Lately we’ve been thinking about quality coffee’s current obsession with all-things-technology. While there’s arguably more science than art to making good coffee, the current climate seems to have pushed any art aside. It reminds us of civilization at the turn of the 20th century, when society held a common belief that technology was going to solve all our problems. Right before the mechanized killing of World War I, the Industrial Revolution giving way to the Great Depression, and the invention of the atomic bomb.

So today we witness a lot of obsession over incessant measurement — sometimes merely in the pursuit of more measurement, and even to the level of confusing the act of measurement for actual science. This technological obsession also manifests itself by a holy-grail-like belief in the new espresso machine that will revolutionize coffee. All of which creates a lot of interest in coffee but has rarely created better coffee — or at least better coffee experiences.

As a result, quality coffee feels a bit soulless and sterile these days. This sterility has even gone mainstream in a mass-produced way, at least at the general consumer end, most notably in the form of espresso pods, single-serving coffee devices, and superautomatic espresso machines. Hence this reactionary article in last week’s New York Times: In Defense of Old-Fashioned Espresso – NYTimes.com.

Can good coffee be saved from itself?

How might we overcome this clinical obsession and save the soul of good coffee? A few months ago, Ben over at Chemically Imbalanced proposed a very thought-provoking (and discussion-provoking) idea of Le Coffeeing — a sort of coffee variant on France’s recent and reactionary Le Fooding culinary movement. Le Fooding may be a weak analog for what coffee needs, but the inspiration behind Le Coffeeing carries a lot of merit.

We’ve recently been thinking about the potentially constructive parallels between the wine and coffee industries (at least where they make sense), and today’s coffee vanguard has a lot more in common with Napa winemakers than they do with the stodgy-but-vaunted restaurant establishment of France. This is why we caught a glimpse of potential quality coffee salvation in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on Napa Valley Wine’s Retro Dudes | Jay McInerney on Wine – WSJ.com.

The Retro Dudes of Napa are more than familiar with Napa’s cathedrals to perfectly manipulated premium wines — for example, high-performance Cabernets that smack you in the face like a plumber’s wrench made of fruit and oak. What makes the The Retro Dudes interesting is their “passion for quirky, individualistic, artisanal wines” — pursuing neglected wine varietals, blending their wines in Old World ways, keeping the skins on their grapes for natural fermentation rather than the modern technology of controlled yeast additions, and generally “rejecting some of the technological winemaking of the modern era in search of wine authenticity (and presumably, drinkability)”.

Today coffee lovers are bombarded with hype about the pressure profiling technology of new $18,000 espresso machines, $20,000 Japanese siphon bars, $11,000 superautomatic Clover brewers (i.e., until Starbucks purchase of the company made them uncool), disproportionate fawning over $100-per-pound Cup of Excellence microlot winners that devalues all runners-up, and $400+ gadgets providing digital readouts of your total dissolved solids and extraction yields that risk making statistical gymnastics the ends rather than the means to better coffee. The pursuit of the mythical perfect coffee may be giving us more to learn and experience, but it’s also sapping the soul and even the enjoyment out of the beverage.

Here’s to hoping that a generation of Coffee Retro Dudes can come to the rescue before its too late.

Earlier this week, we caught a radio broadcast of NPR’s “Fresh Air” where the program’s host, Terri Gross, was interviewing an entomologist named Douglas Emlen: The Fascinating World Of The Dung Beetle : NPR. About 34-35 minutes into the audio program, Mr. Emlen introduces an anecdote about cockroaches and coffee that even manages to gross out Ms. Gross.

The story goes like this… In the late 1980s, Mr. Emlen traveled the countryside in search of bugs with his academic advisor/professor, a renowned entomologist named George C. Eickwort. Mr. Eickwort apparently became heavily dependent upon a steady stream of coffee throughout the day, but it had to be whole bean, fresh-ground coffee. And back then, good quality coffee was much more difficult to find than today. So they often had to drive 45 minutes out of their way to satisfy Mr. Eickwort’s coffee habit.

Mr. Eickwort needed whole bean, fresh-ground coffee because he, with his many years of entomology experience, developed an allergy to the cockroaches he often used in his studies. And because pre-ground coffee is processed from huge stockpiles of coffee that typically get infested with cockroaches, it’s next to impossible to keep the roaches — and their, uh, “byproducts” — out of the coffee supply to avoid an allergic reaction to the stuff.

As if the staleness of the pre-ground coffee in pod machines wasn’t enough to turn our stomachs. Of course, to be fair, pretty much everything we consume comes with some non-zero level of contamination. Whole bean coffee comes with its own set of contaminations (the least of which includes rocks).

But it’s interesting to note that people with cockroach allergies can be a sort of canary-in-the-mine when it comes to coffee quality.

UPDATE: May 19, 2009
If this story didn’t creep you out, this one from New Zealand might: 3 News > Lifestyle > Story > Call for nationwide espresso standards as cockroaches infest machines. Yes, it’s not just ground coffee that cockroaches love to live in, but some of the espresso machines as well.

Today’s New York Times blogged about a new barista-as-art exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum: Guggenheim Turns Coffee Into Art – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com.

Part of an art installation named Cinéma Liberté/Bar Lounge (we are told the other half is a movie), baristas behind a wooden bar serve espresso drinks from three Francis Francis machines. The concept presents the craft of, and the interaction with, the barista as art.

Not surprisingly, the coffee is supplied by Illy, which explains the espresso machines used in the exhibit. Illy has opened temporary “concept” espresso bars in New York City before — such as their Beauty Has A Taste stunt two years ago.

To qualify as art, we only hope the exhibit uses legitimate, ground-to-order fresh coffee. However, based on the pictures of the setup, “art” unfortunately seems to mean the stale, flat-tasting, pre-ground beans and environmental waste of Illy coffee pods. Talk about obscene art.

Yesterday’s The Age (Melbourne, Australia) published an article on the growing business of home espresso education: Short, strong grounding in espresso – Epicure – Entertainment – theage.com.au. The author noted how cafés, roasters, and other retail locations are creating “coffee classrooms” for instructing consumers on how to “create the perfect coffee at home”. The reason for this? Citing the article: “Many of the classes around town grew from pressure by consumers who were disappointed with their home espresso making.” The Age has published essentially the same story before — so this was more of an update.

On the one hand, that consumers are seeking out better quality espresso is good news. It means they are becoming more aware of its potential beyond the bitter, over-extracted dreck that’s an American staple. And for many home espresso enthusiasts, scouring the Internet for forums and blogs isn’t their favorite method of self-education, so more formal training courses make sense.

However, there are multiple reasons why home espresso consumers are disappointed. For one, most home machines are ineffective slabs of future landfill that produce lame espresso. For another, there is a home espresso industrial complex actively convincing consumers that they all need their own home setup — when it’s actually inappropriate for many people. And they are luring consumers with false promises of convenience, quality, and cost savings as part of their pitch.

Although it is true that just about anyone can make great espresso at home, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It depends on the person. For most consumers, we believe good home espresso is possible but impractical — as it requires a special combination of financial investment, time commitment, and a willingness to learn for the home espresso hobbyist to make it all worthwhile.

So what are your best options?

Option 1: Stick with the “costly” coffee shop habit

This option gets dismissed most often by personal finance columnists and home espresso machine hawkers, but it’s still one of the best options out there. Even those of us with decent home set ups still want the occasional retail espresso (CoffeeRatings.com is ample evidence of this) — for convenience when on the road or for the variety of trying something different.

Pros:

• It’s convenient. Someone professionally makes your coffee for you.
• It’s mobile. No need to carry your own set up with you wherever you go.
• It’s usually of a decent quality. The pros typically make a living off of better machines, more regular system maintenance, and supplies in heavier rotation than most home setups.

Cons:

• The recurring costs add up over time, and they are all quite visible once you look for them.
• The typical American retail espresso still has a long way to go on quality standards.

Option 2: Buy a home espresso set up

New homes are regularly sold today with these ubiquitous appliances built into their kitchens — even if the appliances themselves are built more for convenience than quality. And the convenience vs. quality question is the major theme with this option — as consumers must pick one, and only one, of the two for it to work.

This is also really the only option if you are seeking the God shot. But for every home espresso zealot committed to the religious cause, there are dozens who are merely window shoppers enamored with the concept. (You know the type: copper pots in the kitchen that are never used, etc.)

Pros:

• Potentially cheaper over the long run. But then if you want cheaper, so is changing your own motor oil.
• Potential quality. It’s a great choice for “prosumers”. If quality is what you’re after, with a bit of time and money you can easily beat over 95% of the retail cafés out there. But if you’re buying a superautomatic machine for the convenience, Starbucks starts to look pretty good.

Cons:

• People readily devalue the costs of their own labor.
• Major up-front costs. If you do not commit to a lot of regular, repeat usage, you’re throwing money away relative to buying your coffee out every morning. Even if you discount your own labor, many machines require hundreds of drinks just to break even.
• Most home espresso machines produce inferior espresso. The most readily available machines on the market are frequently made by general appliance manufacturers (“garbage disposals, toasters, ice cream makers, and espresso machines” — that sort of thing) looking to cash in on the Starbucks craze.
• Potentially exploding costs and loss of counterspace. Even among those that do manage to get a lot of use out of the up-front investment, many are soon tempted to upgrade and spend even more money.

For these reasons, this is the option we absolutely recommend least out of the three.

Option 3: Buy a Stovetop Moka Pot

This is the option we recommend most often for people interested in a home espresso set up. Oh, sure, it’s not really espresso (as if the SCAA-awarded “Red Espresso” [sic] is any more so). But neither is some of the stuff poured at a lot of retail cafés — and even less so for what a lot of home machines produce.

This is the Italian family’s home coffee staple. Though in Italy, good retail espresso is around every corner. And if you’re buying a Moka pot larger than the 4-cup variety, you must either like stale brewed coffee or you’re throwing a Bar Mitzvah.

Pros:

• Typically costs less than $20
• No need for stale, pre-ground coffee and ridiculous environmental waste as with coffee pods.

Cons:

• It isn’t espresso.

We’re more than a bit late with the news here, but a hearty and well-deserved congratulations to Kyle Glanville of LA’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea for winning the 2008 U.S. Barista Championship (USBC): 2008 US Barista Champion « The Official 2008 SCAA Conference Blog.

Proving the West is Best, and giving us some minor trash-talking rights, five of the six finalists all hailed from our own backyard Western Regional Barista Competition. Booyah.

Could we get any further away from Minneapolis? Please?

We weren’t exactly glued to our monitors for the blow-by-blow updates of the USBC as some have. Part of that is being in India, where everything is 12½-hours ahead of Pacific Time (yes, there is an extra 30 minutes in there). But a bigger part reflects the forced spectacle of barista competitions in addition to the overall SCAA conference spectacle itself.

The redeeming qualities of the SCAA conference include a number of interesting presentations and topics of discussion, elements the USBC, and the Roasters Guild Coffee of the Year Competition. But there are also big sponsorships by the irrelevant likes of Krups and Da Vinci Gourmet syrups (never trust a product that has “gourmet” in its name), soapbox political causes that have been uniquely attracted to coffee like flies to a bug lamp, and featured or “award-winning” irrelevant products — such as java jackets (just say no to paper cups), the 2008 PR onslaught of the Handpresso (wow, now we can drink crap pod coffee on the go!), and the exhumed resurgence of a PR onslaught for “Red Espresso” (which is no more “espresso” than if I put orange pulp in my espresso machine and called it “Orange Espresso”) after a two year hiatus.

In short: many of the things about the coffee industry I really don’t like and wish would go away. If this is the promise of the so-called “Third Wave” as advertised on the SCAA conference Web site, please drown me now in the undertow.

In the “unclear on the concept” department, this weekend’s Toronto Star published an article that, in its opening paragraph, mentioned “coffee’s elevated status as the new wine.” However, it then proceeded to discuss coffee-pod-based home espresso machines in the same context: TheStar.com | living | Specialty coffees become the new wine.

This is as incongruous as all the luxury cars that now tout their mp3-compliant sound systems — given that the audio quality of mp3s is more like the vintage 78 rpm record when compared with their audio CD predecessor. Just because a technology is new and trendy doesn’t necessarily mean it has made the quality any better (orange-flavored Tang, anyone?).

Even if we buy this silly notion that coffee is the new wine, these pod-based espresso machines are the equivalent of distributing and consuming wine from single-serving juice boxes with straws. Between the pre-ground, stale beans; the inability to alter the time, temperature, pressure, coffee tamp, and other variables of the espresso shot; and the environmental waste of excess packaging — these systems are more akin to a step backwards towards our instant coffee/percolator dark ages.

And if coffee is really going to be the new wine, is there any chance we can please drink it out of something other than a paper cup?

UPDATE: Dec. 18., 2007
Curiously enough, today I discovered a very thoughtful post from a wine blogger who discussed some of his frustrations with espresso: cluelessaboutwine – wine blog: A Bad Workman Blames His Gaggia. As much as the blogger might think he knows little about making a good espresso, I wish more espresso “professionals” had just half his knowledge, awareness, and instincts about quality espresso.

Today’s New York Times published a brief article on Francis Ford Coppola’s personal obsession with espresso machines, of which he’s apparently owned some 300 to date: The Epic in a Demitasse Cup – New York Times. Of particular note is a machine that is “an early favorite, a large, silvery old-fashioned machine for the first offices of American Zoetrope Studios, his production company”.

San Francisco’s Cafe Zoetrope uses a rather unique Bosco machine from Naples — a gift from Dr. Ernesto Illy presented to Francis Ford Coppola. But you can even check out his early favorite in the front display window along Columbus Ave.

Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the aesthetic and espresso quality spectrum, we have a story from tomorrow’s Crain’s Chicago Business News about downtown Chicago execs who are “treating” themselves to the art of the plastic pod espresso machine: Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | Finer Things: Controlling the office buzz | Crain’s.

Hold that Learjet time share! The way to impress clients these days is a watery espresso with a thin crema — squirted out of a plastic capsule of stale, pre-ground beans after shoving it into a hunk of self-heating plastic. Once again, it just goes to show that power and prestige still cannot buy good taste.

Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People – New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed by machine manufacturers and roasters targeting the home market.

In particular, she points out the design demise from the espresso pod and pod machine market — citing its inherent packaging wastefulness, the ugliness of the new wave of pod-friendly machines, and the irritation of over-designed machines that only work with a select kind of overpriced coffee pod. (The last phenomenon being so bad that there is a market for “ghetto pods” — echoing the days of do-it-yourself inkjet printer cartridge refills.)

Coffee pod freshness

If poor design were their only drawback. The author takes a pass on criticizing espresso pod quality, stating, “Admittedly, Nespresso and E.S.E. do taste rather good. (The premeasured grounds are fresh, thanks to the hermetically sealed capsules.)”

It’s clear the author is a designer and not necessarily a coffee geek, but this is an old soapbox topic for us. Virtually all the coffee you purchase today comes in some sort of hermetically and/or vacuum-sealed container — including Folger’s and Maxwell House. (Even setting aside that pre-ground coffee is far more unstable than whole bean.) If that were necessary and sufficient to keep coffee supplies fresh, there would be little advantage to home roasting or purchasing roast-dated coffee from the likes of Blue Bottle, etc.

But the truth is that freshness matters a lot, and it matters immensely when it comes to espresso. No matter how well you mummify pre-ground, roasted coffee for shipment around the world and storage in warehouses, it is always more stale than local, recently roasted supplies. In espresso, it always produces a thinner, lighter, less healthy looking crema. I’ve never encountered a single exception to this rule. Just look at the photos and ratings from our Nespresso tests. So unless she’s comparing these pod machines to the home Krups models of the 1990s, coffee freshness remains a negative for these new machines/systems.

New York espresso redux

Also in today’s New York Times Travel section is an update on a familiar topic: where to get a decent espresso among Gotham City’s terrible standards: Weeknd in New York – Coffee Bars – Travel – New York Times. In addition to some of the usual suspects, they also mention Zibetto Espresso Bar — a relative newcomer of note.

It’s been a long time coming. After three years of laziness, I found a clean way to add non-SF espresso bars to the online database without having them muck up the SF sorts and ratings. It’s not a lot, and there are still a few kinks to work out, but it’s progress.

And the timing may not be better, given that the city of San Francisco has canceled Halloween and declared itself closed for the evening. As SF Mayor, the honorable Burgermeister Meisterburger, put it bluntly, “Halloween costumes are hereby declared illegal, immoral, unlawful and anyone found with a pumkin in his possession will be placed under arrest and thrown in the Kink.com Armory!”

So take heart, San Franciscans. We begin with virtual travel out of this closed city by featuring the first non-SF café with this new resource…

San Tommaso 10 represents the birthplace of Lavazza, dating back to 1895. This café has also represented Lavazza’s flagship café to this day. This despite the Lavazza chain cafés around the world and their more recent Espression offshoot — both replies of a sort to Illy‘s Espressamente cafés. But make no mistake — this is no grand caffè. It’s all about modern design here.

Other than some branding revisions, this café has changed little since our first visit in May 2004 — when Lavazza had just started offering their èspresso mutation. It has a relatively modest façade on a mild-mannered street of downtown Torino. You can fetch your own pastries on the right in the glass case as you walk in, walk up to the tiny front bar with room for two (or by the single-person bar on the side by the newspapers) and have your morning breakfast. Though there is more stool seating further back, among the heavy Lavazza advertising section right before the lunch café starts.

The place is decked out with serious Lavazza accessories, especially centered around the Lavazza BLUE home/pod system. The space is now painted a sort of creme green/blue color scheme — and it’s still surfaced with many mirrors to make it seem larger than it really is.

Back behind the bar is a lone three-group La Cimbali. From it, they pull shots with a highly textured, speckled dark and medium brown crema that’s only hindered by it’s modest depth/thickness. As it is, it’s served more like a natural ristretto. Thus its flavor is relatively bold — suggesting the typical Lavazza profile, but stronger and also with some roasted woody spiciness. It also has a good, robust aroma. The cappuccini are large and have excellent microfoam. Served in Lavazza-logo IPA cups. A reasonable deal at €0.90.

Read the updated review of San Tommaso 10.

The London Times today published a business section interview of Andrea Illy, the head of IllyCaffè: The original Mr Bean – Times Online.

More of a financial/business article, it discusses Illy’s role in the world of specialty coffee — touching on Illy’s technical innovations (some of them regrettable, IMO), brand positioning, and even Mr. Illy’s belief that Fair Trade is “a marketing business” with an unsustainable system that doesn’t reward quality (Illy follows more of the Direct Trade model). And while Illy isn’t gunning to dilute themselves like Starbucks, they have significant expansion plans in mind — whether to compete with Nestlé over the coffee pod market or to expand into the high-end café market with Espressamente.

For the past few days here in Alba, Italy, I’ve been sampling a number of the notable local offerings: from Antico Caffè Calissano and Pasticceria Bar Cignetti (each of whom serve Alba’s local MoKafè), to Vincafè (and their use of Asti’s SlowFood-friendly Caffè Torrefazione Ponchione), to Alba’s installation of Casa del Caffè Vergnano 1882 (selling on-site roasting of Caffè Vergnano beans), and to the many local dining establishments that serve that home province king, Lavazza. The espresso is solid and quite good just about anywhere here. However, the best I’ve had thus far in this gourmet-food-obsessed town comes from the Gambero Rosso-honored, locals-only Ben Tivoglio Cafè that — surprise, surprise — serves Illy under heavy branding. There’s often something about Illy if it doesn’t have to leave the continent.

More for a future post…