The Perfect Cup

I am imagining an alternate timeline in which Desmond runs a coffee bar at the bottom of the hatch.

What on earth could LOST possibly have to do with the way we think about coffee? One of the important things I felt the ending of the show did was to suggest that our questions about its mysteries can only be adequately solved by rethinking them as questions about epistemology. At the point where fixed explanations only perpetuate the search for more information, the only adequate way to satisfy the quest for static answers is to think about the larger, dynamic narrative structure that intertwines them. This is important because rethinking the search for a fixed, platonic truth as a dynamic exploration of how that search can be meaningful parallels the way that third wave baristas tend to think about coffee. The dirty little secret about the perfect cup of coffee is that it doesn’t exist; instead, trying to construct the perfect cup of coffee only functions as a way for baristas to keep learning about coffee and to keep making their coffee better.


Adopting this paradigm as we think about coffee is crucial to understanding why the everyday appreciation of coffee can be so rewarding. One of the misconceptions I feel my last post may have encouraged is viewing coffee as a static product. Coffee is generally portrayed as a fixed, opaque end-product that is completely dissociated from its method of production (earlier this week, a café employee answered my question about where and when their beans were roasted with: “I’m not allowed to tell you”). Coffee beans are packaged like different flavors of candy (light roast, dark roast, African, Hawaiian blend); different types of coffee are listed on a board like soft drinks; flavor terminology is reduced to “strong” and “weak.” Thinking about coffee and coffee products as manufactured goods neglects the relationship between production and product that makes coffee appreciation both dynamic and rewarding. A more apt comparison would suggest thinking about coffee the way we think about good food, in which both the properties of the starting materials and the method in which those materials are combined and prepared creates the final dish. Therefore, as we begin to think about cultivating an enriched understanding of coffee, coupled with a movement toward our individualized conception of the most enjoyable cup, the opaqueness with which coffee is presented to the typical consumer will have to be made more transparent. To that end, one of my new objectives is to occasionally infuse my explorations of day-to-day coffee appreciation with a slightly didactic approach. My goal is that by pairing intellectual and technical explorations of coffee, I will be able to elucidate coffee as a dynamic process in a way that is accessible to both the everyday coffee drinker and the die-hard coffee enthusiast.

Latte art. It looks pretty. It’s hard to make. But what does it mean?

It turns out a whole lot. Latte art can only be poured if certain variables in the coffee-making process are perfectly balanced, meaning that latte art, itself represents a harmony of both style and substance. The refined look of the design in the cup is contingent upon the refined preparation technique(s) which made that design possible, a synchronicity which is reflected in the quality of the drink. Because latte art can only be poured when the coffee is made to exacting standards, seeing latte art in your cup immediately indicates that (barring a few exceptions) your drink will taste fantastic. This artful concomitance between form and function provides us with an elegant rubric for demystifying the dynamics of coffee preparation. First, I will use latte art as a way to explore the role milk plays in milk-based espresso drinks. Then, I want to discuss how thinking about coffee, itself as artful can help us explore the way its dynamic nature interfaces with our repetitious enjoyment of the drink.

Preparing milk is a science. The end result is ideally a sweet, rich pitcher of warm milk that is infused with a layer of dense foam. In order to arrive at that pitcher of steamed and frothed milk that is crafted to intermesh with a great shot of espresso, some basic science behind the process must be unfolded.

As the temperature of milk increases, so does the solubility of the lactose molecules it contains; this is why steamed milk tastes sweeter. Steamed milk reaches its “sweet spot” (clever, I know) between 140 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit (if you want a more precise temperature, we could settle on 155); above 160 degrees, the protein in the milk begins to break down, resulting in scalded milk (a new layer of large, gross foam also forms with the breakdown of protein, functioning as a serious detriment to the texture and flavor of good foam). At the same time, the initial splitting of protein in milk at low temperatures, as it is injected with hot air, allows for the creation of good milk foam. This process occurs best below 100 degrees Fahrenheit; it is also one-way (the protein cannot be unsplit), meaning that fresh milk should always be used with each new cup of coffee and that foam should be created by injecting small amounts of hot air at low temperatures. The fat content of the milk also influences its foaming ability (although this variance can be overlooked since it won’t hinder an experienced barista) and its perceived richness.

All this comes together when the steam wand is opened up and your barista begins the journey toward latte art. The chemistry behind the steaming and frothing of milk is directly responsible for its desirable attributes as part of an milk-based espresso drink. If the milk is heated to the wrong temperature or it is frothed too erratically or at too high a temperature, its attributes will deviate from their ideal state. How thick is the foam? What is the perceived sweetness and richness of your drink? Does it taste burnt? All this is determined during those brief seconds in line when the barista puts the steam wand into a pitcher of milk and turns it on. The perfect balance of these attributes creates an environment in which latte art can be poured (since the creation of latte art is contingent upon the existence of foam that is dense, composed of small bubbles, and infused into the steamed milk), meaning that the stylistic façade of latte art rests upon a more fundamental structure of milk preparation that interlinks the look of the artful latte with the reasons why it tastes good. On the other hand, if the bubbles are too big, the milk was not ideally frothed; if it tastes burnt, it was steamed for too long; if there is a high volume of large, tasteless bubbles on top, the protein may have broken down; etcetera. By demystifying the basic science behind latte art, we are able to transform the visual appeal of the milk drink into a formula for unfolding the way its taste can change every time.


This is why thinking of coffee as artful can be such a valuable approach, since it allows us to begin deconstructing the uniformity with which coffee is usually presented. Developing a biological and experiential understanding of what type of coffee we enjoy best based on our daily experience of coffee also means that we have developed a set of tools for approaching and unpacking the changing taste of coffee; the tools are our preferences. We can use the differences between our refined schema of the perfect cup and the attributes of the cup we are drinking as a litmus test for isolating and examining the aspects of the coffee before us, and what we like and dislike about it. In other words, using our sensory experience of coffee to continually question what we think about the coffee in front of us uses the static nature of everyday coffee enjoyment to explore the dynamic nature of a drink that is constantly different. This relationship integrates with a general notion of art, which we can define as: “the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.” Latte art can be though of as an ideal arrangement of coffee elements in a way that heightens its sensory appeal. Similarly, thinking about how the ensemble of different coffee attributes appeals to her coffee preferences allows the average coffee drinker to explore the dynamic nature of coffee despite the veil of monotony she is likely to encounter in a typical café.

The concept is deceptively simple. It basically suggests that we think about why we like or dislike a certain cup of coffee. But that simple suggestion implicates a larger paradigm shift in how we think about coffee, which replaces the search for the ideal cup with a more involved and rewarding exploration of how and why we like the coffee we do. Just a little more focus allows us to peel back the looks, tastes, and smells of our coffee from beneath the surface of its uniform façade. In so doing, we unlock a new world of learning in which our favorite drink can be a gateway to exploring new elements of coffee preparation, and in which those elements of coffee come together to make a drink we enjoy more and more each time.



Sources
For their own sake, I will not mention the name of the café where they were not allowed to tell me about their beans. I have nothing positive to say about that.

De Lazzer, Aaron. “The Milk Frothing Guide.” Coffeegeek. 7 Nov. 2003.
[http://coffeegeek.com/guides/frothingguide]

“Art.” Wikipedia. 18 Jul. 2010.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art]

Coffee Snob

My grandmother looked at me like I was a lunatic earlier this week when I pulled out my travel equipment and started making coffee in her kitchen. Hunched over my hand grinder, cranking like a madman while chunks of ground coffee went flying into the air; precisely weighing beans on my scale; checking the temperature of my water, obsessing over the way I poured it into the chemex: who the hell would want to go through all this trouble just for one cup of coffee? Surely I must be mad.

What seems to constantly mystify people who aren’t familiar with my coffee eccentricities is that I actually like putting so much work into making my coffee. For me, at least half the enjoyment I get from drinking coffee comes from its preparation, since the brewing process allows me to cultivate a deeper appreciation of the cup I eventually drink. As I make my coffee, I start piecing together a mental picture of the drink I’m preparing: looking at the beans, smelling the coffee as it brews, thinking about degrees of roast and extraction variables. The coffee I make myself is always the coffee I enjoy the most, because through its preparation I am able to form a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the coffee I end up drinking.

It turns out there might be concrete reasons for my weird obsessivness, reasons which can give us a larger insight into how coffee-drinkers develop a satisfying relationship with the coffee they drink every day. In order to start understanding the relationship between coffee eccentricity and coffee enjoyment, we need to make a brief detour into the world of neuroscience.


I recently finished reading Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide (a fantastic book that I can’t recommend enough), which explains some of the mechanics behind how and why the brain makes certain types of decisions. One of the chapters of the book talks about how our brain uses dopamine neurons to predict patterns in the outside world, to which we are exposed based on daily experience. One of Lehrer’s examples is a naval officer who was somehow able to differentiate an enemy silkworm missile from friendly A-6 fighter jets based solely on the blip pattern it made on his radar screen. It was later discovered that because of the missile’s altitude, its began to appear on his radar screen at a slightly different time than the A-6 fighter jets. At the time the officer was only able to tell the missile apart from the incoming jets based on a “bad feeling” the mysteriously approaching objet was giving him; it turns out the feeling was the result of dopamine neurons in his anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) having developed a predictory system of how the A-6 jets looked on the screen, after staring at them for countless hours. The officer’s “bad feeling” was the result of his emotional brain having developed a seemingly innate sense of how certain objects looked on the radar.

Pretty cool stuff, right? Well, of course, during this whole chapter I was thinking about coffee. Lehrer’s explanation of how the emotional brain maps predictive patterns of phenomena we experience on a regular basis immediately reminded me of the bizarre symbiosis with my espresso machine I have never been able to explain. I own a Gaggia Baby – an entry-level espresso machine with a small, aluminum boiler that is challenging to keep at an ideal extraction temperature. After years of fighting with my espresso machine’s capricious boiler and learning to work with its other quirks, I have developed a strange symbiosis with the machine: I know when the boiler is about to start a new cycle; I know precisely how long it takes to get up to steaming temperature; I know when the extraction is going to do something wonky; I know all this, but I don’t know how I know it. Well now I do.


Jump back to my Grandmother’s look of incredulity earlier this week. After seeing me spend twenty minutes making just one cup of coffee, she suggested that we try to make something we could both enjoy using her machine. Our combined efforts to reconcile our two brewing techniques was nothing short of comic – we must have looked like characters in an Abbot and Costello sketch as we fumbled around the kitchen and argued about how to use the machine. But what surprised me was that the coffee we ended up with was actually pretty good. It was different than the coffee I’m used to drinking, but it tasted good. Somehow, it still wasn’t good enough.

What was missing was the brewing process with which I am so familiar: thinking about exactly how much coffee I’m using; smelling the beans as they open up during the extraction process; getting a feel for the coffee I am about to drink. What I was missing was the pattern of coffee brewing to which my emotional brain has become so attuned, and the process of comparison between expectation and result which mirrors the behavior of dopamine neurons in the ACC, and which I use to continually refine my brewing methods. But this process of enjoyment was totally lost on my grandmother, because her pattern of coffee enjoyment is completely different. This entrenched method of coffee appreciation, with its individual ‘eccentricities’ and ‘rituals,’ explains a lot about how regular coffee drinkers enjoy the coffee they are used to drinking. It suggests that familiarity plays an enormous role in the way regular coffee drinkers appreciate the coffee they love. To me, this also explains the success of the corporate coffee model, since it allows a coffee drinker to walk into any branded café in the world, know immediately what to expect and what to look for, know what they like, and know how it should taste. It also explains the enjoyment people get out of low-quality, mass-produced coffees for home brewing, which is easy to make and tastes the same every day. It explains why I can give a cup of some of the most flavorful coffee in the world to an inexperienced coffee drinker, and have him tell me it tastes too strong and he doesn’t like it.


Rather than using this phenomenon to argue that all the coffee peons who do not appreciate specialty coffee should renounce their ways and start drinking good coffee until they learn to like it, I think that this process of habituation points to the richness and diversity of different ways people choose to appreciate coffee. Moreover, it points toward a reconsideration of what we define as “good coffee.” I would argue that a cup of coffee can be considered “good” when it meets certain standards of appreciation: if I get a delicious cup of coffee out of my chemex, that is good; if my friend who studies architecture and never sleeps brews a giant pot of coffee that is full of caffeine and that he will enjoy, that is good; if someone runs into a coffee chain on her way to work and gets a quick cup of coffee that can be enjoyed on-the-go, that is good. But when my chemex coffee tastes overextracted, when my friend’s coffee is too weak, when the woman can’t have her coffee to go, then that coffee fails its standard of enjoyment and can be considered bad. The role habituation plays in this process of enjoying good coffee doesn’t just suggest that there are different types of good coffee out there, but that each individual’s consideration of what makes coffee good is directly shaped by the way he or she chooses to experience it every day. It’s not simply cultural or economical, it’s also biological and deeply rooted in our sensory and experiential experience of coffee. I have an example.

During my time in Michigan, I was able to make it out to this really great coffee shop in Ferndale that roasts their coffee on-site and brews it fresh using the right equipment. I talked for a little bit with the owner, who showed me around the place and made me some coffee in one of their vacuum pots; I was even able to see him finish off a roast. When I saw him brew the coffee in the siphon (vac pot), using an extraction profile I would never choose myself, I immediately started asking him about his timing and stirring techniques. But he wasn’t interested in anything about that; he said (this is a paraphrase): “some people think I’m crazy for stirring the coffee right away like this, but I think it tastes good.” The coffee I ended up drinking really surprised me (it was an Ethiopian Harrar, a great coffee that I’m pretty familiar with): at first it didn’t taste like anything, then flavors started coming forth, buried beneath the layer of irrecognition in my cup. The coffee was good, it was really good – I just had a really hard time tasting this cup of coffee, because its profile was so alien to me. I ordered an espresso and was met with the same scenario. When they first brought it out I expected sheer failure: I had ordered a double and was looking at a good four ounces of thin, bitter-looking espresso sitting in some weird cocktail glass. But what I mistook for an overextracted cup of bitter sludge was actually one of the best “lungo” shots of espresso I have ever tasted. It was delicious and incredibly refreshing. Instead of drinking it in under a minute like I usually do, I sipped on it for at least five or ten minutes – the glass cup they brought it in was perfect, since it helped open up the coffee by bringing it to a lower temperature (this, too went against convention) and since its aesthetic matched the slower pace at which the drink needed to be enjoyed. This was coffee I was not used to - it boggled my palette and at first I thought the people at this café were horribly misinformed. But it turns out that what I mistook for improperly prepared coffee was actually coffee attuned to a different palette, a refined brew that I struggled to recognize. These guys were making really flavorful and good coffee, the snobbiest of the snobby, but I almost didn’t realize it. They were crafting their coffee to match a type of palette I had never encountered before. They were like coffee snobs from the bizarro world.


This encounter suggests to me, more than anything, that good coffee is inherently subjective, and that coffee enjoyment is cultivated as people build a sensory and experiential relationship with the type of coffee they enjoy on an everyday basis. Our relationship with coffee can grow based on how much we decide to expand our experience of it, learning about bean origin and different brewing techniques, trying different types of coffee we would never usually consider (perhaps out of our grandparent’s coffee pot or from an eccentric coffee snob), talking to people and learning about what they get out of the coffee they love. As we broaden the range of our coffee experience, we also deepen our attachment to the coffee we prefer, incorporating these new experiences as we continually refine our schema of the “perfect cup.” Everyone has their own standards of coffee enjoyment, and each regular coffee drinker cultivates a satisfying relationship with the type of coffee he or she likes based on his or her daily engagement with that cup. By paying more attention to the sensory experience of their daily coffee, regular coffee drinkers can deepen and enrich their appreciation of that preferred cup.

What I’m really trying to say is that each coffee drinker is a snob in his own way.



Sources
Lehrer, Jonah. How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.
Chazzano Coffee is located Ferndale, MI.

Mission Statement

Can destruction be a form of creation? I decided to start writing this blog after having turned over the Coffee Club I started and ran for two years to new leaders, packing my apartment full of coffee-making equipment into indefinite storage, and preparing to move to start a new job, where my relationship with coffee will most likely be reduced to grabbing a morning espresso on the way to work. It is here, among boxes of old equipment, sitting in front of my computer as I sip on coffee poured from my “travel” chemex, that I decided to write about coffee. Therefore, the primary objective of this blog is to help me maintain an intellectual and quotidian engagement with coffee as I venture into the uncharted wilderness outside my recently imploded ‘coffee universe’ (or perhaps the swirling, caffeinated energy of my coffee-verse just fizzled out in a big chill). Rather than chronicling the ongoing struggle with my espresso machine’s erratic grouphead (maybe it just needed moar tubes) or my attempts to craft matching roast and extraction profiles for my favorite coffees, the focus of this blog – as I see it at this point – will waver between the technical, the cultural, the academic, and whatever else seems of interest to me at the moment, as I use my ongoing experience of coffee to think about what is of interest in the world of coffee, and how approaching it a certain way can be of value to people who enjoy it.

The “extraction” referred to by the name of the blog is thus twofold: as we think about the literal extraction of chemicals from ground beans that turns water into to coffee, we will also hopefully be able to extract meaningful (or at the very least interesting) ideas about coffee and the role it plays in our everyday lives. Ambitious? Pretentious? Uninspired? I make no apologies. One of the most overlooked facts about coffee, especially by self-proclaimed “coffee geeks” such as myself, is that despite all the time we spend studying coffee chemistry, refining our roasts and extractions, and pushing towards the infinitely regressive “perfect cup,” people’s experience of coffee is largely shaped by the way it is presented to them and the way they approach it. In other words, the science of the perfect cup loses most, if not all of its meaning without a serious consideration of how people’s appreciation of that cup is shaped by the way they experience it. I could ramble incessantly about the “aesthetics of coffee enjoyment” (thus I abate my fear of the blank page) and I think it’s a serious issue that validates the purpose of this blog. As my hands-on engagement with coffee takes an increasing back seat to a more observational role, using my previous experience with coffee to think about ways of considering and reconsidering the ways we experience it in our everyday lives will cultivate an enriched appreciation of coffee that is both democratic and accessible. That, anyway is my goal.

Someone once warned: “don’t you know caffeine can cause serious delirium?” Perhaps that’s true, and perhaps this blog can also be seen as a lingering effect of the serious delirium associated with high caffeine exposure. In either case, I hope you will join me on my journey through the world of coffee and I hope you find it worthwhile. For those not up to the caffeinated task, gargling a mixture of fifty percent hydrogen peroxide and fifty percent water has also been known to help.