Even GQ magazine can’t figure out if the “Third Wave” is coming or going
Posted by TheShot on 20 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Quality Issues
Thanks to Tim of espressophile fame for giving us a heads-up on this article posted yesterday from GQ magazine: The Most Important Drink of Your Day: Restaurants + Bars: GQ. Tim got his heads-up from the guys down at Verve Coffee Roasters, who are among the handful of regional coffee shops highlighted in this best-of article. Also cited from the ‘hood, with photos, were Blue Bottle Coffee and Ritual Coffee Roasters.
Even if GQ doesn’t register on our respectable reading list — after all, they have a sub-section on their Web site dedicated to Megan Fox — we liked a few quotations from the piece, including:
So why, every morning, do you pay $4.79 for a watery latte that was lovelessly made on a push-button machine that could be safely operated by a 4-year-old?
But, as always, things get stupid when they stumble over this “Third Wave” business — what we’ve long dismissed as delusional, fabricated nonsense perpetuated by people who think they just invented good coffee or just discovered consumers who appreciate good coffee. (Or perhaps worse: naïve journalists that take this nonsense as fact.)
For example, in one paragraph, GQ presents a statement about these cafés returning to the quality practices of yore:
In case you haven’t heard, we’re living in a Golden Age of Coffee. (Note: Please don’t actually go around calling it that.) Thanks to a new generation of purveyors bent on returning craft and artistry to the beverage
Then to completely sound like they’re talking out of another bodily orifice, a few paragraphs later they commence mumbling about the “Third Wave”:
Here’s the deal: Vacuum-packed stuff like Folgers and Hills Bros. is considered coffee’s First Wave in America. Peet’s and Starbucks, which brought us espresso, are Second Wave. Third Wave? That’s the painstakingly crafted brew we’re talking about. Here’s how the new breed does it.
So which is it? New breeds, a new wave? Or is it a throwback “returning craft and artistry to the beverage”? The article should have stuck with its own final advice: shut up and drink it. All that time staring at January Jones’ cleavage on the cover has clearly affected their coherence.
6 Comments »
That’s weird, I always thought of Peet’s and Starbucks as bringing us really dark roasted coffee, not espresso. I understand that Starbucks was able to take advantage of SELLING espresso, but not until Howard Schulz took over. I’m pretty sure Peet’s didn’t bring us espresso until Jerry Baldwin moved back to the Bay Area and bought Peet’s, so which wave were in then? which wave are we in now?
So here’s a recent conversation with my 67-year-old Portuguese uncle-in-law Ronaldo, aka “Tio Café,” as he was preparing coffee for us in his decades-old Chemex brewer:
Me: Did you know that after all those years of roasting your own coffee and using a Chemex brewer, you are now considered part of what’s called coffee’s “Third Wave”?
Tio Ronaldo: O quê??
Me: No, really. I read it in a magazine.
Tio Ronaldo: Drink your coffee, Greg.
Is he the same guy that invented the double ristretto
?
I guess I understand why some people scoff at the “3rd wave” designation of this new generation of roasters/brewers/baristas — it’s inevitable that ID’ing an “in-group” is going to create an “out-group” and that those that are not given membership to the “in-group” are going to be a bit bitter and jealous of those that are receiving what they consider an undue amount of attention as well as a group of people that are genuinely suspicious of hype — but, ultimately I think that the designation carries some weight.
It may seem overly simplistic to some but the division of the recent history of coffee into three waves is a useful device. I mean, really, there is something going on when six months ago, after just moving to Oakland I was hard-pressed to locate a decent place to have my coffee and espresso and now I have a choice of at least five. It’s hard to sit and look at the current coffee scene and not come to the conclusion that there are some new ideas about what good coffee is all about swimming around.
So, I guess it all comes down to semantics. I think the division of the recent history of coffee into three is fine. I see the logic: Folgers, et al., Starbucks/Peet’s and Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Ritual, Stumptown … and on and on and on. Folgers and the like was *the* way the majority of people drank coffee until Peet’s and Starbucks came along. Peet’s and Starbucks have always been about the dark roast, about tried and true blends (Major Dickason’s anyone?) and about proper brewing technique. To my eye, this new crop of roasters is all about experimentation — with how coffee is brewed and sourced (direct-trade anyone?) — and breaking free of a roast-focused approach to coffee towards one that has an increased respect and focus on origin.
My point is that there is a difference, no matter what you want to call it, between how coffee is approached now vs. how it was approached in the past. There is a current coffee zeitgeist that a large number of people are following. One might scoff at it’s name and feel as if it promotes a certain exclusionary vibe (and I would agree with that) but it’s pointless to ignore or debase the many good things that are new and different about what is happening in coffee right now.
Well, this really is a tough subject and it really is difficult to say anything on certain terms. Experimentation lies at the heart of any dynamic and competitive industry, and I would have to say that the experimentation in the specialty coffee industry is not a new thing. You could argue that there is MORE experimentation now than ever before, but again, in any dynamic industry, experimentation and discovery occur progressively faster as more knowledge is discovered and shared, and a higher level of participation is reached. Today’s experimentation is likely the continuation of the experimentation of previous generations. One cannot contemplate PID and pressure profiling if one has not first contemplated a heat exchanger or volumetric pump. One cannot contemplate a heat exchanger and pump if you have not first contemplated a lever operated espresso machine, and so on.
The appreciation of single origins is not a new thing, and neither is roasting to origin. There is certainly more focus on the farm but take for instance the Cup of Excellence, which was born in response to coffee prices reaching historically low levels at the beginning of this decade as much as it was due to any new wave. One of the founders of the Cup of Excellence, George Howell, happens to be very 2nd AND 3rd wave isn’t he?
The “third wave” was a self proclamation at its nascense, so I would have to say that it risks having alterior motives. I feel that it also risks myopia in the short term ,but the good thing is that in the long term these things have a way of working out. One day darker roasts and blends will settle back into fashion again and hopefully people will appreciate the full spectrum of what coffee has to offer, light to dark, blends to single origins, single espresso versus double, 14 grams versus 21, and etc, etc. In a way, the use of double and triple ristrettos today is the necessary outgrowth of years and years of Americans experimenting with how to make “Italian coffee” work within the confines of 12, 16, and 20 oz cups. Right?
I can understand how the division into three historical categories can be useful, but I also find it confusing. Recent arrivals to the business have injected a burst of energy, innovation and quality, no doubt, but it needs to be understood that this is something that has been years and years in the making.
I’ve gotta say, Guest, reading your words make me wonder if I wrote that myself. I don’t believe you’ve said anything I cannot completely agree with.
The only added wrinkle, which I still don’t understand, is why the coffee industry frequently acts as if the evolution of consumer tastes over the years were something unique to coffee.
To be true to Trish Skeie’s and Nick Cho’s original definition of “Third Wave”, these waves supposedly represent a progression of consumer appreciation for coffee. And yet over the same time period, we’ve witnessed:
You have to have your head buried in buckets of unroasted green coffee beans to not see how consumer tastes are evolving independent of what any of this has to do with coffee.
You could also argue that this is an extension of Howard Moskowitz‘s consumer psychophysics — where product marketing maximizes profit by creating idealized product variations targeted at consumer segments with similar tastes. It’s likely a combination: product segmentation incentives, a greater sophistication of consumer tastes, and the democratization of these tastes.