The backlash against the filter brewing fad has officially begun
Posted by TheShot on 20 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Machine
Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald published a curious fad-contrarian article under the subhed of “Espresso lovers are fighting the siphon and filter revolution”: Shots fired in retaliation.
Now the idea of a “siphon and filter revolution” is still a bit silly to us, given that siphon brewing has been around since the 1830s and filter coffee for even longer. For example, we’ve lost count how many times we’ve seen people “ooh” and “ahh” geek-out over recent Chemex brewer coffee references as if they we witnessing something revolutionary. This despite the fact that I have several uncles-by-marriage who have been using Chemex brewers for longer than most of today’s baristas have been alive.
However, filter coffee has undergone something of a public interest revolution. This has been another dimension to our theory about exploratory coffee fads, such as an obsession with single-origin coffees and medium roasts. What’s old becomes new again as coffee lovers experience the natural progression when seeking out the next “new” thing: something to learn from and to be stimulated by, even if it’s your immigrant uncle’s coffee.
So we have things like London’s Penny University, who are focusing on the new faddish thing (for UK standards) by offering only filter coffee and not espresso. This makes as much sense to us as the concept behind Scott Rao’s Everything But Espresso book. Instead of defining what you are, you define yourself by what you are not.
Now don’t get us wrong. We love filter coffee in its various trend-friendly forms. But if the Third Wave was supposed to be about enjoying coffee for its own sake, why are we setting up so many rules about what not to offer and what not to do? The traps of single-origins-only, medium-roasts-only, or filter-coffee-only are just as badly restrictive and closed-minded as having only blends, dark roasts, and espresso at our disposal.
Back to yesterday’s article, unfortunately it doesn’t express that “backlash” very well — instead favoring its own, counter-fads such as the Strada, the Slayer, etc. More to the point, we need more people speaking out saying, “But I like my espresso. Why is it suddenly passé?”
9 Comments »
I think you’ve missed the point of Penny University here. It wasn’t about faddish bandwagon jumping – it was more about trying to create a more diverse an interesting coffee culture in London.
Espresso is everywhere in London, brewed coffee is not. This is a shame because, while I do love my espresso, brewed coffee is delicious and interesting. Instead of moaning about it we had the opportunity to do something.
While I don’t subscribe to waves, the point was really that people were buying a specific coffee – something traceable and interesting with credit to the ingredient rather than the brewer. (Something often missing in espresso)
As for defining yourself by what you don’t do – how is that a bad thing? What on earth is wrong with doing a limited number of things well? The urge to do everything for everyone leads to the commonplace mediocrity found in cafes across the world.
No one is saying that all cafes should be like this – in fact the point was that cafes can and should offer a whole host of different experiences. There is no one correct way, nor are we implying that there is.
As for the article – it seems so confused and off target that I don’t really know how to respond to it.
Brewed coffee, especially the good kind, is surely a rarity in the UK as it is in, say, Australasia. But what I don’t understand is the “no milk, no sugar and no espresso” rule. The rule is in the negative.
If you’re going to introduce coffee lovers to a new variant, it just makes more sense to me to go for a kind of big tent approach. Rather than trying to seek out a rather independent, new form of coffee drinker from one that currently exists, why not take it to them — i.e., appeal to the (espresso-loving) base you already have?
Or, in other words: before bringing the mountain to Muhammad, it might be easier to first try bringing Muhammad to the mountain.
It wasn’t as much “No espresso” as it was “we don’t have an espresso machine in here”.
I am not sure why every coffee shop ought to have an espresso machine – espresso is just another brewing method. It just happens to be the fastest and most flexible.
As for the no milk, no sugar – it isn’t about being anti-pleasure, or exclusive. We charge what we charge for a cup of coffee because that coffee is interesting and characterful. It gets significantly less so with the addition of milk or sugar. We have nothing against people taking a bag home and adding whatever they like, but as a roaster we just wanted an opportunity to share coffee with people and have them taste what it was about that coffee that made us buy it.
People’s response has been amazing. Only those online have complained (usually because they feel that they are absolutely entitled to whatever they want, wherever they want it.) but in the store people have been interested to try coffee without sugar, despite the fact they usually would want two or three in there. And they’ve enjoyed it (or said they did, and came back for more).
Milk and sugar are necessary for most coffee served globally. 95% is filthy, bitter and unpleasant so I think it creates a very different expectation when you take them away and send the message that they won’t be necessary here.
We’ve been busier than we expected – to the point that it showed up the severe limitations of the space we were in, should we want to go longer term – and I’ve been left with nothing but admiration and appreciation for the people who’ve come and tried something different, who’ve tasted their coffee with thought and interest and have been a delight to serve.
People don’t need a big tent. They don’t need to be tricked into trying something. We regularly, and painfully, underestimate the coffee consuming public.
I’m not so concerned about the milk and sugar thing. It’s more, say, living nearby, wanting to go to my favorite coffee shop, and on the day I’m in the mood for an espresso, I’m told, “Sorry, we don’t do that. Jog on.”
But this is like being angry because you went to your favourite fried chicken place and they didn’t have any traditional cantonese food….
It isn’t like we took the espresso machine away, or serve it only when we’re in the mood, it has just never been a part of that business.
Plus, 100m away, you have Gwilym Davies’ Prufrock where we send people who want something espresso based. Why compete when you can compliment?
Sure, there’s Cantonese crispy fried chicken. But that and KFC really isn’t an accurate comparison. People go to coffee shops for coffee. Not for filter coffee or espresso coffee and never shall the twain shall meet.
People in the industry notice the difference. But that’s a nuance that’s largely lost on a lot of consumers. More to your example, the comparison is more like having separate Cantonese restaurants for siu mei and lou mei.
What naturally follows then are separate cafés for vacuum pot bars, pour-over coffee, espresso, and cold-brew coffee. For a person who is just looking to get their morning fix with a good brew, that’s a lot of decision-making to put someone through first thing in the morning.
It’s annoying enough for me to have local roaster/cafés who spout the one-dimensional, “Oh, we only do medium roasts.” Adding preparation methods to the balkanization of coffee shops will only make it worse.
I think you’re enjoying playing Devil’s advocate a bit too much, Greg. I’m with James here. The idea is a bit high brow, but I think there’s nothing wrong with treating coffee like any other ingredient and setting up something on par to a restaurant for coffee. It’s only pretentious or exclusive if your attitude conveys it. Good customer service can go a long way to combating negative expectations. Sure, there will be some people who want a cup of Joe, but will they really stumble into Penny University by mistake. (OK, there will probably be some)That’s just not what that shop is. And besides, it’s closing soon anyway.
As to the larger point, there definitely is a faddish element to various brew methods as well as an element of professed rediscover and people figure out these old timey methods actually work when you stick good coffee into them. To that, one might critique this Aussie response by saying that they are the one’s that need critiquing. Here in the US, siphon brewing is already quasi-passe. It’s the V60 man, or wait, is it something else?
But in all seriousness, two points. First, not all these brew methods are recycled. The V60, aeropress and Clever are three good examples of brand new methods that have been the brew method du jour on many blogs, and rightfully so. They need exploring.
Second. Much of what people are doing these days is discovering – I’d argue for the first time – that when you use good coffee in one of these long-standing brew methods, that there are a lot of variables to play with in getting the brew method to work properly for that coffee. When you were siphoning maxwell house, who cared except in the most excessive cases whether your brew method was off since it pretty much sucked no matter what. With one of today’s many extremely high quality coffees not only do you want to get it right, but different alterations and different methods bring out different aspects of the coffee. I think these two dimensions are what people are playing with (whether they fully realize it or not).
I think we wasted too much breath on Penny U. My point wasn’t to condemn them at all. Rather, it was about how, as quality coffee exploration moves forward in society, it’s become way too much about what we won’t do or what we stop doing — and not enough inclusiveness for the various preferences among the untold numbers of coffee lovers out there.
It’s as if the only way we can appreciate medium roast coffees is at the exclusion of lighter or darker roasts, the only way to appreciate single origins is at the exclusion of good blending, or that the only way we can appreciate filter coffee is in an environment free of an espresso machine.
To me, that’s not progress. That’s just keeping the blinders on and tilting your head in a slightly different direction. It’s as much selective ignorance as it is enlightenment.
I honestly cannot wait until we tire of being Portuguese Explorers about coffee and start setting down roots to build a few settlements — so we can get back to enjoying coffee, and not treating it like some alien autopsy. Instead of reflecting an accumulation of learning, what we have instead is coffee ADHD.
All and I mean all of this shit is just an opinion… and everyone has one. If you don’t like what some shop is serving, then QUIT going. My guess is that before long the ever famous penny university will realize that their sales have dropped and sprint back to their espresso machine ASAP. Capitalism will sort this one out.
Goo-day mates