Posts made in May 2009

Choosing the Right Drop Coffee Brewer

There are several common choices for making drip coffee. Restaurants with staff carrying coffee to tables to serve generally choose to brew directly into 1-2 gal., 64 oz – or 1.9 liter glass or stainless carafes. These will have a short holding time: well under 30 minutes for glass pots on burners, and somewhat longer hold times for stainless, insulated carafes.

Coffee houses will choose to brew into larger air-pots, or 1 to 1.5 gallon stainless insulated servers. These containers will have hold times up to 2 hours or so. Coffee in a thermal container will keep its temperature longer if you preheat the container by warming it with hot water before brewing. Hold times will decrease as you pour cups of coffee from it. A container that is nearly empty will lose temperature rapidly; a full container will stay hot longer.

Machines from all the major manufacturers are available in any of the popular formats. Brewers can be either analog, with simple push buttons and only a simple volume control, or digital, with computer programmed recipes. Most equipment we sell is digital, and we will typically configure your coffee house brewers with extra deep brew baskets to insure you can use as much coffee as needed without having grounds overflow the filter.

Whatever brewer you use, consider filtering your water with a cartridge system to remove bad tastes from your tap water and reduce scale build up.

The final steps to a great drip coffee come in choosing your coffee variety and brew strength. And of course remember to keep your servers and brew baskets clean. If you use flavored coffee, keep separate brew baskets, air-pots and grinders. If you’d like to know more about new brewers give us a call. You can arrange to stop by and try out our favorite machine in the demo room, and we’ll help you choose the brewer and coffee that best suits your needs.

Origins, Classifications, Estates

The names given to specialty coffees do not follow a universal format. There are no international standards available when we see something like “Colombian Supremo” or “Sumatra Mandheling”, so common usage prevails.

“Single Origin” generally means coffee the coffee was grown in a particular country. Breakfast Blend and French Roast wouldn’t be Single Origin because in the one case (as the name states) it’s a blend, and in the other, the name simply denotes the color of the roast — not the type of bean used.

Within each country, either a region or grade comes next. Kenya AA is a grade, while Costa Rican Tarrazu is a region. Costa Rican SHB — Strictly Hard Bean — is a grade, but in this case, because Tarrazu is a top growing region, the highest classification of SHB is understood. The same could be said of a Kenya Kirinyaga: the AA is implied. Sometimes, the coffee industry will also use the term “Estate” or give the name of the city where the farm is located to help further distinguish the growing area. Jamaican Blue Mountain Wallenford Estate means coffee processed within the Wallenford network of pulpuries and finishing works. Costa Rican Dota is a town in the Central Valley region, and signifies a coffee with a better defined area than simply Tarrazu.

Next, let’s decipher Hawaiian Kona. In some cases, sellers simply use the name and reputation of Kona to describe a blend that is mellow. The State of Hawaii has a law on its books that prescribes a minimum of 10% Kona in a “Kona blend”. However this only applies to coffee sold in Hawaii, not elsewhere. Names on coffee can therefore be misleading.

A true Hawaiian Kona is (of course) 100% Kona – grown in a strictly defined area on the Big Island’s west coast. It can also then carry the name of an estate, such as Pomaika’i Farm. And don’t forget the grade: Extra Fancy, Fancy, and #1, in that order. Other countries have their own particular methods of names, regions and grades.

Coffee Express has procured a few Cup of Excellence® coffees in the past couple of years. This U.S-based, international program sets the highest bar for quality. In this case, not only is the country, grade, and farm known, but also the type of coffee plant (typica, catura, etc.), altitude grown, and other qualifiers that can determine taste. We are happy to direct you to one of our customers, should you have an interest in trying any of these distinct and wonderful coffees.

Required Reading

It was a couple of years ago, on a visit to Harney and Sons Tea headquarters in Millerton, N.Y. A good part of the floor in the middle of a fairly large room was covered with cloth and bamboo mats. Spread out and stacked up on the coverings were hundreds of objects. There were tea chests, boxes, tins, tea pots and kettles, preparation and serving wares, related implements, books, documents, photographs, and miscellaneous artifacts of Asian origin. Anticipating the question, Paul Harney answered, “That’s Michael’s book”.

A couple of years later, we have The Harney & Sons Guide To Tea, by Michael Harney, Master Tea Blender. The stated purpose of the 272 page, hardcover volume is “…to transform tea drinkers into tea experts.” It is, in fact, a clearly written, well-organized presentation of Michael’s own expertise developed over years of tasting, travel and trade in the world of tea. If it doesn’t make you an expert, it will provide a solid foundation toward that goal, and be a valued reference for years to come.

At Coffee Express Co., when we instruct in coffee or tea basics we seek to provide foundational knowledge that can be built on over a lifetime. As with coffee, tea is a vast subject with a long history and many varied regional traditions and styles.

The Harney & Sons Guide is a first-person exploration of tea history, geography, cultivation, processing, and culture. It classifies the diversity of tea styles, and offers practices for proper brewing and serving. A unique and useful aspect of the book is Michael’s refined method for evaluating tea by aspects of aroma, flavor, and appearance.

Lively, informative, entertaining, and unpretentious, this book is highly recommended. Available from Border’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or Harney & Sons.