Stumptown are the source of one of my most troubling coffee experiences, one that still haunts and nags at me today.
No one in the coffee industry really likes decaf. We excuse its taste, we get annoyed at how fast it stales, we treat it as a second rate coffee experience. I was in that camp too for a while. Coffee no good? Well, it is decaf…..
According to the owner of the stoneworks auction website, I was one of up to 3000 users watching or participating in the latest auction. It went on for 9 hours and you had to feel very, very sorry for the Japanese who would have started bidding at 10pm and finished around 7am. (though you suspect they probably had access to sufficient caffeine)
I am not going to go through who won what (it is there on the website still) but there are a couple of things about this auction process, about the success of this farm, that I want to write a little about and get some feedback on from the community.
First of all I was quite surprised that the Petersons decided to auction off so many small individual lots. The high prices achieved in the past were a function (in my mind) of both quality and scarcity. I don’t debate the mesmerising cup this coffee is capable of producing, but I don’t think that it would have reached $130/lb last year if there had been 10 times the volume available. Granted, the small individually processed batches have drive the price up on the top lots to similar heights but this then leaves the issue of how to communicate the difference between Stumptown and Sweet Maria’s $105.25 lot and a $6 lot. What key areas would the consumer respond to and be willing to massively increase their spend for?
The variation in price also implies a variation in quality. This is not a criticism of the farm – no farmer in the world is going to claim they produce nothing but exceptional coffee. I do worry, however, that there is potential to damage the brand. (and I have no doubt that it is a brand now) I have seen more extreme examples of this in other super-farms such as Daterra. Daterra is a cutting edge farm, capable of producing stellar coffee, and the research they are involved in is invaluable. I know they did a great deal of work on tracing aroma in the cup back to the crop with Illy and I hope eventually some of that research will see the light of day. What surprises me is that they have not distinguished very strongly between their best lots (like the reserve) and then other lots which don’t taste as good. I have seen several roasters proudly claiming the Daterra component of their blend without specifying which one it was and the coffee not tasting great. I thought the idea of the Esmeralda Especial worked well, but was still being muddied by some people so if anything I would have thought they would have distinguished lots even more aggressively.
I feel very strongly that for us to really move forward in speciality coffee we must consistently deliver on our promises to the consumer. Asking them to pay a high price for a cup promises that it will be worth it, and making proud boasts about the coffees we use promises that they will taste something that will be starkly different, discoverable and satisfying. Will every single roast of the Esmeralda be great this year from all the different companies? Does a new, but interested consumer, tasting an average cup of Esmeralda leave them very confused about the prices of the higher lots? Do we risk looking exclusive rather than inclusive to those teetering on the edge of becoming interested and excited about great coffee?
My other thought on the success of the farm has been the double edged sword of the visibility of the Geisha varietal used. I travelled a little bit in Costa Rica last year and every farm I visited had at least a little Geisha planted. Some were more cautious than others in the space they were giving over to the gamble. In three or four years will we see a sudden flood of Geisha on the market (which will immediately drop its desirability) and will it be any good. A while ago I dug through my coffee text books to see if I could find any references to the varietal. I found very little except for a small study carried out abotu 40 years ago in Costa Rica comparing the success of various varietals of which Geisha was won. It lost out primarily because of its lack of yield – less of a problem if you have quality and scarcity on your side, but with lots of people suddenly producing lower yields from their farms scarcity becomes void. No notes are made in the study about increased cup quality, but that study could still easily be dismissed as techniques have moved on and you could also argue that Costa Rica’s quest for yield held it back as an origin producing distinct and amazing coffees until the more recent micro-mill revolution that we are seeing signs of. (if people want me to dig up the study I can do)
On this subject I am very happy to concede I might be wrong. I haven’t spent enough time at origin to feel completely confidant in the above statements, and if Peter or Geoff or anyone else who has spent a lot of time at origin are reading and want to correct me I would be very grateful. I really just want to learn more, and hope that we aren’t all debated-out on this issue which covers just about all of the coffee industry.
I am not going to write up the visit to Probat too much – Klaus has already done a great job at the Coffee Collective Blog.
However I think the photoset from the Probat Museum will be of interest to quite a lot of people. I’ve tried to add a little info to the pictures – size of batch, date of manufacture etc…
I have the museum guide so if anyone has any questions I will try and answer them. If you
Probat Museum Roasters
I haven’t managed to get around to sorting through the photos I took whilst there with Klaus, Casper and Anette. It was one of the WBC prizes – a trip to Probat to learn more about roasting.
I will post more once I’ve sorted the photos – the museum alone is worth the trip to Emmerich. I had my video camera with me and took a few things. It is my first effort with iMovie, and probably doesn’t make much sense – it is just a bit of fun really. I’ve uploaded a version to YouTube if you want a quicker loading version (I don’t like the encoding youtube does much though)
[flv:/video/probat.flv 320 240]
Whilst I am painfully aware that Tokyo is looming over me, today I finally managed to get hold of a GB5 (thanks to Darlingtons), though like a fool I forgot that they don’t ship to the UK with flow restricters and I didn’t order any.
So I pulled a few shots this afternoon and I now feel like I can properly focus over the presentation. I have made almost all the decisions about the coffee – a few profile things to sort out – and I am pretty set on my sig drink now (yes, I should have decided something 2 months ago – remember kids: organise, it really helps.)
In other news I received some coffee from Germany,courtesy of Wolfredo who looked kindly upon my lack of coffee. This is the first time I have received coffee packaged like this. I was impressed! I look forward to trying it tomorrow.
Tasty. I love that word. Its like delicious but slightly less camp. It implies, to me, more than simply tasting good – it implies moreishness and comfort, perhaps even satisfaction.
Those of you I encountered on my roadtrip, and Stephen especially, will be sick of this particular rant/”philosophy”. I will start with food, because food is wonderful and I suppose that it is the best metaphor (is it possible to write about coffee without endless metaphors?).
I think most of the time we eat because we are hungry but we aspire to eat something tasty. Be it tacos (look, I am obsessed – leave it), a great steak or a beautifully cooked lasagna, this is undeniably great food but entirely different from a plate of food Wylie Dufresne may serve you, or something Adria may conjure. They, of course, are not even vaguely alone in plating up dishes of food that are to be eaten and enjoyed by the head more than the heart. Food where the pairings of ingredients are spot on, clever and interesting and it undoubtedly a pleasure to eat but isn’t food you crave.
Most customers approach coffee from a very functional point of view. It is needed, for chemical comfort or just as part of routine and of course (you hope) for pleasure. However, a lot of the time it feels like we are looking for the cups that are intensely unusual, complex and of course interesting. Coffees from Idido, for example, are incredible – full of intense fruit flavours and treading the fine line of wild beautifully. They are coffees that taste nothing like coffee. I love them for what they offer as well as what they suggest coffee is capable of. However, first thing in the morning as I stumble down the stairs, or when I duck into a cafe out from the cold I want coffee to do something else for me – I just want it to be tasty. It is cups of coffee like this that will become benchmarks of our nostalgia.
I love cupping, I love the ritual and I love pushing myself in an area I see a huge room for improvement. However I am often in fear that certain coffees are glossed over because they aren’t blockbusters. Yet at home I am yearning more and more for tasty. Which is odd, as I had been (not so long ago) hell bent on a path of discovery and a search for the blockbuster type coffees. This morning I brewed a Chemex of coffee (better than any chemex as I had been grinding too fine – thank you to Kyle G for fixing that) and it was so very tasty. I don’t think it was as good as the coffee could be – I know the co-op well and the coffee is capable of extra-ordinary fruit – this cup was just balanced and rounded and perhaps lacking in complexity but still immensely enjoyable to sip at as I wrote a few e-mails and caught up on the feeds. I didn’t want to have to think about it, I just wanted good coffee. I do worry that coffees like this will get left behind in our exploration of coffee’s boundaries.
Had a weird one today – a bag of coffee roasted in Spain that at first glance looked a very odd mixture of roasts:
It wasn’t until I broke one of the shiny ones open that I worked out what was going on. Inside the dark, sticky beans the colour wasn’t nearly as dark and in fact was pretty light. I stuck one in my mouth and the weird sticky, sweet outer coating (the person I was with suggested sugar puffs as a description and he was spot on) pretty much confirmed that these were the result of the weird and rarely seen (in the uk anyways) practise of throwing sugar in the with the beans to help disguise qualities of the coffee. Back when I was just getting into coffee chemistry I managed to get hold of my first scientific paper and it was about this style of roasting. Sadly (sort of) I didn’t get to taste them. I sort of want to know more – do you need special equipment for this? How much sugar do you add? Do you spray on sugar water? Can it ever possibly actually taste nice? Anyone ever had a go?