Category: General

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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

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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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It’s a matter of taste…

September 25, 2013GeneralEngradmin

It’s heart warming and amazing how much confidence people have in our insight in their taste. Frequently we get people that would like to order some coffee from us, but don’t really know what kind of coffee to order.  A possibility would of course be to just order small amounts of several coffees (a trial package or so) and just see what one likes, but regularly they just tell us “to send us whatever we think they like”. Wow! So they actually think we know them good enough to know what they like?

Let’s start with some basic decision-making aspects here:

  • How do you prepare your coffee?
  • How do you drink your coffee?
  • What do you generally like in the taste of coffee?

How do you prepare your coffee? As espresso, as filter coffee, as french press, with a mocca ?? That makes quite a difference…we know coffees that taste great as filter coffee but have no body whatsoever as espresso, for instance.  Body? Coffee? Ok, this may need some additional explanation. Well, in short, the body is like the mouth-filling experience that you get from a sip of coffee. A sip of water has no body:  you take it in your mouth but apart from making your mouth wet there is no further sensation, so you swallow it.  A good body really fills your mouth so that you taste flavour everywhere, and also the flavour stays as long as you have the coffee in your mouth. So we do know (and actually sell) coffee that as espresso has the sip-of-water effect, though it makes a great filter coffee. Therefore it’s important to know how one makes the coffee before advising.

How do you drink your coffee? Just black, black with a bit of sugar, a lot of sugar? Or with milk? When I say “sugar” people immediately think about “sweet”. Now, I won’t deny that sugar is sweet, but sugar is also a taste enhancer. A small amount of sugar actually brings forward a lot of acidity in coffee that one wouldn’t taste without the sugar. Of course I’m talking about a small amount of sugar, let’s say the amount that fits on the tip of a stirring stick for an espresso. If one uses more sugar the sweet taste will overpower the taste enhancing effect and your coffee will just be sweet. So if somebody drinks coffee pure black it’s better to have a coffee that is not too bitter and has some acidity, but someone that always puts a small amount of sugar in the coffee can have a more bitter coffee as the sugar will bring forward the acidity anyway. And somebody that uses a lot of sugar …. well, they just like sweet. The same counts for milk, more or less. Milk also enhances acidity, but at the same time also dilutes the coffee. So for coffee with milk it’s better to use a more bitter coffee with a strong body.

What do you generally like in the taste of coffee? Some people like bitter, some people like acid. Very important to take into account. We once had a coffee from Java (Indonesia) that was considered very high quality, but also very acid. It almost felt like drinking warm apple cider. So quality or not, it’s just not my taste and I would personally not buy it to drink at home. But I’m not into just-super-bitter coffee either, though I know people that are.

And then there are numerous other factors that we can’t even control: the temperature of the water you use (hotter water tends to give more bitter coffee) and how fine you grind your coffee are just two of them.

How do we know? Well, we just try by making coffee in different ways. We have an espresso machine, a filter coffee machine, a french press, a vacuum brewer and even a cezve or ibrik for making turkish coffee – with a real artisanal hand grinder to make the very fine turkish grind. And we just try…how it tasts.We’re still missing some things though; we don’t have a mocca right now and are also missing a chemex. But who knows, some day…

So every time we’re being flattered with the confidence people have in our skills to pick them a coffee, a question-and-answer sessions starts based on what’s mentioned above. And usually we can work it out and send a coffee that they like.  And that then probably adds to our good name that we are so good in sending exactly the coffee they like.
But now you know: we’re not telepathic, we just tried!

Cheers,
Lupita