Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com

As we mentioned in our last post a couple days ago, being popular and being good can be two very things. There are few places where this is more apparent than on Web sites that thrive on aggregate public user ratings and reviews. We had intended this article to be about Yelp’s top SF coffee picks — much like our annual round-up on the Best of CitySearch. However, our analysis of Yelp’s rankings became so absurdist so quickly, our story changed dramatically from what we originally intended.

Yelp not only failed at the fundamental task of telling us what other San Franciscans thought was the best coffee in town, in aggregate, but it took us down a dark and strange path into the social motivators behind the site. In essence, we found that Yelp’s rankings are a better measure of a social game among its users than as a measure of the establishments its users supposedly rate.

It’s been a good year since we last poked Yelp in the eye over its major flaws. So this time around we will take a critical look at Yelp’s actual rankings for top coffee in San Francisco based on their rather mad methods.

Arbitrary Standards

Many of you probably know that Internet users were TIME magazine’s choice for the 2006 Person of the Year. You might even be familiar with James Surowiecki’s book, Wisdom of the Crowds, which illustrates many ways in which the collective intelligence of large groups of people is greater than that of individuals. All of this is certainly wishful thinking in an election year. However, any “wisdom of crowds” has also provided us with mob behavior, witch hunts, and mass hysteria.

Fortunately, poorly biased coffee ratings should not inflict any bodily harm on espresso lovers who have been lead astray. Or at least in theory — as there have been times we’ve sampled some pretty awful espresso and still wonder about the long-term health effects. But sites such as Yelp are often utterly useless to us because the rating criteria are often completely arbitrary.

To help illustrate this point, we present a summary of Yelp’s Top 20 SF Coffee & Tea establishments as of June 5, 2008, as determined by Yelp users. (Given that the review rankings are dynamically affected by new user ratings, and that we had something of a Web hosting meltdown since the time we started penning this post, the ranks have changed a little since last month. They are also likely to change after this article is published.)

Next to each ranked establishment, we’ve listed their equivalent rank on CoffeeRatings.com (many of which are tied with others for the same ranking), real quotes from reviewers who gave the establishment a maximum rating of five stars, and our associated thoughts on the reviewers and/or the reviewed. It’s the kind of stuff that makes us think they should change their name from “Yelp” to “Wince”.

And the next 10…

The Negative Review Head-scratchers

While the above covers the excitable, five-star reviews that contribute to sometimes puzzling accolades for otherwise weak espresso purveyors, there are equally puzzling criteria reviewers use to depress the rankings of otherwise great espresso options. Below are a few more of the more bizarre rankings on the list — optionally accompanied by some classic excerpts from the Yelpers themselves who gave the places one-star reviews (with a couple two-star reviews thrown in for good prose):

• The Hayes Valley Blue Bottle was ranked #36 of 784, below The Castro Cheesery at #24, and just below the ever-disappointing 595 Mission St. SOMA Peet’s at #34. Overheard: “OVERRATED… this spot can be such a freaking scene, filled with thirty-year-olds holding little dogs on a leash, talking about internet gossip on their iphones.” (Apparently coffee quality is dependent upon age, dogs, and iPhones.) “I don’t like coffee, except for maybe an iced one on a hot day.” “I don’t know how anyone can drink coffee if the[y] say they believe in global warming.” (Note to Al Gore: Solve global warming by shutting down Blue Bottle.)
• Theatre Too Cafe ranked #59 with an average 4.5-star rating (Overheard: “Tasty. Juicy. Ample. Cheap.”). Meanwhile, CoffeeRatings.com gave it a 1.80 espresso rating, ranking it 584th out of 594 — or the 6th worst in all San Francisco.
• Blue Bottle Farmer’s Market at #63 of 784 ranked below both nearby purveyors, Frog Hollow Farm at #44 and the 2 Embarcadero Peet’s Coffeeat #60
• Coffee Bar (tied for #1 on CoffeeRatings.com) at #74 ranked below a Mission Starbucks on 2727 Mariposa St at #71. Overheard: “I wasn’t exactly inspired to try it myself” (So I gave it a one-star rating anyway.) “The MUSIC is way too loud.” “Coffee Bar has been open for about two months, but they haven’t bothered to mention that small fact on their website which still says it’s ‘coming soon.’ What gives? … So you get one star until you get your act together.”
• Blue Bottle Cafe (tied for #1 on CoffeeRatings.com) ranked at #114. Overheard: “I asked for it to go, they made it to stay. Then they insisted on throwing that away to make it right.” (Those bastards!) “Sure it’s organic, sure it’s shade grown, sure it’s fair trade. But you needlessly spend cash on expensive coffee; but by the same token you won’t give a homeless person change?” (Note to greenies: hardworking homeless people in Nicaragua don’t count.) “I’m really more of a tea guy, myself.”
• Ritual Roasters, Mission ranked at #145, just below Java Beach Cafe at #143. Overheard: “If you knew me at all you know I don’t drink coffee…I only went into Ritual because I was walking by and I had to pee.” (There’s grounds for a one-star review right there.) “Pffff, how incredibly lame to cover up the plugs… Whose brilliant idea was that?” (Laptop owners speak out on coffee quality.) “In all honesty, I have not tried your coffee because the masses of bug eyed yups and students clinging to their laptops and I pods makes me want to vomit.”

I don’t know what kind of parallel, warped universe some Yelpers are living in. But one that ranks Theater Too Cafe at the 92nd percentile — well above Blue Bottle Cafe, Coffee Bar, and Ritual Roasters in the Mission — must contend with questions such as, “Mommy, why do you have three heads?”

The Yelp Rating Lifecycle

To be sure, there are a few ratings on Yelp that we’d actually agree with. But take Cento, for example. It was only open one month when it was ranked #9 on Yelp — and it had a ways to go before it left the “honeymoon” stage of the Yelp rating lifecycle.

What is the Yelp rating lifecycle, you ask? Typical for a place like Cento, wannabe hipsters race to be the first to review a place they like and pump it up — particularly if it’s obscure or relatively out of the way in some back alley. Apparently, from what we observed, they believe this behavior somehow bestows upon them some form of social currency among other Yelp posters. It’s the “I’m cool because I am an insider and I found it before any of you” badge.

But then as a place gets exposed and more people know about it, this is followed by a wave of professional killjoy reviewers that love nothing more than to say, “OVERRATED! — And they’re so arrogant here” as a form of their own social currency among Yelp posters. It’s the “I’m late, but I’m cool because my tastes are way better than this” badge. Mark our words. Give things a few months and Cento’s Yelp ranking will drop like Starbucks‘ stock price.

Interestingly enough, since we originally wrote this paragraph in June, Cento’s Yelp ranking has dropped from #9 and is now currently hovering around #24. While our repeat visits haven’t produced espresso ratings as strong as our first, we sense there’s more going on than just a subtle weakening of their espresso.

So what does any of this have to do with the rating of quality coffee, you ask? Absolutely nothing. But it has everything to do with how Yelp works. Which is precisely our point. Using a site like Yelp only makes us feel dumber than we already are.

No Comments »

This weekend’s move to a new (hopefully more reliable) Web hosting provider seemed to go rather smoothly. If you’re reading this post, you are viewing CoffeeRatings.com at it’s new home.

Since the whole ordeal to change Web hosting providers took us a full month, and since we don’t trust Web hosting providers all that much these days, we will be keeping our WordPress account at http://coffeeratings.wordpress.com/ for announcements and other emergency purposes should this site suddenly become “unavailable”.

But otherwise, we’re happy with the move (goodbye and good riddance, Burton Hosting!) and are looking forward to getting back to business as usual. Thanks for your patience throughout this transition.

No Comments »

Given that our headaches with our Web hoster are resolving themselves at a snail’s pace, we’re itching to get back to business as usual. So we are carefully returning to publishing here (saving copies of our databases as frequently as possible) — even though we risk a future “blackout” at any given time. How better to do that than with a classic CoffeeRatings.com Trip Report?

This is a quiet, local place that gets many SFers worked up as if they’ve experienced the Real Italy here — or at least something that authentically makes you feel as if you’re someplace else. And they’re not entirely off the mark. There are often authentic Italians speaking the language inside. And this has been in operation since 1905 — with the Lucchese Gamdaccini family now running the place (as proudly painted on the front door). They are a very friendly lot and offer fresh-baked Italian breads, biscotti, other baked goods, and typical café lunch items.

The café itself occupies a nice corner not far off of Columbus Ave. at Bannam Pl. There are some sidewalk café tables in front, large glass windows, and several indoor café tables and chairs.

Using a two-group La Spaziale machine, they pull shots with a thinner layer of a medium brown crema, served in modern Miscela d’Oro IPA cups. The body is a touch thin, the Miscela d’Oro flavor leans towards the smoky/tobacco side with some pepper notes, and the cup has more of a potent aftertaste than an initial flavor. But overall, it’s a decent espresso. And drinking it in a location such as this only helps.

Read the review of Danilo’s Bakery BaoNecci Caffè.

No Comments »

Thought CoffeeRatings.com went belly up there for a while, didn’t you? If not, we certainly did.

On Saturday, June 14, our subscription with our Web hosting provider (Burton Hosting: avoid like the plague) automatically renewed after a credit card payment cleared. The next thing you know, the DNS to route traffic to CoffeeRatings.com (and all e-mail, etc.) was completely botched up for over a week.

Which is when we learned how bad things can get when a Web hosting provider slowly pulls their own plug without telling you anything: emergency tickets go unanswered for more than a week, you discover support phone lines have been disconnected since you last used them, and all e-mails to former e-mail contacts there go unanswered as well.

Essentially, our current Web hosting provider appears to be a sinking ship, so we’re trying to refrain from posting much here with the expectation that the lights could go out at any moment. Databases have been backed up in triplicate, and we’re in the process of planning a switchover to a new host that might actually have a live human or two behind the operation.

You can read more about it at CoffeeRatings.com - Our Nomadic Home (http://coffeeratings.wordpress.com/), which we’ve designated as an alternate information source while we go through this transition.

Thanks for hanging in there, and sorry for the mess. The mops are out, and we’re going to be in a bit of a tussle trying to wrest control of our domain name from a business that apparently exists only as an answering machine in a broom closet somewhere in England.

2 Comments »

As we hinted in a previous post, San Francisco magazine just published Josh Sens’ story on the more recent evolution of San Francisco’s local coffee scene in its most recent issue: A new buzz | San Francisco online. (There’s even an article featuring CoffeeRatings.com on the back page: The coffee bard | San Francisco online.)

The article features Coffee Bar, Blue Bottle Cafe, Ritual Coffee Roasters (including some great quotes from one of our favorite area baristas and coffee writers, Gabe Boscana), and Trouble Coffee. A couple of interesting points Mr. Sens raises in his article include:

• “It’s just coffee” — Running a business that really cares about the details involved with good coffee often requires a thick skin — especially in the face of the many knee-jerk reactionaries who ridicule what they see as coffee elitism. (I.e., “Folgers’ Crystals was good enough for my parents, and it should be good enough for you too.”)
• The Caffeine Factor — Trouble Coffee’s Giulietta Carrelli directly addressed the role caffeine plays in good coffee, which Mr. Sens found unorthodox and refreshing. In many ways, we appreciate the decaffeinated coffee drinker as a sort of “true” lover of coffee, independent of its psycho-chemical effects (i.e., its about “enjoyment” rather than “usage”). But there’s a reason why Duncan Hines is the #3 consumer of purified caffeine: the caffeine enhances the “mouth-watering taste” (OK, that’s a bit subjective) of their brownie mixes.

No Comments »

Last week, the Guardian (UK) published an article on a home espresso enthusiast’s journey to obsession: In pursuit of the ‘God shot’ | Food and drink | Life and Health. Having reviewed almost 600 espresso shots in SF proper ourselves — most of them pretty bad — we’d like to believe we know a thing or two (a thing or two too many) about obsession. But the pursuit of the “God shot” — the unachievable attainment of the perfect espresso — is a common story among home espresso enthusiasts.

As highlighted in the article, the story typically starts with a “starter” espresso machine — the gateway drug. It then soon leads to machine upgrades, grinder upgrades, and tampers. Conversations with fellow home enthusiasts via online forums (what they were known as before “social networking” became the phrase du jour — and the beginning of the end of the Internet’s second bubble) lead to more areas for obsession, lost kitchen counter space, and financial ruin. These typically include home roasting, naked portafilters, and the point of no return: PIDs.

PIDs, or Proportional-Integral-Derivative devices, are a programmable digital control unit, relay, and a temperature probe combined into one. They enable owners to control the temperature of a boiler to one-tenth of a degree for maximum brewing precision. Now I may be an electrical engineer by way of college degree, but I’ve always seen the PID as the first step of the descent into espresso madness. The point of no return.

Fact is that my home machine is a “simple” manual Gaggia G106 — the modest, illegitimate sister to the author’s original La Pavoni Europiccola. And OK, I also own a Mazzer Mini (pre-doserless model). I’m obviously part way to madness there. But why haven’t I been lured by the siren song of the “God shot”?

I could easily improve my home espresso set up. But there’s this thing called the law of diminishing returns. There comes a point where after every few hundred dollars of investment, how much better does your home espresso really get? And what is the dividing line between simply “enjoying coffee” — and enjoying only something that requires the equipment and budget of a high-energy physics lab that recreates the first few microseconds of the universe’s Big Bang? (My apologies to James: I like that you own a $20,000 siphon bar — so I don’t have to!)

I’m sure I’m missing out on something by not taking my obsession further. But then there’s a lot else in life I could be missing out on too.

3 Comments »

Dealing with the media can often feel like waiting for a Muni bus. Just when it’s been so long that you forgot that they exist, suddenly three pull up in a row over the span of a few minutes. This time the media frenzy surrounded the recent openings of Blue Bottle Cafe and Coffee Bar — with additional curiosity spent on filter coffee from the Clover brewer and James Freeman’s $20,000 siphon bar.

Trouble is that there are a lot of eyes that roll when they see things like $20,000 siphon bars and $11,000 Clover machines. “It’s just coffee!,” they mockingly say. “These pompous coffee snobs are rightfully getting ripped off.”

So we at CoffeeRatings.com wanted to put our 15 minutes of media fame to good use: to help promote better coffee in the Bay Area. (By saying “we” instead of “I”, it at least helps me to believe there’s more than one Bay Area resident who wants better coffee standards in town.)

Coffee Achievers, Coffee Believers, and Coffee Agnostics

Fortunately, I didn’t encounter much “are you out of your caffeinated mind?!” reporting. ABC 7 TV (KGO) Morning News, for example, had a lot of fun doing a recent coffee story — as I did shooting it with them: abc7news.com: San Francisco coffee bars offer unique, expensive brew 2/08/08. This wasn’t entirely surprising, given that Amy Hollyfield and the rest of the morning TV crew has to get out of bed at 3 a.m. every day for the 5 o’clock News. Let’s just say they have developed a deep appreciation for chemical stimulants, yet they’re rather particular about their morning coffee. (Big Peet’s fans — they thumbed their noses at Starbucks.)

Last month they brought me along as their “expert taster” (their words, not mine) for a TV segment ride-along to Blue Bottle Cafe and Coffee Bar to evaluate some of the newer technologies in brewed coffee. (Classically, at Blue Bottle Cafe the next day, James Freeman asked me if I saw the piece that aired on TV that morning — as he doesn’t own a television.)

Then last weekend I hooked up with Josh Sens, a reporter writing a story on Bay Area coffee for San Francisco magazine, and his food-writing/TV-show-producing friend, Sarah Alder, for a coffee-tasting ride-along in San Francisco. Also quite a caffeinated road trip blast, we visited Blue Bottle Cafe, Trouble Coffee, Ritual Roasters, and Caffe Bello. They particularly enjoyed Trouble Coffee for its off-the-wall quirkiness and good macchiati — but they were most impressed with Trouble’s “build your own damn house happy meal” consisting of coffee, toast, and a coconut (the entire shop menu) for $7. (Sarah gets the credit for all of the Trouble Coffee photos, save for the Happy Meal sign, associated with this post below.)

Given their mutual appreciation for good food and wine, my obsessive coffee habits weren’t too off-putting. Josh asked a lot of intelligent, detailed questions about coffee production, preparation, and the industry, and I’ve put him through a bit of my address book for follow-up interviews. It promises to be an interesting piece that should come out in the next 2-3 months.

It’s Just Coffee!

A bit more unusual was my interview with Joe Eskenazi, who wrote a similar story for the SF Weekly a couple weeks ago: San Francisco - News - SF’s $12 Cup of Coffee at Blue Bottle Cafe. (Their Web site even included a brief bio piece: News & Politics: The Snitch - Too-Much-Coffee Man: San Franciscan’s Java Obsession Has Led Him to Rate Every Last Cafe in The City (From 1 to 587).)

From that experience, I learned a little more about the art of the media misquote. In the article, Joe quoted me as saying of Blue Bottle Cafe’s siphon bar coffee, “It’s probably not something I’d pay for more than once a month.” However, just as the article’s title misleadingly mistakes a $12 pot for a $12 cup, I was referring to a personally drinking an entire pot of the stuff by myself. Simple mistakes, or examples of poetic license to amp up a story intended to expose the excess of coffee gluttony? You be the judge.

The question is valid — but more for the line of questioning that (thankfully) never made it in the article. In typical SF Weekly socialist bias fashion, I was asked, “There are a lot of homeless people living around the Blue Bottle Cafe’s neighborhood. How can you justify a $10 cup [sic] of coffee when you have to step over the homeless to get it?”

Champagne ethics on a beer budget

Forget for a moment the illogic of buying a $1 cup of dreck at Lee’s Deli as a cure for homelessness. Some people in this town will whine to no end demanding the purest organics, sustainable farms, and well-paid workers with living wages and health benefits … and yet have a coronary if somebody actually expects them to pay for all of that.

One could argue that you could save the spare change from buying cheaper coffee (though screw the workers exploited to grow, store, ship, and serve it to you) and donate the difference to the needy. But what is it about good coffee that is somehow less ethical than buying your clothes somewhere other than Goodwill or relying on a mode of transit other than a bicycle?

Of course, getting this line of questioning from a publication largely funded by its final few pages loaded weekly with ads for escort services and every other form of female sexploitation imaginable raises a whole other set of ethical questions, but let’s stick to coffee.

Even Dante’s Hell puts good coffee in only the third circle

Is premium coffee at a premium price so self-indulgent as to corrupt the moral fiber of our nation? Every time I think that I’m getting too obsessive, elitist, or pretentious about coffee, all I have to do is look at a site like Chowhound and read users’ “trip reports” of restaurant meals, their price tags, and their insular critiques of citrus foam or xiao long bao. Believe you me — we had better hope One Laptop per Child doesn’t succeed at connecting much of the Third World to the Internet. Otherwise hoards of outraged, starving villagers will want to suicide bomb the living crap out of this country after reading sites like Chowhound.

The critical consumptionism of CoffeeRatings.com is already shaky ground. But when you elevate that to competitive criticism of consumption — while seeming so blissfully unaware of how offensive that might be perceived by anyone else — you may as well hand out duct tape, bags of nails, and explosives.

Yet another reason why CoffeeRatings.com might never solicit open user reviews…

No Comments »

Yesterday Public Radio International’s (PRI) The World aired a broadcast on the Italian espresso: Espresso | PRI’s The World. While every news outlet in America was regurgitating Starbucks‘ publicity over their token three-hour store closure for employee training, reporter David Leveille took a different approach by interviewing the art of the espresso from a distinctly Italian perspective.

(David Leveille tried to contact me for an interview for this story yesterday morning — he was particularly interested because this blog regularly cites the Gambero Rosso Bar d’Italia. But alas, that day job thing kept me from getting back to him in time for his deadline.)

The radio story gets a few details wrong — for example, a proper espresso is produced with near-boiling water, not steam as reported in the story. But the story outlines how Italian baristas “perfect their craft over the period of years, not hours”. It even includes an interview with the head barista at Sant’Eustachio il caffè, who is as comically arrogant and opaque about their methods and materials as you’d expect from this beloved café. (There’s something about Europeans and the ceremony of the safely guarded culinary secret, such as the Pastéis de Belém in Lisbon.)

2 Comments »

Occasionally this Web site can be the source of a real life story, and the story of Caffè Mokabar is a good one. For a little background, after a couple weeks of espresso research in Piemonte, Italy last October, we were most duly impressed with Caffè Mokabar among all the coffee roasters we encountered. So when I wanted an authentic regional import to serve with a Piemontese meal my wife was planning for the private supper club she operates in the city, I scoured the Internet for Caffè Mokabar…but to no avail. Back then (unlike now) they didn’t even have a public Web site. So I settled on a U.S. distributor of Caffè Costadoro that I found.

Not long after, a comment appeared on this blog from Andrea Bertolino, Marketing Manager at Caffè Mokabar and grandson of company founder, Ermenegildo Bertolino. We later connected over e-mail and exchanged our mutual appreciations for great coffee — and immediately discovered that we were both are rabid fans of the Torino-based soccer club, Juventus F.C.. (In fact, Andrea descends a long family line of season-ticket-holding juventini.)

No coffee hooliganism allowed

Andrea then introduced me over e-mail to his childhood friend from the ‘hood, Roberto Cauda, who was swinging by SF as part of his travels to a Las Vegas technical conference and could bring me a stash of Caffè Mokabar — which is unavailable in the U.S. However, there was one catch. Roberto was born an avid Torino F.C. fan, a granata, the cross-city rivals who would love nothing more than to see Juventus burnt to the ground in flames if not for the fact that both clubs have shared Torino’s Stadio Olimpico (i.e., 2006 Olympic Stadium) for the past couple of seasons (and for many, many years prior to 1990).

For a little context, a lifelong friendship with an inherent football (soccer) rivalry like that is not far off from the Montagues and Capulets of nearby Shakespearean Verona fame. It’s ten times worse than the 49ers vs. Raiders fan rivalry. And just before our October travels to Piemonte, Juventus played Torino at the Stadio Olimpico for the first leg of the season’s Derby della Mole — which was spectacularly won by Juventus with a last-minute thriller of a goal by David Trezeguet that had me jumping on my sofa at home (but also ruing that I didn’t schedule my trip for a week earlier so I could attend the match).

Last month I met Roberto at SF’s Grand Hyatt, and Roberto unloaded a kilo and a half of precious Caffè Mokabar on me. And upon seeing me in my Juventus jacket (of course I had to wear it, as much as Andrea wished he could have witnessed that), Roberto made it clear under no uncertain terms that no word nor photographic evidence of himself fraternizing with a guy in a Juventus jacket could ever come back to Italy. (So hopefully there are no granata reading this. )

In all seriousness, Roberto was great company and I showed him around town for the evening. Being on neutral turf in America, perhaps it’s a bit like the truce between Israelis and Palestinians at Camp David. After all, I have good friends in Italy who are granata (”some of by best friends are…”). Though Roby shot me an e-mail upon returning to Malpensa afterwards: “P.S. you need a decent jacket :-)”.

Now about the coffee…

Given my home use of Caffè Mokabar’s best arabica-only blend, did it compare favorably with my experiences in Piemonte? One rule of thumb we’ve long held is that virtually any locally roasted coffee can be superior to even the best imports — given the freshness difference. Illy is a perfect example of quality that is outstanding in Europe but yet doesn’t translate as well in the U.S. — once shipped for many days and thousands of miles to SF as an oxidizing roast. This no matter how much inert gas or other freshness measures the roasters might take.

However, we were surprised with how full its flavor was — and how much it held up, including its volume of crema it produces (the canary in the mine for coffee freshness), over time. Given that it was an all-arabica blend (as is Illy), it produced a surprising amount of crema and managed to have a rather well-rounded flavor profile. (The typical Italian coffee blend for espresso leverages some quality robusta for these merits.)

Andrea was quick to acknowledge Illy as a great quality product for anyone to aspire to. And he was quick to mention how it was worthy of its considerable expense — just as Mark Prince mentioned in comments here how Ernesto Illy would have wanted it that way. But price even aside, I’d take this stuff over Illy beans in a heartbeat every time.

The coffee holds up to a finer grind well. I tightened up my Mazzer Mini on it without the grinds “gumming up” together in the portafilter. Part of that is certainly due to the more modest roast depth of the blend. And as far as the flavor of the blend goes, that’s completely subjective — many people simply cannot stand the flavor of Lavazza, for example, regardless of freshness. But there are a few blends that really “wow” me in flavor even after the freshness fades, and this is one of them.

Caffè Mokabar needs a distributor in the U.S. — so if we don’t pick that job up ourselves, you’ll at least have us as customers. Because unfortunately we’re all out! A big thanks to Roberto, Andrea, and the Bertolino family for underwriting this post with great coffee carried thousands of miles to reach us. I’ll be thinking of them when the next Derby della Mole takes place this Tuesday.

7 Comments »

What will those wacky Swiss think up next? Apparently, it’s an espresso-tasting machine: A machine with a taste-for espresso.

Yes, it’s the latest invention from the people who brought us yodeling and clandestine overseas bank accounts. But with the Swiss, it’s not all good stuff. They have also brought us brain-dead, monkey-operated, superautomated espresso machines — such as those manufactured by Franke, Nespresso, the Schaerer. (The latter of which is responsible for the dreaded Verismo, part of a secret Swiss plot to bring about the downfall of Starbucks.)

So the nation that has built robots to do everything from stacking wheels of cheese to pumping out sickly cups of espresso has turned its attention to espresso tasting. (More sophisticated coffee industry robots that also wear hoodies and bike messenger bags, collect tatts, and listen to Cat Power on iPods are apparently still in the works.)

The machine operates by analyzing gases released by a heat­ed es­pres­so sam­ple. By evaluating some of the over 1,500 aromatic and flavor compounds in a brewed espresso, the developers hope to replace a lot of the human profiling that still goes on in coffee production. A study on the effectiveness of the device, which is rumored to be nearly as ac­cu­rate as a pan­el of trained hu­man es­pres­so tasters, is planned for publication in the March issue of An­a­lyt­i­cal Chem­is­try.

Robots to brew, robots to drink

The coffee industry still relies heavily on human senses for evaluating what makes a good cup. While some day a Swiss-made, espresso-tasting robot may put CoffeeRatings.com out of business, I was also struck by something James Freeman told me yesterday at his new Blue Bottle Cafe. He took a moment to sample his siphon bar coffee after serving it — noting how he was impressed with how the bartenders at his neighborhood Nopa often sample their cocktails from the ends of stirring straws as a way to keep tabs on the resulting product.

Technology can go a long way towards modeling the physical world. But until coffee is served by robots for robots, chances are that some things just can’t be replaced without the human touch.

UPDATE: Feb. 12, 2008
More news of this story is starting to hit the presses. This includes the Royal Society of Chemistry, which uses espresso-tasting profile charts as illustrated by the Centro Studi e Formazione Assaggiatori: Machines get a taste for espresso. There’s also the actual ACS publication: When Machine Tastes Coffee: Instrumental Approach To Predict the Sensory Profile of Espresso Coffee, where other blogs have excerpted some of its illustrations. Plus a weak, one-minute audio spot from Scientific American: Scientific American: Coffee Tasting Machine Stirs Industry.

4 Comments »