I blogged on this after a customer asked this question this week. She had been told that Good coffee will never need sugar. Read below and tell me what you think....A great customer of Star Gardentown Cafe - Toowoomba - was told that ‘good coffee does not need sugar’, is this true? I have to say that there is no definite answer to this one. There are times where it is a well defined ‘Yes’ and others where you wouldn’t dream of it. I guess the first question that needs to be answered is - are you putting sugar in your coffee to mask an undesirable flavour? - If this is the case, find somewhere else to buy your coffee, or learn to make it the right way!So, are you putting sugar into it just mask an undesirable flavour? If so there may be a few reasons. Has that coffee shop that you frequented for a long time one day dropped the ball in terms of the quality of coffee they serve? The biggest mistake is blaming the coffee itself. Rarely will the coffee be bad. There is a roaster somewhere that put alot of love into that blend and somewhere along the line, a barista or staff member has dropped the proverbial ball and ruined what might have been great.Take Di Bella coffee for example. They have just taken great honors in Australia’s Golden Bean awards for 2009, yet, one of my local cafes makes their coffee taste like the worst coffee ever made! The poor roaster has no control when he/she sells the beans, yet would go out of business if they refused to supply any cafe that didn’t do them justice. The making of the coffee in your local cafe is only the small final step in a much larger history in your cups life. The process - Grown, picked, fermented, sorted, bagged, shipped, roasted, blended, shipped to the cafe, ground, extracted and drank, - is lengthy enough that somewhere along the line something can foul the end result. You will find that in the roasting process, no faults should be detected and then passed on to the consumer. A good roaster will never roast a sub-standard green bean and pass it onto their customers. Likewise, a good roaster will frequently ‘cup’ their coffee to ensure that the end result in their roast is what they expected.So what can a barista/cafe stuff up? - Heaps - There is literally tons of ways to ruin a good bean in the final stages of making a coffee.* Is the whole bean stale? Does your cafe buy too much or not sell enough. Is it sitting on the shelf for way too long, it is exposed to excess amounts of air?* Once ground is it getting used straight away? Think about it - Once ground, there is A LOT more surface area for air to contact and start the deterioration. A good barista will grind to order, giving you the freshest tasting cup.* When was the espresso machine cleaned last? This would have to be the biggest fault in why your coffee is bitter, and hence why you need to sweeten it with sugar! Cleaning with chemical over night is essential (domestic machines don’t need this frequency), back flushing the system hourly if not more and cleaning up as mess (washing out equipment) is made can alter the flavour of the cup. A messy machine will kill your coffee.* How long did the extracted shot sit around until it got drank/milk poured into it? Time kills as well. and,* How long was the actual extraction of coffee? Did the barista really know what they were doing when they started making your drink?So these things - plus a whole lot more - can ruin you cup of Joe in a cafe but espresso coffees are only one way of making a good cup. What other factors can make you add sugar in the home or through other processes like siphons/plungers etc?….‘Good coffee ‘ is a wonderfully diverse medium that knows no limitations. Major factors like what extraction method - Espresso, siphon, plunger, pour over etc - will usually dictate what sort of origins of coffee are used in the process. Different countries, broken down into regions and further into farms will produce unique flavour profiles somewhat like wines. Some origins may produce naturally sweet flavours, some dry. Others will be sour and yet still some can be combinations. An African coffee can be really sweet (Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Kenyan AA) and not need any sugar as they have distinct floral and fruit nuances. In saying that though, an African coffee might give you an intense explosion of these flavours with just a small amount of sugar added. Extract an African coffee through an espresso machine and you will draw out a lot of the beans acidity making it tart on the tongue. Extract the same bean through a siphon or pour over and all that ‘pop’ of acidity will be mellowed and almost non existent, giving you great floral nuances as the beverage cools down.So, to answer Yes, to the question posed, some coffee’s like African coffee’s can be good with a bit of sugar. Just like a good chef always seasons food with salt and pepper to draw out natural flavours, a little sugar can increase the pop of flavour on your tongue when drinking coffee. A good chef will adjust the seasoning to sit the dish, adding more at the table before even tasting can tip it over the scale and start to ruin the flavour. If you are in a good coffee shop, trust your barista and try the coffee first, they might know that the blend they are using is great as it is, that milk enhances the flavour and that sugar will drown out the delicate nuances that await your palate Being that you picked a good coffee shop as well, chances are that the same barista loves what he does and he cleans his machine and knows what he is doing. Don’t pass judgment on a coffee before you taste it, sip it without added sugar first and then adjust accordingly.If you happen to be a extra tall, extra caramel, half shot coffee drinker, than chances are sipping on an espresso shot will taste awful. Intensity of flavour is obviously going to alter your preference to the final cup you drink. A good barista will know if his/her blend goes better in milk based drinks compared to straight shots. We at Star Gardentown Cafe try to offer alternatives for espresso drinkers. We know that we designed our blend for the 80% of our customers that drink milk based beverages. Therefore, we offer single origins and blended alternatives for the coffee geeks drinking it strong and black.In the end it comes down to personal preference. The biggest advice we can give though, is that if you are getting a coffee that requires more than one sugar, either find another another shop or learn to cut down on your sugar intake. Who knows, you might enjoy the flavours that you are masking (and cull your dentist bills). So, does good coffee need sugar? - Yes if you want a small amount to help draw out natural flavours, - no, if you are just using it to mask terrible coffee.
Read more…
Posted by Jesse Bladyka on October 24, 2009 at 5:16pm
The following has been copied from my blogspot photos are available there, http://banditthebarista.blogspot.com/ :I thought this blogging thing was going to be easy to keep up with, but I guess I'm busier than I thought. This month has been an exciting progression for the Coal Creek Roastery. We're awaiting the arrival of a new roaster, a Deidrich HR-1 (ours is black), which will allow us to roast samples to the same exacting standards that we roast for production. It will also allow us to experiment with different profiles and roasts without risking the loss of product. All in all, it is going to be excellent and I'm looking forward to it.We've begun to get together at the roastery for weekly Coal Creek Jams, pouring latte art, drinking beer, talking about the upcoming competition season and having a grand time. I think it's great to provide some of our newer baristi with an appreciation for how hard we work and how much fun that can be. Everyone is having a great time and it's happening most Thursday nights. If you're coming through Laramie, stop by!Excuse the lengthy preamble, the core of this blog concerns a very special cup of coffee that I've been privileged enough to consume. Hacienda La Esmeralda is a coffee farm located in the province of Chiriqui, in Southwestern Panama. They have recently revived the Geisha cultivar and have made it quite popular. Michaele Weissman chose the title of her book God In A Cup based on a description of this coffee. Each year, the farm holds an auction for the top lots of its coveted Geisha crop. This year, the top lot sold for $117.50 per pound (keep in mind it hasn't been roasted yet and there should be at least a three times margin above the green price). I did not get to taste this. I did however get to taste a lot purchased and roasted by Intelligentsia, titans of the third wave of Specialty Coffee. John was gracious enough to agree to spending $100 of the company's money on two 1/2 lb. bags of the Geisha that Intelligentsia roasts only once per week. I figured it was worth a Saturday at work to taste this stuff. I brought Emma to take some photographs and I fired up our halogen beam heater to see how the coffee fared on with a siphon extraction. The beans were beautiful, Geisha is a long, thin, canoe shaped bean, which I imagine is very difficult to roast. The roast I received was fairly consistent, with only a few discernible tips on the verge of scorching. I carefully measured 26 grams of coffee, ground slightly finer than drip, about at the number six setting of our Mahlkonig EK-43. I used 15 ounces of water and a mingle time of 55 seconds, resulting in a total extraction time of just over two minutes. Emma and I split the siphon and chatted about how it presented itself. I have tasted plenty of coffees, few have been so delicate and complex. I felt that the best aromas and flavors were present when the coffee was very hot. Intelligentsia describes the flavors as Orange Marmalade and Toasted Marshmallows. I immediately picked up on the caramel, maple syrup and brown sugar sweetness, also present was a very mild pinon nut sweetness. The coffee presented an intense fragrance, floral and tea-like. A touch of lavender and bergamot, a delicate body like a clean, Sencha green tea. The acidity was very much like oranges and kumquats. As the coffee cooled I picked up a cucumber mouthfeel and the acidity turned more toward stewed tomatoes and celery, the body retained its delicacy and acquired a bit of a black tea, pleasantly bitter characteristic. A truly elegant cup, I look forward to cupping it Monday and preparing it on our Clover, to round out my experience of the bean. I'll keep you posted on these developments.I'm currently drinking a homemade Bloody Mary. If I learned one thing when living in Wisconsin, it was how to appreciate and prepare a proper Bloody Mary. Emma and I used to spend a fair amount of time at Genna's in Madison after the weekly farmers market. They made some serious Bloody Mary's, which came with unlimited access to their extensive garnish bar, including everything from the traditional olives and celery to pickled asparagus, cheese and dilly beans. It took some practice but since moving away from the readily available, I have figured out a reliable and quite delicious recipe.The basic rules are:Do not use anything from a can, tomato juice from a can tastes tinny, and in the same vein, lemon juice that is not fresh will add a tinny flavor to what should be one of the best cocktails on earth.Also, you need cheese. Bloody Mary's are completed by a very sharp Cheddar, I'm consuming a Cabot Private Stock from my lovely home state of Vermont. It gives balance to the spiciness of the drink and if you add some Wood's Cider Jelly, essentially a reduction of unpasteurized apple cider, it sweetens and adds complexity to the entire experience.Two words as important as "bloody" and "mary" are Garlic and Horseradish. There is nothing worse than a Bloody Mary with no spice. That being said, it's easy to overdo the garlic or add so much horseradish that you end up with shrimp cocktail sauce. I find one small clove of garlic and 1/2 tsp. of horseradish per serving is adequate.Infuse! I use Ketel One vodka, infused for at least a week with dried celeriac root. This thickens up the vodka and again steers you away from the metallic flavors that can come from the citrus, the tomato, or the vodka.Salt the rim. No excuses, even better is to grind some pepper into your rim salt and rim with salt and black pepper.Finally, BEER CHASER. There is nothing that can do as much for a Bloody Mary as a beer chaser. The drink was designed to bridge morning and afternoon, breakfast and lunch, and you must, must, must, accompany a Bloody Mary with a beer chaser. A mild amber ale will do, I'm using Fat Tire today, a pilsner also works quite well, many weekend mornings I'll crack a PBR to do this job.Thanks for humoring me and reading this, more to come soon!
Read more…
