by KJ Fallon
After at least three years, the coffee plants produce fruit, the coffee cherry. When it is ready to be picked, it turns a bright red. The plants usually yield one harvest a year, but there can be a second harvest in some countries, like Colombia, for instance. The arduous task of picking the coffee cherries comes next. Usually the coffee is harvested by hand, which is a very painstaking process. In places where the terrain is more level, machinery can be used to harvest the fruit.
There are two ways to gather the coffee: strip picking—where each and every cherry is picked from the tree—or selective picking—where only the cherries that are ripe are picked; this is done by hand. This method is used mostly for the arabica beans, which are descended from the original Ethiopian coffee plants and bring high prices in the marketplace.2 According to the NCA, “A good picker averages approximately 100 to 200 pounds of coffee cherries a day, which will produce 20 to 40 pounds of coffee beans. Each worker’s daily haul is carefully weighed, and each picker is paid on the merit of his or her work.”3
The third step in the coffee plant-to-cup method is processing. This has to be done fast so the fruit doesn’t spoil. There are two ways to process the coffee cherries: the dry method and the wet method. With the dry method, which is useful in places where water is scarce, the coffee fruit is strewn about on immense surfaces to be sun dried. The fruit must be covered from the rain and during the night to protect it. This method can take weeks.
With the wet method, a pulping machine removes the pulp and skin from the beans; then the beans travel through troughs of water, and the heavy, ripe beans go to the bottom while the beans that are not quite ripe drift upward. After passing through spinning drums, the beans are deposited into fermentation tanks that further slough off more layers of material clinging to the beans.4
The fourth step is drying the beans (if the wet processing method has been used). The beans can be dried by the warmth of the sun or with a tumble dryer. At this point the dried beans are referred to as parchment coffee.
The fifth step is milling. As the NCA says, “hulling machinery removes the parchment layer (endocarp) from wet processed coffee. Hulling dry processed coffee refers to removing the entire dried husk—the exocarp, mesocarp, and endocarp—of the dried cherries.”5
An elective step in the milling process involves polishing the beans. After the beans have been hulled, any silver skin still on the beans is removed. While polished beans are thought to be of a better quality than unpolished beans, there really is hardly any difference between the two. Next comes grading and sorting. This involves sorting by weight, size, and imperfections in color and such.
Then comes the exporting of the beans, which at this point are called green coffee. The green coffee is put into sisal or jute bags and shipped.6
The next step is tasting, which doesn’t refer to sipping a cup of coffee that has been brewed at home or in a coffee shop—this is something entirely different. This tasting is called cupping, a way to accurately assess the quality of the coffee. As the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) explains, there is a strict protocol to cupping.7
The cupper visually inspects the beans. Some beans are then roasted in a small roaster, ground right away, and put into boiling water. The aroma of this little brew is very important. The cupper tastes the mixture after checking the aroma again—there is a special way the coffee is tasted. This is a very involved and very important process and requires a well-trained cupper. Says the NCA: “Coffees are not only analyzed to determine their characteristics and flaws, but also for the purpose of blending different beans or creating the proper roast. An expert cupper can taste hundreds of samples of coffee a day and still taste the subtle differences between them.”8
Roasting, the process by which the green beans become the heady and fragrant coffee beans we all know and love, comes next. The beans are kept constantly moving in an oven that is 550 degrees Fahrenheit. Not long after, the oily and aromatic caffeol comes out of the beans.
Grinding the beans comes next, and how fine or coarse the grind is depends on the brewing method: “The length of time the grounds will be in contact with water determines the ideal grade of grind. Generally, the finer the grind, the more quickly the coffee should be prepared. That’s why coffee ground for an espresso machine is much finer than coffee brewed in a drip system. Espresso machines use 132 pounds per square inch of pressure to extract coffee.”9
Lastly, comes the brewing, and everyone is familiar with this.
Manés Alves’s Coffee Lab International works with clients and their roasting partners as an independent Quality Assurance lab, which is crucial, according to their website: “Underlying coffee quality problems can be complex; from the integrity of the green beans, improper storage, and inconsistencies between roasts; to packaging deficiencies, blends that are out of spec, equipment issues, and lack of proper staff training.”10
Things can go wrong during any one of the steps, including things that can affect the taste of the coffee at the end of its journey. The different steps have to be done at the right times, starting with the planting.
The coffee that is planted, of course, has to be adapted to the area where it is going to grow. Some plants are, to a certain extent, more hardy and pest resistant, but they are often not the best for cupping. While they are good in terms of yield, they are not so good in terms of quality.
“After you pick the coffee, the quality is there,” Alves said. “There’s nothing else you can do to improve it . . . The only thing you can do is actually destroy it. Destroy the quality that is already there. It’s actually much easier to destroy the quality than preserve the quality.”
At the hulling stage the quality can be maintained or lost. Same with storage and with the journey from where it was produced to where it is being shipped. “Let’s say your coffee comes from Kenya,” Alves explained. “If you don’t have the coffee inside a plastic container, by the time it gets here it’s going to be at least four points lower. Imagine you score the coffee at ninety. By the time the coffee gets here it’s going to be an eighty-six.”11
Roasting is another stage where missteps can happen and affect the coffee quality. Roasting slipups are, according to Alves, a huge problem. This usually happens more frequently with small roasters that do not have the tools to figure out how to be consistent from roast to roast. Alves said that there are different color meters that can be used to show what color has been achieved when the coffee is roasted. Twenty or so years ago the least expensive of these tools would cost $20,000. Now they are available for around $2,000 and do the same thing.
Blends can also be out of spec. And what is that? A blend out of spec means that a certain type of blend has been set up with a certain type of flavor profile. If, when the coffee is tasted, the tasters find that the blend does not hit all the different points that it is supposed to hit, the blend is out of spec.
So concludes a very condensed version of the journey of coffee from where it is planted and grown to your cup. Now, about that single serve . . .
PART TWO
LOVING THE SINGLE LIFE?
CHAPTER 4
Rise of the Single Serve
Coffee consumption awareness led to specialty coffee, which eventually led to brewing coffee by the cup. A product came on the scene that had a tremendous impact on the success of single-serve coffee. It was a very compact and portable coffee brewer by Salton. Salton was known for their yogurt maker that could make yogurt overnight; it was very successful. Salton is also known for marketing the George Foreman Grill, which promised to grill in a healthier way right at home. In 2003, Salton came out with a small, compact coffee brewer that brewed one cup at a time, using a soft coffee pod.
This came about when Salton discovered there was a factory in China that had been making brewers for another company. That company had to move the enterprise to a location better suited to their needs.1 That left a factory in the Hong Kong area that knew how to make those machines but no one to make
them for, until Salton came calling. Salton partnered with this manufacturer to make the Salton machine, and in September of 2003 introduced the Salton coffee brewer to the United States. This happened simultaneously with the launch of a second generation small brewer for $249 from another company, Keurig, available at the time only on the company’s website.2 The Salton brewer was around $59 retail. This was another factor, in addition to Starbucks laying the groundwork for people to thirst after gourmet specialty coffees, in setting the stage for the success of the single-serve coffee brewer.
Because Salton had had such tremendous success with the George Foreman Grill in the early 2000s, they had a very strong reputation with retailers.
When Salton launched its single-cup brewer in the United States, they got the attention of the top executives at the large retail chains. Salton convinced them that this single-cup brewer was the next big thing and was a sure bet. But there was a slight twist in the way that small appliances were usually handled within the big stores. In most cases, appliances were bought by the buyer from the appliance department and then sold in the same department. Food bought for resale, especially in small amounts, was sold in a gourmet food section of the store. The food might be imported bread or coffees or teas.3
However, for the Salton one-cup brewer appliance to reach the customers in the strongest way, the coffee brewer and the coffee it brewed would have to be sold in the same department. Salton was putting its money where its coffee brewer was and going full force with television advertising and infomercials. They were really trying to educate consumers about the new concept of brewing a single cup of coffee using the Salton brewing system.4
This definitely paved the way for Keurig and its K-Cup, which was not yet a household name.
Nick Lazaris, president of Keurig from 1997 to 2008, notes that when a company like Salton knocks on the door and says this way to make coffee is the next new thing and they are behind it, large retailers will take notice. Salton was able to point to the success of single serve in Europe and say they were the first ones to bring it to the United States. The large retailers listened when Salton told them this new coffeemaker had to be marketed a bit differently.5
I have measured out my life with coffee pods.
—As T. S. Eliot might have put it had
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock been written today
It wasn’t any one thing or event that set the stage for single-serve coffee being taken for granted.
Coffee Enterprises, based in northern Vermont, is an independent coffee testing laboratory certified by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCA). They use advanced physical, chemical, and sensory testing equipment, and their senior staff has extensive experience in all aspects and stages of coffee production, from buying and roasting to production to retail operations. They also assist with product development and quality control for single-serve coffees.
Spencer Turer of Coffee Enterprises has experience with coffee quality testing and product development, green coffee sourcing and trading, retail marketing, menu development, and barista training. He is the chairman of the Technical Standards Committee of the SCA, a member of the Technical & Regulatory Affairs Committee of the National Coffee Association USA (NCA), and is a founding member of the Roasters Guild. He is very familiar with the advent of the single serve.6
Turer said in an interview that those in the coffee industry knew with the arrival of the single cup—when Keurig and Senseo were launching the single-serve method to brew coffee and even to some extent with the Mellita Pour-Over and the Chemex—it was all about the convenience of making one cup. “The difference,” he said, “between the Mellita and the Chemex and the Senseo, the Tassimo, and the Keurig, was when you were dealing with an automatic machine, it was and is all about convenience. Here is a convenient product that enables the user to be able to make a variety of coffee and tea beverages without having to grind and dose and worry about filter paper.” And in about forty-five to sixty seconds, you can go from not having anything in your coffee cup and badly wanting a hot beverage, to having that hot beverage in your hand.7
The beginning of the consumer version of the single serve was rooted in convenience. But very quickly—strategically speaking; it took a number of years in real time—people started to ask questions, Turer remembers. Coffee drinkers asked, “Why can’t it taste better?’” and “Why is it different than what I’m getting in my drip coffee maker?” or “Why does it taste different even though it’s the same brands? Why is it different than what I’m getting in the retail stores?”8
After everyone got used to the convenience, it became more about the quality. “Quality became a very difficult task,” said Turer, “because the hardware of the machine was already established. The size of the machine, the diameter and circumference of the cups, and the spacing, and all the money and resources that had been spent to create these machines, and how pervasive the machines are in the trade. You can’t just change them dynamically.”9
In the single-cup coffee market today, Turer believes, the holy grail seems to be how to provide a convenient product in a cost effective machine that can make a high-quality cup of coffee. Turer advises the clients of Coffee Enterprises that they need to understand the brewing extraction, the contact time, the dosage, the grind, and the filter medium. “There’s only so much space in whatever one of these disks, or cups, or packets that you can put coffee in,” Turer said. Coffee really blooms when water is added, so you can’t just put more coffee in the pod to get more body.
The size of the container is already controlled and finite, and there are a limited number of options available. Many factors have to be taken into account with the single serve—the water temperature, the little bit of pressure, the grind. “You can’t grind it too fine or the water’s not going to percolate through the grounds,” Turer explained.
Turer said they are now seeing companies that are trying to invent something a little bit different, either different technology with the brewing or just completely different dynamics for the cup. And the market is there, he emphasized. “It’s a mature market, but it’s not the definition we know from generations past, as a mature market . . . there’s still emerging growth.” In addition, the quality of consumer products today isn’t the same as the quality of consumer products from a few generations ago. “You expect your coffee maker to stop working in the twenty-four to thirty-six months, and when it does, you throw it out and you go look for the next best thing. ‘What’s the highest quality brewer I can buy in my price range?’ And if it’s something a little bit different, then you do that.”
Coffee Enterprises works with a lot of companies regarding brewing technology, and also with many companies regarding Nestlé-type pods, Keurig-type pods, and even with people trying to develop their own types of pods that are a bit different from everything else.10
There are many ways to market coffee and there are many ways for the coffee drinker to brew coffee. The single serve fills a need and therefore has a market. “It’s the way to get the coffee to the consumer and it has to be the next best thing out there. But really, the Holy Grail in single cup is, it needs to be convenient. It needs to be [an] all-things beverage so it’s not just coffee. It’s coffee, it’s tea, it’s fruit products and then if it can do other things as well, that’s great. And it has to be cost effective.” Turer points out that while coffee made using a single-cup brewer and a pod is less expensive than buying a brewed cup at a retail store, it is dramatically more expensive than buying a pound of coffee and scooping it into your old Melitta.
As we can see from the relatively high price coffee drinkers pay per cup using individual single-serve cups without batting an eye, people will still pay a premium price for a good cup of coffee and the convenience that the single serve provides.
The single serve is here to stay and has become a category of its own in the world of coffee. The National Coffee Association, founded in 1911, was one of the first trade assoc
iations for the US coffee industry. Several years ago, the NCA started issuing a separate book just for single serve and they have been publishing one every year because of strong industry interest, according to Joe DeRupo, the NCA’s director of External Relations & Communications. Interestingly enough, when they first started noticing single cup, the initial reception was very slow, to the point where they stopped tracking it for a couple of years. It didn’t seem like it was going to amount to anything, and then all of a sudden it exploded.
DeRupo said the NCA started tracking single serve as a separate category between 2005 and 2007. The percentages of those who owned a single-cup brewer increased one point each year. The momentum slowed down a bit for a few years and the NCA stopped tracking single serve as a separate category for about three years. “Then,” DeRupo added, “we started again in 2011. It was already up to 7 percent.” And every year after that, it has gone up significantly. In year—from 2011 to 2016—the figures were 7 percent, then 10 percent, then 12 percent, 15 percent, 27 percent, and 29 percent. That’s just for ownership, DeRupo noted.11
And, according to DeRupo, single serve will continue to grow: “I think it’s still evolving. From 2015 to 2016, it still increased from 27 percent to 29 percent. I don’t think it’s plateaued.”
It is a fact that single-serve coffee has pretty much changed the way we perceive coffee, and it has put a spotlight on the preference of consumers for convenience. The big move toward interest in specialty, or gourmet coffees, and enjoying the variety of different coffees that were made available in the marketplace, led up to that popularity. “We saw that happening for many years,” said DeRupo. “Now it seems that convenience is very important.”
Also, the timing was right for the single serve to be a hit. It was a way for consumers to try the many different coffee options they saw in the marketplace. Coffee lovers seemed to need as many options as they could get. The more options for having a blissful cup of coffee, the better. There could never be too many blends, roasts, brands, or other choices. Say you come upon a new coffee and want to try a few cups to help decide which roast to get. You can get a small box of their single-serve coffee to experiment with the different roasts.
