JIMSEVEN

I meant to write this review a while ago – and Liz Clayton’s excellent review finally spurred me into action.  In early June I was in Boston, and had a little spare time.  I made my way to Dwelltime in Cambridge, and while waiting to order I saw this book for sale.  I grabbed a copy, and started reading as I drank my coffee.

A little backwards and forwards on twitter with Merry White (better known as Corky) and suddenly I’m no longer having coffee alone, but am enjoying being sat talking with her face to face – she is local, being a Professor at Boston University.  She very kindly took time out of her day, and took me around some local cafes and introduced me to people and it was a lot of fun.  I’m very grateful, and wish to be transparent, and I think (or at least I hope!) that day doesn’t really influence my review.

Most of the books on coffee I’ve read recently have bee devoted to getting us to brew better coffee, or understand the product itself better.  (This is no bad thing!)  It felt so invigorating to read about how coffee can become entwined within society, to look at how cafes fit within a different culture and the roles they can fulfil.  Japan’s wider culture can easily become an obsession, because so much of it feels so alien.  Seeing how something as familiar as coffee shops became interwoven into that society was oddly inspiring to me – a renewed feeling that we could do interesting and novel things in our own cultures, certainly beyond the narrow coffee culture we currently have now.

I had no idea of the breadth of coffee influence of Japan – it made me interested in going further into aspects of the history of coffee in Japan.  On the brewing/barista side of things, the term kodawari was appealing and compelling.  I will avoid trying to explain as Corky does a much better job than I!

Perhaps this isn’t really a review, more a recommendation – all I can really say is that I enjoyed it, and if you want to read something well researched and well written then you’ll probably enjoy this too.  Check below for some links to purchase (none are affiliate links).

Links:

University of California Press

Amazon

Amazon UK

@merrycorkywhite

A while ago Gwilym sent me over a link to this video. It had been sitting, unwatched, in my links repository for a while – despite the fact that I’d watched and enjoyed the previous film from the film maker.

Give it a watch now – it is a worthwhile ten minutes – and best watched before reading this.

Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

I really liked a lot of what he had to say – he was engaging and clearly passionate. I liked hearing about spending a lot of time practicing and being ok with not being very good. I enjoyed hearing about developing technique to the point where you feel comfortable to start making art. I agree completely about mistakes being really, really great ways to learn if you are open to that.

The thing that he said that I had a negative, visceral response to was, to quote him,

This tag “handmade” on its very, sort of, basic face value means quality. If it is made by hand it’s made with great quality. If you think of a handmade suit, you think of something that’s, like, perfect. That’s why you pay more for it. Or a handmade car. To me that’s the sort of the value of handmade.

If we’re honest, the speciality end of the coffee industry has traded and marketed hard on this idea – all the while knowing that it simply isn’t true.

Something is not imbued with a greater level of quality simply because it is made by hand. One could argue that it attains some form of value, some cultural capital. I could understand if people believed that because it was handmade it was worth more, but it isn’t of higher quality.  His knives are worth more because they are a combination of skills, vision, materials and art.  In his eyes would he believe the knife would be better, more functional or long lasting,  because he didn’t use any of his machines, and did everything by hand?  Is he compromising his quality in return for commercial gain every time he switches on a lathe?  I don’t think so – and I would be surprised if he thought so too.

This inevitably leads us to thinking about divorcing the ideas of value and quality – something we’ve tried very hard not to do in coffee. It makes us think about things like tradition in a different. A particular process may have some worth because it is traditional, because it is a cultural artifact that is worth preserving. In food, and in coffee, there are many processes that are retained because of their cultural value – because we see them as having worth. It easily brings us to an awkward word and idea that, so far I’m glad to say, coffee hasn’t had to contend with: Authenticity. (An entirely different post could ask, and stumble around the answer to the question, “Is authenticity even possible in coffee, with so many opportunities for input along the way?”)

This intersection of quality and cultural value popped up again in the interview in two parts of the NYT wine critic Eric Asimov. (Part 1, Part 2) When asked why he is against blind tasting he says:

I think it’s infantilizing. It gives consumers the illusion of a level playing ground. I think we’re all very open to the idea that because we’re Americans and we’re democrats with a small d, aristocracy is a fiction and if everybody is given the same opportunity, then everybody can shine equally. I think there’s a lot more to it than that. I think that’s a dumbed down way of looking at wine.

I think for evaluating wine, there’s a great deal to be learned by knowing what you’re dealing with, the history, past performance, past experiences. It seems silly to me that only wine critics are asked to shut their eyes to that. (Emphasis added)

You could argue that in the past 10 years speciality coffee has done a better job selling the story of the coffees we drink than it has done selling geuinely excellent cups of said coffee. You could argue that the great success of Kona or JBM is the ability to sell the story to the extent that it becomes and brand and an idea where the price becomes totally divorced from the actual value.  Going back to Asimov’s point – would a tasting have greater impact if you ran it blind, or if you talked through the coffees – their provenance, their meaning – as you tasted them?  (This is an open, rather than rhetorical, question.)

More than this – as specialty coffee gets to a point where we have to look at sustainable pricing – is focusing on increasing the cultural capital of a cup of great coffee a route with greater returns than just focusing on everything in the cup?  The challenge of increasing the cultural value of coffee (because right now it carries very, very little cultural value) takes us to a similar place to wine – a world tripped up by pretension and snobbery, and where people seek to manipulate the value of things through exploiting what we have decided is valuable about it.  ((I already feel entirely out of my depth on this subject so I should stop here.))

I hadn’t planned to bring this post to a rousing finale, more to think out loud.  It seemed worth commenting on the way we can misuse words that could be really useful to us when used properly.  It also seemed worth noting that lots of people and industries have the same issues, challenges and current solutions we do – and I’d be fascinated to know how they think coffee is doing compared to them.

The break, for those not exposed to the coffee industry’s tasting rituals, is a part of the tasting process when cupping. After letting the ground coffee and water steep for a set time we bring our noses down to the floating layer of grounds we call the crust. We stir a prescribed number of times and we inhale the aromatic release through our noses. We pause, we think, we assess.

It is a part of the process treated with much seriousness when training or explaining the process. It is one ritualistic moment of interaction in the otherwise pretty boring brewing process before we start tasting.

Over the last couple of years I’ve become less and less interested in this part of the process. It isn’t just because I’m tall and the table often feels a long way down for a lazy man. It just felt like an awkward process from which I gain no real insight into the coffee I am assessing.  Or perhaps better – I get no information of value from it that isn’t available via tasting.

In the past I had various theories about why I thought the break may be a valuable tasting tool, but I suspect they were so wrong that I am not even going to confess what they were.

When I started cupping getting the chance to break felt like a privilege, but now it feels more like a chore. I am reassured to find that I am not alone in this. When cupping with colleagues and peers it is getting to the point where we need to draw straws to see who, reluctantly, has to do it.

I think there is some value in assessing the smell of the dry grounds, but if I am honest I love the idea of arriving at a cupping table with the bowls already stirred and cleaned, cool enough to be ready to start tasting.

There is pleasure in ritual. Perhaps the frequency of the process has fatigued me, and I don’t feel like I can give it the time to be patient, slow and methodical.

There really isn’t a bigger point to this. I am not saying that we should never smell the break ever again. I’m not trying to play the “challenge everything we take for granted” card either. One of the reasons I continue to write this is because it is a journal of sorts for where I am, what I am thinking, and a way to share that with a large, global audience who may react to it in a way that inspires me.

When you’re born you are a blank canvas when it comes to flavour. Yes, you are predisposed to like sweetness, and a preference for salt manifests very early on too – but otherwise every preference you have is learned.  People who like flavours or textures we might personally find disgusting aren’t genetically different from us – this is very much nurture over nature.

When learning what tastes “good” over “bad”, one influential aspect of the eating environment is the facial expression of the parent. This means a child can learn what should not be eaten before that can be properly communicated through words. This is no secret, we’ve all seen parents do the exaggerated “yummy!” face to encourage their child to try new foods. Just remember that looking for clues about what we eat and drink in people’s facial expressions is hardwired into us.

How is this relevant?

So, let’s imagine we’re in a coffee bar. You are behind the counter and a customer comes in. Unsure of what they want you (quite rightly) ask them what they usually enjoy. They say they usually enjoy strong brews of french roasted coffee from a place that you know buys poor quality green coffees. They like, what you might describe as, “bad” coffee. On bar you have carefully roasted, clean and interesting coffees. You are aware there is a wide gap between what you have and what they usually drink. Regardless, you persevere and make them a cup. You pass it across the bar and watch them take that first sip (despite it being way, way too hot to properly taste). As they swallow that first mouthful of a totally alien cup of coffee they look at you.

Right now – what facial expression do you have? (Be honest!)

Experience tells us that we’d be wearing a nervous grimace.  This comes from the part of us that lacks the confidence and conviction that they’ll like it, a part of us that will be a little wounded if we hear that they prefer the french roast. Looking at our own reaction a little deeper it gets worse still: it is both arrogant and dismissive to presume they won’t like it. We don’t think they’re capable of enjoy “good” coffee and this is broadcast through our non verbal gestures. We become the snobs, the pretentious, the unlikeable coffee nazi.  The customer doesn’t get it.  He doesn’t come back.  All too often we see customers like this treated as an inconvenience, a battle we decide we can’t win and abandon all efforts towards before we begin.

We all seem to be stuck in this way of thinking. Why aren’t we excited? Here is a customer who likes drinking coffee so much that they can cope with the bitterness and lack of sweetness or flavour found in very dark roasts.  If they think coffee like that is ok, think of how much they could love great coffee!

They like coffee. You have great coffee. This is awesome news! You get to be the person that potentially blows their minds. Even if they don’t get it the first time, they’ll be more likely to try again if you are confident that they’ll enjoy it. You have an opportunity here, that you’d be foolish to miss.  ”I like lattes from Starbucks” should be music to our ears!  We can offer them a combination of milk and espresso that will be shockingly, wonderfully sweet and pleasing. This is exciting!

If you think of every customer who likes “bad” coffee as an easy win then everything is more fun. Are you really sure you want nothing but customers expecting complex, well structured brews exhibiting exceptional clarity and sweetness? Are they really the easier audience?

The reason I doubt the our desire for a passionate, knowledgeable customer is the typical experience of a coffee professional going out for an espresso. Rarely is an espresso presented with excitement. Usually it comes with a caveat:

“The shot was, er… a little quick.”

“Sorry, I’ve been struggling with the grinder today.”

“Yeah… It was tasting great earlier but now it just isn’t as good.  Not sure why.”

A caveat doesn’t save anyone’s ego, but it does put a pretty low ceiling on how enjoyable the coffee can be.  This makes drinking that espresso a lot less fun.

When buying an espresso, no one should realistically be expecting to have their mind blown every time. A fair expectation would be a well made espresso, free from obvious brewing defects, whose price matches the value. That’s it. Not a godshot. Not “perfection”. Just a nice espresso from someone who is proud of what they made, served without an excuse.

We’re passionate about what we do, and passion can be so compelling. It can draw people in, it can open then to exploration, it can change the way they see something. We just need to focus a little more on using it to its potential, unleashing it at the right time and in the right amount.  N.B.  This isn’t advocating for talking to everyone in giddy detail about every aspect of a coffee – whether they care or not.

Maybe I’ve built a straw man argument here (though experience tells me I haven’t) and this is just misdirected ranting.  I’m ready to be vigorously disagreed with.  Maybe some people really, really do prefer the taste of dark roasted coffee and can never be converted, but if we think we have something better, something more valuable, then we should be more excited about this than we currently are.  The point of this post is not to attack our current practices, things I have done and probably still do, things we’ve all done.  I just wanted to share something that had been on my mind for a while.

In my coffee work my number one frustration is with water.  I think it is something that has been massively underestimated, both as an industry and very much personally.  To begin with I knew that hard water was bad, because coffee machines have boilers and you get a build up of limescale.  The consensus seemed to be that you should throw a simple filter in front of the machine and all would be fine.  This could not be further from the truth.

Early errors

First of all – I’ve yet to encounter an ion exchange filter that has effectively prevented scale build up for as long as advertised.  I’m not accusing manufacturers of being misleading, I just think we have different standards of when water is acceptable.  When we saw scale building up in customer’s machines we originally presumed it was our mistake, we hadn’t made sound recommendations about how often they should be changed.  Then we installed flowmeters and we discovered that they simply weren’t effective to the extent required.  At this point I was a little confused.  How had everyone else been coping for so long, in London, without having the same headaches as us?  Part of the reason was that up until about 4-5 years ago there were very few machines with flow restrictors on the hot side of the hydraulic circuit.  One of the advantages of a heat exchanger is that you can keep your flow restrictor on the cold side, where scale is less likely to build up.  All of the dual boiler machines that had been coming into the UK had been unrestricted.  As people began to demand flow restriction as standard we began to see these issues crop up.  The other side of the coin was that a number of companies were actually pro-scale because it was a good source of aftersales revenue through servicing and descaling.

Even when you are on top of your ion exchange filter – they’re still not ideal if you are looking for the best cup quality.  While they’ll remove bad tastes from the water, they don’t massively reduce the overall TDS (total dissolved solids) in the water.  Typically we wouldn’t see much below 250ppm, and though this water would be unlikely to produce scale inside a machine it wasn’t the greatest solvent in the world for getting the best out of your coffee.

This is as much a public catalogue of errors and learning, because at the time we genuinely thought this was the best solution.  We didn’t realise how bad things were, and what kind of measures were actually necessary to take.  John Gordon took on the burden of learning a lot more about this, and has done a huge amount to share what he has learned.  I’m incredibly grateful to him for dragging me by the heels into this stuff.

The current solution

Here is pretty much where we are now (though bear in mind this may change as we continue to learn):

If you are in a hard water area and are interested in best possible cup quality, and in keeping your machine in good condition then the only viable choice is reverse osmosis (RO).  This is painful news because the initial cost of an RO unit is several times that of a simple filter.  They are also bigger than a filter.  They are also less water efficient.  Not all of this is good news – but when you are dealing with water with total dissolved solids at upwards of 450 ppm and calcium hardness at 300 ppm then you have to accept that local geology has stacked the deck against you and it will be an uphill battle.

More than 9 out of 10 machine service issues we deal with are due to a build up of scale.  I don’t think we are alone in this statistic, as a company working in a hard water area.  There are a number of companies who provide solutions, and this isn’t the place to recommend any particular one.  Support and service are a big part of any equipment purchase – and these can vary by country and location.

I don’t like that RO is the way forward, but I like it more than how coffee tastes when the water is bad even less.  I am sure that right now there is no better solution and that a unit is worthwhile investment.  If you are thinking of opening a shop in London, or any other hard water area then I beg you to build one into your budget.  If you have an existing shop in an area like this and you haven’t looked into it then I’d suggest doing so strongly – you may already have experienced (several times) what happens when limescale attacks!

In my own experiences (which are relatively limited) I’ve found myself enjoying coffee close to the SCAA’s published specifications (pdf) as used at WBC and the like.  I know other people have had good results at very low TDS levels, but I think the chemistry of the water makes a big difference here.  I’ve struggled with water much below 80ppm (with our coffee) but I’ve had great coffee in places like Oslo that have water around 40ppm (correct me if I am wrong).  This means that there is no hard and fast rule with low TDS water – it is, like everything in life, more nuanced than that.

Where we need to go next with water

We need better understand of how the exact makeup and composition of the water impacts coffee brewing.  So far I have only mentioned Total quantities, and levels of carbonate hardness.  There is typically a lot more in the water, and I haven’t even brought up stuff like pH and its impact yet.  This is because we’re still a little unsure.  Using things like the Langelier Index we get little insights into how water may behave inside our equipment, but not with our coffee.

Where everything really breaks down for me is when people brew coffee at home.  Right now, for domestic consumers of coffee in London, I don’t know what to propose.  Tap water makes all coffee taste generic, boring and unpleasant.  Right now we’re mid Kenya season, but a great coffee from Nyeri brewed with London water just tastes brown and sad.  None of the stunning fruit goodness, that justifies the pricetag, is available to the person who bought the bag – simply because they live in the wrong part of the UK.   Filtered tap water (through a Brita filter or similar) certainly tastes better, but it is mostly just a taste and odour filter and it barely reduces hardness – the TDS remains too high to make truly excellent coffee.

Am I then left to suggest that they buy bottled water?  Should I recommend certain brands, or try to explain how to read the mineral content that they must publish on the side of every bottle?  Do I try and get people to install domestic RO units (which isn’t actually super expensive, but many people rent and may be unwilling to attack their own plumbing without expensive professional assistance)?  Should cafes with high capacity RO units be selling that water very cheaply to go along with the bags of coffee they retail?  (I like this idea – if the bottles can be done in a sensible/sustainable/not really heavy to carry home way).

This is a big problem.  This is not a universal problem, not in the UK, not in Europe, or in the US or the rest of the world – but it effects a massive number of people who drink and enjoy coffee.  We’re not discussing this enough as an industry (despite the best efforts of John and others) and we don’t have a coherent solution.  We can’t stick our heads in the sand on this any more.

There is a discussion hosted on branch here.  I’d love to see people tackle this problem, and offer up some ideas on how we move forward.  (I’m going to try and keep this one on topic, so access may be limited to those who offer some insight in their request)

I know I’ve posted a bunch of stuff about the NBC but I thought I’d write a quick final summary with some thoughts on the event.  This year was my 4th NBC (’06, ’07, ’11 and ’12) and it has been interesting to see the evolution in the event over time (I am by no means a veteran of the NBC).

I remember vividly ’06 and ’07, feeling a mixture of sadness and jealousy that I would never get to be on a team at the NBC.  Back then it was a team focused event and as an observer you got to sneak in and look behind the curtain and get to soak up the same talks.  I think the NBC has changed to cater to what we need as an industry – a forum for discussion, for fun and for learning.  The team competition has definitely receded compared to the talks and tastings.  How this will evolve into next year I don’t know – but I think the NBC is increasing in value every year.  I should probably note that this year felt a little more mature than previous years (a little less silly and messy).  Maybe we’re all getting old…

While I am guilty of this in the past, I should take issue with the fact that many people complain that the NBC is too expensive.  To be fed three meals a day, to be taken around a city, to have access to great talks and tastings and to have access to a great deal of free beer to facilitate conversation – €700 suddenly looks pretty reasonable!  (Next year’s tickets are actually about €650 at the moment too!)

I’m going to post a final talk (and I feel bad for not posting all the talks!) – I think it was my favourite of the three days because it was a quintessential NBC experience.  Tim Wendelboe’s talk was super interesting.  Tonnes of info, engaging and fun to listen to.  Very Wendelboe in style too.  I thoroughly enjoyed it but it was made truly fascinating because we got to cup the coffees he was talking about straight after the lecture, and you could wander up to Tim after and ask a bunch of extra questions.  It was educational, it was interesting, it was tasty and it was fun.  Which is why I will be back next year…

This is one of several talks at NBC this year that I would consider essential viewing for coffee professionals.  Once you understand what Vince is explaining then things make a lot more sense when it comes to many people’s experience with certain brew methods apparently performing better when “underextracting”.  Many, correctly, ignored what the meter was telling them and dialled in by taste – which turns out to have been inline all along.  If this didn’t make sense, it will after this talk:

You can download the slides here, so you can follow along and see the numbers a little more clearly.
Also: I am really looking forward to the iPad app!

I know I only just posted a recent talk, but I discovered the SCAA had uploaded a talk I gave at Symposium this year so I thought it would be fun to post it too.  This talk had to be changed a little bit at the last minute, because I was going to talk about pricing.  This is something that you can’t really do, because trade associations can’t get their members together and encourage them to put up their prices.  This is price fixing, the government doesn’t like this (and Ric Rhinehart goes to jail….)

Price is, of course, a huge part of the discussion and I think a great way to focus decisions (if I had to charge £10 for a cup of coffee…).  Anyway – I hope you enjoy, it is shorter than the NBC talk and a few ideas are common to this talk and others so apologies if you think I’m repeating myself!

Discussion of this post on branch.com