I suppose this is going to become a place where I can put longer-form coffee thoughts in addition to the basics of the 50-state project. (By the way, to the absolutely no one who is likely to notice, I changed the name from "The United States of Arabica" to "The American Coffee Project" because Facebook decided it found the link suspicious. I can't help but think the presence of the string "Arab" or "Arabic" was what made it seem suspicious, which is pretty racist! Perhaps I'm wrong and it will eventually decide this one is also suspicious because it's a site that has barely any views. I guess we'll see.)
So on Facebook I did a series of videos where I tried the three Nepal coffees that I discussed in the last post. (It will not surprise you to know that my thoughts here were collated from those sessions.) On the last one, my dad left the following comment:
In any event, the question is apropos. One of the things that I like most about third-wave coffee is how variable it is. Because of the focus on provenance, the commonness of single-origin coffee, and the tendency toward lighter roasts, you can really fixate on the wide variety of potential flavor notes that can emerge out of a cup of coffee. And it really is a wide variety - just check the tasting notes on a few single-origin bags at the roaster of your choice. Just as one example, a quick check of the Paradise Roasters webpage right now reveals that their current offerings include flavor notes as widely ranged as coriander, brown sugar, milk chocolate, green tea, tobacco, and sun-dried tomato.
Dunkin Donuts coffee, to use the example my dad gave, is more along the lines of second-wave coffee - it's better than something like Folgers, but that sort of mainstream coffee (with the possible exception of something like Starbucks' Reserve line, their attempt at third-wave) is generally designed, like a lot of mainstream fast food, to be repeatable and familiar. Dunkin Donuts coffee is going to taste pretty much the same in every Dunkin Donuts in America, and it's probably going to taste pretty much the same as the coffee in every McDonald's in America, and so forth. This second-wave coffee may be better stuff than the first wave, but it usually relies on heavier roasts - which assist with the uniformity of flavor, but of course what you end up tasting is, mostly, the roast. Ultimately this is why I came to give it up.
My own journey to specialty third-wave coffee was something of an evolution. Well into adulthood, I did not drink coffee at all. When I started drinking it, it was second-wave stuff - bags of Starbucks and Seattle's Best, usually brewed at home with the subsequent addition of sweetened creamer. After a while I stopped sweetening my coffee and just using half and half; then I started drinking better stuff some of the time; then I started drinking better stuff ALL of the time. And over the last six months or so I've even moved to drinking it black on the weekends when I can brew it a little nicer in the Chemex and have a chance to focus on the flavors.
So, certainly it's possible for someone's palate to evolve on coffee. Less than a decade ago I didn't think I liked the stuff at all! The question, I suppose, is whether you sort of need certain personal conditions. If someone just needs to grab their morning coffee for functional purposes, are they going to appreciate the wide variety of flavor notes? Possibly not. And indeed if the coffee doesn't entirely taste like "coffee" - that is to say, it doesn't have that strong roasted flavor - they might actually be upset! If you blindfolded someone who always drinks second-wave coffee and gave them a sip of either of the Lekali Estate coffees, would they guess that it was coffee? They might well not.
There's nothing really wrong with this, by the way. I consider myself to have "evolved" beyond second-wave coffee but it's more of a personal decision based on what I like. Not everyone needs to do that or feel that way, especially if coffee is more functional, or something you drink to wash down your breakfast. If you want a ham and Swiss sandwich, you probably want to make it with stuff out of the deli case. You don't need to make it with jamon iberico and cave-aged Emmentaler, and indeed it's probably better that you don't! Those things are delicious, but to some extent you're wasting them if you jam them into a sandwich. And it would be a borderline scandalous waste of some $20 bag of specialty coffee to pump flavored syrup into it and use it to wash down a McGriddles sandwich or something. There's a kind of coffee that works in that milieu. It's not the high-end stuff that tastes like a cup of tea.
High-end specialty coffee has a price point that marks it as a luxury product, certainly when compared to second-wave coffee - a particularly good bag of whole-bean third-wave coffee might well cost me four to five times what it used to cost me to procure a bag of Seattle's Best, and that doesn't even include the extra labor that I have to do to grind the beans myself. But it's also a product that enables you to go on all kinds of journeys, letting your taste buds travel around the world and experience the way the land and the weather on different farms, in different countries, on different continents affect the way the beverage in your cup tastes. Coffee is functional for me but it's also fun. Drinking the exact same cup every morning would only be the former. But probably a lot of people are just fine with that, and that's fine. I don't think there would be enough supply if everyone in the world suddenly decided they were only willing to drink third-wave specialty coffee!
Anyway, that's kind of a winding way to answer the question. Would someone who only drinks second-wave coffee recognize some of these tea-like flavors as coffee? I think they probably wouldn't. But could they learn to? Sure! Whether that's what they're looking for is ultimately up to them.
So on Facebook I did a series of videos where I tried the three Nepal coffees that I discussed in the last post. (It will not surprise you to know that my thoughts here were collated from those sessions.) On the last one, my dad left the following comment:
I have some questions. When you did a video of another coffee that I think you said was all typica, it sounded like you thought it almost tasted like a different kind of beverage. Would someone who normally drinks Dunkin Donuts coffee recognize it as coffee? What about this one?I'm not sure which coffee I said this about - I vaguely remember saying it but I couldn't find it in the videos, though I did make some comments about how the mutability of coffee as it cools can make it taste very different from the start of the cup to the end, which is a related but distinct comment - but this got me thinking somewhat. As noted, all three of the Nepali coffees were at least somewhat reminiscent of tea. This hasn't been an entirely uncommon experience for me, either - a couple months ago I had a Panamanian Geisha from Paradise Roasters that was very unlike what most people would think of as coffee, with a lot of fruit flavor and a light, tea-like body, and "tea-like" appears a couple other times in my tasting notes spreadsheet. (It surely will not shock you that such a thing exists.)
In any event, the question is apropos. One of the things that I like most about third-wave coffee is how variable it is. Because of the focus on provenance, the commonness of single-origin coffee, and the tendency toward lighter roasts, you can really fixate on the wide variety of potential flavor notes that can emerge out of a cup of coffee. And it really is a wide variety - just check the tasting notes on a few single-origin bags at the roaster of your choice. Just as one example, a quick check of the Paradise Roasters webpage right now reveals that their current offerings include flavor notes as widely ranged as coriander, brown sugar, milk chocolate, green tea, tobacco, and sun-dried tomato.
Dunkin Donuts coffee, to use the example my dad gave, is more along the lines of second-wave coffee - it's better than something like Folgers, but that sort of mainstream coffee (with the possible exception of something like Starbucks' Reserve line, their attempt at third-wave) is generally designed, like a lot of mainstream fast food, to be repeatable and familiar. Dunkin Donuts coffee is going to taste pretty much the same in every Dunkin Donuts in America, and it's probably going to taste pretty much the same as the coffee in every McDonald's in America, and so forth. This second-wave coffee may be better stuff than the first wave, but it usually relies on heavier roasts - which assist with the uniformity of flavor, but of course what you end up tasting is, mostly, the roast. Ultimately this is why I came to give it up.
My own journey to specialty third-wave coffee was something of an evolution. Well into adulthood, I did not drink coffee at all. When I started drinking it, it was second-wave stuff - bags of Starbucks and Seattle's Best, usually brewed at home with the subsequent addition of sweetened creamer. After a while I stopped sweetening my coffee and just using half and half; then I started drinking better stuff some of the time; then I started drinking better stuff ALL of the time. And over the last six months or so I've even moved to drinking it black on the weekends when I can brew it a little nicer in the Chemex and have a chance to focus on the flavors.
So, certainly it's possible for someone's palate to evolve on coffee. Less than a decade ago I didn't think I liked the stuff at all! The question, I suppose, is whether you sort of need certain personal conditions. If someone just needs to grab their morning coffee for functional purposes, are they going to appreciate the wide variety of flavor notes? Possibly not. And indeed if the coffee doesn't entirely taste like "coffee" - that is to say, it doesn't have that strong roasted flavor - they might actually be upset! If you blindfolded someone who always drinks second-wave coffee and gave them a sip of either of the Lekali Estate coffees, would they guess that it was coffee? They might well not.
There's nothing really wrong with this, by the way. I consider myself to have "evolved" beyond second-wave coffee but it's more of a personal decision based on what I like. Not everyone needs to do that or feel that way, especially if coffee is more functional, or something you drink to wash down your breakfast. If you want a ham and Swiss sandwich, you probably want to make it with stuff out of the deli case. You don't need to make it with jamon iberico and cave-aged Emmentaler, and indeed it's probably better that you don't! Those things are delicious, but to some extent you're wasting them if you jam them into a sandwich. And it would be a borderline scandalous waste of some $20 bag of specialty coffee to pump flavored syrup into it and use it to wash down a McGriddles sandwich or something. There's a kind of coffee that works in that milieu. It's not the high-end stuff that tastes like a cup of tea.
High-end specialty coffee has a price point that marks it as a luxury product, certainly when compared to second-wave coffee - a particularly good bag of whole-bean third-wave coffee might well cost me four to five times what it used to cost me to procure a bag of Seattle's Best, and that doesn't even include the extra labor that I have to do to grind the beans myself. But it's also a product that enables you to go on all kinds of journeys, letting your taste buds travel around the world and experience the way the land and the weather on different farms, in different countries, on different continents affect the way the beverage in your cup tastes. Coffee is functional for me but it's also fun. Drinking the exact same cup every morning would only be the former. But probably a lot of people are just fine with that, and that's fine. I don't think there would be enough supply if everyone in the world suddenly decided they were only willing to drink third-wave specialty coffee!
Anyway, that's kind of a winding way to answer the question. Would someone who only drinks second-wave coffee recognize some of these tea-like flavors as coffee? I think they probably wouldn't. But could they learn to? Sure! Whether that's what they're looking for is ultimately up to them.
Comments
Post a Comment