Too Darn Hot

As we have been tracking over the past couple of years, global warming has been impacting coffee growing regions around the world — from excessive rains leading to flooding to increased temperatures minimizing the available coffee-friendly agricultural regions.

The Guardian now has another update for us: The temperatures are warming enough that they are inviting a lovely little pest, the coffee berry borer, to live in higher and higher altitudes. This little beetle wants the same thing we do — coffee, delicious coffee! — but couldn’t hang with the coffee crops all that often because they preferred a cooler clime than the beetle’s 68F degrees. Warming kicked up temps in parts of Ethiopia’s mountainous growing region to this level in around 1984 and scientists have been tracking the borer’s population expansion ever since — it’s now present in every coffee growing region except Hawaii, Nepal and Papua New Guinea.

Coffee’s commodity price has been slowly increasing as a result of environmental and economic pressures and is at its highest this year. With an estimated $500m damage sourced to the coffee berry borer crew, it will only serve to increase the cost even more.

What is Crema?

We recently wrote about crema — what it is, what contributes to its formation, etc. — and we thought we’d film Gail talking about it, as well, and test out a comparison test between an Americano with and without crema. Check it out!

Dude, Where’s my Crema?

Crema is a little bit of a Holy Grail in the espresso world — folks are talking about it all the time, searching for it, measuring their technique, equipment and coffee by it. But what the heck is it? What does the production of crema give you? And is it really that important?

Some of the bigwigs in the specialty coffee industry (such as James Hoffman) have proclaimed crema to be ‘rubbish’; we won’t go that far, because — like everything with coffee — it’s really a personal preference. When we were at the SCAA convention in April, we went to a couple of lectures that talked about coffee preparation variables and how they effect the end result. From those lectures, we picked up the following tidbits of info that play a part in the formation of crema.

First, let’s define our terms here: Crema is the initial light/tawny colored liquid that comes out during an espresso extraction. It is what causes that ‘Guinness effect’ that folks sometimes reference. As the lighter liquid infuses with the darker liquid that comes after, it filters up and ‘settles’, leaving a tan colored layer on top of the darker espresso below.

The formation of crema is a blend of a few different things: As water is forced through the coffee under pressure, it emulsifies the natural fat/oil content in the bean, suspending it in tiny microbubbles of air. Additionally, after coffee is roasted, it out-gases C02 for awhile (generally for the next 24 – 72 hours post-roast) and so coffee that was more freshly roasted will also emit some C02 during extraction.

As the specialty coffee industry has grown more and more focused on quality, distribution, craft and flavor, crema was a hallmark for two different things: First, the bean’s natural fat/oil content was higher and therefore could be assumed to be processed at the plantation in a preferable manner, and second, that the coffee had been roasted recently enough that it still had some C02 out-gassing from the beans. So espresso enthusiasts became very focused on the creation of  crema as the most important element of good espresso.

This isn’t necessarily true. You can pull a beautiful looking shot that filters down and looks quite gorgeous, but that, in fact, tastes quite sour because the crema is the result of post-roast C02. Conversely, you can pull a delicious shot that has no crema at all because of the way the bean was processed at the plantation and how darkly it was roasted. Pressurized portafilters and superautomatics feature technology that aerates the coffee during extraction, to give the illusion of crema, but the flavor doesn’t necessarily back it up.

So here are some parameters to keep in mind in regard to the creation of crema:

• Plantation Processing – Beans that are naturally/dry or pulped natural/semi-washed/honey processed will naturally maintain more of their sugar and fat, resulting in more crema production during extraction. You’ll find beans produced in Africa and Brazil to use these processes, with a movement in other Central and South American growing countries toward ‘Honeyed’ and/or pulped natural processing. Beans from moister climates (such as Sumatra) will have a very different taste and oil content to them because they are most often wet processed.
• Roast Date- How recently was your coffee roasted and how darkly was it roasted? While the ‘sweet spot’ for a coffee post-roast varies, pulling shots with coffee roasted less than 72 hours before will definitely result in an early blonding that is often mistaken for crema. You want some of the C02 for the emulsification of the fat, but not so much that there’s no room for the coffee solids to actually extract.
• Roast Color – Darker roasts will bring more of the bean’s natural oil to the surface, which will then transfer to packaging containers, grinders and your other equipment, resulting in less overall oil/fat in the coffee grounds themselves that can be emulsified. So you will likely often see that darker roasts can produce less crema.
• Espresso Machine Tech – Pressurized porftafilters aerate the coffee during the extraction, giving the illusion of crema. Similarly, superautomatic machines will often utilize technology that will produce the look of crema without it actually being the emulsification of the fat/oil and the C02. This makes these machines ‘user friendly’ but it’s also kind of a hack and often doesn’t taste as rich or complex as shots pulled via traditional extraction methods.

We’re not scientists and we don’t love following rules, but we have been reading and talking about and then experimenting with crema for the last few months, so thought we’d share our current thoughts. Certainly, there could be more to crema than we’re aware and we’re always learning.

What do you think of crema? How have you achieved your favorite shots — coffee type, roast style, equipment? Please share in the comments.

Top 50 Coffee Drinking Countries

If you’re expecting to head to Rwanda and sample some of their world-renowned coffee, you’ll most likely be sorely disappointed in the cup of coffee you end up with. This is true of many of the coffee producing countries of the world, who actually have a relatively small population of actual coffee drinkers. The majority of their coffee is exported around the world — and you’ll probably find a tastier cup in Finland than you will in Ethiopia.

At the end of April, Bloomberg reported (from Euromonitor) the most avid coffee drinking countries in the world, measured by the quantity consumed in liters per capita. We took that, put it in a table and assigned each country a general region, as well, so you can sort it and see which parts of the world are the biggest coffee connoisseurs.

Field Trip: Gail & Kat Take on the SCAA Main Event

No, there weren’t any wrestlers present, but there was a high concentration of coffee related ninjas on the floor. Last week, we were lucky enough to head down to Anaheim, CA, for the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Main Event, which is a specialty coffee industry educational and trade show that covers everything from coffee growers to roasters to equipment suppliers to mad skilled baristas. This year, it also hosted the United States Barista Championship — with Mike Phillips of Intelligentsia defending and re-securing his title. He’ll be heading out to compete with the rest of the national barista champs from around the world at the SCAE (Specialty Coffee Association of Europe) event this summer in the UK.

But back to the show. We attended a few different lectures, talked with many of our vendors on the trade show floor, watched Midwest Barista Champ Mike Marquard compete in the USBC semi-finals and even headed to a little partay that Intelligentsia, La Marzocco and Espressi (makers of the MyPressi TWIST) were throwing at Intelligentsia’s roastery in L.A. Yes, Grammy got her groove on.

In this video, Gail talks to us about what she learned from the lectures we attended, discusses some new products we saw  and even shares with us her new love for TWIST-inspired cocktails.

Single Origin: Velton’s Finca Alaska

While we have an appreciation for the simplicity of many espresso blends, getting into single origins can be a sumptuous adventure. For his recent Holiday Blend, Velton imported a delicious Arabica from the El Salvador plantation Finca Alaska. This 2007 Cup of Excellence winner is a clean, smooth cup with bright lemon, fig, chocolate and even blackberry notes.

He only has a small quantity left, so if you have a love for single origins and want to try this excellent varietal, we highly recommend picking it up. In fact, during our recent trip to Hario USA, this is the coffee we used to demo the gear and Edwin Martinez noted that it is one of the best coffees he’s tasted in a long while — even bringing it down to the plantation in Guatemala and impressing his counterparts there!

Not sure if Velton’s Coffee is worth the hype? Well, your local church folks sure thinks it is:

Vroom Vroom Vroom

With a lot of recent scientific data pointing to the adverse impact our reliance on fossil fuels is having on the environment, inventors, universities and entrepreneurs the world over have been tackling the issue of alternative energy in different manners. As we wrote about in 2008, the University of Reno had successfully developed a method for converting used coffee grounds into a form of biodiesel. At the time, the results weren’t mind-blowing — yes, it was feasible, but was it scalable?

Over a year later, the BBC1 show Bang Goes the Theory took the idea of turning coffee into a more explicit form of fuel by converting a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco to use coffee as it test drives 210 miles from Manchester to London. Dubbed the ‘carpuccino,’ the project was taken on to accentuate the importance of experimenting with alternative energy. The catch, however, is the fact that the cost of the trip is between 25 – 50 times that what it would cost if petrol was used instead of coffee. Depending on coffee quality, the cost of the trip could be anywhere between about $1400 and $2800, compared to about $55 for a journey fueled by gas.

So, obviously, this may be a fun idea, but really not a great solution. Add to that the recent assessment by the International Coffee Organization that climate change has begun to severely impact the coffee growing regions around the world — which is contributing to the noticeable increase in the cost of coffee — and the idea of using java to power our favorite transport, digs and gadgets is even more ludicrous. But, we won’t slight them for trying — even if it was ultimately just a publicity stunt.

A Different Kind of Buzz

Addiction can be a lonely place. Whether we hide our vices or not — stealing a secret cigarette while the wife isn’t looking, sipping a sly cocktail at the end of the bar by ourselves or knocking back a few shots of espresso despite our doctor’s orders — it  can sometimes feel isolating. But we should take some comfort in the fact that we are, in fact, not alone. At least, not in nature.

Joining the ranks of our friendly Russian drunk chimpanzee Rostov (who was recently sent to rehab to break his boozing and smoking ways) are our favorite little pollinators: Bees! A study conducted by the University of Haifa found that bees had a preference for nectar that included trace amounts of caffeine and/or nicotine in it. When we first ran across this story, we thought, ‘of course, coffee cherry flowers would have caffeine in them’ but we were surprised to learn that nicotine and caffeine chemicals are found in the flowers of many fruits — even grapefruit (which has some of the highest concentration around)!

Scientists created synthetic nectar (which is comprised of sugars) that was neutral, had caffeine or had nicotine and then let the bees loose. They were able to then track the bees’ preference for the nectar with the caffeine or nicotine over the neutral, sugar-only nectar. The assumption is that this evolutionary development on behalf of the flowers in question was to create an addictive relationship, thus spurring the bees to visit often and spread the pollen far and wide.

So there you have it — the next time you’re ruing your addiction to caffeine, know that you are in great company.

(And, while it’s not often we wish we were a talented illustrator, this story should have been accompanied by an illustration of a greasy looking bee with a five o’clock shadow, a cup of coffee and a cigarette hanging out of its mouth. If you are a talented illustrator, there’s a free bag of Velton’s Bonsai Blend in it for you if you can draft something and send it our way.)

Field Trip: Hario USA – Coffee Processing Experiment @ Finca Vista Hermosa

Edwin Martinez is not only the US representative of the Hario products, he’s also a third-generation coffee farmer from Guatemala. While we visited him last month, he talked to us about a coffee processing experiment that he undertook with some of his roasting customers who were looking to change the base flavor of the coffee before they got their hands on it. This video covers the experiment and talks about coffee processing in general, as well as how what is done to the coffee at the plantation effects the end flavor of what will end up in your cup.

Field Trip: Hario USA – Coffee Roasts & Agriculture

One of our favorite discussions with Edwin Martinez of Hario USA was in regard to coffee and agriculture. He is a third generation coffee farmer in Guatemala, and also participates on an international level in several aspects of the coffee industry and community — from tasting competitions to product development. Because of this, he has a fairly unique perspective and he often sees the coffee chain from end to end.

In this video, he talked with us about roast trends in the US by region, how farmers react to different industry factors and gave us some insight into how coffee grown at different elevations have different flavors and acidity.