It would be really good, when talking about how we are brewing espresso amongst professionals, to start by talking about the weight of the espresso.  We need to stop using volume.  It is useless. Utterly useless.  Saying 1.5oz is like saying “about a basket full of coffee”.  It gets me in the vague ballpark, but it doesn’t really help if I am trying to dial a coffee in.

I’ve been really enjoying the reviews of various blends over on Home Barista, but I’d have really loved to know how much people’s great/amazings shots weighed (especially with Vivace’s Dolce where unusual crema volume is reported) – it would have made the reviews a lot more interesting and transparent.  I am sure it would also have been useful for people following along with those coffees and similar machines at home.

I know Andy Schecter posted about this on Portafilter less than two months ago – and now I just sound like a broken, whining, complaining record.  But weighing espresso is just so useful.

Alright.  That was it, no more posts about it.  This was the last (hopeful!) try.  We shall now return to normal service….

UPDATE: It was in error that I used the Home Barista thread as an example as some of the reviewers were indeed using both mass and brew ratios.  Apologies!

I’d love to know which are your favourites for drinking from (rather than collectable favourites) and why.

Related links:

Gwilym’s WBC Performance

The internet is full of information, though it is also full of keyboard heroes, and has something of an issue with its signal to noise ratio.  Identifying who is a useful purveyor of information is tricky and, while there is growing use of indicators in forums, often it is he who shouts loudest that wins.

I started blogging to chart my own learning, and to share what I found out with others.  Sometimes this information was very useful, and sometimes it really wasn’t.  With the videocasts the idea was to share techniques that people could use at home that would be repeatable and help them make better coffee.  It was argued (quite correctly) that my Chemex technique was flawed – that the top of the cone was likely underextracted compared to the coffee at the bottom of the cone.

I was wrong, and this was a good thing – it was useful because I learned and hopefully others reading too. ¹

It could be said (and it was) that I shouldn’t abuse my position and ‘release’ techniques that hadn’t been completely tested, because I could (in theory) quickly spread misinformation. ² While I saw the point I couldn’t help but feel that if I had to reach some sort of perfection then I would never ever get there on any technique.  I don’t think we’ll ever reach close to perfection.  If I am brewing coffee in ten, or even five, years time the same way I am today I have failed as a professional or we have failed as industry.

Good scientific method is about throwing an idea out there to find out what is wrong.  The internet is a great way to communicate ideas, to spread them.  Being wrong is a very important step in learning and needs to happen regularly.  I am sure each and every one of us is appalled by something we used to do differently even a couple of years ago.

If you say you have the perfect technique – I don’t believe you.  If you say you have the perfect espresso blend – you’re going to look stupid very soon.

Distrust those with all the answers.

Test other people’s ideas and techniques.

If you disagree then throw your opinion into the mix.  If you agree then do so too.

Don’t take what I say, or what any other (coffee) blogger says at face value because I/we/they are going to be wrong. Often. And that is ok.  You only look a fool when you are wrong but refuse to accept it.

1. Because it was aimed at home brewing I had been trying to come up with a technique that could be done without special equipment – I am sure there are more chemex’s in homes than pouring kettles.  I hadn’t meant to direct the method at the industry.  I really don’t want this to sound like an excuse, though it probably does already.
2. I should be clear in pointing out that selling information does change all this a little

1.  My initial offset opinion could be wrong, by about 0.5C closer to display. This doesn’t affect findings on stability or repeatability – it is just numbers.

2.  I will brew coffee in the next video.

3.  The video isn’t 13:20 long, it is about 7 minutes.  No idea why vimeo thinks differently!

Videocast #5 – Introduction to the Uber Boiler from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

Marco have built us a prototype of a great water boiler. This is a quick intro into what it can do, and why they built it for us.

For more info go to http://www.marco.ie/uberproject

I have been extremely lucky in the last few years when it comes to travel. I’ve sat in many different cafes and coffee houses around the world and had a varied set of experiences therein.

By and large the cafe experience in England is disappointing. I am not talking about the small number of quality focused cafes in and out of London, and I am not picking on anyone in particular, but there is something a bit depressing about sitting down in the average independent cafe.

First and foremost amongst my gripes is the lack of personality in many independent businesses. It seems that in an effort to compete with the chains and to please everyone many cafe owners consider injecting a little personality a bad thing. So much samey furniture, the same old display fridges, and a clear fawning devotion to all the worst bits of the chain cafes.

Forgive a brief tangent here but I also have to vent my frustration at how independent cafes refuse to take the good bits from the chains. We see the same absurd drink sizes, slavish pricematching (or just 10p cheaper!) but we don’t see the adoption of the clever things the chains do. Starbucks know how to move people. They know how to move a lot of people through a queue, how to quietly upsell them every step of the way, how to use that queue to get the most exposure to their merchandising.

Sadly most architects and designers don’t know how to move a queue. They design aesthetically pleasing bars, that are awful to work behind or to patronise. The amount of machines sat cosily in recessed spaces depress me, because I know at some point someone is going to need to get access into those side panels and that engineer is going to have an irritating day.

I think many businesses feel very accountable to “the consumer” – a mythical everyman customer. I feel quite strongly that you can’t have every customer, so you should go after the ones you want and the ones that appreciate what you do. When visiting Ritual last year we were sat down in the middle of cafe, Girl Talk was playing on the sound system pretty loud, the place was noisy and crowded and there are lots of people wouldn’t enjoy that experience but it was clear that I was one of many who did. It is very hard to feel possessive and loyal to a place without personality. When people find somewhere they connect with they get attached and fiercely loyal – it comes through quite clearly in Tim Styles’ short review of Leila’s.

The coffee served is always going to matter a great deal to me, but if I am going to go out and to sit somewhere to drink it then there has to be more. I want honest, interesting detail. I love the cups hanging on the copper tubing that weight the door closed at Flat White, or the little record player (and splendid choice of records) at Taste of Bitter Love, or the strange and unusual crayon markings adorning the cups takeout cups at Gwilym’s on Sundays at Columbia road. Genuine little touches that give away a little bit about the people behind the business or behind the bar.

I am not saying the coffee doesn’t matter – or that the coffee isn’t enough to be successful, but in my ideal future London is full of interesting, fun places to go and be that just happen to serve awesome cups of coffee.

Square Mile Coffee Roasters takes its name in part from a time when London had a coffee culture – one of the strongest in the world, and in what is now the financial heart of London there were hundreds upon hundreds of coffee houses that would morph and evolve into different businesses and exert many and varied effects on a cross section of culture and commerce.

What is English coffee culture now? Sadly it is one of two things:

1). A semi apologetic, continued embrace of instant coffee. We managed to move past most freeze dried food (though I know some people have a weird fondness for Smash!) The thing is we all know it is bad, as a nation we joke about it and then get away with it by playing the anti-snobbery card.

2). An embrace of Americanised Italian coffee retail – chains dominate our high street (in all areas of retail) and we are served faux-Italian coffee drinks in convenient (for the retailer) portions.

All of this is very negative, and this isn’t a negative post. It really is a post with a hypothetical question:

What would I wish English coffee culture to be like ten years from now? What would be its defining qualities that distinguish it from other strong coffee cultures?

This is a wish list remember, and we can discuss how to get there afterwards. If I were treat English coffee culture as a blank canvas then I think there are a few priorities:

Traceability – people understand what they are drinking, and understand the factors influencing their choice. I really have no issue with labels like Fair Trade as long as the consumer understandings what the label means. More than that I wish people would want to know exactly where and how the coffee was grown.

Preference – people making concious and informed choices about their coffee, based on an understanding of the range of tastes, flavours and possibilities within the spectrum of coffee. This is just a long way of saying: death to the phrase “coffee is just coffee.”

Seasonality – this is a growing movement in food, and I hope coffee gets the opportunity to be included and swept along with other seasonal products. There is no downside to people understanding and embracing seasonality, enjoying fresh crops for those months where they really do taste fresh.

A strong base of brewed coffee – right now espresso drinks are the launching pad to getting people into coffee. Brewed coffee just isn’t as sexy as espresso, but I think a little coffee grinder and a french press in every home doesn’t involve a huge spend but would re-ignite people’s fondness for ritual and make coffee more accessable (more on this very important topic in a paragraph or two). Right now a lot of espresso machines are going into people’s home and the resentment of the process and the spend is just another reason to justify digging out the Nescafe. I don’t want to get rid of espresso, I just want it to be another weapon in the arsenal of coffee brewing. Espresso shouldn’t be the only method associated with quality.

These are all fine ideas but where is the roadmap to get there. It all comes down to one word: accessability. Right now the hardest thing to overcome isn’t monetary – we aren’t very precise spenders, despite the credit crunch and all – but we are terrified of appearing to be snobbish about anything. Snobbery has a terrible name. How the idea of not wanting to accept something below standard, something simply not good enough got a bad reputation I don’t know, but it certainly did. I am a snob. I don’t want to drink something that tastes bad. I don’t want to eat something that tastes bad and will probably hasten my demise (I am looking at you Ronald McD.). Yes, anti-snobbery is also linked in to anti-intelluctualism which dogs many cultures (but not all). I don’t really understand how knowledge and understanding aren’t desirable but many aspects of our cultures do really tell us this is the case. Maybe this is just the little bullied geek in me talking, but ironically it just seems a very stupid way to go about things.

Essentially we need to make it ok to love coffee, the way it is sort of ok to love wine, or beer (but not real Ale, we are still suspicious of them), or great food or cinema. I don’t think the super premium stuff is the way to do that, though it could certainly be a tool. The problem with the super premium lots of coffee is that because of the price it gets special treatment, exclusive treatment and it is very easy to dismiss as coffee for odd-ball enthusiasts. Exlusive by its very definition is not where I want to go.

That doesn’t mean we don’t need quality coffee – we need coffees that show distinct characteristics, often (but not always) indicicative of their geography and process and we need to roast and serve them as transparently as possible. We need to get people to fall in love with the product and not just the business that serve retails/serves it because if that business closes it must leave behind coffee aware and coffee thirsty consumers who still want to drink coffee, not just brand-x coffee. (though that doesn’t make that much sense for those of us starting up brand-x coffee!)

I really wanted to write this article as a roadmap for us, as well as (hopefully) a jumping off point for debate. Thoughts are welcome in the comments.