…I thought you were in the UK!

A lot of my comments present themselves in the posts I made over here:

http://blog.iamdooser.org/post/309878066/the-price-of-coffee

http://blog.iamdooser.org/post/309945432/more-on-coffee

I agree that there is a finite market for specialty coffee that will be receptive to blogs and brewing guides, but the majority of the people who come into a cafe because they enjoy a better cup of coffee do not seek out those guides. They rely on friends or the barista or experimentation to help them. The challenge then, is identifying those customers who appreciate higher quality and helping them to brew a better cup without bombarding them with information and equipment requirements. When the brewing method is simple and the results are good, there is a sense of accomplishment and those people will spread the message. The market is not only the people reading the blogs, its also the people who just want a better cup of coffee but don’t know how to get it at home. We have to reach those customers if we want to grow the specialty market. I realize what I’m about to say may go against the underlying pursuit of higher quality, but maybe we should be focusing on developing a brewing guide that is extremely simple, a guide that may not produce the best cup but rather one that is “good enough”. If the message is simple, its easily understood and easily spread. Once we know customers are listening, we can expand on the message.

Look at the success of Nespresso in Switzerland. People has to go to special Nespresso stores and has to buy a proprietary machine and overpriced coffee! But the result in the cup is much better than most of the stuff people have had before and it is an absolut easy, nifty and clean solution to make coffee at home. And important: One can’t go wrong with this.

But in my opinion there is room for speciality coffee to fill some gaps. Nespresso e.g. is not that easy for bigger amounts, there is still the waste proplem (capsules) and Nespresso (Nestle) is not that fancied by all. And last but not least there is much room in relation to taste.

But if we want to enforce speciality coffee we have to leave the coffeegeek path (for a moment!). The way to brew coffee has not just to make a tasteful drink, it has also to be simple and sexy. And if we discuss about communicating the right grind size why do we not look at the common grinders available in warehouses. At the moment I am already happy if someone owns one of these conical Solis/Dualit/Whatever grinders and there is just a scale with about 20 steps. Quite easy to tell them the right grind size.

What I would like to see is something like an “inverted French Press”. A pretty thermo walled jug/mug with a cylindrical (gold filter) basket in there. You will brew like a FP (just hot water and a proper amout of a coarser grind) and after 4 Minutes (and some stir) you don’t push the grounds to the bottom, you just put the basket out. Pretty simple, the grind size will not affect the brew time and the coffee will not get bitter if you leave it in the jug for a moment.

I find that people who are not “in to” coffee look at me and my scales with a fair amount of bemusement. They are far more accustomed to the “scoop method” and look at the using of scales as a bit extravagant and possibly a tad eccentric.

As far as how these insights relate to the customer’s coffee buying and brewing experience, well, that depends on the customer. As I said, those people who are not “in to” coffee are those that look at the use of scales as an extravagance. These same people are quite possibly people who are not going to be customers of yours. I feel – and one can call me a cynic – that there is a finite – large, yes, but finite – market for specialty coffee roasters to tap into. I don’t think the market is anywhere near tapped out yet but there are always going to be a large group of people that will always look at coffee as, simply, a vehicle for caffeine and who will never wish to appreciate coffee for its finer flavors and so never go out of their way to look for coffee that can fulfill that inclination. That’s OK. There’s room for everyone. But those aren’t your customers.

Your customers, on the other hand, I think either already understand the value in a bag of specialty beans or at the very least should need little prodding to understand it. These people are probably going to be receptive to suggested methods of eeking out every last ounce of flavor (i.e. value) from a bag of fine beans. These are the people that are going to appreciate the illustration – weather through print, web page or video – of relatively simple but effective methods to empower them to get the most out of their bag of beans. I think that your online brewing guides are very well produced and clear. I wonder, though (and excuse me if I am exhibiting my ignorance as I have had no chance whatsoever, being a Californian, to check out your marketing materials) if printed guides that could be given to your wholesale customers for distribution to their retail customers might be a nifty way to get across the basics of various brew styles. Postcard size, maybe? Something to attach to the fridge or place within easy reach of the customer’s brewing station at home. If their production values are any match for your videos’ I think they might be quite effective and attractive.

Value, then. I think, quite possibly, that this is an overlooked point. One that is ripe, especially in this economic climate, for effective illustration. Even us snooty connoisseur types like to be reminded, on occasion, that the way in which we consume our coffee has budgetary advantages as well as culinary and aesthetic ones. “How many cups of coffee can I get out of a bag of beans?” “How much per cup if I buy beans instead of stopping by the café?” These were frequent questions during my café days. It’s good to have an answer at the ready. Maybe these questions, too, could be answered on the little “how-to” postcards.

Anyway, my two cents (pence?). Wonderful blog. Someday I hope to be able to experience your coffee in it’s home city. Until then …

As for the drawbacks of brewing at home, there are 3 main ones that I can think of:

(1) Inferior equipment

Most people don’t have top-of-the-line espresso equipment in their homes, but I would argue that there is affordable espresso equipment out there that you can get very good results with once you’ve figured out how to get the most out of it (i.e. keeping it clean, using the right water, temperature surfing if need be, etc.). Equipment for manual brew methods like v60, Chemex, siphon, and French Press is also pretty affordable. Some good roasters (Intelligentsia comes to mind) are starting to offer well-edited selections of equipment which is helpful in narrowing down the universe of equipment to the best-in-class. It sounds like James is hoping to offer some Hario products in the future, which would be awesome for people in the UK.

(2) Lack of technique

I’ve found pretty helpful guides on the web for most brewing methods, but they can be hard to find in certain cases and they’re not all in one place. It would be great to have a single site where you could look up the brewing method you wanted to learn about and find various tips/demos from different roasters/cafes.

A major disadvantage for non-professionals with respect to technique is that most of us probably make no more than 30 drinks per week, so even if you have the right idea your learning curve is a lot flatter and it takes a lot longer to get up to speed (e.g. I started working with v60 a couple of weeks ago and since then I’ve only made 10 cups, whereas I would most likely have made several hundred if I was working in a cafe).

It can also be a disadvantage to not have someone else right there with you to bounce ideas off of in real-time if things aren’t going quite right. It would be pretty cool if local roasters held ‘office hours’ for a couple hours per week and, in exchange for buying a bag of coffee, you could chat with them about the different problems you’re having with your brewing and see what suggestions they have.

(3) Not working with a coffee enough to get it dialed in

I would guess that most non-professionals only consume ~1lb of coffee per week. This means that unless you’re buying the same coffee week after week (which gets boring), you typically don’t have enough opportunities to get the coffee dialed in. Many roasters (Barismo, Barefoot, Ritual, and Square Mile come to mind) are starting to suggest specific brewing parameters (e.g. brewing method, dose, volume, temperature) which is quite helpful. I’d like to see roasters take it a step further by offering their tasting notes so consumers can see how they arrived at what they’re suggesting. This would help us understand more about the coffees we buy (what happens if I use a bigger dose? lower temperature? etc.) before we start brewing them and make the suggestions seem less arbitrary. I realize this would only appeal to a niche of the market, but it could be one way to push things forward.