Daniel's World of Coffee

I Should Have Been a Funk Singer (Coffee of the Week)

Here's part two of my visit to the CEL. And yes, I sing on this video, inspired by coffee. If you can't understand my hyper-excited babbling at the end, I'm saying, "Thanks Intelligentsia... Thanks Geoff Watts... Thanks Kenyan Coffee Producers!"

This is my coffee of the week, incidentally. Hands down.

Part one of my visit to the CEL here.

If you don't know what the heck I was singing about during the making of the Chemex, Stephen Morrissey's cool Chemex video here.

Not the same Gichathaini Kenya, but another fresh Kenya from Intelligentsia here.

Scott Rao's book here.

Don't forget to drink lots of coffee before you go out tonight, and Happy New Year everybody!

How Define Winter Coffee?

Today I was a little fed up with some sub-par cups of coffee I had in my immediate area over the last few days (cafés and coffees that will remain nameless), so I decided to cut out the middleman and just roast up something from the stores of marvelous green coffees I have tucked away from travels over the last year.

I picked a classic, strictly-high-grown Bourbon from El Salvador and roasted it a couple minutes past first crack on my Gene Café home roaster. This is pretty standard operation for me; I like that style of coffee a great deal.

As soon as I had it cooled down I went ahead and ground some up and made a chemex. It was quite lovely. Rain was beating on the window as dark clouds swept over the hills of Seattle at this darkest time of the year. As I tasted the bright-n-snappy, yet sweet-n-chocolatey character of the coffee, I remarked to my companion "Now this is great wintertime coffee."

But now that I reflect on that for a moment I wonder, just what does that mean? At the time I meant that liveliness of the coffee was invigorating to me on such a gloomy winter day. But there seems to be a great deal of difference of opinion out there about what constitutes "wintery" or "holiday-time" when it comes to specialty beverages.

Let's take three quick examples of "holiday blends" that I have had recently. Descriptions from the companies:

The Celebration Blend from Intelligentsia (a beautiful coffee, if you ask me). Intelly writes

The first thing to surface is a candied orange peel acidity, almost that of a sweet marmalade. Notes of cassis and juniper berry give dimension while the mouthfeel maintains a clean yet rounded cup. Toasted hazelnuts and anisette yield a pleasing aftertaste with hints of baking spice to ring in the season.

The Holiday Blend from Jim's Organic Coffee:

Three rare coffees; Tanzanian Mbeya, Brazil Poco Fundo, and Celebes Toraja White Eagle make up this year’s Holiday Blend. These coffees; roasted to a full city (medium heavy) roast, combine to yield a festive dark berry character; perfect to enjoy the spirit of the season.

And the Holiday Blend from Zoka Coffee:

This year at Zoka we have come upon many great Single Origin coffees. Our 2009 Holiday Blend is comprised of our roasters' favorite 4 coffees from 3 continents, highlighting their individual strengths while almost simultaneously making each other better. With almond in the aroma, this Holiday Blend presents flavors that remind us of our childhood. Graham crackers, cranberry sauce, and fig cookies throughout the cup warm you from the inside out.

Intelligentsia and Zoka both mention baking, evoking spiced cookies and things of that nature. Jim's and Zoka mention berries. It seems to me that these descriptions are trying to make the coffee sounds like a mug of spiced cider or other warm winter treat. This seems reasonable. I would characterize all three descriptions as generally accurate, though the Intelligentsia one is more spot-on in my experience.

Who wouldn't want a coffee that tastes like these? I like them too.

The funny thing is, though, that in winter time I actually crave more fruity, snappy, acidic coffees. If I'm having a big piece of buttery pound cake on Christmas morning, the last kind of coffee I want to have it with is coffee that tastes like more baked goods (well, ok, not the last kind of coffee, but you get my point). I like something to create a contrast. It's the same reason I'm most likely to enjoy a rich, mellow Brazilian when I can have it with something bright and snappy to eat, like fresh strawberries.

But that's just me. What do you think of when you think of "winter coffee?"

Top 20 Coffees of All Time: The Magenta Orgasm

Talking about my "top twenty coffees of all time" yesterday got me thinking about what, seriously, would be on that list. So I am going to revisit some of those memorable coffees over the coming weeks when the mood strikes me.

The following article appeared on my old, old blog (the LiveJournal one), and my readership has changed quite a bit since then, so I thought it would be fun to repost this. I originally wrote it for the women's website Divine Caroline, so those of you who are coffee experts can forgive the elementary presentation. But I still stand by the general philosophy of this piece. Enjoy!

Papayas, Love Poems, and Magenta Orgasms

COFFEES THAT ARE TRULY ONE OF A KIND

by Daniel Humphries

I’ve got my score sheet right here in front of me. It says, and I am not making this up: “banana, papaya, pineapple, raspberry, mangos... tropical...” (then you can see I am getting a little excited, because my handwriting is more hurried) “so sweet and smooth... astonishing” (then I lose my professionalism altogether): “Velvety pinks and magentas!!”

Would you guess that I was describing coffee? Yeah, me neither. But this is the sort of thing I sometimes come across in my travels: a truly unique coffee. For the skeptical here’s a statistic: brewed coffee typically contains over 800 different organic compounds, compared with around 200 in a glass of wine. Each compound has unique flavor, from the nasty (ashes, mold, animal hide) to the divine (meyer lemon, honey, baker’s chocolate). What marks a great coffee is an intriguing combination of positive attriubtes and a lack of negative ones.

It was in Ethiopia that I found the coffee that caused my little “pink and magenta” orgasm, in the middle of scoring coffees for a national competition. Now, strictly speaking, “velvety pinks and magentas!” is not a technically acceptable term. You might be surprised at the level of detail that goes into scoring these coffees. Coffees are evaluated on flavor, aftertaste, acidity (not always a bad thing!), body, cleanliness (really!), balance, sweetness, fragrance and aroma (not technically the same thing!), and well, you get the idea. If you are interested in what a scoresheet looks like (and if you are interested, my goodness dear, what kind of hopeless nerd are you?!) you can see one version (though not the one I was using) here.

The aroma notes I listed above (papaya, mango) are the kinds of notes professional cuppers will often make on their score sheets, though admittedly those particular notes are quite rare. Writing down colors is less common. It’s supposed to be scientific, after all. Sometimes I have to remind myself. Otherwise I might end up with drawings of race cars for, say, a kick-ass Blue Batak Sumatra; a series of angrily sketched frowny faces for defective commercial coffee from — name redacted to protect the purveyors of defective commercial coffee — ; and Keatsian odes to delicate Guatemalan beauties (“O, thou still unravished Huehuetenango of quietness...”)

Usually, though, I just stick to my numerical scores. I swear. Besides, giving a coffee a 9.5 on aftertase is about the same as writing a love poem to it, considering what that implies about the quality of the coffee.

All this is just to find coffees that people are going to like. Generally we don’t speak of people evaluating their double americanos based on balance and fragrance. But there’s the catch: they are evaluating it that way. They just don’t know it. People know what they like, they just sometimes lack the vocabulary to explain it.

And what do people like? Above all, they like sweetness and a smooth mouthfeel. Market research backs this up. Also: duh. This is why people put cream and sugar (or soy and splenda, natch) in their coffee. People also like a good aftertaste, a pleasing snap (“good” acidity), and an interesting or comforting aroma profile. The fact that they don’t break it down that way doesn’t mean that it can’t be broken down that way.

A truly great coffee will be so sweet and smooth as to not need any cream or sugar or Stevia. (Actually, nothing should ever need Stevia, ever. For any reason. Have you tried that stuff? I don't care if it's "all natural"," it’s like putting the purified essence of the sun on your tongue, if the sun was made out of sugar and post-industrial chemical waste). A truly great coffee will also have something unique about it that no other coffee has, no matter how sweet and smooth.

And this is why we go through all the trouble to taste and score coffee after coffee in the kinds of competitions I’m describing. Trust me, a lot of the coffee is terrible. There are all kinds of defects that can come up on the table. I don’t need to tell you this. You have already had terrible coffee many times. But the search is always worth it. When you find that glittering ruby on the table, you are such a happy little taster.

Lucky for you, dear and beautiful reader, it’s not necessary to go to Ethiopia to find these coffees. Just be discerning. In fact, be a snob. I highly recommend it. If you want to find a coffee like the one that made me start singing arias in Ethiopia, look for coffee that was bought and roasted in small lots or “micro-lots.” Coffee bought at specialty auction is reliably outstanding. Look for “Cup of Excellence” (top coffees from all over Latin America and now Rwanda), “Best of Panama” (top coffees from, um, Panama), “Ethiopia Limited” (where I found my little gem) and the like.

If your favorite roaster or coffee shop doesn’t offer something like this, ask them why not? And as always, let your own taste be your guide. If it makes you want to draw unicorns, it’s good coffee.

(Magenta Square by Nigel Tomm)

Coffee: Intelligentsia's Guatemala Itzamna — La Soledad

Late spring and early summer are my favorite time of year for new coffees. This is when all the fresh new Central American coffees come in. As much as I love Ethiopian coffee and Kenyan coffee, if I had to choose only one region to drink for the rest of my life, it would be good old backyard C.A.

It's mid-August now, and the 2008-09 Centrals have been around long enough for me to feel comfortable with them. I tasted a lot of good coffees from El Salvador again this year, some good Nicaraguas, and one killer Honduras. But lately I've been gravitating to Intelligentsia's Guatemala "Itzamna" from Finca La Soledad. (Itzamna is the mark created by Intelligentsia, it means "Goddess of the Harvest"; La Soledad is the farm that this particular lot comes from... they also have regular Itzamna and Itzamna: La Maravilla).

This coffee stood out like a champ the first time I cupped it blind at the Soho lab. It's very lush and round while still ringing with clear sweetness and a full, forward acidity. Really fantastic stuff. These are small lots that Intelligentsia brings in, and they seem to vanish just as soon as they appear. I imagine there can't be that much of La Soledad left. Get your mitts on some if you can.

I've been drinking La Soledad in a Chemex, dosing about 33 grams to 14 ounces of water to get a 12 ounce batch. Perfection in the morning, I tell you.

One of the keys to great coffee is clean processing. Look at this picture of the processing facility at La Soledad that I lifted from the Intelligentsia website:

Now that is clean processing.

Finally, here's some of what Geoff Watts, buyer for Intelligentsia, has to say about this great coffee:

La Soledad (Acatenango) contributes a rich milk chocolate and butterscotch sweetness, and this year the farm finished top 20 in the Cup of Excellence—hats off to them for this recognition of their achievement. It is one of my favorite farms because the forward progress and investment they are making to advance quality and become a standard setter for social and environmental responsibility on the farm needs no explanation; it stands out every time I visit. They've just completed the final stage on their very impressive water treatment system and have started work on a cupping lab that will be built on the farm itself. They are currently working on some diversification with an innovative plan to produce avocado oil from the groves of delicious avocado trees on the farm. These guys are the definition of pro-active.