New Rules

So Starbucks finally opened a store to try to go toe-to-toe with the high-end coffee crowd. The signs were there all along; from half way across the world, even I knew that they had bought the company that manufactures clover and remember people complaining about how Starbucks had apparently gone and bought up all the Blue Batak so that it was difficult for the little independent dudes to get any?

Read the Cho's article, take a look at the photos on flickr: from a five minute glance it looks like the new store is a cold and calculated attempt to jump into the little independent dude space. Take a look at the bolts sticking out of the back of the LM, the old-school kettles, chalkboards and enough recycled timber to take on even MD. This is grunge manufactured with decimal point precision.

Naturally, I think that the gut reaction of anyone interested in high end coffee will look at this venture with cynicism. I mean, they can't really be cool if the process by which they create the image of being cool is detached, calculated and analytical ... can they? These guys are just stepping into the little independent space and presumably regurgitating all the same messages about "single origins" and other buzzwords that the high-end coffee movement has been all about; any bets the coffee won't actually be all that good ... will it?

But let's take a step back for a minute. It's not as though putting together a funky looking cafe, presenting the public with a beguiling array of buzzwords and information about coffee and still selling a pretty crappy product is something that Starbucks has a monopoly on (if, indeed, that is what they are doing here). There are any number of little independent roasteries out there that are free-riding on the work of the good guys. I think that many of us have been to a cafe or roastery where the barista behind the expensive multi-boiler wundermachine has waxed lyrical about the fantastic properties of the coffee of the day, only to serve something that was disappointing, if not defective, but in no way lived up to the hype. Similarly, I think that many of us have been sold coffee accompanied by a whole page of information about it, but that two seconds of research will show is actually one of the cheaper, commodity type coffees right off the offer sheet of a large broker. (Sidebar: I'm in no way bagging the large brokers; they have stunning coffees as well as crappy coffees - the challenge for the roaster, as always, is to find them.)

The good news for the consumer is that Starbucks will hopefully mop the floor with independents who talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. Starbucks has the cash, the marketing brains and the clout to beat these guys at everything that they do. The only advantage that the independents have in wining the marketing "war of words" is that they are not associated with the Starbucks brand and can position themselves free of the baggage that that entails. Hopefully competing with this new entrant will mean that independent little guys will have to deliver better quality. The news is good for those that do; hopefully this new Starbucks store will act as a stepping stone to get consumers in the USA moving towards the best coffee.

So overall, I'm quite optimistic about the impact of this new venture on the consumer (as opposed to on little independent roasteries) - more competition is usually better. I do have one gripe, though - whilst the "inspired by Starbucks" tagline obviously does the job of getting the consumer to understand that it is a Starbucks store, it is a bit of a slap in the face to all of the independent stores that would seem to have been the real inspirations for it.

The B Word

OK, so it has been a while since I last updated, but it hasn't exactly been hard to get your fix of Luca coffee rants. My last article, on Fair Trade coffee, was published in BeanScene #3 and is on my other web page, complete with copious footnotes and the full reviews of the featured coffee. My recent article in Cafe Culture gave a very brief overview of the wonderful coffee tasting course that I did in the USA earlier this year. And there is much more in the pipeline ...

The one thing that is decidedly missing in the above is controversy and opinion. After all, what is the bloggosphere if not a virtual soapbox?

There was a tiny bit of controversy in response to my last post, where I dared to use the word "best," albeit with half a billion disclaimers, including prefacing the word with "one of" as opposed to "the". The person who posted the comment since deleted it. I kind of wish that that person hadn't because the comment raised a very good point. From what I remember, the comment was something along the lines of "don't use the word best; can't we all get along and appreciate everthing that everyone is doing without comparing and whilst singing kumbaya." Obviously I'm paraphrasing. The poster of that comment is welcome to take exception and correct me, but is welcome to stay silent, safe in the knowledge that I won't reveal his (or her) name ;P

I certainly agree that the B-word is used indiscriminately online in relation to coffee and its presence often indicates unreliable information. In the past, I have been careful not to use that word where possible. That said, all coffee, all coffee machines and all coffee roasters are most certainly not created equal. I don't think that it's controversial to recognise that some things are better than others and having spent a lot of time exploring the world of coffee I'm happy to mention some things that I like. (I'm even more happy to do so against a background of a disturbing rise in coffee roasters using buzzwords over substance, but that's a rant for another rant!)

In that spirit, let me point out that our good friends at Square Mile have to be amongst the world's best coffee roasters. (Stick that up your pipe and smoke it, anonymous commenter!)

On a more serious note, I have now had the pleasure of tasting coffee from Square Mile on multiple occasions and in each instance I have been quite amazed at the care taken to select different coffees and roast them to present vastly different sensory experiences, which mostly match up pretty closely with the description of the coffee.

Now, there are a few really top notch coffee roasters around and whilst the shelves at Square Mile groan under the weight of many trophies, that's not really enough to merit my dragging my lazy hide to the keyboard for this blog post. What merited this post is that Square Mile seems to be a happy convergence of an abundance of coffee talent and a dearth of accounting talent leading to a ridiculously cheap subscription for us Aussies. Long story short, we can get a 350g bag of coffee delivered to our door from merry old London every month for about $20/month (roasted for filter brewing). That's about $60/kg delivered. I actually wrote an email to Anette to check that this price was correct for Australia, given that postage of anything to Australia from practically anywhere is usually enough to impoverish all but the six richest kings of Europe. To be fair, though, this is also in part due to the AUD being the strongest that it has been against the GBP for a long time.

There's always a catch and this time around it is quarantine. It seems that AQIS has now decided to inspect anything and everything. Green coffee imports quite clearly require a permit, but I have never had a problem having roasted coffee shipped in until a few months ago - presumably because nothing nasty can survive the 200C+ temperatures that coffee is exposed to when it is roasted. The first time around, my order arrived a mere week after it was posted, but this time around it was delayed two. Here's hoping that we return to the situation where roasted coffee is acknowledged to be as low risk as it clearly is.

Great coffee every month and reprieve from the agony of choice. Lovely.

Anyway, with my obligation to put something on this blog fulfiled, I bid you adieu!

USA - FINAL POST ... and then some ...

OK, so the old blog hasn't gotten much of a workout in the last month, so time for a whirlwind update ...

USA Trip - The LAst Leg

OK, so after Atlanta, I headed over to LA for a few days of hanging out with Em, Scott and Saxon from AIR and the various Intelligentsians ...


Deaton gives us a tour of the Intelly roastworks.


Kyle and Tim showed us the training room, where the staff for Venice beach were hard at work in their intensive training program. Terry Z's GS2 looked pretty schmick.


Intelly Silverlake. This store was like a magnet; I was in LA for two days and I think that we made about four trips to Silverlake!


Gorgeous layout in the front patio; I really should have also taken some shots of the inside of the store. The store is set out to give the staff heaps of room to work, but nonetheless looks beautiful. Great coffee offered in a number of brewing methods.


Kenya Thunguri brewed as a clover. An absolute stunner, in the league of the Mamuto. Personally, though, I find a whole mug of brewed coffee to be a bit of a hard slog. Not only is it a helluva lot of coffee, but it also takes forever to reach a nice drinking temperature. I much prefer BBB's way of brewing it into a pot and serving it with a small cup, which allows you to pour a small amount into the cup at a time in order to have it at the perfect drinking temperature.


We also took a trip to Venice Beach to see how the new store is progressing. It is going to be pretty phenomenal. I'm tipping this to become an iconic photo for the area once the sign is lit up.

Home Again

Of course, there have been a lot of interesting things on at home, too. Looking back, I have actually done a heap of cuppings over the past few months. And good ones, too - good coffee, good roast levels, multiples of each sample.


(Conclusion: you can't cup with paper cups. I'd better add cupping bowls to the shopping list.)

I also feel that we're on the up-side of the Melbourne coffee cycle. Not only are we getting in a lot of new green coffee at the moment, but the cold weather allows for much better storage and ageing. I think that it will get better over the next few months as the stuff that is now new becomes an old acquaintance to the people roasting it, following which, as it starts to heat up several months down the track, things will start to decline. That said, there's every reason to be optimistic that the down side of the cycle won't be as bad as it has been in years past. For one thing, the past year seems to have seen a lot more competition come to the green coffee market, with a few Aussies starting up agencies for overseas importers. For another, I think that the better roasters are now starting to think about green storage and will be better able to manage their inventories towards the end of the year. The question is how much these best practices will actually spread; getting people to spend more time, money and effort on coffee is always an uphill battle. George Howell puts it very succinctly; to paraphrase him, good green storage only costs a few percent of the overall price - everyone in business believes in insurance, so why not pay the tiny amount for good green storage so that you don't end up having to try to sell green that has gone bad?

Finally, I suppose that I should briefly mention Seven Seeds. I suspect that the guys probably want to keep it under wraps a bit so that they can have a slow start, but that's simply not going to happen. Needless to say, it is extremely well fitted out and there are a few really clever ideas that I'm sure will be copied, such as the nursery. Taking a walk around the green room is really quite confronting; there's a lot of very expensive and very good coffee in there. Frankly, this place has nearly everything to be one of the best coffee roasteries in the world. And I don't say that lightly.

USA Trip 09 - Days 9 Through Whatever ...

New York


So after Coffeelab I didn't do too much coffee stuff in New York. Apparently there's stuff there that you can do other than coffee.

I did make it down to Cafe Grumpy and 9th St Espresso. Grumpy delivered service true to its name and coffee true to its reputation. Everything seemed to be very driven by Ethiopian coffees; more stuff of the IMV Ilk. The espresso and clovers were pretty good, but I have to say that I found their in-your-face IMV type flavour to be rather unsatisfying after the balance of the espresso that Mane busted out on our last day at Coffeelab. Fantastic cappuccino at both Grumpy and 9th St, with Grumpy pulling off a rather amazing transmogrification as the berry flavour of their coffee gave way to dark choc in the last few sips. But what's with the milk? Coarse bubbles at both places.

SCAA + Atlanta

The Specialty Coffee Association of America Expo was always going to be jam packed ... add the World Barista Championships and it was a very, very, very packed few days ...

WBC


Team Australia in their run through time; Tim, Wolffy and JP. I really wanted to spend more time with team Aussie and more time watching the WBC, but had too much stuff to try to squeeze in at the expo. In fact, I only ended up watching one performance - Mike Philips from the USA (who I thought definitely had a winning performance). Tim's run through went well; his espresso tasted really sweet and I can't wait to stream his performance, already knowing full well that he will have done us proud.


Grinders provided by Espresso Parts. Tshirts provided by latteart.net.au.

The WBC espresso bar; fancy being able to get great coffee at a barista competition!

Labs

OK, so in a nutshell, I did four labs - two brewing labs and two farming labs. The farming labs were absolutely awesome, with some guys at the cutting edge taking us through all of the various processes and correlating the many goings on at the farm with the result in the cup. Money well spent.

Show Floor


Me using the new time machine. At least I think it was a time machine; every time I came near it I lost half an hour!

The machine that everyone was talking about. Utterly amazing. Brew pressure profiling via a new lever group. Critics correctly point out that brew pressure profiling via a lever is impractical in a busy bar operation. Except when you can record the pressure profile and play it back! There were also a bunch of other cool things, including SS portafilters and teflon coated steam wands. I'll go out on a limb and say that I reckon this prototype is the best machine on the planet at the moment.



You can get an idea of the front of the machine from the photos above.

LM are popular dudes. Every man and his dog gave them coffee.

So how did the coffee taste? Pretty amazing.

USA Trip 2009 - Day 5

Some images from Coffeelab for your viewing pleasure ...


Jen grading coffee before passing it through the screens

My coffee grading table

Aroma tests - note the red light; used during the aroma tests and triangle cuppings so that you can't tell the difference in the colours of the ground coffee, solutions, etc

Mane pushes forward the odd one out - I think he got this one right

Preparing for a regular cupping - an activity that takes place very quickly and efficiently with many people and Mane's awesome cupping lab

Today's Indonesian cupping featured a few pretty mindblowing coffees. Delicious.

USA Trip 2009 - Day 3

A picture's worth a thousand words ...



Mild, inoffensive. Surprisingly good, actually.

Gibraltar + Idido Misty Valley from the lever machine.

Pourover bar for Fleur.

Lever machine. Tasted like it burnt the coffee a bit, but, still, nice coffee.

Kyoto brewer + syphon bar.

Syphon of the IMV.

Right, so great coffee from Blue Bottle, but missed out on Ritual. I am currently writing from Waterbury, Vermont, taking the Coffeelab course with Ben and Jen from Five Senses. One of the questions that I'm hoping to answer is exactly how much Australian coffee in general sucks compared with what's possible. The first day has proved to be a great calibration with the SCAA calibration form ... and I'm pretty zonked ...

SCAA

Excuse the lameness of this post, but I just thought that I'd let y'all know that I'm off to Coffeelab, then to the SCAA conference and WBC. Agenda is as follows:

Waterbury for Coffeelab
New York
Atlanta for SCAA/WBC
LA

So get in touch if you'll be around for any of that.