I’d really appreciate it if you could answer this poll, because it seems like something I ought to know/would be interesting know:
Loading ...Even if you are just stopping by, or reading in your feed reader – I’d be very grateful of a quick click.
Thank you.
My brain is full of questions at the moment, and I thought I’d post (vent) some of them on the off chance that anyone reading them has any answers.
I love cheese. Everyone loves cheese. I don’t really, despite trying, really understand cheese.
Before I type cheese too many times I want to let people know that the next London Gastronomy Seminar is coming up and I am really quite excited about it. There are more details here.
On a side note – Neal’s Yard Dairy are a company that I have a huge amount of respect for, not just because of the quality of their product but because they do such a great job of communicating it in their shop, and ultimately they are incredibly good at selling it.
There is lots to be learned here. I hope to see you there!
For a while all has been quiet on the Uber front. We shuffled some stuff around at the roastery, and as part of it we chose not to cut the old Uber into the new worktops as we planned to upgrade – the new Uber having a different (smaller) cutout.
The new Uber arrived today and I am very excited. This probably could have been a post for the Square Mile Blog, but there are many more exciting/important things to post on there!
What’s different about this Uber? The capacity is bigger. We sometimes used the old one for cupping, but it had more of a cafe use/quick recovery capacity so couldn’t do many bowls. This one has a 6 litre boiler – very exciting! This one has a flow control dial, instead of an button control. It also has some beta software for us to test out.
I missed the Uber when it was gone. My brewed coffee consumption dropped (a bad thing). My experimentation also dropped off a little (also a bad thing). I hope to get that going again. I also grew irrationally annoyed with kettles (a weird thing?).
Before anyone accuses me of spam (perhaps fairly) I should make clear that we don’t make any money from the sale of Uber boilers, though yes – they are now available for sale. It is just a project that we’re really excited about and it has been, and will be, a great tool for exploring coffee. We’re extremely grateful to Marco – they are splendid!
Competition season often leaves me with an uneasy relationship with a drink I usually find very enjoyable. I should add that my own view is in no way representative of competition judges, or competitions or anything like that – just a thought rolling around my head.
Generally, it seems, we treat milk as an enemy. People talk as if steamed milk is trying to hold a pillow over the face of coffee flavour. We talk about whether or not a coffee “cuts through” the milk. I’ve never really been thrilled with that phrase or way of thinking about coffee but I have to accept that I am in the minority here. Read More
You drink a nice brewed cup of coffee from a hypothetical farm in El Salvador. It is incredibly delicious. The cup is light and juicy, but still very sweet. There are notes of cherry and caramel and acidity is reminiscent of a crisp apple. We celebrate this coffee, perhaps we bid a lot money for it at an auction, and are excited to roast it and retail it.
We then brew the same coffee in an espresso machine. It doesn’t taste good. People say it lacks body, isn’t complex enough, has too much acidity. People say it is one dimensional. We roast it darker than before, though hopefully not a lot. We mute and soften the acidity, try and keep the sweetness. We burn away some of what we loved in the hope that it will be a better espresso. Even now we don’t enjoy the coffee as much. People still complain that it isn’t complex enough, isn’t complete enough.
“This coffee isn’t good enough to be a single origin espresso.”
We blame the same coffee that we once celebrated. This doesn’t make sense. If the job of a brewer is to translate what is great in the coffee down into the cup why aren’t we pointing our fingers at the espresso machine? If the job of the barista is to use tools to translate what is great in the coffee down into the cup why aren’t we ashamed of our failings?
I’ve been thinking more and more about the tiers of tastiness when it comes to not only coffee, but any food or drink. I think this was probably triggered by the whole aerating thing.
Having tasted coffee that had been aerated, as well as coffee brewed with aerated water, against a standard brew there had been a noticeable difference: an improvement. Surely, then, this would be something to do in a cafe setting? If it is going to improve the experience for the consumer, then one would be foolish not to, right? Read More
I am very much aware that promoting my own products or business on a personal blog very quickly spends any currency of goodwill that I might have built up.
There are, however, rare instances where I think it is entirely worth it and this is one of them. There is more information about the coffee on the product page, but we want to keep up the spirit of generosity of people like Aida Batlle and Gwilym and we want to raise as much money as we can.
You can read more about this coffee and what we are doing here. I hope you’ll consider buying a bag.
My experience with the ExtractMojo has so far resulted in one recurring realisation: I often wasn’t grinding finely enough. The purpose of this isn’t to rehash the whole underextracted thing. More a simple experiment in terms of people’s preferences.
Accurately communicating grind size remains near impossible. We can say coarse, very coarse or fine or whatever, but it is still a pretty bad communicator when you are stood in front of a grinder that you don’t know.
If people are up for it then I’d like to try an experiment. Pick a method that you know well. Record how you are currently setting your grinder for your desired grind size. Each time you brew it, keep everything the same (brew temp, water volume and steep time if applicable) but go a touch finer. Keep going until you hit the wall of bitterness. You’ll know it when you taste it, when the cup falls to pieces in a bitter finish. Come back a touch coarser, and try a side by side brew of this grind Vs your original grind. Which is better? Why?
I hope a few people will try this – it would be really interesting. I am interested because if someone asked me the ideal grind size for the aeropress, for example, then I’d say to keep the steep time the same and bring the grind as fine as you can before it starts tasting noticeably bitter.
(I am quite prepared for you to all come back and tell me I am an idiot)
You could say this debate is old news, but somehow it still seems to be rumbling on.
In the english speaking online coffee community it often seems a bit like Intelligentsia Vs. Naturals-Lovers, and Geoff Watts great post on the Intelli website kicked off the debate again recently.1 To quote the relevant part:
Footnotes:Things I hope become historical footnotes:
The near-fanatical obsession with dry-processed coffees. Increased risk for the farmer + significant loss of varietal/terroir nuance in the cup + likelihood of current trend reversing at some point = probably not the kind of coffee we want to promote.
