People often think I'm weird when I get excited about stuff like when I had a cup of coffee from mold-tainted (green) coffee. Every coffee experience, both good and bad, is an educational opportunity. It's a little bittersweet, though, when the cost of tuition ends up being a half of my one bag of Intelly Panama Esmeralda Especial... (...well, one of my bags... a little shout-out to fans of David Sedaris.)It's not so much that I learned something I didn't know... it's more a poignant reminder of a basic principle.
I've brewed the coffee from this 8 ounce bag three times so far. I guess I should mention that I'm not at home. We're on a little family vacation, staying at my sister-in-law's house in San Antonio, Texas, many miles away from the tools of my trade that I've become so used to having around, especially our Mahlkonig Guatemala grinder and our digital scale (with 0.1 gram resolution). Mary and David have a Bodum Antigua grinder that we gave them as a Christmas present, and in lieu of a digital scale: a lowly tablespoon.
So three times: twice here at Mary and David's (once on a Chemex once in a french press), and once at my friend Loris' shop here in San Antonio, called "Cafeggio" (in a french press). At Cafeggio, we ground the coffee on a Bunn G2 grinder.
The Esmeralda was EFFING BOOM-DIGGITY AWESOME once. It was an "HJ-BJ Combo" (inside joke) in the mouth of jasmine, orangey-citrus, and something I can only call "The Taste of Clean." It was only so-so the other two times. So guess which was which?
.
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So on Monday, I'm going to Cafeggio to do some latte art training, and before I come back to our home-away-from-home, I'm grinding the last of the Esmeralda on their G2 and bringing it back to brew for my wife Suzy and our hosts, cuz I ain't gonna let them think that what they've been calling "That Really Expensive Coffee" is as mediocre as what they've had.
I've never experienced the result of "uneven grind" in brewed coffee quite so succinctly. The Bodum Antigua created a VERY muddled cup. It's like putting an ill-fitting muumuu on Gisele Bündchen: you could JUST make out the beauty that's there... but only because I've known it before... and it's shrouded in this cloud of... okay I'll say it... murkiness. Clearly, the overly-fine particles created the muddy overextracted-part that simply drowned out the delicate flavors.
So let this be a lesson to you, both in coffee, and in life: if you KNOW that the hottest supermodel ever to grace the bedroom of Leonardo DiCaprio is coming to see YOU, have the appropriate apparel ready for her to wear... or you'll miss-out on what could be the most intensely erotic experiences of your life, and you might never know it.
HJ/BJ = Howard Johnson/Ben & Jerry's?
ReplyDeleteOur experience was a freaking lemon bomb.
We had a decent number of takers for the $5 cup - but not enough to make the experiment profitable (although we still have an unopened 1/2 lb).
Doesn't bode well for the Brazil though... sadly.
I imagine it's even tougher for you because you're getting such an expensive coffee from an outside roaster (Intelly). We (Artigiano) have been selling the Brazil Santa Ines, along with the Bolivia #1 and the COlombia #1, for a month now and it's been pretty awesome, but I can't imagine having this much insanely expensive coffee without the lower overheads of in house roasting. Still, it was a highlight for me when Lindsay mentioned the other day she had run out of her stock of Clover prep'd Santa Ines after selling over 30 in one afternoon! But you're right, the $5 cup is really more of a customer appreciation gesture than a profitable business model in and of itself. We'll see where it goes from here!
ReplyDeleteNick B.,
ReplyDeleteActually, since we're Intelly customers, the Esmeralda was a much better bargain than the Ines we're getting from y'all - the batch Vince roasted earlier today.
We'll be offering that end of next week. Now that's expensive for us... and Romina was asking if we wanted the $60 shipping options on top of it!
Better be at least as good as the Esmeralda ;-)
We're ok losing a few bucks for the notoriety, but unfortunately we couldn't get one damned local food editor to come and try it. Yet we have a weekly beer column in our largest daily paper.
Not getting the press interested was far more disappointing than not breaking even on the beans.
No kidding! From our end, it seems like curiosity has been the best factor for bringing non-coffee journalists (read: nearly all foodies) to the table. Only problem is the Ines isn't exactly an extravagant coffee-- its subtle complexity is what gets cuppers raving (and what had me in sensory euphoria when I stepped on shift today after enjoying a pre-work french press). This can be a bit of a tough sell when people expect "the big coffee" to be a smack-you-in-the face outrageous experience.
ReplyDeleteAmong the best press we got was an article in the Vancouver Sun (biggest Van newspaper) in which the journalist basically gave us the benefit of the doubt where her palate was concerned, and admitted her preference for dark roasts (most notably, she gave Vince a paragraph of the article to expound on the many reasons to avoid overroasting quality coffees). She also acknowledge that the availability of the Ines could be good for the progression of coffee, which kind of took me by surprise (though I've been saying this for a long time!). But these articles are few and far between as many outsiders will just laugh at the notion of a $5 (or $6 or $10) cup and dismiss the whole thing.
But glad to hear you've got all those amazing coffees, wish I was out in Pittsburgh to look you guys up.
I love this article.
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