Coffee is a fruit?

Coffee is a fruit not a bean. I used to say that a lot to really make people understand that you can't be afraid of the fruit. The fruit can be very delicious. A coffee that is very jammy and sweet is not your milk and sugar coffee but it is more like a sweet red wine.

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I personally love the great clean perfume Yirgs. The great antithesis to the funky fermenty Harrars.

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A thought, the absence of roast flavors is the essence of coffee flavors. I have this theory that the absence of roast bitters allows you to taste more of the sweetness in these dense uber coffees. Bitter confuses the palate and hides the sweetness. While I admit you can manipulate some really interesting roast flavors at times(especially in espresso), the fruit is what is unique.
It comes back to what George talks about with the coffee horizon. A concept where coffees are a commodity where all the micro lots are blended together and roasted/processed as such into one generic coffee profile. When you roast dark and slow enough, you can make most any coffee into a dull cocoa with a generic coffee flavor. He's right about that. The thing is it also applies to espresso and over blending. When we put filler in the blends that may cover or hide much of the interesting tastes in the coffee.

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We should seperate the coffees at harvest into smaller and smaller lots to help isolate the most complex and unique lots. Goerge is pioneering this and the CoE helps a lot.

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With all that said, I'm going to take some time and learn more about tea. I am tired of bickering with people who just focus on renaming the standards instead of finding a better cup. Minutia over flavor. When it comes back to flavor, I'll be there.
Does anyone get the feeling that the Scandanavians in general and especially the Danes are drinking better espresso than us on a daily basis? While we are wowing over 2oz doubles of lightly roasted Yirg SoE, that may be old hat for them! Something to ask the last three WBC champs.
-Jaime

Cupping high grade taiwanese teas.

Checking the leaves after the cupping which were very intact, undamaged and pretty. Thy expanded with each brew until being fully unfurled.

Dha yu ling and a Pear mountain tea from taiwan. Each taiwanese tea was high grown and sells for $100 per 5.5oz. These teas were both at the base very sweet and intensely floral.
Fresh crop!
Flavor cuppa notes:
Pear mountain - pear, cinnamon, mint, honey, super creamy, and lemon drop aftertaste.
Dha yu ling - molasses, cinnamon graham cracker, clean cucumber, grape soda aftertaste.
Summary: We don't drink teas like this in the states! Silas needs more of these!
The sweet aftertastes linger in a super sweet clean flavor for many minutes afterwards.
-jaime

UPDATE: I realized that after this cupping we had to rethink everything one more time. If the tea industry is this advanced in Taiwan, then it means this is where the coffee industry should be or will be going. It's scary to think but maybe that's what it's about. The tea's were expressive, amazing, and complex. They were worth getting excited about. They were more complex than any tea I have had. Granted I have visited china and Japan but these blew down any of those expereiences by a long shot. It was strange how you could taste layers of flavors in the cups. Tea has this potential? That's something to think about.

Big cheers to Ben's dad in Taiwan for arranging them!

Teflon Portafilters

Originally uploaded by Chris Owenscoffeemutiny.

I love this idea of having teflon portafilters on a bar. I don't know why everyone is so cool to the idea here in the US. It seems fabulous to just be able to rinse and wipe the portafilter and not worry about rancid oil buildup.

Jaime

Diagnosis of a label

On our last trip to New York, I came across a few bits and pieces in one of the McDonald's gas station combo rest areas you see in CT on I95. Inside is a McDonalds and a coffee stand selling Lavazza. At the stand was this big board describing PB&J lattes and Nutty Buddy lattes as 'Specialty Coffee.' Those drinks had little to do with coffee but the irony was that right across from the stand was a huge sign for McDonalds iced coffee as a 'Premium Roast.' I thought, all we need is a Starbucks in the building! Then we could round out with some 'gourmet coffee' or some other nondescript term the marketers came up with. I chuckled a bit but it was kind of sad. With those terms, it's just varying derees of the same spin.

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The coffee industry is running out of nondescript terms to describe it's coffee.

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There, I've said it. When Starbucks says "This coffee is bold." I'm sorry, I looked it up and I still don't know what it means in terms of coffee! How about robust? I still struggle with full bodied. Now if my coffee is not Bold, Robust, and Full-bodied, it must be meek, weak, and light??? It's marketing spin isn't it? They must assume by controlling the label to make it sound nice without really saying anything they have succeeded in delivering the product with ambiguous terms that cannot be identified as positive or negative. It takes a lot more guts to describe the flavors in a coffee than to just say it's "full bodied and smooth." Check the coffee boards of some of these corporate shops and try to really pin down exactly what they are saying. It's all very nondescript and vague. Try the Starbucks site, that's my favorite. Just scroll through and imagine trying to tell a friend what each of the -flavor- descriptors of each of the coffees means. This one has zest! This one is bold! Say what? Then again maybe that's better than saying bitter, ashy, and burnt!

It seems that the marketing just muddies the proverbial water. Diluting and confusing the facts until the consumer gets into a routine of "Venti Breakfast blend." That's the real danger when someone is convinced that they know what that means and are so comfortable ordering it, they cannot go into another shop and order something else without confusion. The marketing gets into your routine and you have been pushed to recite the branding terms until you forget that you have been branded. Now, when you go into another shop, you must unlearn your routine and go back to normal land where there are small, med or large. OR Where a cappuccino may actually be a true italian 6oz microfoamed cappuccino and not large foamy latte.

Sadly, I really don't see it stopping anytime soon but we should not give up and roll over.
So, How do we fight this:

Transparency

Consumer Education

Perceivable Quality(and value)differences

Online Forums and other free information sources

Exceptional product in the independent Cafe



All opinons welcome-

Jaime

Costa Rica: Reflecting on water

Last winter when I was travelling through central america, I volunteered at a coffee farm for about a week and a half. Now the water quality in most of central america (Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Hondorus, Nicaragua and Panama) is fairly poor, but Costa Rica because of the economic situation in most of the country, is an exception for the most part. So after having to buy filtered water or purifying my water with iodine tablets for 2 months, I was surprised to find that the coffee farm had clean, fresh tasting water. It came from springs near by and collected in a well underneath the guest house. For several days the other guests and I were drinking the water with delight, relived that iodine was not necessary. After maybe 5 days I noticed a soapy taste in the water and started to get concerned that maybe the water wasn't as good as I had thought earlier. The other volunteers didn't notice any thing strange about the taste so I kept drinking it, thinking that maybe they had a chlorinated source. After washing some dishes one night I realized there was a hole in the sink. I ran the faucet and went outside to see a good amount of water dripping into the ground right below the sink. The pipe that brought us fresh water was right there sticking in the ground and it turns out that the soapy dish water was leaking into our well beneath the house. I patched up the hole as best I could and put a pot underneath the sink to catch the excess water leaking through. After about a day or so, water started to taste alot cleaner and like it did the first couple of days I was there. I never thought developing my palate would actually be practical like that!


Now several months later after coming back from california, I am realizing how incredibly critical water quality and chemical make up is for tea. I think my brita has a learning disability, cuz the water goes through it too fast. I tried poland spring and volvic and neither work as nicely as the water in cali. Ben's filtered and softer water worked fairly well, but I still can't get that same sweet and fullness as in california. Whatever ends up working, I realized that where ever you are in the country your water is probably gonna be a little different. I know that when I was in Arizona several years ago, the water tasted aweful cuz it had been sitting in the pipes for a really long time. Maybe I just need to get a new filter...



-Silas