What you need to know and why you need to know it!

The other day I had overheard a conversation and was inspired to write an article on the importance of coffee origins, varietals, processing and the roll of the barsista in educating themselves as well as the consumer. The problem I found was that I did not know where to start. So, in a twist of fate, I turned to my good friend Josh Longsdorf's Blog and found that he had already written a very poignant article on just those subjects. I think it is a really great read and that everyone should give it a gander, so I copied it here for everyones reading pleasure:

Reinventing the Role of the Barista
March 19th 2009 | Posted by Josh Longsdorf

The past couple decades have seen an evolution among coffee growers, roasters, and importers, with changes occurring faster than they themselves can keep up with. The industry as a whole is seeking a means to decommoditize coffee, to create a truly sustainable coffee infrastructure - one that is sustainable for the land, the growers, the customer, and everyone involved in between.

In the industry I think sustainability can be likened to a cup of coffee. While many agree coffee should be enjoyed black – or, in it’s natural state, if you will – this doesn’t always work for everyone. To some black coffee is an acquired taste that they have to work hard at enjoying. Others may never be able to enjoy it at all. The same is true of sustainability. Each farmer, each importer, and each roaster has their own cup of sustainable measures that make the relationship between them taste good. While each of these relationships is unique, the one thing common to all of them is the importance of transparency. This is where the barista comes in.

Baristas must do their best to keep this cup of sustainability black and clear – transparent – and garner as much appreciation as possible from our customers. To do this, we must reevaluate our role in coffee. We can no longer limit ourselves to just preparing it. We must also act as its representative to the consumer. We must provide them with the knowledge of what makes each cup of coffee so unique.

Things to know when representing the coffees:

• Where does your coffee come from?
There are currently more than 30 countries that grow the Coffea arabica plant; within each there are usually several growing regions and within each region there are hundreds of farms and some of these farms are even broken into several different micro lots. Therefore it is no longer a matter of whether your coffee comes from Brasil or Ethiopia. We also need to know the growing region, farm or co-op, and even the lot number in some cases. Every coffee has its own story to tell, and that story is reflected in the cup. Whether it’s from three separate micro-lots from the same farm or three farms from the same region, each coffee will be unique, and the barista should be able to explain that to the customer

• Who is the grower or producer?
1 in 10 people in the world work in a job some how related to coffee. With this fact it is then not surprising that there are more than 25 million coffee growers in the world, many of them go unrecognized. A lot of the growth in cup quality that we have seen throughout the years is attributed these growers.

• What is the cultivar or varietal?
Simply put in biological terms, varietals are naturally occurring and cultivars are produced or cultivated through selective breeding. In coffee however the two are often used interchangeably. With more than 40 cultivars stemming from the two varietals Typica and Bourbon, along with Mocha in Yemen and Ethiopia, and wild plants of Ethiopia there are more than 50 varietals and cultivars of Arabica coffee. Many producers grow more than one varietal or cultivar of coffee, all of which will have their own unique characteristics. A Bourbon will have different characteristics then a Pacamara will from the same farm.

• How was it processed?
The easiest way to think of processing is how was the fruit removed from the seed. Today we are seeing many exciting methods of processing, but generally are three major categories; wet or washed, dry or natural, and semi or pulped natural.

• Elevation?
Usually represented by a number followed by ‘masl’ (meters above sea level). Higher elevations mean less atmosphere, thus slower growth, which generally equates to a denser bean.

Of equal importance to properly representing the coffees is involving the customer.

Consumers generally want to know what they’re consuming, and we often fail to help them much in this regard. Edwin Martinez of Finca Vista Hermosa Farms in Huehuetenango, Guatemala says it best: “If more of us can taste and experience coffee we can begin to uncover the layers and become intimately familiar with it’s origin. Decommoditizing coffee hinges on ensuring the farmer is not anonymous.” By creating situations for customers to ask questions we can involve them in a way that is comfortable and educational for them. So how do we spark their interest?

• Cuppings-Traditionally, cuppings have been used for greens purchasing and quality control. These days, many are finding cuppings useful for educating consumers and introducing them to new coffees. Cupping allows the consumer to explore the fragrance, aroma, mouth feel, and taste of several coffees side by side.

• Flights-Taking a cue from an industry that does well in educating their customers; the wine industry has used flights to both educate and sell to customers for centuries. Whether we’re talking varietal/cultivar, origin, producer, or three completely different coffees all together, flights can be a fun way to compare and contrast coffees with customers. Remember to use small servings for flights, possibly with the option of taking a cup of their favorite with them afterwards.

• Single Origin Espresso-Ditch the ol’ blend, grab your favorite coffee and offer it up as espresso. Many roasters are now roasting some of their coffees specifically for single origin espresso; however, if your roaster doesn’t roast single origin espresso, you should be able to pull shots with most coffees as long as they were roasted well to begin with. S/O espresso gives the consumer the chance to see a coffee in a new light, and gives you a chance to introduce each unique bean to espresso drinkers.

To some this information may be a second language, and to others second nature. Either way, every barista could be doing more to educate the world about coffee. Remember in educating the consumer it is not the knowledge you have that matters, rather it is the experience they walk away with.

If this information isn’t available to you, a good place to gain it is to talk with your roaster.

If you like this then check out his website at rootcoffee for more stuff, I am sure he will be posting more of his stuff soon.

Current events!

WOW, the weekend already and I feel like I have had the shortest week in the world. Today, I woke up extra early, and worked the farmers market doing pour overs for the nice peoples of Bay View. Unfortunately though, even though we had people gladly waiting for more than 10 minutes for a cup, we were told that we could not do the pour overs any more. This is because other "nameless" vendors complained that we were stealing business or something like that, so basically we are not going to be doing the whole pour over thing anymore. The good news is that I have two on order from Michigan to get in Anodyne... I am very pumped about this let me tell you!

In other news, a group of us got together last Wednesday(I think)and had some coffee fun and experimentation. We had on hand for coffees a Costa-Rican Palmares Centro pulped-natural coffee, a El Salvador San Emilio 100% Bourbon pulped-natural, a Organic Mexican Alta de Pacifico, and some Schweik from Metropolis. We were also brewing them via multiple dosages and styles on the Chemex brewers and on the siphon brewer. If we had more time we were planning on utilizing the french press and moka-pot since James or Brett said that they had never had a good moka-pot, and well I feel very confident that I could do justice on a brewing system like that. The results and methods were very striking with changes ranging in the dosing sizes of the coffee, the method of adding and subtracting coffees and even pouring technique. I should definatly say that it was all for fun and we ended up all having a lot of coffee and I am sure we all left feeling great!



But back to my very busy day today, after the farmers market, I took a little break and had some lunch at home, but promptly met up with Steve to go do a semi-planned espresso crawl in Madison Wisconsin where I had heard that there is a pretty good coffee scene. To my slight disappointment, the coffee shops there were pretty mediocre. With the exception of Bradburys' which was amazing, and Indie's Coffee house where the Barista did a great job, I just really was not a fan of the espresso blend. I think that almost all of the coffee shops were not bad or even close to some horrible coffee shops I have been into, but that they have a lot of great potential as far as making a great shot of espresso given the right blends and training. All in all, I would say that Madison was a cool town and there is a pretty open landscape for quality coffees to come into play there.



To really finish off my night I hung out with the Boywonder from Roast on the 'East Side', and our great friend Chase, as well as the Girl and Luke. We drank some brews and ate at Honeypie's on Kinnickinnic and left feeling absolutely amazing... I can tell you right now that I am perhaps the most tired I have been in a long time. I sincerely hope that no one calls me before noon tomorrow so I can get my sleep on. I know this probably wont happen though because I can never sleep past 9 anyway but hey heres for hoping!



Oh, and heres a pic (she will most likely hate) just for the heck of it of me and the girl...Good night Coffee Blog!

So, it is the weekend again. Time for me to collect my thoughts on my life, coffee, and everything going on in general. I have been trying really hard latly to get things moving in the catagory of getting stuff done, or accomplishing goals.

Milwaukee
First off, personally, I feel great! I am surrounded by people who love and care for coffee as much as I do. We talk and debate about coffee all day long. Truth be told, I do not think I would rather be anyplace besides Milwaukee. Working at Anodyne has provided me with an opportunity to really put my knowledge into practice, work with some excellent coffees and people, and is giving me a chance to experiment with coffee and feel out its boundaries. Milwaukee is a town where there are tons of quality coffee shops hidden all over. If you have never been here, most likely you have least heard of Alterra. Alterra has some great coffee, and some great people working for them. You have Anodyne, where the focus is not about opening up franchises, but about roasting the best coffee and representing it to the best of our ability. I do not know much about them but The National. Every time I go into The National I get amazing spro from Metropolis out of Chicago. The baristas at The National know how to pull it and brew a good cup. There are also the guys up at Roast Coffee Co who can do great things with coffee (if you get a few drinks in them), but seriously they can do awesome things with some coffee. We also here in Milwaukee, happen to be bordered by Madison where there are a crap-ton of roasters and coffee shops, I have not been there yet, but plan on doing an espresso crawl in the next coming weeks.


The Holy Coffee Grail
I really want to do something amazing with coffee, but I kind of feel intimidated by the thousands of years of history behind coffee and feel like there is not much left for a person to discover or conclude about coffee. Although I do know that we are just skimming the top of an ocean of coffee adventure, I just get the feeling like I am scraping the bottom of my bowl and need a refill of this coffee awesomeness. It is like I want to discover something awesome in this multi-cultural, multi-national thing, a beast of sorts. I hear stories about how great things are being done all over, from a several thousand dollar siphon thing in California, to the Slayer people up in the North-West. But, when all is said and done, I can not help but get this feeling like we are all looking for this "coffee grail." Seriously, I see it in all serious coffee people. This look that is almost coveted, a way of living, we have this esoteric thing, coffee. When they speak to non-coffee people the look is always the same too, "What, you have not experienced the awe-inspiring amazing-ness that is great coffee?" I know this sounds weird to a non-coffee person too. "Dude, it is just coffee, couple bucks in a can at the store. Duhh!" I guess I just want to scream about how great it is, be its number one advocate. But, there is this almost quest going on to find the best way to brew, and the best coffee to brew. If you know the secret, it is amazing. If you don't know the secret and its just a cup of coffee, well, thats great too, but yeah. This grail though, this need to find and achieve coffee bliss, we are all looking for... I wish I had words to describe it.

Movies
Something I find funny is movies. More specifically coffee in movies. I occasionally see a french press or a moka-pot in these Hollywood movies and wonder "Do they know how to use that?" I, for sure, do not want to sound pretentious but seriously, it makes me think about the Hollywood stars too. They have almost this unlimited source of income and you always end up seeing these paparazzi photos of everyone walking down the street holding a cup by "you know who." I do find it funny, but could only imagine if I had this level of income, the coffee I would drink... I guess this makes me come to the conclusion that I would love to see some more people who waste money regularly, waste it on coffee, and great coffee at that.

Ultimate conclusion for the day
I am sitting at my kitchen table, typing on my laptop. I cant complain about anything. I think I am going to go get some coffee right now, my chem-exed "summer awesome fun yeah blend" was not enough to quench my thirst. I definitely have my head in the clouds today, not thinking to seriously about anything.

Busy, busy, Busy

I have been sooo busy lately that I do not know when I will have time to sit down and write some more in depth coffee stuff on here. But, I have been doing some coffee related stuffs that I could put up on this blog...

My sweet, awesome mother bought this old, awesome grinder that is in great condition at a garage sale for me, but I also just got my bratza maestro grinder for the apartment, so its more of a decoration for the house...


I have been experimenting on grind sizes for pour overs... I think we have a great cup...


This is the new addition to my sleeve, beans and a sunset... ohhh coffee, what you do to me...


This is the drip station that I have had made up for me, it is big pimpin and I am having two of them made for Anodyne, both at the farmers market and one in the cafe... It should end up being great for the shop and all Milwaukee



Yeah, thats it for now, I have to go finish making my toddy for luke to try and to see if it would be good in a coffee stout... but more on that later...

Where should my focus be?

So, where is your focus? I think we may have gotten lost along the way.
Back in Michigan, when I worked at Kozy Koffee, I was struck with an idea. Where should my focus be? The coffee? The industry? The method? The job? Well, I concluded that since I was fortunate enough to work in the industry as a barista that I should redefine my title. I, in fact, do not and did not want to be a barista, I wanted to be a scientist and a researcher. So, I looked and found that there was many views and styles of producing the consumable coffee.

At the time I had been pretty lost and apathetic towards my job and my life. I really had not any reason at that point to be investing any time into coffee beyond the fact that I was paying bills and that sure felt good. I still to this day do not feel any connection to the rock-star barista lifestyle. It is not my goal to become famous and I pretty much despise idol worship. I have other ideas and plans, and as far as the industry is concerned, well as you could tell by my last blog post, I really am not happy with the current industry and its focus on certifications and processes. Although, I am happy with a few dudes doing some great things for the coffee itself.

The coffee, well, I love the coffee. I think it is beautiful and fantastic and it touches so many people around the world. This is indeed where a lot of my focus has been lately, but I sincerely find that beyond that, I have become very upset with what is done to the coffee by both uneducated persons and persons ignorant to the proper and professional ways of making coffee.

Which leads me to what I was thinking about back in Michigan. I was working with one other person (Courtney) who actually cared about the coffee as much as me. And well, I took it in my own hands to better my knowledge and do the right thing with the coffee. I personally bought a Chemex and designed my very own pour over/ drip station. I really wanted to find the right way of making coffee that would compliment the specific coffee brewed. I was very sick of airpot coffees that would sit for hours at a time. Coffees that would be dosed incorrectly, coffees that would not be ground to the correct setting, and mostly over extracted coffee. I was sick of coffees that were tainted with flavors added to them. To this day, I get angry thinking about how there are forces out there in the world that define coffee as just an economic commodity that needs sugar, milk, syrups and sauces.

I can understand working a job to make money to pay the bills, but lack of care and ignorance leads to bad quality, there is no doubt about it. I honestly refuse to go into most coffee shops because I know I can not get a good cup of coffee. I never, and I mean never, order a cup of coffee from a restaurant because there is no focus on the coffee, it is a restaurant. I also never get gas station coffee, I will leave that right there.

So the focus, where should the focus be in my rant? The focus is on the quality. The focus is on the coffee bean. The focus is on the method. Every coffee blog and site you go to will have fifty million different ways of telling you how to prepare the coffee, and how to properly do everything coffee related. The truth is, everyone is really just learning. Although the story of coffee is as old as humanity, maybe even older, we are just now in the past 100 years roasting the beans to a standard level, and only for the past ten to fifteen years been roasting the coffee to get real flavors, and I am not talking about dark roasted anything.

I feel like we are on the cusp right now of righting wrongs that have been wrong for so long. All the misconceptions are in the process of being de-misconceived, (if that is even a word.) The point is this, the more we learn about coffee the more we need to hold the standard higher. An analogy is in order : Yes, you can paint at home, but most likely, you will never be a Monet or a Da Vinci. Its the same with coffee, you can most likely make a good cup of coffee at home, but if you get it professionally made, it can be life changing.

I really hope that this does not come off as overly pretentious. It is just that when consumers go into coffee shops with uneducated baristas, it really projects onto the consumer. The consumer then becomes also mis-educated and passes the ignorance along. The current coffee markets have been in many ways very progressive by allowing the importation of some of the best coffee to ever have been tasted, and in so many cases this great coffee's potential is ruined by this ignorance. I am reminded of those medicine commercials you see on the television for all the new drugs being marketed, “Please consult a professional before use!” We have the ability to make great coffee, just a lack of knowledge currently that is stopping most.


Common problems that are constantly being corrected:
1.Do not freeze your coffee
2.Do not keep it in the fridge
3.You have thirty days limit after the roast day to use your coffee before spoilage occurs
4.Only grind your coffee right before you are about to use it
5.Dark roasted equates to “burned all the flavor away”
6.Dark roasted coffee also does not have more caffeine than light roasted coffee

Empathy, dignity, and economy...

Last night, I stayed up late watching the 2006 movie "Black Gold." It is based around a man named Tadesse Meskela. He happens to be the main guy at the OROMIA coffee Cooperative in Ethiopia. His "mission (is) to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy," as the website blackgoldmovie.com says. I watched the movie intently, I watched the farmers in the movie intently, and I watched the British, and American consumers intently.
I see something unnerving in this picture and it starts in that I love coffee. Not just the morning cup, and not the exploits of becoming a "rock-star" barista. I love coffee in that I feel as if I am a part of something that is as old as history. It is in the story of the bean, that the trouble starts. The story that stands behind every coffee bean that is picked and the person that had to pick that bean in order to stay alive.
I must confess that I have only been "in" the coffee industry for about five years now and am by no means an expert, but I am a human and have what I feel to be an immense amount of empathy for other humans. What I have come to learn in my five years, is that in the "industry" of coffee, the people who pick all the coffees from around the world, work for next to nothing in comparison to what their labor produces for others in the chain of coffee consumption. What I mean is this; the average coffee farmer get pennies per pound of coffee sold, and through the normal channels of international trade the coffee comes out on my end in a cafe/roaster setting costing the consumer nearly eleven dollars per pound. The gap is huge. Where does the money go and why are the coffee farmers still living in poverty?
I am by no means going to pretend to be stupid and ignore the fact that there are costs involved in shipping hundreds of thousands of pounds of coffees from all corners of the earth to thousands of other places around the globe, on the contrary, I am very aware. But I am also aware of quality and the debate on Fair Trade vs. not Fair Trade. The debate stems from the fact that the certification by the Fair Trade organization in turn pays the coffee farmers more per pound of coffee than the average non-Fair Trade coffee. This in turn also helps the farmer out by giving them more money to re-invest back into the farms, labor and increase the quality of their lives. The counter point is that the term Fair Trade in no way indicates quality. From the viewpoint that I currently stand, I only want the best coffees that I can buy. Unfortunately, the Fair Trade markets have driven, in some respects, the quality of coffee down by instead of promoting quality coffee, promoting certification by the Fair Trade organization, so that the farmers could get more money by producing an inferior bean.
Writing this, I feel a certain level of guilt. I do feel like coffee farmers need to be paid more, but only a premium to those who dedicate themselves to quality. The comparison that I often reference is that of natural selection. The website Wikipedia.org defines natural selection as "the process where heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common over successive generations of a population." In terms of the economy of coffee, when consumers support this "Fair Trade" over quality, they are inhibiting the natural flow of increasing the quality of their crop and therefor inhibiting the farmer from getting paid more for producing quality coffee.
What happens, as I have read, is that instead of all these farmers producing better quality coffees, they work the farm from a mostly "get the job done" perspective, not caring and therefore driving the quality and market for the coffee down. The market is driven down when average quality coffee is taken to the local cooperatives, where they are often mixed together with all the other coffees from the regions where they are harvested. This is really a big thing considering that this will mix all the hard work of the farmers who care with the coffees of the farmers who do not really care. On my end, what this does is gives us, the roasters and the consumers? We end up with coffees that have no merit beyond the Fair Trade certification.
Again I would hate to come off as stupid and ignore the hard work of a few daring souls that are out there really working to increase quality of coffee and quality of life for the farmers. Intelligentsia has created and copyrighted the term "Direct-Trade," where they deal directly with the farmer, but even more recently as written on his personal blog of at dougzell.com, Doug Zell, who basically is Intelligentsia has begun importing coffee and by doing so "are... guaranteeing our growers great prices for great coffees through our pioneering Direct Trade program, but importing and financing our coffee ourselves provides an even greater degree of transparency and logistical control that allows us to land carefully selected Direct Trade coffees months sooner than if we were using outside importers." There is also Stumptown coffee who "pays the highest prices ever seen in these countries in pursuit of these (coffees)." The coffees they purchase are among the best you can buy and are according to their website "the product of a maximum commitment of time, energy and money from our farmers."
My personal problem lies in the question "What can I do to help?" On the small scale roasters side of things, is it possible to really help when the the roaster to go through an importer? Is it possible to help these farmers when it is at this point almost impossible for the average coffee shop to survive? Is it possible to help when misinformation and greed permeates the roots of the coffee industry?

So, last night I watched a movie... It moved me, it changed the way I am thinking about the coffee industry, it has inspired me. It has been a goal of mine for the last year or two to source my own coffee, giving dignity, context, and a face to the coffee farmer, buying directly from him. My hopes are that the industry will change for the better by then. It shouldnt have to be so hard to show you care...

My homies from Michigan

Just another short little thing. Last weekend Courtney and I ventured out to Michigan so she could get her second session done on her tattoo sleeve. We were fortunate enough to make it out to The Ugly Mug in Ypsilanti on Saturday morning where these awesome guys were kind enough to hook us up with some killer new Ugly Mug shirts and some coffee. We posted the cupping notes for it over on the Anodyne blog so check it out, but for real we had a blast. We had a chance to pose here in a family photo:

From the top left: My good friend Josh Bongwater, Miro "Always" Lomeli, Me, Courtney Vaquera, Second row:Jim Saborio owner of Comet Coffee AA, MI), and Ypsilanti famous Ethan Billups