Coffee Exactitude

Some very good, very smart small batch/specialty coffee roasters/retailers or other reliable sources of coffee information will lay out highly detailed instructions for the "proper" way to prepare the "perfect cup", as if they were describing some kind of science project conducted in a laboratory. Some examples:

Stumptown Brewing Guide
Peet's Brewing Methods
And my personal favorite:
The Coffee Research Institute

My brother the professional coffee roaster, who has a good 20+ years in the industry, had this to say when asked why his holiday apple pies were so good: [With a shrug] "I just followed the directions."* He sometimes reminds me of Spock from 'Star Trek', always fighting feelings of irritation with people who refuse to approach every situation logically.

The thing is, coffee is passionate stuff - otherwise you wouldn't be reading this right now - and as such, somewhat defiant of things like logic, step-by-step processes, and rules. It's not alone in the world of food in this regard. If you throw a barbecue and invite any men, for example, you will inevitably hear an argument about the proper method of cooking meat with fire. Now, our ancestors just rammed a stick in it and put the damn thing on the fire - there wasn't any talk of "Seven minutes to a side at high heat, and then let it rest in its own juices for at least three". Of course it may be argued that our barbecue tastes better than theirs did, although I can't imagine many of us going hungry for as long as they did, much less killing and skinning it ourselves.

The reason I draw this analogy is that for me, while I am certainly educated in the "proper" way to prepare coffee, at 8 or 9 in the morning it's a much more visceral thing. I'm scratching my scalp, yawning, trying to twist kinks out of my spine, and trying to hold up beltless pants while pawing through a cupboard full of medications, boiling water for my wife's tea and trying to fix eggs for a picky three-going-on-four year old -- I lack the facility to multi-task to the level of holding all of this activity while simultaneously grinding with an eye on the size and symmetry of each grain, degrees Fahrenheit of the hot water, etc.

As soon as I am able to grab time and space to do my coffee thing, after everybody else has been fed, dressed, etc., I pour some beans from my canister into my cheapo Krups touch grinder up to about here (a little more than what's needed to cover the blades); fill up the kettle with water from the faucet while counting to about ten or twelve; put it on the electric stove turned on high and wait for it to whistle; when it whistles, grind the coffee for about twelve seconds while shaking the grinder to ensure more-or-less even grind consistency; thump the grinder upside-down so that most of the coffee falls out of the grinder and into the lid; dump the coffee into the press pot, moisten the grounds so that they swell and increase surface area for better brewing; pour the rest of the water in, filling it so that the crema rises to just above the metal band, and stir; set timer for 3 minutes; when timer goes off, press down on plunger, and then decant immediately into a thermos. My wife thinks that even this routine is pretty anal, and makes fun of me for whining about how long the grounds are supposed to steep even though she's made me plenty of awesome coffee without much consideration of the niceties.

To make a long story very short, these things don't require much measurement or consideration; they are habits I have acquired, and the product is continually monitored by color and smell during this procedure. I can and literally sometimes have performed this routine half-asleep. Do you follow a recipe when you make eggs? Toast? Pour yourself a bowl of breakfast cereal? Actually in a sense I believe that we do - it's just a sort of wordless mnemonic that doesn't contain much in the way of precise measurement.

Two of my favorite small batch roaster/retailers in Seattle are Caffe Vita and Lighthouse - both of whom brew coffee via press pot and decant it into thermoses to sell in place of "drip". As I watch them work, they pretty much prepare the coffee the way I do, or even less carefully if that's possible, and it always comes out fantastic. Might it be better if they did it slowly, cautiously, step-by-step as ordained in the standard industry texts? It might. But if I wanted it that much better I would stay home and do it myself. Or better yet, visit my brother and make him fix us coffee.

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*See "Pies, Apple" in The Fanny Farmer Cook Book

Coffee Under Adverse Conditions

Some interesting coffee experiences can be had where circumstances are not particularly optimal for preparation. My favorite one of these was brewing coffee “cowboy style” on a camping trip - fistfuls of coarse grind tossed into a pot of water boiling over the campfire, strained through a paper towel. We were at a very high altitude, and water boils at a lower temperature there, so it also did not get quite hot enough to steep fully. Nevertheless, I remember sipping the brew out of a glazed metal camping mug and feeling such pleasure at the flavor and aroma in that setting of fresh mountain air and camp fire smoke. I wouldn’t dream of preparing coffee in such a manner at home, and most definitely not for invited guests; but it suited me fine.

This morning I was confronted by a cracked press pot carafe, and since it would have been a drastically inconvenient expedition to try and track a new one down before lunch, I decided (at my wife’s advice) to break out the stovetop espresso maker. I’ve been having trouble for a while now getting decent-tasting espresso out of ours; it is one of the old school models that’s molded out of aluminum, rather than stainless steel, and aluminum appliances can be impregnated with unpleasant odors and flavors that can be passed on to the food prepared in them. Also, it may be superstition on my part, but I just find that espresso made in stainless steel models tastes better somehow.

I’m not skilled at brewing stovetop espresso like my Italian wife is; I inevitably have temperature and timing issues, and the process seems to take forever. What I have been getting out of our stovetop unit is one of those “coffee-like beverages” I discussed earlier - black hole shots of the sort that are sternly denounced in the specialty coffee retail profession (instead of a regular surface-covering cap of crema ranging from nut brown to copper red, one finds a ring of weak colorless crema or even just bubbles around a black liquid surface; this product screams “Bitter!!!” to the trained eye). In addition to the black holes, the espresso is murky rather than luminous. The flavor profile is like a list of “how-not-to’s” - bitter, oily, acrid, harsh, leaving an aftertaste, etc.

My remedy in salvaging something drinkable from this decoction was the one used by people the world over: milk and sugar. The resulting beverage was drinkable. There were interesting qualities to be noted in the flavor profile; although bitter, oily, acrid, harsh, and leaving an aftertaste, there also was an interesting body quality that lingered on the tongue, and the ghosts of some of the mid-range flavor qualities lingering in the finish (citrus, wine, etc.) One might say that drinking this cup was like settling for a below-average Chianti so that one has something to wash down a plate of spaghetti with.

You are probably wondering why I even bothered to drink this beverage rather than pour it down the sink. The reason is that my fascination with coffee includes endless curiosity regarding the bad coffee experience. How does bad coffee happen, why do so many people tolerate it, and how can it be prevented? In my case, the bad coffee experience was entirely my own fault, and very easily explained by a multiplicity of causes:

1. The espresso was not fresh, but pre-ground and stored in a paper to-go cup with tape over the hole in the lid. I’m not even sure how long it’s been sitting there.

2. I was just too damned lazy to get my behind out of the house to Bed, Bath & Beyond or Target to buy a replacement carafe for my press pot.

3. I used unfiltered tap water.

4. We have a stainless steel unit somewhere in the house, possibly the garage, and finding it would have solved a lot of problems with the product that came out - but it also would have taken effort on my part, which I was unwilling to expend.

I could go on, but I think this is sufficient to paint a picture. Many of us want a coffee-like beverage in the morning, but are too lazy to go the distance required to having one better than merely potable. You could go to the local small-batch roaster for a cup of something decent, but the massive chain shop is on the way to work and has a drive-through. You could make your own at home, but you ran out of beans last weekend and haven’t gotten around to refilling your canister.

While it’s only human to be lazy sometimes, there’s no reason to settle for a reduced quality of life because of it. Effort, as it turns out, is a major component of any sort of enjoyment or pleasure. I think that we as a culture have become addicted to convenience, valued over and above quality that requires us to reach a little further. The tendency to indulge impulses of laziness - the “Why bother?” impulse - is less a moral failing than it is a symptom of depression, and anybody who’s paying attention to the way things are in the world has one or two good reasons to be depressed. But more importantly, the lazy way is not necessarily the easier way. We just have to make efforts directed towards pleasure a part of our daily routine. Not to make to fine a philosophical point about it, but remembering to keep one’s supply of fresh beans stocked is a hallmark of taking care of the business of taking care of oneself. When writing your grocery list do not hesitate to consider the status of your coffee canister. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, a half pound per week should do it (more than that and you risk overstocking). Remember that coffee is food. You’re drinking it for more than just the buzz, you’re drinking it to satisfy a sensual desire. If you think of it in those terms, you’ll be less likely to deprive yourself.

Coffee For the Non-Coffee Drinker

I have found that the particular tastes, expectations, desires and demands of the “non-coffee drinker”, in regards to drinking the drink that they do not drink, to be fascinating. On a regular basis, I am called upon to prepare a beverage for the person who introduces themselves by saying “I normally don’t drink coffee. What would you recommend?” Others who might more accurately describe themselves as “infrequent coffee drinkers” have done so just enough times to acquire a taste for something that almost tastes like coffee, but as little as possible; still others desire the taste, but none of the other things that go with it (caffeine, sugar, fat, etc.) As a coffee drinker and server I am called upon to step out of myself and imagine what it would be like to (apparently) not like coffee very much, but perhaps just a little.

This is no small challenge, but it could easily have been a bigger one. Some grateful visitors from the midwest recently expressed, with some emotion, their relief at being served coffee “by someone who actually drinks it”. They then proceeded to describe, with distaste, coffee servers back home who had no taste for what they were serving, and therefore were unable to provide a product they had any personal or emotional stake in. Needless to say, my visitors were unable to derive any satisfaction from that coffee experience. It was a pleasure to provide that for them, but it was also educational for me, because it reinforced a suspicion of mine - reminiscent of the old adage (which I shared with them) to “never trust a skinny chef”. Coffee is food, as I have said before; and if you don’t taste the food you are making, how can you know whether it is any good?

Fortunately, I like coffee, and I have some strong opinions about what makes it good. Because of this, I also have opinions that need to be overcome if I am to sensitively provide service to people with different tastes than mine. I still have trouble with the concept of the raspberry mocha, for example - for me, it seems tantamount to pouring ketchup on a juicy slab of prime rib - but I think I am able to serve one that will satisfy the person who orders it. I can find the good in it - the fleeting aroma of good espresso as it disappears under a flood of syrup; the magical, alchemical intermingling of espresso and chocolate; and, well, I do like raspberries. I could really enjoy drinking some espresso while eating some fresh raspberries and fine dark chocolate. So, that’s the key - using my imagination.

Another instance in which this challenge crops up for me is serving decaffeinated coffee. Coffee that has had the caffeine removed has been altered, and there is just no way around this. Caffeine is part of the intrinsic flavor of coffee just as alcohol is part of the intrinsic flavor of gin. I can’t imagine drinking non-alcoholic gin. Now I have drunk good decaffeinated coffee, and recently; but it is a different beverage, a changed beverage, and as such it is not the one that I prefer. Coffee - and espresso in particular - contains several volatile chemicals in addition to caffeine that are stimulating, a rather complicated mixture of oils, esters, acids, sugars, etc. Some have been found to be vasodilators (i.e., chemicals which cause the capillary vessels to expand, thus increasing blood circulation, giving one that slightly “flushed” feeling), others raising the blood sugar level, some actually helping to release endorphins, and so on. The very act of drinking a hot beverage is in itself stimulating. It’s not the lack of caffeine as stimulant that I am challenged by; rather, it’s the lack of caffeine as a building block of coffee’s complex molecular flavor structure. Everyone knows what it’s like to try to cook from a recipe, get one tiny thing wrong, and have the whole thing go in the trash. Getting the salt and pepper wrong on a plate of eggs can make them completely inedible for me. It’s the same with the caffeine in coffee - without it, the coffee just tastes kind of funny.

However, I think it is to my credit that I have mastered the skill of proffering a beverage which I do not (okay, okay - seldom) drink. So far, I’ve received only positive feedback on the decaffeinated espresso beverages I’ve served, and as for the decaf brew, I never let it sit past the expiration point. I feel confident that I have the ability to craft something that might not please me but may please another, and I consider that an achievement worthy of some degree of pride.

That having been said, I offer to you an example of one of the moments that truly make my job worthwhile: A text message from a hard-to-please customer shortly after serving her a beverage I’ve definitely had to learn to make the way she likes it.

Coffee By Any Means Necessary

Coffee is food, but it is also an experience. As such, whatever parameters one chooses to frame that experience are a matter more personal than scientific. Everyone comes to coffee with a different set of biases, expectations, and desires; it is entirely up to you whether you enjoy your experience with coffee, whatever the circumstances, as there are an almost infinite number of methods for mediating, reducing, or purifying it.

My brother (a more than 20 year veteran of the industry) and I enjoy diner coffee, which we sometimes refer to jokingly as a “coffee-like beverage”. It’s rather like the cigar and wine aficionado who occasionally will light up a convenience store stogie with some cheap alcohol in a paper cup: Within some parameters, less subtle tastes may be called for - the backyard barbecue, the church potluck, etc. Coffee is a social drink almost more than alcohol, as it is consumed in the daylight hours when our mate-prowling masks are hung up in the closet. Because of this, it is sometimes necessary to drink “bad” coffee with sugar added for social purposes. In actuality, the only truly “bad” coffee I have ever had was in a resort in Mexico, a drink I hesitate to even grace with the name, unmatched in its foulness; it bore a certain resemblance to standing water in bird baths, or dredgings from an estuary. Because of my deplorable addiction to caffeine, I was forced to drink this concoction, which was clearly prepared with nothing but contempt.

By contrast, I have had “coffee-like beverages” in roadside diners that, while inferior in most respects, were prepared with some friendliness, if not actual love, that were quite passable, even palatable. Even a tepid or oleaginous cup can be tolerably ameliorated by a bit of maple syrup left over in the pitcher from breakfast. French roast is another type of coffee that seems self-defeating in that any recognizable flavor profile has been annihilated by the beans having been roasted beyond all recognition. Still, when you’re in a recording studio at 3:00 AM trying for the 96th time to eke out a memorable solo, a cup of steaming French roast seems like a godsend. Conventional wisdom in the coffee industry is that a full French roast is a way to squeeze the last bit of profit out of an inferior crop; but it may be argued that, like blackened catfish, what was originally a method for retrieving opportunity from the brink of disaster now becomes something people look forward to on the menu.

In light of these observations I want to report on a couple of recent “coffee-like beverages” I succeeded in enjoying. The first was a decoction of Vietnamese coffee, pictured here.



The coffee is served as it drips from a small metal filter basket directly into the cup; the grind is set to espresso, so the drip is glacially slow. One’s meal may be half over before the coffee is ready to drink. The beverage itself is charcoal-like, a true unabashed French roast, with overtones of kerosene. What’s more, when cream is requested, what one gets is sweetened (with corn syrup) condensed milk from a can.

This may sound abysmal to the sensitive, but to me, as I gnawed on a skewer of Mekong style grilled pork, it seemed fitting, it smelled evocative, it tasted curiously good. It is a rough-and-ready coffee experience, one suggestive of war zones and streetwise creature comforts. It is coffee that at one time or another was the best that could be accomplished with the materials available, and has since then become a regional delicacy. In fact, most haute cuisine bears a similar history; a solid majority of the dishes listed on the prix fixe menus of French restaurants were originally considered “peasant foods”. As for the coffee, I consumed every drop and regretted none.


Another recent potation to grace my palate was a canned iced coffee beverage from Tasco, purchased from one of White Center’s myriad Southeast Asian grocery stores. Reminiscent of Starbucks’ “Frappuccino” - albeit obviously “creamed” with some sort of coconut-derived glycerides that are probably lethal to the cardiovascular system - it was sweet, but not too much so, and reasonably pleasant tasting at room temperature. Couldn’t they have added some sort of whey or milk solids to make it taste less like palm oil? Of course to do that they would have had to add a lot more preservatives, and as it is the ingredients list is refreshingly short.

Part of the enjoyable experience of consuming this decidedly augmented coffee product was shopping in an Asian grocery, looking at all the pictures on the thousands of different cans - most without any English on them at all - and trying to guess what was in them. Fortunately this particular product was friendly to the illiterate Westerner.

In both of these instances, context is all. Available cuisine is often the most common mitigating circumstance surrounding coffee consumption; one can tolerate a mediocre or even sub-par shot of espresso after a sublime Italian repast, and the same is true of Southeast Asian cooking. What I am curious about and would like to explore is the taste of outstanding gold-standard Vietnamese or Thai coffee. Perhaps it would come in the form of a piping hot press pot of coarsely ground single origin coffee from the region. I can think of more than one small batch specialty roaster in Seattle that may offer mainland Southeast Asian varietals (as opposed to the already familiar Indonesian, Sumatran, or Javanese coffees). I will investigate the matter, and report back my findings.

Coffee + Soy or Coffee vs. Soy?

A question out there for you folks who for whatever reason mix soymilk with your espresso, drip, press, or other form of coffee. [If you find this subject matter disgusting, please move onward to the next post, and have a nice day.]

Has anyone found a brand of soymilk that does NOT break up into curds on contact with the acids normally present in coffee? Silk brand has a "creamer" product that holds up fairly well [some sort of emulsifying agent no doubt - hopefully not high in trans-fats or anything; i'll go read the carton later], but what if I want a soy cappuccino? Or is this simply a crime against both God and Nature, and I am simply being punished for my puerile habits?

Any and all comments warmly appreciated.

The Best Coffee In The World

I'm not going to mince words, split hairs, or serve you decaf on this one. The best coffee in the whole entire world is Arabian Mocha Sanani [a.k.a. Mocha Yemen], and is roasted by Peet's Coffee and Tea of Berkeley, California. [Second place - and it's a photo finish - goes to beloved artisan tiny batch roaster Lighthouse of the picaresque Phinney Ridge neighborhood here in Sea-Town. Hell, even the Great Green & Black Satan can't seem to screw it up.]

I have brewed this coffee as espresso, through paper and gold cone filters both "Mr. Coffee" and "Melitta" style, and [best of all] in a press pot or "French Press". I've even made "cowboy coffee" with it - i.e., boiled a pot of water over a campfire and then thrown a few coarse-ground fistfuls in, straining the product through a paper towel. It holds up under any and all circumstances.

Most coffee that you drink doesn't startle you like Sanani does. Usually you start with that roasted bean flavor followed by an interesting aftertaste, or the acid burn of No-Doz, or whatever crap you dump in there. The coffee of Yemen, however, immediately comes over you like an ancient and tawny port, a smooth single malt scotch, and a good cigar all rolled into one. You can taste the unique preparation method of this particular varietal, in which the coffee cherry is dried onto the bean in the blazing Arab sun rather than pulped and rinsed off beforehand.

Drinking this coffee has all of the flavor notes one looks for in any coffee, rolled into one - the tart acid on the tip of the tongue, the creamy fatty esters on the middle, the toasty oxidation somewhere on the back and sides - and then ties it all up with a nose like a particularly velvety Chianti.

How do Peet's manage to knock this particular bean straight out of the ballpark? It's a mystery, it's magic, more art than science - I imagine it's got something to do with the excruciating care they take on timing the different stages of the roast from first crack to cooldown - like any culinary craft, it's an alchemical thing, requiring a hermetic and gnostic sort of wisdom that cannot be written down. However it is done, I've found their roast has an unbelievably long shelf life, certainly far longer than any roasted bean has any right to. By contrast, Lighthouse's roast is very immediate, very NOW - you'd better drink it all this week if you know what's good for you. Of course it's delicious enough to drink a bag full in a few days, but you don't want to rush it.

"Latte Art"

I'd like to make a confession. "Latte Art" is one of those lovely haute cuisine presentational novelties, like radish flowers, that can make one's cup just a little more enjoyable. But since it is ineffective as a substitute for good coffee, I have never given it much consideration, much less effort. When I shared this prejudice with my boss, like the good sensei he is, he replied: "These things will come in time." He did not say, "Too bad - you'd better get up to speed on it, or you're toast," nor did he say "I don't care about it much either." Rather enigmatically, he said it would come in time.

So I didn't knock myself out learning how to make those clever little squiggles, leaves, pictures of smiley-faced suns, Italian paper patterns or what-have-you on top of everyone's drink. Instead, I focused on rendering a quality beverage according to my employer's preferred specifications (which are also something as nebulous yet exact as any expectations about food can be). I made it my watchword to never be satisfied without some kind of exclamation of satisfaction from each customer - "Ahh, perfetto!" for example - "Just as I would have expected back home," as one Italian guest remarked. Every time someone took a sip of their drink and either shrugged or didn't react, I inquired if everything was all right, and whenever possible either remade the drink or memorized the person's face so I could do better next time - with the optimal goal of doing it right the first time, seeing as how you can't count on a second chance after a first impression. High standards perhaps, but without them, life loses some of its joy.

The funny thing that happened is that I started making art on people's beverages almost by accident. Or rather, I discovered that when one focused on technique for quality purposes, the art sometimes appeared on its own - perhaps this is how this particular element was discovered in the first place. I'd time the shots, position the wand in the milk just so for the right number of seconds, tamp out the few large bubbles, swirl, pour with the right elbow position and wrist action, and maybe my hand would tremble a little from having forgotten to pack my lunch that day, and there it was! - that telltale squiggle of crema on foam that said "Make that last gentle flick forward and you'll have yourself a leaf". And now I have a new highly-set ideal, designed for maximum challenge: In addition to a sigh of satisfaction after first sip, an exclamation of "Beautiful!" at first glance. So far I'd say I get that about 10-15% of the time, conservatively. I'd like to get up to 30%, but I'll happily take it one customer at a time.

Customers: You've Just Got To Love Them

You've just got to love the guy who comes up to you, spreads his hands in that "What world am I in?" shrug, and goes: "I'd just like.....a CUP OF COFFEE." As if you personally had created the entire European cafe culture to vex him. Really, it's a treat to be imbued with such God-like power. Because when I give him exactly what he wants - with reasonableness and calm - perhaps he will come to see that his negative expectations go out before him into the world and create most of what he doesn't want.

But one shouldn't hold one's breath.

Welcome to Serious Grounds!

If you were to ask ten friends of mine to describe me, I think at least nine would interject with some mention of coffee. Those of you who think Seattle to be a coffee-obsessed town should have seen Berkeley, California in the late seventies and early eighties.

My fellow Berkeley High students and I would traipse off the then-open campus and drink cappuccinos at Trumpetvine Court or Au Coquelet, or lurk amongst the revolutionary manifestos at the Old Mole bookstore sucking down numerous cups of French Roast, exploiting the owner's sadly naive free refill policy. On the weekends we'd flock to Telegraph Avenue and order "giant caps" from Espresso Roma across the street from UC Berkeley Campus, rubbing shoulders with Iranian exchange students, architecture and engineering geeks, transplanted European supermodels, shadowy beatnik figures who might be the next American poet laureate or else some kind of dope dealer....

From there, we'd spin out to Cafe Mediterraneum (the owner of which is rumored to have invented the latte), where Jerry Rubin plotted revolution, People's Park protesters ducked out of the clouds of tear gas, and any number of aspiring rock stars wrote lyrics on napkins while drinking pint glasses of nightmarishly strong coffee.....

And then there was Peet's on Vine Street. Like Woodstock, you had to be there, but unlike Woodstock it's still standing and still doing a respectable trade. Sure, they may have passed the point of IPO. But it's still a damned good sack of beans.

History is important when talking about coffee. Legend has it that the beverage we recognize by that name was first cultivated for the purpose of brewing as kaveh by either the Yemenite or Ethiopian people some time between the twelfth and fifteenth century. Legend also has it that the American Revolution was fomented in coffeehouses. These stories may be nebulous and sketchy on the facts, but like the other cash crops that drive the world's economy, there is a mythology behind the reality that refuses to be ignored. Amber waves of grain. Corn is King. Legalize it, don't criticize it, etc.

Some of us even remember our first cup of coffee. Mine was of course Peet's, probably either House Blend or something similar, at the age of ten...which would have been 1975 or '76, in my parents' kitchen, with about 25% half and half and two spoons of sugar. I even remember one time in that same kitchen taking my first daily sip from one of our heavy stoneware mugs and feeling a grotesque scuttling on my tongue, and spitting out a brown household spider. for most sane people that would have been their last cup ever. For me, it was the beginning of a lifetime obsession.