Coffee Talk Miami 2008

Coffee – the cutting edge

The cutting edge can be defined as the most advanced or innovative position; this talk is effectively the cutting edge at this particular moment. If there is further discussion, the cutting edge will have moved on.

The only way to determine the cutting edge is to determine just what the limits of our present knowledge are – where are we in relation to what are we seeking to do? This involves knowing just where we are in relation to the science of what we are trying to achieve. Anybody can make a claim that their machine or process is the cutting edge or the leading machine but if it does not achieve what it sets out to do, or does not work, then it is not the cutting edge. We need to understand the criteria by which we judge success. The criteria can only be determined by discussion of the important points around the subject. What we need to discuss are the ideas or the philosophy attached to what we do in the industry.

Perhaps I can make my position clear by stating the following.

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.

Religion is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and shouting "I found it!"

My own position is closely related to the first one – I know where the room is but I am not sure what is in it. If I knew everything I would have all the answers but I do not. I do have opinions for what they are worth. The science that has been published is not widely understood and even if it was, I am not sure how it would be applied in many cases.

How does this relate to the world of coffee?

My view of the coffee industry is that there is a lot of science and knowledge existing which is not commonly applied. I think there is even more in various repositories owned by very large companies which do research and never publish anything.

I would like to give you some examples of problems which need discussing. Each one is just part of the problem. I wish I could put these points into some sort of order but they do not seem to fit easily.

LOGIC I see a lot of comment where one proceeds from logic to the fact, whereas the only correct way is to establish the fact and then to establish the logic. There are simply too many variables involved in just about every coffee process to be logically sure that you will arrive at any conclusion. You can only arrive at a conclusion and then by eliminating variables establish the logical connection or the scientific relationship or function.

The balance between science and marketing.

I believe that in many companies a scientist who turned up for a job and claimed to be able to improve the product would lose out to a marketing person who could sell more product. For too many in the coffee business the emphasis is on selling and not on really understanding what you are selling and how it performs at the customer level. Good marketing does not improve the product.

The first point to determine is just what we are trying to achieve. If the answer is a better product rather than higher sales then we can proceed intelligently because I am not sure what a better cup of coffee is. Those who think they know speak often and loudly while shouting down differing views. I suspect that many of those who are silent have a much better idea.

If I say that a good cup of coffee has as at a minimum, a nice recognisable taste sensation and a good coffee aroma then we at least have a start. I think that is a fairly defensible statement. It is not complicated and it makes sense. There are two questions to be asked of any coffee – indeed of any food and they basically encapsulate my position.

Does this taste like coffee?

If the answer is positive, then do you like it?

If the answers are positive to both questions then it is a good coffee.

The taste part is a little hard to define because bitterness is easy to define but may be very acceptable if a lot of milk and/or sugar is going to be used. As a further complication I now read that taste can be registered on the oesophagus.

I think most of us know how to avoid bitterness in the extraction. If it is there we have to tweak the blend until it disappears but aroma is a real problem because it is ephemeral. While we can make mechanical analyses using spectrometers, the problem is that the aroma is reacting on the brain and its memory and the recognition of pleasant sensations. There is a problem for most consumers articulating what is bitterness, strength and acidity.

I once discussed the aroma of wine with a wine aroma specialist and stated that the aroma of wine was static compared to coffee which varied a lot during the drinking. To my surprise she claimed that the aroma of wine depended on the shape of the glass and other factors. Coffee served at different temperatures has different flavouirs.

When I make the notes da da da duh – if you are familiar with the notes then immediately your mind floods with expectation of the following notes - da da da duh. Now if you have never heard that combination of notes before then you will likely have an entirely different sensation to the person who has. I mention this to demonstrate how complex the issue is.

It is all very well for a taster to say that there are hints of mango – which mango ? - in India there are three hundred and fifty different types of mango. Sound and sight are one thing. Apple – which apple? Black currant – which black currant? Aroma is different and relies on our memory associated with words which may have different meanings.

I want to mention a friend of mine in Sydney Ryan Spinoglio who is the only olfactory sensory and flavour virgin I have ever met. Garlic, onions, meat, curry, spices and a host of other things have not passed his lips in fifteen years. When we talk I have the feeling that we are discussing the Mona Lisa but I am seeing it through a fluttering curtain whereas he has a clear view of the picture. Just as the great perfume houses of the world rely on a very small number of highly trained and highly paid noses to create, it seems that the coffee world is trying to do something equally complex with a host of poorly trained, if trained at all, coffee fanatics. I think the comparison is between the trained perfumers of the world and the little stalls selling perfumes in the Tunis bazaar.

I wish to raise a modern phenomenon and that is the desire for something new and different. The specialist coffee roaster is trying to attract the person seeking something new and different. I can imagine a wine buff finding the perfect bottle of wine and rejecting an offer for a lifetime supply. I think this phenomenon exists in coffee – there is a desire to find the best new thing – a new source. The old becomes old hat and is discarded irrespective of the intrinsic quality. The new hype is better than the old.

Coffee tastes better in a fine porcelain cup because the porcelain has a better feel to it. If a blindfolded person can tell that the coffee tastes better in a porcelain cup then we have a fact that requires logical explanation. The feel of the porcelain on the lips becomes part of the feel of the coffee.

I now return to the religion part.

At the basis of all the prelates in the religion category is a belief in the conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom – as defined by John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional wisdom is the product of the repeated expression of views that is in the interest of those professing them to hold, and which gain strength and validity from the frequency with which they are expressed.

In simple English, the more people who repeat something, the more likely it is considered to be true. The repetition of protocols and mantras is likely to establish the truth irrespective of whether there is a single truth or a single protocol for that sector.

A great example of the confluence of religion and conventional wisdom was seen in a religious war that raged over the correct pressure that should be applied when tamping coffee. Egos were aroused and conventional wisdom invoked to establish a protocol. I believe that scientific testing has shown that the tamping pressure is not important. In retrospect I am surprised that fatwas were not issued.

Some of you will have seen the movie Ratatouille – the critics name was Mr. EGO. How appropriate. A friend of mine who is in the Norwegian industry told me that the best coffee was the one where the roaster stood on top of his factory and shouted loudest. It takes a large ego to do that and where opinions are substitutes for facts, egomaniacs are godlike.

I think the expression ‘a god shot’ is an excellent representation of this. When I say that the coffee industry is like a religion I have the idea that it is a religion where the drink itself is the holy sacrament and is made according to the rules of the various branches of the religion. Each cult has its high priest and they present dogma for the followers. The word for the dogma is the protocol.

This leads me to what many in the coffee industry think is the cutting edge – the observations of those who feed and control information to coffee websites. Their main qualification for publishing the information is that they own the site which brings immense power. I would feel a lot happier if there was a disclaimer that whoever was making the comments was not on the receiving end of freebies. If the mind is corrupted then the senses are very unreliable. Clearly they are in the religion section – more cultish than science based opinions in most cases and clearly they are egomaniacs.

There are probably others but I know two that are intellectually honest Robert Vriesendorp’s www.caffezine.com and Alan Frew’s websites. www.coffeeco.com.au

Freshness

I want to examine the coffee from another angle because what I have already discussed about aroma is so complex that to all intents and purposes it is beyond our control.

The first thing I want to examine is coffee flavour. It is well established that the mouth tastes sweet, sour bitter etc but the nose has the ability to detect aroma and that is what determines flavour. Block your nose and you cannot tell the flavour at all. I believe that like night follows day the more aroma and the better the aroma, the better the cup of coffee and I think we now know how ephemeral it is.

The aromatics come from the cup of coffee and they arrive there by being leached from the coffee grounds. The fresher the coffee the more aromatics. At this point I am fairly confident that I know what freshness is but I know that various cults have arisen about freshness.

Let us examine some of these cults;

1. Coffee should be allowed to degas for three days. Good business for those who build the silos.

2. Coffee should be kept in a cool dark place and will stay fresh for up to three weeks. Good for roasters who do not have better methods of keeping the coffee fresh

3. Coffee should be packed in a pressurised can and allowed to equalise for 24 hours before use. This has worked for Illy and imitators.

4. Coffee kept in a hermetically sealed container in the freezer picks up odors. This is an opinion held by those who do not know what the word ‘hermetically’ means.

5. Coffee taken from the freezer is affected by the change in temperature and changes flavour. No proof is ever offered.

6. Coffee taken direct from the roaster is the freshest. This is an opinion I hold but I do not know if it definitively true.

7. Coffee can be kept fresh in a little vacuum bottle with a hand vacuum pump. If the max percentage of oxygen is less than one percent these units build false hopes. They are ineffective in protecting coffee.

8. Coffee is best stored in a cool dark place in the house. This was probably true in the 1800s.

9. Coffee packed in a valve bag is fresh. In fact the valve is totally wasted.

10. Coffee beans stay fresher longer than ground coffee.

Goglio Luigi have developed a packaging system using a high pressure valve which mimics the Illy can – not popular – swells up and does not look good. This is an example of having an excellent product and finding it difficult to sell. While I am talking about valves, I think that all manufacturers should ask for proof that the valve they are buying actually works.

Many years ago my first mentor in coffee was George Kepper – one of those legendary golden tongues who exist in every country of the world. He told me the story of how when he was trying to supply an Italian with espresso coffee in the 1950s it was never right and then one day he picked up a bag that had been in the corner for four weeks and the Italian exclaimed that this was the right coffee. It was covered in oil. Oil on the beans is generally a sign of staling. Because packaging was pretty primitive at the time, most of the coffee would have been stale. I think Illy and other companies were using tins. I am guessing that when Gaggia made his lever model machine, he was using coffee that was not roaster fresh. He produced a thick solid crema on the coffee. Gaggia put the words ‘Crema Naturale’ on the face plate of his machine and I suggest to you that this became the standard for the industry.

Is it a false idol??? If he had put freshly roasted coffee into the machine he would have had a bubbly crema. I know that large bubbles in the crema dissipate very quickly but in a product that has a half life of thirty seconds, is it important? If the coffee is roaster fresh then many in the industry say that the coffee tastes gassy – I am not sure if they can detect it without knowing just when the coffee was roasted. In fact most of the responses I get suggest that freshly roasted coffee used in an espresso machine delivers undesirable results. The weight of opinion supports the notion that it is better for the coffee to degas for indeterminate lengths of time. I would like to be able to say that scientific evidence exists with blind tastings to confirm the general opinion. And I mean blind – with an eye mask on so that appearance of the crema is hidden. The jury is out and I am not sure if it is true – has the case ever been argued?

The only scientific results regarding freshness I know are those conducted by the Coffee Research Center in Montpelier in 1984 – freezing was best. Michael Sivetz, a true scientist, agrees and he is a chemical engineer. I have spoken to food technologists and they agree – the lower the temperature the longer the freshness. None of this is conclusive until the industry does a major study where no companies who have vested interests in maintaining their position are involved.

I have to say that every person I ask has the view that coffee has to rest for some time. I am not convinced – it is too easy to conform to the conventional paradigm. I really need to see a properly conducted experiment which proves one way or the other what the truth is. If anybody knows of triple blind experiments with more than thirty people in the experiment I want to know the results. A triple blind experiment is one where a double blind experiment is conducted by people who are blindfolded.

Sonic branding has now emerged to confuse the issue. When I tell you that an English supermarket sold both German and French wines and they were able to achieve the following – by playing French music, the French wine outsold the German wine five to one and by playing German music, the German wine outsold the French wine two to one. How long will it be before Mexican beans are sold with a marimba accompaniment, Peruvian beans with their special flute and Viennese blends are accompanied by a zither.

Cleanliness. I have notes major improvements in procedures and these are very important in delivering a first quality product.

Roasting

I will tell you some facts. The Italian Roaster manufacturer Brambatti has supplied a large transport system to an Italian company near the big toe of Italy where the beans are transported in Nitrogen so that oxygen can not affect the freshness of the beans.

I imagine the cutting edge is profile roasting and it works but it relies on a good palate to determine what the flavour profile is and what you want to change it to. I am sure it works but I have genuine doubts whether the operators are capable of adjusting the roaster for best results. The machine will certainly deliver consistent results.

So far I have not seen any claims by roasters that they are using a special roaster and you can instantly recognise the coffee from the different flavour. If something is different, the consumer should be able to recognise it. Since I have not seen such claims I imagine that they do not exist and that all the different roasters can be adjusted to give acceptable results.

One of the problems that has not been and probably never will be solved is that a sample roaster delivers a different roast to the large machine in the factory

Infra-red. I am not sure there is any advantage from the actual use of infra-red but at least its use minimises smoke because there is not a requirement to introduce a large amount of air requiring an after burner

Spiral tube a new concept which theoretically applies to coffee. Hot air is applied to beans which are transported up a tube with a rotating heloidical spring.

Grinding, The Colombini grinders from Italy were the first very –precise grinders and they have now been copied by other companies. They have the only cryogenic grinder in the world which has been adopted by a large roaster at a vast cost.

Packing. High pressure valve bags are now available and there are various metal cans available which mimic the original Illy system.

Provided the oxygen content of any container is less than 1% this seems to be standard for fresh coffee. The less the better. I have seen results down to .3% oxygen – I repeat point three per cent. When you buy a machine get it in writing that the machine can perform to the specification you set. I once met a Belgian roaster who transformed an Italian machine that did not work into one that did by flooding all the pipes with nitrogen and then some.

I am aware of intelligent packaging and packs that incorporate desirable aromas and they will almost certainly be part of the world market in the future. Freshness indicators will probably be part of the future. I cannot see how the coffee industry can stop these developments. It will only take one roaster to steal market share with such devices for the opposition to crumble.

Espresso machines Dallacorte is advanced with competitors catching up fast or already caught up. Fully automatic machines can achieve the same results but for some reason the serious market thinks that hand operated machines produce a better result. I have my doubts. I think the major advance is the advance in knowledge that by using a lot of brass in the group you get more temperature stability. I believe some groups now weigh seven kgs. The use of advanced electronics is also helping.

Clover – a great machine – I am a little worried that it proposes a forty second extraction but it certainly provides unbelievable control over the extraction. I do not think it will shift the coffee world off its axis.

Sunbeam Australia and domestic machines. A two boiler machine designed for cappuccinos. I believe this is at the forefront of domestic machines anywhere in the world. The graphs show the performance of the machine as against the specifications which are usually only available for machines. I give this as an example of what the customer needs to know and is rarely told. The information is sometimes available on websites. Other machines perform adequately for most consumers whose largest problems stem from using inadequate grinders and not measuring the coffee properly.

Three graphs I personally use a Subito or Capresso machine – simple to use and has a variable size brewing chamber that makes satisfactory coffee for the Italian style cappuccinos that I prefer – with sweetener.

Espresso grinders – grind on demand and packing. The problem is the varying sizes of filter baskets. One of the problems is that commercial machine manufacturers deliver machines with varying size baskets. On the other hand the industry tries to teach consumers to use 7 gram measures. This is a case of do as I say, not as I do. It is all very confusing.

Cleaning espresso grinders with dispensers and machines is very, very important. If the machines have rancid oils, how can you taste the coffee?

Baristas – elevated beyond responsibility level. I cannot see many of them ever participating in the decisions that they have to know about.

Pods and capsules. My own experience is that I have seen pod making machines with various pod espresso machines on the bench nearby for testing. It is apparent that pods are not interchangeable as originally hoped.

I have stood next to machines making pods for private label and I have noted the number of machines that are used to test the pods – in other words they are not as interchangeable between machines as might be imagined. The pods are effectively manufactured to work with a particular machine. The pod relies for its performance on the back pressure caused by the combination of filter paper grade and the size of the granulation in the coffee grind and the pressure formed in the pod machine. On the other hand capsules rely much more on the depth of the bed and the granulation of the coffee which seems to give a much more reliable result on different machines. It is rather hard to get objective advice on this because the manufacturers of pod machines do not want to upset existing customers who make pods by recommending capsule machines to new customers.

Capsules seem to work on most of the machines that they fit. Apparently the manufacture of the empty capsules by two plastic manufacturers in Italy has allowed different machines to proliferate. Originally coffee manufacturers tried to have capsules that only worked on their machines.

There is certainly major growth in the pod and capsule sector – they solve most of the problems that I have been discussing.

Philosophically there is a comparison between the beer home brewing industry and the coffee industry. We buy cans and bottles of prepared beer rather than brew our own. Is this the future for coffee??? Will we buy pods rather than brew our own??

I am not prone to making predictions but I believe that the future for the coffee industry will have a significant sector making special capsules at slower speeds suitable for smaller roasters. I feel confident that an Asian manufacturer is quite capable of making a small machine at affordable prices. If very small FFS machines can be sold for less than $10K then small machines for a small multiple of that price range should be able to make capsules.

Sorting green beans, mechanical harvesting and de-stoners to improve the appearance quality of coffee beans, has made life a lot easier for smaller roasters. I have seen the de-stoner on a large roaster and I was amazed at the quantity of stones in the bin.

Air assisted frothing of milk – I have seen just one machine like this. I am not sure if it is an improvement.

I must mention the role of milk – after all the amount of milk in a cappuccino or latte is greater than the coffee. I am told that the lactose or milk sugar content in NZ milk is higher than in Australia. Seeing as most customers outside Italy are drinking milk based drinks there should be more interest in milk.

Espresso machine handles have had new designs which have improved the formation of crema and make a better visual coffee. The main improvement has been the development of the espresso handle where the two spouts underneath have been removed and the coffee falls straight through the filter into the cup. My experience of this is that the coffee produced lacks a metal taint. I imagine that it is unattractive for manufacturers to promote it because it turns a two cup machine into a one cup machine. It is important that the tamping of the coffee is even.

Cleaning hygiene and freshness are equally important.

Conclusion

A successful industry is one where the expectations of the customer are delivered by the supplier. The industry builds its own expectations in every country. I would like to see some sort of consumers’ rights statement by all producers in the coffee industry to the effect that the product delivered delivers the same result as the result produced in the factory in terms of freshness and flavour. I would like to see retailers be able to advise customers that it is worth while to spend the extra money on a machine because they can demonstrate better results. I would like to see retailers sell things that work and lastly I would like to see the coffee industry deliver to the end user coffee of the same quality that it serves to its own family and most important clients. I would like to see the hype replaced by, or at least based on fact.

THE CONUNDRUM

It bothers me immensely that there are few within the industry who create coffee aromas and few who can give critical analysis to their and other’s products and even fewer among the consuming public who even try or recognise in the slightest what has been created for them. And the point I want to make is that, given this situation what is the point of the coffee industry even trying if the results are so ephemeral and fleeting. Staling, the inconsistency between machines and the same machine and the changing temperature in the cup are but a few of the problems. The masking effects of milk and sugar nullify whatever is left.

What does it mean if after a lot of effort in the tasting room you create something which only you can taste and which changed by the time the consumer gets it.

I hope I have given you something to ponder.