Shipping to:
“It’s his baby”.
These three words may be the most understated description to Alan Adler’s decision to retain AeroPress Inc., the company he founded after coming up with a ‘better way’ to brew coffee. This led to the birth of arguably one of the most popular home brewing apparatuses today, the AeroPress.
The AeroPress Movie, produced by the gents over at European Coffee Trip, breaks down the story of how the AeroPress came to be; from the device’s humble beginnings in Palo Alto, to its annual celebration at the World AeroPress Championships.
The 45-minute documentary, available to download on the official movie website, regales coffee lovers and curious folk alike with Alan Adler’s quest of making a better cup of coffee.
The film jumps across various interview segments of Adler, as well as interviews and stories from Tim Wendelboe and Tim Varney (who started the World Aeropress Championships), industry leaders such as James Hoffman and Kyra Kennedy, and 2017 World Aeropress Champion Paulina Mickza.
It is quite straightforward in detailing the history of the AeroPress as told by Adler, and the film is interspersed with accompanying graphics, oftentimes feeling less like a documentary and more of a casual short. The film provides for easy viewing and, just like the AeroPress, prefers to keep things simple for its audience.
A funny highlight of the film arises when it is revealed that Adler does not subscribe to the different recipes made by various AeroPress users. Instead, he insists that people always prefer the coffee that he brews himself.
On a personal note, after having competed at several local AeroPress Championships myself, it was interesting and entertaining to see how it all started. It was especially humbling to see how the championship has grown and evolved from the cupping room of Tim Wendelboe in Oslo, to the global event it has become today. Among the many coffee documentaries out there, the AeroPress Movie is a considerably light choice, with less of a focus on technicalities and more of an appreciation for keeping things simple.
The AeroPress movie is perfect for anyone, not just AeroPress owners or coffee enthusiasts; although it could be said that the documentary was designed for a specific target market. It can be argued that the film is required viewing for any die-hard AeroPress user, but for anyone looking to see the fun side of the coffee world, this film certainly does the trick.
The AeroPress has already achieved cult status as a brewer for all, and who would’ve thought that this home favorite was born in the lab of a toy maker.
“I certainly didn’t dream it was possible.”
Neither did we Alan, neither did we.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye
Header Photo by @werb.coffee
Coffee culture is weaving its way into more and more homes, especially during these times. Media consumption is at an all-time high, and the rise of the “coffee influencer” is expanding its reach to cater to those who want to stay updated with industry news, bean and equipment reviews, or tips on how to make a better cup!
If you’re a budding home barista, or someone who just wants to be updated with everything and anything coffee-related, we’ve listed down several coffee professionals who are definitely worth your Like and Subscribe. Check them out!
James Hoffmann / Youtube
James Hoffmann is the 2007 World Barista Champion, co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters in the U.K., and author of The World Atlas for Coffee—definitely no stranger to the coffee scene.
In just three years, his YouTube channel has amassed a wide range of content that appeals to both the budding brewer and the seasoned barista. Even someone with just a sliver of interest about coffee is bound to find something informative or entertaining on his YouTube channel.
Come for: Product Reviews, Recipes, Tutorials and Guides, Coffee Trends
@junichi_yamaguchi / Instagram
Love latte art? Then @junichi_yamaguchi is the man to follow on the ‘gram.
Junichi Yamaguchi has seen much success in the realm of visual coffee art, winning the Coffee Fest Latte Art Championship in 2014. If the Ballerina pattern is your favourite form of latte art, then you have Junichi to thank for popularising it.
Bless your Instagram feed with beautifully-poured cups, mouthwatering canelé photos, and café life at Junichi’s @here.kyoto. The reverence to this marriage of coffee and art is evident in every well-composed (and perfectly-poured) photo.
Come for: Latte Art, Design Inspiration
Scott Rao is one of the most influential coffee thinkers in the industry. His books and classes have inspired many to look past the old and dusted rules of coffee-making, in favour of an approach that involves mixing technical concepts with practical application.
While he is better known as a consultant for café and roasting businesses, his blog contains insightful nuggets of coffee wisdom about brewing and roasting for the advanced learner.
Come for: Coffee Roasting Tips, Brewing Concepts, Industry News
Seattle Coffee Gear / Youtube
Everyone has their favourite auntie, and Gail Williams is ours.
Getting into home espresso could be daunting, but Gail breaks that wall down with her undeniable charm and humour that she sprinkles in every Seattle Coffee Gear review. You don’t have to be in the market for an espresso machine. These videos are informative, entertaining, and wholesome at best.
Sadly, Gail recently retired from her role, but she has left a decade’s worth of content that will undoubtedly be enjoyed for years and generations to come.
Come for: Espresso Machine Reviews, How-tos, Coffee Q&As
This may only be a handful of personalities who've influenced and inspired the coffee scene with their valuable contributions and insights. We are sure there are many others out there, and we'd like to know who your favourites are in the comments section below!
Words by Jon Choi @theheadbean
Most of the recipes in the Morning Journal are inspired by the flavour profiles of the capsules available in the Morning Marketplace.
Despite these flavour notes and profiles taking the form of coffees, we still believe that one can take inspiration from so much more—a favourite restaurant, a new food trend, or a television show.
Morning Renditions is a new series that aims to flip the script to create (or re-create!) coffee recipes inspired by both classic and modern pop culture.
And because we’re kicking this series off during the spooky season of Halloween, our first recipe is about everyone’s favourite fictional cannibalistic serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Hannibal is portrayed as sophisticated and cultured, with refined tastes in art, music, and food. He does not bore, loves to amuse, and is a smart talker—essentially the perfect dinner guest (provided he didn't eat you after). Numerous scenes show Hannibal meticulously preparing beautifully-plated meals from his victim's flesh, and probably the most notable example is his admission of eating a census taker's liver "with some fava beans and a nice Chianti".
One of Hannibal Lecter’s favourite pairings, from Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Inspired by his love for gourmet ingredients and his penchant for food pairings, we've created a gruesome-looking dessert that is both 'trick' and 'treat'. Just in time for your Halloween party, come sink your teeth into Hannibal's "Liver" Pudding.
This recipe is also inspired by soy pudding desserts that are common across Asia. The pudding base resembles a blood-drained liver and is made with our favourite soymilk and some gelatin powder. In place of fava beans are red beans, a commonly-used topping, which also amps up the gore factor. For the brown sugar syrup, we've swapped out the water for a Kenyan espresso from Roastworks Coffee Co., which has a boozy and fruity profile—much like Hannibal's favourite wine.
Hannibal's "Liver" Pudding (Serves two)
Ingredients:
Pudding Base:
Red Bean Paste:
Coffee Sugar Syrup:
Preparation:
Recipe by Jon Choi @theheadbean
In efforts to better connect the coffee roasters with you, the coffee drinkers, we are embarking on a new series - 'Roaster on Roster', where we feature our partner roasters on the MORNING marketplace and spend some time catching up with them about their projects, inspirations and also their lives outside of coffee.
First in line on our 'roster' is Patrik Rolf of April Coffee Roasters.
A few months ago, we jumped on a video call with Patrik to have a chat with him and among other things, check up with him on how things are in Copenhagen, the experience of opening a coffee store in the midst of a pandemic as well as his other passion projects (hint: April Coffee Brewer).
About the Roaster
Patrick Rolf is the founder of April Coffee Roasters based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He started his journey in Coffee with Da Matteo, spent two years as Head of Roastery at Five Elephants in Berlin and was a Brewers Cup winner in Sweden as well as the runner-up for the 2019 World Brewers Cup Championship.
Leon: Patrik, how are things and what is the COVID situation like now over in Copenhagen?
Patrik: I think the situation at the moment is fairly within control. In Europe, overall, it's moving in the right direction. We were one of the first countries in Europe to quarantine so we got in quite early, from mid March to the end of April where not many people went out and there were restrictions.
After that, it kind of opened up and from the middle of June, it was almost business as usual. There are still some restrictions but it's actually working fairly okay. I think the main challenge now is just the lack of tourism.
L: How has this affected your business directly?
P: I think it's affected us in a few different ways. First of all, we're a wholesale company in the sense that we sell all around the world, and different markets have shut down at different times. I feel that now we're back on track. There are a lot of companies that have it a lot worse than we do.
L: We understand that you used to visit origins quite often, and so from now henceforth, how do expect for it to be different?
P: Obviously now it's not the time to go to origin, so we haven't been traveling at all like we did. We did a few trips late last year - Ethiopia, Kenya, Costa Rica early in the year (which we always do), so that's fine. We did have a few scheduled trips for this time in the summer to Ecuador, Burundi, Brazil and a few other places, which we canceled. It is fine because everyone understands and we're doing it virtual now instead. Everything is online, we do zoom discussions with our farmers, we get videos from the farms and we take samples, so actually very little has changed.
Of course, it's nice to go and visit them. But I mean, if this whole COVID-19 has told us anything, it is that online is still a pretty solid way to communicate.
L: It's quite interesting now that you mentioned, because I used to go to origin quite a bit but now I find myself speaking to the farmers even more and having phone calls with them on WhatsApp, FaceTime, and I don't think I have spoken to them as often as pre-COVID.
P: I mean, humans are an inherent social race, right? We're social animals and I think this whole COVID-19 has highlighted that quite clearly, as in how people communicate more diversely, and almost more than before, because they found a way of communicating or being social.
There's been a lot of discussions going on about what will happen post-COVID, as to if more people will stay in the rooms and just do online conversations. But I think social interaction is never going to be enough. Just meeting someone, physically, is so important for us, so as a species, we're going to continue doing that.
Nevertheless, interesting times and again, it's always like this, with every disaster it will bring about positive and negative things so there's definitely some good stuff coming out of this whole period as well.
L: So, Patrick, just a side question, because everybody knows you are into coffee, the big question is, were you always into coffee, what were you doing before coffee and what got you into coffee?
P: I started in coffee about eight years ago, and started because of Da Matteo in Gothenburg. I was just a regular in their coffee shop and was doing some consultations regarding marketing and business development with a company I had together with the founder of da Matteo - Matts.
So I’m in coffee because of one person more than anything else and it's a person called Matts Johansson, who started Da Matteo. He was and is a huge inspiration for me today as well and if I didn’t meet him, I would never have ended up in coffee because he introduced me to everything to do with coffee.
I competed in coffee before I started working with coffee as well. I competed in a barista cup and that was very much because of him as well, because he allowed me to hang out in their lab to train.
I got into coffee because my idea at the time (which definitely has changed) was that coffee was very quality focused, that is was very craft-focused and authentic. I had an idea that people cared a lot about what's going on and how they can make stuff better. Not sure if I believe that today, but it doesn't really matter because I'm on a different path. That is basically the short story of it all.
L: I think everybody got into coffee in a certain way because it helped craft a certain part of their career or just meeting people. Meeting people for me was actually the most important thing in coffee.
L: Anyway, I'm gonna soldier on with the questions, because there's quite a bit. We can talk about one of your projects - the April coffee store and showroom. With most of your brand and customer base being very widespread globally, what made you open up a store in Copenhagen, in the midst of a pandemic? And obviously, about this controversial statement you mentioned a few times about how the world doesn't need another coffee shop or roastery.
P: Which I still hold very true to that. For us it is a daily challenge to justify our existence in this industry. Which is why we try to do the things we do.
The coffee store came out of a few things. So initially, because of COVID, very early on, when people started to understand that this will become a thing in Europe, I had some quite interesting discussions with Maxwell in February about this - we kind of saw this coming.
When we went into quarantine here in March, the industry, from one day to another just became so negative. People had a lot of these negative thoughts but I wanted to go out of the quarantine time to have done something positive, because I don't see a reason for why any situation in life should just be negative, it can be both positive or negative at the same time.
So we signed a contract for this space, right in the middle of the quarantine, and spent the duration of the quarantine building it, it took about a month and a half. So one, because we need this industry to also display that we can do positive stuff in the midst of a pandemic and I'm convinced that when we get out of this, people still have this need of social interaction, we have a need of interacting as well, as a company.
Also because, as you say, we've been very international from day one, and we're going to continue being that but we also want to be more local and we want to support the city that we're in.
Now we're interacting with the people of Copenhagen on a daily basis. Plus, we always had so many people traveling to Copenhagen, wanting to meet us, but our roastery has always been off limits and we don't accept visits. So it's cool to finally have a space where when people travel in and they want to try our coffee, we can tell them to come by our shop and we’ll brew some coffees for them. So rather than doing a coffee shop, it’s more like creating an April living room, where you can come and hang out with us and try some of our coffees.
L: What type of customers walk into your store? Are they existing customers or new people that you meet?
P: Mainly Danish, of course, but it's a good mix. In Denmark or especially Copenhagen, we have a lot of very quality-focused people within the food and beverage world. The restaurant scene in Copenhagen is quite developed. So we have a lot of people that are interested in food and beverage from before, we also have our neighbours on the street.
There are a lot of people who have never interacted with April before. Even though we are established in the coffee world we have a lot of people that have never heard about us before that walked into our doors
L: What was the inspiration behind the living-room format for the April Coffee store?
P: Back to the question where you mentioned in the beginning that the world does not need another coffee shop and the way I see it is that we did not create another coffee shop but we are actually creating an experience that you don't get anywhere else.
One, because we serve 100% coffee, there's nothing else. Two, because of the design and the feel of that place. We teamed up with one of the most established Danish furniture designers - House of Juhl, on all of our interior.
This is not your average coffee shop. We are trying to create an experience.
It's just a space where you come for the experience more than anything else and then hopefully you get to taste some really, really, really good coffee.
L: The second project that I would like to talk about is your April Coffee Brewer. Can you tell us more about what this product is about and also how your experience was launching this new product into the consumer market?
P: For the April Brewing kit we had one very simple goal in mind, and bear in mind, we haven't succeeded with that goal yet, but it was that I wanted to win a World Championship. A part of that was also to bring something else to the table at the Brewers Cup.
It's been a discussion for a long time but the Brewers cup feels more like a sourcing competition rather than a brewing competition. It's so much about the green coffee you're working with more so than anything else. I wanted to change the focus there and actually bring a brewer that I created myself to emphasise the brewing aspect of the competition.
It's been a three year process. I first brought it to Brazil in 2018 where I had the highest compulsory but then one of the judges thought I had poured too little coffee in his cup but I didn't say much about it.
So the thing with the brewing kit and what we improved in Boston was that we had the highest score by far. In the final, we were four points higher than anyone else, but the Chinese girl had a stronger compulsory than I had so she ended up winning by 0.2 points.
When you prepare a flatbed brewer versus a cone brewer, you'll realise that in the colder temperatures (and the colder temperatures are very important when you compete), the cone brewer is going to create a more acidic taste experience that is not as balanced as a flat brewer. A lot of people when they compete, if you look at their score sheets, they start with quite high points at the hot temperature, but then the judges will cross over your score and write something lower after, because the attributes in the temperature changes doesn't benefit the cup.The judges will taste your cup of coffee for the last time in the lower temperature as well. So that needs to be the best experience of the cup.
A lot of the focus with the brewing kit was to make an experience that maximises the taste quality of the mid to lower range (temperatures) in the cup and you do that by creating a bit of harmony and structure, with a better mouthfeel to the coffee as well, making everything fit together a bit. That was the goal.
It took us about three years to do it with ten prototypes. It was always important for me that we're not launching this product before we proved that we can do good stuff with it and I think second place in the World Championship was kind of the tipping point there where it's like, “Okay, we've got the highest cup-score in the world championship, we got a silver medal (we wanted a gold medal, but that's how it is - come back for that later on)”, then it was time to launch it.
It's been a great experience. It's been challenging, because COVID happened the month before we were supposed to launch. So it's been a bit disruptive to our production lines but apart from that it's been a good experience.
L: Let's talk about your capsules, your coffee line. What was the tipping point for you to decide to use this Nespresso compatible format to share your coffee?
P: It was the fact that at a point when I tasted Nespresso for the first time, many years ago, instead of saying “this tastes off”, “it’s not nice”, “I don't like this”, “It's not quality” etc. So most people kind of disregarded it as just something that Nespresso does. But whenever I taste coffee products I don't like, I get excited.
It's the same that we have this cold brew line but I don't like cold brew. So instead of saying, we're never going to make cold brew, we say how do we do a cold brew that April likes - likewise with the capsules. Generally capsules didn’t taste good, they had extractions issues, and a lot of materials issues (where everything was plastic in the beginning).
Then we asked ourselves, “How do we do a tastier one?”. That was the only incentive. Business wise, it didn't really make any sense back then. We pushed a bunch of money into trying to make a tasty version of a capsule and it’ll be years before we recover the money we invested into making the capsules the way that we do.
I looked at Nespresso, the same way I do at La Marzocco and you guys have understood that as well right? Because you guys are creating your own machine. What Nespresso did was to create a brewing system, right? They didn't create a capsule, they created a brewing system - a machine that you can brew some kind of coffee beverage with. To me that was amazing, because now we have a platform and you creating another machine now, which I hope is better. But I think the format of a capsule is amazing, it's consistent, fast and tasty (if you do it well).
I think the biggest struggle with selling coffee as a product if you’re talking about coffee beans, it's the fact that someone needs to brew it. You sell them a bag of espresso beans, they need to take it home, start up their machine, dial into the grinders and I would say 9 out of 10 times our coffee doesn't taste the way that it should, because someone else has to brew it. Which is what makes it difficult. Whereas with a capsule, we can guarantee 100% of the time that our coffee will taste exactly like we intended it to taste. It's a fantastic product.
So I'm super excited and have been for years since we started this whole product and I feel we're getting on top of it. Not convinced still, being as small as we are, it's a hard product to push because it's really a volume product.
L: Yeah, we get quite a bit of requests for your capsules from this part of the world, especially the Costa Rican Volcan Azul. Predominantly in Singapore, people prefer a bit more chocolate and then if it's honey and fruit in a way where you still have chocolate people will likely reach out to those coffees. Do you roast your coffee differently for capsules?
P: Yes, which you have to. We can’t go into too much specifics but the thing is for this brewing format, the temperatures and pressures are quite different from any other type of extraction. So, you can't really roast it the way you normally do, like how a lot of people take their espresso roast and put it into capsules.
Nespresso machines or your machine are not La Marzocco machines. It's not nine bar pressure, nor the same flow rate so it goes without saying that it's a different type of brewing and a different type of brewing requires a different kind of roasting. It's just like how we differentiate the espresso and filter roast where it doesn't make any sense to make one roast profile for both filter and espresso because you have a pressurised brewing method and an unpressurised brewing method with two vastly different flow rates. There's no way that the optimal version of a roast will be awesome for both. It might be good for both but if your goal is to make the best version of a coffee, having the same roast profile is just lazy.
L: Yes, it's absolutely important that we are aware that there is no one roast fits all for the brew method or the way you enjoy your coffee. So that's why we exist and why there’s specialty coffee. Moving on to the next topic. We observed that all your projects are very design centric. We'd like to know where your inspiration comes from? We know that you love to do things that infuse a local craft, a certain artisan craftsmen or certain ceramists, whether from Japan, Korea etc.. We want to know what's your inspiration and how do you come to these design decisions when it comes to April.
P: First of all, thank you for acknowledging that it looks good and there's effort in the packaging. But the key thing is that we put the beauties on the inside first. The idea is that inside comes first, so what’s within the capsule is substantially more important than the packaging of the capsules. So the relationship between quality of taste of coffee and design, is that we don't care about design, taste quality first.
Then when it comes to design, as we do with most things in April, all the design is made in-house. So we have two partners that we work with, a guy called Max Duchardt in Berlin, and then an illustrator called Ryoto Miyaki in Tokyo. Those guys are the ones that are doing the design work for our brand. It's very little of me interfering, so I can't take any credit for that, because it's really just their version of April. We let them do their thing but obviously I also have a clear direction and idea of how I want it to look.
Part of the foundation of April is that when we work with partners it’s the same as when we work with the farmers - we don't go to our farmers to tell them how to farm coffee or how to process coffee. We choose farmers that have a specific integrity in their taste and their approach because their coffee is amazing. We are not farmers, we are coffee roasters, so it’s the same thing with design, we choose people that are very skilled at what they do and then we let them do their thing and then we decide in the end whether it fits us or not but we would never go in and micromanage someone that is very good at what they do.
L: Patrik some people might also be interested to know that other than coffee, what other hobbies or passions do you have?
P: Inspiration-wise nothing really came out of coffee. Linking back to how I started in coffee, and my assumptions about the coffee industry, the longer I am in the industry, the harder it is to find that quality, coffee is a hobby science at best so I am not convinced that coffee is getting the respect it deserves by professionals. So a lot of my inspiration I find are from other industries.
In terms of interests, I have been studying philosophy for a few years now. I have always been interested in any kind of physical activity, which in my world translates to lifting stuff in the gym. Which basically sums up to training my body and mind. Meditations in various forms which in my world translate to journaling, reflection, walking and being alone in quiet (without any form of distractions).
I just appreciate quality in general, I find people in Copenhagen and around the world that do quality stuff and go and meet them. One of our coolest features in our coffee store is this indigo-dyed curtain with the April logo on it that is dividing the two shops - that is hand-dyed by these awesome indigo farmers in Japan. So that is kind of like a hobby and interest of mine.
L: Are you reading something interesting now?
P: I have a few books that I read continuously everyday that are more so a reminder, which would be Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ (which is also something I travel with). Very recently, I am re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘Talking to Strangers’ - super interesting especially with the Black Lives Matters movement that has been active recently, it’s a great way to get a perspective on things.
There is something else that I have been interested in: There is a foundation in Canada, Munk Foundation, where it’s a very wealthy family that have started something called the ‘Munk Debates’. It is a relatively old concept but I’ve recently discovered it because they have now a series of interviews regarding COVID-19. They have historians, economists, thinkers on 10 episodes discussing how the world will look like after COVID-19.
L: Last question - What is your morning ritual/routine like?
P: I wake up at 5.30am every single day and after taking a shower I am out the door at 6am. What I like drinking now is actually tea, I am really into cold extractions with tea, so I take that with me in the morning and walk out the door to go for a walk for about 30 minutes - just walk without doing anything or listening to anything. It’s a great way to start your mind, I try not to think about anything. After that I go to the coffee store, usually there at around 7am and then have my first coffee at eight o’clock. Today my first coffee was a pourover made by Jo here at April, a Red Honey Processed Gesha from Volcan Azul.
L: That’s a fancy morning coffee!
P: I should say that our store is fancy, we are doing good stuff. There’s no average qualities here and we only bring in the best we can get.
L: Patrik before we leave I would like to say thank you so much for being on Roaster on Roster. We’d like to thank you for your positivity, your dedication to quality, your passion to the craft and your constant need to collaborate with people who also understand quality. Please keep safe in the meantime. We look forward to visiting you some day, or maybe you could swing by.
P: I would actually love to, it is on my list. Last year, I was very close but I am definitely coming. It will be super cool to hang out with you guys.
Watch the full video feature of this conversation with Patrik on our IGTV! And check out Patrik's coffee capsules over here.
Do you ever wake up to one of those mornings where you just want to skip the ritual and have your coffee fix right away? We feel you.
While brewing at home is becoming more common nowadays, those lazy mornings may call for something a little simpler, and that’s where single-serve brewing comes in. This process takes a lot of the work out of your brewing ritual, but it still provides a great cup to start the day with.
In the world of single-serve coffee, the two most popular options available today are coffee capsules and drip coffee bags.
Coffee capsules have found themselves in the homes of millions worldwide thanks to widespread selections and availability, aggressive machine pricing, and the emergence of Nespresso-compatible capsules made by various coffee companies and roasters.
The drip coffee bag, invented in coffee-obsessed Japan, was made to make filter coffee much more accessible. By having the pre-ground coffee contained in the drip bag, the bare minimum a coffee drinker would need is hot water, ready to pour into the coffee. The bag itself does its job by also serving as the coffee filter. If you wanted to follow the recommended brewing instructions on the drip coffee bag packet, you would most likely need a scale and a gooseneck kettle (with a thermometer) to make the most out of the drip coffee bag.
The coffee capsule, on the other hand, simply requires you to put the capsule in the machine, press the button, and voilà! You have coffee.
In terms of how the coffee is made, they serve vastly different cups.
While a coffee capsule can be made to brew an espresso up to a long black, a drip coffee bag is made for filter coffee. Prep time may be slightly quicker with the coffee capsule since all you need to ensure is that your machine is plugged in, and that it has water in it.
The drip coffee bag, on the other hand, may require you to set up some additional brewing equipment. However, when travelling, a drip coffee bag is much friendlier since you’ll be guaranteed to, at the very least, find a source of hot water. You can’t always guarantee the availability of a coffee capsule machine during your travels, unless you bring your own, of course.
With varied preferences across the coffee drinking spectrum, having these two unique single-serve coffee options is great. What coffee drinkers ultimately want is a satisfying cup of coffee, and whether that is achieved through single-serve methods or through your own coffee brewing ritual, what matters is to simply enjoy the cause and effects of making your own cup of coffee.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye
Depending on which side of the world you’re reading this from, you’re probably either trying to reclaim some sense of normalcy, or (like myself) still stuck in a lockdown. Whichever case you find yourself in, you may be one of the hopped-up caffeine heads that have decided to act on their much-needed fix by becoming a home barista.
The rise of the home barista shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. With the sheer amount of people who love to drink coffee, it was inevitable that a good number would eventually dabble into brewing at home. What might have begun as experimenting at home could now be a full-blown ritual for a lot of home brewers.
One thing to note, is that while the French press and pour over brewers have been around for a while, it is recently that developments in home espresso have gotten exciting.
If you wanted to have an espresso at home, you were often stuck with having to buy yourself a single group espresso machine or a fully automatic coffee maker. With the advent of several manual espresso makers, and the lowering costs of building better machines, the espresso has definitely become much more accessible. Of course, how can we forget the entry of the Nespresso system, in being able to deliver espresso shots with just the push of a button? These newer technologies have helped to enable a culture of brewing at home that has made it exciting to see what people have been making at home.
The home barista, without the benefit of what would classify as a formal coffee education, can get their education from fellow home baristas, or from the vast expanse of the internet. Without the biases that can come from brewing a particular way, the home barista is allowed a much wider opportunity to experiment without the judging taste buds of a paying customer. A great advantage a home barista has is that their limits are defined by their creativity and their willingness to acquire the equipment to brew. A home barista can have as much gear as their wallet will allow them and can mix and match different kinds of gear to make for different brews.
Whether you’ve started mastering the art of a pour over, experimenting with a manual espresso brewer, or went all out with a café-like setup at home, there’s just no denying that the home barista is here to stay.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye
Humans have been drinking coffee for the past few hundred years and we've seen a huge leap in coffee adoption and research in these past few decades, coupled with an increase of quality throughout the coffee chain.
With its storied history, and now-ubiquitous reach, it’s not a surprise that cultures and households have formed different ideologies and habits when it comes to the bean.
In today’s article, we explore some of these some commonly-dropped (and some newer) coffee nuggets, to see what’s plausible, and what should be outright busted!
Myth 1: Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, next to oil.
Quoted in coffee books, economics websites, and even a US Senate Committee hearing once upon a time, this myth is one that does not seem to go away. We are not disputing the fact that coffee is huge - in fact, it is a large contributor to the economies of many developing countries. But a quick search online will reveal that coffee is nowhere near the Top 10, much less second place. The Observatory for Economic Complexity, a leading platform for world trade data, lists coffee at 121st place in 2018, with a total trade value of $30.9bn. Crude Oil, as the myth suggests, tops the same list.
But where did this myth come from? Outdated statistics or mis-interpreted data, perhaps? We did a little digging and found downloadable data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, focused on agricultural commodities, including food and drink products. We aggregated data from 1961 to 2008, and found that in four years (1977, 1978, 1979, and 1986), green coffee was indeed the top crop by trade value. The latest data available (2008), shows green coffee in 18th with a total trade value of $19bn, bested by corn (7th), wine (5th), and soybeans (2nd). We sifted through the data further, found four coffee products on the list, which we then combined out of curiosity. Added up, coffee (green, roasted, extracts, and substitutes) ranks 5th, unofficially making it the highest-ranked beverage on the list.
Coffee was the top traded agricultural product once upon a time. One can also argue that it’s the top traded drink product, according to current data. But to call it the second largest commodity by trade in the world? Bit of a reach, even for our favourite beverage.
Verdict: Busted
Myth 2: The fresher the coffee, the better the brew
The past few years has seen the Specialty Coffee community championing freshness. Roast dates over expiry dates. Buying enough for a month versus stocking up. We agree that there is nothing quite like fresh coffee but one thing that must be considered is the presence of Carbon Dioxide, and how it affects the brewing process.
CO2 is a byproduct of coffee roasting, and is naturally dissipated over time. In fact, the one-way valve in many coffee bags is meant to relieve this excess gas. However, in large amounts, the gas gets in the way of a proper extraction. This is especially evident in espresso, where a shot pulled with day-old coffee will ironically taste worse than week-old coffee. You may get very thick crema, but flavours of burnt carbon will mask the potential sweetness of the coffee.
Freshly-roasted coffee is like a living thing, and the volatility of CO2 and other aromatics prevent even the most-skilled baristas from zoning in at the perfect recipe. Allowing these erratic gases to stabilise with a few days of rest allows the coffee to be calibrated and enjoyed at its best. This peak of flavour depends on origin and roast level, but a nominal range from roast is three days to a week for filter coffee, or two to three weeks for espresso. After four to six weeks, many of the tasty aromatics and flavours begin to disappear, and oxidation begins to set in.
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, such as shelf-stable cold brew coffees and nitrogen-flushed capsules, but perhaps those are discussions for another time.
Verdict: Plausible, only because there is such a thing as too fresh.
Myth 3: The best place to store coffee is in the freezer
This is an interesting one, because it shows how a myth can be disputed by then-current data, then validated by newer research.
Let’s start off with the premise - we can prolong the shelf life of foods by freezing, so why not coffee? The coffee community has advised against freezing coffee for many years. The issue is not the freezing itself - this lecture posted by the Specialty Coffee Association suggests that lowering the coffee by 10 degrees decreases aging by a factor of 2, 20 degrees by a factor of 4, and so on. The detrimental bit is what occurs once you defrost coffee. Any bit of precipitation (hot or cold) will start to degrade the bean. Think of this as prematurely brewing away the tasty compounds of the coffee - stuff that will not make it into your cup. The overall consensus at the time was to simply buy fresh coffee, and store it airtight in a cool, dry location.
In 2016, a peer-reviewed report suggested that, under controlled conditions, freezing roasted coffee did more than prolong shelf life. Grinding coffee before condensation sets in allows for a more even grind particle distribution. Supposedly, this allowed for better flavour clarity, as the destructive potential of grinding was noticeably reduced by the frozen state of the coffee. This article was influential in that many baristas used this technique in coffee competitions (with successful results), and a number of cafes began storing expensive and prized coffees in the freezer. However, to minimise the effects of condensation, coffees have to be portioned off into exact doses, and frozen in vacuum-sealed containers.
Yes, you can freeze coffee after all, and get good results upon brewing. However, the effort and equipment required suggests a use case far beyond the everyday coffee drinker’s routine.
Verdict: Confirmed, if done correctly.
The great thing about a dynamic product such as coffee is that nothing is ever absolute. While these myths were scrutinised against the best information available to us, they are not meant to impede one’s enjoyment of the brew. After all, the best coffee is the one you enjoy, regardless of method or practice.
Words by Jon Choi @theheadbean
In the world of streetwear, there is Supreme; for whisky enthusiasts, there are the aged whiskies of Japan and in the world of specialty coffee, the Gesha reigns atop the pedestal of the most sought-after coffees in the world. It seems, that whenever some obscenely priced coffee comes out onto the market, you’re almost guaranteed that it will be of a Gesha varietal. You’re also more likely to see Gesha coffees being used by champion baristas when competing at huge coffee events, with different baristas likely sourcing their coffees from the same company handling the same exclusive farm.
There definitely is an excitement from both the home brewer and the professional barista when presented the opportunity to either brew or consume a cup of these highly-prized coffees, but it might help to bring some context as to where exactly these coffees come from.
Although both the terms Gesha and Geisha have been in regular use for the better part of over a decade, the origins of the coffee come from the Gori Gesha forest in Ethiopia. In the coffee world, “Gesha” typically refers to the coffees from Ethiopia and other countries where they have begun harvesting these coffees, while “Geisha” came into the lexicon from the award-winning Panamanian variety that has been setting records since it’s debut at the Best of Panama show in 2004.
It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that some of the world’s best coffees would come from the historical birthplace of coffee, but what really brought the Gesha coffee to international fame was when a Panama Geisha coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda reached a (then) record price of $21/pound. Suddenly, coffee aficionados and roasters around the world were scrambling to get their hands on these incredibly special coffees.
So what exactly makes these coffees special? From an objective standpoint, Gesha coffees have been consistently scored highly by licensed Q-graders (individuals who have been certified to score coffee based on a particular set of metrics). Regardless of whether they’re the Ethiopian or Panamanian variety, these coffees have ranked very highly at coffee auctions, often setting records wherever they are. With a wide variety of tasting and cupping notes like jasmine, lime, rose, strawberries, and honeysuckle, it is no surprise that Gesha coffees are often used at barista competitions to truly bring great flavors forward.
At the end of the day, it’s a simple question of economics. With the high demand for great quality Gesha coffees and an obviously limited crop or supply, you can expect to continue paying high prices for a cup of these great coffees. They are obviously not economical to be for your daily brews but when the opportunity arises to try some Gesha coffee, take a chance and excuse yourself for a once-in-a-while splurge to taste why these coffees consistently set the bar.
I guarantee they’ll be worth your while.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye
Capsule machines are a great gateway into enjoying espresso-style drinks at home, without splurging for a costly espresso machine, a grinder, and all the odds and ends that go with it. For most people, this convenient solution is adequate. But as it is with many other pieces of consumer technology, there always exist aftermarket ways to “hack the system”, so to speak. One such thing we are exploring today is the use of refillable capsules. There is some degree of tinkering involved, so read on if you’re curious to see how far we can push our machine with one of these!
The use case for refillable capsules
The easy reason is, you can use any coffee from your favourite coffee company! That may be a rare single-estate coffee, or a decaf blend you truly like. If you cannot purchase it in capsule form, then refillable capsules allow you to make it yourself! Another thing is the aspect of sustainability. While many roasters are now switching over to compostable or biodegradable materials, a reusable capsule that will last for years sounds like the environmentally-friendly option.
Which refillable capsule to use
There are three main designs: A plastic capsule with a flip-top mesh lid, a metal capsule with a screw-on lid, and a metal capsule with a “stick-on” lid, that you have to replace every time. While the other designs may aid espresso extraction a little bit better, we decided to go for the first option as it’s the cheapest, it’s 100% reusable, and the generic design makes it easy to find.
The drawbacks
As evidenced in our testing, it’s not such a straightforward process to get good results! What we’ve learned is precise coffee weights and grind settings are necessary to get a good espresso. This means that you’ll need a scale that can ideally measure to the tenths of a gram, and a burr grinder capable of grinding fine enough for espresso. You can use pre-ground coffee too, but it will be harder to dial-in, and you may end up with watery results. Yes, all capsules contain pre-ground coffee, but many roasters use nitrogen-flushing techniques to preserve freshness and equipment not available to the consumer. This all adds up to a lengthy morning ritual, much longer and more involved than the usual 30 seconds it takes to pop in a capsule and brew.
Test Bench and Methodology
First, some caution. Using aftermarket accessories, including refillable capsules, on your Nespresso machine may void your warranty!
The goal: Create a tasty espresso from a refillable capsule that displays similar taste characteristics as one pulled with a commercial machine.
What we used:
We used a commercial burr grinder for this experiment. It may be a bit out of reach to the home user, but it is a popular model for cafes and home enthusiasts. This can hopefully provide a reasonable approximation of grind setting - one that you can ask your barista friend about, and is also easily researchable online. For the grind setting, we settled on three levels for this experiment: Very fine, fine, and medium-fine (marked on our EK-43 as 2.5, 4.5, and 6). For comparison, our commercial espresso machine was pulling shots at the 4.5 setting that day.
In a previous article, we found that capsules contained between 5-6 grams of coffee. We found it difficult to consistently fill the reusable capsule to this level, so we limited the experiment to two specific doses: 4.5 grams, and 5.5 grams.
Summary of Testing Variables:
Results
Test |
Coffee Weight |
Grind Setting |
Shot Yield |
Result |
1 |
4.5g |
Very Fine |
10g |
Intense, Salty. Strong and under-extracted |
2 |
5.5g |
Very Fine |
~1g |
Pump stopped after 3 seconds. |
3 |
4.5g |
Fine |
25g |
Intense, but sweet. Terrific with milk. |
4 |
5.5g |
Fine |
12g |
Pump stopped after 10 seconds. |
5 |
4.5g |
Medium-Fine |
60g |
Balanced, but watery. Good as is. |
6 |
5.5g |
Medium-Fine |
15g |
Pump stopped after 15 seconds. |
Our machine’s pump stopped on all of our tests with 5.5g of coffee in the capsule (Tests 2, 4, and 6). Word to the wise: if your pump stops early on in the extraction, wait at least a minute to relieve the built-up pressure in the machine, before discarding the capsule. If not, you may get an aggressive burst of pressure, which may be accompanied by grounds flying everywhere! Here we see the limitation of a reusable capsule. Single-use capsules are not meant to be reused, and therefore can get away with thinner materials. This allows for a bigger cavity for coffee grounds, which allows the pump to successfully push water through more coffee. Needless to say, all our shots that used 5.5 grams were simply a few drops of undrinkable bitterness.
The meat of our experiment lies with Tests 1, 3, and 5. While the Very Fine setting was a little bit too intense and salty, our Fine and Medium-Fine setting gave us our favourite results. Test 3 was similar to a ristretto - enjoyable on its own, but probably tasty as a small cappuccino. Test 5 highlighted the best flavours (we did get chocolate, nuts, and apple notes!), but the longer shot reminded us of a long black, lacking the intensity of the other two.
Conclusion (or should you do it?)
Yes, with a big IF. All our tests used freshly-ground coffee, pulled after no more than 10 minutes after grinding, on an industry-standard commercial grinder. Packing the reusable capsules with coffee was a chore in itself - we had to get creative with tamping down the coffee, just to fit coffee into our thicker reusable capsule. The results do speak for themselves - if you dial it in correctly, you can achieve an espresso that will do your chosen coffee beans justice. However, the amount of work required may discourage people who are happy with just popping in a ready-made capsule. It’s a fun experiment that makes you bring the best out of your capsule machine, but we don’t see this replacing our morning routines anytime soon.
Words by Jon Choi @theheadbean
“Practice makes perfect”
That statement rings true when it comes to brewing your favorite cup of coffee. Experienced baristas and long-time home brewers may already have their favorite go-to recipes, but for a coffee aficionado that is just getting started, there are a great number of resources to help you with brewing at home.
Having the fancy pour-over kit, all-white kettle, and a Bluetooth scale might be on the wish-list of every aspiring brewer, but a little extra help goes a long way, and the following 3 apps should provide some good help in perfecting your brew. The apps presented are all free-to-download and should give you a varied experience and great practice to help you perfect that brew.
Filtru (Free: Android/iOS)
The Filtru app may be the newest one on the list but it probably possesses the nicest interface of the 3. All 3 apps provide brewing guides, but the Filtru app adds some great features like the ability to add your own brewing recipes, provides visual cues for grind size, and is compatible to pair with a variety of Bluetooth scales to help track your brewing. Apart from following their recommended guides, you can also choose to upload your own recipe and share it with other Filtru users.
Brewmaster (Free: Android/iOS)
The Brewmaster app comes to us from Acaia, makers of some of arguably the best Bluetooth brewing scales in the industry. Although Acaia has several apps available to download and pair with their scales, the Brewmaster app is designed to push you to log your brews and help you to monitor your progress in your brewing. The flipside to using the Acaia apps is that you will need to have an Acaia scale to pair with.
coffee.cup.guru (Free: Android/iOS)
The coffee.cup.guru app is a popular choice on both iOS and Android app stores, and has a great selection of recipes depending on your preference. Apart from providing the several recipes and brew guides from the World Aeropress Championship, you can also mark your favorite recipes and log your own personal ones.
Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye
Cupping is the universal language for coffee tasting. From roasters making green coffee purchase decisions, to consumers simply deciding which bean they prefer, there’s loads to learn from tasting coffees side-by-side in a controlled setting. Yet, this intense slurp-fest may seem intimidating, especially to those only beginning to get into coffee. Much like how capsules have made Specialty Coffee more accessible, we’ve made a quick capsule cupping guide, adopting the best bits of this industry standard in a manner that is easy to pull off at home!
What you’ll need:
Simply pull two shots of the same espresso into each bowl or cup, following the roaster’s intended recipe, if possible. Repeat for each of the other capsules you want to include in the cupping. Set them up on the table from left to right, and label accordingly. Once done, fill each of the cups to the brim with hot water. You may find that the amount of hot water to be added will vary, depending on how long or short the shots of espresso were. What you’ll have at the end is a set of “cupping-strength” coffees, each with the same volume, ready to be tasted!
Fill the extra empty cup with hot water, and place your spoon in it. This will be your rinsing cup. Start the timer and start tasting the coffee from left to right by slurping from your spoon. You may use this coffee flavour wheel from the Specialty Coffee Association as a guide to taste, but even general tasting notes like “sweet” and “fruity” are fine, especially if they matter to you. Remember to rinse your spoon in-between tasting different samples, then dab it dry on the napkin. Take note of the time, and taste again, keeping in mind that additional flavours may reveal themselves as time passes and as the cup cools. Stop tasting when the flavours become flat, or are no longer noteworthy.
This exercise will give you a baseline of the flavours of the capsules you have on-hand. Simply repeat the process once you get a new set of capsules. At the very least, you may find that this assessment tool will help you develop your coffee preferences and help with your capsule purchases in the future!
Words by Jon Choi @theheadbean
Tasting profiles exist to help customers select a coffee, and provide an expectation of how the cup tastes once brewed. In the industry, they influence purchase decisions at the cupping table, or release candidates for roast profiles. More than mere flavour notes, they often include other attributes such as mouthfeel, texture, finish - things that complete the experience of coffee-drinking. More precise notes such as Blueberry, Tea-like, and Creamy are slowly edging out generic descriptors such as Bold, Smooth, and Strong. One word in particular, commonly hollered in cupping tables and pourover bars around the world, is juicy. The use of juicy is perplexing because it feels both generic and specific at the same time. It seems to be a quality of good coffee, yet it lacks the detail of other common flavour notes. We started to wonder about the definition and use case for it, so we called a friend (five, actually) this week, and asked them to spill the juice.
James Hoffmann (@jimseven) of Square Mile Coffee and YouTube fame, offers the following: “Juicy, as a descriptor, suggests a lovely combination of fruit acidity and sweetness. It’s more of a fresh fruit acidity, but should be well balanced with the sweetness of coffee to make it pleasurable.”
This confirms that juiciness in coffee is indeed a pleasant quality. It’s interesting to note that James won the World Barista Championships in 2007 using two single estate coffees that, at the time, were not commonly pulled as espresso. “Light, delicate, fresh” were used to describe his coffee, and in a competition scoresheet that rewards balance and sweetness along with acidity, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the man was pulling juicy espresso thirteen years ago.
Miki Takamasa (@mikitakamasa) of Koffee Mameya adds some insight and inclusion. While we ourselves often associate light roasts with juiciness, Miki-san states that it “...can only be found in coffee that has been perfectly roasted and extracted. It’s clean, vibrant, even if it’s dark roasted”.
Next up is Monique Buensalido (@sinongnanaymoe), a PR and Digital Media Executive from Manila, whose home and office are walking distance from multiple coffeeshops. Monique is the quintessential Specialty Coffee fan, always eager to try new origins and flavour profiles. She goes for the definition of juicy as “...when drinking the coffee feels and tastes like I bit into a fruit and I’m chewing it. I often equate juicy coffees to chewy, fruity ones.”
This definition is interesting, because it suggests this specific combination of flavour and texture. Still, another comment we received, offers complexity as a reason to use the word. Joma Rivera (@yomarivera), celebrated bartender and Bar Manager at Kafe Utu, shares “...when I describe a coffee as [juicy], it is going to be [a] fruit forward cup. Think of apples, blueberries, strawberries, pears, etc. Aside from the flavour profile, the coffee should have a medium complexity and not only highlighting a single flavor”.
Our final definition comes from a well-travelled coffee friend, who has worn multiple hats in the coffee industry. From podcasting (before it became cool), to roasting, to competing in coffee competitions, to judging the same competitions, to running his own kissaten, we could not think of a better individual to ask to “drop the hammer” on this, so to speak. The following is an excerpt from Jay Caragay (@onocoffee) of Spro Coffee:
“I think of it as eating an orange. One that’s bursting with liquid (juicy) when you bite into it - it’s also succulent, with the ideal flavor of orange. A taste experience that makes you salivate when you think about it. It’s that but in delicious anticipation. How I think that applies to coffee is when you’re cupping/tasting a coffee and you get that salivating reaction. I think it’s a very positive attribute/characteristic.”
As per Jay’s definition, juiciness is a positive quality that goes beyond specific flavours and textures. This single descriptor encompasses and ticks multiple attributes, and rather interestingly, suggests that excitement and memory are part of the flavour experience of coffee.
Which of the four are most similar to how you perceive juicy coffees? Do you have your own unique interpretation of what makes a coffee juicy? Let us know in the comments below!