Don't be so Bitter

Next time you drink a cup of coffee I'd like you to consider its flavour.  Rather than slurping it down, take a second or two to allow the coffee sit on your tongue and in your mouth and see what flavours you can pick out before you swallow it.  Even after swallowing keep searching.  At a typical barista training class we will taste and assess anywhere between 50 and 100 coffees.  We look for flavour and mouthfeel.   More often than not when you drink a poor coffee you get a taste - not flavour.  Usually that taste is bitterness, it is at the back of your mouths or in our throat and is often confused with strength.   The more bitter, the stronger it is perceived to be.  Wrong. 

Coffee has an abundance of flavour. When you taste coffee, the flavours should sit in the middle of your tongue and they should wrap around your mouth.  Caramels, dark fruits and chocolate are just an example of flavours that you might be able to identify.   The mouthfeel is also known as body.  A properly made coffee will be balanced. When you taste it, it will be present in the middle of your mouth, it will be rich in mouthfeel and the flavours should be noticeable on your tongue. Acidity to the front, fruits and sweetness to the middle. It should not be bitter.  Think flavour not taste. 



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Rich Sweet Milk

There are three main properties that affect how the milk tastes in a cappuccino and latte.  
Fat content is high on the agenda - and the reason is that the fat carries the flavour. Think french food - loads of butter and cream.  This is the richness.  
The higher the fat content the richer the texture in the mouth.

The sweetness comes from the lactose (disacharides).. this natural sweetness in milk is accentuated with heat, as the milk is heated the natural sugars are more obvious to the senses. Now heat is another discussion.. and something we touched on last autumn.  Suffice to say that if you over heat the milk, you'll ruin the texture of the milk.  There is a key temperature for this.  Its 65 degrees celsius.  Anything above this makes the milk split into a dry foam and boiled milk.  

The last factor is protein. Protein comes in simple terms as grass, and specifically grass feeding.  Cows fed on a high grass diet will produce higher protein milk.  This is essential for the milk texture.  As you heat the milk you release the proteins. Again too hot and the milk splits and loses its texture. 

For really great milk try different varieties.  Avonmore sell milk that has consistently high values in protein and lactose.  Other suppliers like Adare farm foods sell organic whole milk - loads of natural proteins, happy cows, rich and creamy.

The most important thing is to find what you like.  The sensory taste and texture is really important when making coffee.  If you can deliver this texture and mouthfeel regardless of latte art and all that fancy stuff, you will have great tasting coffee.

Great coffee is not enough

Every week I visit different cafes.  From Dublin to Cork and Waterford to Westport. Last week I was in Ardkeen Quality Foodstore in Waterford.  We train their barista's to deliver the best coffee they can.  One thing struck me while I was there.  It was the sense of community within the shop.  The barista knew everyone by name.  There was no rush, no pressure, it was a really nice environment to arrive into and to be a part of.  Its what a cafe should be.

Mind you, I don't have to travel to Waterford to experience that.  I can experience that here in Limerick too, be it Michelle in Arabica on Shannon street or Laoise out in Delish Cafe Castletroy.  I'm sure you all have your favourite local place.  For many It used to be the pub.  Now, more than ever cafe's are more important in our lives.  As author Ray Oldenberg suggests, they are our third place.  First : home, second : work and then that third place where we go to have a social coffee, a work chat or to fix the world. 

Great coffee is not enough.  What makes a great cafe is the chat, engagement, being able to nod your head at the barista and they know you're having your regular cuppa.  The barista job, and that customer interaction is often overlooked by many cafes.  It is what separates the average from the great.

Coffee Snobbery

Do people really know what the difference is between a good coffee and a bad one. Is it the coffee or the experience? I’ve already wrote about the experience - so lets talk coffee. For me it has to be freshly roasted - and by that I mean roasted ideally by an Irish coffee roaster some time within the last four weeks. The shorter the better. 

As the lads in Two Spots Coffee say, remember when wine came from France and coffee came from Italy ? Well forget that. Ireland has some really fantastic artisan roasters. So this is the only place to start. Buying coffee from an Irish roaster keeps 75% of the money spent on the coffee beans in the country. Importing roasted coffee sends 75% of the money out of the country. Its a no brainer.

At Coffee Culture we roast every week, offering café owners freshly roasted coffee, that can be ground to order and made on demand to give you the best possible opportunity to enjoy coffee at its best. After that, we rely on the skill of the barista to perfect the espresso.  We train all of our cafe staff, starting them all off at Level 1 Barista Skills.

Its really difficult to make great coffee.  It takes time, practise, patience and dedication.  Coffee taste varies, but in some ways its quite generic - people just want a fix.  But that is changing - customers are getting more discerning, recognising great tasting coffee and flavours.

Are you a Coffee Snob ...or just passionate

I had a really interesting chat with someone last week, and they were saying how in their opinion there seemed to be a bit of coffee snobbery going on.  Trying to be impartial I engaged in the discussion.  My thoughts on coffee are that everyone has an opinion on it.. its a hugely subjective topic and I suppose like everything there are people that are really passionate and others that don't care, and just want to get their fix.

I'm no coffee expert, and I never profess to be one.  I do however claim to be somewhat of a cafe expert, I've opened over a dozen directly as a consultant with clients, I've fit out over 100 again as consultant/designer/project based work and I've opened about a dozen of my own projects from cafe's to restaurants, hotels, bars and nightclubs.  So I've been around, lost a few quid, got some scars.

Would I do it all again ? most definately.  I love the catering industry and in the last 10 years I have grown to really like the daytime cafe/coffee shop market.

One thing I feel important to tell people is to keep your product accessible.  The coffee market has changed, single origin beans are 'de rigeur' and there can be some really interesting finds out there.  But if you aim too high and mighty about it all, I fear you will scare off the regular 'cup of jo' drinkers. 

To me, the coffee experience is about educating people, and bringing them on a journey.  Making sure that they are enjoying the offering, your passion and that they can feel like they are learing something new and interesting.  There is no 'one size fits all' when it comes to a coffee offering.  There is skill, patience, learning, and educating..  and as a coffee shop owner - you have to investigate why are you getting (or got) into the business in the first place.  If you are not passionate about food and drink or at least one of them, you'll soon get caught out.. your interest will wain, and your customers will see you don't care.

BUT, if you are passionate your customers will come on that journey, they'll be loyal, they'll stick with you and they'll become your friends.  Don't be a snob, be passionate.

Roast of the day

If there is one thing that I’m passionate about it’s fresh coffee.  I don’t care how you extract it, aeropress, v60, espresso, French press, chemex, whatever floats your boat.  But when it comes to buying fresh coffee I offer my café customers one option and that is to buy Irish roasted.  Irish roasted coffee can come in many guises, from small artisan specialists to big commercial roasters.  But the most important factor is that your coffee is fresh – and that is the key to any great food offering.  (yes, coffee is a food!)  Freshly roasted, freshly ground and each cup made to order – you won’t go far wrong.

When I say freshly roasted coffee – by that I mean coffee roasted at absolute maximum within the last 4 weeks.  We don’t have to accept stock piled coffee that sits on pallets in Italy or the UK, maybe roasted 3 months ago and with a shelf life of 2 years – we’ve moved on.  It’s time to support local suppliers and buy Irish. Your customers will appreciate you for it, and you’ll have a happier conscience too.   

Like cooking, roasting is a skill where the specific pleasant flavours and tastes within the bean are identified by the roaster through the roasting process.  When roasted, these flavours are then magnified through the extraction.  So in short, properly sourced, quality beans, roasted with skill and precision will taste of fantastic ripe fruits, will posses great body and length, a balanced acidity and punch, and will linger in your mouth with a smooth and velvety feel.  It’s a skill that takes years to perfect and understand and if you are passionate about coffee and want your customers to be interested in what you offer, I encourage you to go beyond the bag and find out more.  

Finally don’t get consumed by price when choosing your coffee supplier.  A euro difference per kilo from one supplier to the other in the price nets down to little over half a cent per shot when you get to the bottom line.  It could be the difference between losing a customer forever or winning one for life.

The Barista Boom

Article from Totally Dublin magazine Issue 90 - March 2012

 

Yeah we’ve had baby booms, but there is definitely a Barista Boom going on at the moment. The whole coffee experience has shifted, black mugs of day old stewed filter and free refills are no more   …thank god.  Coffee now has a standard.

The word barista is of Italian origin, and when you think of passion, the Italians have it in buckets full.

Barista’s take pride in the coffee they sell, and how they make it.  And this desire for perfection, encourages their customers to come back time and time again.  It’s no use if you are to set up a café to just open the doors and hope the customers will come in, you have to create something different, an experience. You have to display a passion and enthusiasm for what you do, and this can be translated to the customer for between €2 and €3 a cup. 

Café’s all around Dublin have copped onto this, and the results are fabulous coffee served with care and pride in places such as Clement and Pekoe (South William st), Cup (Nassau street), 3fe (capel Street) and Thirdspace (Smithfield).   If you run a café and need to do something about your offering you can take various barista training courses at Coffee Culture, run every month in Dublin, or catered specifically to your property.  More and more café’s are seeing the benefits of employing baristas.  Not only are they a skilled and educated barperson, but they engage with your customers, and take them on a coffee journey.  More importantly they bring your customers back for the experience, time and time again.