For me this talk was a moment of crystalisation about how I feel about coffee right now, and what I want to focus a lot of my energy on.  I had initially planned to talk about how quality focused businesses were doing well right now, but in the process of writing the talk that seemed to shift.  I should add a final caveat to this by saying that I do love making and drinking espresso.

My talk was titled “How the coffee industry lost the public’s trust, and how good coffee can win it back again.”

My feelings about espresso changed dramatically around the time I first experienced coffee in Italy.  A few things struck me initially – the coffee was prepared reasonably well, it wasn’t astonishing or delicious and it was cheap.  I would later learn that the price of espresso to be consumed at the bar is regulated and never more than €1.  When I first made espresso for Italians I was initially confused by the fact that they never asked for espresso, they just asked for coffee.  Non-specific, without customisation – just coffee.

Like many people I had held a fairly romantic notion of espresso in Italy.  This was swept away and replaced by disappointment.  This has since given way to respect.  I think what changed my mind was a little perspective, and a better understanding of espresso’s history. ¹

This poster is probably familiar to everyone in coffee.  For me it summarizes pre-1948 espresso.  The innovation that espresso offered at this point was speed.  Suddenly a cup of coffee could be brewed very quickly.  So quickly, in fact, that you could grab a cup whilst hanging out of the side of a moving train.  The cups of coffee are full to the brim, and have not even the vaguest whisp of crema upon them.  This was nothing like espresso as we know it.  This was like having a big tank of water with which to make multiple moka pots.

Then of course we have post WWII espresso, we have Achille Gaggia’s espresso machine and we have the first mentions of crema.  Again – at this stage espresso didn’t suddenly become perfect little 25ml shots, full of thick dense crema.  The real revelation for me about this period was an almost throwaway sentence in one of Kenneth Davids books on coffee.  Post WWII Italy was not an economically strong place.  It is unlikely that the coffees bought during this time, during the birth of espresso’s tradition as we know it, were anything other than cheap and readily available.  It is no great surprise that naturally processed coffees from Brazil and robusta became the bedrock of the traditional espresso blend but we’d do well not to assume they were chosen because they tasted the best.  Espresso is pretty good way to brew these coffees.

The point that I am slowly working towards is that for all the romance, history and tradition, espresso is not special.  It is not luxury.  It is not gourmet.  It is just a way to brew a small, strong cup of coffee.

That of course changed, and in no small part thanks to Howard Schulz.  It is worth noting that in any description of his epiphany moment in Italy, where he saw a barista craft both an espresso and a cappuccino in a convivial and charming manner, does he describe being blown away by the coffee.  It was the experience that stuck with him, and the experience he thought he could sell. ²

He was, of course, quite right.  He could sell the experience, he could package it up and replicate it almost exactly across the world.  I have no idea how many different stores they have worldwide, but with 700 in the UK it is hard to argue with him.  However we did something else as part of this process.  We made espresso expensive.

Let’s say a single espresso in London costs £1.50, which is a little high but not by any means unusual.  Assuming it is a 25ml shot that works out at 6p/ml.

If you were to go to a pub and buy a pint of espresso it would cost you £34.08.  Or you bought a wine bottle of espresso it would cost £45.  That is a phenomenal amount of money.  Think about the drinks you can buy for that sort of price.  They are either extremely delicious or extremely alcoholic.

The problem is that a price tag like this is a pretty hefty promise.  Selling an espresso for this much implies that the experience will be of equal value.  Sip for sip it should be as satisfying as a great champagne.  The problem is that in this country, in London, in the vast majority of businesses – it isn’t.

Charging this much and delivering something so awful as the average high street espresso destroys any trust between the coffee industry and the general public.  This kind of price/experience discrepancy makes people feel stupid.  It makes them resentful.  It turns them into the kind of people that get very angry and leave vicious and dismissive comments at the bottom of news stories about speciality coffee posted online.  We’ve all seen those comments online, globally I might add, that follow a news story about speciality coffee.  Angry, bitter comments about what a waste of time and money this ‘fancy’ coffee is, that it is nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes and that coffee is just coffee.  These opinions come from specific experiences, we – the coffee industry – have created some very angry consumers.

As soon as the economy started to dip there were a glut of articles on ways to live more frugally, how to strip unnecessary spending from your day to day habits.  In every single list was coffee.  By and large lattes on the high street are overpriced, they are worth cutting out of the budget.  The frustration is that they don’t have to be. ³  I wouldn’t advise dropping the coffee from your routine, I would advise finding a place that makes one that is worth the money.

Yet still the industry persists in telling us that espresso is better.  At the Allegra talk I listened to to Rebecca Hemsley, the head of coffee for Pret A Manger, talk about how they offer (for the price conscious) a cup of filter coffee for 99p.  She added that they weren’t cutting corners – they used the same blend as they do for their espresso.  I should add that a single espresso at Pret is £1.25.  What message does that send to the consumer?  How does that affect their expectations of both the espresso and the filter coffee?

So I’ve written quite a lot already about espresso, and haven’t really gotten onto the subject of brewed coffee.  At this point in the talk I began brewing a small press of coffee.  I wanted to talk about where I thought coffee could go.  In the first talk of the day Darcy Willson-Rymer, the MD of Starbucks UK, had described value as being a combination of price, product and value.  I quite liked this, and say what you like about Starbucks but they’ve cleared managed to price their experience right for it to be the success it is. ⁴

I chose a coffee to brew that had very distinct and interesting characteristics.  I talked about where the coffee was from, and how it had gotten to the UK.  I described the coffee as having strong notes of blackcurrant, cherry and blueberry.  For me this makes an obvious promise, whereas a price makes a slightly less direct one.  A promise like this is a fairly big one but they pay off is also potentially huge.  We all have a salesman in our life that we completely trust.  They might not be an obvious salesman – they could be a bartender, a waiter, a sommelier or someone who sells stationary.  We trust their judgement, and we are loyal to them.  That trust was gained through making promises and keeping them.  Making a promise like this with a cup of coffee was what pushed us to work with Marco on the Uber Boiler but that is a slightly different topic.

As the coffee finished brewing I explained how much I’d like to sell it for a cup:  £3.  This wasn’t because it was vac-packed, or because it was airfreighted, or because it came in a nice bag with a nice logo.  If you like coffee, then I think that that combination of price, product and experience is good value for money.  Buying and drinking this cup of coffee is worth every penny.  I offered that one 8oz press to the audience for sale, and I am very grateful (and was somewhat relieved at the time) to both Darcy and Louie Salvone for paying £5 each (to charity) to split the press between them.

Brewed coffee is capable of such flexibility, such a range of experiences – from the satisfying, to the interesting, to the exciting, to the downright weird – that I think it is the most overlooked and underestimated weapon in the arsenal of those of us trying to build consumption of great coffee.  I am not saying it is better than espresso, but I do think a great cup of brewed coffee is less elusive than a great espresso.

Most operators believe espresso is somehow better than brewed coffee, and that brewed coffee is a second class experience that is suitable only for bulk brewing the nasty, weak coffee they serve at events where people aren’t paying for coffee.  Restauranteurs insist on having espresso machines even though the flow of a restaurant and its layout make serving great espresso virtually impossible even if the brewing is impeccable.

So I should wrap this up by saying that in the next year or two the proliferation of great brewed coffee, ideally by the cup, is a big goal for me – both personally and professionally.  If you are reading this and you can help then I really hope you do because I think everybody, from grower to consumer, wins.

1. Though I should say that my espresso history is far from authoratative!
2. Can I just take a moment to have a quick rant about the constant use of the word ‘theatre’ around espresso.  Theatre is entertaining, but there are only so many performances of the same thing that I am prepared to sit through and pay for.  If you have bought a commercial espresso machine mainly because of the theatre then your business may be in for some difficult months ahead.
3. That said, a large part of me is enjoying a market with more value focused, quality conscious spenders.
4. I am aware that is a childish and snarky dig at their product, but the whole point of this post is about serving great coffee which I don’t think they do.

I am going to start with trust.  This might seem an abstract word, but I hope at the end of this it will earn its place as a fitting title.  What I really want to talk about is the state of relations between the average consumer and the average cafe.  In my eyes we have, by and large, lost the trust of the consumer.

To start with I want to use the example of restaurants:  Let’s put you in the situation of being stranded in a strange town, full of independent restaurants and you are very hungry.  You scan the menus outside of three or four places and from this you will make some judgments on those businesses.  Two key factors here will influence your judgement – what dishes they serve and their price.

The first is really quite obvious – from the dishes you’ll know whether to expect home cooking or whether to expect Michelin level cuisine.  However this won’t really give you a very strong indicator of the quality compared to the prices.

Now let’s skip to the end of the meal.  You chose the place with the fancy cooking, and you’ve racked up quite a bill.  What’s more the food wasn’t very good.  In fact it was terrible.  How do you feel?  Angry?  Taken advantage of?  Disappointed?  Betrayed?

When restaurants do this they completely lose our trust – we’ll likely never spend any money with them again, and probably go out of our way to make sure family and friends don’t fall into that trap.

Hopefully you can see where I am going with this – think about the coffee you’ve bought in the past, and the prices you’ve paid.  How often has the price been correctly tied to the quality?  How often have you had your trust abused?  I am sure I am not alone in being extremely distrustful of most places selling coffee (globally I might add).

If you own a cafe then ask yourself if your customers trust you.  I mean really trust you.  If a regular came in and you had an unusual (but excellent) coffee in your grinder, or to drink as a french press brew, would they buy it on your recommendation?  If you found a coffee you thought was worth £5 a cup, could you sell it to them?

The advantages of trust are obvious – increased loyalty, increased customer spend, easier ethical/helpful upselling and a win/win for you and your customer.

I’ll aim to continue this next week…..

Clover at Square Mile HQ

The internet has been all a flutter with the news that Starbucks have acquired Coffee Equipment Company who make the Clover. It is so ubiquitous that I am not even going to link to any sort of articles about. Tempting as it is to post smugly about one of my five predictions sort of coming true something else is on my mind.

It seems that Starbucks has intentions of withdrawing the machine from the market and retaining complete control. Clover currently pledge on their website that all machines currently deployed will be supported.

I had come back from the States intent on spending some quality time with the machine and trying to get a better understanding of it before I had to give it back or buy it. I like the fact that you have control and repeatability in one cup brewing in a way that is currently unrivaled (be interesting to see how Starbucks use their ownership of the Clover patents to keep other manufacturers out of the market). However I’ve had quite a lot of coffee from it, and I wasn’t sure if I didn’t like the cups I didn’t like because of the brewer or the way it was being used. Hence wanting to get to grips with it in a bigger way.

Still – I need to think more on whether I want it. I don’t think the fact that Starbucks own it now devalues it for me. The people who have them now (approx 300 machines I think) are the only people outside of Starbucks with access to this technology. I was always against selling the brewer above the coffee, but if the brewer can do what people feel it can then it is an undoubtedly a great tool.

However the worries about support (machinery is machinery after all) are still pressing, and seeing a big company devalue a device and lower expectations and pricing of by the cup brewing is also a concern. That said – I think I would be very surprised if Clover rolled out with the 1s model as is. With that whole team/company on board I expect to see a machine based on the 1s designed much more specifically for Starbucks. (do you smell another prediction?)

I suppose that I will I could just ignore all the news/media/hype/hate and decide if it brews coffee like I’d like to present coffee. Though I suspect that the ongoing disconnection from Clover/CoEqCo will remain the largest obstacle.

The Wet Process

The primary goal of the wet process is to remove the sticky layer of mucilage that surrounds the beans and parchment before the coffee is dried. The practise stems from a simple goal of improved consistency and reduced defects in a lot. When this layer is removed there is a lowered chance of problems and flaws in the coffee. However it should be made clear that this does not mean that it will be of a higher quality as that is both subjective and also needs to be balanced by what characteristics are desired from the coffee. As the process uses up a lot of water it is only the higher grades of cherries that go through this process – in terms of ripeness or varietal.

There isn’t much on the history of the wet process available. The earliest printed source I have is Ukers, and the process of loosening the bean from its “closely adhering saccharine coat” is documented in reasonable detail.¹ I’ve heard various different things about its origin, and Costa Rica is the most commonly quoted country to me (though I currently have nothing solid to back this up).

A coffee bean after pulping, still coated in the mucilage

The mucilage layer is primarily carbohydrates – a variety of simple and complex, long chain sugars² , and is between 0.5mm to 2mm thick³. The washing process, broadly speaking, is considered complete once the layer easily comes free from the parchment. The simplest test is to take some of the beans and rub them – if they retain a slimy texture then they are not ready, though if the mucilage easily comes free in the hand then they are ready to be removed, rinsed and dried.

The carbohydrates that we want to break down are celluloses keeping the cell walls together, the most common of these in coffee is also found in many other fruits: Pectins.

Pectins

The Structure of Pectin

The key to successful fermentation of coffee is balance of the methods of breaking the pectin down: bacteria and yeasts.

Bacteria can produce enzymes like pectinase and pectase that are specific biological scissors that break the pectin down. However some research done claims that the most commonly found bacteria in the process do not produce the right kind of enzymes to effectively break down the mucilage. ⁴

Yeasts break down the pectins too, but the byproducts of those reactions are typically ethanol and lactic acid. In the right conditions the balance is right and the mucilage is broken down quickly with no negative characteristics being developed.

The source of the enzymes is even more of a mixture than that – there are plenty already within the cells of the fruit. These enzymes are gradually softening the fruit as it ripens. Once the bean is pulped they become much more active, due to the oxygen and the presence of other bacteria.

Of the three sources of enzymes it is important to note that yeasts prefer oxygen free conditions, whilst the bacteria are more effective with oxygen around. For this reason it is important not to let water tanks stagnate, as then the yeasts take over causing negative flavours. Different types of fermentation – open, water covered or a mixture – will have a different balance of reactions for this reason, creating a very different cup profile.

Once pectin breaks up, in an environment with sufficient calcium it can start to gel – this is useful if you are making jam for example. This also explains a rather amusing test of fermentation done in some parts of Costa Rica – a stick is put upright into the tank and if it stays upright (held by the gelatinous water) then the fermentation is done.

There are various factors that affect the balance and speed of fermentation:

Temperature

This is the key variable in fermentation, and is the key variable dictating the time it takes. Enzymatic reactions are directly linked to temperature so at higher altitudes the process takes longer as the ambient temperature is usually lower. To increase the speed of fermentation it is possible to preheat the water in various ways before the cherries arrive at the station to be pulped, but I am not sure how common this is.

Acidity and pH

Again sources here seem to disagree about whether pH should be close to neutral or quite acidic⁵”. It can often get down to a pH of 4.5 towards the end of fermentation – it is worth noting here again the pH is a logarithmic scale so a pH of 5 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 6, and 100 times more acidic than a pH of 7. At lower pH the yeasts do better than the bacteria, though I’ve read that low pH can stall a fermentation.
Work was done in Nicaragua on monitoring pH to see if it was an accurate predictor/indicator of the state of fermentation⁶ The sharp drop to around ph 4.5 near the end of the fermentation was also matched by an increase in lactic acid and ethanol implying that the yeasts had taken over the bulk of the breakdown of the carbohydrates at this point, though it seems unlikely that they were the cause. More likely the products created by the bacterial and natural enzymes caused a drop in pH and also slowed down their own reactions.

pH during fermentation in Nicaragua

There aren’t many other studies widely published using pH as a tracker, though I’d be interested to see more.

Part 2 will cover more about specific cup qualities linked to the wet process, including the generation of off flavours like vinegar and onion. Any questions, corrections or things that don’t make sense then please leave a comment (I lost a few of my original papers since I started the original paper).

1. Ukers, “All about Coffee”, The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935
2. Redgwell & Fischer,”Coffee Carbohydrates“
3. Illy & Viani, “Espresso Coffee, The Science of Quality”, Elsevier, 2005
4. Sylvie Avallone, Jean M Brillouet, Bernard Guyot, Eugenia Olguin, Joseph P Guiraud (2002),”Involvement of pectolytic micro-organisms in coffee fermentation”, International Journal of Food Science & Technology 37
5. Ken Calvert, “The Microbiology of Coffee Processing
6. Susan C. Jackels, Charles F. Jackels (2005), “Characterization of the Coffee Mucilage Fermentation Process Using Chemical Indicators: A Field Study in Nicaragua”, Journal of Food Science 70 (5), C321–C325