Coffee More Complex Than Wine

World Champion Barista James Hoffman


The winner of the World Barista Championship which just wrapped up in Tokyo was a Brit who believes "coffee can be more complicated than wine when it comes to taste and aroma". James Hoffman's winning signature drink combined biscotti foam, milk chocolate and a tobacco-infused cream! Way to go! Hoffman said of his concoction: "I wanted to use ingredients that have an association with copious pleasure". Sounds like my kind of guy! Congrats, James, who is off to London to open his own coffee shop.





James, by the way, was fifth place in the competition held in Bern in 2006!





How come a Starbucks' barista didn't win, I wonder... Just kidding!

Coffee as Medicine

I've finished my bowl of cereal, fruit and yogurt, have taken my vitamins, and now I'm taking my coffee. Yes, that's right, I'm "taking" my coffee. Coffee is medicine after all. It's good for your sense of well-being and in a long line of news stories about how coffee can be good for you, not bad for you, I came across yet another in this morning's LA Times. In a small piece titled "Caffeine, exercise may fight cancer" the piece reports that exercise combined with moderate caffeine consumption could help prevent the occurrence of skin cancer. In a study done by Rutgers University, NJ, the scientists found that rats could reduce the likelihood of pre-cancerous sun-damaged cells from becoming cancerous by 100% if the rats either exercised or drank caffeine. However, when both the exercise and caffeine were combined, the preventative qualities of the combo raised the efficacy to a whopping 400%

Well I should be a good case study for this. Growing up in New Zealand, like all others of my generation, I experienced severe over-exposure to the sun as a kid and carry the evidence on my skin. But I do exercise and I do drink caffeine - perhaps sometimes to excess. So if any scientists are interested in meeting me, here I am... Meantime, once you finish taking your daily dose of caffeine, don't forget to get out of that chair or up off that couch and do some exercise.

Coffee a Lifesaver

The journal Nature reported on April 1st that a technique using enzymes to convert type A, B, and AB to type O will potentially eliminate the constant shortage of blood. Blood types A, B, and AB carry proteins that cause hyperallergic responses typically resulting in death when given to people with a different blood type. Since blood type O is absent these proteins, anyone can safely be given type O blood. The idea of such antigen-stripping goes back to the early 1980s, when it was discovered that an enzyme in coffee beans removes B antigens from red blood cells.

Coffee to the rescue once again! Now I know why my blood is type O; it's all the coffee I drink!

Starbuck's Losing Its Soul

In February the former CEO of Starbuck's circulated an internal memo questioning whether or not Starbuck's is losing its soul.

Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee. In fact, I am not sure people today even know we are roasting coffee.

What soul is there when coffee is made with dial-up espresso machines and automated milk steamers? Despite the black aprons of the "master barista" at Starbuck's, there is little art left in the art of making good espresso coffee at Starbucks. But judging from those I work with, it's just as popular as ever. My belief is that it's just that people have never known any better. Experience truly great espresso drinks like you will get at the independent coffee houses in Seattle, or the cafes found the length and breadth of New Zealand, and you will understand how far Starbucks has strayed from its soul and the art of espresso-making in their drive for economies of scale. I'm all for them making a profit, but they could be doing just as good or even better if they had stuck to the art of espresso coffee roasting and brewing. Just look at the syrups and flavors that are thrown at their drinks to meet the demands of many of their customers who obviously mustn't like the taste of their coffee.

McCafes from the Golden Arches

While in New Zealand recently I saw McCafe signs all over the country (yes, the burger chain) and just found information about McCafes on the New Zealand site for McDonalds. I wonder if coffee-loving New Zealand served as a test market as I am yet to see one in the U.S. and could not turn up a similar page on the McDonald's USA site. I know you can get "premium" coffee from McDonalds in the USA, but this is simply drip coffee, but in New Zealand it's the full-blown real McCoy of espresso coffee drinks. However, the above linked story published today in the Daily Tribune from Royal Oak, MI, indicates that they may have in fact been launched in the U.S. I guess I will have to venture in to see for myself. It can only be as bad as a Starbucks after all.

Bikini baristas bring new meaning to the "Got Milk" ad campaign

One of the enduring tenets of the advertising world is that sex sells, and it seems it sells coffee quite well too. The owner of Cowgirls Espresso opened her first coffee stand near the Silver Dollar Casino in the Seattle area in 2002. Sales were good enough, but when barista Candice Law and other employees suggested doing "Bikini Wednesdays" sales doubled right off the bat. Well when you realize you're on to a good thing, why stop there? And they didn't, extending the sexy espresso theme to "Fantasy Fridays," "School Girl Thursdays," "Cowgirl Tuesdays" and "Military Mondays".

Cowgirls Espresso wasn't the first coffee shop to juice up their coffee sales with scantily clad female baristas. Sarah Araujo of Sweet Spot coffee shop claims to have started the trend. In an effort to distinguish her store from the ubiquitous competition in Seattle, she launced Tube Top Tuesdays, Wet T-Shirt Wednesdays, and Fantasy Fridays.

It seems that being a bodacious barista pays for the girls too. Typical tips in a regular coffee shop might amount to $10 to $20 a day. The bikini baristas report getting anywhere up to $200 a day! Yes, sex does sell.

I have not seen any reports yet of any stores that cater to the fantasies of the other side; women and gay men. Nope, the last time I checked in at a coffee shop, the male baristas were typically pasty white and skinny, with a bit of acne here and there, and some greasy looking hair too.

If you're ready to lick the milk off your upper lip and check out the udders on the cowgirls, visit the Cowgirls Espresso website and The Sweet Spot Cafe.

And I always thought this is what they meant by Espresso porn!

What's the "Got Milk Campaign"?

Espresso Coffee Snobs Blog is Back!

When I started EspressoCoffeeSnobs.com I also started this blog at Blogger.com. Of course I wanted to take their option of hosting the blog on my own website, but had no end of trouble when coming to publish the blog from Blogger to my website. And I wasn't the only one I discovered when I searched the Blogger forums; it was a common problem. Then I tried using a forum which I called "Your Two Beans Worth". Boy, you think email spam is bad! Try forum spam! Within days they were there: the pornographers, the pill-pushers, the weight-loss champions, the online casinos, all posting spam links to their websites. So I had to drop that too.

Well, yesterday I thought about trying again, and noticed that there were still some stray links out there to the forum and the spammers were still going at it, so dropped that idea. But when I visited Blogger I found that they have had a major re-release of Blogger and that all the issues with hosting your blog on your own website have been resolved. Yay! So I'm going to try to pick up where I left off. The thing I want most of all is to provide visitors to EspressoCoffeeSnobs.com the opportunity to respond with comments and start a conversation. Let's hope that the spammers won't attach the blog too. So I just posted a link from EspressoCoffeeSnobs to the blog, and am renaming it "My Two Beans Worth now that I given up on the forum. This new version of Blogger has options to prevent spamming, such as requiring comment posters to register and then for me to approve the comments before they get posted. It's a lot of inconvenience to you all, of course, but please appreciate that without these steps, most of the posts would simply be links to porn, casinos, drug sites, etc. I appreciate you taking the time to register and post your comments.

John

Where is my coffee?!! Has she gone to Rwanda to buy the beans?!
(Miranda Priestly played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada)

Rwanda seems to be in the news today! First of all, a piece from Sala Kannan writing for "The Sleuth", one of Agora Financials stable of investment newsletters, showed up in my inbox. The article used the growing of premium coffee beans as an example of how economies can surge in the aftermath of war.

Then later in the evening came a "Wide Angle" piece on PBS featuring the role of women in the recovery of post-civil war Rwanda. And what should be covered in one of the segments but the story of widow Epiphanie Mukashyaka who started her own coffee growing business. (You can watch the Wide Angel piece of the Rwandan woman who established a coffee growing business in the aftermath of the Rwandan massacre online).

Going back to Sala Kannan, she writes:

Chances are, your gourmet coffee comes from Rwanda...Rwanda, a small East African nation...has emerged from a treacherous internal ethnic conflict that left nearly a million people dead. After a terrible genocide ended in 1994, Rwanda established a constitution and an elected government. We can safely say that a political institution is in place. Does Rwanda have an established corporate institution? As far as coffee production goes, it does. Not only has the U.S Agency for International Development pumped $10 million into Rwanda’s coffee market to improve quality of production, it has also set up farming cooperatives.

The cooperatives provide the link between the coffee farmers and gourmet roasters all over the world. And Rwandan farmers get a fair price for their coffee. The cooperatives have done wonders for the nation’s coffee quality and its exports.
According to a New York Times article: "Maraba [was established in] 2001...[was] Rwanda’s first coffee cooperative and the initial experiment of A.I.D.’s Partnership to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda Through Linkages.

"The partnership, which is known by its acronym as the Pearl project and is directed by Timothy T. Schilling of Texas A&M University, has since made a 300 percent return on its investment, with 90 percent of its revenue being paid to farmers. Pearl has promoted the production of higher-grade coffee by organizing farmer co-ops and training their members in farming techniques, coffee processing, quality control, marketing and by building relationships directly with the roasters who buy coffee...

"Five years ago, all Rwandan coffee sold at the C-grade, or lowest-quality, price. Now, demand for fully washed Rwandan coffee (about 7 percent of the crop) far exceeds supply. ‘The emergence of Rwandan specialty coffee on the global market is stunning,’ said Michael D. Ferguson, a spokesman for the Specialty Coffee Association of America, a trade group in Long Beach, Calif. ‘Everyone inside the specialty coffee industry is excited about it.’"

USAID now has a special agreement with coffee giant Starbucks, whereby it sells premium coffee from Rwanda. The roast is appropriately called "Rwandan Blue Bourbon." Costco (COST: NASDAQ) will also start selling coffee from Rwanda later this year.

Before coffee cooperatives were established in Rwanda, farmers had little reason to cultivate coffee. In the mid/late 1990s, farmers returned their war-ravaged farms, but cultivated other crops that were cheaper and took less time to harvest. And whatever coffee was grown was of poor quality. Before the savage genocide, 60% of Rwanda’s total exports were coffee. This is a fertile land and is called the "land of a thousand hills" for a reason -- the hills, soil and climate are perfect for coffee growing. But after the genocide, Rwandan coffee exports declined to 30% of the national total. Today, coffee accounts for 30% Rwanda’s total exports and is a $35
million industry. Besides, Rwanda’s coffee is now marketed as premium quality.

So as far as coffee production goes, both political and corporate institutions in Rwanda are conducive. But is there a free market? President Paul Kagame recently liberalized his nation’s coffee trade and has made coffee exports one of his top priorities. Not only is there a free market for coffee trade in Rwanda, the global coffee market is also helping things. After years of depressed prices, coffee has now joined the global commodities boom. According to the International Coffee Organization, mild Arabica coffee sold for 80 cents a pound in 2004. Today it sells for $1.05 and coffee prices recently hit six-year highs.

Social, political, economic and global environments have all come together to lift Rwanda’s coffee industry. Its achievements are just another example of the robustness of a postwar economy. It is an example of the abundance of its land. And more importantly, it is an example of the promise of Africa...Sala
Kannan

Great to think that a country that was so ravaged by war is finding the growing of premium coffee beans as one of the ways to grow its post-war economy. I'll be looking out for the Rwandan coffee beans at Costco.

Read about the two varieties of coffee beans at EspressoCoffeeSnobs.com

New business serves coffee in the hospital. How about that! Promise me if I ever end up in hospital that you'll put espresso in my IV drip, alright!

Recommended reading: How to make all sorts of espresso coffee based drinks for your IV drip.

Indian Coffee Chain Feels the Heat

I guess many of us traditionally associate tea with India, but working as I do in the IT industry with its current mania for "outsourcing" our jobs to cheaper Indian labor that we work side-by-side with at the office, I have learned that they appear to be even bigger drinkers of office coffee, as mediocre as it is, than my American co-workers. So here's some news on the coffee scene in India itself.

Popular coffee-brands and cafe chain "Barista" is looking for a buyer. Owned by Chennai based Sterling Infotech group, Barista's 130-odd espresso bars are up for sale and is also looking for new investors.

Barista had pioneered the branded coffee culture in India. However, it had lost over to arch rival Cafe Coffee Day owned by Bangalore based Amalgamated Coffee Bean Coffee
Trading with 300 and odd outlets to its credit...more

Here's the one simple step you can take to give your espresso coffee a flavor burst. I call it my golden rule of making espresso