The internet is quite talkative at the moment. The coffee sliver of the internet anyway. Lots of talk about seasonality, which is a good thing.
This does beg the question – how long is coffee good for? Green coffee I mean – we’re still arguing about roasted coffee’s shelf life and a great deal more time and money has been spent on that topic in the last 100 years.
If anything, and we are getting into the realm of personal opinion here, green coffee is trickier because green coffees don’t age the same way. Each lot is an individual little time bomb. As much as we can look after it as well as we can in storage/in roasteries – we are still working with an individual fuse whose approximate length was determined before the coffee left the producing country. Read More »
I’ve another post coming on why I blog, but this reason deserved a post in its own right. A few days ago Shaun dropped me an e-mail about the Vinturi. He’d played with it a little bit and thought it was interesting, and thought it might be something that would interest me. I admit I was curious – so I grabbed one from the UK website. (Clicking through may help explain the image above!)
As I write this I confess I know very little about the science of aerating wine – feel free to point me in any link-based directions! I didn’t know if it was specific to wine/alcoholic beverages with very volatile fractions, or whether it would affect coffee too. I’m rather lucky in having Anette who is very good at tasting things – so I gave her several different brews split into pairs of cups, one aerated and one not. Each time she said one cup tasted noticeably better, and it was the aerated one. As I was the one conducting the tests I’m rather biased, so feel free to discount this – but I thought the aerated cup was sweeter and had better clarity.
One obvious explanation would be that the aeration cooled the coffee, so comparatively it was the easier cup to taste – I should probably check how much temperature is lost (though I did preheat the Vinturi before doing it). I am sure a slightly cooler brew would have an advantage, and a noticeable one at that, over the same hotter brew of the same coffee. Simply pouring into a cooler cup could well create an advantage. However the use of aeration in wine – which, again, I don’t understand yet – does intrigue me.
Yesterday we dropped some espresso through it, and it was interesting. We then brewed an americano, skimmed it (for this is what crema skimming was truly made for) and then aerated it. It was the best american I think I’ve ever had. Perhaps I simply wanted it to be.
I am well aware you could pull the “Emperors New Clothes” card on this one – but I still think it warrants a little attention. If people can come up with some experiments that will isolate the aeration then I’d be willing to try them and perhaps open the doors at work to people who want to take part in a little experiment too.
I will keep playing with it, and report back after a bit of reading on the science (if any) behind it all…
Footnotes:
As I mentioned in a previous post – I get asked this question quite a lot. So for the month of January I logged every cup of coffee I drank, using a splendid website called Daytum.
So – how many coffees? In January I drank 126 cups, so on average a daily consumption of 4.
Below is a quick breakdown of my consumption, as well as an explanation of what was logged, and what wasn’t.
Read More »
Footnotes:
You may well have seen these videos – but just in case I thought I’d post a few up that I’ve enjoyed recently:
First up a fun video from the Norwegian crew who came to visit London and did the whole Disloyalty Card in a day. Epic, heroic quantities of caffeine consumed! Quite how they managed to cup with us halfway through the day remains a mystery. I’m almost jealous of their coffee constitutions: Read More »
At the London Gastronomy Seminars I was given a Mypressi Twist to play with by the UK distributor. I had been toying with buying one having seen the hype online, so this was a rather pleasant surprise.
I didn’t really get a chance to play with it til yesterday afternoon. I’ve played with it some more today and this is just a quick summary of my thoughts and what I think is particularly interesting about it.
First off – it makes pretty good espresso. I know I am hardly the first person to make this observation, but I think everyone who tries it is pleasantly surprised. I think with a few adjustments to technique then you can get something better than any espresso machine in its price bracket, or up to two or three times its price. If you like milk drinks though – then this may not appeal to you. Read More »
This evening I had a lot of fun presenting at the London Gastronomy Seminars. The topic was flavour in wine and coffee, and I was up after Jamie Goode, which is a hard act to follow! Our topic was “Flavour – from plant to cup”
Jamie’s presentation was full of information and topics that could have become a presentation in their own right. Talking to him before, and thinking about what he said during, I suspect I am going to get sucked into flavour perception all over again. Not so much the mechanics of taste reception and gustation – but more what our brains choose to do with this information. Perception rather than detection.
I should also add that the wine Jamie used for his talk was fascinating. The best description I could have was it was like tasting a natural process, having only drunk washed coffees. Jamie’s rather more eloquent notes on it can be found here.
I really do enjoy giving talks and a room full of 150+ people certainly delivers a little adrenaline rush. (I shall make no secret of the fact that I would kill to talk at TED one day, so thoroughly jealous of Intelligentsia being involved this year! If you need a barista at all…..) That said – suddenly having to brew 16+ litres of coffee with a single filter brewer was a little challenging!
I talked a bit about coffee’s journey, dividing the narrative into four stages: creation (growing)/processing/roasting/brewing. I then served two coffees and tried to relate the flavours in the cup back through those four stages. The Q&A from the audience at the end was inevitably my favourite bit, the range of questions was wonderful. Unfortunately they were unable to film tonight’s event, and I don’t think putting the slides up would be very interesting.
I think the London Gastronomy Seminars are going to continue to grow and grow – there already seems to be a community forming of diverse and interesting people with a shared passion. I look forward to the next one, and hopefully I’ll see you there!
A rather splendid new website launched today, and I think it is a great idea and potentially very, very useful for us all.
It is called Brew Methods and I strongly suggest you visit, bookmark and begin sending the link to everyone you know.
You can read more about it by its creators on cleanhotdry, but the premise is simple – a single place online you can send anyone who wants to know more about brewing coffee, and there they will find links to various different tutorials, write-ups and videos.
There is also a submission form so you can help increase the amount of knowledge aggregated there.
Outstanding!
Restaurants have a complex set of rituals, etiquette and laws governing the interaction between the establishment and the guest. Jeffrey Steingarten (and I wish I could quote it but my copy is out on loan) talks about how the best waiters are so good that they become invisible. Plates arrive, glasses are filled and the table is cleaned without any unnecessary interuption. This idea being that people come to restaurants for two reasons: for food and for company. If making sure each of these is as enjoyable as possible is the goal then you can work back and justify the seemingly curious rules and laws laid out in fine dining. Read More »
Two events I am very excited about, one very soon and one in a few months:
London Gastronomy Seminars
This month is the second in the London Gastronomy Seminars series. The title is “From plant to cup: flavour in coffee & wine” and I am presenting along with Jamie Goode.
Those of you into wine will know Jamie from wineanorak.com and his blog is great too. I saw Jamie present a few months ago and I learned a great deal, and hugely enjoyed his presentation. The bar is set high for me, and I am going to work hard to make my part of the presentation as interesting and useful as I can.
If you are in London then do come down, feel free to ask me awkward and difficult questions and drink some coffee and some wine!
From plant to cup: flavour in coffee and wine
21 January 2010, 7pm
Senate House, University of London (directions are here)
(Hosted by the Centre for the Study of the Senses, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study)
Tickets (£10)
SCAA Symposium
I’m also very excited about being involved in the SCAA Symposium this year. I helped out in one of the workshops last year, but due to WBC commitments couldn’t get as involved as I would have liked. This year’s event looks amazing and I am delighted to be attending.
I am taking part in the first session alongside some big names in coffee. I hope I can bring something of value to the discussion! The program looks amazing and I look forward to catching up with a lot of people there.
See you at one of these soon I hope!
