R.I.P. Pour-Over Coffee: 2009-2011?
Posted by TheShot on 01 Jul 2011 | Tagged as: Barista, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
Pardon the sensationalist headline. (Like nobody has ever done that before.) But here’s something from yesterday’s L.A. Weekly on Demitasse, one of the more anticipated new coffeeshops in the L.A. area, that questions/provokes some of the conventional coffee wisdom of the month: Demitasse Will Not Have Pourover Coffee + Other Twists on the Third Wave Coffee Shop – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink.
So what’s different here? Anticipated “Third Wave” (ugh) coffeeshop openings have been fodder for the local presses for several years now, so it only makes sense that each might attempt to differentiate themselves from the hoard with a slightly different angle now and then. But what we have with Demitasse is yet another coffeeshop identifying itself (at least in the article) more by what it doesn’t do than by what it does do. And what it doesn’t do is pour-over coffee.
Or does it? Per the article, clearly they’re fans of the Clever full-immersion coffee dripper — which some circles might say isn’t pour-over coffee by only a slight technicality. But the reason the owner, Bobak Roshan, gives for not offering pour-over coffee is telling: “Roshan adamantly is against the method as far too dependent on the skills and utmost attention of the barista, too often to the detriment of the coffee drinker looking to have the cleanest, tastiest cup possible.”
There you have it. The method requires too much concentrated attention, for too long, of an easily distracted barista in a retail environment. There is some truth to this, even suggesting a bit of retail reality folly in the nascent Brewers Cup. Of the few coffeeshops that have offered vac pot coffee over the years, most would only do so after the morning caffeine rush-hour. And yet vac pot brewing requires much less constant attention than pour-over brewing. And then there’s the reality that the biggest expense in retail coffee is labor.
Which isn’t to say that pour-over brewing is going away anytime soon. Despite the many efforts to convince us otherwise, retail pour-over brewing has been around for decades. However, this might suggest that many coffeeshops are starting to learn the dismissed conventional wisdom behind the once-novel-now-passé Clover brewer: that individually hand-crafted, manual brewing processes make a great cup of coffee, but they fail to scale in a retail environment supporting any kind of volume at a competitive price.
Now if only we understood the semi-conventional wisdom behind using Equator Estate Coffees — despite only a single notable retail example of it in the face of dozens of underachievers.
7 Comments »
“The method requires too much concentrated attention, for too long, of an easily distracted barista in a retail environment.”
How could we remedy these problems? Let’s see. Maybe we could hook up some kind of timer to a water tower, so the barista doesn’t have to manually pour the water. And while we’re at it, we could install a shower-like spray head, thereby achieving more even saturation across the grounds. And finally — man, I’m a genius! — we could use a flat bottomed filter for better drawdown.
Oh wait . . . I just invented the Fetco.
Clover’s Precision Pour Over doesn’t seem so silly, however.
Agreed. But who wants to buy another machine from Clover? Hopefully, other companies will introduce their own single cup auto-brewers.
That said, machines such as the Fetco can produce a great cup and it’s an advantage to be able to brew larger amounts of drip coffee during busy times. In my experience, most drip customers aren’t picky about what’s on tap — first and foremost, they want caffeine and they want it now.
Yet even from a craft perspective this can be a good thing, because offering only one or two coffees on tap and changing them frequently is an easy way to introduce your customers to a wide variety of coffees.
How tiresome it is to see yet another of your persistently (willfully?) ill-informed references to our business. After your last post about us we encouraged you to visit our facility and put your assumptions to the test (especially after falsely identifying us as an author of an espresso that in fact wasn’t ours). But, you won’t test or investigate any of your assumptions or statements about us. You still have no insight into what we do, the range of our coffee profiles, or the growers we work with. As stated in our response to your previous post:
“…. as an espresso enthusiast, you are acknowledging a basic tenant of espresso: there are different stylistic preferences. Espresso is not an indicator of quality range (as in the vogue among roasters of using robusta a few years back) but rather of the ability to design for stylistic preference and the competence of the barista… we serve a demographic that overwhelmingly prefers and chooses a milder, dark roasted espresso profile – simply put, we have a full spectrum range of espressos “on the table” for our prospective clients to choose from… Please accept an invitation to come to our roasting facility and cup our espresso offerings..”
Brooke McDonnell
Equator Coffees & Teas
Unfortunately, Brooke, what you serve at the roaster does not directly translate to what consumers experience in a retail environment. This is one of the many important ways coffee isn’t like buying a bottle of wine. So while I do greatly appreciate your offer to visit, and I regret not being able to take off of work to take you up on it yet, none of that changes the retail experience we have had at 36 purveyors who use your coffee. Most consumers just don’t have the option to walk into your roaster for an espresso; instead most have to settle for a reseller at a retail location. Ultimately, insight into what you do, the growers you use, etc., is meaningless unless you can taste it in the cup.
We’ve definitely had one stand-out example, which should suggest that it’s not entirely the coffee itself — and we’ve written as such. But given the dozens of underwhelming retail examples to date, it suggests you at least face the same “last mile” problem that has plagued many local roasters in the area — from Blue Bottle Coffee (who severed their ties to Frog Hollow Farm to open their own retail locations and address their retail delivery pipeline) to Mr. Espresso (who opened Coffee Bar to showcase their beans and control their retail delivery pipeline) to a multitude of roasters in-between.
It’s not fair to say that Equator Estate Coffees can be held directly responsible for diminished quality (and occasional outright failures) in the retail service chain. But we would be completely dishonest if we were to somehow sing the roaster praises of Equator Estate Coffees and put a blind eye, and deadened taste buds, to how those coffees rather consistently exhibit themselves at the service end of the supply chain in a retail environment.
What is odd, however, Brooke, is that many local roasters from Four Barrel to Ritual have acknowledged this challenge and inconsistency in the supply chain. Their response has been to actively make efforts to address it, such as:
Just as examples. However, unlike all of these other local roasters, your unequivocal answer has been to deny that any supply chain problem exists and to instead “blame” the taster.
Or to put it in less wordy terms: Brooke, I think you’re burying your head in the sand when it comes to the legitimate retail service supply chain problems Equator Estate Coffees is experiencing. This problem is not unique to Equator by any means. What seems unique to Equator Estate Coffees, however, is in denying that the problem exists and hence doing nothing to address it.
Hi there,
Thought I’d address some of the concerns this article raises about our shop.
LA Weekly perhaps gives off the impression that we’re sacrificing quality for expediency, which is certainly something I would never do.
Long before I decided to get into the coffee business, I had my issues with pour-over coffee. I find that very, very few places know how to do it right. Most places butcher it and you end up with really under-extracted coffee as a result. I feel that it just became trendy, so everyone jumped on the pour-over bandwagon without fully understanding how to do it right.
When I decided to open my own shop, I had to figure out what got me consistently the best extraction. The answer was the siphon and the Clever, both full immersion brewers. One is a bit smoother, but with less body. Both make excellent coffee, and I have found that they make better coffee than a pour-over does. I think the weakness of the pour over is the lack of contact time. The french press had the right idea, but the wrong filter. I think the Clever and the siphons have nailed it.
With respect to using Equator, I can honestly say after having blindly tested many a roaster, their coffees almost always came out on top versus some of the more in vogue roasters. I’ve almost always tried their beans on my own equipment, so I can’t speak to whether or not other places using their beans are brewing correctly. I can speak to the amount of time they’ve spent working with myself and my staff to ensure the quality of their product.
Once we’re up and running, please come visit!
- Bobak
Thanks for the comments, Bobak. Actually, we admire your out-of-the-box thinking in rejecting the pour-over. Not that it is inherently bad, but offering it has become something of a cliché with what seems like little critical thinking applied to it. Many in the industry are content to offer “me-too” services without thinking through their own service requirements themselves.
As for Equator Estate Coffees, we’ve always found the results in retail locations to be less than expected/desired and a lot of variability. A couple years ago we ran some simple statistical analysis on our ratings based on different variables. To reproduce that chart here with our most recent statistics for Equator Estate Coffees added in, this is what follows:
There are a few things worth noting in this data:
If you can break through whatever factors are holding many retail locations back that serve Equator Estate Coffees, you may just be the reference espresso location they need. Best of luck to you, as the data among the 36 rated retailers serving Equator Estate Coffees suggests you have a few obstacles you’ll need to overcome.
Looking at comparative standard deviation scores, Blue Bottle Coffee and Mr. Espresso are far ahead of Equator Estate Coffees in working out the inconsistency kinks in their retail consumer delivery chains. As long as Brooke & Co. take a defensive stance and deny that there’s any problem, this will never improve for them.