“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do". Potter Stewart

mycuppa October 2022 Newsletter

Please be aware that peak season for freight is fast approaching - starting in a fortnight from the 3rd week in October and running until the end of January.

Since April this year, we have used a new, high-speed AusPost facility - a system unavailable to all Victorian merchants or retailers.

This change has continued to deliver significant benefits by improving transit times. The biggest difference involves bypassing a major choke-point in the Victoria - Melbourne Parcel facility at Sunshine. We sometimes see "express" service performance from our regular parcel freight.

It will be interesting to see how the high-speed system copes during the most painful period of the year - mid-November through mid-December.

Another day, another bunch of new coffee brands launched.

It always seems to continue or slow down. The number of entrants rushing to launch their "online coffee" brand with a dream of success from outsourced "drop-shipping".

Life's a beach when you can get enslaved people to do all the hard work. Maybe they don't read the news and ignore extreme labour shortages.

Barely a day passes without some newbie with stars in their eyes and almost no knowledge of coffee asking us to provide a completely outsourced model in supporting their new brand yet to be launched. Thanks, but no thanks.

If there wasn't already a confusing array of 3000 brands and offers available in Australia, into the mix come all the influencers, celebrities and other wannabe with their stylized stories of how they "do it differently with highly ethical actions and beliefs".

Just last week, a batsman in the current Australian cricket team launched his new coffee brand online. Good luck; it's a jungle out there.

Last month a big social media celebrity lurking in the shadows behind a 3rd party digital "front" agency wanted some coffee products for flogging to their followers alongside their bundles of "wellness solutions".

Shamefully, they didn't care about the taste, quality or traceability of the proposed "certified" products. Nope, this was only ever about how much margin they could make by charging double everyday retail prices in promoting organic features and offering some questionable and unproven health benefits. Lab verified mycotoxin-free - snake oil, indeed.

 A Melbourne couple has launched a new coffee brand in the last two months. They have styled their coffee brand on the "plant-based healthy lifestyle" of the couple. 

Maybe I'm a Luddite with my head in the sand, but blow me down. I had yet to learn whether what I ate made any difference to roasted coffee or whether my roasted coffee was "better" because of a fake plant-based healthy lifestyle. It's one example of a dozen new brands emerging over the last few months.

Alongside these "thoughtful approaches" are socially solid and ethical convictions - partnering with carefully selected coffee roasting brands. In other words, the only brands willing to engage with new start-ups, and that's a small list.

But the true irony of this Melbourne brand promising so much "hope", like many other new coffee brands launched since the pandemic and cloned like sausage factories, was the unmistakable fact that they are selling coffees containing robusta.

Okay, that's cool; people are entitled to choices, but when it comes to trying so hard to convince the coffee-buying public they are different by tugging on "emotional triggers of healthy alternatives, social and ethical justice", it's certainly not clear just how this Melbourne coffee loving couple and their robusta-laden coffee are providing those health or social benefits.

Considering that robusta in their coffee was grown at low-altitude, absolutely drowning in chemicals by unfortunate farmers caught in a poverty trap. Don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story about Melbourne coffee lovers and their ethical pursuits of a healthy lifestyle and charging a premium for the privilege.

Is mainstream coffee turning into a freak show where sellers have no vested interests or control over quality? It's all about alluring images and contrived stories designed to take your hard-earned $ money in exchange for high-margin mediocrity.

Please keep your hands on the wheel at all times.

The Stuff of Secrets

It is no secret that plum, cherry and dark chocolate are a winning trifecta in coffee.

This month's Secret Label takes sweetness to another level in a soaring symphony of delicious acids.

If beauty is a power, then a smile is its sword, and this month's coffee will slice through any milk-based espresso with Excalibur's ease.

 

Light, Medium or Dark (LMD) - does it even matter?

It's not easy today trying to purchase coffee in Australia from 3000+ retail brands all screaming for attention.

One of the greatest misconceptions perpetrated on the retail side of roasted coffee is a historically oversimplified classification of "roasted coffee" into three primary ranges - light, medium or dark.

I wish it were that simple - alas, far from it.

Light, Medium, Dark (or LMD) is an outdated and inaccurate way to describe roasted coffees.

It's like telling someone needing detailed directions to "head north".

Yet LMD remains a strong anchor in the myriad of ways sellers of roasted coffee articulate their offerings, particularly when they attempt to prove their often vacuous points of difference.

Many coffee drinkers are still leading their purchase decisions with the Light, Medium, and Dark criteria - no wonder retailers keep playing to that drum.

The biggest misconception of LMD is that dark-roasted coffees have greater levels of flavour. That is just not true.

Coffee strength is a measurement of caffeine level. That caffeine level will decrease on a darker roasted coffee.

Roasting coffee longer or darker won't necessarily increase or improve the flavour (beyond medium), and this urban myth gained traction long ago and continues to prevail today. Not only does the taste disappear, but the darker you take a coffee, the more delicious acids are also escaping.

When consumers ask for "strong", they may indeed want "bite" or bitterness.

Most coffee industry sections generally strive to reduce bitterness by carefully manufacturing "cleaner" cups. However, the quality of ingredients and a brand's style or market demographics limit the result.

What happens when you roast coffee

When roasting raw coffee, hundreds of chemical and physical transitions (and transformations) occur to the "green" coffee until it reaches the desired or target endpoint.

Generally, this endpoint could be any of the 40+ shades of brown. It's never, ever as simple as "medium brown".

Before introducing monitoring tools for displaying one or more temperature records in real-time during the roast batch cycle, akin to using a microscope, operators relied upon crude olfactory senses - sight, smell and sound.

They looked at colour through a small glass aperture, smelt a sample of the beans during the roast and listened carefully for cracks (beans exhausting moisture like popcorn).

Today, those olfactory methods are obsolete and deemed crude or incapable of managing the dynamic, split-second responses during roasting. In reality, relying upon olfactory senses will be "too late". The changes required during roasting must be made "ahead" of the event due to the natural thermal lag of heating or cooking ingredients.

There are certainly no romantic notions of "passed down secrets from roast masters" that some brands attempt to portray as their "difference".

Unfortunately, many roasters are still unable or unwilling to grasp modern tools by continuing to rely upon basic controls of time and temperature combined with optional olfactory tasks.

Some won't upgrade their platforms to gain insight into what's happening during their roasts and continue to do things the same way, ignorant of the changing coffee industry landscape.

For the most advanced platforms, like our industrial Brambati - the most intelligent roasting system available- we use AI tools to help build and optimize precision and consistency. The human element (me) is watching, managing, tuning, and tweaking.

Evaluating coffees for quality

Many factors combine to create a cup profile for a specific coffee. The final colour is undoubtedly different from one of them. Colour is just a guide for the roaster, like a signpost on a journey.

As roasters, we don't tend to think in terms of colour, but instead, we manage the shape of a roasting curve.

Control of a roasting curve starts when raw coffee enters the roasting chamber and plays out every second of that 12 to 15-minute batch. Every moment is critical when roasting coffee, not just the exit. 

What we look for when roasting is our desired results of " acidity, sweetness, body, flavour and finish" in balance.

I never look at the final colour of the roasted coffee because it's remarkably different depending on the origin and varietal. A few coffee brands still use instruments to measure roast colour, but again, I ask, "What's the point of a colour level if the coffee doesn't taste great because of events well before the end?".

Some coffees have naturally higher sugar levels (brix) and are darker when roasted; others will show lighter shades of brown despite being roasted to a deeper level.

Of course, there will always be a group of exceptions. Those roasters seem stuck in rigid ways of quantitative quality control by colour instead of taste.

Please don't laugh; most prominent brands in Australia still use colour as their primary QA metric as it provides them with some false sense of security and an easy way to defend mediocrity or achieve their beliefs in compliance. 

When the coffee industry grades coffee, it is roasted light and the brew method to assess this light roast is remarkably different from how consumers usually drink coffee.

A process called "cupping" is intended to reveal defects in the underlying quality of the coffee and help determine a calibrated score and the associated description for its attributes.

Generally, these light-roasted coffees are unsuitable for milk-based espresso or cafe-type coffee beverages as the lighter roast has a thin body and a short finish, often leading to a disappointing cafe-style experience.

Shifting styles - a walk on the lighter side.

One of the most significant changes in coffee roasted over the last 12 years has been a gradual shift from dark roasting towards a more generalized medium (or medium dark, depending upon your context), specifically in Australia.

We are not talking about a revolution here, just a noticeable shift.

Whilst other coffee-consuming countries may have continued with their historical traditions for their roasted coffees, in Australia, there has undoubtedly been a trend towards lighter styles for espresso and cafe consumption, even if it's only a barely fractional change each year.

Recently, a couple of Australia's most prominent brands announced significant changes in their direction towards a more "middle medium" rather than the dark or medium-dark of their heritage. Finally, they are starting to accept that consumer tastes have shifted.

The continued growth of a distinctly different segment, specifically for lighter roasts, parallels the changes from dark to medium.

These lighter roasts have fueled alternative brewing methods, e.g., pour-over, Aeropress, filter, cold drip, embracing fruitier elements and producing an almost "tea-like" liquor, making for a delicious "black coffee experience" when done right.

Filter-style, light roast coffees are trendy in Scandinavian countries and markets worldwide where higher quality lots are the accepted standard, e.g. Australia, Japan, and South Korea.

Lighter roasted coffees are generally described or categorized under the generic term "filter roasts".

So when you see a "filter roast" coffee offered for sale, it almost always means that coffee has been roasted "lighter" than espresso.

It also highlights another calibration issue when using the simplistic terms of light, medium or dark.

Espresso roasts are a broad range of styles largely open for individual brand interpretation. That means one brand's idea of espresso roast could be dark, whereas another brand may think it's light.

You can now see why the simplistic light, medium and dark (LMD) lack the accuracy to describe a coffee.

Beware the hype of light-roasted coffees.

It's not just owners of innovative or alternative brewing devices that have embraced light roasted coffees.

A small and growing band of purist espresso enthusiasts have jumped on the "light roast" bandwagon to discover a new universe of flavours and experiences.

However, the journey towards lighter roasted coffees used in espresso has been challenging.

For almost a decade, many of these light roasted coffees were sour, grassy, herbal, woody, thin, and lacking flavour when used for espresso brews.

It was an era when roasters experimented with profiles and ignored basic principles of "developing" the raw coffee sufficiently. Think uncooked food.

Many brands playing in the "light roast" segment often tried to push extremes of "light roasted", sometimes with disastrous results.

Eventually, the industry started to lift its game by roasting filter style with similar profiles to traditional espresso coffees but finishing the roast shorter, at lower-end temperatures, eliminating many of the sour, grassy and woody notes.

Another term that emerged around nine years ago was the maligned "Omni roast". Marketed by those ambitious brands trying to convince consumers, they had developed a "holy grail" in coffee roasting.

It was a "big promise" - to prepare coffees satisfying the demands of light and medium roasting environments, e.g. filter and espresso. Omni-roasts are exaggerated claims and often can't achieve success in either category - stuck in the no-man's land of the middle.

Even with perfectly roasted lighter-style coffees, espresso extraction remains challenging, and this has to do with the soluble characteristics of the roasted coffee.

Like those prepared for filter style, light-roasted coffees are far more challenging for espresso. The grind, dose and temperature are far more critical or less forgiving with light-roasted coffees. It's often a knife edge.

Dialling in light roast coffees on espresso involves a lot more skill and requires high-end equipment - think commercial grade. I'm afraid that Breville or Sunbeam gear will not cut it.

The longer a coffee is roasted (by implication also the darker), the more it will generate more soluble beans.

Rarely will brands talk about the solubility of their coffees.

In 2012/2013, the specialty coffee industry was obsessed with the TDS frenzy - total dissolved solids measured by portable refractometers. 

Why is solubility not a significant part of the descriptor for roasted coffee?

Mainly because it's difficult or complex to measure, and then translating those results into a format that consumers can understand easily was never going to happen. The "coffee thought police" mandates TDS ranges between 19 and 24, yet the taste was not to everyone's liking.

Nothing is worse than wasting much coffee by wrestling with the grind setting, dose and extraction variables to chase a decent shot.

It is a problem that can often happen using lighter roasted coffees for espresso.

It's never easy, and despite skill levels or equipment capability, there will be inevitable wastage as the parameters of the roasted coffee are adjusted to more closely match the extraction variables.

It brings us to another mythical term in the coffee industry - brew recipes. Brew recipes are not the solution often promised and won't solve extraction problems. Brew recipes are too specific to an environment or instance and never will a brew recipe be able to apply universally—a good topic for explaining in next month's newsletter.

When the stars align and everything works a treat, it's possible to generate excellent espresso from lighter roasted coffees. But is it worth the wastage and frustration?

Often, the first coffee of the day is early morning when the body is not functioning correctly. Who wants to wrestle with a grinder and machine to play around with, wasting many shots, particularly if you have to rush off to work?

Medium and darker roasted coffees will be more soluble. The darker the roast, the more soluble.

A soluble coffee will extract a lot easier for espresso applications. But just because the coffee has been roasted medium or medium-dark does not guarantee that the coffee will be easy to use.

That, folks, is the entire point of this article.

Colour, or the claimed roast level, means nothing.

The flavour depends on how coffee is managed for the entire period in the roast chamber. It is also due to the quality of ingredients and has nothing to do with how long or "dark" a coffee roasts.

It's possible to roast coffee that may appear dark on the outside, yet it's not dark inside, e.g. just like a steak on a BBQ, presenting as cooked outside but not inside.

Dark roasted coffees are the domain of the lower-grade qualities. Dark roasting helps hide or mask certain defects, so the resultant coffee takes on more homogenous characteristics.

Only some brands will dark roast high-quality coffees; that's nuts. It would be such a shame and a waste of great quality beans to roast dark and lose the fruity sweetness, only to be replaced with a bland and less complex character.

The same is true for light-roasted (or filter-style) coffees. Better quality grades are critical for lighter roasted coffees as the defects in lower quality lots would be amplified by the lighter roasting and, in most cases, produce an inferior taste.

In summary, we recommend our readers keep an open mind about roasted coffees - this means avoiding getting stuck in a hole thinking that only dark roasted coffees are suitable for your palate or preferences.

Similarly, we caution that light roasted (Filter Roast), whilst offering unique fruits, acidity, sweetness and complexity, also comes at the cost of being more challenging for espresso applications. If you add dairy (or dairy alternatives), the lighter roast styles may need to provide sufficient body and finish to satisfy your palate.