Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Jack Hanna of Canberra, Australia is the reigning world champion of latte art — at least according to the recent World Latte Art Championships held in Belgium this past May: Aussie cappuccino king says coffee art not all froth | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters.

Australia has won the title two years running. (No surprise, given how much Australian tourists seem to obsess over latte art when visiting America.) And although Mr. Hanna received some stiff competition from the usual assortment of European representatives this year (from Denmark, Russia, and Iceland), it may come as a surprise to some that the Italians came in last. In fact, the Italians always seem to fare poorly at this competition.

Given how seriously Italians take their coffee and design, it might make you question where latte art sits in the hierarchy of Italian art appreciation — relative to the likes of Giotto, Caravaggio, and Titian. It ranks somewhere alongside the works of Delpino — as in Vinnie Delpino, of Doogie Howser, M.D. fame.

Not that the Italians are always right when it comes to espresso; they certainly have a sameness problem, and they clearly lack examples at the top-most quality end. But while latte art is aesthetically pleasing and is a nice indicator of a café that cares, it is more about milk than it is about coffee. All things considered, I’d take great microfoam over latte art any day. Which makes latte art nice, but but about as relevant to quality espresso as birth control is to Neil Patrick Harris.

1 Comment »

Today InsideBayArea.com featured an article on Pete Rogers of the San Leandro-based Rogers Family Co.: Inside Bay Area – Compassion drives coffee company’s success. The article emphasized the Rogers Family Co.’s commitment to helping Central and South American coffee growers by buying directly from them and working to improve their living conditions. Most recently, Peter Rogers and his company have been reaching out to Africa — Rwanda in specific.

Although the Rogers Family Co. runs the very high-minded Organic Coffee Co. (the family apparently doesn’t like to spell out the word “Company”), puzzlingly they also run San Francisco Bay Coffee — one of the cheapest and crudest grade coffee supplies available in the Bay Area. It’s most commonly found at Costco outlets, and it seems to have a shelf life longer than Twinkies.

The article oddly makes no mention of San Francisco Bay Coffee, and your guess is as good as mine as to what’s in it and what the people on the producing end are getting paid for it. Whether or not it constitutes the black sheep of the Rogers Family, one thing is for sure: it’s coffee without any kind of greater purpose.

2 Comments »

Props to the blog wcuk for one of the more thought-provoking posts I’ve read in a while: The Rise of Yuppie Foods « wcuk. It concerns the question of whether the diversification and specialization of common consumable staples — from coffee to wine to chocolate to the restaurants where we eat — is driven less by taste buds and more by “a middle-class need to distinguish itself through consumption”.

What else to explain the insane rise of the illusion of choice in the past couple of decades? More than just the pursuit of better quality and a greater variety of consumables, to a large degree it is the result of segmentation marketing — intending to target you, as a customer, to define and re-assert your own identity through your consumption habits.

One awkward, angst-ridden suburban teen’s Marilyn Manson T-shirt is just another person’s double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato.

Or so the argument goes. Heady stuff. It would certainly explain a lot of the viceral, dismissive reactions and cultural resentment you now find against elitist gourmet products — as evidenced by the “$4 coffee” myth.

A brief history of modern consumer snobbery

Well, maybe it wasn’t entirely wcuk’s recent post per se that I found so thought-provoking. After all, I’ve long since dismissed use of the word “gourmet” as shorthand for a cheap marketing ploy to pass off canned pork & beans as maiale e fagioli in scatola with just one extra adjective. But his post referenced a fascinating historical review of specialty coffee from an anthropologist’s perspective, a paper titled: “The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States” [PDF, 460kb].

As discussed in the paper, coffee got its start as an elite, rarefied beverage imported from remote corners of the world, made available only to the truly privileged. But in time, it became affordable, popularized, familiar, ritualized, mass produced, standardized and commiditized beyond all recognition of its origins. The quality dropped precipitously as the big players who dominated the supply market competed only for the lowest price.

It is only recently, in the past couple of decades, where have we witnessed the development of the specialty coffee trade — largely as a grassroots, Hail-Mary-pass reaction by small roasters to the dwindling number and aging demographic of regular coffee drinkers throughout the mid-20th century. And there was deliberate intent behind this transformation. The flavored coffee fad of the 1990s, which comedian Denis Leary immortalized with his desire for “coffee-flavored coffee”, was a direct marketing pitch towards soda-drinking twenty-somethings who didn’t drink any coffee. (These days you could argue that milk has largely become the new coffee flavoring.)

As the anthropologist puts it:

my newfound freedom to choose, and the taste and discrimination I cultivate, have been shaped by traders and marketers responding to a longterm decline in sales with a move toward market segmentation along class and generational lines.

You are what you, uhh … consume

And how does this relate to consumers distinguishing themselves through consumption? Citing more from the paper:

That there is a complex relationship between class and food consumption is often remarked, first in the obvious sense that particular groups occupy differential market situations in terms of their ability to purchase certain foods, and second in the uses various groups make of foods and food preferences in marking themselves as distinctive from or in some sense like other groups

It’s interesting and relevant history — the sort of thing that the self-described Third Wave coffee prophets tend to conveniently ignore. (If not outright deny its existence, like the architects of China’s Cultural Revolution. What is it with self-fashioned revolutionaries and their inability to cope with history?) And yet it comes from a paper written in 1996 — when Starbucks was only 1,006 stores in 21 states (it is now more than eight times that size in the U.S. alone, and it plans to add some 2400 new stores just this year).

Sure, like the Third Wavers, I still believe taste is big part of it. CoffeeRatings.com owes its existence to my first revelation espresso. But on the whole, there’s clearly a lot more to it than just that: coffee is a booming, not a dying, business today. Even if you don’t think coffee has become a mildly addictive fashion accessory, how do you explain all the new coffee drinkers — many of whom don’t even like coffee?

As with all good history, it pays to read it for yourself first.

No Comments »

Today’s Globe and Mail (Canada) reported on the arrival of the $15-a-cup (CAN$) Hacienda la Esmeralda Especial at Vancouver’s Caffè Artigiano: globeandmail.com: Pay up and smell the coffee. [alternative link: The Tyee — Coffee Hits $15 at the Pump.] Kopi luwak pretenders, take notice.

The Panamanian coffee won the 2007 Roasters Guild Cupping competition at the 2007 SCAA annual conference. The coffee was sold in an online auction for a record $130 a pound to a consortium of roasters, including Coffee Klatch Roasting, Groundwork Coffee Company, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, The Roasterie, Roastmasters.com, Zoka Coffee Roaster and Tea Co., and 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters. That last British Columbia roaster supplied Caffè Artigiano for exclusive retail distribution of the coffee in Canada.

In unrelated news, thanks to the aforementioned The Roasterie for recently supplying me with a test batch of their Super Tuscan Espresso blend — recently rated a 90 on Kenneth Davids‘ CoffeeReview. It produced some great crema at home at one week after roasting — even if it was a touch too mellow and muted to rank among my favorite espresso profiles.

2 Comments »

Recently we reported on Colombia’s Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (Federcafé), originators of the Juan Valdez marketing campaign, and their recent partnership with Coca-Cola to produce Juan Valdez-branded shelf-stable coffee concentrate. If that marketing move didn’t scream “Juan Valdez quality,” just wait for Juan Valdez-branded ethanol: Coffee gives you energy… for your car. – AutoblogGreen.

A research group paid by Federcafé found that coffee grains have enough sugar content to effectively ferment as ethanol. The study even affirmed that coffee has a higher sugar content per bushel than corn (put that in your Iowa corn subsidies and ferment it!). Federcafé’s Director, Gabriel Silva, announced that the first coffee-based ethanol manufacturing plants will be ready for 2008.

While this sounds like a much better use for low grade coffee stocks than, say, drinking them (Love My Carpet latte, anyone?), how long before people start confusing Juan Valdez with his brother, Exxon?

Colombian coffee growers seem to be facing challenges similar to Starbucks: how to keep up the image of quality while simultaneously cranking up production volume.

No Comments »

In case you need more evidence that the legal profession has an endless supply of ready-made idiot consumer lawsuits, recently a 17-year-old “unwittingly” gave herself a caffeine overdose by drinking seven double espressos at her family’s sandwich shop: BBC NEWS | UK | England | Wear | Girl overdoses on espresso coffee.

While a caffeine dosage equivalent to at least 80 espressos is required to kill a person, don’t rule out the future possibility of some accidental suicide. When it comes to consumption habits, people are behaving more and more like dogs locked in a closet with a three-week supply of Purina Chuck Wagon. Can an idiot lawsuit leading to health warning labels on espresso drinks be far behind?

UPDATE: Aug. 23, 2007
Paranoia mode: on. Like the hypochondriacs in the early 1990s who worried that their new use of cell phones was going to give them high risks of brain cancer, we now have communities new to specialty coffee that fret over one foolish teenage girl signaling a deadly coffee menace for everyone: Scotsman.com Living – Health – Danger that lurks in your mug.

Coffee has been consumed safely by humans for centuries, and yet we fret about it more than we worry about energy bars of dubious, very recent origins. Of course, the truth is that only witches drink specialty coffee — so any worries over health concerns are moot given that all specialty coffee drinkers should all be burned at the stake or drowned on boiling oil.

No Comments »

This week, Citysearch.com announced that the votes have been tallied once again for their annual “Best Coffee” poll: Best of Citysearch San Francisco 2007 – Best San Francisco Coffee. And is there anything more effective than the annual readers poll for highlighting all the anomalies and flaws of open user review systems? I know I like being reminded every year that Chevy’s is the best Mexican restaurant this metropolis, with its proud Latino heritage, has to offer.

So, without further ado, here is a summary of their 2007 readers’ poll winners — along with their corresponding 2006 rankings and their current ranks on CoffeeRatings.com (many of which are tied with others for the same ranking, btw).

† — Highest-rated of multiple cafés in the chain chosen for ranking
‡ — 2007 Citysearch Editorial Winner (also 2006 Editorial Winner)

Like the Citysearch editors at least, we do love Blue Bottle. Even if they make up crack-pot drinks like the Gibraltar — named after the glass it comes in, and said to be a cross between a latte and a cappuccino. (Given that most San Francisco cappuccini are more like voluminous, full-on caffè latti in Italy, I’m really not sure of the point. This would be like 7-Eleven offering a 32-oz Big Gulp as a step down from their 44-oz Super Big Gulp®.)

But dropping off Citysearch’s “Best of” list in 2007 were:

• Caffè Greco (formerly #7)
• Blue Danube (formerly #8)
• Caffè Roma (formerly #9)

Out with the old, in with the new, perhaps? Well, if by “new” you mean being replaced by three entries that don’t quite rank in the CoffeeRatings.com Top 100 for SF. (There are currently 25 places tied for 99th, and it’s unlikely that Gallery Café could come out on top in a tie-breaker.) Of course, that says nothing of the neighborhood lobbyists who haven’t ventured very far and consistently rank Café Abir and Tartine Bakery on this poll.

Speaking of Tartine Bakery, after taking a year off the list, Citysearch reviewers once again lost their minds and returned it for an appearance in 2007 — the only returnee to Citysearch’s Top 10 list. This despite the fact that their sister restaurant, Bar Tartine, serves espresso good enough to crack the Top 100 and yet doesn’t rank on Citysearch. Ah, those cruel anomalies…

If I ever begin to think that CoffeeRatings.com has become redundant and superfluous for Bay Area espresso lovers, annual reader polls like this do wonders to keep me putting off “retirement.”

No Comments »

This café was once highly regarded before a recent ownership change, but we never got around to trying their espresso until recently. It’s a sidewalk corner café located across of the SF Cable Car Museum. There is some outdoor seating along Mason and Washington Sts., and indoors there are several tables in a relatively quiet setting. Along Mason, there are interesting ‘carve-outs’ in the façade that house small tables surrounded by three sides of glass looking out over the street. There’s also some counter seating where they have beer on tap.

Ordering at the counter, you’ll feel like you’re towering over the staff due to their lowered service area — where they’ve hooked up a three-group La Spaziale. They sell La Colombe’s Nizza medium roast here, and they are one of the few (but growing) La Colombe customers in the area. (In the past year, La Colombe Torrefaction opened distribution operations in Dogpatch, heating up the quality coffee roaster wars in the Bay Area.)

The Gallery Café pulls espresso shots with a thinner layer of medium brown crema. Flavorwise, it has a slightly bitter edge, but it’s predominantly herbal — a bit like cloves. And while they use a proper serving size and the cup doesn’t taste ‘diluted’ per se, it has a lighter mouthfeel nonetheless. Not a bad effort, but clearly not one of the city’s best.

Read the review of Gallery Café.

No Comments »

Talk about an unusual opening in the West Union Square area in the past year. This café is the daytime sister to The Cellar next door/downstairs (they even share employees) and it turns to a bar/lounge at night. Across from the Academy of Art University, it doesn’t seem like much from the outside. But inside there’s a designer gas fireplace, dark wood floors, dark brown walls (13-feet tall), a wall that converts to a movie projection screen at night to go with the beer and wine served here.

It’s a gallery-like space, with wide windows, modern furniture, and a long bar featuring twin superautomatic Schaerer machines. While that is a bit of a disappointment for everything put into the place, right next to these machines they employ an on-site SonoFresco (literally “I am fresh” in Italian) Live Roast coffee roaster. (SonoFresco has developed a scaled down, in-house, ventilated roaster the way that Fresh Roast Systems has talked about doing.) You’ll even see plastic cannisters of green beans stored nearby (they store the resulting roasts in the back). But a lot here has a DIY ethic, from the fresh orange juice squeezer contraption to fresh baked goods.

They serve espresso in a short whiskey glass, and it comes with about a 2mm layer of even, textured crema. Flavorwise, it’s very mellow and muted. But it’s light without tasting diluted (eventhough the shot is a touch large). The freshness of the coffee, however, makes it mildly interesting over the usual swill at these kinds of places. And interestingly enough, the place does nothing to promote their on-premises fresh coffee roasting.

Read the review of Sugar Café.

No Comments »

From today’s ABC News (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – that ABC News), Big Four coffee giant, Nestlé, is seeking to obtain exclusive rights to two rather generic images of coffee in a coffee mug: Copyright moves ignite coffee controversy – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

The two images Nestlé is trying to copyright — one of black coffee in a white cup viewed from above and the other of a red coffee mug viewed from the front — could expose anyone else in the Australian coffee industry to potential breach of copyright lawsuits should the coffee images they use be deemed similar enough. (For the record, Nestlé has already registered the word “decaf” in Australia.)

One can only guess that Nestlé will soon copyright the stale, rancid, un-coffee-like flavor of Taster’s Choice and sue espresso bars all over America for royalties.

No Comments »