microlot coffee, when beans are harvested and handled with the same care that goes into making wine, and the flavors of an exceptional cup of coffee can be as layered and complex as a glass of pinot noir. Cream would just ruin it.

If it sounds snobby, consider this: would you dab a Peter Luger porterhouse with ketchup? A slab of well-aged beef needs nothing more than salt, pepper and a good char. There’s nothing arrogant about leaving the Heinz out of it.

Firstly, never is a very  long time. To say that one might never add cream — or any dairy — is to rule out the little slice of heaven that is the espresso macchiato, or the more bountiful coffee and dairy expression that is the cappuccino. And that would be wrong.

Secondly, Peter who? Oh… yeah. I guess it’s a New York thing. Sorry, if you want to make a purist’s analogy between coffee and aged beef, maybe you should refer to a purist’s steakhouse, and those are in Kansas City. Yes, both of them.

Thirdly, hey… check out that photo! That’s an old-school alt.coffee regular in the picture! Neat. ;)

And fourthly, if you think this isn’t an issue near and dear to the hearts of many, note that the original Times piece has more than 100 comments on it, which is to say, this may be a greater issue than Global Climate Change and FISA, combined.

Posted on June 22, 2008 - by deCadmus

Congrats to the World Barista Champion!

Congratulations to Stephen Morrissey, who’s taken top honors at the WBC in Copenhagen!

The news is all kinds of awesome… couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. ‘Course, it’s nothing but great news, too, for Square Mile Coffee, the much anticipated partnership between Stephen and the 2007 WBC winner, James Hoffman. Honestly, I’m going to have to make a trip ‘cross the pond just to try their coffee.

Update:

Jason at Texas Coffee People puts Stephen’s triumph in perspective:

He trained James Hoffmann for last year’s WBC.  He trained Kyle Glanville for the USBC, which he went on to win.  He won the Irish Triple Crown of the Irish Latte Art championships, the Irish Cup-Tasting championships, and the Irish Barista Championships.  And now, in his first ever appearance in a World Barista Championship, he was crowned the World Barista Champion.  This man is unstoppable.

Nice. ;)

Posted on May 29, 2008 - by deCadmus

Your Highness, you’re history! Coffee?

After 240 years of absolute monarchy, Nepal has ousted its royal autocrat and declared itself a republic, thus condemning themselves to an altogether new sort of political strife: shifty-eyed scoundrels who’ve been elected to their highest office, rather than merely inheriting it.

Good on them.

Some words of advice as the Nepali people draw up a new constitution:

• Habeus Corpus is a Good Idea.
• Executive Orders are a Bad Idea.
• Ban lobbyists from the get go. Trust me on this.

To mark the occasion, I’ve roasted up some Nepali coffee that I picked up at the recent SCAA expo. This is the first Himalayan coffee I’ve sampled, and I found some surprises along the way…

The Coffee

This green sample comes from Himalayan Java, and is described as organic, shade-grown on farms above 1100 meters, and fully wash-processed. I suspect at least two of these claims are overstated. The beans appear to be semi-washed, which isn’t a problem, really, nor is it unexpected; Nepal does not have a long history of wash processed coffee, and this may be about as washed as this coffee gets.

Further, the roast characteristics of the coffee really don’t jive with the 1100 meter claim. Mind you, I don’t doubt that there’s plenty of high ground to be found where the coffee’s sourced (c’mon, it’s in the frickin’ Himalayas!) but this just doesn’t roast-up like an especially dense bean, nor does it cup like one. (More on that in a moment.) I suspect the coffee is an amalgam of a number of farms, from a number of elevations, some likely quite high up, others much less so.

Perhaps most remarkable attribute of this coffee is its fragrance. Unroasted, the green coffee effuses jasmine and sweet tobacco notes. (Stunningly so. I actually stepped away from the roaster to track down my better half, and thrust a mess of green coffee in her face saying, “Here… smell this!” After being assured this wasn’t some kind of “pull my finger” trick she acquiesced, and agreed that the fragrance was qute remarkable, and would I mind if she might now finish the dishes, thank-you-very-much.)

Much of this aroma remains through the roast, muted somewhat, and muddied, too, by some subtle ashy notes, despite my applying the heat rather gingerly. In the cup were notes of chocolate, subtle spice (cardamom, in particular) and some rustic fruit and earth flavors, all wrapped in a fairly mild body, and with virtually no acidity at all (which — rightly or wrongly — I take to be another sign that this coffee wasn’t grown at particularly great altitude.) It cups, in short, much like an Indian Mysore, as much as any origin I’ve tasted.

All in all, an interesting bean, with some distinctive attributes (that aroma!) that with some nurturing, some winnowing and some care might make a name for itself some day.

Much like Nepal, itself, this coffee’s story is still being written.

Posted on May 9, 2008 - by deCadmus

Oh Crap I’m Tired And So Can You

Or, how I spent my time at the 2008 SCAA conference and expo.

Day 1. Depart Burlington International and arrive at LaGuardia. Hike between terminals to change airlines. Send a prayer winging to the airline gods that my luggage makes the same trek. It does, but at a cost… as I pick up my luggage in Minneapolis my back makes a *twoing* sound. [Oh, crap.]

Arrive at hotel and am shuffled immediately into a lovely cocktail reception with many familiar faces — and some soon to become familiar — from Green Mountain Coffee, Transfair USA, Sustainable Harvest, Grounds for Health, and Root Capital, as well as friends from origin: Peru, Colombia, and Kenya. Have exceptionally productive conversations about content sharing, and the like. Eventually I have to make my apologies, take a muscle relaxer, order coffee from room service and fall asleep before I can drink it.

Day 2. Do the registration shuffle. Am impressed that SCAA is *really* taking the “green conference” thing to heart… it’s the first time in a long time I’m not saddled with a worthless bag of swag and paper I don’t need.

Begin the day with a press conference featuring Green Mountain’s Lindsey Bolger and Dr. Jane Goodall. Save the day (or at least make the presser go more smoothly) by solving a potentially devastating A/V issue. Why yes, that is a spiffy way for a geek to start his day… I nearly forget that my back is out. By the way, Dr. Jane is just about the sweetest, most present person that I think I’ve ever met. [I've mentioned before that I'm a fan.]

Briefly visit the ongoing competition at the U.S. Barista Chamionship. Wow… the USBC has become quite the hot number: stadium seating, cheering crowds and a video crew catching every moment, and webcasting it live. Chat with Doug Zell who is hyper excited about the chances of Intelligentia’s barista team. [As well he should be... eventually Intelly's Kyle Glanville will take home the top spot in the USBC.]

I ponder Kenneth Davids‘ questioning the practice of using a coffee’s origin as a primary key in the tangled taxonomy that is coffee’s sensory vocabulary. Determine that I disagree with him on many points. [There's a blog entry in my future, here.]  Fail to see Don Holly’s well-reviewed A Brief History of Coffee because I’m stretched out on my bed in my hotel room with an aching back, shaking my fist at vindictive airline gods.

Dinner with Lindsey Bolger, Don Holly and Carl Staub got cancelled. Bummer. Briefly do the evening cocktail reception, sans cocktail… I’ve taken another little pill for my back. Sample a little Ethiopian food and a lot of Ethiopian coffee, while visiting with fellow [former] altie Marshall Fuss. Spend some time with Bill Fishbein, congratulate him on his “retirement.” I pass on Intelly’s shindig at the Mill City Museum to make an early night of it. Brew a cup of hotel coffee in my room. By the smell — somewhere between wet cardboard and wet dog — the hotel coffee is crap; fortunately I fall asleep before I have to actually drink any of it.

To be continued…

Posted on May 1, 2008 - by deCadmus

In Search of Warmer Climes

There was new-fallen snow on the summit of Hunger Mountain today — I think it’s Hunger Mountain… I can’t be sure; we flatlanders are notoriously peak-challenged — and flurries in the air, still, on my drive home through the greens this evening. Here we are, the cusp of May, and old man winter still won’t let loose his grip. Mean ol’ bastard. It must be time to take a break, and search for warmer climes.

How about… Minnesota?

It’s time for that once-a-year caffeinated spectacle — the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s conference and expo, this year in sunny [please?] Minneapolis. Maybe I’ll see you there… somewhere between the barista jam and the hotdish.

Posted on April 24, 2008 - by deCadmus

New Entries in the Coveted List of Links

I’ve two new blogs to add to the short list of links I keep over — thataway. [Imagine a disembodied hand waving toward the rightmost column of the page you're looking at. Thank-you.]

The first of these — Daniel’s Coffee Blog — by Daniel Humphries, another Seattle-born coffee guy, who for some reason chose NYC over Vermont when he got restless leg syndrome (the old-fashioned kind… not the “malady” they try to sell you drugs for on the nightly news). On occasion I’d drop by Daniel’s LiveJournal pages to find amazing things like this photo collection from a trip to Ethiopia. Here’s hoping he finds lots of inspiration with his new digs.

The second is another blog on writing — Ecstatic Days — by fantasy author Jeff Vandermeer. I have at least one of Jeff’s books in my reading pile [Shriek, if you must know] and, while I haven’t yet opportunity to get beyond the first few pages, I expect good things. All the more so after following a link to this post — Evil Monkey’s Guide to Kosher Imaginary Animals — by way of Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light.

Posted on April 24, 2008 - by deCadmus

Pinching Pennies, Counting (Coffee) Beans

The economic downturn is beginning to get to folks’ bottom line — their coffee money.

Java junkies looking to pinch pennies are sipping less expensive coffee drinks, brewing at home or going cold turkey altogether. The shift is hurting both small-time coffee shops and giants of joe such as Starbucks, which said Wednesday that it expected lower second-quarter profit and full-year earnings than it originally projected because in-store sales and traffic had declined.

Historically, coffee is one of the last things to go from consumer budgets… but that history of spending doesn’t necessarily account for a more modern affectation: the five-buck-a-cup über café latte.

Those who haven’t given up the coffee-shop routine are buying less expensive drinks: drip coffee rather than a caramel macchiato, or an iced coffee instead of a frappuccino.

“Fancy coffee has had its run,” said Dean Trucco, owner of Stir Crazy, a boutique coffee shop on Melrose Avenue.

While brewed coffee — both at home and in the coffee house — should be poised to make a come-back, what might that mean for the five-buck-a-cup Clover-brewed single origin? We’ll see.

Posted on April 22, 2008 - by deCadmus

Green Up Your Coffee House!

It’s Earth Day 2008. The climate crisis is accelerating, vast sheets of ice are collapsing, islands in the Pacific have been drowned in rising seas, and weather the world over is growing increasingly violent. If we don’t take immediate action — all of us, and right now — we face a future unlike anything we’ve known.

But let’s be honest… running a successful and (ideally) profitable coffee house is something of a high-wire act at the best of times. And — economically-speaking — these aren’t the best of times. You’ve got a budget to watch; a creeping expense column can throw things out of kilter. Fast. It’s not going to do you or your environmentally-minded customers any good for you to bankrupt yourself in the name of ecology.

That said, there are savings to be found in running a more efficient and sustainable coffee house, coffee shop or espresso bar. Some of these savings can be realized pretty quickly, others require a longer view. If you can, don’t just consider today’s bottom line, but tomorrow’s. And next year’s. And — for goodness sake — don’t lose sight of the ultimate bottom line here… the planet’s climate is in crisis. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the viability of specialty coffee is at the forefront of that crisis.

In greening up your coffee house, there are (at least) three distinct areas where you can bring your efforts to bear: reducing energy, increasing sustainability, and making it easier for your customers to go green, too. We’ll look at each in turn. There’s a lot to slog through here, so I’ll get right to it.

Reduce energy.

A coffee shop is an energy sink. You’ve got lots of things to keep hot, things to keep cool, and excruciatingly specialized equipment to get them all mixed together. Where do you begin?

Start with an energy audit. Chances are your power company will audit your business at no charge, and provide you with a fairly comprehensive list of recommendations. It’s a great place to start… and an ideal way to benchmark where your business stands, right now. You’ll want that baseline to measure against after you’ve made some improvements.

While your power company will have lots of tips for you in terms of properly insulating your space (ceilings, walls, windows, doors) and savings you might achieve in terms of lighting (switching to CFL fixtures) and the like, chances are they won’t know enough about your specialized equipment — say, espresso machines — to tell you the whole story. You can augment what you learn on an audit report by using a portable or panel-installed power use monitor (think Kill-A-Watt and the like) to measure how much energy your specialized equipment consumes.

You’ll find your coffee house has any number of power-sucking commercial appliances. You’ll probably learn which of these costs you the most to operate in the course of your energy audit; you may not learn, however, which are the most efficient… or more importantly, which aren’t. Lacking any information to the contrary, here’s where you might want to start.

• Dishwashers. You probably know you can save energy and water by running your dishwasher only with a full load. (Of course you do!) You may not know that if you invest in an Energy Star rated commercial dishwasher you can see a pretty immediate return on your investment. An efficient dishwasher can save your coffee house up to 90 MBtus, (about $850 a year on your energy bill) and 52,000 gallons of water (probably another $200 a year).
• Refrigerators and freezers. Today’s Energy Star rated chill chests are as much as 35% more efficient than the bog standard item of the last 10 years, due to advances in compressor and fan-motor efficiency and new anti-sweat technologies (’cause nobody likes a sweaty fridge.) Your new refrigerator can pay for itself in a little more than a year.
• Espresso machines and brewers. In a great many cases, you can insulate the boilers of your always-on equipment (much like you’ve insulated your shop’s hot water heater, right? Right?) Mind you, if you don’t know the internals of your brewers like the back of your hand, it’s probably best to have it done by your service-tech. A flaming espresso machine is decidedly not eco-friendly; we’re probably talking about kevlar, not simple fiberglass batting.
• Coffee roasters. Clean, clean, clean! A clean roaster is not only a safe roaster, it’s also far more efficient than one that’s choked up with years of coffee oils, a creosote-filled exhaust and clogged air vents. You may be surprised with the energy savings you realize.

So maybe it’s not in your budget to spring for new, high-efficiency appliances this year… there’s no reason you can’t make sure the appliances you have are operating at peak performance. Clean your fridge’s evaporators, condensers, and heat-exchange coils. Replace worn and leaky door seals. Better still, get a regular service regimen going so that all of your equipment is operating well throughout the year.

Increase sustainability.

Greening up entails more than just curbing your shop’s power demands. It’s also about breaking some bad habits, many of them having to do with things we simply throw away. After decades of disposable everything, we’ve become conspicuous consumers of our limited natural resources. And it’s got to stop.

• Enough with the plastic cold cups already. Bio-polymer alternatives biodegrade in commercial composting landfills inside a month; plastics are forever. Greenware cups from Fabri-Kal make petroleum-based plastic cold cups obsolete.
• Nix those unrecyclable paper hot cups. Look into compostable paper cups like the ecotainer from International Paper, lined with a corn-polymer resin that’s compostable and will degrade over time.
• Still double-cupping? Just stop, already. Please. Products like the Java Jacket are pretty much de rigeur and new biodegradable entrants like the ecoSleeve appear to work just as well for cold cups, too.
• Want to take a really big step? Consider getting rid of disposables altogether!
• Recycle! How many gallons of milk does your coffee house consumer every day, and how many plastic jugs do you empty as a result? If you’re not recycling, that adds up to a heaping pile of forever in a landfill. Recycle your consumables. More, make it easy — like, really easy — for your customers to do the same.
• Use green cleaning products. Green cleaning agents are safer for your employees to use, and they typically don’t contain any VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Check with the Green Restaurant Association for a list of endorsed products.
• Buy food locally. When you purchase locally grown foodstuffs, suddenly all of your customers are localvores. More to the point, locally produced milk, fruits and vegetables are fresher, taste better, and your dollars support your own community (rather than some faceless transnational food cartel.)

Make it easier for your customers to go green, too.

People are waking up — finally! — to the stark realities of global climate change. And increasingly, folks the world over want to do something about it. People are setting back their thermostats, choosing cars with better gas mileage, replacing their light bulbs — all the while looking for opportunities to do more. You can help.

• Offer organics. By all means, start by offering a selection of great organic coffees. More, make an organic coffee your house blend; your standard espresso. But don’t stop there! Look for local, organic milk and dairy suppliers, bakers and folks who farm great produce. Make organic an every day thing.
• Switch to recycled paper products. From paper towels to napkins to bath tissue, recycled paper products — no longer limited to options of “brown” and “rough” — are an increasingly compelling alternative to virgin fiber sources.
• You know and I know that folks just love those cute little bottles of water. More, we both know those little plastic bottles are just plain stupid, ecologically. So do something about it. Offer ice-cold, filtered water to refill your customer’s reusable bottles, to start.
• Encourage customers to use their own mugs. Whether you want to host a wall of customer cups for your regulars, or offer a discount for folks who drop in with their travel tumbler in-hand, get behind your customers’ efforts to green up their own lives.
• Educate your customers. Going green isn’t one of those private, hair-shirt-wearing sort of things… it’s something that you want to make some noise about. Let your customers know that you’re going green. And how. And why. By demonstrating your commitment to the environment, and by making it easy for your customers to make good choices in your place of business, you help them make greener, more sustainable choices everywhere.

Final thoughts… and an invitation.

Greening up your coffee house can save you money (in the long run, certainly, even if it may have some up-front costs). And going green can improve the morale of your staff even as it boosts the loyalty of your customers — all of them. Greening up means a safer, healthier place of business, and will ultimately lead to a safer, healthier environment. Most of all, going green is simply the right thing to do.

While I’ve thrown a lot of ideas into this article, it’s really just a start. I welcome your feedback, your ideas, and your stories about how you’re greening up your coffee house… the challenges you face, and how you overcame them. We’re in this together, after all.

I’m not the only one talking about the intersection of coffee houses and sustainability these days. See also:

• Matt Milletto’s Going Green in Your Coffee House, part 1 and part 2.
• Stewart Fritchman’s Sustainable Coffeehouse video