Friday April 12

Wet, Dry, or Vinified? New Frontiers in Coffee Bean Prep.

That magical hint of fruited perfume you found in that Kenya or Yrg one year, and never again? Could these flavors be in your coffee reliably, year in, year out? Emilio Lopez of El Salvador is trying to make that happen with his fermentation experiments.



Coffee is fermented in water tanks to remove the mucilage, i.e., the fruit that surrounds the coffee bean. Modifying the flavor is not the intent; but it does happen. If you remove the mucilage by drying the cherry in natural processing, the drawn out ferment adds more flavors; whereas if you scrape it off in a mechanical demucilager, you add no flavors at all. In each case the coffee tastes different. Coffee aficionados argue at length which of these methods is best or most legitimate; but none of us have much idea about what is actually happening to the bean at the enzymatic level.

Emilio, who has learnt wine making in Heardsburg, Napa Valley, points out that fermentation can do many things: it adds the alcohol to wine and beer; it adds the carbon dioxide and sour dough flavors to bread; finally, it adds the pungency to cheeses, cabbages and other fermented products. None of these flavors are welcome in coffee, and if they are present, the coffee is labelled as fermented. But fermentation also creates esters and other aromatics in wine and in coffee; it is these that make some bottles of wine worth hundreds of dollars. If they could be controlled to enhance the flavors native to coffee, it would add value to them as well. Emilio is experimenting with the fermentation vats used in wine making. These hold very little water, use circulating pumps, with exact water formulations and specific yeasts, precisely formulated and controlled. Fermentation times are extended to up to fifty hours (as compared to twelve for most wet processing) to fix the desirable flavors.

At the brewing cup, one competitor used an experimental coffee that Emilio had prepped. It was doen using wine yeasts, with the coffee cherry skin removed, i.e. like white wine. I need to follow up to bring more details of this story, and am trying to taste some samples for an extended report.


Pretty as a Picture: Latte Art Competition

This year, a demonstration US Latte Art championship is being run under the supervision of Krystal Burns of Palace Coffee.



The winner of the eventual SCAA sanctioned full version will go on to compete in the world championship. Krystal has been running latte art throwdown leagues in Canyon Texas and the surrounding region. In these leagues, the competitors' league standings go up and down in weekly competitions. The league topping baristas go on to regional championships. Regional winners go on to the nationals

The competition format gets more formal at each step. Jay Caragay,



who is judging, explained that at the national and international levels, competitors have to submit a photograph of the pour they intend, and then reproduce it precisely in two cups of equal size, and then, properly scaled, in cups of 6, 12 and 18 ounce sizes. The scores are then adjusted to reflect the figure's degree of difficulty.



Sunday baristas need not apply.

Some people, Mark Price most prominently, question whether highly refined latte art is a useful barista skill. The best pours require a coffee blended and roasted not for taste, but for dense crema; and in competitions the same coffee is used by all competitors. The milk is stretched not to achieve the highest sweetness and creamiest mouthfeel, but slightly less, to get to the best painting stage. Finally, it's a coffee competition where nobody ever tastes even a drop. In the end, it is a spin off that may have little to do with making great drink making; but it is the most audience friendly competition, and the Latte Art throwdowns draw a paying audience which is unique to coffee competitions.