SEE ALSO
Aeropress p13
Cupping p64
French press p101
G
Gear | BREWING
A fetish for, and fascination with, equipment is prevalent in many areas of life. The term “gearhead” may come from the world of cars, but coffee brewing, and especially the making of espresso, has its own legions of gearheads. Jump onto an online coffee forum and take a look. There is a host of beautiful equipment and curious tools to discover, and there are vexed issues to become embroiled with, whether it is the motor speeds of grinders, or the use of flow restrictors or shower screens. Gear in coffee ranges from the classic and rudimentary to the super hi-tech and cutting edge. As we learn to value quality in coffee ever more, very small differences in variables become meaningful. I often compare it to Formula 1. Half a second is nothing in an ordinary day, but it is quite a different matter on the racetrack.
Geisha | VARIETY
No relation to the traditional Japanese hostess, the Geisha variety is actually named after a town in Ethiopia around which the variety is widely grown. Although cultivated in other countries, it was the introduction of Geisha to Panama in the 1960s that began its real journey to the top of the tree. This elegant, long-leafed plant is low-yielding and needs the right conditions to really shine. The cup profile is often more comparable to great Ethiopian coffee than to American lots. A great Geisha is immensely aromatic, with layers of floral notes and balanced juicy sweet acidity. Geishas have been grown in other countries with varying success. The top Geisha lots come at a premium price and repeatedly sell for more than any other coffee variety in the world. There is some contention around the success of Geisha, with the feeling that one coffee should not get so much of the limelight and that context is required for the quality to be understood. There is some truth in this, but I never fail to be blown away by a top Geisha. They are some of the most magical cups of coffee I have had, and at a blind tasting, when a Geisha is on the table, the words “Wow, that one is incredible” will often come to the lips.
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Ethiopia p80
Panama p169
Variety p228
God shot | ESPRESSO
“Most shots of espresso are a bit rubbish, but every now and then you strike gold and the coffee is beautiful, and you don’t know why.” Or so the “God shot” rationale goes. This romantic notion, while delightful, is problematic. On the one hand, it is true that coffee will vary inherently due to its nature as a harvested crop, and because each lot is made up of many individual beans. On the other hand, it is a notion that turns espresso making into something of a dark art, with inconsistency and low quality as more a matter of chance than anything else. The past decade has seen a wave of critical thinking, scientific inquiry, and better technology, and the notion of the god shot has slowly lost ground in favour of a focus on the provenance and flavour of the coffees being brewed rather than on an artisanal notion of a raw, “feel”-based process. There is some resistance to the introduction of science in coffee and its pursuit of a more consistent, better quality of coffee. Some feel that it takes away what is so special about coffee, and that it de-crafts and disenchants coffee. My response to that would be that we actually increase the potential and romance of coffee if we allow more people to engage with the flavours of great cups of coffee by making more of them.
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Barista p23
Green | UNROASTED COFFEE
“How old is the green?” and “How much did you pay for the green?” are a couple of industry examples of where you may come across the term “green coffee”. Mainly, it is a term used in the industry for unroasted coffee, which is how the world trades coffee, though not how we drink it. When coffee is harvested and the cherry and parchment have been removed, we are left with the raw bean. These beans typically have a greenish colour, hence the name. The type of coffee, and especially the processing, can alter the exact hue of the bean, with many appearing more yellowish. What is fascinating is that we often discuss the quality of the green coffee versus the quality of the roast. You could, for example, have great green coffee that is badly roasted or a dodgy green that is very well roasted. It takes a little while to become adept at tasting for these differences.
SEE ALSO
C market p41
Freezing p98
Silver skin p198
Grinding | PROCESSING
Grinding coffee is simultaneously both very simple and incredibly complex. On the one hand, we are simply crushing coffee up into smaller pieces; on the other, we are creating different distributions of particle sizes and different-shaped pieces of coffee at different temperatures. It is a wonderful example of finding a world in a detail. It is impossible to break coffee up completely uniformly, so all grinds are a mixture of different sizes. By using a hi-tech piece of equipment called a particle analyzer, we can record exactly how many pieces we have of each size and how many different-size pieces there are. The really small pieces are called “fines” while the really big ones (relatively speaking, of course) are “boulders”. A fine is defined as a coffee ground smaller than 100 microns. A micron is one-millionth of a metre, which is ridiculously small. For example, the size of a water droplet in a mist is 10 microns and a typical sheet of paper is 100 microns thick. The finer the coffee grounds, the easier it will be for water to dissolve their contents.
SEE ALSO
Freezing p98
Grooming | ESPRESSO
This term refers to the moving around of the grounds in the basket before they are tamped and brewed in the portafilter. The concept behind grooming is to spread the coffee throughout the basket, allowing for a more uniformly distributed bed, which in turn allows the water to more evenly extract from all the coffee. There are varying techniques. For many years, the “stockfleth” was mastered by many a professional barista. In this technique, you effectively use your forefinger and thumb to spin and spread the coffee round. With the “north, east, south, west” method, you use the index finger to move straight atop the coffee in each direction. Both these are less common now. In the world of laying sand and cement, vibration is the most effective levelling technique, and simply tapping the basket horizontally and vertically is very effective. It also neatly avoids the busy barista having a constantly brown finger. Specific tools have also been created. The Ona Coffee Distributor was created by World Barista champion Saša Šestić: you place the tool, which resembles a disc with a propeller-like base, atop the portafilter and spin the device to level the coffee for you.
SEE ALSO
Barista p23
Espresso p79
Extraction p86
Portafilter p176
Tamping p213
World Barista Championship p239
Guatemala | ORIGIN
Guatemala is a country well known for its quality coffee and is one of Central America’s biggest producers. Geographically, it sits at the top of the region, above El Salvador, and, as for most of its neighbours, coffee is a valuable export. Within Guatemala, there are many coffee-producing regions, but the best known is Antigua. This region can produce some stunning cups but, like any long-established growing region, prices tend to be on the high side. Huehuetenango is also seen very often in the speciality sector and some truly excellent coffees are grown there. Great Guatemalan coffees often have a bright and complex juiciness to them with a chocolaty centre. Unfortunately, crops have recently suffered dramatically from leaf rust.
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Leaf rust p140
Gustatory | TASTING
When we eat or drink something we put it in our mouth and taste it. Gustatory is the technical term for this, referring to the experiences in our mouth that relate to taste. It is, however, a joint venture with our nose and in fact most of our ideas about “flavours” actually have more to do with the olfactory system. (You have likely heard of the big five tastes the tongue is responsible for: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami. In the past
, a “tongue map” was frequently touted showing which part of the tongue was responsible for which taste, but this idea is now much disputed.) The mouth is more responsible, however, for “taste feelings” as opposed to aromas and flavours. Astringency, smoothness, silkiness, and stickiness are all the domain of the gustatory system. A truly exceptional coffee experience engages and excites both the mouth and the nose.
SEE ALSO
Body p31
Olfactory p163
Super taster test p210
Umami p223
H
Hawaii | ORIGIN
Hawaiian Kona is a long-revered name in the world of coffee. You are, however, unlikely to see it in the world of speciality coffee. Hawaii is rare in being a first-world coffee-producing country. This means that the coffee is relatively expensive for the same quality of coffee grown elsewhere, due to significantly higher labour and production costs. These costs mean that Hawaii has had to be pioneering in terms of introducing automated technology, and even the agronomist at Brazil’s famous Daterra Estate has made trips to Hawaii in order to observe operations and take away fresh insights. Hawaii offers relatively low altitudes for coffee growing and produces cup profiles that are round, smooth, and complex.
SEE ALSO
Brazil p35
Heat exchanger | BREWING
Espresso machines tend to heat the brewing water in one of two ways. The options are a thick metal boiler that is heated with an element (the most advanced of these will regulate the temperature to within a degree) or a heat exchanger. In a heat exchanger, a small tube with a very narrow diameter sits inside a hot boiler. When you brew a shot, fresh water is pulled through the tube and the “stretched-out” water is heated almost instantaneously. Heat exchangers are clever but have a few potential problems. If you are not brewing for a short while, then the water in the heat exchanger can get too hot. Additionally, the heat exchanger will still require a body of very hot water to act as the heat source – if this temperature drops when the machine is receiving heavy use, the brew water will have less heat to draw upon and will drop also. La Spaziale, an Italian espresso manufacturer, has an ingenious patented heat exchanger that uses steam instead of water, thereby providing a more stable heat source.
SEE ALSO
Espresso p79
Multi boiler p151
Honduras | ORIGIN
Coming relatively late to the Central American coffee-growing party, Honduras is now the largest producer of coffee in the region. In my experience, excellent Honduran coffees have outstanding complex (often tropical) fruit and acidity. Green buyers are often wary of coffee from this origin as, although the conditions are excellent for growing coffee, they are not always so good for drying it once the coffee is harvested. This is simply to do with the amount of rainfall. Problematic drying means that a coffee can taste awesome when it is fresh from harvest, but that the flavours quickly fade away. This issue is being heavily focused upon, especially with more coffees being grown for the speciality market. This is an exciting coffee origin.
SEE ALSO
Green p109
Honey process | PROCESSING
First of all, there is no honey involved. The name refers instead to the sticky flesh of the coffee cherry called mucilage. When coffee is processed and dried, you can choose to leave all the cherry on (called the natural process) or remove all the cherry using the washed process. The honey process sits somewhere between the two and is essentially the same as the pulped natural method. Honey processing has caught on in Central America, and it is common to hear about a range of honey processes: black, red, and yellow, with less common labels of white and gold also existing. These labels imply slightly different things in different coffee-growing regions but, in general, refer either to the percentage of mucilage left on the bean or the amount of light and heat to which the mucilage is exposed. The heat and light are controlled by either the depth of the coffee layer or the frequency with which the parchment is turned, which in turn has an impact on how quickly the beans dry and the amount of fermentation that takes place in the interim. The black honey process universally implies more mucilage and a slower drying time, which results in a heavy, rounder, sweet cup with softer acidity. Each successive honey process (black, then red, then yellow, gold, and white) represents less mucilage and quicker drying times, or more frequent turning, resulting in brighter and lighter-bodied cups. The white honey process is intriguing as all the cherry is removed using water jets, which makes it possibly the most “fruit”-free process, even more so than washed processing.
SEE ALSO
Fermentation p90
Natural process p156
Silver skin p198
Washed process p235
I
Ibrik coffee
See “Turkish coffee”.
Importing | TRADING
It is possible for coffee companies to source and import their own coffee, but what is more common is for specialist exporting and importing companies to act as intermediaries. Buying, shipping, and storing coffee is a big operation. Sourcing coffee directly provides a lovely narrative, and in times gone by, when the speciality industry was less prevalent and used less transparent practices, it was a great way to sidestep a bunch of limitations. Working with an importer has a number of benefits that small, quality-focused roasters can take advantage of. Hauling coffee across the world in container ships and through warehouses means that the coffee that turns up can often vary greatly from what you tasted on the cupping table at origin. If you are buying direct, this is a risk you have to stomach. Importers also have the benefit of specializing in their part of the supply chain, allowing them to focus on superior networks and relationship building. Boutique importers do now recognize the need for more unique coffees and are able to respond to trends for certain styles and processing. In doing so, it is becoming more common for programmes and competitions to be initiated by importers. Direct buying does have its benefits: it is easier to secure exclusive coffee and obviously you can save a bit of money.
SEE ALSO
Cupping p64
Defects p67
Independent coffee shops | COFFEE CULTURE
The term “independent coffee scene” technically just encompasses all the non-chain coffee shops around the world, and thus a huge range of coffee-serving establishments of varying qualities and styles. However, the term has come to embody a sense of values, especially with regard to the coffee. The “third wave” and speciality movements are rooted in independent coffee culture and the correlation makes sense due to this. At the same time, I find the term and its use a little irritating at times. Many independent coffee shops have no focus on artisanal coffee, and, perhaps more interestingly, exceptional coffee is not solely the remit of independent coffee companies. Defining exactly when a coffee company is no longer independent can be tricky, but I have definitely seen growing, ambitious, quality-driven coffee companies producing and furthering the case of speciality coffee.
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Third wave p218
India | ORIGIN
India is a country known for many things: it has a lively mix of cultures and an incredible history, and is a booming modern nation. And, although it is definitely better known for the quality of its teas, there is also a fair amount of coffee production. In speciality circles, the country is known for growing some of the best Robusta coffee. Arabica is less well suited to the growing conditions in India, though, that said, there are some impressive lots that display a round and creamy body with pleasant, spicy notes. Monsooned Malabar originates from the southwest coastal region of Kerala. In earlier times, coffee was transported in wooden boxes on seafaring vessels. During the monsoon season, the green coffee making its way across the seas would soak up a lot of moisture and create a coffee that was low in acidity and slightly musty, with a very round body. A preference for this evolved and so, when transportation improved, coffee began to be put through an artificial monsoon process to mimic the flavour.
The cup profile can be divisive, as acidity and nuance are lost. A strong market for the coffee continues to exist, however.
SEE ALSO
Species p202
Indonesia | ORIGIN
Earthy and spicy are the notes that this part of the world is best known for when it comes to coffee. This can mainly be attributed to the unique wet-hulled processing method, also referred to as giling basah. This is a two-stage process. The coffee has most of the cherry removed and is dried to 30–35 percent moisture (for export it would be completely dried, to 12 percent moisture or below). This drying phase is carried out with the mucilage still intact, much as in the honey process. Afterwards, everything, including the parchment, is removed from the beans before they are dried further. It is unusual to remove the parchment this early and the process tends to give the coffee a bigger body and lower acidity. Fully washed Indonesian coffees are available and will tend to have more acidity. Although there are some exotic coffee stories from this part of the world, such as Kopi Luwak and Old Brown Java, for me the best coffees from this region are washed coffees with aromatic and spicy qualities. The rounder Indonesian coffees are more often found in espresso blends looking to achieve a full-bodied and less acidic profile. Note that many locations and islands come under the Indonesia bracket, including Sumatra, Sulewesi, and Java.
The Coffee Dictionary Page 6
