Coffee kills kittens

When I was a kid, I was afraid of anything that might be the slightest bit good for my health.  I avoided eating anything green, soy, or low-fat like it was poison, which was very difficult given my mother's persistence in buying food rich in vitamins and hiding it in my sugar.  She would cook broccoli into my brownies and carrots into my cake!  The nerve!  In retaliation, I decided I would mask everything even remotely good for me in sugar.  Every morning when I got a bowl of Chex, it was saturated in enough sugar that looking at it made one feel the onset of diabetes.
     "Are we having corn tonight mother?  Could you please pass the sugar?  No...just give me the bag."

You may be wondering to yourself, "Joshua, dear sir, what does this have to do with coffee?"  Well, I've noticed a growing trend in the coffee industry that harkens back to my days as a kid cracked out on sugar.  I believe that many people think coffee is good for them.  So, in keeping with their childhood rebellions, they want to cover the nasty coffee up with large amounts of unhealthy stuff.  A large, extra-sweet, carmel, vanilla, hazelnut, and white-chocolate mocha isn't a drink; it's unresolved childhood angst.

The obvious solution to this pandemic is to conduct a massive campaign aimed at helping coffee drinkers confront their personal aversion to eating healthy food, but I think there is a subtle solution that should not be ignored.  We should just make everyone think that coffee is really unhealthy.  Think about it.  Cigarette boxes have pictures of black lungs on the front that tell you "beware of the smokey death contained in this package" and people love them.  Humans are actually very self destructive.  If the front of every coffee shop in America had a picture of a cracked-out hobo with brown teeth that read, "this is your life on coffee and -plus- coffee kills kittens," we would be fighting the customers off with a stick.  So the next time you're in a coffee shop, don't cover up the taste of your coffee with sugar or excessive amounts of milk.  Just remember that coffee kills kittens and I promise it will satisfy your sadistic craving for sugary death.  Heck, it's so bad for you that you might even want to quit smoking just to balance things out.

OMG! They're dead!

A few days ago, I made a latte with dead shots.  They weren't even old shots.  They weren't on their last legs, in need of a transfusion, or on life support in critical condition.  They were dead.  For those of you who aren't cued into coffee lingo, a dead shot has supposedly become gross and decomposition-y after having been made and let to sit.  Some people say they go dead after 30 seconds and some say a minute.  The point is that apparently shots of espresso have the life span of a mayfly, but back to my original point.  I made a drink with dead-as-a-mayfly shots and it tasted suprisingly similar to the ones I had made with fresh shots.  Actually it tasted the exact same.  This got me thinking about what actually makes a shot "die."

In reality, there are only a couple of things that happen to espresso over the course of a few minutes.  First, the crema or foam that sits on top of the espresso reintegrates with the liquid.  Crema, on its own, contains some of the best flavors and aromatic qualities of the espresso in high concentrations.  Drinking it straight can be overwhelming but, it stands to reason, that having the crema reintegrate might actually be a good thing.  Second, the espresso cools down.  The temperature of espresso has a lot to do with how we taste the various flavors contained within it and, in fact, our taste buds have many microscopic channels called TRPM5 that increase the bud's sensitivity at higher temperatures.  If, however, espresso passes a certain temperature (the exact temperature being unique to every person) it will burn our tongues and greatly decrease our ability to taste.  Given that espresso typically comes out of the machine at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, a fresh shot can easily burn off our ability to taste its liquid-y goodness or numb us to its heave-worthy horrible-ness.  In essence, a shot that has sat for about a minute may actually be a better representation of the espresso than a fresh one.

I don't know how the rumor of "dead shots" got started but I do know if you work at a shop that serves poor coffee (or poorly serves great coffee) it would be advantageous to let people drink the shots hot.  That way their burnt taste buds won't be able to tell them that they're drinking something awful.

Quality on vinyl

Okay, so I'm at Stumptown in Portland right now and I order an espresso, latte, and scone.  Am I a worse person for the fact that I, one, see a man behind the bar with about a day's worth of growth and think "he must be new" and, two, hope that the person pulling my shots has a proper "barista" level beard?  There was, however, a person working behind the bar with no facial hair whose gender was in question (turned out it was a girl) so I automatically felt that he or she was more qualified to make coffee than the guy without a beard.  Is that bad?  I hope not because I'm pretty sure that, every time I go into a new coffee shop, I judge whether or not to get an espresso based on my barista having ears with two or more piercings or at least one piercing gauged 12 or larger.  It doesn't stop there.  If I walk into a shop that doesn't have eclectic artwork or old/retro furniture but does have a very clean and sterile atmosphere, I feel like bolting for the door.

I don't know if this judgement comes from the specialty coffee industry in the United States having grown up with the grunge movement or from the twenty-somethings that seem to populate most barista positions.  All I know is that the oddity of a barista or shop is directly related to their perceived quality.  I also know that I am probably vastly limiting myself in my perception of a quality coffee shop.  So I promise from here on out to not blow off a coffee place, whether it be a shop or drive-through, based on the Hollister shirt that the barista is wearing.  I'll blow them off for having bad coffee.  I will say, though, that when I noticed that Stumptown was playing their music on a vinyl record player I also noticed a significant improvement in their espresso.

Seed to cup

It fascinates me how coffee is brought from being a tiny seed into being in my venti vanilla mocha. It's an unnatural fascination, really.  I'm so incredibly fascinated by it that I'm planning on taking a trip to see coffee farms in other countries.  I'm so incredibly, dauntingly, fantastically bewitched by the process that I can hardly think of anything else.  My job is suffering and that's saying something coming from a barista.  Alright, maybe I'm not that fascinated with it, but I do find it interesting.  I find it interesting enough to think that you and I (as coffee drinkers) should at least know the basics of what happens from seed to cup.  I also hope that by knowing a little more, we can start to appreciate our drinks for what they are.  So read on dear Sir or Madame and consider yourself educated.

The coffee bean starts its journey as a shrub in a coffee farm.  The typical coffee tree will take about three to five years to start producing cherries and end up being about 10 feet tall, depending on the species.  When it does start producing cherries, they are harvested one of two ways.  Much like regular cherries, coffee cherries ripen at different times and are often handpicked throughout the season as they ripen.  They can also be "stripped" or harvested all at once, either by hand or by machine; the ripe cherries being separated post-harvest.  This method typically wastes about a quarter of the cherries.

After they are harvested, the cherries go through a process to remove the pulp from the the seeds or "beans" on the inside.  Two common methods of accomplishing this involve leaving the cherries out to dry in the sun or washing the pulp off with water.  There is also a thin shell around the beans that must be removed separately during the processing of the cherries.  After having been processed, the highest quality beans are typically roasted and brewed by a group of elite, certified, and quality graders.  They rate the coffee on a scale of 1-100.  Only the highest quality beans end up in a specialty coffee shop.  After, the beans are shipped to the roaster.  The roaster typically does his or her own evaluation of the coffee upon its arrival.  The beans are then roasted into the dark, aromatic beans we think of when we buy coffee.  I try to roast my own coffee at home and, trust me, roasting is easy to do but very difficult to do right.  If you have ever had a great cup of coffee that came from great beans, the amount of time and dedication that it took to get that into your hand might boggle your mind.

I don't know of many foods that have been cared for, inspected, and selected with the same level of dedication that coffee beans have been.  If I were to try to explain the whole process in detail, it would probably fill a decent-sized book.  Maybe not a bible or dictionary sized book but probably at least a "first-harry-potter" sized one.  So, the next time you go into your favorite coffee shop and order a large vanilla mocha, remember the painstaking process it took to get that coffee into your hand.  Maybe then we can start to appreciate coffee for what it really is: fascinating.