Category: Drinking Coffee

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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