Author: Guadalupe Sierra

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Looking for a good cup of coffee

When you are in a country that grows amazing coffee you may think it would be easy to enjoy a good cup of coffee…. well, that is more easily said than done!

Currently I am in Mexico visiting family and looking for coffee to bring to NL. A few months ago I wrote about some delicious coffees from Mexico (Mexico grows coffee in 9 out of 31 state) and now we are one more step closer to have them permanently into our coffee stock [http://www.engrano.fr/2013/11/13/tasting-mexican-coffee/]. My passion and love for coffee was born here in Mexico, but as in many other latinamerican countries it is easier to find good coffee beans here than to find a decent cup of coffee.

I don’t know exactly why but in most latinamerican countries coffee is not truly appreciated and usually it is prepared either too weak (probably the huge American influence) or too sweat. Even worse, to make it taste “stronger” instead of using more coffee they used coffee that has been roasted way too far ending up in a bitter but tasteless cup of coffee.

Argentina is a different story. In Argentina about 60% of the population has some degree of Italian descent and because of this huge Italian influence coffee culture in Argentina is similar to Europe and different from the rest of Latinamerica. Funny enough no coffee is grown in Argentina.

Traditionally Mexicans prepare their coffee as “cafe de olla” coffee from the pot infused with unrefined whole sugar, cinnamon, sometimes aniset or clove. In a clay pot water, cinnamon and sugar are heated up to boiling point, then ground coffee is added and mixed. The heat is turned off and the beaverage should rest for a couple of minutes. Then the coffee is sieved and served. Please imagine a household smelling like coffee and spices, perfect!

In Ecuador, as in Peru and Colombia, the tradition is to prepare a heavy coffee syrup called “cafe pasado”. The coffee is prepared as filter coffee, sometimes with a metal or cloth filter, but always with huge amount of ground coffee. The warm water is then added slowly and once the coffee is ready it is cooled down and saved. When someone wants a coffee, just add warm water to a portion of the “cafe pasado”.

With the more busy modern life these traditional slow preparations of coffee have been replaced with filter coffee. In the last 10 years espressos arrived to Latinamerica and the coffee scene is slowly changing. People are now learning about their own delicious coffee. More local coffee companies are offering a variety of single-origin coffees, but still the fashion is weak coffee. Last week I found a cozy coffee place where they roast their own coffee and the smell was amazing! They had a menu with coffee from 6 different regions of Mexico. To my surprise they even have coffee from Nayarit. I didnt even know they grew coffee there! Nayarit is a state in the Pacific coast and it wouldn’t suprise me if together with coffee from Zacatecas and northern Veracruz it is the most northernly grown coffee in the world!!

I was ecstatic! I bought beans from Nayarit that I will soon taste. And since it was early in the morning I asked also for a cappuccino thinking this should be THE cappuccino. But instead I got a 280 ml cup filled up with warm milk and almost no coffee. I heard them prepare an espresso for my cappuccino so my conclusion is that they use too little coffee for a too big cup of milk…dissappointing. The same story happened at different coffee places and restaurants. One time I sent the cappuccino back and asked them to pour an extra espresso on it. They didnt understand why. Even at a famous italian restaurant I got a soup-size bowl with warm milk and just a hint of coffee when i ordered a cappuccino, see the image below.

IMAG0478

My luck changed when I came to Queretaro. The coffee at the hotel is still hideous, burned and bitter, but when visiting Amparo, the coffee distributer whose coffees I intend to bring to NL, I got a real espresso with aromatic coffee from Coatepec! So I see the dawn of decent coffee glimmering at the horizon: if a coffee distributor can make a good espresso it’s matter of time and that knowledge spreads down to coffee places and finally the consumers. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years we will see espresso bars all over the place in Mexico ?

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Why not try Turkish coffee?

Last week I was a couple of days in Istanbul, and when in Turkey one obviously doesn’t order espresso, but Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee is a very interesting way of preparing coffee because it is in several aspects completely opposite from let’s say Western European coffee. In order to understand this we have to discuss the relation between the coffee roast, grind, preparation time and taste. Also, it is important to know that coffee is a solution of many different substances in (hot) water, and those substances do not dissolve equally easy in water. So what are the important relations?

  • Roast : when coffee changes from light to dark roast the basic taste looses acidity and gains bitterness.
  • Grind : finer ground coffee has more contact area with water. Therefore, finely ground coffee needs less preparation time to get the flavour out of the coffee compared to coarsely ground coffee.
  • Preparation time: when coffee stays longer in contact with (hot) water more components of the coffee will be freed from the coffee beans and dissolve in water. Pressure does this too. But if preparation time gets very long (or pressure very high) the coffee becomes more bitter.

Now the idea of filter coffee is that the coffee soaks rather long in the water. If coffee is ground too coarse there is little contact surface between coffee and water and on top the water runs through very fast. This results in a rather tasteless watery coffee. In terms of taste it is not a problem to grind the coffee too fine, but of course the water will not run through the filter anymore. Espresso is based on a different concept: the flavour is extracted from the coffee in a very short time, which requires a combination of fine coffee (large contact surface) and high pressure.

Turkish coffee is a very old and traditional way of preparing coffee, so high pressure equipment is out of the question. In order to still get the same amount of flavour in the coffee as for instance espresso the only way is to grind the coffee even finer as done for espresso (more contact surface) and let the coffee be longer in contact with water. That cannot be done in a filter anymore: with such finely ground coffee the water will never run through. Therefore the coffee is mixed with cold water and then slowly brought to boiling in a special pan,  the cezve. Regional differences exist whether the coffee is brought to boil only once, or several times slightly cooled down and brought to boil once more. The results is a strong coffee full of flavour and quite comparable to espresso.

However, especially when multiple boiling cycles are used, the coffee may also become quite bitter. This is compensated by using coffee that is roasted a bit lighter than one would use for filter coffee or espresso. Therefore making Turkish coffee from Full City+, Italian or French roast beans may not be very successful as it may give a very bitter coffee.

The grinding, finally, is so fine that it almost feels like flour. Many household grinders can in fact not grind coffee that fine unless it’s a seriously expensive grinder. But if you have a local Turkish supermarket where you can buy your own cezve, you may want to look if they also have a hand grinder for Turkish coffee. Usually they only cost a handful of euros. Grinding is a slow job, but it works!

Knowing all this, nothing can stop you from making your own Turkish coffee once in a while. Just for a change… Pour the coffee mixture after boiling in a small cup. Make sure you have some foam as well. Let the solid coffee particles sink and set….and enjoy!

One final practical note: if you prefer your coffee with sugar: boil the sugar along with the coffee, because putting it in afterwards and stir will stir up the finely ground coffee which will take a long time to sink again. By then your coffee will be cold.

Cheers,
Lupita

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Crema

After a few busy days, we found time to write a blog about something that I found very important in my coffee: the crema. Crema is the italian name for the espresso foam and the presence of this foam is an indication of freshly roasted coffee, proper extraction and proper grinding. So, the lack of crema should warn you not to even try that coffee!

Crema is one of the two parts of the composite beverage called espresso; the other part being the underlying liquid. Espresso is unstable and the most rapidly varying property is the gas content, hence the crema. When the beverage comes out of the espresso machine there is a sudden drop of pressure in the fluid, and this drop causes gas release. The dissolved gases (mainly CO2) fizz into the cup and build up a layer of froth. This layer should be at least 1/10th of the volume of the espresso and the crema should be persistent: it must survive at least a couple of minutes before breaking up and it should be solid: capable of bearing for some time the weight of a spoonful of sugar.

The beautiful aspect of the foam is formed by tiny gas bubbles inside the viscous espresso liquid where minute bubble fragments floating producing a “tiger skin”effect on the surface. But why sometimes we do not have that espresso with a thick, smooth, tiger skin effect? Here are some of the reasons:

  1. The beans are not fresh. The CO2 in the beans releases with the ageing of the beans and none is left to make the crema. On the other hand, coffee brewed immediately after roasting generally produces too much of a lot of light-coloured crema. Therefore we prefer to let the coffee rest for at least 24 hours before brewing it.
  2. The type of beans. Some Robusta beans generate more crema, but usually this crema fades sooner than with Arabica.
  3. The grinding and the tamping. The beans should be ground to the precise size and the coffee should be packed even and tampered properly in the portafilter. If the ground coffee is too coarse, the water will pass through too quickly and little to no crema will be produced. The same effect will happened when coffee is not properly tampered and thus being too loose. You can see it in the picture below: the crema is very light.
under_ex

On the other hand if the ground coffee is too fine or if the coffee is tampered with too much pressure the machine would not be able to force the water through without straining. The crema will have a dark brown color, or in extreme cases, there will be a dark crema with large oily spots (see below). When heavily over extracted, the crema may not be more than just some foam along the glass.

over_ex

To achieve a good crema and a good espresso the flow of the coffee, when being extracted, should be steady and even and it should flow from both holes in the portafilter. This creates a thick crema with a slight striped pattern at the surface.

ok_ex

  1. The brewing temperature and pressure. To produce crema the water should be warm enough to caramelize the sugars in the coffee and the optimal temperature for this is between 92 to 96 C. A low temperature produces light crema too. The brewing pressure should be between 8 and 10 bars to achieve good crema.

The foam layer not only fascinates our eyes but also acts as an aroma-sealing lid, preserving the volatile compounds that make the aroma of the espresso. Good crema is the result of all the variables working together and maybe also a good amount of practice!

Cheers,
Lupita

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What is exactly espresso roast?

I write this blog trying to answer questions that I usually get when selling my coffee. One of the most common questions is: Is this coffee roasted for espresso. Well, where should I start. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “roasted for espresso” or “espresso beans”. In my experience we should enjoy the wide variety of coffees that nature has given us, and roast each coffee to its optimum roast. After that, we brew it to its best independent whether this is an espresso, a mocca, filter, cold or turkish coffee.

There are, nevertheless, different degrees of roasting, which names are a little bit arbitrary. But before going into this I first need to explain something about the roasting process. Roasting coffee is basically nothing more than slowly heating up the beans, but when doing so different process take place. Obviously the beans change colour: starting from green they get yellow, light brown and then darker and darker brown. While it’s getting darker brown chemical processes take place. At a certain temperature the sugars in the coffee beans start caramelizing, which releases water and carbondioxide gas. This makes the bean rapidly expand and sounds like making popcorn. This moment is referred to as first crack. Caramelizing continues with increasing temperature until all sugars have transformed and at this point the bean itself start decomposing: the physical fracturing of the cellulose matrix of the coffee begins. This point is called second crack because the beans again make a crackling noise; not like popcorn as with first crack, but more like the sound of crunching paper. First crack is clear to hear and hard to miss. Second crack is less predictable than first crack and the moment when second crack occurs highly depend on the type of coffee.

But, returning the different degrees of roast:

Light cinnamon: Beans have a light tan, flavour is dry, unpleasantly sour, little or no body. Reminiscent of cereal.

Cinnamon: Slightly darker than light cinnamon, but the taste and texture is little different.

City Roast: Light to medium brown; at the end of first crack. The bean surface is smooth due to the expansion during roasting. At this point the coffee starts giving off carbon dioxide. This was once the predominant roast in the United States. Varietal variance distinct. To our opinion the lightest roast one would like to drink, because starting from here coffee starts to taste like coffee.

Full City Roast: Medium brown. Coffee is at the verge of second crack. The beans have a slight sheen of oil. Body, flavour, and aroma are quite balanced.

Vienna or Light French: Medium to dark brown with drops of oil on the surface, second crack is under way, greater sweetness, carbonized sugars lend a caramel flavour; body exceeds acidity.

French: Surface is dark brown and lightly coated with oil; burnt notes become noticeable, acidity low.

Italian or Full French: Almost black, with a lot of surface oil. Tasted clearly burnt; acidity and even body are almost undetectable.

Judging the roast only from colour is tricky since different coffees have different colours at the same roasting temperature or degree. Our Galapagos, for instance is a light-coloured coffee and even at light french roast, while our Cariamanga Caturra is dark brown starting from the first crack. There is no standard in roasting: depending on weather conditions the temperature where first crack occurs may range from 170 to up to 190 degrees. Second crack may follow first crack almost immediately or only at considerably higher temperatures. So the trick is in the combination of monitoring the colour and the temperature and listening to first and second crack to decide whether the point one wants to stop roasting has been reached.

We studied and tested our coffees and decided to roast them to Full City Roast. Does this mean that they are suitable for espresso? Sure! We love espresso and we enjoy our coffee the best like that. We realise that many espresso drinkers believe coffee for espresso should be French roast or Italian roast, but we believe that an important part of the flavour of the coffee gets lost when roasting coffee that much. We like to distinguish the flavour of each coffee and that can only be done if not all sugars have been completely carbonized yet.

Roasting coffee the best possible way depends on many factors and also is a personal preference as some people prefer their coffee more bitter and others more acid. Whether a coffee is suitable for espresso or performs better in filter coffee depends on the body and after taste of the coffee. This is something specific for a coffee and the degree of roasting has only very little influence on this. Therefore we don’t like the idea of having a special “espresso roast” as it’s not so much the roasting that makes a coffee suitable for espresso, but it’s the coffee itself.

Finally, if you are curious about the roasting progress, check our youtube video:

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The Secret of Sugar

It’s funny to see that more and more I’m confronted with the fact that people (either friends, family or customers) seem to think I have a kind of teacher function and I may even hold them accountable for how they drink their coffee. Of course this is complete nonsense…

One of those things is: sugar. Some people drink coffee with sugar, some don’t. Personally I don’t but for instance my husband does like some sugar in his coffee and we even have friends that kind try to saturate their coffee with sugar. But when we’re on markets with our mobile espresso bar we get customers ordering an espresso and then look at me in an apologizing way saying that they really want to have some sugar in their coffee “although they realize that is not how coffee should be drunk”. Well….let me put it like this: you should drink it the way you like it most, independent of what others think is good. It makes little sense, in my opinion, to drink coffee the way others expect you to drink it and actually dislike it.

But I’m wandering off. Sugar is a taste enhancer that happens to taste sweet just like salt is a taste enhancer that happens to taste salty. That may sound all very obvious, but what I’m trying to say is that we can add sugar or salt to food in order to make it taste either sweet or salty, but we can also add them to food just to enhance the taste. For example, bread contains salt but bread doesn’t taste salty. However, leave the salt out and it really tastes horrible (well, I think it does). This counts for many food products that contain salt without tasting salty.
However, we can also do this with sugar, though that may be more rare. But let’s now take coffee: we can put in enough sugar so that our coffee tastes sweet just because we like sweet. But I would like to challenge you to have a coffee and actually put in very little sugar: typically something like 1/8 of a teaspoon for an espresso, maybe slightly more for a filter coffee. This is so little that the coffee won’t taste sweet at all, but you may discover a dramatic change of taste!
Sugar has the ability to really enhance the acidity of coffee. So a rather bitter coffee with the smallest amount of sugar may actually significantly improve in taste and become very nice and balanced. Of course we cannot do this for every coffee. A coffee that is very dark roasted and has almost no acidity left cannot be made into a balanced flavoured coffee: the sugar enhances the acidity, but if there is no acidity left there is simply nothing to enhance.

So to everyone, whether you drink your coffee with or without sugar, I would suggest to give it a try. Start with a coffee without sugar, have a sip, add a very small amount of sugar, have another sip, add some more sugar etc. You will notice the coffee change flavour until at some point the sweetness of the sugar becomes noticeable and the flavour of the coffee remains the same. It’s an interesting experiment, especially with strong coffee drinks like espresso or from a mocca.

Now next time someone tries to convince you that real coffee drinkers (whatever that may mean) drink their coffee without sugar you can tell them: a) sugar in small amounts actually enhances the flavour of coffee and b) you drink coffee the way you like it, and not the way other people think you should like it!

Cheers,

Lupita

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Value for money

It has been a while since my last post and I sincerely apologize for this. The last 2 weeks before Christmas were honestly quite frantic with an overwhelming amount of roasting to be done. As in the previous years we do not roast or send coffee from a few days before Christmas until new year’s day for the simple reason that we cannot guarantee the delivery. After a negative experience a few years ago of a customer ordering coffee just before Christmas and actually got it delivered on January 4th made us do so. The customer complained (I probably would have done the same) but there was very little that we could do about it. Hence, from that year we decided to simply close for Christmas and new year.
So what does one do if the business closes: go away for a break! And so we did. We worked our way done from our home town in The Netherlands to Barcelona in Spain to spend christmas there and we made it back on time for new years eve.

On the road we regularly stopped for a coffee, well, usually an espresso or a cappuccino. Not along the motorway, of course, because what they manage to serve in cafeterias along the motorway only has the colour in common with real coffee. No, we passed through villages and towns and visited local (espresso) bars to get our daily dose. And of course one cannot stop noticing things.
In the Netherlands, but also in Belgium, we found espressos to be large and rather watery. In fact, they were more like lungos but then with the ground coffee insufficiently tamped in the porta filter. Hence, the water run through too fast with too low pressure….and too much water. Why would that be the case? We started brain storming and came up with the plausible conclusion that it’s all related to value-for-money. In this part of the Europe the value of a product is unfortunately often measured as quantity rather than quality. So a real espresso, only being 30ml large, is a bad deal for 2 euro. A lungo, that is more in the order of 100ml, then seems to be a far better deal. Whether this is the initial though of the cafe owner or he started with real espressos and changed to watery lungos after complains of customers about their small espressos we don’t know, and didn’t dare to ask.  Unfortunately this principle is also applied to cappuccinos, and a watery lungo with a splash of milk is really not that good.

Moving into France, however, things improve significantly. Espressos are real espressos and cappuccinos are real cappuccinos. Apparently in France value-for-money is not just about quantity and people do value a good espresso highly. Is it all paradise then? Well, personally speaking, no. We, that is my husband and I, generally find that espresso in France is from too darkly roasted coffee and therefore quite bitter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s our personal taste: we prefer a bit more acidity in our daily brew.
And so we finally arrived in Spain. Spain for us, at least when it comes to coffee (and wine, tapas and some other food related things) gets quite close to paradise. We’ve been there many times and drank coffee in all sorts and sizes, but a place where they really serve bad coffee in whatever form we’ve never been able to encounter. Nothing beats a good cortado (an espresso with a small amount of milk) after dinner…. Then let it be 3 euros….to us it’s real value-for-money!

And so just being in Barcelona for christmas was of course waaaay to short. But then, it’s not so far and we know all the good places, so we’ll probably be there another time this year…

Happy 2014 to everyone,

Lupita

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The caffeine issue

A usual topic discussed with Latinamerican friends and costumers is caffeine. I am Latinamerican myself, but my business is based in the Netherlands: a country where you hardly find decaf coffee. On the other hand, last week I was visiting friends in Barcelona (Spain) which typically is a country where it is easy to find good quality and tasteful decaf coffee. So caffeine seems to be more an issue for some of us than for others, but choosing for decaf coffee is a solution with consequences. Allow me to elaborate….

I have a more than average interest for caffeine since I am intolerant to caffeine. Yes, indeed, I love coffee and I run a coffee business but I cannot handle caffeine as diagnosed back in the days when I was still living in Mexico City. And so I stopped drinking coffee, coke, tea and eating chocolate. After a few weeks I could handle most of the absences but coffee, and so I started drinking decaf coffee. Unfortunately it is hard to find decaf coffee that doesn’t have that typical burnt taste, but after lots of screening I found a brand for which the taste was not so bad. As I was living in Mexico, my options for preparing my morning coffee were either a filter machine at my office or a little french press for my personal use. Decaf coffee brewed by either of these two methods still has caffeine so I could only drink 1 cup of french-pressed coffee a day to not damage my health.

Then I moved to the Netherlands and I discovered a wonderful way of preparing coffee: espresso! This may shock you but 7 years ago it was almost impossible to drink an espresso in Mexico City! When moving to the Netherlands I also became a researcher, and so besides doing research for a university I also did research for my health. That is how I learned that espresso is the best way to enjoy your coffee while having very little caffeine in it. A standard serving of espresso is 30 ml and contains about 70 mg of caffeine per serving for a 100% Arabica espresso. This amount varies depending on the type of coffee: Arabica has considerably less caffeine than Robusta. To see it in perspective: one gets the same amount of caffeine when drinking 730 ml of Coca Cola. So when friends come to my place and are drinking coke the whole night but refuse an espresso after dinner because it has too much caffeine and they may not sleep until late, I usually suggest them to stop drinking Coca Cola and enjoy a good espresso!

Other ways of brewing coffee do lead to a high consumption of caffeine. Filter coffee or percolated (french press) contain between 100 to 200 mg per serving for a serving of 150 to 190 ml. Coffee brewed with a Moka contains about the same amounts but for smaller servings, usually 40 to 50 ml.This is because caffeine exhibits high solubility in hot water. Therefore, because of the long contact period between water and ground coffee when brewing coffee with a filter machine, a french press or a moka the caffeine content in your cup of coffee is higher than for an espresso. In total 80-98% of all the caffeine in the ground coffee will end up in your cup. When percolating an espresso only 70-80% of the caffeine in the ground coffee is extracted. The time of percolation for an espresso (which should be 30 ± 5 sec) is just too short to extract much caffeine from the cellular structure.

As mentioned before, the caffeine content of your cup also depends on the type of coffee. Arabica has lower levels of caffeine, amino acids and chlorogenic acids in comparison to Robusta, but it has 60% more oils. It makes sense: producing caffeine is a chemical mechanism of defense for a coffee plant. Robusta coffee grows at warm and humid climates of tropical lowlands (below 1000 m altitude, 22-26 °C) while Arabica coffee grows at higher altitudes (1000-2100 m) where temperatures average around 18 to 22 °C. Arabica coffee can grow at lower altitudes as much as downto 400m in regions further away from the equator. In environments ideal for Robusta plants to grow there are simply more birds interested in eating nice coffee cherries and therefore the plant protects itself by producing caffeine and chlorogenic acids.

Decaf coffee has considerably lower levels of caffeine, not more than 70 mg per liter, but decaffeination is unfortunately a chemical process. In the earliy days it was done by steaming the beans and then solve the present caffeine in benzene, but obviously for health issues the use of benzene is no longer allowed. Less harmful chemicals are now used, but nevertheless they’re still synthetically produced chemicals with their environmental impact. More environmentally friendly methods involve soaking coffee beans in water to slowly desolve the caffeine, but this also leads to dissolving other componenets of the coffee bean that in fact make the flavour of the coffee. This can be resolved by soaking the coffee in water saturated with those other components from another batch of coffee, but in the end the coffee will be altered in more ways than just reducing the amount of caffeine. So in all those processes many things can go wrong during this chemical process which lead to terrible flavour. Is there no perfect way to make decaf coffee? Well, actually, the best way that only removes the caffeine is to soak the coffee for hours in carbondioxide under immense pressure, but as one can imagine this is an expensive process that consumes quite some energy as well.
Therefore I always have a bit of a laugh when I meet people that drink fair-trade organically grown….decaf coffee. They’re clearly not aware of the environmental issues that may come with the decaffination process.

Anyway, if you, like me, have issues with caffeine and either cannot find decaf coffee with decent taste or refuse to drink coffee that has been chemically treated, then go for an espresso!

Cheers,
Lupita

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Tasting Mexican coffee

Mexico is not famous for its coffee, which is a pity, since there are beautiful coffees grown there. For years the main market for Mexican coffee has been… Mexico, and so internationally there is not much knowledge about the Mexican varieties. Last Friday, thanks to a good friend , I got some samples of Mexican coffee to taste. So imagine a kid just before Saint Nicholas: that was me facing this 5 varieties of Mexican coffees!

Coffee is grown in Mexico in 12 out of the 31 provinces. The best known coffee growing provinces are Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Until yesterday my two favourite Mexican coffees were a washed typica from Coatepec (Veracruz) and a naturally dried Arabiga (but I don’t know what variety) from Guerrero. Guerrero? Yes, admitted, Guerrero province is best known for the fact that Acapulco is there, but they also grow some coffee at small scale along the Pacific coast. Veracruz, on the other hand, is along the Gulf of Mexico. Hence, two very different coffees from two different regions of Mexico. Coffee from Coatepec is very aromatic, it has a good body and acidity and a dark chocolate aftertaste. The coffee that I liked from Guerrero came from a small community that grows, processes, roasts and grinds their own coffee. It was naturally dried and I guess some fermentation was involved because the coffee had a deep, strong flavour and a aftertaste with hints of liquor. It was like drinking Irish coffee, but then without the whiskey! It is very unfortunately that the community is not willing to sell this amazing, unique coffee as green beans. They only sell it roasted and ground as that is part of the community income.

The best way to taste coffee is through cupping. For cupping the coffee is only lightly roasted, stopping just in first crack. In fact, this is lighter roasted than one would generally drink it, but when roasted so light the coffees for sure haven’t lost any of their flavours and aromas yet while there is only little bitterness that could cloud the taste of the coffee. That’s the ideal situation though, the samples I got were already roasted for normal consumption so that I could not do cupping, Therefore I simply used the samples to prepare espressos. Most of our costumers drink espresso anyway, so I tasted the coffee in the way that they most likely will be prepared.

One of the coffees that I tasted is from Chiapas. Chiapas is a province devoted to coffee, and it is grown in different regions of the province. Coffee from the region of Ocosingo (in the Itsmo of Tehuantepec, half way between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean) has a strong flavour and some acidity. However, coffee from the Soconusco, an area famous for coffee close to the coast, is acid, bitter and has a strong aftertaste.

The big surprise for me was the coffee from the region of Pahuatlan, Puebla. This coffee looked a bit over roasted, even a little bit shiny. The smell is both nutty and flowery and the taste is well balanced with acidity and bitterness. The flavour seems to be deep, with layers. The aftertaste was pleasant, not bitter nor acid. For a coffee from a rather unknown and small coffee region a real gem.

Having tasted quite a few Mexican coffees by now, the common factor is acidity. All of them have strong acidity and little bitterness. The best known example of that is the so-called Mexico Maragogype coffee. This type of coffee that in Mexico is predominantly grown in Chiapas province can be very acid. It’s something you have to like, or not.

The next step now is to get some green samples of the Mexican coffees we tasted to see if we can play around with the roasting to get the optimal taste. And then…who knows? They may show up in our web shop at some moment…

Cheers,
Lupita

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The price is right

In the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot, for different reasons, about coffee and money, or money related to coffee. First and most important of all because I ordered new coffee from Ecuador a few weeks ago . Last August I visited Ecuador where I visited coffee farms and tried the coffee from the 2013 harvest and as a result of that I placed an order. After returning to The Netherlands I paid for the coffee and now I am waiting for it to arrive.
While waiting for the coffee I went on holidays and had the opportunity to taste wonderful coffees and to check prices of coffees sold abroad. Directly after returning from holiday (that is, last week) while still suffering from jet lag I had to fill in the tax forms for this quarter. And finally, last Thursday I read in the newspaper about a guy who was visiting Cameroon and saw many well maintained coffee plantations. But when he ordered coffee in a restaurant he got instant coffee. He asked the waiter if he had tasted that coffee, but the waiter had never tried coffee at all, because coffee is expensive in Cameroon. Apparently they export all their coffee to Europe and then import back from Europe instant coffee at a high price. Not really fair.

So, the money issue related to coffee has been going around and that got me thinking what is actually the right price for coffee?
We all want to enjoy a good cup of coffee, either early in the morning at home or after work at a cozy coffee place. And we dont want to pay a fortune for it. But we also want to pay the right price. Coffee, as wine, olive oil and some other delicacies undergo a long process from the plant to our table. In Ecuador, our coffee is grown at small farms where it is harvest and processed by hand before the coffee is transported from the mountains or from the Galapagos island to Guayaquil, the main port of Ecuador. Our coffee is then threshed in small machines just before exporting it to NL. After I receive it, I check and clean the coffee by hand, roast it, pack it, sometimes grind it and send it to dear costumers. As you can see there is a lot of time, care and handwork involved. In each step people working for our coffee deserve a fair income according to their effort.

Prices change with offer and demand. In Japan, coffee is now a fashion item and coffee beans are therefore expensive. In May this year the price for a kilogram of Latin American roasted beans in a chain store was around 40 euros. At a similar store in Australia the price (in October) was around 20 euros per kilo. Considering that seen from Latin America both countries are across the Pacific Ocean the variation of price is huge! It must be said that in both countries the price of coffee is higher than in for instance Europe and the US in general. A major reason for that is transport: where there are regular and frequent shipping routes from Latin America to both Europe and the US with some healthy competition that reduces the transport costs, crossing the Pacific there are not and so transport costs are higher.

Transport costs are clearly a major factor in the price of coffee. Over the last year or so the price of green coffee has dropped significantly and several of our customers where wondering why this doesn’t lead to lower prices for roasted coffee. Well, unfortunately it is not so simple. First of all, most sellers of roasted coffee (including ourselves) still have stock that was bought for the higher price, so until that stock is sold not much will happen. Secondly, the coffee price is only a relative small part of the total price of a kilo of roasted coffee – somewhere around 20% of the price. So if the price of green coffee drops with 50%, the price of roasted coffee only drops with 10%. And thirdly, the price of transport has increased over the last 2 years mostly due to higher fuel surcharges and higher port fees. So basically we don’t want the price of green coffee to drop, we would like the price of transport to drop! Because right now there is the rather unsatisfying situations that we, as coffee lovers, have to pay more for our kilo of roasted coffee, while the coffee farmer actually gets less….

Cheers
Lupita

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Melbourne & Sydney

Last week I was in Melbourne, Australia, for the first time in my life. I was gladly surprised with the coffee culture there. For a whole week I enjoyed a self-guided coffee tour through the city. With a few recomendations written down in my diary I ventured through the city with changing weather to visit the recomended places and additionally I popped into the places that just looked interesting.

They're very fond of latte art in Australia!

They’re very fond of latte art in Australia!

What makes a coffee place look interesting? The place should somehow catch my attention as for any other customer. Sometimes it is the decoration, sometimes it is the location (at the waterfront or close to a park), sometimes it is their original advertisement refering to coffee. Then, the coffee expert in me kicks in and I start paying attention to other things. Do they offer single origin coffee? Do they mention the brand of coffee, or do they roast the coffee themselves? And, very important, I prefer places that smell like coffee instead of like food.

I had fun in Melbourne. I learned what Melbournians like in coffee: acidity! I tried some very acid coffees in the state-of-the-art coffee places in the city. As much as I appreciate acidity, I prefer my coffee to have a good balance between acidity and bitterness and to have a good body. Overall, Melbourne is a coffee destination: Melbournians appreciate coffee and have an increasing interest in single-origin coffee with properties that make each coffee unique.

Sydney treat: (ice)coffee with macarons

Sydney treat: (ice)coffee with macarons

Now I came to Sydney full of curiosity to see the coffee scene here. Guess what? Sydney is also full of coffee lovers! But Melbourne and Sydney are completely different cities. In Melbourne every block in the CBD (commercial business district) has restaurants and coffee places. On the other hand the CBD of Sydney is full of high fashion stores and for the coffee places one has to go to the neighbourhoods just outside the CBD (for instance Woolloomooloo or Potts Point) where there are indeed coffee places in every block.

Some places have just nameless generic coffee but many places have single-origin coffee! Why do I feel this is important? Because coffee blends are specific to a store, so very good blends I may not be able to find anywhere else but in that store. Single-origin coffee can be found anywhere in the world. So if I find the same single-origin coffee somewhere else I can expect it to have the same taste (assuming they roasted it equally).

Next week I’ll be back in The Netherlands, probably still not recovered from the jet lag that for sure I will have. I could then write on coffee served by airline companies….but probably I won’t for obvious reasons.

Cheers,
Lupita