Ecco Caffè founder and fellow South Side Chicago homie, Andrew Barnett, posted a little background about the Cup of Excellence program on SFGate yesterday: Inside Scoop SF » The Cup of Excellence: The Oscars of the Coffee World.

Thankfully he compared CoE to the Oscars and not the Grammys — the latter of which have been, hands-down, the least credible and least relevant artist awards going. (As evidenced by the many album-of-the-year winners named at least a decade after the artist is either over the hill or dead, plus occasional jems like naming Jethro Tull “best heavy metal band”.)

As one reader pointed out to us over email, there is some irony in that George Howell — someone whom many in the industry look down upon as a sort of “second wave” coffee dinosaur — is at the roots of the modern single-origin coffee explosion.

Call it coffee’s version of Hubble’s Law: the rate at which a local coffee scene evolves is inversely proportional to its maturity. What?!? Let us explain. Seattle and San Francisco are examples of well-established coffee cultures, and the rate of evolution and improvement we see in the coffee there tends to nudge along at a rather lumbering pace. Contrast this with what we’ve found on our recent return to Cape Town, South Africa. The local coffee culture there today is noticeably different from our last visit in July.

Cape Town may be much further along than, say, Dallas, Texas — where earlier last week we learned that a single new espresso machine in town is all that’s required to “earn us a little gold star on the national coffee map.” Cape Town boasts generally high espresso standards overall, plus a few exceptional cases such as Origin, TRUTH., and Espresso Lab Microroasters. But changes at just those three were significant enough.

Origin Coffee Roasters

So what has changed? Over at Origin, they’ve reworked their retail model so that customers can now opt for any variety of their roasted coffee, rotated every two weeks, in any of four (five?) ways. This is not unlike SF’s recently opened Ma’velous.

They offer any of their coffees as plunger (i.e., French press, at R17, or about $2.50), Turkish (R17), pour-over (using a Hario V60, at R20), and siphon (also Hario, at R22). Additionally there’s the espresso option (now R16, up from R14 a few months ago) — which can also accommodate any coffee as a single-origin or blend option through the use of their new doserless Compak grinders. Cup of Excellence coffees are additionally available for a R10 surcharge.

Origin’s upstairs “dining” area is being reworked with a new La Marzocco GB/5 placed at a new espresso bar that’s front-and-center, and downstairs they replaced their Linea with a three-group Synesso (Origin being South Africa’s Synesso distributor).

Origin is also emphasizing their recent triumphs at Cape Town’s 2011 regional barista championships, where Joanne Berry, Origin’s barista trainer, won for the second year running. It inspired Origin to offer the signature drinks of their competing baristas on the menu for R25 — save for the spun sugar cups made for Ms. Berry’s drink at the competition. Although we’ve always questioned the relevancy of the specialty drink category of barista competitions, Origin has at least created a retail outlet to make it more relevant.

Oh, and the Kenya Makwa AA 2010 here, made of a typical SL28 & K7 Kenyan cultivar mutation, was excellent.

The TRUTH. about espresso crema

David Donde is quite a local force of personality. He founded Cape Town’s TRUTH.coffeecult and co-founded Origin (TRUTH. being part of the stereotypical local coffee scene “divorce,” a la Ritual Roasters and Four Barrel) and the Specialty Coffee Association of Southern Africa. This when he’s not doing a local radio program on sports cars.

We had missed connecting with David a number of times on our last visit, so we lucked out finding him having breakfast when visiting TRUTH.’s main location. David always has several different ideas going on in the fire — not all of them coffee related. But in our discussions about coffee, he was clearly obsessing over flavor. For one, he’s adamant about getting the “roast flavor out of coffee” and having it rely more on acidity and body. He also expanded on some of the assumption-busting experimentation he’s thought about since meeting James Hoffman in London to play with coffee — akin to how some musicians cross paths and hold a private jam session. (In David’s words, he “spent day with James tasting bad coffee and trying to fix it”.)

One big topic was the whole “crema is bad for coffee” debate that originated from the Coffee Collective guys in Copenhagen a couple years ago. Mr. Hoffman took a year to succumb to the idea, and just yesterday we had Eater interviewing Chris Young and touching on the subject.

The idea is that crema is a necessary by-product of good espresso extraction. But while we’ve all been indoctrinated that “crema is good,” further inspection suggests that the crema actually makes espresso taste bad. That without crema, or even skimming it off as David demonstrated for me, your espresso is a cleaner, sweeter shot.

We still came to the conclusion that the idea is very subjective. Yes, the crema by itself was bitter, and the crema-less espresso was cleaner and sweeter. Not that we’re big fans of bitter coffee, but we’re much bigger critics of deconstructionism — i.e., the belief that the quality and integrity of the whole is merely an aggregation of the quality of its constituent parts in isolation. But even ignoring that we value deconstructionism as a barely more reputable cousin of homeopathy, the subjectivity of this evaluation is grounds enough to be skeptical: some people are clearly on a mission to make all of our coffee taste like berries, and not everybody thinks this is a good idea … us included.

Experimentation is high these days in coffee, and David is a major advocate. Still, we can’t help but be a little jaded when people start bandying about the science word in relation to all of this, invoking misplaced implications of high technology. Lacking a basic control or null hypothesis, the simple act of measurement is no more science than a three-year-old who crawls the floor looking for things to stick in his mouth. Just because the Taiwanese chain 85℃ puts salt in their coffee, and experimenters learn that salt masks bitterness in coffee, should that honestly make 85℃ eligible for a future Nobel Prize?

Science or no science, experimentation and challenging assumptions still has merit. David also demonstrated how latte art was possible without crema, explained how he came to appreciate the caffè americano only when the espresso + hot water order was switched (a la the Aussie long black), and related that cold portafilter handles (frozen even, in his own test) do prove to make terrible espresso. We also saw very much eye-to-eye on things like the relevance of specialty drinks in barista competitions (what are you really judging?) and the limits of “cause coffee” when quality isn’t your primary goal (Jo’berg’s Bean There being an example).

Espresso Lab Microroasters

Last but not least is Espresso Lab Microroasters. While still working with their four core sources for beans, they have expanded a bit of their small storage area for greens and even added an additional GB/5 for Saturday market traffic. Apparently their business nearby doubled since our last post, so here’s to supporting good coffee.

But talk about a memory — the team remembered what we last sampled from them four months ago. They also follow a coffee buying strategy we’ve long advocated: buying runners up at Cup of Excellence competitions at a major discount to the winner. Should a couple of subjective points in CoE taste test really justify one coffee selling at multiples of its runner up? The Lab’s organic-farmed Serra do Boné came in second in Brazil’s 2010 CoE competition, and we missed nothing but a much higher price for a stellar, balanced coffee with a sweetness of fruit and honey.

Last week the Lab recently added an Xmas blend (35% Karimikui Kenya, 35% Adado Ethiopia, 30% Mocha Harazi Yemen) as a “dessert” coffee: it has a noticeable lack of body, by design, but with a brightness and lightness for finishing off a big holiday meal. Still, with the great number of South Africans who prefer the moka pot for home use (despite being able to buy every variant of Aeropress, Hario V60 dripper, etc., while here), we like the fact that they optimize some of their roasts for the underappreciated Moka pot.

And on the “is crema bad for espresso” controversy, btw, co-owner Renato thinks crema is integral but sets the stage wrong as the first taste on a consumer’s palate.

We can only manage what we might find in Cape Town again next year.

In the headlines today, Consumer Reports continues to explore the merits of ghetto coffee: Lack of excellent coffee blends: Consumer Reports | Reuters. Whereas before they chimed in on the McDonald’s vs. Starbucks debate — something we’ve always likened to a beauty contest between Courtney Love and Joan Rivers — this time their “expert” taste buds were disappointed by 37 different coffee blends available at major supermarket chains.

Of course, we’re writing this post while sipping a press pot of some freshly ground El Salvador Nueva Granada from Barefoot Coffee Roasters. (Mmmmm.) But this is the same Consumer Reports that lavished untimely praise on Toyota last month.

Our biggest contention with Consumer Reports is that, in recent years, they have over-extended themselves from objective reviewers of consumer appliances towards more subjective arbiters of public taste. It’s one thing to judge a minivan by objectively measurable criteria such as noise levels, cabin space, engine pickup, and fuel economy. It’s an entirely different thing where, to quote the press release:

“Consumer Reports has a rating criteria in which the tasters look for specific characteristics including the flavor and aroma.”

Consumer Reports established itself on unbiased, objective reviews of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and even home espresso machines. But lately they have been trying to become public taste-makers for coffee. This shift towards subjective analysis calls their credentials into question — particularly since we’ve found a number of dubious conclusions from their previous taste tests. It also makes us question what’s next: wine? Restaurants? Single-malt Scotch?

How is Consumer Reports any different than CoffeeRatings.com?

Do we claim to be any more qualified as arbiters of coffee taste? Absolutely not, but that’s kind of the issue. What best appeals to your taste buds or our taste buds does not follow the same kind of analysis that you’d give a child’s car seat.

So who makes the taste judgments, and how they make them, become absolutely critical. Transparency is essential, as this is the know-your-coffee-reviewers problem we wrote about three years ago. And Consumer Reports‘ model for expanding into coffee reviews — which is indistinguishable from their legacy of reviewing dishwashers — offers none of that. It’s one thing to recommend a cordless phone for its range and battery life, but it’s an entirely different thing to recommend one to eat for dinner.

What additionally concerns us is a kind of blind (and undeserved) reverence bestowed on Consumer Reports by most media outlets and consumers — many who seem blissfully unaware of their transition from objective review criteria to subjective taste-making. From another take on this survey (Why America Can’t Get a Great Cup of Coffee – DailyFinance), we also learn:

Tasters looking for “smoothness and complexity, with no off-flavors” and beans “neither under-roasted nor charred” and, of all things, “subtle top notes” were left wanting.

To be useful to consumers on subjective criteria, Consumer Reports must frame their standards of coffee tasting to a profile to which we can each relate. What’s written above is perhaps better than no information at all. But reading this, we’ll be damned if we can figure out how our own taste preferences compare to theirs. Who actively seeks out under-roasted, charred, or off-flavored coffee? This doesn’t describe coffee profiling so much as defect-finding, making Consumer Reports less coffee tasters and more meat inspectors.

Furthermore, Consumer Reports has provided no information about their methodology and standards for evaluation. The freshness of their supplies, how they prepare their coffee, how many samples they try at a given seating — all of these factors can make a huge difference in any side-by-side comparison. (UPDATE: We at least learned they do a swish-and-spit.)

Of course, in today’s quality coffee world where purveyors and consumers are obsessing over single origin roasts, a survey of supermarket coffee blends seems about as retro and down-market as tuna casserole. Not that there isn’t an audience for down-market coffee reviews. After all, there are people who think of Joan Rivers and Courtney Love as beauty queens. We just ask that if you do these reviews, please bother to do them properly.

And with that, we leave you with one of our favorite quotes about public tastes for coffee:

If I asked all of you, for example, in this room, what you want in a coffee, you know what you’d say? Every one of you would say “I want a dark, rich, hearty roast.” It’s what people always say when you ask them what they want in a coffee. What do you like? Dark, rich, hearty roast! What percentage of you actually like a dark, rich, hearty roast? According to Howard [Moskowitz], somewhere between 25 and 27 percent of you. Most of you like milky, weak coffee. But you will never, ever say to someone who asks you what you want — that “I want a milky, weak coffee.”

– Malcolm Gladwell [video: start at 10:45]

Recently I was approached by a writer exploring ideas for an article to be published by Wired in the UK. (This wouldn’t be the first time.) The subject line of his e-mail? “The Future of Coffee.” His goal was to put together a piece about the “vanguard of the coffee industry,” featuring “new and disruptive technology or methodology to do something entirely new.”

This is hardly an uncommon theme these days. Problem is that there is little “there” there (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein on her hometown of Oakland). For a Wired audience nurtured on futurism bombast, there is more bleeding-edge innovation going on with sous-vide cooking than the much more ancient art of coffee per se. However, coffee is far more universal and something many can relate to on a daily basis, so it naturally garners more readership.

For some people, this hideous contraption suggests “The Future of Coffee“:

What we have now is a critical mass of consumers who have “rediscovered” good coffee in recent years — even if good coffee has been around for a long time. Just that it used to be that much harder to find. In the six years since we started this Web site, the best shots we’ve ever had have not improved. But places that serve very good shots have become much more common.

But when people experience what seems like a sudden eye-opening discovery or awakening — such as the realization that there’s more to coffee than mass-produced fodder — there’s a tendency to mentally project some hockey-stick-like growth in coffee innovation for what has essentially been pretty much the same process since the 1800s. Once opened up to new possibilities, that this process of discovery and awakening doesn’t continue on some trajectory just seems too boring and mundane to accept.

Parallels between coffee and the Web?

In fact, I’ve come to liken what’s going on with coffee consumers to my experiences with the genesis of the World Wide Web — even if the Web has actually innovated while coffee has much less so.

Back in 1991, I was working among particle physicists with gravity-defying hairstyles who spoke in triple integrals at SLAC, home to the first Web site in the U.S. So I got to witness it all from the beginning — from the advent of image support in Web browsers to finally distinguish the Web from Gopher…to the 1996 psychotic rush to anoint push technology as the Web’s next revolution (Twitter 0.1?)…to the 1997 predictions by marketing wonks that we would all be shopping online at 3-D storefronts employing VRML that Christmas (shades of 3-D TV?). We even have Third Wave coffee, which I find jokingly analogous to the trite and nonsensical Web 2.0.

Coffee or the Web, the sense of experiencing an innovative rush begets more demand of, and expectations for, the same. Just read the sloganeering on the Slayer espresso machine Web site:

What lies on the other side of Caffe Artigiano, David Schomer, PID, FB80, Fair Trade, Cup of Excellence, and all the dreams of an organic, authentic, Coffee Universe now circulating and seemingly just beyond our grasp?

If Slayer was a Wired-friendly dot-com circa 1999, it would have been ridiculed for buzzword/hyperbole overload before finishing that sentence. And yes, Cup of Excellence competitions are clearly more recent constructs for coffee advancement. But for each legitimate advancement, there are dozens of examples such as the Japanese siphon brewer: a modern spit-shine on manufacturing design applied to 1830s coffee extraction technology.

Coffee punk’d

Even if most “future of coffee” claims are vapor, what’s the harm in a little excitement, right? Well, things have gotten so ridiculous, and consumers have been so duped into thinking things are changing too fast for them to keep up with, that we have things like this video published a few days ago: How to brew a good cup of coffee Boing Boing.

From the post on BoingBoing.net:

Simple steps for brewing a right proper cup o’ joe. It’s really the “handsorting” step that trips up the less sophisticated coffee drinkers, but then, failure to prime one’s coffee filters is also a common mistake

Huh?! And then looking at the comments on these pages (and other online references to the same video), the great majority suggest that viewers took this video quite seriously … that they were completely oblivious to how much they were being punk’d into believing anything about innovative coffee technique and technology. Here’s the direct video as published by Ben Helfen, who works at Octane in Atlanta, GA:

Not long after posting this, Ben later had to add a disclaimer on the video’s Vimeo page, worried that people would take it seriously and make themselves horribly sick in the process:

DISCLAIMER: This video is meant to be a joke for my coffee industry friends. If you were to actually try this, it would taste nasty and probably make you sick.

Former US Barista Champion, Kyle Glanville, was obviously in on the joke with his excessive use of exclamation points in his Twitter feed. But despite its great humor, unfortunately the joke went over most people’s heads. That merely reflects how bad false expectations about coffee innovation have become today — and it is clearly what Ben Helfen was exploiting.

UPDATE: Feb. 4, 2010
“Fourth Wave Coffee” or Third Wave Hyperbole? The New York City arrival of the Slayer has brought out more bombast (as if we had a shortage): Baristas Test The Slayer, the New $18,000 Espresso Machine | Serious Eats. We still wonder how serious “Serious Eats” can be if it follows the crutch of the clueless: referring to new espresso machines by their MSRP price tags in its headlines.


UPDATE: Feb. 10, 2010
Thankfully, the New York Times wasn’t as easily duped by MSRP price tags: What Kind of Coffee Do You Get for $18,000? – Diner\’s Journal Blog – NYTimes.com. They correctly noted that the $18,000 quote for the Slayer machine isn’t out of line with a standard La Marzocco GB/5, for example. But interesting that the Times should cite the Slayer’s pre-infusion for single origin espresso shots as one of its big advantages. Particularly given the faddish nature of single origin espresso shots and quotes like CoffeeGeek.com’s Mark Prince’s, “I still have yet to meet a single origin coffee I’ve truly enjoyed as an espresso.”

The Slayer could make the single origin shot more palatable in theory. But is all that devotion to a second-rate espresso shot made from trendy beans with a limited flavor profile worth it?

The Mission is one of SF’s best neighborhoods. We don’t necessarily mean Mission Street, however: home to BART’s Plasticuffs Station and a decent assortment of angry heroin addicts. We’re talking about 24th Street — a working class neighborhood with a strong immigrant community, but without many of Mission Street’s rougher edges.

Decent coffee is now on the list of this neighborhood’s amenities. Along 24th Street, east of Mission St., a series of independent cafés opened in recent years — Sugarlump, nearby Mission Pie, Sundance, Dynamo Donuts, and also Haus. (We’re deliberately excluding the coffee atrocities down at L’s Caffé.) These may not be coffee destinations in their own right, but they offer several options for a decent shot, or cup, among these few city blocks.

Not being big fans of the coffee in Germany, the Haus name doesn’t carry much appeal for us. This fortunately doesn’t apply to the coffee here. The former El Mexicano Restaurant converted over to this airy espresso bar in May 2009. There are concrete floors, a tall ceiling, unfinished wood chairs and tables, and a lot of sunlight through the large glass panes in front and back. In back there’s also patio seating among several tables.

They use Ritual Coffee for espresso (their Evil Twin Brasil blend for our visit) and De La Paz for their filter coffee — and there’s a lot of varieties stacked up on the shelves behind the service area. They were also playing France Gall when we first came in, which immediately signals, “this isn’t your average coffee shop.” (And it scored points for good esoteric tastes.)

Btw, Kanye, this is one of the best videos of all time — France Gall’s “J’ai retrouvé mon chien”:

Using a three-group La Marzocco GB/5, they pull shots with a medium brown, even crema of decent thickness. It’s a smooth-bodied shot with strong characteristics of the underlying coffee blend: sweetness, brightness, and the sharp potency of lemon peel. It’s a solid, flavorful cup — but it may vary based on your favorite flavor profiles. Served in classic brown Nuova Point cups.

Read the review of Haus.

The brightness bomb profile

These citrus shots — aka, brightness bombs — seem to be a highly popular flavor profile for new espresso bars these days. And it’s not just this and our last SF café review. While we like the experience of a brightness bomb now and then, we hope that this doesn’t become more and more routine. Sameness is already a very real issue in the flavor profiles among some of the Bay Area’s best espresso purveyors.

As Stumptown exemplified with their Hairbender shots, espresso doesn’t have to have a smooth, rounded flavor profile to achieve lofty heights. That was a good thing and a break from what might be called a more traditional Italian espresso. But these days it seems more and more shots from new, notable cafés target just that narrow range of the flavor spectrum — whether through medium-roasted single origin Central American shots or simple blends that make an all-out assault on acidity. Coffee simply does not advance by replacing one monotone flavor profile for a different one.

Opening just a week ago — in the space previously occupied by the Illy shop, Caffé Il Latte — this tiny café is the first in San Francisco to use beans from Santa Cruz-based Verve Coffee Roasters.

The tiny space relies on mirrored walls to add depth, and there is a little bit of a kitchen to prepare their local, organic foods. But it seems largely about the coffee here — even if people are apparently always coming in asking for bagels. There’s a single square wooden table inside with wooden bench seating on two ends.

Meanwhile, their three-group La Marzocco Linea at the front counter almost dominates the space. The place is run by two former Blue Bottle staffers in Kate and Shannon Amitin, and Verve was convinced this was the right place to start an SF presence.

For their standard espresso shot (reviewed here), they use Verve’s All-City blend — which was custom designed for the café. Shannon indicates he wanted an espresso blend without “trendy” fruitiness in its flavor profile, and the All-City delivers a potent, sharp, extremely bright shot that reminds us a little of Stumptown‘s Hairbender. They were going for an Italian-style espresso, and it is served relative short and with a very potent herbal flavor. (It is not for the meek who like their coffee mellow or with milk.)

They considered forgoing the whole “single origin thing”, but they offer a unique Sumatra ($3.50) that contrasts greatly with their espresso blend: more floral and smooth-bodied. Served in classic brown ACF cups. And to appeal to the trendy misery coffee market, they also sell cans of Café Bustelo. Kate’s SF-famous sea salt caramels are also on offer.

Read the review of Farm:Table.

A San Francisco Espresso Milestone?

Farm:Table represents a sort of milestone for us — and a good one at that. In the six years we’ve been publishing espresso reviews here at CoffeeRatings.com, we’ve witnessed a number of coffee bar openings…and closures. We see Farm:Table representing the natural turnover from a previous generation of coffee bars to a new one with much better standards.

We’ve long been noting how often new coffee bar openings crack our Top 20 rankings for the city. Many of them have been highly publicized and located in SF’s “trend-friendly” neighborhoods. But when the replacement for a hole-in-the-wall café opens up in a less-traveled coffee neighborhood, offering excellent espresso and featuring a new roaster for the city, we have to take a step back and appreciate how much local standards have improved in San Francisco.

Australians are no slouches when it comes to appreciating good coffee. But last month, an opinion piece in The Australian highlighted what the author, John Lethlean, felt was a lot of misplaced fuss, pomp, and circumstance going into coffee origins these days: Just a strong one, thanks | The Australian.

A self-described “coffee-geek groupie,” Mr. Lethlean appreciates the energy and dedication behind the many nuances of “single origin”, “estate-grown”, and “cupping”. However, he refuses to play along. Why? In the end, many of these subtle shades of variation don’t make all that much difference to him — particularly when contrasted with the impact a barista can have preparing an end result espresso.

Mr. Lethlean also reaches out to the inevitable wine analogy. But even there, he points out, few wine consumers can discern subtle differences of terroir, variety, harvest condition, and method — and even fewer consumers can do the same with their coffee.

We agree with many of Mr. Lethlean’s sentiments. His article reminded us of what we recently wrote about the recent obsession with origins and “maximizing adjectives”: that it reflects a current trend intensely focused on experimentation over a more learned enjoyment. However, our society has yet to simplify a single consumable after fragmenting its market — whether soda, yogurt, or orange juice. So even as consumer interest in coffee experimentation could potentially wane, we still expect the adjective parade to live on.

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported on a curious coffee bar concept planned for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea‘s latest location, currently under construction in Los Angeles’ Venice Beach. The concept includes featuring five different stations where five separate baristas personally attend to each customer, individually catering to their unique coffee whims: Intelligentsia plans a groundbreaking coffee bar in Venice Beach | The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene.

Although this proposed system will supposedly accommodate the customer that’s merely interested in a quick cup of coffee, Intelligentsia CEO Doug Zell claims, “We want the role of the barista here to be like a sommelier or a great server at a restaurant.” Hence the main emphasis of this process will be to individually educate customers about coffee varieties and brewing options, to direct customers to the kind of coffee experience they are seeking, and potentially suggesting possible pairings for the coffee along with home equipment options.

Now coffee’s wine analogy is already a beaten dead horse — particularly as many coffee bars continue their march towards becoming surrogate wine bars. But Zell’s proposed concept seems to take the barista role well beyond sommelier and into the new territory of a Nordstrom personal shopper. Will sophisticated coffee consumers welcome this as a lower barrier to delve deeper into coffee, or will they see this as more of a bloated and heavy-handed sales pitch?

Is “the Ignorant Customer” a viable restaurant concept?

Sometimes we feel that the premium coffee industry is a bit over-earnest in their consumer marketing efforts. While we applaud some of Zell’s eyebrow-raising moves, such as eliminating the venti-sized drink, this latest idea smacks of trying to mold consumer behavior — rather than relaxing a little and letting consumers organically help define it a little more.

Part of the fun is figuring out things for yourself. And nobody likes the experience of dining at a restaurant with a sommelier always hovering over them. So while some hand-holding is good, too much and you risk Starbucks‘ insistence on customers speaking in their specialized drink-size language.

Which isn’t to say that we wouldn’t want to be a coffee tourist at Intelligentsia Venice Beach. And Zell and company should be commended for their out-of-the-box thinking and original approach. But this time, we wonder how long before the novelty wears off.

Intelligentsia’s concept seems founded on expectations that most coffee consumers are uneducated, that they will wax poetic about $5-a-cup Cup of Excellence beans from El Salvador if only an expert explained it to them, and that they will come to appreciate cuppings as the ultimate enjoyment of coffee.

That may be true for some of their customers — and certainly more true for Intelligentsia than for most coffee chains. But as with the current fad of experimenting with only single-origin coffees, consumer interest and the business model generated through this educational process is neither long-term nor sustainable. Consumers cannot remain ignorant forever. And in this era of simplifying our lives, enjoying coffee shouldn’t always have to be an educational chore.

UPDATE: April 28, 2009
The L.A. Times published an article on this coming café: It’s just you and your barista at Intelligentsia Venice – Los Angeles Times.

While revisiting Dynamo Donuts earlier this month, we quickly noted the bags of Four Barrel Coffee in the back. Like the Four Barrel Coffee mothership, Dynamo had been using Stumptown Hairbender to date — with rumors that they would switch over to Four Barrel once they got their roasting operations going. Four Barrel commenced their roasting operations earlier this year, and their Friendo Blendo roast had now made it to Dynamo Donuts.

Yet the results at Dynamo Donuts, while very good, were a bit of a disappointment compared to the Hairbender shots they previously pulled. Was it the coffee? The day’s barista? The wet February weather? To remove some of the espresso preparation variables from the equation, we recently revisited Four Barrel Coffee to find out what they were doing with their own roasts in place of Stumptown’s.

It had been a few months since our last Four Barrel visit (and since our last Trip Report). Not much has changed inside — other than the roasting operations at the rear looked polished up. Also, there is new counterspace off to the left as you enter — where we found Four Barrel staff holding a cupping.

Of course, there is the same pair of Mistral machines, the four eBay-purchased boar’s heads, and a wall of roasted coffee for retail purchase. To further evaluate some of Four Barrel’s new roasts, we also opted to also buy some for home use — and encountered quite a bit of frustration.

The Single Origin Bubble

Four Barrel’s shelves were decked out with various single origin roasts from Guatemala, Panama, Ethiopia, El Salvador, etc. — but not even so much as a label indicating the existence of a sold-out blend (e.g., Friendo Blendo). Four Barrel certainly sells their Friendo Blendo blend directly to consumers, and the supplies on their shelves may have been starting to thin out (with three-day-old roast dates). But all single origins and no sign of a single blend? This struck us as frustrating on two levels.

At one level, over the past few years single origin coffees have become so overly faddish and trendy that we can see the eventual backlash forming like a tsunami on the horizon. Now we really do love a lot of single origin coffees. And sure, many coffee consumers still need to get the single origin thing out of their systems to educate their palates with the constituent parts. But the recent irrational exuberance over single origins, at the almost complete exclusion of any blends, is a bit myopic and far too limiting — especially when espresso is involved.

Which brings us to our second issue: we largely agree with Mark Prince’s (of CoffeeGeek.com fame) statement that, “I still have yet to meet a single origin coffee I’ve truly enjoyed as an espresso.” Here Four Barrel showcases some of the most exquisite espresso machines on the West Coast. Their coffee menu is dominated by espresso preparation, despite the occasional French press. And yet their retail bean stocks reflected absolutely none of that.

But don’t take our word for it. Just try some of their Panama Duncan Estate Micro-Lot #1 in a home espresso machine. We did, and the results were as poor as we expected: a thin crema; a flat, one-dimensional, and slightly metallic flavor; and little body. (Even though we knew we were doing unholy things to a good roast, we are experimentalists after all.) Fortunately our home vacuum pot justified some of their efforts — though we must add it did not justify their notably (and expectedly) steep price tag. (UPDATE: a couple days after first writing this, the coffee did peak and shined in a vacuum pot — but still not as much in a French press.)

Comparing Four Barrel Coffee’s Friendo Blendo to Stumptown’s Hairbender

But back to the main event: Four Barrel’s in-store espresso. In some ways, Four Barrel’s (and Dynamo’s, for that matter) Friendo Blendo and Hairbender shots were similar: a very dark, textured, patchy crema; a lighter body than you’d expect for such a precisely made shot; and a more potent bright taste at the bottom of the cup.

But in other ways, the new Friendo Blendo shots didn’t measure up at all to their Hairbender predecessors: they lacked their intense brightness, they exhibited a relatively muted flavor potency in the cup, and even their dynamic range of flavors seemed abbreviated. We’ll even go so far as to suggest that Four Barrel’s Friendo Blendo shots taste like Hairbender put through a low-pass filter.

Which isn’t to say we didn’t like Friendo Blendo — or that Four Barrel doesn’t produce some of the finest espresso shots and coffee roasts in the city. But, given their pedigree and pricing, Four Barrel Coffee carries the weight of a lot of expectations. And while Four Barrel will hopefully ratchet up the quality as their roasting operations continue to get underway, these expectations remain largely unmet.

Read the updated review of Four Barrel Coffee.

It’s not often that a lone double shot of espresso warrants a post here. But last month (hey — we got lazy) we had a rather rare espresso experience. We alluded to this espresso shot in a previous post, and it was among the best we’ve had in the Bay Area. (And we’re including the employee espresso bar at Mr. Espresso.)

It was a shot of single origin Ethiopian Sidamo brewed from the “new” Bosco machine at Blue Bottle Cafe. Actually, we couldn’t stop at one and ordered a second.

Single origin? Ewwwww…

Are we big fans of the single origin trend? Not exactly. But we do like experimenting with different kinds of coffee and learning about our tastes — and the components that make up the coffees, blends or otherwise, that we like. The likes of CoffeeGeek.com’s Mark Prince may understandably say, “I’ve never met a single origin espresso I’ve liked.” But there are moments where the individual parts of what goes into an espresso blend, when of high quality and exquisitely prepared, can hold their own.

Our most common complaint about single origin shots is that the flavor is typically one-dimensional. Second, the crema tends to run thin — lacking robusta or other varietals to punch it up. Third, their body tends to run a bit thin. Since single origin shots typically go for flavor over raw earthiness, there’s often little in the cup to carry it — such as a more darkly roasted Indonesian coffee.

However, this single origin Sidamo shot had a rather impressive dynamic range, a well-rounded flavor profile, a solid crema, and a full body. This when we were expecting a dry-processed, wild-tasting Ethiopian with some potential floral and citrus notes. James Freeman told us that barista works the Bosco machine to about nine bars of pressure to get the right impression on the coffee and bring out these broader effects. And a result is a tiger-striped crema of a relatively rich and very even consistency accompanied by a primarily pungent flavor with a honey-sweet edge.

Read the review of Blue Bottle Cafe’s single origin Ethiopian Sidamo made with their Bosco machine.

The Machine

Lately, rare espresso machines have become something of a differentiator among high-end SF espresso bars. Many know about Blue Bottle Cafe’s Japanese siphon bar. And Four Barrel Coffee‘s recent opening showcased their two Kees van der Westen-designed Mistrals.

Last month, Blue Bottle Cafe replaced the two-group La San Marco lever machine at their single origin bar with a Napoli-manufactured Bosco manual lever machine. (We say “Napoli” instead of “Naples” to distinguish it from the soulless, godforsaken town in Florida that’s better known for golf, bugs, strip malls, and $2 million condos.) It’s the only Bosco we know in the city besides the showpiece at Cafe Zoetrope, gifted to Mr. Coppola. Otherwise, you need to look to a five-group model over at Caffé Vita in Seattle.

If you know James Freeman, you know his m.o. would be more of the classical enthusiast — preferring Japanese siphon bars and Bosco machines to, say, the Mistral’s state-of-the-art, high-design hot rod that’s naturally more to Jeremy Tooker’s liking (of Four Barrel Coffee fame). When tablehopper first reported that Blue Bottle Cafe would open with “some very special machines”, we very briefly wondered if James would go for a Mistral. That lasted about a millisecond. Knowing his traditionalist appreciation, the Bosco is hardly a surprise.

In other Blue Bottle news, last month we also got in a conversation with Richard Tarlov, co-owner of the Canyon Market. He mentioned that he had been trying to carry retail Blue Bottle beans in response to numerous customer requests (yes, they even have Blue Bottle zombies in Glen Park), but that Blue Bottle coffee production is currently tapped out. They are apparently fully maxed out on their distribution until they move into larger facilities for their roasting operations.

UPDATE: Dec. 24, 2008
We recently learned from Scott Brody, Lead Bartender at SF’s Epic Roasthouse, that Epic Roasthouse ultimately sold this Bosco machine to Blue Bottle Coffee (and that Epic purchased it earlier this year through Seattle’s famed Caffé Vita). Apparently Epic management found the Bosco too expensive, and as a two-group machine it was too large for a bar.

Still, Mr. Brody lamented that, “In over 15 years of working in restaurants with espresso, that was far and away the best machine I’ve come across. And the easiest to get a great shot. The first I ever pulled was the best I’d ever pulled to date. And as the machine broke in, and I got used to it, they just got better.”