Posts tagged with "Tips"

Taste Characteristics of Coffee Growing Regions

As a coffee lover, you might want to know what a new variety would taste like – for example, maybe you’d like to try Papua New Guinea – but are worried you won’t like it. There are many taste profiles from the different coffee growing regions around the globe. A broad description of these would be:

Africa: Bright and Fragrant
Central and South America: Mild and Smooth
Indonesia: Full Bodied and Bold

First, you’ll need to figure out if you want to try a medium roasted or a dark roasted coffee. I know that sounds elementary, but you’d be surprised how many people will ask for a variety that brews a robust cup of coffee when a lot of the time what they really want is a dark roasted coffee.

Each specialty coffee requires different degrees of heat and roasting time to achieve its optimum flavor. What this means is that a Sumatran will require more heat (and need to be darker roasted) than say, a Colombian would, to get the most flavor out of it. If a coffee is under-roasted it will tend to be a little bitter, but if it’s over-roasted, some of the flavor will be roasted out, and it will taste a bit flat (and probably burnt).

African coffees are usually acidic in flavor, and “winey” is a term often used for their dry, bright taste. Kenyan, Tanzanian and Zimbabwean are good examples of coffees with these characteristics. Ethiopian coffees from Harrar can have floral, fruity tastes, while those from Yrgacheffe are known for their chocolaty tones.

The coffees from the Americas are usually smooth, crisp and clean with bright aftertastes. Examples of these are Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Mexican and Colombian. Personally, I feel that Colombian coffees are some of the most consistent tasting from year to year. Some of these coffees, like those from Brazil & Nicaragua, have a nutty, or buttery smooth taste. And Hawaiian Kona has a sweetness to it that makes it a truly special cup of coffee, indeed.

Indonesian coffees have good body, similar to a bold red in the wine world. Some people mistakenly call this taste “strong”, but strong coffee is just brewed strongly – with extra coffee. Coffees from this region include Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and Indian among others.

Another useful tip to consider when tasting coffees is they should be sampled hot, warm and at room temperature. Coffees that are just brewed can have their tastes masked by the high heat. These flavors will become more pronounced as the cup cools. You should enjoy the flavor of a cooler cup as much as you did when it was hot. Be aware though that, conversely, taste and aroma characteristics can appear fleetingly just after brewing.

Two Important Influences on Coffee’s Taste

Two important influences on coffee’s taste are geography and price. I’d like to take just a moment to discuss each of these a bit.

The wine industry has used the term terrior to describe the effects of soil, sun, rain, and elevation on grapes and the resulting wine. While the attempts to link aspects of coffee and wine often go too far, this similarity has merit. In large part terrior is what makes bright the notes of a Costa Rican differ from earthy Indonesian coffees, half a world away.

Two Costa Ricans can taste much different as well, the distance here measured in a few miles. Weather and soil vary even at close range. Of course other factors influence taste, and will provide future topics of conversation for us.

The old adage says that price and quality go hand-in-hand. Coffee is no exception. For starters, let’s break the bean into two categories “commercial” and “specialty”. While the line between these two general types can blur, fancy – or specialty – brings with it the understanding that the additional care goes into the cultivar, elevation, the position on a hillside; the picking, processing, roasting, and ultimately, the brewing. Understandably, this extra attention costs more.

A price variance that is harder to nail down is what can be made of the difference between, for example, an $8.00 a pound Panama and one that is $16.00. You may even see ratings on coffees: numbers on a scale given for taste qualities: nose, brightness, body, balance, etc. Because taste is subjective, the more “cuppers” participating will generally give a more accurate assessment. So, two Panamanians can have vastly different scores.

Packaging and marketing also influence the $16.00 coffee. Consumers appreciate a story that personalizes where the coffee comes from. If the name of a town or farm or family can be linked to the coffee, all the better. Possibly the farm uses methods that are more kind to the environment, or is circumspect in how it makes economic decisions. The promotion of these features is another factor that helps drive up the price.

Taste, which should be what the coffee drinker really enjoys, sometimes gets lost in the promotion. Coffee Express Co. works to procure the highest grades and the best-tasting lots from all over every country whose coffees we carry, including organics, Fair Trade, and decafs. We’ve kept our eye on the ball for quality over the years, fashioning our production, packaging, and delivery methods to ensure that we supply our retailers with the best coffee available, delivered fresh from the roaster, at affordable prices. You don’t have to overpay for taste.

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.

Tea

Tea is hot . . . or cold. Your choice. Either way, this first cousin to coffee is one of the fastest growing and most important categories in the beverage industry. Coffee house operators, restaurateurs, and food retailers better pay attention. Update your selection, educate your staff, and inform your customers to establish your position and boost your sales.

Until recently, tea sales in the U.S. were incidental, lagging behind the specialty coffee boom. But it’s been a couple of centuries since we threw tea into the Boston Harbor, and tea is back with a vengeance.

To some degree, this surge of interest is driven by significant – and attendant publicity of – health benefits, which include cancer prevention, weight loss, and more. Lower caffeine content per ounce is said to be another contributing factor, given the aging population. Additionally, of course, the growing interest in all things culinary, sensory, and gustatory is the perfect driver for the fabulous array of flavors and aromas in the tea world.

As with coffee, there is a lot of information to absorb from thousands of years of Eastern tradition, and hundreds in the West. Categories include a stunning number of varieties: true leaf teas include greens, oolongs, blacks, and more; straight teas from China, Japan, India, Africa, and Indonesia as well as blends, flavors, and decafs. Dozens of herbal infusion, also known as tisanes, have their own history, lore, traditional uses, and methods of brewing.

In the future, I’ll talk about understanding and classifying different tea types & styles within this framework, as well as topics on brewing, marketing and merchandising in your establishment.