July 22nd, 2010
Disclaimer: This post will not tell you how to make the perfect coffee – I was trying to think of a catchy title and “How to make your coffee taste better by making small adjustments to the brew variables from the standard method – a lesson learned from the WBC” was a little long winded. As in most cases perfection is something to aspire to, but in reality will never be achieved. If anyone can think of a better title please leave a comment.
Now I know that the WBC was quite a few weeks ago, but I thought I would write about it today as I think there is an important lesson to be learned that we can all employ when brewing at home. This lesson doesn’t just apply to brewing espresso, but to any coffee maker.
Stray from the standard brewing method
While the standard brewing method is a great starting point when learning to use a new coffee maker, it’s not a strict recipe that must be followed to the letter. To get the best out of your coffee (or to pursue perfection) you should experiment with the way you make it.
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Tags: coffee maker, espresso
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July 12th, 2010
Sorry for the lack of new posts recently. I’ve been distracted too much by the World Cup. Hopefully now it’s finished I’ll get back to blogging on a more regular basis.
Speaking of the World Cup; now I know this post is a little off topic, but I couldn’t really resist talking about the finals (I’ve also tried to justify it a little by using coffee beans). England’s performance was at best, very frustrating and anxious to watch and at worse a humiliation. The press are very keen to blame everyone and anyone for what went wrong, provided that it sells newspapers.
The Formation
To me the underlying problem for all England’s woe seems to be their formation. A 4-4-2 formation without a proper left winger (no offense to Steven Gerrard) didn’t work. The basic principle of an attack is to stretch the defensive team and so create space for goal scoring opportunities. The problem with England when they attacked was they didn’t keep a good shaped. Other than the occasional width provided by the full-backs getting forward, England kept to the middle of the pitch. This made it easy for the opposition to defend against (particularly as most had 10 men behind the ball), as they weren’t stretched at all. It also made it frustrating for the England players as their bunched up shape left no easy passes on to teammates.
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June 27th, 2010
If you haven’t heard already, the results for the WBC are as follows:
- Michael Phillips (USA) 706 points
- Rual Rodas (Guatemala) 691 points
- Scottie Callaghan (Australia) 672.5 points
- Colin Harmon (Ireland) 659.5 points
- Soren Stiller Markussen (Denmark) 644.5 points
- Stefanos Domatiotis (Greece) 632 points
Should you have missed any of the action, the videos for all the competitors are still available online here.
The whole event was done really well. The only disappointing thing for me was the drawn out announcement of the final results. Like many people I’m sure, after the final performance by Rual, I wanted to know the results as soon as possible. But instead, I had to endure each and every sponsor being invited onto stage, by the MC, to give a speech.
Could you imagine this happening in the FIFA World Cup? After England beat Brazil in the final (I wish), before Steven Gerrard can lift the trophy we have to hear a speech from all the sponsors.
MC: I’d like to welcome onto the pitch our ball sponsor Adidas.
Adidas: Thank you. This World Cup we at Adidas listen hard to what players and coaches alike wanted from a football. We then went incompletely the opposite direction and took inspiration for the Jabulani ball from those 99p plastic balls you find on the garage forecourt.
MC: Thanks Adidas. Now I’d like to welcome Ronald MacDonald…
Big respect must go to Stephen Leighton of Has Bean Coffee. As a sponsor he had the opportunity (and every right) to promote his company. I can’t remember his exact words, but basically when he was handed the mic he said “Just get on with the results”.
Update: Just watch the announcement back to find out what Stephen’s exact words were. What he actually said wasn’t crude like the words I suggested above – sorry. Light-heartedly Stephen said:
All the baristas rocked. Can we have the results please.
Tags: espresso
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June 19th, 2010
Wimbledon isn’t the only competition kicking off in London next week, as the World Barista Championship arrives in the city. Michael Phillips or Colin Harmon might not be household names like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Andy Murray; but the WBC is a hotly anticipated event in the coffee calendar.
Starting on 23 June, at the Olympia Exhibition Centre, 54 nationalities will compete over 3 days to see who is crowned World Barista Champion. Each competitor must produce 4 espressos, 4 cappuccinos and 4 signature drinks during a 15 minute performance; which will be scored by an expert panel of judges.
To learn more about the event visit the WBC website. You can also watch live streaming of the championship here.
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Tags: espresso
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June 12th, 2010
Last week I posted about a new brewing method I was experimenting with, aimed at keeping the water temperature of the brew in the optimum extraction range (i.e. 90-95°C) for longer.
What’s wrong with the standard method?
In the standard method, you allow the water in your kettle to cool after boiling to around 95°C before adding to your cafetiere. The problem is that once the water is poured into the cafetiere, the cafetiere sucks heat out of the water until the cafetiere and water are at the same temperature. Even with pre-heating the cafetiere, inside a few seconds of adding the water, the temperature has already dropped by 4-5°C. As the temperature will continue to drop by 2-3°C every minute during the brew, the time spent in the optimum extraction range could be less than 1 minute.
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Tags: cafetiere
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June 3rd, 2010
Jesse from BBC's the Fast Show
..drinking too much coffee!
For the last week or so, I’ve been trying to come up with a new method for brewing with a cafetiere. It all started when I was testing our new thermal cafetieres for a previous post. I notice something that is really obvious, but hadn’t crossed my mind before: when you add water to a cafetiere, the cafetiere immediately sucks some of the temperature out of the water.
Even if you pre-heat a cafetiere, its temperature is still lower than the water in your kettle (which of course you’ve left to cool down a bit after boiling). So as soon as you pour the water into the cafetiere, it absorbs heat away from the water until they’re both at the same temperature. As cafetieres are usually made from conductive materials (glass or stainless steel) this heat sync occurs within seconds of pouring water into it.
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Tags: cafetiere
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May 27th, 2010
Back in February I wrote a post about the poor state of my garden and how I decided to put my spent coffee grounds to good use and try to improve the way my grass looked.
Well three months have past since the original post so I thought it was about time for an update. Has the coffee started working, or is it time to invest in some grass coloured paint?
Results so far…
The grass is definitely greener. But you would expect that this time of year. We had a cold winter and I’m sure a lot of snow and hard frosts aren’t particularly good conditions for grass. Much better is sun and rain – although this spring has been mostly dry and dull!
One positive sign is that there seems to be more birds in the garden this year than last. I’m hoping that it’s because all the coffee in the soil has marinaded the grubs and worms, making them an even tastier treat for birds. More likely though is that the soil structure has improved making it a more attractive home for grubs and worms; and extra grubs and worms equals extra birds.
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May 21st, 2010
We’ve just started stocking a range of thermal cafetieres and it got me wondering what’s the actual point of them? Yes, I know they keep your coffee hot for longer. This new cafetiere claims to keep it hot for 3 times as long. But if you leave your coffee in the cafetiere doesn’t it keep extracting?
This is something I’ve read and heard many times but never got around to testing for myself. Does coffee really keep extracting even when the plunger is down? So I conducted a test using a TDS meter, measuring some coffee immediately after I’d finished brewing and then again 5 minutes later. The results showed that the coffee which had been left in the cafetiere was indeed stronger, by 6%.
This might not seem a lot, but the aim of brewing is to extract all the desirable flavours from the coffee whilst leaving the undesirable ones behind. So if all the desirable flavours have already been extracted by the time the brew has finished, than this extra 6% of strength will be from the undesirable flavours.
Therefore, keeping your coffee hot for longer isn’t a good selling point for a cafetiere. If you leave your coffee inside it, it’s going to keep on brewing, and when you come back to it, it will taste darker, bitterer and will contain more caffeine.
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Tags: cafetiere, coffee maker
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May 10th, 2010
In this unprecedented time in British politics, what do David Cameron and Nick Clegg need to ensure their talks over forming the next government are fruitful? Obviously, they need plenty of open-mindedness, support from their respective parties and from the civil service. But most importantly they need coffee!
It’s long been debated whether coffee actually makes you smarter. Scientific studies have shown that a cup of coffee can temporarily improve: focus, alertness and short-term memory. But perhaps more importantly, history has shown that coffee houses are a breeding grown for innovation. Many geniuses frequented coffee houses and many coffee houses evolved into national institutions.
Top 5 Famous Coffee Houses
1. Lloyds Coffee House – where Lloyds of London (world’s leading insurance specialists) began.
2. Jonathan’s Coffee House – where the London Stock Exchange began.
3. Café Foy – where the French Revolution started.
4. The Green Dragon – where the Boston Tea Party was planned.
5. Tontine Coffee House – an early incarnation of the New York Stock Exchange.
Maybe if Cameron and Clegg held meetings in a coffee house it might inspire them to start a revolution on the voting system and give them enough fiscal insight to decipher a budget for economic growth. Does anyone know whether you can get good coffee in the House of Commons?
Staying Awake
Clearly, the deal between the two parties may take a while to thrash out. So Cameron and Clegg can expect a few weeks of sleepless nights. Maggie Thatcher famously only slept for 4 hours a night when she was PM. If they want to go one better than her, they could take a leaf out of Honoré de Balzac (a prolific French writer) book (excuse the pun), who allegedly drank over 60 cups of coffee a day and only slept 2 hours a night. How he found time to write anything, in between making coffee and emptying his bladder is a mystery!
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May 4th, 2010
One of the biggest problems when describing a brewing method is getting across what size of ground coffee to use. The trouble is that each grind setting on a coffee grinder will produce a range of sizes rather than one exact size.
How coffee grinders work
The reason we get a range of sizes from a grinder, is that grinders use a crushing action to break the bean into smaller pieces. On a conical burr grinder, there are two discs: a female cylindrical disc and a male dome shaped disc. Each disc has ridges (know as teeth) running across its surface, and it’s these ridges which crush the bean. Obviously crushing isn’t an exact science. Irregular sized pieces break off from the bean each time it’s crushed between the grinder’s teeth.
If you look at the cross section below of a burr grinder: the bean enters at the top and as it progresses down, the gap narrows between the two discs, breaking the bean into smaller and smaller pieces. The ground coffee cannot escape from between the grinding discs until it’s small enough to fit through the gap at the bottom (indicated by the two red arrows).
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Tags: cafetiere, coffee grinder, espresso, stove-top
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