Category: Espresso

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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

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Coffee fashion

About 2 years ago we decided to go to markets with our mobile espresso bar, just to see some “real” customers. That may sound strange, when running just a webshop as we do the only contact with customers is through e-mail and we just like to meet people who drink our coffee, comment on it (either good or bad) and have a chat. An espresso bar at for instance a lifestyle market is the ideal opportunity for that!

But now after 2 years and 10-15 markets we discovered there is really no such thing as “the average customer”.  Maybe that shouldn’t surprise us, but somehow it did. We’ve had markets that we sold almost only cappuccino and we run out of the 24 liters of milk we brought at least an hour before closing the market. Other times we brought back more than half of that amount of milk because everybody wanted to drink espresso.  Why is that? We honestly don’t know…. The weather, the mood, the time of the year? Any guess is as good as any other guess.

So what have we seen so far. Well, as said, we’ve had markets were we sold a lot of cappuccino, or a lot of espresso. Last market we did (Swan Market in Rotterdam, last weekend of September) we had a lot of people asking for lungo while in any other previous market we hardly made any lungos. And also, a lot of people asked for a double espresso instead of a single one.  Maybe it’s just fashion…the last half year a large coffee company making coffee pads has heavily advertised on special coffee pads to make lungo (which is nonsense, by the way – a lungo is an espresso for which one let more water run through the machine, so the coffee is exactly the same) so maybe with the word “lungo”  being frequently on TV somehow people subconsciously now start asking more often for a lungo?  Or do I sound too much like an amateur Freud now?

Anyway, we always enjoy seeing our customers and have a little chat. Some just want to have a drink, some are genuinely interested in the coffee or want our advise on buying an espresso machine. Others start asking questions on coffee cultivation and so on.

Ah, that reminds me to something else quite different this market: we had several people asking whether we also have soy milk. This is also a new experience …  Now I can imagine somebody having for instance lactose intolerance or just being vegan, but the interesting part was that after we told them we unfortunately don’t have soy milk most of them decided to have their coffee with cow milk instead. So they were clearly not allergic or vegan. Again, something that is (temporarily) in fashion?

I will take the opportunity to thank everybody that visited our espresso bar last weekend, or in any other market. Thank you for the nice (short) talks and your feedback on the coffee we serve….

Cheers,
Lupita

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Growing and brewing good coffee – it’s not the same

During the year my husband (who is equally infected with the coffee virus) and I travel quite a bit to different countries, and what strikes us the most is that in some of the countries where they grow the coffee the coffee served in restaurants and hotels is often really bad.

Last week my husband was in Brazil and several people he met were proud to tell him that the best coffee in the world is Brazilian coffee. “Well”, as my husband responded, “that may be, but why is it wasted by over-roasting it?” And as he explained to me, in the hotel and in restaurants he consistently got coffee that had lost its typical coffee taste due to over roasting, therefore reducing it to dark and bitter water. Or at least, that was the case in Rio de Janeiro.

However, the most shocking experience we once had was in Mexico were we visited a distributor of green coffee to see if we could convince them to export some of it. They were not unwilling and invited us to come and taste some coffee in their office. So we went, and we got served an extremely watery coffee (the colour of green tea!) in a disposable foam cup. We told them that in order to be able to taste the coffee we would at least need to have something resembling coffee and asked them to make it as strong as they could. They claimed they way they made is is how Mexicans like it but they made it stronger and so we ended up having something more or less the strength we drink at home, but still in a foam cup.  Now two remarks here: first of all, though Mexicans are generally not into strong coffee, they for sure don’t drink it thát watery. Secondly, the cup! If one receives potential buyers of your coffee it should be served in either a ceramic or glass cup. I can live with a plastic cup or even a cardboard disposable one, but not thick foam! That kind of cup kills any mouth-feeling and therefore any joy in drinking coffee.  Fortunately, later that trip to Mexico we got a lot better coffees…

Fortunately we also see positive developments. A while ago we received a message from an association of coffee growers in Ecuador who had learned that we import their coffee. They explained that over the many years they had lost the knowledge of roasting their own coffee and wanted to know from us how we do it. So we explained…. That’s something that we support: people that not only know how to grow coffee, but also know how to roast it and preferably can also prepare it…

Now you may wonder in what countries we like the coffee that we get served. Well, I first have to mention that we’re mostly espresso drinkers and not so much filter coffee drinkers. But with that we like the espresso in most mainland Europe countries with Spain and Italy being our favourites.  Outside Europe, well, of course Argentina. We were also not disappointed with the espressos we got in Peru.  Maybe we’re just picky, we shouldn’t rule out that possibility either.  But don’t get me wrong, almost any country where one enters an espresso bar one can get a descent to very good espresso. I’m now just talking on what one gets in a normal restaurant or hotel…

Fortunately there are still lots of both coffee growing and non-coffee growing countries where I haven’t been yet. So there is still plenty of possibility that I have to change my mind that the best espresso is generally made in countries where they don’t grow coffee. Who knows?

Cheers,
Lupita