Drip coffee is not only the coffee made of the drip machines, but also vacuum pots, French press, and so on. It is good for brewing single orgin beans, specially for arabica beans.Theoretically, all brewing tools can make the same drip coffe with proper management and control. Essentially, they are same.Espresso should use specially processed beans, and can be very well tasted. Although in several countries, all cafes serve only espresso drinks, not drip coffee any more. I do believe that drip coffee can be another choice.Same as espresso, one has to make drip coffee well. For example, *$s has its drip coffee much deep roasted and so all their drip coffee has "burnt" taste. Is that a difficult thing to know to solve? They must have their "experts" for roasting, but that simple mistake kept till now. What is wrong with them, or maybe the problem comes from the whole coffee industry.Another example is a cafe of one German chain, in Beijing. As franchised, the owner was trained for roasting because they all have to buy a Probat 5kg roaster for their shop. But, they were not trained for coffee brewing, neither coffee knowledge. When they want me to taste their single origin beans, they made it by a small superauto machine, and made a caffe lungo, to about 120 ml. Is that because the German company would care of training them well, or they do the same in their own shops?If drip coffee can not be well made, it may disappear for sure. So, try to improve drip coffee if you do like it or even love it. In our local market, most drip coffee are drinkable but never taste good. Probably, they want to make it bad, but not able to do it as bad as their espresso. Poor guy, they need a big "holloware" to "boil" the beans, not even grounds.
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I was going to say something about this problem, but soon I found a post in some forums about it. The guy who made that post remain in that forum on in Feb of 2007, and dispeared totally after that.It was clearly stated that "we would concentrated in the quality of the drinks, but not the paintings", or similar. It was not due to the creater of the forums, but the participants to get "those" people having different opinions out of that forum, and shut up to talk about their own opinion about coffee and this duty, or passion or work.I had recognized that I am not alone, but those had been kicked out of the sights and hearing.In Chinese language, we used to say that "to better show on the perfect bases", that means that one can make a some very good things in a better look or something. If the shots are perfect, one can make it in a better look. But, the fact is normally not this as we all know around the world. We are still in a very low developing level of understanding espresso and its brewing skills, as well as its quality standards. Not even a single language to talk about different coffee drinks.But, never try to define the tastes, it simply not possible.I do not do the latte art almost, but train people how to prepare for it and how to practise for it, if necessary and they would. I spent a lot of time to practise of brewing espresso and find problems and solve the problems. I would not practise for latte art, and I do believe it takes a lot of time from practising brewing espresso.I do not do latte art, not even brewing espresso for myself to enjoy. Although I know how to do it, I do not fix a set of machines, grinders, blends and working status for the machines, so that I am not experienced to make it perfect very soon. From our trainees, I can get a better one to enjoy.Suppose I spent a lot of time to practise the latte art, I am sure I won't have enough time to think about espresso and its brewing.For example, I used as firstly a computer in 1986 and bought my first notebook computer in 1992, and set up a forum about using of application softwares in 1997-98, which is still there and very active without my attention from many years ago, but I never be enrolled into software programming, neither coding.Many people can learn to make latte art perfectly, but not many people can really understand espresso, and set up a new and well organized theory about coffee. So, that is what I like to do.Recently, I had new trainee, who had see a lot of message about those rules and undestanding of brewing espresso from websites, forums, and books (all books in Chinese he can find), and so on. After my course of our coffee theory, he understood why we are right and why others' are wrong. How can I convince him? I am not a magic teller, but only tell the trueth, and the reason, and practise until to make a shot.Tamping force? Theoretically, he understood, and practically he experienced it. So, for him, there is no way to refuse to believe us. We did not hide your opinions aside, but telling them all directly. They can even try different ways until they find the trueth.The "Golden Rules" are printed on a large board and attached on the wall in our practicing room. For each item, we have our own explanation and our trainees can see it every time when they are practising.What do we really expect?
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After years of development of Coffee and Espresso Theorey and their brewing skills, Kaffa Cafe is ready to go for its commercial business.Where can we go? Many!Trianing of baristas, cafes, supply of machines and distribution of coffee beans, and so on, as usual. And, we also have something else to do, which are mainly related to coffee.While it is organized, we have time left, at least for myself to do something else.What can I do for this time? First, I am writing my book of "Kaffa Handbook for Baristas", and mainly concentrated in the contents of psirits & cocktails, and other soft drinks.What else? Today, I have got an idea. I remember that someone told me that the Fusion of cuisine is not really defined yet, till now. I do not know whether it is true or not. If anyone have any idea, please let me know and have some further information about it.While the world is getting smaller and smaller, people have chances to learn and to try different cuisines around the world. Like Chinese people about Sichuan cuisine, it is loved by some people, but avoided by others. It is too hot, or spicy. Someone is trying to make a new version of it, but not quite succeed yet. It is something we can do for many others, I suppose.First step, I have to know more about it.
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For the top level of those coffee professionals, we may be at the similar level for the quality of espresso drinks.But, most people cannot make others to do the same, or even better coffee drinks. It is mainly due to the understanding about espresso and its brewing skills.As I said once, we can train about 30 - 50 people in 15 days, if there are enough people coming.Someone said that, they can do many more. Does it mean that they can have those people to make their cafes and the coffee drinks great? OK, let us make a simple calculation.Suppose they can train 80-100 people, then it would be > 150 people per month, and 1800 people per year. How many cafes they can have? it is probably 500 cafes? Or an half of them? In three years, their cafes will cover the whole country and improve their local coffee market totally. Does it happened somewhere?For us, the difficulty is mainly too few people who want to be trained, or know how to choose a right place to be trained. There are indeed many trainers here. If one care enough to visit some of them, and taste their coffee drinks, they can easily find that we are better. But, most people do not. Specially for those young people, they chat with others on the internet and go with them, without careful searching.On the other hand, our trainees are mostly the potential investors for cafes, only few would work as barista. They are mostly high educated and know how to choose the right one from several training places. So, the number of "high qualified cafes" are still small, but continuously increasing. For last year, it was about less than ten, but for this year, it is expected to be around 20-30 for the whole country.As many people knows, we are extremely different from the world coffee industry and those professional organizations. But, our theory really works well. Do you want to give it a try?If someone would have our "barista training" set up for other countries, we can give the best condition for cooperation, because the globel market is so huge and we cannot cover it all. We also expect to improve the quality level of the world coffee industry. So, we need your help.
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For years after I joining the website and forums abroard where we can meet the baristas, home-baristasm, and coffee professionals, we had been still alone for the good coffee and espresso drinks.In Chinese phrases, we say that it is the coldest when you are at the high level of development. It is what we have to be, and let us be there.I cannot conclude that the effects for the trainees from other training of baristas, while for us, it is so nice to have more and more trainess to have their own cafes opened aorund different cities in China. And for those who follow our suggestions, their cafes must have the high quality espresso drinks from the first day of their openning. No more time needed.After two opened in Hainan by one of our trainees, now one is going to open in Shenzhen, and another one is in Harbin, again, following another which was opened a couple of years ago.In Guangzhou, the coffee market is going down, and one can see only the cafe closed, not opened. The next wave will come after the new cafes opened by our trainees in near future.A couple of years ago, I and our colleagues were worried about this, due to those cafes with rather poor coffee drinks are opened fast, to decades of cafes in a year. But now, the market is down and everybody is quiet, and looking at the coffee market without investing any. In this case, our trainees' cafes are going to open one by one, steadily.Go, go, go, Kaffa Cafe is going, without any respects and worries from those who used to drink coffee and may know more about coffee, and good in business in this free market. We are practicing a new, or maybe in fact, the oldest business spirit for success.While everybody say NO, some people are copying from us but in terms of many different sources like taiwan and abroad. Our standards are also going to the people, the baristas, and the cafes finally. The world is changing, and the earthquake may occor some day.Recalling to the posts in the beginning of 2006, we knew only that we are learning. But, one day, we were surprisingly to find that we are just in front. Why the world is going so slowly?Wait, and see. What will happened, in near future.
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(Peter Tam, Kaffa Café)After years of learning and understanding about coffee, we had formed our own understanding, or even we call it coffee theory. Although we cannot be sure if it can be called a full established theory or not, we do have our own understanding about coffee, espresso, and many things related.Recently, we heard about a speech about coffee, specially about espresso, who is famous in the science of coffee and world coffee industry. We do not mean to offend neither to be rude to the expert, but we would let people know what we think about coffee and its science, in our mind.There are several points , which I would discuss here, with you, all the readers of this article. If anything wrong, you can let us have your comments and opinions, which are mostly appreciated.Let’s start.Question 1) Is it possible to know coffee well in terms of analytical chemistry?It is mainly described in a book about espresso and its chemical analysis for its tastes and brewing results. Although one can find out some of the components in espresso drinks, it is almost impossible to understood beans, as it is a kind of organic material and so complex as any other organic materials. As general understanding, I suppose, no organic materials can be well understood in terms of analytical chemistry in details of its components and deep into its molecule structure.I had no experience of other industries, but know something about the Chinese traditional medicines, they are mainly herbs, minerals, entrails, and so on, all are organic materials. The complex of Chinese medicines is more complex due to the organic structure of the human’s body and their organs. As one may know that, the traditional way of preparing Chinese medicines is boiling in a crock or similar. It tastes bitter, some of them are very bitter. I is the reason why very young people never like it, and Chinese people used to say that, good medicine tastes bitter and good advice is harsh to the ear.Suppose we had found some tastes is composed of mainly something at ratio of 50% or more, can we be sure of its key influence or not? It is well known in organic chemical industry that the influence of a “catalyzer” is very important and even the key of the right results of a chemical reaction.As in modern Chinese medical industry, people try to concentrate the Chinese traditional medicines and get 70%, 80%, or more of the components, and drop the most part of the water and very few (in ratios) of others, the results are usually in much loose of the effects, if not all. In fact, they loose all effects for most of those examples. It can be a reference for us, as we are trying to understand of coffee, another organic material.Question 2) The deeper the roast, the more the beans loose its tastes!“The deeper the roast, the more the beans loose its tastes!”, yes, it sounds quite right and even great. But, we can also think of it in another way. Try to smell the green beans, and you can be sure that it does not have any smell like coffee. The smell of coffee only comes after the beans are roasted to certain level, so as its tastes. Considering the complex of smells and tastes of coffee, we can suppose that their smells and tastes comes out more or less at different level of roast. If they are much more “over” roasted, some of the smells and tastes can be killed.But, what is the standards? We can only find it by experiments, I suppose. Based on our general understanding about coffee and Coffee Science, we can never get it in terms of analytical chemistry protocols. We can generally speaking about over- and under- roasted, reference to the “standards”, but we do not really know the “standards”, the reference point.Question 3) Water temperature for brewing coffeeAs he said, to brewing drip coffee, one use boiling water, but for espresso, they use only water heated to 88℃ or 90℃. It is simply not true, so we can be sure as any body else.People well know that, one can never use boiling water to brew coffee. Otherwise, the coffee grounds will be burnt. For any brewing tools around the world, whether drip coffee or even Arabic coffee, they are designed not to make the water boiled.As one of the very simple example, one can use the hot water from the espresso machines to brew the coffee in a French press. Does it leave more flavors or not? Surely not. The difference between drip coffee and espresso is the water pressure, not the water temperature, or to say the combined results of water temperature and water pressure.Question 4) Does it work to lengthen the lasting time of after-taste by pressurizing the beans, and why?I would like to know any research work and the paper to discuss about such a result.It is Kaffa Café(3/27/2008)
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