Three (+) Waves, Part 2

Coffee 201

Three (+) Waves, Part 2

This article references content from The 5 Waves of Coffee by Brodie Vissers, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Peet’s: Why Craft Coffee Is Consolidating and How We Got To Third Wave Coffee by Eater, and “Nestlé Targets High-End Coffee…” from the New York Times.

OVERVIEW

We talked about the “three waves of coffee” in the last Coffee 201. But things don’t stay static. As we look out to the horizon, we see that new movements are coming (and already here) but that there is much debate about what constitutes the “next wave” in coffee. 

Fourth and Fifth Waves?

In the Brodie Vissers video mentioned above, he refers (somewhat cautiously) to a Fourth and a Fifth wave. There’s been talk of these since the Third Wave began to gain traction, likely in part because people want to feel unique and different once something they love “goes mainstream.” Doing a quick google search about Fourth Wave Coffee shows you a chorus of voices defining the Fourth Wave, all of them in completely different ways. Fourth Wave is about scalability and accessibility. Fourth Wave is about environmental consciousness. Fourth Wave is about Coffee as Science. Fourth Wave is about The Home Barista. Fourth Wave is about Cold Brew. Fourth Wave is about being EVEN MORE ARTISANAL. 

All the videos waxing poetic about the Fourth Wave speak to perceived shifts within the Third Wave of coffee, and the question of whether that warrants better descriptions of what we do. Within the scope of this article we’ll focus on three shifts: the commercial success of the original Big Three of Third Wave (and similar shops), the pivot in vocabulary from “Third Wave” to “Specialty Coffee”, and the prevailing strong influence and smart business moves of First and Second Wave powerhouses.

The “Boutique” Chain – The Triumph of Third Wave

Like Starbucks in Seattle, the Big Three started as single shops. That’s not the case now. While still “specialty coffee”, Intelligentsia now has seven coffee bars in major cities across the US. Counter Culture has eight; Stumptown has eleven. Much of this is intertwined with a big change that happened in the mid 2010s, being the acquisition of Stumptown and Intelligentsia by Second Wave pioneer Peets, shortly followed by Stumptown gaining prime shop real estate in the Portland Airport. This was a massive shift that skyrocketed Stumptown (and specialty coffee as an industry) to new heights, and has proved to be a massively successful business move. 

However, as Stumptown grew, they naturally changed from the accessible, home-grown crew to a more corporate, inaccessible, managed tone. The demand for Stumptown beans meant that, eventually, you could buy a bag of Stumptown’s Hair Bender at the grocery store for a lower price than a local coffee shop. Stumptown’s success resulted in a slow but noticeable change in business model.

This wasn’t an isolated event. In 2017, major Third Wave roaster Blue Bottle from Oakland, CA was acquired by Nestlé. Once upon a time, James Freeman, the founder of Blue Bottle absolutely railed against Nestlé by name, saying there was “a special place in hell” for single-use coffee pods: 

“Pod coffee brands like K-Cup and Nespresso have appropriated the language and symbolism of exclusivity without any corresponding craft or deliciousness.” – The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee

Now, Blue Bottle recently announced their signature line of Nespresso single-use pods, defending the quality of the coffee they could make. However, Freeman’s argument against these pods back in 2012 was not just a quality concern, but an ethical concern (Nestlé is a company regularly in the news for the kind of stuff Third Wave is explicitly against). That leads directly to a second shift: away from “Third Wave Coffee” as an ethos, towards “Specialty Coffee” as a quality marker.

“Specialty Coffee” – The Best of the Best

Lately, the dividing line between “Specialty Coffee” and “Third Wave Coffee” has become more evident. I think this recent situation with Blue Bottle and Nestlé demonstrates this well. We see the rising star of specialty coffee drawing the attention of both a large number of consumers and also large businesses. With the Third Wave of coffee having gone mainstream, we hear things like “consumers demand the best” and see ads for increasingly accessible specialty coffee tailored toward affordability, convenience, and quantity.

To give credit where credit is due, there have been massive innovations in coffee production that have allowed them to maintain delicious taste at high production volume. But is that really what Third Wave coffee is about? Is this new Specialty Coffee the same as Third Wave, or has the industry moved on to something new?

Just as Third Wave functioned as a “split” from Second Wave, so it seems that another split has taken place. Those drawn to the hallmarks of Third Wave don’t seem to be finding a place amongst Third Wave’s greatest successes, at least without significant shifts of priorities. After selling Stumptown, founder Duane Sorenson said what he missed most was roasting coffee and working directly with the farms. That’s what made Third Wave unique: a hands-on, personable approach with farmers, shops, customers, and the coffee itself. Sorenson returned to coffee in 2017, opening Puff Coffee, a shop with a conspicuous emphasis on small-batch, micro lots, communality, and the term “itsy bitsy”. It seems like Sorensen is going back to his roots, yet somehow, it comes across as a pivot.

Unbreaking Waves – First and Second Wave Forever

Amidst the seismic shifts and acquisitions in the industry, it’s worth pointing out the somewhat-obvious. Stumptown and Intelligentsia were bought by Peets, a Second Wave company. Blue Bottle was acquired by Nestlé, a First Wave household name. For all of Third Wave’s success, it’s really the First and Second Wave that have come out on top with smart business moves and market-savvy acquisitions. In some ways, it may be appropriate to say that there are no distinct waves anymore, as the three appear to have fused into the new hydra of commerce that is Specialty Coffee.

And, existing as a constant undercurrent beneath all these discussions, it’s important to remember that there are a lot of people who simply don’t buy into the hype of Second and Third Wave. On the consumer side, specialty coffee is expensive, which means that in the eyes of many, it is something for the wealthy or irresponsible (insert a WSJ article about the money millennials could save if they forewent their daily Starbucks). Single origin sourcing and direct trade has done right by many coffee farmers, securing a fair wage for their work, but the flip side of that is a bag of coffee that costs $18, and a latte that costs $7. People like my dad will always buy their whole bean coffee from Costco and make it at home. 

So What’s Next?

If the Fourth (or Fifth) Wave of coffee is scalability and “the business of coffee” – bringing high-end coffee to the masses – then you can make an argument, as Vissers does, that Blue Bottle is ahead of the curve. Partnering with First Wave megalith Nestlé and releasing a line of Nespresso pods developed to have an artisan, high-end taste, made available in the comfort of your home – that’s a masterstroke in unifying multiple strands of coffee into a new whole. But I’m not convinced that it’s Third Wave coffee anymore.

That raises the key question: are the values of Third Wave coffee still relevant? I believe that they are. 

After eight years working at a Third Wave shop, I’m convinced that making good coffee is about more (but not less) than just quality and taste. I’m still convinced that direct trade is important, that transparency and ethical payment makes a difference, that spotlighting coffee producers and giving credit where it’s due is an honorable and decent thing to do. I’m still convinced that quality born out of stewardship, not consumeristic “demanding the best”, is the best way to make “good coffee.” And I’m still convinced that opening and running a local, small business is not a necessary stepping stone towards global distribution, but a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. Maybe, amidst changing tides and “waves”, the answer is to just keep doing things the best way we know how.

Three (+) Waves, Part 1

Coffee 201

Three (+) Waves, Part 1

This article references content from The 5 Waves of Coffee by Brodie Vissers, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Peet’s: Why Craft Coffee Is Consolidating and How We Got To Third Wave Coffee by Eater.

OVERVIEW

They say coffee comes in waves, at least according to people who are pretty serious about their coffee (for better or worse). But what does somebody mean when they say a shop is “second wave” or “third wave”, and why does it matter? Let’s go over it.

A Word About Waves

What do we mean by Waves? Like all language, origins are a bit amorphous, but it’s generally agreed that the term “third wave coffee” is a riff off of “third wave feminism”, which rose to prominence in the PNW in the 1990s. The word “wave” is used to refer to something continuing a movement or a progression of thought, but with significant enough differences to be considered its own distinct “thing.” Third Wave Coffee is part of the overall story of coffee’s popularity in the United States, but it has notable differences from what came before; enough to be considered its own thing. In the end, sociological concepts often depend on made up categories that don’t perfectly match reality, so we’re not taking ourselves too seriously here.

It’s also worth noting that all conversations about “waves” when it comes to coffee are relatively recent and significantly North American, especially the US and Canada (and also the outlier, Australia). Coffee in the rest of the world generally doesn’t follow this progression, and have their own trajectories and cultures around coffee. Worth keeping in mind. So, without further ado…

First Wave – “The Best Part of Waking Up…”

First Wave coffee can be characterized as “Coffee for sale at your local store”, and began around the turn of the century – the 1890s onward into the 1920s. This was the first big explosion of coffee’s popularity (interestingly, precipitated in no small part by the Boston Tea Party, forever creating coffee as a more patriotic beverage than tea). Importers and big coffee names like Folgers, Maxwell House, and Nestlé meant that you could go to your local grocery store and buy a can of coffee to brew and drink at home. The First Wave of coffee saw such companies become household names, as coffee could be found in homes, offices, and diners across America. As you know, “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

This was a consumer-driven movement, as in, people were brewing coffee at home. This was the era of bitter, somewhat-stale tasting coffee, and practices like vacuum sealing and freeze drying were common to extend shelf life. The country the beans came from would never cross your mind; it was all about the brand name. One development in this world was the advent of coffee creamers, which can be seen as something of a proto-Second Wave that came about in the 1950s and partially merged with Second Wave (Coffee Mate was released in 1961). The sweet, flavored coffee drinks created a new possibility for coffee drinkers, one that would continue to be developed well into the Second Wave.

Second Wave – European-American Fusion

The “Second Wave” of coffee, in many ways, began in direct response to the perceived and actual lack of quality of the First Wave. Like the names of First Wave coffee, the two big names should be familiar to you: Peets and Starbucks. These two have a very intertwined history. Peets was founded in Berkeley, California by Dutch-American Alfred Peet in 1966. Peet is credited with starting the specialty coffee movement in the US and has been called “the godfather of gourmet coffee in the U.S.” and “the Dutchman who taught America how to drink coffee.” Accordingly, he’s also the man who taught the founders of Starbucks how to roast, leading them to open Starbucks in 1971.

Second Wave coffee moved away from the freeze-dried and bulk packaged practices of First Wave and began to develop a more artisanal method of sourcing, roasting, and blending. They focused on the country of origin, leading people to specifically request a coffee from Columbia or Brazil, for instance. These coffees were roasted to compliment the origin’s traits, but the roasts were dark, and got darker as time went on, leading Peet to disavow Starbuck’s roasting methods as they ventured into super-dark “Italian” and “French” roasts.

However, these efforts to tap into the perceived higher quality of European coffee is really what introduced European drinks to the American market. The prevalence of lattes, cappuccinos, espresso machines, even coffee shops – all of this is in large part thanks to the Second Wave of coffee. Coffee shops were birthed as their own subculture (think Central Perk of Friends fame) with their own lingo. This movement plumbed the depths of European coffee and reinvented it, leading to funny anachronisms like the “caramel macchiato” which draws on the aesthetic of Italian coffee, but with little connection to it.

In many ways now, Second Wave is characterized by the fusion of Peet’s brand of specialty coffee and its hallmarks with the consumer-driven Coffee Creamer sub-movement that found its birth in the First Wave of coffee. So we have dark-roasted Colombian coffee pulled on an espresso machine and mixed with steamed milk, but in a larger-than-European-size, called by an Italian name, and sweetened with caramel and vanilla. This isn’t to make fun of those drinks at all, but to point to the unique fusion that is Second Wave coffee and has become so familiar to us. 

Third Wave – Craft Coffee

The Third Wave of coffee came to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s, although its roots were laid decades before then. Third Wave coffee is often referred to as “specialty coffee” (more on that term next article). Since its inception, the Third Wave was centered around smaller, local coffee shops, but was pioneered by a group of shops called the Big Three – Intelligentsia in Chigaco, Illinois; Stumptown in Portland, Oregon; and Counter Culture in Durham, North Carolina. These shops prioritized ethical coffee sourcing (fair trade or direct trade), more meticulous and lighter roasts than Second Wave to preserve intrinsic flavors, traditional, less sweet, and smaller drinks, and an increased emphasis on barista skill and quality drink preparation.

Broadway was founded as a Third-Wave shop, and our first roasting partner was Stumptown, who lent us much of our initial business practices, drink recipes, vocabulary, and more. They mentored us as we entered into the coffee scene and became the first Third-Wave shop in the city (as far as I’m aware). Much of Third Wave I don’t need to even directly mention here, because it’s baked into the way we do things: our retail bean shelf lined with the names of countries, farmer, and co-ops; serving 6oz cappuccinos; dialing in and weighing our espresso; only partnering with roasters that engage in direct trade. All of these are things we learned and inherited from Stumptown and have stewarded over the years.

These are also the reasons why we don’t do certain things. The success of the Second Wave has meant that people come into a coffee shop expecting certain sizing conventions, vocabulary, flavors, roasts, and drinks. We’re often asked “why don’t you offer…?”: why not have 20oz cups, why not offer Irish Cream or Raspberry, why not have blenders, italian sodas, dark roast? The reason is: we’re not that kind of shop. There’s nothing wrong with Second Wave coffee, but we aren’t it. There’s a rationale behind every one of those things (which I’m happy to answer!) but it ultimately comes down to “we want to be good at what we do instead of trying to do everything.”

I will sometimes use the phrase “we’re more similar to Stumptown than Starbucks”, and that usually helps “click” the kind of model we’re doing (it also speaks to the breakthrough of Third Wave/specialty coffee). Whether a customer prefers that or not is their own prerogative, but part of being a Third Wave shop is knowing what we are and what we aren’t. There are great examples of Second Wave shops. Honestly, I have tons of respect for a lot of baristas at Starbucks and Peets. I’m friends with many of them, and they’re great baristas. Being good at what we each do provides quality variety.

What Comes After the Third Wave?

As you can imagine, things don’t stay static, and there have been developments in the coffee world since Stumptown first opened their doors in ‘99. That is what we will talk about in the next coffee 201.

A History of Coffee

Coffee 201

A History of Coffee

OVERVIEW

Everyone loves a good Colombian espresso, but… coffee isn’t native to Colombia. How did it get there? And where did espresso come from? Coffee has become quite the ubiquitous beverage, but it wasn’t always that way, and it was through a network of global trade over time that coffee spread throughout the world.

The Red Sea Coffee Trade

Coffee is originally from the regions surrounding the Red Sea, specifically Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen, in areas around the ancient Kingdom of Axum (one of the biggest world powers at the time, and very poorly represented by history books). The coffee plant is a shrub which grows in the Ethiopian highlands and has small, red fruit. Coffee was discovered, legend has it, in the 10th Century, when an Ethiopian-Arab goat herder discovered his goats leaping around with wild energy after eating the fruit off the coffee shrub. The story is a whole saga, and is probably made up, as it was first recorded over 800 years after it supposedly took place, but it’s still a fun story. Regardless, for a number of years, coffee was consumed as a food product, the fruits eaten by workers for energy during the day. 

It wasn’t until a few centuries later that coffee was developed as a beverage in nearby Yemen, originally by making a wine from the coffee fruit, but eventually in the method we know today of roasting and grinding up the seeds of the fruit. It was shipped from Somali ports, which at that time were some of the most important and successful ports in the world, shipping between East Africa, India, and the Middle East. The receiving Yemeni port was the city of Mokha, which is the origin of Mocha (referring originally to a coffee with a distinctly rich, chocolatey flavor, and later to a coffee with chocolate added) and the popular Moka Pot brewer invented in 1933, both named after that port city.

Turkish Coffee

Coffee expanded from the Red Sea into the very powerful Ottoman Empire (based in modern day Turkey) and spread with them as they expanded and conquered other parts of the world. The world's first coffeehouse was opened in Istanbul in 1555. This is why a traditional method of coffee brewing is referred to as “Turkish Coffee.” Coffee shops served coffee along with rose-flavored Turkish Delight and were social gathering places, where people would discuss philosophy, listen to poetry, and play games like backgammon. The coffee itself was flavored with cardamom, mastic (tastes like pine), or ambergris (whale bile! that tastes like musk and isopropyl alcohol, cause you know, sure.) 

Coffee shops caused a great deal of concern in the Muslim world, as it was feared that they would replace mosques as public gathering places, and cause the people to be rebellious and intoxicated. The Ottoman government sent spies to eavesdrop on coffeehouse conversations to root out insurrection attempts, and one sultan even attempted to ban drinking coffee under penalty of death, but it was poorly enforced and completely ineffective. Coffeehouses became a central cultural institution in the Islamic world of the early modern period, and a common breaking-down point of social barriers, drawing together diverse sections of the population including academics, idlers, businessmen, government officials, and even foreign travelers to socialize. They were significant for expanding the location of hospitality from the home to a “fourth space” (after home, work, and mosque).

Developing the European Coffee Tradition

Coffee arrived in Europe through contact with the Ottoman Turks. Inspired by experiences in coffeehouses in the Ottoman Empire, European merchants brought the tradition back to Europe. The main importer of coffee in Europe was the massive port of Venice (within modern day Italy) which had strong trade connections to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (hence the term for the most common coffee variety, “arabica”). The first European coffeehouse was founded in Venice in 1645. Later, fancy cafes in Paris would have hanging chandeliers and marble tabletops, and patrons would drink coffee and eat “ices” (sorbet), both of which originated from the Ottoman Turks and reflected the fashionable “Turquoiserie”: the long-prevailing European obsession with all things exotic and Ottoman.

Coffee spread in popularity across Europe as a drink of both the royalty and the average person. However, it was in Vienna, Austria that a massive coffeehouse culture developed that laid the foundation for what we come to think of as “European Coffee”. Vienna is widely considered to be the birthplace of the cappuccino, a mixture of coffee and frothed milk, so named due to its similarity in color to the light brown robes of Capuchin monks. Coffeehouse culture in Vienna mirrored the diverse cross-section of society seen in the Ottoman Empire, with the mega-diverse Holy Roman Empire (centered in modern day Germany, but including parts of northern Italy and elsewhere) finding expression within those gathering spaces. 

In England, coffee shops were often synonymous with “penny universities”, so called due to the fact that someone could spend a penny to receive a coffee drink and then engage in stimulating intellectual conversations.

Global Expansion

As demand for coffee grew, efforts to grow it outside of the Arab world increased, and unsurprisingly, it was the enterprising Dutch and the world’s first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India Company, that succeeded in that regard. They managed to acquire (according to some accounts, steal) one of the closely guarded coffee plants from Mocha, Yemen and plant it in a botanical garden in Amsterdam. The Dutch cultivated these plants in areas they controlled: the Kingdom of Kandy in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), southern India, and the Dutch colony of Java. Within a few years, much of Europe’s coffee was grown in Java, which is why we still call coffee “Java”. 

A hundred years later, the Mayor of Amsterdam gifted* a seedling from that stolen coffee plant to the King of France in 1714. A seedling from that tree, which had been planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris, was shipped across the Atlantic and brought to the Caribbean after a harrowing voyage that involved a storm, a pirate attack, and someone intentionally trying to kill the coffee plant. Coffee was then cultivated throughout the Caribbean, South, and Central America. One particularly wild story from that era features the wife of the governor of French Guiana being so enamored with a handsome Portuguese explorer that she secretly hid a pouch of coffee seeds within a bouquet of flowers for him, allowing him to establish the massively successful coffee farms of nearby Brazil.

(* this seedling was also possibly stolen — a LOT of coffee espionage around this time period)

Espresso and the Modern Coffee

Italy, as you might have guessed, played a huge role in the modernization of coffee, specifically the Northern Italian city of Turin. Though the first prototype espresso machines were built by Frenchmen, the first recognizably modern, steam-powered pressurized coffee brewers were made in Turin in the 1880s. These espresso machines reached global attention after an espresso-based coffee shop served coffee at a 1906 World’s Fair Expo in Milan, Northern Italy. The event saw millions of visitors from around the world exploring the latest developments in fine arts, engineering, and industry. This revolutionary “espresso” (meaning “made on the spot/made in a moment”) was a huge hit.

However, for many years, Espresso was a regional drink in Northern Italy around the cities of Genoa, Milan, and Turin (it also, interestingly enough, returned to the origins of coffee itself through Italian influence in the Horn of Africa, to Italian Somalia and Eritrea, as well as back to the birthplace of coffee: Ethiopia). The spread of espresso to the United States was facilitated by World War II, when American soldiers fighting in Italy were surprised by the highly-concentrated espresso coffee drank by the locals. Due to its strength, it was common for Americans to water it down to make it more palatable and similar to their familiar brewed coffee. This led to Italians mockingly referring to this watered down espresso as an “Americano.”

Italian styles of coffee flourished in the post-war 1950s, with GIs interested in bringing back the “exotic” foamy cappuccinos and espresso-based drinks they’d experienced in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. In the United States, coffee and espresso went through several evolutions over the past century. These are often referred to as “waves”, and it is those three waves of coffee that we’ll discuss in the next Coffee 201!

How to Taste Coffee: Part 3, Bitter-Sour Confusion

Coffee 201

How To Taste Coffee: Part 3, Bitter-Sour Confusion

Much of this content is from James Hoffman’s A Beginner's Guide to Coffee Tasting, an academic paper written in 1979, as well as the delightfully-named Society of Sensory Professionals. What a time to be alive.

OVERVIEW

This week, we’re talking about a peculiar intersection of theory and practice, with a good dose of vocabulary thrown in. It’s a common point of confusion that is called “bitter-sour confusion”. We’ll define what that is and then talk about why it matters to YOU.

What do we mean by “Bitter-Sour Confusion”

Here’s an explanatory quote from James Hoffmann to start us off. If you want to actually hear him say these words (and check the accuracy of my transcript), this is a link to the timestamp.  

This is what he has to say about this concept of “bitter-sour confusion”:

“There is quite a common phenomenon in the general population which is called bitter-sour confusion. Where a lot of people, especially when tasting sour coffee, will describe it as bitter, because it’s unusual to most people to describe a coffee as sour. So sour-bitter confusion is pretty normal. Again, if you’re perceiving it strongly down the sides of the tongue, if it’s causing a little bit of salivation, it’s likely to be acidity. Now, I’ve come across sour-bitter confusion quite a lot in my professional life [...] that’s the language someone will reach for to describe what they don’t like.”

Here’s a more academic quote from the Society of Sensory Professionals, an organization I will never get tired of referring to by name. Here, they’re discussing the findings from that study:

“One hypothesis is that the subjects have more cultural experience with sweet and salty foods than sour and bitter foods, allowing their perception of sweet and salty to be more clearly developed than sour and bitter. A second hypothesis is that subjects are more familiar with sucrose and salt in their pure forms than citric acid and quinine sulphate [used in the testing], again allowing the subjects to better develop their own personal concepts of sweet and salty versus sour and bitter. A third hypothesis involves the incorrect cultural labeling of typically sour foods as bitter, as in the case of bitter lemon. In regards to these hypotheses, the authors concluded that the sour-bitter confusion can be attributed to a lack in the clear understanding of the definitions of sour and bitter rather than a physiological defect [i.e. it’s not a problem of tasting different things, but a problem of definitions.]

Enough Technical Language

That’s probably as scientific as we’ll ever get here, but what it demonstrates is what many in the specialty coffee industry have concluded: issues of palate development can be resolved with more experience tasting coffee. Sour-bitter confusion is one of the biggest areas that is going to be helped by you and a fellow barista tasting the same coffee. Let’s give an example of this.

If one of you says “oh, this is really sour” and the other one says “to me it tastes bitter” there’s a couple things you could conclude. The first thing, and something I occasionally hear on our team, is the “God only knows” response. “You taste bitter, I taste sour… the world is just one big cosmic mystery with espresso in it” and then we walk away and we conclude that there’s no way to dial in this espresso. That’s probably not going to help in the long run, and it’s also not accurate. “But how could two people taste the opposite thing?” Well, what if they aren’t tasting the opposite thing? That leads to the second conclusion.

The second conclusion you could reach is that, perhaps, you’re using different words to describe the same sensation. That’s why the study above is so important. Sour-bitter confusion, it says, is not a physiological defect, meaning it’s almost certainly not the case that two people are tasting different things. Instead, dig a little deeper. Think about what the coffee feels like in your mouth, where you’re feeling sensations, and compare that with someone else. You might just discover that what you’ve always called “bitter” is actually caused by acidity, making it better described as “sour.” Or vice versa.

Practical Tips

• Assume you and your fellow baristas are tasting the same thing.

The quickest way to undermine your confidence as a barista is to assume something is wrong with you (or your coworker). It’s very normal to need to get on the same page in terms of the vocabulary you use. This is called calibrating the team and it only happens when we taste coffee together and talk about it.

• Don’t feel bad.

For whatever reason, this “sour-bitter confusion” can make people feel like they’re dumb. I mean, what could be more embarrassing than someone saying the coffee tastes sour and you shout out that it tastes bitter? You’re not dumb. Getting to the place where you can accurately identify flavors is a matter of practice, and this is something you can practice. You got this! Try dialing in with a coworker this week.

How to Taste Coffee: Part 2, Palate Development and Dialing-in by Taste

Coffee 201

How To Taste Coffee: Part 2, Palate Development and Dialing In by Taste

OVERVIEW

Continuing our series about tasting coffee, this week we’re talking about “palate development”. We’ll start with a good process for dialing in and finish talking about the concept of palate development.

Dialing In By Taste

Espresso is something that you drink. This may seem obvious, but the fact that espresso is a thing intended to be drunk gives us a clue about the best way to dial it in. Just as a chef will constantly be tasting their dish and is adding certain ingredients “to taste”, so too should a barista be periodically checking in on the recipe of the coffee they’re serving to customers by tasting it. Tasting the coffee provides a reference point for what the recipe on the board is actually producing.

A Workflow

In this case, I’m actually not going to write much here (I know, passing the buck.) I would highly recommend that you watch James Hoffman’s video below. Sometimes, reading something written on a page is just not the optimal way to learn something. By watching James’ process of dialing in a medium roast coffee, you can see how he interacts with it real time, what he’s thinking about when he drinks the espresso and what changes it prompts him to make.

Even though the coffee he’s dialing in is a light roast coffee (so the dosage, among other things, are different) the kinds of questions he’s asking himself and the adjustments he’s making are going to hold true no matter what coffee you’re dialing in.

One helpful definition here: when James talks about a “recipe” he’s not necessarily referring to what is “right”. Instead, it’s more descriptive of what happened, how the espresso pulled. Maybe the coffee pulled to 42 grams in 27 seconds, or whatever. Maybe that recipe sucks. You don’t want to keep using it. You’d change the “recipe” to perhaps be 42 grams in 29 seconds, and you’d do that by changing the grind to be a bit finer. Recipe for espresso is never a fixed thing. When we find a recipe that works nicely for whatever espresso we currently have, we write it on the board to share that with the team, especially the next barista to dial in. But it might change, and that’s both ok and expected.

A note on Palate Development

Dialing in espresso and trying to taste differences can lead to feeling a bit out of your depth. It’s challenging to taste something and know exactly what’s going on, nevermind then using that information to make an informed decision about what adjustment to make. It’s for that reason I’d highly recommend that you dial in with somebody else. The collaborative nature of two people (or more) tasting espresso helps to calibrate our team and get us all on the same page when it comes to how we’re describing different coffees. It also helps catch that pesky “sour-bitter conflation” that I’ll be talking about next week. 

Below is a short video from a few years ago of Ethan, one of our former assistant managers, now just a plain-old regular customer, talking about palate development and giving a word of encouragement! (Not all these posts will be so video heavy, but I know for some of you it’s helpful to see somebody do things or talk about things).

You guys can do this! I think every barista has a moment where a lightbulb turns on while tasting coffee and it makes more sense, and the only way to get there is to just keep tasting it and comparing it with what other people experience. We’re building vocabulary and familiarity, and that’s what matters.

How to Taste Coffee (and other silly things to say)

Coffee 201

How to Taste Coffee (and other silly things to say)

Much of this content is from this great video by James Hoffmann: “A Beginners Guide to Coffee Tasting”

OVERVIEW

This week, we’re starting a new series that’s all about tasting coffee. That’s a silly thing to say, and possibly an even sillier thing to dedicate a three week series to. But that’s exactly what we’re going to do, for two reasons. First, tasting coffee is really all we’re doing as coffeehouse customers and as baristas. And second, tasting coffee, contrary to popular belief, is not as simple as it’s made out to be.

What Is Tasting?

This is a ridiculous heading. Let’s roll with it, because it’s time for a diagram of a tongue. This diagram on the right is a bit of a controversial one, because you’ll occasionally hear someone say this has been “debunked”. However, tasting coffee for any length of time will confirm that there is some truth to the diagram. The reality of it is that parts of your mouth are more sensitive to certain tastes (as opposed to the debunked part, which is that those zones only taste certain flavors). 

The two most useful of these are that bitter compounds tend to sit heavily on the back of the tongue, and sour flavors tend to light up the back sides of the tongue. Everything else is a lot more subjective, but those two sensations can help us identify over-extraction (often a bitter flavor) and under-extraction (often a sour flavor). We’ll be talking more about bitter and sour and the wide gulf between them in a future Coffee 201.

Extraction and Taste

When tasting coffee, the first thing we want to do is actually to focus on the physical sensations we’re experiencing. Sometimes this is referred to as “locating”. We’re looking for things like mouthfeel, linger, heaviness, etc. Let’s use espresso as an example. If the espresso is very light and almost tea-like, that’s something we should notice. If the espresso is sitting heavily on the palate (a word that is essentially an elevated term for your tongue), that’s something we should also notice. 

Physicality grounds our tasting in what’s actually happening. If the espresso I’m drinking lingers on the palate for a long time, that tells me I’ve extracted too much out of it. If I get an unpleasant sourness concentrated in my cheeks and the sides of my tongue, that tells me the coffee might be under extracted, or at least is very bright and tart. You’ll hear people describe coffee as “clean”, “chewy”, “bright”, “acidic”, “cloying”, “syrupy”, etc. These all lean towards the physical sensation, and are a helpful place to start.

Focusing on the physicality of what we’re tasting frees us from the subjectivity of beginning the conversation with “tasting notes”. As a former trainer at Dapper & Wise puts it, tasting notes are a bit funny because they’re describing coffee as tasting like anything but coffee. But everybody loves a good tasting note, so it is to them that we turn. 

Tasting Notes

I won’t spend too much time on tasting notes. Dapper & Wise likes to use the verbiage “this coffee reminds us of” to reinforce the fact that tasting notes are both inherently subjective and also going to be different from person to person. If you’ve never tasted a persimmon, you won’t taste persimmon in a coffee, no matter how much the roaster or your friend insists it’s there.

If you’re wanting to enhance your ability to describe coffees, my recommendation to you would be to eat and drink anything but coffee. After all, tasting notes are a matter of vocabulary, not skill. Everyone is tasting the same coffee. What makes the difference is associations, which can only come as you taste lots of different things, and description: being able to put it into words. 

Watch someone (maybe yourself) who is tasting something distinctive in a coffee but is struggling to put words to it and you’ll see that tasting notes have more to do with being able to describe what you’re tasting, and not some abstract concept of a person being “better at tasting coffee.”

Practical Tips

• Focus on “Locating” first

When you dial in coffee, don’t get too hung up on trying to get it to taste like the notes. Work on the core components: sour, bitter, and sweet. Those are all physical sensations. Find a balance between those three that is pleasing to you. That’s 80% of the work right there.

• Taste other things and think about them

Eat an orange. Try baker’s chocolate. Eat dirt (don’t really). If you need a starting place, pick a note on a bag you’ve never heard of, buy that thing, and eat it.

Brew Ratios in Practice

Coffee 201

Brew Ratios in Practice

If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out this great video by James Hoffmann: “Understanding Espresso - Ratio”

OVERVIEW

This week, we’re going to continue talking about Brew Ratios from a practical standpoint. This document is essentially a narrative of what it looks like to dial in using weight and ratios. Refer back to the first part of this series as needed to get terminology definitions, examples, etc.

Dialing In Using Weight, not Volume

Many of us have not interacted with ratios much, and we weren’t trained on using them to dial in coffee. Volume is a much easier way to train and to dial in because it’s so visual and obvious, and it’s how we typically measure things we’re making. If you’re making a cocktail, you go by ounces, not weight. When you’re cooking, again, it’s two teaspoons of a spice, one cup of water, two cups of flour (although it’s worth noting that professional bakers actually do prefer weighing their ingredients over using volume measurements due to the greater accuracy of using weight). All that said, it will feel like an adjustment to start dialing in by using weight. In contexts where it’s busy, the simple unfamiliarity of dialing in a different way will likely result in us not doing it. That’s why it’s worth having an example of what this would look like that you can practice when things are less busy.

A Weight-Based Workflow

First things first, dialing in by weight does not mean you are going to be weighing out every set of espresso you pull, nor do you need to. Weighing your shots is a part of the dialing in process, not the regular service-oriented espresso pulling process. 

Put another way, weighing shots is something you do when you jump on bar, you’re tasting the espresso, and you’re working to get it dialed in. When you finish, you’ll then use that info and the parameters you settle on to pull espresso for drinks – as you actually make drinks, you’ll use volume and time to make sure nothing is changing and that the espresso is behaving consistently according to the parameters you established while dialing in. So, we’re not throwing out using volume and time as a reference point, we’re just not using them as our guiding star to dial in.

 I’ll walk through this workflow of dialing in step by step:

1. PULL A SET: The first thing to do to get information is just to pull a set of espresso. Purge the grinder if it’s been a while since you’ve pulled this coffee to get rid of stale grounds. Let’s use the 1300 blend as our “mental espresso” here. Let’s say it pulled to 1.5 ounces and it took 27 seconds.

2. WEIGH THE SET: Once the set has pulled to whatever volume you think seems right, place another measuring cup on the scale, zero it, and pour the espresso into it. Weigh the espresso. For our example, we weigh the set of espresso and it comes out to 32 grams. That’s a 1:1.7 ratio. Here’s the math of how to figure that out: 19g in x 1.7 = ~32g out.

3. TASTE THE ESPRESSO: Tasting the espresso gives us an actual reference point for what the numbers mean. There’s only one way to know what recipe makes good espresso, and that’s to taste it. It’s also very useful to you to taste espresso pulled at different ratios. Taste it even if it’s bad. While it might not sound pleasant, you can learn what good espresso tastes like by tasting bad espresso. Learn what over extraction and under extraction taste like by tasting them. You’ll build your palate as you give yourself experience tasting espresso.

4. ADJUST AS NEEDED: Let’s say the espresso pulls too high in weight. 32 grams is a bit high for how Coava roasts their coffee. You taste it, and it’s a bit thin, perhaps it has a lingering bitter note. You have some choices now on what adjustments to make. The shot was pulled at 27 seconds, so you could choose to stop it at 25 seconds.  That would result in a slightly lower volume, which may be exactly what you need. Alternatively (and probably preferably in this scenario) you can fine the grounds by one notch and again pull to 27 seconds, which will result in the coffee pulling a bit lower.

5. RINSE AND REPEAT: Continue making adjustments as needed. Because you’re using weight as your first guide, you can even do this while pulling sets for service. You can make an adjustment on the fly, keep pulling sets until you see the adjustment take effect, and then weigh a set of espresso to see how that’s affected the weight. Then you can just use it for a drink, and you’ve both dialed in your espresso a little more and not wasted any coffee. I’d only recommend doing this if the espresso is servable, but you want to polish it a little bit, not if it’s pulling badly and you’re trying to fix it. Dialing in can (and should!) be something you come back to throughout your time on bar as changes occur.

6. CONSIDER YOUR COFFEE: Finally, consider the coffee you’re dialing in. Let’s say we’re at the espresso machine dialing in Single Origin. It’s a new, Dapper & Wise, lighter-roast coffee from East Africa. That tells me a few things:

• Dapper & Wise roasts their coffee for a normal espresso, so I should be comfortable with a higher volume (closer to 2 oz).

• It’s a lighter roast, so it weighs more. The amount of coffee in the basket will be lower.

• It’s from East Africa, so I might want or need a longer pull time to fully extract the coffee.

Hope that helps! Try this out with your fellow baristas as you’re on shift.

Brew Ratio: Ristretto, Lungo, Etc.

Coffee 201

Brew Ratio: Ristretto, Lungo, Etc.

Much of this content is from The Professional Barista’s Handbook by Scott Rao, Andy Schecter’s 2006 post “Brewing Ratios for Espresso Beverages”, and this great video by James Hoffmann: “Understanding Espresso - Ratio”

OVERVIEW

This week, we’re talking about Brew Ratios and the terms that go along with them. We’ll talk about the concept of a “brew ratio”, define some common coffee-industry terms, and give a basic rundown of what you might need to do with this information.

What is a Brew Ratio?

The term “Brew Ratio” simply refers to the ratio between the weight of dry coffee going in (i.e. the weight of ground coffee you’re putting in the portafilter basket) and the amount of liquid coffee coming out (i.e. the weight of espresso you’re getting out of the machine). 

For example, by default we dose 19g of dry coffee: if we pull a set (a term for a double shot we picked up from Stumptown) of espresso and it weighs 26g out of the machine, that’s 19/26 (19g in, 26g out), which could also be referred to as a 1 to 1.4 ratio, written 1:1.4. 

Another example: A 1:2 ratio with our standard dose would be 19 grams in, 38 grams out. That’s measuring coffee by weight, not volume.

Coava likes shorter ratios, or what’s called “ristretto”. You may have heard terms like ristretto or lungo before. Let’s define them.

Ristretto, Normale, Lungo: Definitions

From Scott Rao: “A normale is a standard shot, a ristretto is made with the same dose but less water, and a lungo is made with the same dose but more water. Therefore the three terms refer loosely to espresso brewing ratios.”

Rao includes a big, mind-melting chart made by a guy named Andy Schecter. It’s a lot, so I’ve distilled that down into some basic helpful definitions, although it’s worth noting that these parameters are not set in stone. This all assumes a double shot, or a set, of espresso.

• Ristretto: This is a short (or “restricted – ristretto”) espresso. The ratio here is anywhere from a 1:1 ratio to a 1:1.5. 

• An example of a 1:1.5 ratio is a dose (in) of 19g and a yield (out) of 28.5g. I got that number by multiplying 19 x 1.5.

• Normal(e): This is a “normal” set of espresso. This range is 1:1.5 to 1:2.5. 

• An example of a 1:1.8 ratio is a dose of 19g and a yield of 34g.

• Another example is a 1:2.5 – dose of 19g and a yield of 47.5g. See the big difference?

• Lungo: This is a long espresso. The ratio here is anywhere from 1:2.5 all the way up to 1:4+. This can sometimes border on being like a small cup of coffee.  We almost never pull these, but I’ve been asked to before. Feel free if someone does.

Why Weigh Coffee At All?

The short answer is “Crema”. Crema (that light colored foam on top of espresso) is similar to espresso in contents but is more airy (it’s related to that CO2 output we learned about a couple weeks ago). Therefore, it’s lighter in weight, and depending on how fresh or not-fresh a coffee is, there will be more or less crema in the cup. This means that the volume can “trick” you by being mostly crema.

As James Hoffmann says, “If you’re chasing a fixed volume, to get that fixed volume, say 50ml as a double espresso, with very fresh coffee, more of that volume is going to be gas and foam, basically, and less will be liquid. Compared to a coffee that has rested or aged a little bit more that has less CO2 in it. This will mean you produce identical looking espresso that actually have very different recipes. For that reason, I would strongly recommend weighing the output of your coffee machine, because that way you’ll really understand how much liquid you pushed through [...] This is probably the most critical thing to control to have consistent and repeatable-tasting espresso.”

Practical Tips

• Try out weighing your sets.

A quick and easy way to do this is to just put another measuring demitasse on the scale, zero it out, and pour your espresso into it. Check the weight. If it’s around 26 to 28g, you’ve pulled a ristretto. That’s great. Higher numbers like 32 or 34 grams are bringing you into the normal range. Coava roasts their coffee to be optimized for ristretto-style espresso. Conversely, Dapper & Wise doesn’t roast for ristretto-style, so you might try for a higher yield with their coffees.

• Volume is not the most important factor.

In order to change the weight of your espresso, you may need to change the volume. That’s totally fine. A coffee may taste better at a higher volume or a slightly lower volume. What matters is the flavor and communication. The boards are there so you can write down how you’ve dialed on that espresso, what volume you’re pulling it to, what the output weight is, etc. Your bar handoff conversation also helps explain what’s written on the boards.

Channeling

Coffee 201

CHANNELING

Much of this content is from The Professional Barista’s Handbook by Scott Rao and this great video by Emilee Bryant: “8 Coffee Tips You Need to Know Quicker”

OVERVIEW

This week and next we’re talking about channeling! What is it? What does it want? We’ll define channeling, talk about how it affects your espresso (or pour overs), and give some practical tips for ways to prevent it.

What is Channeling?

Before we dive in, I’d highly recommend you watch this 5 minute video about channeling from Clive Coffee (they’re a Portland-based, home-barista supply store). Channeling is essentially a technical term for “uneven flow of water” through the bed of coffee. In the video, Charles has a great example where he essentially pokes a hole in the bed of coffee and then tamps. It’s invisible from the top, but there’s a massive crack below the surface, and when he runs water through it, it goes straight to that hole within less than 5 seconds. Whether it’s that dramatic or less obvious, channeling has to do with uneven distribution of the coffee grounds and the resulting uneven flow of the water.

Why Does Channeling Matter?

When your espresso channels, it’s going to make dialing in a pain, nevermind the espresso not tasting good. If you’ve ever had the experience of shots “pulling weird” or “pulling badly”, 9 times out of 10 what you’re dealing with is channeling. You might feel stumped because the top of your grounds looked even. But the tamp isn’t a miracle worker – if your bed of coffee wasn’t properly distributed before you tamped, all those uneven features are still present below the surface, and the water will find them.

Espresso that channels won’t taste distinctly over-extracted or under-extracted; it will taste like a bit of both. That’s because the extraction is uneven, which means that some of the liquid has too much extraction, while other parts have not nearly enough.  Water flowing through the “channels” will be over extracted, because that’s where most of the extraction is happening, while the remainder will produce under-extracted coffee. So it will taste bitter, but also weirdly sour. Trying to make an adjustment won’t accomplish anything, because the issue isn’t the grind size, it’s the distribution of the grounds.

As Emily says in the video at the top, channeling is “enemy number one” for bad espresso. So if channeling causes all these problems, how do we prevent it? Before we get to some tips, here’s a list of a couple common things that can cause channeling:

• Uneven grounds/clumping

• Not distributing before tamping. You want a flat bed, not a mound in the center.

• Uneven/sloped tamping caused by not tamping straight down

• Knocking the portafilter into something after you tamp (makes a crack).

• A too-fine grind setting (this makes it harder for water to get through, and therefore, more likely to seek out the weakest point). 

Practical Tips

• Notice it’s happening. Look for uneven flow, fast flow, and “blonding”.

We don’t use an open-bottom portafilter like the baristas in the video (among other reasons, this is due to the volume we serve as a shop). However, there are ways even with a spouted portafilter to spot channeling. The first is an unexpectedly quick drop of liquid: it seems like the water moved through the bed too quickly. 

The second is called “blonding”, which refers to the color of the stream of espresso. It’s normal to see blonding towards the end of extraction, but if you see it closer to the beginning, you have a channel. 

Finally, an uneven flow, or a “pulsing” flow, can be a sign of channeling. None of these are set in stone, so don’t overanalyze and dump a perfectly fine shot because you saw the stream shake a bit, but if you’re struggling to keep the espresso consistent and you see these things happening, they tell you what’s going on.

• Try to evenly distribute your coffee grounds

There’s a lot of different ways to distribute (seriously, there’s too many). Your goal in distribution isn’t just to create a flat bed, but to create a consistent texture. If you see lots of clumps in your coffee grounds, tamping will not fix that. It will push it beneath the surface and cause all kinds of funky water flow as the water avoids the denser clumps and travels through the less-packed areas. I’d recommend watching Emily’s video (at the top), at least points 2 and 3, to hear her talk about channeling and distribution.