Get hold of some Intelligentsia coffee!
Geoff Watts is a very interesting man. For those who don’t know he’s the Vice President and green coffee buyer of American company Intelligentsia Coffee. Coffee geeks across the world hang off his every word – I certainly do –and his blogs are philosophically very stimulating. In a recent post of his he mentioned the term “The next movement” to describe the current manifestation of coffee culture that’s taking place across Western Europe, America and Japan. He identified some really interesting features of this movement, particularly its problems and also its future. For the British coffee scene to keep pushing forward I think it’s important we take stock of our faults and also look to the future, so here are a few of the most pertinent points Geoff mentions.
Firstly, a few problems with the contemporary coffee industry:
• Blind devotion to certification bodies. Don’t get me wrong, most existing coffee certifications have some kind of purpose and some role to play in the coffee world. But they often fall way short of delivering the intended benefits to either producers or consumers. Like all things in life, they ought to be treated with some scrutiny and expected to perform as advertised.
• The Myth of the Golden Tongue. Any taster worth his/her salt will acknowledge that the human sensory system is an imperfect instrument. On top of this, coffee is also one of the most chemically complicated beverages known to mankind, making it hard stuff to measure. Every coffee taster is fallible, prone to relativistic interpretation, vulnerable to bias, impacted by environmental or emotional variables, and likely to make inconsistent or incorrect judgments once in a while. We know how dynamic and volatile coffee is…any particular cupping or tasting is really nothing more than a snapshot in time and may or may not be a truly accurate reflection of the true nature/potential of a given sample. With coffee we need to teach ourselves to be circumspect, to have patience, and to avoid instant judgment. Instead, we must be contemplative, willing to second-guess ourselves, and willing to listen and debate. It is at that point that we gain understanding. Unilateralism or deference to one tongue at the cupping table causes blindness. Overconfidence can easily stifle a cupper’s accuracy, and we’ve got to remember that we are all students…and always will be.
• Single-serve pods. Wait a minute, I’ve got an idea. Let’s package 15 grams of mediocre quality pre-ground coffee into little plastic and foil cups, wrap it all up in plastic, put it in a cardboard box and sell it as Specialty Coffee. That way we can make it more convenient for consumers to prepare stale, over-extracted coffee at home while generating at least 20 times the waste material they otherwise would. The K-cup and Nespresso frenzy that has taken the world by storm really does feel like a monumental step backwards.
Secondly, the things we need to embrace:
• Slow Coffee + the re-discovery of drip. Someone asked me recently what slow coffee is, and my explanation was simple: it is what you get when coffee is handled with meticulous attention to detail at every step from the farm to your cup. It is the triumph of quality over quantity. It is handpicking and hand-sorting to create nearly flawless micro-lots. It is the choice to avoid shortcuts in husbandry, picking, processing, drying, milling, roasting, and brewing. It is the acknowledgment that coffee quality is fragile and needs to be treated with a delicate touch in order to reach its real potential. Espresso machines were originally created as an expedient way to prepare a cup of coffee in a very short amount of time. They have come a long way since then, but never forget that there is something unmistakably beautiful about drip filtering, and many of the most obsessive coffee geeks I know still consider drip filtering the most exciting way to experience coffee.
• Acknowledgment of seasonality as a factor in quality. Like Doug Zell often says, coffee is not like a box of breakfast cereal. It is much more alive, like fruit, in that it is a perishable agricultural product and only gets worse with time. Every country and every growing region has a specific time during the year when harvest occurs. Most countries only have a single harvest annually, lasting only a few months. What this means is that some coffees are fresher than others at any given point in the year. Costa Rican coffees are at their best beginning early spring and lasting through early fall. Bolivian coffees are best consumed in the winter months. Knowing when a coffee was harvested can help consumers make better choices about which coffees to purchase during various parts of the year.
• Redefinition of terms and intellectual engagement with the consumer. In an industry awash with buzzwords and phrases, it is deeply refreshing to encounter real dialogue that gets into detail about the topics that are at the heart of the Specialty Coffee sector. Sustainability: what does this really mean in the context of coffee production? Quality: are there reliable signposts for an interested consumer looking to get better coffee? Is it just something you “know when you see it”? How do you interpret the various messages you find on a package of coffee, and what do they really mean? It is time to move beyond slogans and into understanding, and as consumers we all benefit from having the kind of knowledge that allows us to make good decisions and minimize the semi-intuitive guesswork.
• Anti-corruption efforts in local coffee economies. Corruption is one of the most powerful obstacles standing in the way of smallholder farmers who seek to improve their economic livelihoods. It exists at every level—government, local industry organizations, farmer cooperatives, multinational trading houses—and permeates the industry. Until some of this fundamental corruption is weeded out, many well-intentioned efforts to help farmers move ahead will continue to spin their wheels in the mud.
Visit Geoff’s blog for further rumination: http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/blog
Geoff Watts is a very interesting man. For those who don’t know he’s the Vice President and green coffee buyer of American company Intelligentsia Coffee. Coffee geeks across the world hang off his every word – I certainly do –and his blogs are philosophically very stimulating. In a recent post of his he mentioned the term “The next movement” to describe the current manifestation of coffee culture that’s taking place across Western Europe, America and Japan. He identified some really interesting features of this movement, particularly its problems and also its future. For the British coffee scene to keep pushing forward I think it’s important we take stock of our faults and also look to the future, so here are a few of the most pertinent points Geoff mentions.
Firstly, a few problems with the contemporary coffee industry:
• Blind devotion to certification bodies. Don’t get me wrong, most existing coffee certifications have some kind of purpose and some role to play in the coffee world. But they often fall way short of delivering the intended benefits to either producers or consumers. Like all things in life, they ought to be treated with some scrutiny and expected to perform as advertised.
• The Myth of the Golden Tongue. Any taster worth his/her salt will acknowledge that the human sensory system is an imperfect instrument. On top of this, coffee is also one of the most chemically complicated beverages known to mankind, making it hard stuff to measure. Every coffee taster is fallible, prone to relativistic interpretation, vulnerable to bias, impacted by environmental or emotional variables, and likely to make inconsistent or incorrect judgments once in a while. We know how dynamic and volatile coffee is…any particular cupping or tasting is really nothing more than a snapshot in time and may or may not be a truly accurate reflection of the true nature/potential of a given sample. With coffee we need to teach ourselves to be circumspect, to have patience, and to avoid instant judgment. Instead, we must be contemplative, willing to second-guess ourselves, and willing to listen and debate. It is at that point that we gain understanding. Unilateralism or deference to one tongue at the cupping table causes blindness. Overconfidence can easily stifle a cupper’s accuracy, and we’ve got to remember that we are all students…and always will be.
• Single-serve pods. Wait a minute, I’ve got an idea. Let’s package 15 grams of mediocre quality pre-ground coffee into little plastic and foil cups, wrap it all up in plastic, put it in a cardboard box and sell it as Specialty Coffee. That way we can make it more convenient for consumers to prepare stale, over-extracted coffee at home while generating at least 20 times the waste material they otherwise would. The K-cup and Nespresso frenzy that has taken the world by storm really does feel like a monumental step backwards.
Secondly, the things we need to embrace:
• Slow Coffee + the re-discovery of drip. Someone asked me recently what slow coffee is, and my explanation was simple: it is what you get when coffee is handled with meticulous attention to detail at every step from the farm to your cup. It is the triumph of quality over quantity. It is handpicking and hand-sorting to create nearly flawless micro-lots. It is the choice to avoid shortcuts in husbandry, picking, processing, drying, milling, roasting, and brewing. It is the acknowledgment that coffee quality is fragile and needs to be treated with a delicate touch in order to reach its real potential. Espresso machines were originally created as an expedient way to prepare a cup of coffee in a very short amount of time. They have come a long way since then, but never forget that there is something unmistakably beautiful about drip filtering, and many of the most obsessive coffee geeks I know still consider drip filtering the most exciting way to experience coffee.
• Acknowledgment of seasonality as a factor in quality. Like Doug Zell often says, coffee is not like a box of breakfast cereal. It is much more alive, like fruit, in that it is a perishable agricultural product and only gets worse with time. Every country and every growing region has a specific time during the year when harvest occurs. Most countries only have a single harvest annually, lasting only a few months. What this means is that some coffees are fresher than others at any given point in the year. Costa Rican coffees are at their best beginning early spring and lasting through early fall. Bolivian coffees are best consumed in the winter months. Knowing when a coffee was harvested can help consumers make better choices about which coffees to purchase during various parts of the year.
• Redefinition of terms and intellectual engagement with the consumer. In an industry awash with buzzwords and phrases, it is deeply refreshing to encounter real dialogue that gets into detail about the topics that are at the heart of the Specialty Coffee sector. Sustainability: what does this really mean in the context of coffee production? Quality: are there reliable signposts for an interested consumer looking to get better coffee? Is it just something you “know when you see it”? How do you interpret the various messages you find on a package of coffee, and what do they really mean? It is time to move beyond slogans and into understanding, and as consumers we all benefit from having the kind of knowledge that allows us to make good decisions and minimize the semi-intuitive guesswork.
• Anti-corruption efforts in local coffee economies. Corruption is one of the most powerful obstacles standing in the way of smallholder farmers who seek to improve their economic livelihoods. It exists at every level—government, local industry organizations, farmer cooperatives, multinational trading houses—and permeates the industry. Until some of this fundamental corruption is weeded out, many well-intentioned efforts to help farmers move ahead will continue to spin their wheels in the mud.
Visit Geoff’s blog for further rumination: http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/blog
