Today’s L.A. Weekly featured an interesting bio-piece on father and son L.A. espresso pioneers, Ambrose and Guy Pasquini: Q & A with Ambrose and Guy Pasquini: L.A.’s Single Espresso Origin – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink. You might recognize the Pasquini name for some of their excellent home espresso machines. But the Pasquini family is credited with first introducing espresso to the L.A. area.

Some of the more interesting details from the piece:

• Their initial business was first frequented by espresso-starved Hungarians.
• In the early days, they even got some of their espresso from SF’s Caffé Trieste.
• From the beginning, only about 3% of their customers ordered espresso. The bulk was cappuccino and caffe latte.
• Starbucks coming on the scene helped popularize their business. Well, it was good for business, but “it wasn’t good for quality.”

And while the Pasquinis are rolling with the superautomatic and Nespresso machine punches, we were particularly intrigued by their reaction to La Marzocco. To quote:

La Marzocco did a wonderful job convincing people that only certain machines can make a good coffee. … They did a wonderful job convincing the [specialty] barista that that is the state of the art.

It’s a bit of a back-handed compliment — less to their equipment-building prowess, and more to La Marzocco’s marketing ability to build anxieties and insecurities within specialty baristas.

Which explains a little of the ambivalence we feel when we witness the likes of a Sightglass fawning over the latest coffee toy fads on the market. It’s one thing to be enamored with trendy equipment. But it’s another to rely on it as a cover up for a lack of sweat and hard-work that goes into optimizing with the equipment you’ve got.

We smelled a familiar rat the first time we read it: I Am Jonathan’s Starbucks Card: A Social Payment Experiment (With Free Coffee) | TechCrunch. A programmer/writer publicly offers up his Starbucks Card as a social experiment for people around the world to contribute to and withdraw from his pre-paid Starbucks account. It just sounded too conveniently like the Starbucks’ Pay-it-forward-gate of a few years ago, where media outlets took the bait hook, line, and sinker in different markets over the period of several years.

And just as every other media outlet on the planet picked up this story (here, here, here, here, and here — for example), who was already on top of the hoax? None other than occasional CoffeeRatings.com reader, Andrew Hetzel, noting how the programmer/writer’s public relations & app company, Mobiquity, has performed heavily promoted work on behalf of Starbucks, etc.: Starbucks and the ‘Starkbucks’ Jonathan’s Card Viral Marketing Campaign | coffee business strategies.

Conspiracy theorists may be one of our bigger pet peeves. But if you know any of the history here, this readily fits a pattern that has gone back for years — just with a new tactic. And now, as then, someone points out that calling out the authenticity of this clandestine marketing operation diminishes all the goodwill behind the effort. This smokescreen retaliation came from the same playbook for every Starbucks-seeded “pay it forward” story in the local presses not long ago.

Another of the unmistakable fingerprints is Starbucks’ complete lack of acknowledgment that the phenomenon even exists. Most other supposedly social-savvy businesses would pick up on such a story and highlight it as a feel-good for their legions of loyal customers. But with Starbucks, instead there’s deafening silence — as if they’re more worried about ensuring the credibility of the story by distancing themselves, rather than acting as an agent of promoting its supposed feel-good causes.

Starbucks pleads the fifth, opting for plausible deniability should Mobiquity take the fall

For all the feel-good altruism to be defended here, why is Starbucks completely turning its back on the story? If questioning the story’s authenticity hurts the altruism behind it, where does Starbucks’ complete silence on the matter fall on the “you’re either with us or against us” spectrum? And even more suspicious, this week Mobiquity took down all content on their Web site indicating their Starbucks affiliation after the story broke. (Screencaps saved fortunately by Andrew, and shown here.) And please do read Mr. Hetzel’s blog for gems like all the pro-Starbucks comments on his post that he traced back to corporate IP addresses within Starbucks Inc.

No matter what, you have to admire the Starbucks marketing team for their savvy in pushing the envelope on effective social marketing. Over the years, Starbucks has benefitted from a number of seemingly independent citations in the press affiliating the Starbucks brand with feel-good stories of local altruism. One of their greatest strokes of genius is suggesting that questioning the authenticity of these stories is a vote against altruism. Who could be against that? It’s almost as genius as the religious argument that a lack of scientific evidence is a foundation for religious faith — and hence a requirement for being a truer believer.

This has to be one of the most clueless stunts we have ever seen anyone perform in the name of the professional quality coffee trade. Coinciding with the first London Coffee Festival, some ad wizards came up with the genius idea of having 100 UK baristas churn out a Guinness World Record 12,005 espressos in one hour. Worse still, they celebrate this orgy of mass-produced gluttony as if it were an accomplishment rather than an embarassment: Newswire / UK Baristas Smash Aussie World Record At London Coffee Festival 2011 – Beverage/Wine – Allegra Strategies | NewswireToday.

It’s been a long time since we’ve encountered a better definition of the ol’ *facepalm*. Here we have a quality-focused industry of small independents struggling to find relevancy in the face of corporate coffee behemoths such as Starbucks. To those ends, they have turned to the language of artisan coffee, individual pour-overs with an attention to detail, the term “craft coffee,” and flowery, self-congratulating prose about the so-called Third Wave.

Instead, what we get is a competition that honors espresso-making like a factory that mass-produces vats of industrial lubricant. And Lord knows nothing says “quality” like “quantity”. Even better: quantity rushed to the point of setting world records.

Apparently, much of the discredit goes to Jeffrey Young, Managing Director of consultancy Allegra Strategies, who revels at the UK besting Australia in the PR Hall of Shame: “This record is a tremendous achievement and really shows the rest of the world London’s leadership in artisan ‘Third Wave’ coffee culture. London offers best-in-class food and coffee with many visitors coming here to learn from trends in this great city.”

Thank you, London. Apparently someone forgot to mention that the Third Wave is about how you can produce over 140 gallons of espresso in an hour.

It’s been a while since we posted something specifically about Starbucks. Yes, they still exist. Their CEO, Howard Schultz, is currently promoting a book, published yesterday, called Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul.

If you mentally have to go back to the Clinton administration to remember when Starbucks last had something resembling a soul, you are not alone. But Schultz’s book message is that Starbucks was in financial dire straits with the economic collapse, and it is now making the most triumphant of comebacks. Apparently if you fall into a 20-foot-deep financial sinkhole for a few years, and in the last year you manage to climb your way five feet back up the sinkhole wall, that’s cause for a new book about your miraculous comeback. Even if you’re still stuck in a 15-foot hole compared to where you were a few years ago.

Along with this book release, this month Starbucks celebrates their 40th anniversary. Meanwhile, Peet’s Coffee & Tea has signage up celebrating their 45th. In the spirit of Starbucks buying out anybody who attempts to outdo them, it’s hardly a surprise that there are now rumors about Starbucks buying Peet’s.

Today the comic newspaper, The Onion, put their spin on Starbucks’ anniversary with this infographic: Starbucks Is 40 | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source. Some bullets of note:

• 2002: Responding to complaints that its coffee tastes bitter and burned, Starbucks releases Metal Machine Roast, the chain’s most perversely unpalatable brew to date
• 2007: Following the success of its music and book sales, Starbucks begins offering life insurance, tax preparation, and living wills

Over the years we’ve read a lot of coffee articles. And ever since feedback forms became commonplace on the Internet, we’ve also read a lot of user comments on these posts. At least enough for us to identify 10 common archetypes among coffee article commenters on the Internet — analogous to the ever-popular coffee shop customer archetypes.

Commenters on coffee articles often fall into distinct cliques — many of them rather nonsensical. Just look at Erin Meister’s Serious Eats post last week on the cost of coffee. Not surprisingly, former U.S. barista champ, Kyle Glanville, described it simply as “great post, silly comments”

So here’s to creating a lexicon so we can all say next time, “Stop being such a #6.”

1. The Starbucks Fire Marshall

Like a mutant cross between Tourette Syndrome and a drinking game, these commenters cannot help themselves whenever someone posts something that includes “the S word.” No matter what context or circumstances for the article, we get their reflexive reply: “Starbucks tastes burnt!”

Doesn’t matter if it’s a Wall Street Journal article discussing their quarterly earnings or the latest police blotter reporting on yet another vehicle unable to resist the siren song of a Starbucks’ storefront window. This comment is also frequently offered with an air of implied revelation — akin to Charlton Heston’s infamous, “Soylent green is people!” (Sorry if we ruined that for you.)

2. The Daily Coffee Affirmation with Senator Stuart Smalley

It’s hard to believe that a someone’s self-worth could be called into question by something as trivial as another person’s choice of beverage, but these commenters face this very existential quandary. For them, coffee is still a raw, generic commodity — like kerosene. Hence 1950s truck stop coffee was good enough for grandpa and it’s good enough for us. Anyone who suggests or believes otherwise is part of a social conspiracy.

This conspiracy takes on two dimensions. The first involves separating fools from their money. Yet this is insufficient to explain why these commenters so viscerally exclaim that anybody who pays more than $1 for a cup of coffee is a moron. If it were merely this, any half-lucid person would keep their mouths shut in order to keep fleecing those fools all the way to early retirement.

Which leads us to the second dimension of the conspiracy: these commenters are also reacting to a perceived sense of class warfare. One man’s threat is another man’s double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato.

Rather than admit that “fancy coffee” isn’t their thing and they don’t really get it — the way that some of us don’t get kombucha or Russell Brand — projecting this social unease on those “idiots” paying for expensive coffee is a means of self-affirmation. “Because I’m good enough.. I’m smart enough.. and, doggone it, people like me!”

3. Coffee Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle

Speaking of conspiracies, this commenter archetype believes that the entire apparatus of the coffee industry was deliberately constructed by The Man as a means of enslaving and impoverishing coffee farmers. The actual concept that someone might actually consume and enjoy the end product is irrelevant.

Which explains Fair Trade, a sacred cow among these commenters. Like the TV trope, “think of the children!,” comments from this group focus almost exclusively on “think of the coffee farmer!” What they imply is that every person who touches coffee after it leaves the farm, including the various truck drivers and dockworkers working for pittance wages in coffee-growing nations, are blood-sucking parasites profiting off the backs of noble coffee farmers.

4. The Junkie

This commenter archetype views coffee exclusively as a performance-enhancing drug. When they encounter articles suggesting that there’s good or bad coffee, or that coffee might actually have a taste or flavor, you may as well ask your grandfather what’s his favorite crunkcore band; it’s just as alien.

When they’re drinking the coffee, these commenters could not care less if their coffee tastes like battery acid, and the idea of decaffeinated coffee seems utterly pointless. They are typically attracted to the malt liquor of the coffee world: coffees branded with wake-the-dead, crystal-meth-like psychoactive properties and the sinister names to match.

And if somebody else reports to drink coffee for its flavor, these commenters discount them as merely drug addicts in denial — kind of like the guy who says he buys Shaved Asian Beaver magazine only for the articles.

5. The Born-Again Junkie

Privileged white people haven’t had it easy. In today’s society of competitive victimhood and I’ve-suffered-more-than-you one-upmanship, some are lucky enough to experience the trauma of not getting into Harvard. Others aren’t so fortunate and have to resort to makeshift, bogus afflictions like “caffeine addition.”

Which brings us to the archetype of the recovered caffeine addict. These born-again commenters proselytize a lifestyle free of caffeine: “I once was a caffeine addict, but my life is so much better since I gave up coffee for yerba maté!” Like all lifestyle preachers, it’s not enough that they live with their own life choices — they must convince you to choose them too.

The dirty secret of this archetype is that, rather than face their demons, they are only hiding from the real problem in their lives — namely, their lack of self-control and inability to moderate themselves. Which makes them kind of like the gay man who joins the Catholic priesthood to “cure” himself of his homosexuality. (And we all know how well that works out.)

6. Reverend Home Roaster

Home roasting has been around for over a millennium. Its latest generation, with more modern prosumer equipment, probably peaked about a decade ago. But it is a brand new phenomenon for many. Often those who have discovered home roasting in the past year seem particularly afflicted with a brand of religious zealotry when posting comments on coffee articles.

Whether the article is about the cost of coffee, a Cup of Excellence competition, or even the pour-over brewing device of the month, the comment box is an irresistible platform (read: soapbox) to preach a sort of home roasting gospel. “It’s better than you can buy!” “It’s cheaper to do it yourself!” “It’s so easy, a caveman can do it!” One popular sermon is the Legend of the $5 Hot Air Popcorn Popper: “I have seen the promised land, and it is a West Bend Poppery II!”

You’ll have to excuse us if we don’t start selling off all our worldly possessions in anticipation of the home roasting Rapture. Yes, we like home roasting. It’s kind of a fun hobby from time to time. And yes, we understand that, by golly, you really like this new home roasting thing. We also like Benecio del Toro, but we don’t use the comment thread on a Cup of Excellence article to proselytize his merits as an actor and movie producer. The key to sales is relevancy — that goes whether you’re selling mortgage-backed securities or a home roasting lifestyle.

7. The MacGruber

The MacGruber represents another kind of commenter with a DIY fetish — except that this archetype sees the DIY ethos as a form of social currency. Less idealistic and more self-interested than Rev. Home Roaster, the MacGruber comments on coffee articles to boast of their exploits building traveling espresso machines out of bike parts or attaching PID controllers to portafilter handles. In this regard, they’re a bit like those guys with gold chains and silk shirts who boast of their sexual conquests in laser-filled nightclubs. The difference being that most rational people would be socially embarrassed if confused for a MacGruber.

Given the choice between spending $35,000 on a new BMW or on a used Honda Civic and tricking it out with accessories over the next four years, the MacGruber will invariably choose the Civic. This might lead others to believe there’s something fatally flawed with the Civic. But this archetype also has an obsession with reinventing the wheel. We fondly recall one MacGruber who wrote up an elaborate post on how he converted his Vacu Vin wine-stopper into a coffee preservation system — blissfully ignorant that Vacu Vin has been making “coffee saver” systems for years that are available for $10 on Amazon.com.

8. The Dumpster® Diver

Like The MacGruber, posts from this commenter archetype are about establishing social currency. Except here the currency is scoring a kilo of Colombian for the ridiculously low price of $1.99 a pound at Sam’s Club. As if to jab a hot fork in the eyes of Fair Trade advocates, this archetype boasts about their competitive place in the race to zero-cost, zero-conscience, quality-free coffee.

When this archetype isn’t posting about how much they’ve saved on coffee, they’re frequently long on ideas for using spent coffee grounds to Spackle® bathroom tiles. And if you’re lucky, you’ll avoid their frequent posts about how they bought their new car with the Dumpsters® full of cash they saved by making coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks.

9. The No Coffee Left Behind Act

Whether you’ve tried the coffee at three hundred different places or just three, most people have their favorite coffee. A large number of comments on coffee articles consist of personal endorsements of the coffee from a specific roaster, coffee shop, or home brewing contraption. As an anonymous poster put it on Boing Boing this week:

Every comment thread about coffee contains: (1) someone mentioning how great their home roasted coffee is; (2) a plug for a cafe not mentioned in the article.

Maybe we could just assume the existence of these kinds of comments from now on, with no need to actually post them?

But if we all assumed that, what would there be left to talk about? Hence this archetype of commenters who actively police various online media sources, ensuring their favorite coffee sources don’t suffer the egregious injustice of being omitted from a coffee article.

Some may take the additional step of attempting to elevate their pet coffee by dissing on the various coffee sources mentioned in the article. For example, this archetype frequently engages in slagging on quoted coffee shops for their pretentiousness, for the hipsters who work there, and over the fact that the owners cover their electrical outlets. Basically: all of the ridiculous stuff that’s the irreverent lifeblood of Yelp ratings.

10. The Jaded, Crotchety Blogger

This archetype believes they have seen it/done it long before you even heard of it/thought about it. And despite their whiny complaints of coffee articles that dredge up old topics hashed out thousands of times before over the years, they still cannot look away and feel compelled to respond — like gawkers at a gruesome car accident.

Yes, we’re making fun of ourselves this time. Because if it sounds like we’ve seen it all before, quite sadly we literally have seen it all before. Do you realize what kind of petty life you must lead to have read every coffee article ever written on the Internet? How about so pathetic, you come up with a list of 10 types of commenters on coffee articles.

Two articles in the news yesterday highlighted a bit of our thinking about a major divide in coffee formats: espresso and filter coffee. The Puget Sound Business Journal interviewed the sometimes-controversial Illy man, Giorgio Milos: Illy’s master barista challenges us to take a fresh look at Starbucks, Tully’s | Puget Sound Business Journal. The other article was from London’s Financial Times: FT.com / Food & Drink – The trend: Filter coffee.

Much of what’s there has been said before, except that Mr. Milos nailed a key point with this opening statement: “Espresso is not a beverage.”

This key distinction is critical to understanding good espresso. Without it, Americans suffer bitter, watery, over-extracted dreck. Compensating for the American “more equals better” approach has been the American latte or cappuccino that’s been drowned in large volumes of milk compared with the more typical European version. Alternatively, the American demand for volume — with an equivalent level of caffeine tolerance and quality — is now being met by the return of pour-over/filter coffee.

But let’s back up a step to be sure: what does it mean to say, “espresso is not a beverage”? Espresso is about an intense, concentrated, rather fleeting taste or experience. It is not about quenching your thirst, 44-oz Super Big Gulp style (or two-hour mug style). It’s not about washing down your scone or lingering, Parisian style, in a café over a copy of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger. Espresso is the amuse-bouche of the coffee world; satiety has no place.

Except satiety plays a massive role in the American ethos towards food and drink. When Americans speak of “value” consumption, we’re almost always obsessed with volume more than we are with quality. Dollar for dollar, we are more disappointed being served amazing food that might leave our 34% obese population still able to walk than we are with mediocre food that buries us alive in avalanche-level quantities. See: the American popularity of The Cheesecake Factory.

What this means is the resurgence of filter coffee (in higher quality forms) should do quite well from a cultural popularity standpoint. This trend may be a retread, but it stands to have far more cultural impact here than espresso ever could. We just hope that the minority of us still demented enough to prefer our flavors in short, concentrated doses continue to reap the benefits too. So please: no more pour-over bars that deliberately eschew espresso machines.

If you’re not aware of the disloyalty card concept, it originated a couple years ago in the UK from former world barista champ, Gwilym Davies. The kicker is that it’s supposed to be the opposite of a customer loyalty card, where consumers are given financial incentives for repeat business. Like the kind you get from the big chains such as Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee.

Instead, the informal disloyalty “card” offers financial incentives for consumers to sample the coffee at a variety of independent coffee shops in town — using something of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink informal honor system. The concept has since been mimicked in Seattle, Atlanta, Calgary, and elsewhere, and now it’s apparently come to San Francisco: San Francisco Gets a Dis*Loyalty Card | ShotZombies. Participants in the SF card program include Stable Café, Epicenter Cafe, Coffee Bar, Sightglass, Ma’velous, Farm:Table, Four Barrel, and Ritual Roasters.

The idea has not only spread around the world, but it has even earned a few accolades of genius marketing from a few notables in the industry. We may have groaned in full-facepalm position when Gwilym Davies started spouting from the Gospel according to the Third Wave after winning the WBC crown. But he deserves credit for coming up with a cute concept. But beyond a cute concept, that’s where we never really quite got it.

What dampens our enthusiasm for the concept is that it just moves the goalposts a little further back — rather than refute them altogether. So instead of locking repeat consumer zombies into one chain, we spread them over a few more cash registers. It essentially suggests replacing a monopoly with a cartel. To be truly effective, a program should encourage people to go beyond even the boundaries of something like the participants on a disloyalty card. But then again, we’ve gone beyond boundaries that any sane person ever should…

UPDATE: March 2, 2011
Here’s a curious refinement on the disloyalty card concept: Explore Chicago’s Independent Coffee Shops with Tour de Cafe – Chicagoist. Here the emphasis is on making it a $20 pre-paid card.

UPDATE: Sept. 13, 2011
Toronto’s version of the $25 pre-paid card has been renewed for a second year with new participants (and a few drop-outs): Indie Coffee Passport returns for year two.

Let’s hear it for counter-programming. Starbucks made good on last year’s Plenta threat this week, announcing a new beverage size that targets the gluttony market, called the Trenta. As in Godzilla vs. the Trenta. Taking advantage of a news lull, Starbucks’ press onslaught has the media lapping it up. So naturally, we’re going to talk about the return of Citizen Cake.

This is the long-awaited revival of Elizabeth Falkner’s since-defunct Hayes Valley original namesake shop. Opening in November 2010 on the spot of the former Vivande Porta Via, it’s decorated with a lot of black-painted wood with red highlights. Inside there’s a bar with stool seating and a number of black wooden tables and booths for more formal dining. However, the pastries are, not surprisingly, showcased in front.

The staff here are, well, rather quirky — even by SF standards. They operate a rather restaurant-pedestrian UNIC Phoenix Twin behind the bar to pull shots of Equator Estate Coffee. We’ve long been ambivalent about Equator Estate coffees served in a retail environment; the lack of quality controls at the customer delivery end have produced an inordinate amount of underwhelming cups, given their industry regard. But in this restaurant-like environment, it’s surprisingly decent — though not great.

The resulting shots have a thinner but healthy-looking darker brown crema. It has a limited body and not much sweetness, despite its rather short two-sip serving size. With a darker, heartier herbal flavor of cloves, there is limited brightness in the shot. Served in classic brown ACF cups.

The milk frothing here is dodgy at best, and they also offer coffee in metal French presses. But at least unlike their former Citizen Cupcake location, they’re not hinging their business on the health of a record store.

Read the review of Citizen Cake.

In what’s starting to look like a Spy-vs-Spy-like dance between a Starbucks acquisition and the unStarbucks set, Starbucks’ Clover Equipment Company’s latest move is the Precision Pour Over: Clover Pour Over « Why Not? Coffee. (Courtesy of Seattle’s Why Not? Coffee.)

As we left off in our story, the once-independent Clover Equipment Company made waves with its brewer back in 2007. With its splashy introduction on the market, half lead by its fictitious price tag, lot of people bored with the espresso routine saw brewed coffee as fertile new ground for coffee exploration. But then Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz discovered it, got his hands on it in 2008, and said he was taking all the toys for himself and didn’t want to share.

Many independent cafés were suddenly locked out of the device, and others still thumbed their nose at the machine’s “sell-out” to Starbucks. In retaliation, many independent cafés replaced thoughts of the Clover brewer with an obsession over Hario V-60s drippers — essentially exhuming the 1908 invention of the Melitta coffee filter with a little spit shine.

Clover’s latest move is a prototype that co-opts the Hario V60 in a new design that stay’s true to Clover’s hands-off, mass-production mission. Between that and even Williams-Sonoma now carrying the Hario drippers (a jump the shark moment?), we can only wait and see how the unStarbucks set will counter.

Any way it goes, there’s still no end in sight for the filter drip faux arms race — with coffee consumers caught in the crossfire.

If we had to come up with a top 10 list of overdone coffee-themed articles in the media, one of them might have to be the top 10 coffee shop customer archetypes. BusinessWeek joined the fray in this week’s issue: Coffee Kinesiology – BusinessWeek.

BusinessWeek asked a panel of behavioral experts to evaluate and report on the “taxonomy of the 10 most common Starbucks waiting-line stances.” The study stuck to Starbucks (you mean there’s coffee anywhere else?) and to a lone Manhattan location (you mean there’s anywhere else?) to come up with their research. They also came up with ridiculous quotes about coffee costing $5.50; apparently inflation has hit the ever-popular $4 coffee myth.

That said, we still prefer the Five Types of Morning Coffee Crazies. Though earlier this week, Flavorwire posted a suitably racist version: Flavorwire » Stereotyping You By Your Starbucks Order.