"Are we there yet?"

“Are we there yet?”

I have been involved in coffee for a relatively short period of time, really. It’s a long period of time for me, but in retrospect, it’s not much time at all and I still don’t feel I have a substantial footprint in the coffee industry, especially not in comparison to some.

However, in the short time that I have been in the industry I feel like we have covered more ground than in many, many years prior. Decades, really.

Jet-set back to 1970. Truthfully, I’m not even born yet, not even thought of for that matter. In the coffee world there is no such thing as a micro-lot. No Cup of Excellence. No barista champions or barista competitions. There is no such thing as Fair Trade Certified and certainly no Direct Trade. There is no such thing as a Synesso, no thought to PIDs and pressure profiling and there is no debate about whether we should tap the portafilter with the tamper or not. If we get really serious about it, there isn’t even a solid specialty coffee market in the US yet. We are still one year away from Pike’s Place and the birth of green circled Sirens and quite a few years away from that same corporation moving toward commercial coffee vs. specialty coffee. The life of someone in the coffee industry at this point is vastly misunderstood compared to someone in the industry now.

Back to 2009. The internet is a breeding ground for debates, information, and (coffee) social networking sites. Roasters and baristas scream in their Twits and blogs about how unfair it is that they can no longer source specific lots from farms. We have people vacuum packing their green coffee beans at origin before they are shipped to the roasting facilities in the United States. You mention La Marzocco and the first thought that comes to a discerning barista’s mind is “paddle group with variable preinfusion.” You mention Mazzer and the first thought is that of a giant Robur with electronic dosing. We have (somewhat controversial) tampers that increase the surface area of the espresso with ripples to yield a sweeter shot. Shops are spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on siphon brewing bars. Coffee shops are holding public cuppings. Coffee schools are up and running. Drip coffee airpot systems are being seen as inferior to methods such as vac pot and manual pour over. Single origin espresso is hotly debated.

We have come a long way in a short time, so I pose the question: Are we there yet?

There are certainly things that need to be fine-tuned, technologies that need to be tweaked and methods that need deeper understanding. But are we there? Is the finish line in sight? Is there a finish line at all? Of course, the obvious answer is no, and it’s the answer that I firmly believe. But with the answer “No, we aren’t done yet,” the question “What next” obviously follows. So where are we headed? What happens next?

I know for the years that I have been deeply involved in coffee, baristas have been kicking, screaming and begging for advancements in grinding technology, and that’s really what this post is about- sorry for the insanely long intro. We have conical grinders now that are putting out some fantastic coffee. We have grinders that are more or less half a gram accurate in their electronicly programmed dosing. A few years ago that term would have caused people to stop and wonder what in the world they were missing out on. Where does grinding technology go from here? Do we get water cooled counter-top grinders? Do cafe grinders get roller-grinder features?Do we get to a point where we get to control some sort of digital graph on the grinder that displays what particles, in a specific micron size, are in what percentage in the grind output? Is that even something that is necessary? We all seem to say and advise over and over that grinding, and respectively the grinder, is the most important part of the preparation. I guess the question I pose is… how do we make it better? Can we make it better? Are we there yet?

-bry