Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald published a curious fad-contrarian article under the subhed of “Espresso lovers are fighting the siphon and filter revolution”: Shots fired in retaliation.

Now the idea of a “siphon and filter revolution” is still a bit silly to us, given that siphon brewing has been around since the 1830s and filter coffee for even longer. For example, we’ve lost count how many times we’ve seen people “ooh” and “ahh” geek-out over recent Chemex brewer coffee references as if they we witnessing something revolutionary. This despite the fact that I have several uncles-by-marriage who have been using Chemex brewers for longer than most of today’s baristas have been alive.

However, filter coffee has undergone something of a public interest revolution. This has been another dimension to our theory about exploratory coffee fads, such as an obsession with single-origin coffees and medium roasts. What’s old becomes new again as coffee lovers experience the natural progression when seeking out the next “new” thing: something to learn from and to be stimulated by, even if it’s your immigrant uncle’s coffee.

So we have things like London’s Penny University, who are focusing on the new faddish thing (for UK standards) by offering only filter coffee and not espresso. This makes as much sense to us as the concept behind Scott Rao’s Everything But Espresso book. Instead of defining what you are, you define yourself by what you are not.

Now don’t get us wrong. We love filter coffee in its various trend-friendly forms. But if the Third Wave was supposed to be about enjoying coffee for its own sake, why are we setting up so many rules about what not to offer and what not to do? The traps of single-origins-only, medium-roasts-only, or filter-coffee-only are just as badly restrictive and closed-minded as having only blends, dark roasts, and espresso at our disposal.

Back to yesterday’s article, unfortunately it doesn’t express that “backlash” very well — instead favoring its own, counter-fads such as the Strada, the Slayer, etc. More to the point, we need more people speaking out saying, “But I like my espresso. Why is it suddenly passé?”

Among coffee aficionados in town, quality artisan coffee originates with Origin. Opening in 2006 in a more modest space, this place changed the face of coffee in Cape Town if not South Africa. Since its expansion, it is now three transparent levels of coffee, café, roasting, regional Synesso distributor, and barista training labs. If that wasn’t enough, there’s even a Nigiro Tea salon inside that will wow any tea lover. (“Nigiro” being “Origin” backwards.) It’s no mistake that the three core people behind the cool South African coffee blog, I Love Coffee, chose to meet me at this very place to discuss the local coffee culture.

One of the striking things about this three-level church of coffee is its level of transparency and open access. Through efforts such as Fair Trade, Direct Trade, and the organic coffee movement, transparency in the industry has become an operative word. Here that transparency comes to life — as visitors are welcome to walk throughout the building, check out their roasting operations, inspect their bags of imported beans, and tour their barista training facilities.

Level 1

The service area downstairs is dark with wood slat walls — sporting an array of Hario vac pots, moka pots, drippers, home espresso machines, and beans. Sure, you could say that this place has all the same fad-driven coffee trappings at Truth., but for some reason it seems more genuine in this environment. There is plenty of seating and a two-group La Marzocco Linea at the ready for espresso drinks. Though this Hudson-Street-level downstairs entrance is a bit clubby with a lounge-like feel.

Signs announce the more interesting fresh roasts from Origin’s roasting operations, with a heavier emphasis on African-sourced-beans (Tanzania, etc.) but also some single origins from familiar terroir in Central and South America plus the occasional El Salvador Cup of Excellence. Signs also announce Origin’s place as the home of the 2007 & 2008 South African barista champions.

Level 2

Up the stairs past the Nigiro Tea salon, you enter their second level which consists of offices and a series of benches that form an espresso machine lab. Here, with barista certifications of employees hung on the wall, you can work with a Synesso machine, a WEGA, or a variety of other machines for training (or repair) services. Five years ago we recall Eton Tsuno of the defunct Café Organica espousing his vision for an espresso bar that offers home barista training, showcases home espresso machine models, etc. It’s been five years, and San Francisco still has yet to deliver on that vision. But here it is in Cape Town, South Africa — almost exactly as Eton described.

Level 3

Upstairs to the top floor, you encounter their main roasting operations, a lot of in-process bagging for shipment, and a soul food café. Towards the rear of the floor, there’s a brighter, glass-enclosed seating area that opens out to patio tables and chairs under parasols across from nearby modeling agencies. There’s plenty of café seating there behind the bright panes of glass with a chalkboard wall that’s something of a community chat space.

Like a few other quality places in the area, they serve their espresso shots as default doubles. There are no cappuccinos on the drink menu: only flat whites. There’s even a “3/4 flat white” for this who like theirs with less steamed milk. Staff wearing Origin “Some Like It Black” T-shirts use another two-group La Marzocco Linea machine to pull their double shots in 30ml shotglasses (for R14), placed on a saucer with a short glass of mineral water on the side. Origin used to offer ceramic demitasses for their espresso, but they’ve run out and are awaiting a new supply (they complained that those from the previous supplier chipped too easily).

The Taste Test

Their espresso has a hefty, darker brown crema that persists, a robust body (one of the better examples in Cape Town), and a rounded, pungent, herbal-based flavor with spices and sweetness at the bottom of the cup. They also produce excellent microfoam: it’s even and not overly generous on their cappuccino (OK, “flat white”). You can readily see how inspirational Origin is — any town would be lucky to have it.

Read the review of Origin Coffee Roasting in Cape Town, South Africa.

What is it about coffee today that makes it such a lightning rod for consumer indignation and class warfare? Nobody expresses outrage over a $400 bottle of wine, a $110,000 MSRP Mercedes-Benz, or even a $300,000 diamond-encrusted smart phone. But should someone dare sell a cup of coffee for $12, the world is coming to an end.

And it’s not just the price tag that gets people taking up torches to Frankenstein’s castle either. Bring up a $12 cup of coffee, and angry mobs start asking about how much is going back to the farmers — or how much of the perceived price gouging should be donated to charity instead. Yet this reaction never happens with expensive wine, cars, or mobile phones. (We’ve even noted how this doesn’t even happen with tea.)

Because everything you do is really about me, me, me

People willing to splurge once in a while on a $12 cup of coffee are then invariably labeled “idiots.” But the same could be said of any passion or hobby that each of us spends our discretionary income on: wine, automobiles, NFL tickets, cable TV subscriptions, golf memberships, works of art, Disney vacations, etc. So why all the hostility as if a $12 cup of coffee were a personal threat?

In pearls before swine parlance, we are all swine about something that others deeply value. What makes coffee different is that we resent the suggestion of being “swine” when it comes to something we already relate to and experience. What could be presumed is that our taste in coffee is no longer good enough — as if what someone else drinks is somehow a value judgment about ourselves. Talk about insecurity.

One of the reasons for this cultural dissonance is that coffee is still largely perceived as a universal, utilitarian beverage of only marginal quality differences — an old notion rooted in coffee’s mass production in the 20th century. Another reason is the sense that specialty coffee has gotten too fancy for its own good. But yet another reason is that very few people in our complex society honestly know what things really cost — even if we all think we do.

Cost breakdown of a cup of coffee

Oscar Wilde once famously said that a cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Most consumers know the price of everything but the cost of nothing. Coffee is a prime example. This is what makes layman reporters’ eyes bug out when they see the $18,000 MSRP price tag for a Slayer machine. They think you’re launching the thing on a mission to Mars for that price, completely oblivious of the fact that a decent — and more “pedestrian” — La Marzocco GB/5 machine runs for more than $20,000.

When people complain about the mythical $4 cup of coffee — or the “How I bought a house by making my own coffee at home” myth — they commonly operate with the false perception that retail coffee is $0.20 ingredients and $3.80 pure profit. We’ve vainly tried to explain that the biggest expense in a cup of retail coffee is labor, not coffee beans, so this time we’ll try to back it up with public data.

One major challenge is that every coffee shop is different. Another challenge is that the figures are often obscured in research reports costing thousands of dollars. We unfortunately couldn’t reproduce a recent chart for Starbucks showing how much labor costs were their biggest expense in a cup of coffee. However, here we’ve plotted data from one UK report in 2007 and a BIS Shrapnel report from 2006 showing the production costs of a retail flat white (call it a cappuccino for American purposes).

The chart at left represents the cost breakdown for a major coffee retailer, such as Starbucks. It not only includes labor, profit, and local taxes, but there’s also an administration overhead that covers things like advertising and marketing expenses, utilities, insurance, etc. The chart at right does not include the overheard of rent, administration, nor profit; it more closely represents just production costs.

The thing to note here is how little the actual coffee represents in the price of a retail coffee — and how much its price reflects labor, rent, utilities, and other costs.

So when you’re buying a specialty, limited supply, microlot coffee for $12 a cup, the cost of the coffee beans can increase by an order of magnitude. But don’t overlook the impact of labor costs on the end price. A delicate, pedigree coffee can be wasted by “normal” brewing methods. While vacuum pots and Hario drippers do a far better job of showcasing the coffee beans, they are far more labor intensive than brewing in a basic French press or generic coffee urn.

New York City or Yakima, WA: Who has the more sophisticated palates?

Even if you can successfully explain the constituent costs in a $12 cup of coffee, that still doesn’t explain the recent media freak-out in New York City over it. Aren’t New Yorkers supposed to be the cultural sophisticates — and not the ones stepping off the Greyhound bus on 42nd Street yelling, “Golly!!! That there sure is one tall combine!” like some wide-eyed Kansas farm boy?

Contrast New York City’s recent reaction with a $14 cup of microlot coffee that ranked no greater than a mere footnote in the Yakima Herald in 2008:

And while supplies last, you can order up a $14 cup of coffee made from Nicaraguan beans that Stumptown bought at auction for $47.06 per pound. According to buystumptowncoffee.com: “Its thick caramel notes, Granny Smith apple, kiwi and apricot flavors had us awestruck and thirsting for more.”

When it comes to coffee, it’s as if New York City keeps inventing new ways to embarrass itself.

UPDATE: June 6, 2010
Tadias Magazine, which reaches out to the Ethiopian-American community in the U.S., published this article questioning why the same rare coffee can go for $12 in New York and $2.69 in Seattle: $12 Cup Joe in New York? Same Coffee Goes for $2.69 in Seattle at Tadias Magazine. Once again, to paraphrase Lance Armstrong, it’s not about the coffee. It’s about the labor. While the profit margins may differ, a huge part of the costs behind their pricing depends on how one café prepares the coffee versus another. Not to mention cost of living differences between café locations.

Please repeat after me, aspiring journalists and laymen alike: when you buy food or drink retail, you’re mostly buying labor. When you drop three bills for dinner at The French Laundry, you’re not primarily paying for a grocery shopping list of ingredients. This really shouldn’t be that hard to understand.

Publications frequently run out of ideas, which is why the Wall Street Journal seems to be jacked on coffee articles of late. (But don’t worry — we have no plans to tell you what investments to have in your portfolio.) Just two days after making the ridiculous assertion that Illy is taking on Starbucks, the Journal published a more thoughtful piece on Asia’s “best” coffee: Ground Rules – Asia’s Best Coffee – WSJ.com.

Fortunately it’s nothing like America’s Best Coffee — one of coffee’s greatest product-naming let-downs. The article highlights the history of Taiwanese coffee culture, making mention of siphon pot coffee and last year’s salty coffee fad. The article also offers small sections on coffee culture in Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam — offering glossaries on the coffee in each country and brief tips on where to find a decent cup.

The year 2008 wasn’t about to end without a couple of newsworthy coffee notes. First, we have Chicago’s Intelligentsia banning coffee urns at their Broadway St. mothership: Intelligentsia on Broadway banishes urn coffee | The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene.

Earlier this year, we reported on how they killed off the 20-ounce, venti-sized coffee beverage. Now by freshly brewing cups for every customer by default (via a Clover brewer), Intelligentsia commendably wants to push the quality envelope even further. Vacuum pot coffee is also apparently just around the corner at their locations.

In other news, beer giant Heineken announced that they are getting into the coffee business: DutchNews.nl – ‘Heineken to move into coffee sales’. Heineken cites a recent downturn in beer sales that lead them to their nascent interest in selling tea and coffee to bars and cafés, mirroring Coca-Cola’s recent business-to-business coffee moves. All of which seems rather fishy — given how much alcohol sales are notoriously recession proof, and given news from many European cafés, most notably in France, indicating their current struggles to survive.

In a red-painted colonial village center, Parker Square, next to the Waimea General Store, this café offers coffee and lunch items with an exceedingly laid-back, friendly staff. They have a few outdoor café tables for two in front and several indoor tables. And like any good coffee place on the Big Island, they offer French press specials of some of the island’s finest Kona and other coffees — plus some rather amazing coconut macaroons.

The Waimea Coffee Company gets their coffee from local estates who roast — or from Hilo Coffee Mill on the east side of the island (who themselves aggregate from local estates). But for their espresso, they offered a Hawaiian-only blend from nearby boutique roaster, Cass Coffee of Hilo.

This is typical of the coffee conundrum the Big Island represents: it grows some excellent (and highly priced) coffees, but much of it isn’t suitable for making a decent espresso. Island coffees often do not shine under the darker roasts that typically round out the body and the rest of the flavor profile of a solid espresso. But the stuff can be excellent in a French press or, in particular, as vacuum brewed (i.e., vac pot) coffee.

Using a two-group La Cimbali M30 Classic, the barista steps through some deliberately good tamping and thorough flushing with hot water. They pull espresso shots with a pale, even, slightly textured crema of a modest thickness. (The barista will drink the other half of a double shot if you order a single.)

The result is what you’d expect from an espresso made exclusively with Hawaiian beans: very bright and little body, heavy on the high notes, but no bass. Flavorwise, it is pungent with a flavor of some tobacco and a not unpleasant touch of ash. Served in classic brown Nuova Point generic knock-off cups.

Chatting it up with the local, friendly barista, we apparently learned of a local Hawaiian who travels the Big Island “tasting espresso like a sommelier”. We obviously need to hook up with this guy, but never encountered him in our travels.

Read the review of Waimea Coffee Company.

Today Blue Bottle Coffee Co. opened up their long-anticipated Mint Plaza café — their first true space (besides kiosks and outdoor carts at the Ferry Building and in the East Bay) to showcase James Freeman’s commitment to freshness.

The café is located at a bend in Jesse St. in the Mint Plaza alleyway — in the corner of the old San Francisco Provident Loan Association building (SF’s largest jewelry-only pawn shop, if that gives you an indication of the neighborhood’s dicey past). It’s a bright space with tall ceilings and tall windows that look out on Jesse and Mint Sts. Along the windows is a series of stools with counter seating. Inside there is limited seating at the siphon bar (more on that below) and one long, high table surrounded by stools.

Of course the emphasis is coffee in all its various forms. But there’s also a worthy dessert menu (Caitlin A. Williams is their pastry chef).

For their “routine” espresso blends ($2), they use a three-group La Marzocco GB/5. As you would expect from Blue Bottle, the barista concentrates on timing a slow and deliberate shot — producing an espresso with a richly textured, medium brown patterned crema. It has a beautiful color in the light of the space, a potent aroma, but a thinner body than you might expect for something of this quality. Still, it has a classically robust Blue Bottle espresso flavor of roasted tobacco with an edge of a sweeter honey. Served in a classic brown Nuova Point cup with a glass of water on the side.

Single Origin Espresso

Of course, as a showcase for Blue Bottle Coffee, this is just the beginning of the coffee experience here. James has established a weekly rotation of single origin espresso shots, served from a dedicated old copper, manual, two-group La San Marco machine. Today’s special single origin roast was a Brazilian Camocim Bourbon. Producing one of the very best, if not the best, blended espresso in town, Blue Bottle’s single origin Camocim Bourbon will knock your socks off and comes highly recommended at $3. (James apparently knows me too well, as he personally served me up one before I even had the chance to ask!)

It has an exquisite aroma. The crema is a rich, mottled, and frothy medium brown — a touch thinner in size, as you might expect from a single origin espresso, but it has texture for miles. It has a robust flavor — there aren’t any elements noticeably missing, which is common to single origin espressos — and tastes of chocolate and some tobacco smokiness. Served in a white ACF cup — it is an outstanding recommendation over the “standard” blend.

Siphon Bar

For this café’s opening day, the siphon bar earned Blue Bottle a front-page story on the “Dining In” section of the day’s New York Times. And the place buzzed with the feel of a grand opening. James was beaming over his latest pride and joy, cameras were about still taking photographs of the place and its coffee, and many of the local coffeescenti came by to welcome the place (including Eileen Hassi of Ritual Coffee Roasters while I was there).

So what is this “siphon bar”? For one, it’s not necessarily anything radically new or different. It is essentially vacuum pot coffee made with a special system imported from Japan, except it uses halogen lamps as a heat source and cotton cloth filters that James told me should last a whole year. (Cafe Bello, for example, has offered vacuum pot brewed coffee for the past four years — even though it’s no longer listed on their main café menu.) The New York Times may have gone ga-ga over their fixation with its price tag — which they quoted as $20,000 for the setup — but James dismissed some of that figure on many of the peripheral parts they purchased, training, etc.

However, the siphon bar presents a unique way to experience some of Blue Bottle’s most exquisite coffees. They offered three different bean options. I had their Idido Misty Valley Ethiopian ($10) — which comes accompanied with chocolate sea salt caramels. The pairing may sound a bit pretentious (I’m leery whenever coffee people try to shoehorn familiar wine tasting rituals on themselves), but it works quite well — enhancing both the flavors of the delicate, clean coffee and the richer chocolate and caramel. In any case, the café could barely keep up with the novelty demand for their siphon bar coffee.

James Freeman may have made his start in the East Bay, but as a resident north of the Panhandle, he has made this location a showpiece and a true coffee destination for the city. Some Blue Bottle loyalists might piss and moan because “Blue Bottle was way cooler when you could drink espresso shots made by a tattooed slacker over a sewer cover in a back alley,” but we’ll take good coffee over misplaced adolescent attitude and poser angst any day.

Read the review of Blue Bottle Cafe at Mint Plaza. — with ratings based on their standard espresso blend.

Walking in to a Peet’s Coffee & Tea last week, I noticed they are once again offering their supply of Panama Esmeralda Geisha as a roast-dated “Reserve” coffee. We wrote about this coffee varietal last month (and also in 2006). It has consistently sold at record auction prices, and it has won numerous awards for the best coffee stock out there. (Good luck finding it at Starbucks.)

Unlike the ever-popular yarn for the coffee tourists known as kopi luwak, you will actually find reviews of the varietal on CoffeeReview.com. And although I didn’t purchase a sample at the $130-a-pound auction price for the green beans, I did purchase a roasted half-pound for $25 — for “research purposes” — making it the most expensive coffee I’ve ever purchased.

So what’s the lowdown on this coffee? No surprise: upon opening the bag (two days after the roast date) I immediately noticed how Peet’s will roast anything darker than I’d like — even a prized Central American coffee that has garnered ten first place awards in the past four years. For a Central American coffee with such subtle floral and fruit-like elements to it, roasting it darkly enough so that the beans start surfacing oil (well into the second crack) is a bit like serving prized Kobe beef cooked medium well.

Its roasted coffee fragrance is dominated by floral notes and some caramel. (Here I’m reserving the word aroma exclusively to the olfactory sensation at the back of the throat, per ISO methodology and Espresso Italiano Tasting.) The fragrance is rather subtle, however, and not as potent as Peet’s write-up leads you to believe.

Brewing it in a Cona vacuum pot (vac pot being my clear favorite brewing method for more delicate coffees), it produced a surprising full and richer mouthfeel — not the kind you’d normally expect from a Central American coffee. Tasting it, right away you know you’re dealing with really, really good coffee. It has a wide breadth of flavors — jasmine, some slight citrus, and also some darker, earthy notes that gave it an unexpected structure. Which gave me the idea that it might not make such a terrible espresso after all.

Brewing it as an espresso, it produced an adequate layer of medium brown, even crema. It carried a lot of bright notes in the cup. Its vac pot mouthfeel did not translate to a great espresso body — it was a touch thin. But it makes a very good quality espresso. However, and no surprise, espresso does not highlight the real merits of this bean. (Espresso cup in the photo below courtesy of Bar Lamia, Portovenere.)

Speaking of merits, is Panama Esmeralda worth the expense? In a word, no. Or at least with the way that Peet’s roasted it to something more pedestrian. However, I do recommend it for a one-time tasting to calibrate your coffee palate.

Alvin Azadkhanian is something of an SF institution amidst the ever industrialized approach of coffee roasting and serving. This unassuming storefront/café has a few plastic sidewalk tables & chairs out front under awnings and a few simple diner tables inside. They sell everything from Bodum Santos vac pots, La Pavoni Europiccola machines, many organic roasts for around $10/lb, and even the ridiculous Kopi Luwak at $75/4-oz.

But Alvin’s is far from pretentious. Cut from the same cloth as Henry Kalebjian of the Outer Sunset’s House of Coffee, Alvin’s is a friendly neighborhood place. And the master roaster will serve your espresso himself. (There are pictures of him roasting out of a PROBAT roaster on the back wall.)

Using a two-group Futurmat, Alvin pulls a larger shot with a marginally thin and pale crema. Roasting, rather than espresso preparation, is visibly Alvin’s passion. His espresso has a milder, smooth flavor. But instead of tasting weak, it’s delicately flavorful of fresh mild pepper and some cedar. He serves it in an ornate-looking, Chinese-made demitasse (ironically branded as “Italian Styles”).

Read the review.

If it weren’t for its own BART station, even fewer SF residents would know where Glen Park is. But a local neighborhood coffee shop, Cafe Bello, has quietly been making its mark as one of the premiere coffee destinations in the city. It’s just that few locals know it — let alone do they know where to find it.

A short walk north of the Glen Park BART station, Cafe Bello opened in 2004 as a replacement for the former “Cafe ?” — which closed due to rising neighborhood rents. Whereas Cafe ? bought fully into the Illy caffè system, Josh, the owner of Cafe Bello, swears by Mr. Espresso beans as producing the best crema.

This quiet café has several indoor tables, window counter seating among several stools, and an outdoor sidewalk bench. They sell pastries, teas, gelato, and bulk coffee beans, but the emphasis is on their coffee beverages. Using their two-group, Mr. Espresso Rancilio Epoca, they often produce a solid crema: a dark brown emulsion that hangs on top and clings to the sides of the Mr. Espresso logo IPA or Nuova Point cups. They fill the cup close to the rim, but it’s more of a true doppio rather than an overextracted single.

The flavor can vary depending on the barista and other quality control factors. At its worst, it’s merely good — sometimes missing a little something in flavor depth and brightness when compared to it’s encouraging crema. At its best it can be very good — richer, more pungent, and with a flavor edge of cloves. Consistently there is a mellow background mixture of additional flavors: slightly sweet of vanilla, a hint of cardamom, and even some turpeny sensations.

Speaking of consistency, it’s one of the kinks they haven’t quite worked out yet with the rotation of baristas. Some pull shots with a sketchier crema with larger bubbles suspended in it. Other baristas, like the most recent one reviewed here from last week, have been personally trained by Josh and are among SF’s finest. Because of this variance, this is the Vegas of quality espresso. But on its worst days it’s still quite good. And when it comes to milk-based drinks, Josh isn’t half bad at latte art either.

Cafe Bello is one of the rare Bay Area coffee shops that serves vaccum-brewed coffee — arguably the best way to brew coffee this side of espresso. Better than French press, and certainly better than filter. For $3.50, you can get a show and a monster mug of vacuum-brewed coffee (and if you want the home version, you can buy your own vacuum pot here for $120).

For those who haven’t witnessed vac pot brewing before, it looks a lot like a science experiment. But the spectacle and the clean, robust flavor are well worth the wait. Cafe Bello tends to serve vacuum-brewed coffee only in the afternoons due to the additional process required, which the morning crush makes difficult. But sometimes Josh is in a generous mood of morning showmanship.

For the continual fight against coffee bean oxidation, Josh is also currently in the process of setting up coffee roasting on the Cafe Bello premises. He recently bought a 1-lb batch airflow roaster from Monster Coffee near Seattle. It may not earn him bragging rights with the likes of Blue Bottle Coffee and Ritual Roasters, who lately seem to thumb their noses at anything less than an antique PROBAT roaster, but an in-house supply of fresh roasted coffee stands to improve Cafe Bello’s espresso even more.

Read the updated review.