I didn’t expect to find some stages of coffee roasting to produce such unpleasant effects, or flavours in the cup. Just sniffing the cupping bowls was enough to put me off! Hard to describe, and once water hits it is very different to the aromas you’ll get when using the trier during the roast.

I think it is definitely a worthwhile experience. The only word of caution for those thinking about it is to do with grinding raw/barely roasted coffee. It is incredibly tough stuff, and I was glad to have a VTA6 running full speed to drop the coffee into!

I posted about the little experiment online and got an interesting tweet in response. I had a spare moment this evening, so I went upstairs and rebrewed everything to see what the numbers would say.

Each bowl was done at 60g/l and had the same grind and steep time. I then poured each bowl (rather messily I might add) through a dry v60 paper into another bowl to let it cool. (There is a certain joy in making an absolute mess doing this stuff, knowing there is no one to tell you off!)

I then measured each one in the Extract Mojo. A few very important points before we look at the graph. This is based on a single cupping bowl, and a single experiment. There is plenty of room for error here. Secondly – the refractometer measures the liquid’s refractive index. Software is required to convert this to a strength of coffee liquid. That software has not been created to do accurate calculations for green/barely roasted coffee so the data shouldn’t be considered accurate. (This should be considered no more serious than Tim and I experimenting with the K-ONE written up here!)

Also – I spilled a lot!

Even so – we get an interesting line:

Extraction in a cupping bowl versus roast time

I should add that the numbers (in terms of time) are not accurate and the final sample is more than a minute ahead of the one before it, perhaps explaining the leap. First crack is evident in the jump at around 11 minutes (I realise now this is actually 12 minutes as we’re missing a sample from earlier on – apologies!)

I haven’t tried this particular product (Nescafe Green blend), but having done this cupping today I am fairly sure that Nescafe may well have created something even more disgusting than their regular instant coffee. Impressive work….

Cupping is something that occupies a constant pocket of my mind – the process, the purpose, the results and everything in between. Like many people who often fall in love with coffees on the cupping table I also like full immersion brewing a lot. Often that means the french press.

Cupping, as a brew method, seems to break the rules. While the brewing process is likely slowed quite a lot by the break and clean part of the process (the stir at around 4 minutes), there is still ground coffee and water sat together for 30 minutes or so. And at the end of that 30 minutes some coffees taste utterly fantastic.

If you ask most people how they grind for press, compared to cupping, they’ll say coarser. This doesn’t seem to make sense. The main part of the brew is done in a similar time – 4 minutes – and with a press pot we separate the liquid from the grounds pretty early on. How are we going to get a cup as good as the bowl when the grind is coarser and the total brew time shorter.

I wondered if the agitation of the pressing action played a part – and with traditionally brewed press pots I think it does. If you haven’t stirred and scooped the foam off then there is probably lots of ground coffee that suffers some form of percolation as the screen moves it through the liquid coffee to the bottom of the press.

So today I did a little experiment. I brewed two press pots:

The first was brewed as I usually do: 60g/l (in this case it was 24g/400g water), 4 minutes, break and clean, press and then after a minute or so I served/decanted. The grind was a little coarser than cupping (2 steps on our VTA6).

The second I treated like a cupping bowl. Cupping grind, 4 minutes, break and clean and then I left it sitting there for 10 minutes (around the time a cupping bowl starts to get really tasty). When it was time to pour I put the strainer in but didn’t plunge – I just poured it through the mesh.

I then served everyone in the roastery a sample of each in a simple blind tasting. The french press method had a higher acidity, juicier perhaps, but at the expense of some sweetness, balance and mouthfeel. 5 to 1 went with the cupping method.

For those who delight in the details I also finished up by running the numbers. The french press method had squeaked in a little over 16% extraction. The cupping bowl a little over 18%.

There were a few take home lessons:

- We’ve been underextracting most of our french press brews. With good coffee they are pretty tasty, but this needs to be fixed. Our french press grind now matches our cupping grind.
- This test would have been more interesting had I used the same grind for both presspots. I will run that one tomorrow or next week.
- It is really hard to overextract a french press when it comes to brew time. I used to firmly believe in decanting as soon as possible. I can no longer justify that idea.
- The Honduran CoE lot from Cafe Grumpy was tasty despite our mistakes. (Always fun to test with interesting coffees!) I think I’ve said before that very delicious coffees can sometimes remove the incentive to keep experimenting.
- I need to test the effects of agitation through pressing, as most people don’t do the break and clean when drinking coffee at home.
- I need to test the difference between a 4 minute, 5 minute and 6 minute brew/break time.
- French press now might be the ultimate lazy way to make coffee.

I am not particularly ashamed of the phrase “I don’t know” but there comes a point in the day when you’ve said it five or six times and you feel you really ought to do something about it.

The cause of my embarrassed ignorance:  the change in flavour when coffee cools.

The change in a coffee as it cools is familiar to anyone, especially those who’ve cupped a lot.  I think I might have made the rookie error of associating the change with the cupping process too much – the continued extraction, the constant slight agitation of spoons.  I hadn’t really thought much more about it until customers at Penny University started asking and I realised the change was independent of brew method, filtration type (metal, cloth or paper) and common to all coffees.  Clearly something else is going on here.

I understand a few things about how temperature affects taste – the classic example being Coca-Cola.  Cold Coke is (shamefully) delicious.  Warm Coke is too sweet.  The amount of sugar hasn’t changed, merely our tongues capacity to detect it.  Though with coffee it clearly isn’t simple sugars, and one also experiences changes in taste, flavour and mouthfeel.

Perhaps there is something in the books that I own and I may have missed it, or maybe there are some good archived discussions online I haven’t seen.  It just seems like this is something important in coffee that we all talk about, enjoy and appreciate but don’t really understand.

Links, insight, indepth technical explanations, invitations to seminars in exotic locations and casual abuse for my ignorance all welcome!

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!

I had been in coffee well over a year before I really began to develop my vocabulary and descriptive skills, and that is probably more embarrassing as I had done some work in wine beforehand.

What does the coffee professional have access to, that the consumer doesn’t, that allows them to progress so fast?  It isn’t cupping bowls, or spoons.  It isn’t scoresheets, or large amounts of data about where the coffee is from.  It is regular opportunities for comparative tasting.

I know I just said that it wasn’t about cupping bowls and spoons, though most industry tasting is through the cupping process.  I strongly believe that the rituals and practices of cupping and were not created with the primary goal of tasting the coffee better.  Most of cupping’s routine is about searching for potential defect, looking for consistency, and trying to discern as much about the raw material as possible before purchase.  It isn’t a better way to develop your palate.  Where the cupper gains a quiet advantage is by going through a process of focused, conscious tasting.  You can do this at home very easily, though before you begin I’d advise you to watch Tom Owens’ video on Drinking Vs Tasting.  After that it is pretty simple:

1).  Buy two very different coffees. It doesn’t hurt to ask your local roaster/shop for guidance on this.

2).  Buy two small french presses. As small as you can get really.

3).  Brew two small cups of each coffee.  You could obviously do this with bigger presses and bigger cups, but I hate the idea of wasting good coffee or promoting overconsumption.

4).  Let them cool a little bit. It is much easier to discern the flavours when coffee has cooled a little bit.

5).  Start to taste them alternately. Take a couple of sips of one coffee before moving on.  Start to think about how the coffee tastes compared to the other.  Without a point of reference this is incredibly difficult.

6).  Focus on textures first.  To start with focus on things like the mouthfeel of the two coffees.  Does one feel heavier than the other?  Is one sweeter than the other?  Does one have a cleaner acidity than the other?

7).  Don’t read the labels as you taste.  Instead note down a handful of words about each coffee.  When you are done compare what you have to the roaster’s descriptions.  Can you see now what they are trying to communicate about the coffee?

8).  Don’t worry about flavours. ‘Worry’ is the key word here.  Flavours are the most intimidating part of tasting, as well as the most frustrating.  Roasters use flavours not only to describe particular notes – such as “nutty” or “floral” – but also to convey a wide range of sensations.  Describing a coffee as having “ripe apple” notes also communicates expectations of sweetness and acidity. If you do identify individual flavours – great!  Note it down!  If not then don’t worry.  Any words or phrases that describe what you are tasting qualify as being useful – random words or flavours.

Often upon reading the label you’ll have your frustration relieved as you find the word to describe what you tasted that you just couldn’t pull out from the back of your brain.  It suddenly seems so obvious!  This is part of building a coffee specific vocabulary of flavours – aromas and tastes that you initially find out of context in coffee become what I describe as “coffee versions of…”.

I can’t stress enough how important the comparative part of this is.  Tasting one coffee at a time means that you can focus all you want, but without something to compare it too you are working based on your memory of previous coffee which is unfortunately patchy, flawed and innaccurate.

How often should you do this?  Whenever you get the chance and have some time to relax and enjoy coffee.  Soon you’ll find describing coffees gets easier and easier, though this is something even industry veterans still work on.

One final note on comparative tasting:  The context, unfortunately, remains everything.  Even the best coffee tasters in the world – let’s take Cup of Excellence judges as an example – cannot score coffees accurately outside of context.  A jury member might score a coffee in El Salvador 92, then score a coffee in Guatemala 93.  These are not comparable scores, because the context of those scores has changed so much.  Within the individual competitions those scores matter, but outside they don’t.

I’ve really enjoyed the discussion going on after this post.   One comment that stuck in my mind was Aldo’s Fazenda Kaquend COE Vs Maxwell House experiment. It definitely affected some decisions I made when I was choosing coffees to take with me to a public cupping I did in East London as part of a charity fund raiser.

I knew I would have two separate groups, of between 10 and 20 people each time.  I had agreed to do a cupping, rather than a tasting of brewed coffee (which I would prefer to do with the general public usually), because they were paying for a bit more of an experience.

So which coffees to choose?  I ended up taking a pre-ship sample of the Herbazu, a 2008 Costa Rican CoE sample¹, some Takengon, some Tegu AA and some store bought, preground coffee from Panama².

I love watching the public cup.  They don’t know the rules, the etiquette that we tend to abide by in the industry.  They pull faces, they talk a lot, they think out loud about what they are tasting and are easily distracted.

So – what was the reaction?  As they were cupping many people were surprised by the acidity in the coffees.  Some found this, initially uncomrfortable because it was so novel.  The strangest reactions were around the past crop and stale samples.  They didn’t use positive words to describe them (dusty, bitter, cardboard, nothing, flavourless) and yet before the reveal a quick poll showed them to be oddly popular.

As I revealed each coffee I got them to taste them again, to look for the positive attributes and to notice the negative attributes.  I did my best to explain why each key flavour/taste was there (in general terms – high growing altitude, light roasts, terroir, processing).  People agreed that the past crop tasty unpleasant and like wet jute.³

People also agreed that the stale coffee wasn’t very pleasant.  A couple of people seemed borderline outraged at the suggestion that they actually had to grind their coffee just before brewing to get a fresh cup.  I asked if they had a pepper mill.  They said yes.  I asked if they used it and if they considered it worthwhile.  They said they did, and I tried not to flog a dead horse.

When we cupped the coffees with explanations and revelations of what they were the overall preference of the group shifted away from the ‘bad’ coffees – as you would expect.  Nothing particularly surprising in people not wanting to admit they like something that is clearly ‘wrong’.  What remained interesting was the reaction by all involved to the Tegu lot.  Some loved the fruit, and others were almost offended that a coffee dared to taste so little like coffee.

I guess the only thing I can read into it is that we should be careful using the extremely unusual/super premium lots as conversion tools.  At least half the time they’ll probably reinforce the consumer’s original preference for stale, preground past crop.  In hindsight I wished I could have brought something very simple, very clean and sweet to put on the table.

1. I am not going to say which one, in case the roaster is still selling it!
2. Again, I am not going to say exactly who/where because I am not out to tarnish anyone’s name
3. Despite this sample sat in ziplock bag for 12 months – I can’t help but wonder what term we would use instead of baggy if coffee had never been shipped in jute – a subject for another post perhaps

As always the paricipants there were way smarter than me and offered several interesting options. I dropped into the thread that this was part of my idea of a grand unified theory of espresso, and subsequently a few people mailed and pm’d me asking what on earth I was talking about and what density had to do with it.

Well, I should probably explain what I have been thinking. ²

When approaching a coffee and brewing it using an espresso machine you are often searching for an ‘ideal’ recipe for that coffee.  For many of us knowing as much about that coffee as possible often helps make intuitive judgements about things like dose and brew temp.  If I get my science wrong then please, please shoot me down. ³

One of the things that broke my head about roasting early on was the discovery that the longer/darker you roast the less potential solubles you have.  This may seem obvious to some but it always felt like the roasting process created many new flavours but one must distinguish between flavours and solubles.  This explains why instant coffee is roasting very fast and relatively light – they are interested in a percentage yield so the more solubles the better, regardless of taste.

Knowing this then made something I had experienced make apparent sense – darker roasts generally prefer higher doses, because you need more coffee to get more solubles to get a nice, thick and pleasant espresso.  But after a moments thought it didn’t make sense.  This would mean that you would get a thicker, heavier cup with a higher TDS measurement from lighter roasts but lighter roasts generally produced delicious but lighter bodied cups.  What nudged me towards density was how we approach very high grown coffees versus lower grown coffees.

Higher grown coffees (and let me make a broad sweeping generalisation here) have a much higher acidity than their lower grown brethren.  When brewed as espresso they can easily yield extremely acidic and unbalanced cups and, taking unbalanced and pronounced acidity as a sign of underextraction, I found that higher brewing temperatures helped to produce a more balanced cup.

What do lighter roasts and high grown coffees have in common:  higher densities.  Though there was more to extract (in theory) you had to work a lot harder to do it.  Therefore reducing the dose of a lighter roast/higher grown coffee gave you a higher ratio of water/energy to coffee to help extract a tasty cup.  (I often think of heat energy as some sort of currency, with which you can buy solubles.  The more heat, the more you extract/purchase.)

This is all well and good for convenient examples – high grown, light roasts versus low grown darker roasts.  Give me a clean prepped coffee from relatively low altitudes in Brasil, roast it into 2nd and I will likely be dosing quite high and not brewing too hot.  I’ll certainly be dosing it very different from how I might brew a lot of Aricha as a straight shot.

But what about a light roast of a low grown coffee, or a dark roast of something grown super high up?  This is what lead me to wanting to find a way to measure and compare the densities of coffee beans to see if there was correlation between the density of the end product and an ideal brew temperture of particularly effective dose.

So – if I have had such a good idea why don’t I do all the research and then publish it all at the end of it and try and stamp it “Hoffmann’s theory” or something equally absurd? (Apart from the fact that it is absurd).  Because I want to generate a little discussion about this.  I want people to weigh in and tell me I am being stupid/simplistic and to suggest better ways to test these ideas.  I want to understand espresso better so I can make better tasting drinks and translate coffee’s journey more transparently in the cup. ⁴

I really hope people will offer their opinions on this idea, shoot it down or take it and run with it.  I am going to start doing some basic testing and see what happens.  Lots of little experiments appeal. ⁵

1. There really is no better place on the web for these kinds of questions!
2. Some of this is based on personal preference, some on what seems to be fairly well agreed upon within the community of people who worry a lot about their espresso.
3. There is another post in the works about the value of being wrong and discussing it afterwards – yes, I have a big wrongness to confess to…..
4. I know this is a wordy post and all, and I would have put some nice photos in but my camera is dead
5. For example – if I roast two coffees til their densities match – will they grind the same, and at the same dose will they extract the same?  Would they be ideal, therefore, to blend together to get the most out of each of them.  This probably shouldn’t be a footnote, but it is.  So there.

In recent conversations someone has said to me that they love a certain coffee, but not first thing in the morning.  Maybe mid-afternoon instead.  Initially I didn’t get it.  My very narrow mind assumed that good coffee was good coffee and that the rotation of the earth in relation to the sun shouldn’t have too much impact on how that coffee, my tongue and my brain all got along.

I remember doing an espresso tasting for a wine magazine a year or two ago now.  We tasted the espressos blind – the coffees rushed quickly into our room from the roasters themselves, set up on their own machines just outside the door.  I was excited to taste coffees like this, with other professional tasters and I remember my frustration when the journalist kept asking which espresso we had tasted would go best with chocolate cake, or would be best after dinner.  “This is irrelevant!” I thought, “I want to talk about how these espressos taste!  I want to talk about which come from clean, tasty green coffees, about which have been carefully and intelligently roasted.”  Except they weren’t interested in that.

I’ve written before that sometimes independent cafes are so desperate to be nothing like the chains they despise that they occasionally miss out on some of the smarter ideas and concepts that the chains use very effectively – having spent a lot of time and money researching and developing them.  I know a lot of us in the coffee industry are acutely aware that we drink coffee with a slightly different mindset to most consumers, and that we buy coffees in a different way too.

Does it devalue a great single varietal, single estate coffee to say that is great with breakfast?  If we say that it is a great morning cup are we missing a chance to say that it is an heirloom bourbon, a honey process coffee, part of only a 10 bag lot or that it has really nice red apple and red grape flavours in it?  Which is the most important piece of information to most consumers?  How are they going to enjoy that bag of coffee?  I’ve talked before about how the size of the promise we make is linked to the speed we build up trust with the consumer, but what about when we lose control of how the coffee is brewed?

I have become aware recently that I often talk about coffees in a different way, based on my own choices.  There are some coffees that almost require a little intellectual engagement – they are challenging and interesting and worthy of discussion.  There are also coffees that I drink when I don’t want to think about it, I just want to be satisfied and have a simple delicious cup. ²  Instead of talking about morning coffees – is there any value in talking more about why a coffee might be appreciated in the morning, to emphasize the tasting/sensory part more than the ritual part?

Last of all – what is your favourite coffee to drink around lunchtime and why?

1. That still does make me angry, and a bit frustrated.  It is probably the most common misconception – that the coffee itself has something to do with the strength of the cup.
2. We’ve touched on chuggability before…

You, the consumers, are to blame.¹

Now you certainly can’t take all the blame but consumers have an enormous power over the people making the coffee.  After all – you’re paying for it.  You are staggeringly tolerant of incredibly poor product.  You can do something very simple that would have a huge effect on the quality of coffee served:  when it is bad – take it back.

I’ve spoken to a rich mixture of cafe owners in my few years in the coffee industry, and if we look just at those who serve terrible coffee they all had one thing in common:  they didn’t know.

Worse still they thought that they did a great job, not because they tasted it and found it delicious but because (and to quote them) “not one of my customers has ever complained.”

This is probably true, most people don’t complain.  But what would happen if they did?  Initially not that much.  I’ve sent coffee back, they’ve remade it and it was just as awful.  I sent it back again.  If just one person does it then a business can shrug it off.  Now imagine if a dozen people a day complained.  The business would have their coffee supplier out very quickly – they’d re-examine what their raw materials, their machinery, their production skills.  The might change supplier, they might get some more training.  They’d be worried and they’d turn their energies and their focus onto serving drinks that made their customers genuinely happy.

I am not suggesting that you begin to bully your local cafe into doing exactly what you want, but sending back a terrible coffee is never a waste of time.  Businesses are listening very carefully right now and it may turn out to be in both of your interests.

My final point in all this is that you only earn the right to criticism when you take the time and effort to compliment good work and great drinks.  Let those businesses know – it really does make one’s day!

1. I ought to make it clear at this point that obviously consumers are not really to blame, but to start a discussion about the power of the consumer and also – heaven forbid – have a little fun with this topic!

However I was also due to give a lecture/seminar at the Caffe Culture trade show right at the time I was now scheduled to cup. I asked for 5 minutes delay at the start of the table and just went for it. I think I did my table in 2 and a half minutes then ran off to go and start my seminar leaving someone else to do my reveal. A little while later I got another knock on the seminar door letting me know I was in the final and could I possibly pop out and cup quickly. Stephen kindly took over for 5 minutes as I breathlessly jogged across to the stage, I cupped as quickly as I could (2:26 I think) and then ran back to the seminar. I was very pleased to receive another knock on the door 5 minutes later to let me know I had won! Woo and yay! I shall now be taking on Stephen (and trying to scupper him the night before with a good curry – any info on good curry in Copenhagen appreciated) and being nervous tasting coffee with lots of other lovely people next month.

If I find any photos I will put them up. No trophy for the cabinet, but a certificate and someone to pay my airfare to the WBC which is very nice. Thanks to everyone involved – I will perhaps write up Caffe Culture at some point too.