Category: Coffee abroad

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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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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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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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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

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Coffee abroad

I truly enjoy travelling, maybe as much as coffee. So, when packing for a trip I wonder whether I will be able to enjoy this two passions in the coming days. Fortunately for me coffee culture is expanding and in my latest two trips I have enjoyed nice coffee in nice cities.

Last week I visited Riga with a good childhood friend. This city has a beautiful downtown: a fascinating combination of a medieval old town and art nouveau buildings. And while wondering around the city, I had a hard time not stopping at every coffee place! The coffee culture in Riga is really outstanding. There are a few major coffee chains, local but still chains, that deliver reasonably good coffee in creative beverages. But the most interesting is the little cozy coffee places, full of character, where I enjoyed good coffee served by friendly owners.

Chocolate powder topped cappuccino

Chocolate powder topped cappuccino

This week I am writing the blog from Melbourne, Australia. It was a long way to get here but the city is really worth the trip. And after a 30 hours trip I was carving for a good cup of coffee. That proved to be not a problem in Melbourne. Every block in the downtown has a few restaurant and coffee places, and they serve proper espressos. So far I have only spotted one major coffee chain. Local business with their own coffee trends seems to be the way to go here. Melbournians are generous with the cocoa powder topping the cappuccinos. They also like serving the cafe lattes and moccas in glasses instead of cups or mugs. Furthermore, they also serve cafe cortado, or “short mac” as they call it, after “short macchiato”, in cute little glasses. Getting acquainted with the local terminology I learned that if the short mac is completely filled up with milk then it is called a piccolino. On the other hand, if made from a double espresso the “short mac” becomes a “long mac”.

A "short mac" ...

A “short mac” …

A few years ago I was in Australia for the first time, only visiting Sydney. That time I already learned some of the coffee names found in Australia (and in New Zealand). A long black is an americano but sometimes a lungo. A lungo is usually referred to as a short black. A latte macchiato is called a flat white, though sometimes I have the feeling that the difference between a cappuccino and a flat white is only the chocolate powder on top. Also, then and there I had the feeling there was hardly any coffee culture in Australia. Coffee at restaurants was usually over roasted and not properly brewed. Most of the time I could only get a weak and bitter long black. I wonder now if for coffee matters Melbourne has always been different or that it is part of a changed coffee culture in Australia. But that I will let you know next week when I am in Sydney.

Cheers
Lupita