This week the pipes and tubes of the Internetz delivered a couple of noteworthy articles on local coffee scenes. The first is a cover story in Portland’s Willamette Week (“Drip City: Everything old is new again in Portland’s coffee scene”). The other is a next-generation rehash of a “favorite coffeehouses” list from the Toronto Star (“Espresso yourself: Find your perfect café – thestar.com“).

Portland = Drip City?!

First, Portland. Can we call Portland “the capital of American coffee culture” as the article claims? The idea has its merits. But “Drip City“? Or the even worse subtitle, “The Rise of Nerd Coffee.” Huh? What nerd wouldn’t prefer working with machines that cost as much as a Toyota Prius over playing with plastic cups and paper cut-outs like a poor man’s woodshop class?

But they are right about the claim that “old is new again.” (Didn’t we just write that piece a couple months ago?) Does that make the current pour-over fad akin to bell-bottoms making another comeback, albeit made with very 21st century recycled materials? That might also explain the unfashionables who have been sporting their coffee “bell-bottoms” (i.e., offering individual pour-over coffee) since the 1970s, such as Monmouth Coffee in London, only to discover that they are suddenly in fashion again.

More telling is perhaps this quote from the piece: “I think a huge part of its value is that it’s just fun.” There you have it. One of the greatest motivators behind pressure-profiling machines that add little in the cup and the exhuming of decades-old pour-over technology: never underestimate the power of barista boredom. Given the repetitive stress injuries they risk in a given day, day after day, who can really blame them?

We’d have sued Willamette Week for plagiarism, given how it finishes the piece with a rehash of the evolution from Clover brewer -> Hario V60 -> Williams-Sonoma -> Precision Pour Over — something we posted New Years Day earlier this year. But given how much the rest of the piece is overwrought with Martha Stewartesque abuse of the word “perfect,” we’re distancing ourselves as much as possible.

However, we could use another dose of 90′s rehashed bell-bottoms, JSBX style. Anthony Bourdain need not apply.

Blame Toronto

Speaking of Martha Stewartesque abuse of the word “perfect,” the Toronto Star gave us another groan for the coffee industry with the article title “Espresso yourself: Find your perfect café.”

What is it with coffee and coffeeshop names? Coffee must have more bad puns per capita than any other industry this side of porno movies. The words latte, grind, brew, bean, perk, and grounds should all be banned from coffeeshop names. Though we just might change our minds if someone flaunted it by naming a café “Grounds for Divorce” or something of that ilk.

We’ve probably given Toronto a bit more coffee love here than they’ve deserved — likely because the squeaky media wheel gets the grease, and the Toronto Star has needed a chassis lube for years now. But despite having rehashed the local Toronto café round-up for more times than we can count, the article does a nice job of starting its latest incarnation with the vital baseball card statistics: listing coffeeshops with their opening dates, machines, beans, costs, and specialties.

It gets a bit flowery by qualifying things such as “impressions” and “music,” but that matters to many customers too. They also went a little doll house design crazy by building their ultimate coffee bar in this related article: Raising the bar: Toronto’s ultimate café – thestar.com.

“No, no, no. Alright? No coffee places with names involving metaphors, jokes, or any wordplay whatsoever. No ‘Sufficient Grounds’. No ‘Sacred Grounds’. No ‘Espresso Yourself’.
– Officer John Cooper, Southland (TV), “Identity” (Season 4, Episode 4)

Imagine a sort of twisted, parallel universe where CoffeeRatings.com was born of a chauffeured limousine driving about the city, shuttling me from café to café on an itemized list in search of SF’s finest espresso. Now imagine this endeavor sponsored by a leading purveyor of cheap plastic and metal, responsible for more kitchen appliances in our world’s landfills than any other company on the planet. Then imagine this happening in Toronto instead of here, and you’ve pretty much got today’s read: Krups Cup of Excellence – Suggested Itineraries – Martiniboys.com.

“Recruit a crew of coffee connoisseurs, supply them with a short list of cafés to visit within a day, and limo-chauffer them from café to café on a search for the city’s most quality-driven coffee house,” reads the plan. By this method, the article comes up with a few interesting suggestions for the “undiscovered” Toronto espresso. But given how I’ve held myself to no more than four espresso tastings in a day — to avoid taste bud fatigue, not to mention over-caffeination — do you think I could get Krups to spot me four months of personal limo service?

I could even rideshare with Willie Brown if need be. Hey, it’s gotta be faster than MUNI.

Today’s Toronto Star featured an article on the growth of Toronto area independent coffee shops (many of which call themselves “espresso bars”, per the article): TheStar.com – living – Toronto’s love affair with espresso bars heats up. Toronto now has a mixture of established independent espresso bars and a growing array of newer ones. (A little over a year ago, we wrote about a Toronto local who lamented the common over-extraction problem. Hopefully this new crop of indie espresso bars has helped.)

While some credit Starbucks with paving the way for consumer interest in these indie coffee shops, the co-owner of one of them notes, “They’ve [Starbucks] taken away the art of the barista with what I call their robo-espresso machines.” The article suggests that much of the success of these independent espresso bars comes from how they cater to a customer’s desire for “individual service and wanting to feel special”.

Me? I don’t need to feel special. I just want good espresso.

101 Ways to Make Your Coffee Unrecognizable

On that note, the rest of the article tours a number of Toronto espresso bars with Susan Zimmer, a Calgary-based author of a new book called I Love Coffee! Over 100 Easy and Delicious Coffee Drinks. Which leads me to another observation. Despite the specialty drink “ring” of the three-ring circus that is the barista championship, I have yet to meet a coffee expert with an opinion I respect who focuses their energies on the variety of coffee drinks rather than the quality of the coffee per se.

Sure, a single espresso every time might sound like a monotonous death sentence to some people. But who in their right mind needs over 100 coffee drinks? That smacks of Starbucks’ coffee-flavored milkshake approach, primarily aimed at people who really don’t like coffee but still want to play along as if they do.

And while I’m sure Ms. Zimmer knows her stuff — even if her other book has the red-flag title of Cappuccino Cocktails & Coffee Martinis — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been disappointed by coffee books that suddenly turn into pages and pages of recipes by the end. These books are no more about coffee than The Betty Crocker Ultimate Cake Mix Cookbook is a book about sugar.

Is it really so hard to understand? Coffee is not wine. It is not a martini either.

Some of us coffee freaks out there are often dumbfounded when a local in another city suddenly stumbles upon a coffee institution we otherwise know all too well. For example, take this local’s “discovery” of Bulldog Coffee, and latte art, in Toronto: Latte Art at Bulldog Coffee.

Maybe it’s not quite like being Catholic and having some Roman local tell you that they suddenly stumbled across the Vatican. But sometimes it’s close.

Yesterday I came across a Toronto area blogger, StDan, who has picked up his own cause for finding some of the best espresso served in his fine city of Toronto: Espresso Hunt: Little Italy. Naturally, even at this early stage, he noted the following (familiar) problem: “most places put too much in it”.

Yes, the infamous overextraction problem. Making good coffee is as much a science as some of the finer points of cooking. To simplify matters a bit, brewing coffee is largely about the science of temperature and pressure… and time. The goal is to extract the most ideal flavor and aroma components from roasted, ground beans while leaving behind much of what isn’t so delectable.

• Old, stale beans? You won’t have much “good” coffee flavor to work with in your cup.
• Too hot? (Brewing temperature is ideally just below boiling.) You’ll scorch the beans and impart more of an ashy flavor.
• Not enough pressure? You leave too much of the “good” coffee behind — largely gushing water through coffee’s water-soluble elements that can taste quite nasty on their own. (This is perhaps the #1 problem with home espresso machines.)

On the other hand, pull too much water through your shot of coffee and it’s a little like using your tea bag three times too many. Except it’s far worse than just diluting your espresso. Letting more water pour through the coffee “puck” in the espresso machine, you draw out an excess of these water-soluble elements — resulting in more caffeine (contrary to conventional wisdom, a proper espresso has less caffeine than a typical cup of coffee), more bitter flavor elements, and yet a watered-down taste.

In my experience, overextraction is the #1 problem with espresso in most of North America. Hands down. In part, this is probably due to drink expectations from a culture accustomed to the Super Big Gulp®. So ironically, in the name of customer satisfaction, we are served more of something that’s far inferior. (“Smaller is better” has never resonated with our consumer culture.)

And if a café can’t get a handle on the extraction, any enjoyment of a thick crema that sticks to the sides of pre-heated cups is secondary…