Bad Coffee: the bitter taste of the commodity trade

   I've decided to switch things up a bit this week. This ain't my normal sunshine and puppies blog post. I'd like to talk a bit about bad coffee. Yep folks, it's time to discuss the commodity coffee trade. What's commodity coffee, you ask? Why it's that can of pre-ground coffee on your shelf, be it M**w**l House, F***ers, or many other varieties. You don't know where it came from, but you do brew something resembling coffee with it in the morning. Let me give you a better definition: commodity coffee is an undifferentiated blend of coffee from several producing countries purchased from an importer and sold on the commodities market. I'm not going to tell you that it doesn't taste good. You know that already. Wait, I am going to tell you. It tastes terrible, and it has to be brewed very weakly to even be palatable. What you may not know is where this coffee comes from and the negative effects it has on people along the way.
   Now I know right now you're thinking to yourself: "A large corporation owned by an even larger conglomerate having unscrupulous business practices? Never!" Well, it's true folks. While it may or may not sway you from buying commodity coffee, I really want you to know how these businesses operate, and ultimately the oppression that goes into making a cup of commodity coffee.
   Of course you know that commodity coffee is cheap. It's unbelievably cheap. You may ask "Why should I pay $10-$15 a pound when I can buy a three pound can of Folgers for $7?" I hope by the end of this article, that sentence will sound more to you like "Why should I give millions of coffee farmers the ability to do things like feed their families and send their children to school when I can save some money on something I barely enjoy and use merely as a drug?" or "Why shouldn't I exploit millions of people and push them to grow illegal drugs or illegally seek entry into my country just to survive when I can drink a cup of coffee that tastes like sewage?" I'd like to also convince you that caring about coffee farmers isn't simply the realm of smelly, tree-hugging hippies. Now, as a smelly, tree-hugging hippy, when I'm not participating in love-ins and protests I try to be a fairly well-informed consumer, and I nearly choked on my granola when I discovered how poorly coffee farmers in general are treated.
   The top coffee producers for the commodity trade are Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Mexico, and a significant proportion of the coffee produced in these countries (with the exception of Colombia) for the commodity trade is the species Coffea Canephora, also called Robusta. Robusta is known for a few things: its resistance to disease, its higher yield than other varietals, its ability to grow at most altitudes, and its flavor, which generally is described in terms such as 'rubber', 'tar', or 'pencil lead'. YUM! It is also used to enhance the amount of crema in many Italian espresso blends, an addition that most people in specialty coffee frown upon. I don't mean to suggest that robusta is the main component of commodity coffee, but it is used as much as possible, and it is indeed sometimes the main component. It's traded on a different market than Arabica varietals (Arabica is a catch-all term for higher altitude varietals such as Typica, Bourbon, Longberry, Catuai, Mokha, or Supremo) at about 50-75% the price of Arabica. Coffee producers grow robusta because they may think they are at too low of an elevation to grow other varietals (and so may you, but I'll point out that Kona Arabica is grown at elevations as low as 200 m) or they just don't know any better. There has been little effort to educate many of these farmers, and considering most can't afford to educate their children, the cycle may only continue.
   Commodity coffee is often stored for several years, sold/traded between companies, stored again, then blended and roasted in huge quantities, with 5-8 years between the farm and the roaster not being uncommon. In contrast, green (color, not buzzword) specialty coffee is usually 'current crop' and is considered to have lost much of its unique essence after as little as 9 months. Specialty coffee focuses on local varietals, even going as far as focusing on single farms and even 'micro-lots' or subdivisions of farms. By emphasizing single-origins, the specialty trade provides an impetus for farmers to strive for quality and raises the standard and the price of quality coffee.
   The commodity coffee trade operates in a way that exploits small scale coffee growers by dealing with them only via middlemen, who may often receive greater compensation for their efforts than the farmer. Farmers often strike deals with local cooperatives to provide them some security and exposure to the industry, but sometimes these cooperatives are corrupt, providing a lower price than quoted and keeping much of the profit for themselves. Also, farm lots are combined, which masks the quality of exceptionally good lots by mixing with less than acceptable ones, meaning the farmer has no reason to try to increase his quality. In response to financial hardships created by rough markets and corruption, unethical individuals exploit farms by offering to buy beans immediately at a much lower price than the going market price, which itself is often not even a sufficient wage. In order to survive, farmers sell to these people, collectively referred to as 'coyotes', who in turn sell to commodity coffee importers. When harvest time comes around, these farmers have already sold too much to coyotes to make much profit, which in turn means they rely on sales to coyotes the following year in an inescapable cycle. Much of the coffee that commodity roasters use comes from this practice. This is not a small, isolated problem. It is the modus operandi for the commodity trade. There has been no push to stop this practice or to avoid importers that rely on it. Conversely, it is seen as a necessary business practice for coffee importers to provide the lowest price possible. It is my sincere belief that commodity coffee retail can only survive as a viable business model because of its reliance on exploitive business practices.
   Commodity coffee is publicly traded, and like most anything there is no security in the market. In the 50s, a drought in Brazil made the price of coffee skyrocket, only to drop to an unprecedented level when other countries responded by planted large amounts of coffee (by the way, clear-cutting, anyone?). In the early 1960s, the International Coffee Agreement attempted to stabilize prices by setting quotas such that supply was near demand and prices remained high. Only they didn't. Prices fluctuated, just as they always did, quotas were often suspended, and the agreement fell apart in the early 90s. In 1993, the US pulled out of the International Coffee Organization completely, and in 1994, no economic clauses existed in the revised ICA. Also in 1994, a trade embargo with Vietnam suddenly was no more, and one of the largest Robusta producers in the world opened its doors to America's worst coffee retailers. Many farmers producing better quality beans suffered immensely when they had to compete in quantity with this new behemoth. In 2001, the vicissitudes of the market resulted in a price of 41 cents a pound (only 27 cents for robusta!). When the 'profits' made it back to the farms and plantations, many couldn't even cover their operating costs, let alone feed their families. When the bottom falls out on coffee prices, many small-scale farmers sell their farms and move to slums or illegally enter other countries to look for work, and many make the switch to what they know will sell. Hmm, what could a Colombian farmer grow to make money? Yep, our desire for quantity over quality has pushed a multitude of farmers into the drug trade (e.g. Ethiopia (PDF), Columbia, and Mexico). These are the things I think when someone tells me they're not really interested in buying 'the good stuff' because it's too expensive. By the way, the US did not join the ICO again until 2005, and the price of coffee is still unstable.
   However, specialty coffee companies have been working together over the past several years to decrease corruption in the coffee trade by talking directly with the farmers and assuring the profits at every level of coffee processing and export are completely transparent. Advance credit programs have been developed to give farmers a chance to survive and even thrive without requiring the services of coyotes. These are the basic tenets of the Fair Trade movement (yes, it's not perfect, I know, but it's trying, dammit!), and most specialty coffee buyers either buy Fair Trade or develop their own 'Direct Trade' programs, which are usually even better than the Fair Trade standard. But overall, the best thing specialty coffee companies have almost unanimously done has been to work directly with the farmers and coffee mills to increase the quality and therefore price of their coffee and to provide much of this coffee as single origin, giving farmers the incentive to really push for the best quality possible.
   However, this quality does require an investment by the farmer, and specialty buyers recognize this fact. It involves planting of better varietals, which takes 3 to 5 years, a multi-stage coffee picking process that focuses on the ripest beans, and better quality control and processing practices. Specialty buyers have worked with farmers and cooperatives through direct trade programs to offset these costs and allow farmers to escape from the commodity market. In contrast to the commodity market, in the specialty market, social responsibility is the status quo, not just because specialty coffee folks are often generally groovy people, but because specialty coffee companies are usually not publicly traded companies therefore not interested solely in the bottom line, Fair Trade/Direct Trade coffee is marketable, and the company will only get the quality they want from a coffee lot when the farmer has some solid financial reason to deliver that quality. When the focus shifts to quantity, prices drop and the farmer is, from an economic standpoint, ridden like a Shetland Pony.
   At this point, I'd like to surprise the hell out of you. I, John Jon, am going to say nice things about Starbucks. ::pause for impact:: While they are by no means even nearly the most socially responsible somewhat-specialty coffee company, they are in fact the largest, and while I have a lot of bad things to say in general about their practices, I would like to commend them for a few things. They were among the first publicly traded corporations to sign direct, long-term contracts with coffee producers. Since 2000, they've done much to popularize Fair Trade coffee and often pay a good double the market price. Even more, they introduced us to paying a premium price for really good coffee. They also do put a good deal of money toward socially responsible goals. Currently, 81% of their coffee meets their C.A.F.E. certification (PDF) for ethical sourcing, though their certification system could definitely use some beefing up, as its clauses are written for larger coffee plantations as opposed to smaller farms and there are no minimum price stipulations.
   No, America, we're not going to be able to support coffee farmers paying $2-5 a pound for roasted coffee. We need to become accustomed to paying a bit more for quality coffee. Coffee is a luxury, not a requirement, and while one can rationalize the need for cheap food, clothing, and shelter, there is no reason to exploit others, especially to deliver a product that is undeniably an extravagance. You have the money, and that's the only way everyone who gave you your morning cup is going to be able to make it through another season. And I'm not saying you have to spend much more. Fair Trade is a good first step, and it usually doesn't cost much, if any, more than other decent types of coffee. But the best thing you can do right now to support coffee growers and harvesters is to buy direct trade specialty coffee. Most reputable roasters either have their own direct trade programs or buy from importers that specialize in direct trade. For more info, check out these sites:
Intelligentsia's Direct Trade Program
Stumptown's Direct Trade Program
Counter Culture's Direct Trade Program
Sweet Maria's Farm Gate Program

Coffee Storage: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Freezer Myth

   Okay, so I went on vacation. I wanted to post this; I really did. The opportunity just never arose to really polish this post up all shiny and throw in all my clever jokes, and let's be honest: you wouldn't be reading this blog if it wasn't mildly amusing. I'm just a clown to you people. You sicken me!
   Anyway my loyal fans, each of whom I care about deeply, this week I'm going to discuss an oft overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of coffee preparation: storage. You may say to me, "John Jon, seriously? We all know how to store coffee.", and then you would expound upon the proper method to store your coffee. The problem here is that you'd all be wrong, and each of you would be wrong in your own special way just like unique little misinformed snowflakes. I don't hold it against you.
   Coffee is among the most traded commodities on earth and the second most important in developing countries, sitting just a few hundred billion dollars behind oil. It's absolutely everywhere, and due to this ubiquity, a great deal of folk knowledge and downright lies have spread like a great conflagration amongst you gullible masses. Being the iconoclast that I am, I feel it's my job to take a swing at these old beliefs with my axe of science, shattering, breaking, and generally just havin' a good old time of it.
   Let's start with an old myth that makes a lot of sense at first glance: 'If I keep my coffee in the freezer, it will somehow last longer.' Most of the people I see doing this are using bad pre-ground coffee in the first place, so I really don't think they are going to notice too much difference anyway. That's beside the point, though. The important thing to note is that when you remove things from the fridge or the freezer, there tends to be a bit of a condensation issue. All of the atmospheric moisture that's lazily hanging out in your home and not even giving you rent money will immediately decide to get really friendly with your ice cold coffee beans. This causes rancid flavors to develop in the coffee by increasing the water content of the bean, normally 8-12%, which chemically screws with the essential oils in coffee. Now think about this: you buy three pounds of coffee because you "jus' love that there sum-matt-ruh", and for the next two months, you take it out of the freezer every single morning, each time further degrading the flavor and sending you into a deep depression, one that, based on your accent, might result in a tragic accident involving two cows, a tractor, and a bottle of Jim Beam.
   The reason you freeze food in general is to prevent growth of mold and micro-organisms in moist foods, and as I stated above, roasted coffee has very little moisture. The main process that ruins coffee is the oxidation of its essential oils, which will happen in the freezer as well, albeit slightly slower. In addition, coffee has the uncanny ability to absorb flavors (hence the abominations of vanilla and hazelnut flavored coffee beans), so imagine your consternation when your delicious Guatemala Finca La Maravilla hits you with the flavor of last week's fish curry. And ultimately, nothing you can do will keep your delicious coffee from oxidizing, going stale, and fading into obscurity, not unlike Vanilla Ice. Much like life, you can spend serious time trying to desperately grasp at a few more days and really killing yourself early in the process, or you can enjoy it right now. It's time to embrace the ephemeral beauty of good coffee.
   That being said, there are plenty of things you can do to extend the life of your coffee. The first and without a doubt the most important is this: grind right before you brew. I know I somehow come back to this every week, but that's how important it is, and I don't hear any of my friends talking about their new coffee grinders, so I assume it didn't sink in yet. Coffee steadily oxidizes, and grinding it increases the surface area immensely, expediting oxidation by a factor of this increase. A coffee bean has about 1 cm^2 of surface area. When ground for standard drip brewing, this increases to about 100-500 cm^2, PER BEAN!!! (low end estimate based on powders of similar diameter, ~700 microns, see Brantley and Mellott, 2000. Yeah, I'm a scientist) For those who stare nonplussed at math and just want a quotable quotable to impress their significant other, this corresponds to a 10-50,000% increase, meaning your coffee is going to oxidize ~100-500 times faster than if you had just left it the hell alone. Thinking about last week's article, imagine how long coffee will last when it's ground for espresso. That's exactly why your barista needs to grind only enough for the present shot!
   Next, keep your coffee in a cool, dry place. Since everyone says this, I'm sure that the cool, dry corners of your home are packed with loads of crap, but try to make room. Too much heat can really wreak havoc on coffee oils, and we've already discussed how moisture negatively affects taste. You can also prevent a lot of oxidation by sealing your coffee in an airtight container, preferably a bag that you can push the air out of. Some coffee shops and at least one website sell resealable (ziploc style) bags that also have a small valve on the front that will let coffee out but not in. Keep an eye out for these as they are a rare and wonderful commodity. S***bucks packages in a variant of these that isn't resealable, which allows them to package right after roasting. However, their bags won't help at all once they're opened.
   The simplest solution, and by far the best, is to buy only enough coffee for one to two weeks. The fact remains that if you purchase more than this, nothing is going to keep it from going bad. Do you buy three months worth of milk when it's on sale? No? Are you honestly so busy that you can't take time to run down to the local roastery and pick up a batch of coffee each week? No, you're not. I know you think you have a hectic schedule, but be honest: you're there 5-20 times a week anyway. Also, it should be two weeks from the roasting date, not the purchase date, so make sure you know when the coffee was roasted. The bins of beans at your grocery store have probably been sitting untouched for months. When I roast coffee, I usually roast no more than half a pound, and I think this is a perfect size for standard coffee purchases. Thus far, I know pretty much all of you, where you live, and other embarrassing personal information as well, and I have to say, you have ready access to good, small-batch roasted coffee pretty much anywhere. If you want to know where to go, I'm more than happy to share my knowledge with you (and possibly return the garden gnome I stole from your front yard). But even if you're sitting in Bumblestump, Nebraska, and the only coffee at Bob's Grocery is made with corn and dirt, there are so many online sources for fresh roasted beans that you'll be able to drink specialty coffee until you're on top of the corn silo screaming at the cows to quit slacking off.

How to spot a good coffeeshop: The most important thing you'll read this week

   This week, I have a problem. There's so much I want to say that I'm not really sure where I should start. My topic this week is 'how to find a good coffee shop', though it will be an equally good primer on 'how to find a really bad coffee shop' as well. It will also be a bit of an introduction on 'how to pull a decent shot of espresso' and 'how to act like you know more than your barista'.

   So, it's Thursday afternoon, you're gainfully unemployed, you're walking around <insert hometown here>, you see, in the distance, a ':blah blah: espresso and :blah:', and you wonder to yourself, "Self, I wonder if blah blah's possesses decent coffee". Your self says back to you, "look at the espresso machine". Disregarding the fact that you are quite obviously schizophrenic, you peer through the window, look past the tables full of ugly hipsters who are inexplicably going to manage to get laid that night, and see, much to your consternation, a super-automatic espresso machine sitting on the counter. STOP! Super automatics are easy to spot. The beans sit in bins on top of the machine, and there are no portafilters, just a dual spout sticking directly out of the machine. Basically, the 'barista' hits a button, and the machine does all the dirty work. The 'barista' has no creative input into the drink itself, and the result is always terrible. A super automatic is the most obvious thing you can spot to determine the quality of a coffee shop, and you don't even have to walk into the coffeeshop to see it.
   Before you leave, you notice a sad row of thermal coffee pots. They sit alone and weary, possibly all day long, with no indication of when they were brewed. Decent coffee shops will tell you how old the brewed coffee sitting there is, either with a digital readout or a number written in dry erase marker on the tag. This is something that a lot of even mediocre coffeeshops have caught on to, and it's currently a basic expectation that your coffee should be kept in a thermal carafe and be no more than an hour or two old. Really good coffee shops might have these thermal carafes for folks in a rush, but they will also offer hand drip, french press, or Clover coffee made to order, which is really what you should be getting anyway if you're going to spend two bucks on a cup o' joe.
   So you walk past the crowded hipster swillhole and see the next coffeeshop, the ':yadda yadda: coffeeshop'. You look in the window and see a semi-automatic machine. 'Hallelujah!', you think to yourself. Your self agrees. You begin to walk into :yadda yadda: and a disturbing, sickening sight accosts you like a mugger in a dark alley. The portafilters are sitting upside-down on top of the espresso machine! THE PORTAFILTERS SHOULD NEVER BE THERE! EVER! EVER! I had someone explain to me once why they put their portafilters on top of the machine. They were wrong, and that's why their espresso was awful. Portafilters need to be hot, and they need to be very hot. A portafilter should be essentially at the temperature of extraction, and one rinse is not going to be enough to warm them up. The warming tray on top of the espresso machine is made to keep cups warm, not hot. Espresso machines are designed to let the portafilter stay warmed up and ready to go attached to the machine.
   You take another look around, largely to allow me, the author of your fate, to provide the reader with more warning signs. The drink menu above the counter is full of sugar-bomb mocha hazelnut chai watermelon lattes and the like. There are two potential reasons for this in a coffeeshop: A) The coffeeshop is trying to reach a coffee-illiterate demographic in a small town or tough market. B) The coffeeshop is hiding something, probably the sub-par quality of its espresso. Since there is a legitimate reason for some places to have a menu like this, let's keep looking around. What kind of beans are they using? Run for the hills if they 'proudly' serve any of the following: S***bucks, Green Mountain, Illy, Lavazza. You may think to yourself, "Hey, Illy and Lavazza are Italian. Aren't they quality espresso?" The answer is a resounding NO. Illy and Lavazza are both dedicated to cutting costs, buying the cheapest beans around, and exporting a roast that attempts to not offend either the Northern Italian or Southern Italian palate, thereby offending both equally.
   You stay a bit longer to watch the barista. She surlily takes orders from the uninformed masses (NOTE: this doesn't affect the coffee quality. In fact, many of the best baristas are actually really horrible people) and walks over to the grinder. She picks up the wretched portafilter and doses (pulls the little lever on the side of the grinder) WITHOUT grinding. A good barista will grind only enough to fill the portafilter. If the barista doesn't grind at all, or grinds far too much and just lets the rest of the coffee sit there, it's a VERY bad thing. The flavor of ground coffee begins to deteriorate almost immediately (this is why you absolutely need a coffee grinder at home), and coffee ground for espresso will not be good after a few minutes. She then uses a little plastic insert mounted on the grinder to tamp the coffee. This is a slap in your face. The barista should be tamping all shots by hand by placing the portafilter on the counter, and then tamping lightly , tapping the portafilter lightly with the tamper, then tamping again with 30 pounds of pressure, and finally polishing the tamped coffee by spinning the tamper. Variations of this method do exist and are a-ok, but the important thing is that they tamp with a handheld tamper. She then places the portafilter on the espresso machine, hits a button, and the shot pulls… in 10 seconds. The ideal time for a shot to pull is 25 seconds. If a barista serves a shot that pulls in less than 22 seconds, it's unprofessional (though a good barista might still use 22-28 second shots for lattes, especially flavored lattes). But if they serve a shot that pulls in less than 20 seconds, it's a problem. They don't know what they're doing, or they just don't care about you. A good barista will drop a bad shot and pull another. Quick shots taste thin and bitter. The crema is key. If it looks pale, it's not good (remember our discussion of crema on a chemex last week? Same thing). The crema should be predominantly reddish brown with some slight variation being ok. If it's not there at all when you get your espresso, you just got ripped off. Long shots are bad though not as horrible, and they will certainly not be used by a good barista.
   As the terrible barista pulls her terrible shots, she reaches into a terrible refrigerator and pulls out a terrible metal pitcher. If the pitcher has ANY milk in it or if it looks unclean, it's a very bad sign for your latte. I stress this highly. Any decent barista at any decent coffeeshop will steam only enough milk for one drink at a time and will rinse the pitcher after every use. A bad barista will re-use or 're-steam' their milk. Re-steaming will never result in a good latte. Your bad barista then froths your milk by making a lot of terrible gurgling and sputtering noises, then sits the milk under the running steam wand and walks away from it. Proper treatment of milk will be an article unto itself on this site, but one thing is certain: if they walk away from your pitcher of milk, they aren't giving it the attention it deserves. Good milk will be steamed/frothed to a temperature of 150-164 degrees Fahrenheit (150 is where lactose begins to be at its most perceptible sweetness and 164 is where milk proteins begin to break down), and if the barista isn't looking, they're going to miss this narrow range. It will also contain virtually no visibly perceptible bubbles, often called 'grain' in the business. A good barista will tap and swirl the pitcher a few times after steaming to remove all visible grain, and an absolutely stellar barista won't have to because they managed to break up the grain while steaming. Watch out though; a bad barista won't tap or swirl either. The bad barista who made all those sputtering and gurgling noises was making what we in the know refer to as 'sea foam', and it's another thing that characterizes S***bucks.
   You walk out in absolute disgust, cursing your very existence in a town/universe with such terrible coffeeshops. But then you see it, glistening in the distance like an oasis in the desert: 'Pretentious Snob Coffee House'. It's patrons smile back at you with their well-formed drinks. You walk in the door and see a clean, shiny espresso machine on the counter. It has a name like La Marzocco, Astoria, or even Nuovo Simonelli. You walk up to the counter and see the menu: "Espresso, Macchiato, Cappuccino, Latte, Americano, Hand drip coffee" plus or minus some tea/hot chocolate options that no one reads. The barista surlily takes orders, this time with an air of superiority. It's ok. You're not here to see a smiling face. She walks to the grinder, removes the portafilter from the espresso machine, maybe giving it a quick wipedown. The grinder whirs for a few seconds, then ceases. Tamp. Tap. Tamp. Twirl. She lets the water run for a split second before replacing the portafilter. The shot is too fast. She dumps it, and does the whole process over again. A perfect 25 second shot pours into the cup (even if the first shot was perfect, she might taste to make sure, then pull another to serve).
   You stand face to face with her.
   "One tall latte please."
   "Dude," She replies. "Just say small."
   She warms up a ceramic cup with water from the espresso machine, pulls your perfect shot, grabs a clean metal pitcher, pours in a specific amount of fresh whole milk (she won't even ask), and gives the steam wand a quick flush. You hear a light hissing sound for a few seconds, then a quieter, deeper noise as the whole pitcher of milk is coaxed into a vortex (and she finishes all of this by the time the shots are done). The noise stops, the shots are pulled, she taps the pitcher lightly and gives it a brief swirl, but it's not even necessary. She pours the steamed milk into the latte (she would die before putting a spoon in that pitcher), sinking the light steamed milk below the crema at first, then pouring it delicately and deliberately into a rosetta, a beautiful symbol of the effort that went into creating your perfect latte. You pay (wow, it's cheaper than S***bucks!), and take the first sip. The steamed milk tastes light and sweet, a subtle sweetness from the milk itself. The espresso gives it a wonderful brightness and aroma that brings a smile to your face. You walk away with the aforementioned stupid grin on your face. The next customer walks up.
   "One grande caramel mocha please."
   "I hate all these people," your barista muses.

Poring over pour overs

Wow! Two updates in two weeks?! I know what you're asking yourself right now: "John Jon, what could possibly merit such prolific writing on your part? I mean, I'm obviously of lesser character, having written very little this week, and I need to know the secret to your sudden burst of motivation!" The answer to this question is that I think I've found some topics recently that I feel are really worth writing about. I don't wish to downplay my earlier posts; I find them very interesting and hope that they have helped you to deepen your appreciation of coffee, but I really want to provide practical advice that allows the caffeine swilling masses to enjoy better coffee right here and right now.

Therefore, I'm going to continue my discussion of brewing methods by providing you all with a primer on making amazing pour-over drip coffee. This week, Let's talk about my good friend the Chemex and its ilk. Apart from being on permanent exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, the Chemex Coffee Brewer has been a fixture for those devoted to quality coffee for nearly 70 years. With the recent resurgence in the popularity of manual pour-over brewing methods over the profoundly inferior electric auto-drip machines that we all associate with coffee, we as a people have started to discover a world of sublime flavor and aroma that simply was not there before.
In my last post, I told you I was going to explain why the coffee from your auto-drip machine is so god-awful, so here goes. The auto-drip machine, or dripolator (not a super villain) as those marketing geniuses at Mr. Coffee called it, hails from 1972, when people were apparently tired of the eternity of back-breaking work that making good coffee requires. That additional four minutes was just far too much, so like many 'innovations' of that era, the dripolator's purpose was to sacrifice quality for ease (and potentially to destroy Superman and take over Metropolis). I can assure you that however much you might admire the look of the coffee maker sitting in your kitchen right now, it hates you. It hates you with a cold hatred that draws water at a mere 185 degrees Fahrenheit through its dark, plastic, mineral-encrusted veins, and vomits this tepid water on your coffee, not caring once about your enjoyment. It also stole that $10 you had in your wallet last week, and it's plotting insurrection with your toaster. The coffee you get at your local roaster/coffee house is brewed at a temperature of 196-204 (yes, even at S***bucks), and brewing anywhere below this temperature results in under-extracted, bland, and often bitter coffee (Don't point out that crazy process of cold-brewing from Japan; it's just weird). In addition, the coffee on your counter, unless it brews into a thermal carafe, is being actively heated while resting, a process which ruins the flavor of the drink. It's much better to drink lukewarm cup of good coffee than a hot cup of disgust.
So what options do you have? Well, if you're loaded, you could buy yourself a Technivorm coffee brewer. At a mere $245, it's the only auto-drip coffee maker endorsed by the Specialty Coffee Association of America. However, assuming you're living on something similar to my wages, you can forego the auto-drip entirely and enjoy the quality of a cup of coffee you brew yourself.
Now that we're all ready to set fire to our old Mr. Coffee, let's learn how to brew with a Chemex like a pro. A lot of this is actually going to sound similar to last week. Exempli gratia: Boil water. Again, we're shooting for 196-204, but this time, we're taking it right up to 204. You're going to need to surf this temperature range while you brew, so you might as well start at the top. Again, you can use your fancy electric kettle with temperature control for this, but a kettle on the stove can work in a pinch.
While your water is boiling, let's get the Chemex ready to rock. The major benefit of the Chemex is its filter. This filter is much thicker than a standard coffee filter, so it produces a very clean cup of coffee that sits well and both tastes and smells f'awesome. I recommend it very highly for Central American and Ethiopian coffees especially, but even Sumatra works wonderfully. Unfortunately, It has been noted that this filter has a 'papery' taste, but you can take steps to eliminate this. Start by folding your filter according to the standard directions and putting your filter in the Chemex. Then pour some cold water over the top and pour out. When the water is ready, repeat this with the hot water to further cleanse the filter paper and bring the Chemex itself up to temperature.
When your water is nearly done, grind your coffee. You want to use the same equation I stated last week, about 2 tablespoons per 6 oz. water (again, 2/3 cup for an 8 cup Chemex. Woe be unto those who question this amount). Unlike last week, you have one main factor to consider when you grind for the Chemex: the amount of time it takes to drip. You'll find the water will rush through if the grind is too coarse, and it will stall out if the grind is too fine. Try to experiment with a fine grind that will still give you a reasonable brew time (about 3-4 minutes for an 8 cup Chemex). Also, darker roasts tend to drip faster so you should grind them slightly finer. I haven't come up with a theory concerning this phenomenon, but I can make up some BS to explain it if you want.
Now that you have ground coffee and a heated, rinsed filter, add the coffee grounds. Now it's time to bloom the coffee. Much like I said last time, you want to pour in enough water to fully saturate the grounds, but not so much that they are floating (NOTE: This is tricky. Pour slowly. You'll probably get it wrong a lot). Let the coffee bloom for thirty seconds and then start pouring in water slowly and steadily in a circular motion to sink the coffee grounds below the foam (which there should be plenty of, and also let's stop beating around the bush. It's called crema, the same as on your espresso). Make sure not to fill the filter with water over the rim of the coffee brewer itself. Refill the filter in the same manner as needed, making sure that you don't let the water completely drain out of the filter until the end. A good test at this point is that your coffee grounds should have a layer of brown to caramel colored crema on top once they've drained. If they don't, it's not a horrible thing, but it means that your water temperature was slightly off or the process took too long. If the crema looks blonde, it probably means your ending water temperature was too low. Remember, all of this is not major; you're most likely going to have a damn fine cup of coffee no matter what, but you can try to optimize this to get the best damn cup of coffee in existence. damn.
Now, since I'm covering pour-over devices, I figure I'll say a little bit about the Chemex's friends, the Beehouse, the Melitta, and the Hario V60. All of these are trusted pour-over devices used by fine coffee shops across the nation. The Melitta is going to be your easiest to find, as it is located in most grocery stores. It uses the standard truncated cone filters that many auto-drip machines use. To properly use this type of filter, add the step of folding back the crimped edges of the filter. This allows the filter to sit properly in the Melitta. The Beehouse is basically the same thing as the Melitta in ceramic as opposed to food grade plastic, and requires basically the same procedure, with the exception that you don't really need to bring the Melitta up to temperature with a second rinse. Finally, the Hario V60 is an excellent manual drip device that's really becoming popular in the world of pretentious coffee assholes. Merely mentioning its name at your local coffeehouse may be enough to land you a free drink, a job there, and maybe even co-ownership of the business. The Hario sits solidly between the Chemex and the Melitta in terms of design, with a full cone shape and open bottom, and for something that costs ~$8, it's a pretty good deal. It is also available in ceramic for a little over twice that price, and I recommend that for anyone interested in quality or afraid that evil plastic demons will leach out of their coffee dripper and start screwing with their DNA. Ceramic also has a relatively high heat capacity, while the heat capacity of plastics tends to be low, so brewing with ceramic will help to keep the brew temperature high as well. Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Clever Coffee Dripper. So there, I mentioned it. Enjoy your weekend, and next week, I'm going to be telling you things to look for when evaluating a coffee shop.