Da ich in den vergangenen Wochen vermehrt Anfragen nach Schulungen im Bereich von ein bis zwei Stunden erhalten habe und diese Art Schulung grundsätzlich ablehne, erläutere ich folgend etwas ausführlicher die Gründe hierfür.

Der zentrale Schlüssel für die Weiterentwicklung sind ausgeprägte sensorische Fähigkeiten. Hierzu zählt die Wahrnehmung von Aromen, Geschmacksrichtungen, Texturen, der Temperatur eines Getränks und wie sich diese Dinge gegenseitig beeinflussen, unterstützen oder beeinträchtigen können. Je sensibler die Sensorik funktioniert, desto feinere Unterschiede entdeckt man und desto umfassender kann man sich die kulinarische Welt des Kaffees erschließen. Sensorische Fähigkeiten erlernt man nicht in kurzer Zeit, vielmehr muss man viele Kaffees getrunken und verglichen haben. Die Summe aller bisher gewonnen Eindrücke beschreibt die Grenzen, in denen wir uns bewegen. In meinen Schulungen helfe ich, sich diese Welt strukturiert zu erschließen, ein erstes kleines Terrain zu betreten. Den weiteren Weg soll und muss man alleine weiter beschreiten.

Der zweite wichtige Aspekt ist das Verstehen des Brühvorgangs, der Extraktion. Bei der Extraktion geht es darum, die Kontrolle über die Geschehnisse zu besitzen und Ergebnisse reproduzieren zu können. Es geht nicht mehr darum, eben mal schnell einen Kaffee zu brühen, der wahlweise zu stark, zu schwach, zu sauer oder zu bitter ausgefallen ist. Die Extraktion wird als chemischer Prozess verstanden, bei dem die Oberflächengröße des Kaffees (Mahlgrad), die Brüh- und Kontaktzeiten, die Dosierung, der Druck und die Temperatur in einem komplexen Wechselspiel zueinander stehen. Die Viskosität des Getränks, dessen Aromadichte, Bitterkeit, Anteil und Wahrnehmung der Säure lassen sich aktiv beeinflussen. Nur wer verstanden hat, wie diese Dinge zusammen spielen, kann aus (fast) jedem Kaffee ein harmonisches Getränk herstellen.

Beider der zuvor genannten Themen sind essentiell, um sich weiter zu entwickeln. Ja, Latte-Art sieht schick aus, ist nach meiner Auffassung für den Einsteiger jedoch eher hinderlich als wünschenswert. Das Thema Milch ist ein weiteres umfangreiches Kapitel, Süße und Textur (physikalische Eigenschaften des Milchschaums, wie Dichte und Viskosität) spielen hierbei eine wichtige Rolle. Insbesondere ein Cappuccino lebt von seiner Textur. Die unmöglichen “Interpretation” dessen, was man in freier Wildbahn unter einem Cappuccino versteht, sind kein Maßstab. Versteht man auch hier nicht zuerst, wie Textur und Sensorik zusammen spielen, wie anders die Wahrnehmung von Aromen abhängig von der Textur sein können, macht Latte-Art keinen Sinn. Latte-Art und ein harmonisches, geschmacklich und aromatisch leckeres Getränk mit der korrekten Textur herzustellen ist sehr schwer. Ein dünnes Latte-Art Häubchen auf einer Tasse “Kaffeesuppe” ist eben kein Cappuccino.

Wer sich ernsthaft mit dem Thema Kaffee beschäftigen will, sollte mehr als ein bis zwei Stunden für eine Schulung investieren.

Creating a signature drink can be a quite frustrating thing. Nevertheless, as more as you understand your coffee and aroma pairing in genral the better it gets. The signature drink that I created for this years German Barista Championship and the World Barista Championship had one major aspect in mind: simplicity. Showcasing the greatness of coffee without using  many ingredients. The goal was to let the coffee speak for itself and to present a complex and diverse drink.

What did I do?

In the beginning I was looking for a very long time for a coffee that I would use for the drink. The coffee I found is from Ethiopia, from the Sidamo region and has been collected around the town of Neji. The name of the coffee is Nekisse, on of the great achivements of ninety plus coffee. This coffee has grown on a volcanic soil at 1800 meters altitude and has been naturally processed, giving it intense fruity and berry notes, mainly strawberry and raspberry. I still have some green coffee left and you can get it roasted freshly here at backyard coffee.

After finding the coffee I developed the roasting profiles. I was looking for a profile where I could maximize the fruity notes of the coffee. Developing the profiles took around eight weeks, where I compared the different profiles and had a look how they matured (or not) upon aging. Finally I found a profile that produced what I was looking for, an intense fruity espresso. The “downside” was a higher acidity in the cup, that had to be balanced out.

The next thing was to balance out the acidity and to add some additional elements to the coffee. Again, I kept the focus to not alter the coffee or if I have to, to keep the changes to a minimum. Since dilution can be quite handy if playing with aromas as well, I started working with different types of water to balance out the acidity. In the beginning I did not get anything that was improving the overall drink. Adding one type of water solved the acidity issue while the aromas were dimished. The mineral content of the water played a major role in the perception of the aromas. I ended up having best results using a distilled water. Distilled water was reducing the acidity to a pleasent level and was keeping the aroma profile. Distillation, great thing to be done live on stage.

Distillation for itself seemed to be a litle uninteresting for itself. No big achievement here, adding distilled water to an espresso is not a major thing, right? What else could I do? I came up with the idea of using a rotary evaporator. If you are familiar with chemistry you might know rotary evaporators already. If not, you can find a description on Wikipedia. This device has made it into modern cuisine, mostly molecular cooking. It is used to separate aromas from liquids and other content. For molecular cooking aromas are taken from one material and infused into others, this can be done using an evaporator. I still like the idea but it has several flaws. First, the price tag of such a device is too high. I would use it once during the competition time and might not need it afterwards, spending 3.000,- EUR thus seemed a litle high priced. The second issue is the time required for one evaporation process, which would exceed anything that is possible on stage.

I still liked the idea of gathering aromas and enriching the drink with it, without actually adding an ingredient to the drink. After some consideration I came up with the idea of combining a destillation apparatus and some kind of aroma evaporation. The idea I was coming up with is to add an aroma chamber to a distillery. The apparatus consisted of three elements. A water heating area to produce vapour, an aroma chamber into which the vapour is directed and that contains fruits and finally a cooling area where the vapour could condense back to water. The idea was that the fruis – in the competition I was using raspberries – would release their aromas into the vapour. I went to a company creating laboratory equipment and having their own glass blowers. After they laughed for a while about my idea they started building the first prototype and I was ready for testing.

So, how did it work out?

Well, the first two prototypes just blew up since there was always a congestion somewhere. It took us two weeks, to get the first running (technically) version of the apparatus ready. The process worked but it did not produce the desired outcome, just astringent water. Over a period of eight weeks we changed the heating capacity, the angles and sizes of the tubing, the size and direction of the aroma chamber, the way of cooling. Three months later I had it running as I wanted it to be: distilled water, containing rasberry aromas, nice!

I had a great espresso that I could balance out with the distilled water. Nice, but still not enough. So I decided to cool it down for a test an was amazed by the result. Refreshing, colourfull, complex. But still there was missing a piece, some kind of extra, soemthing that could help to enhance the experience even more. I came up with adding cold sparkling water to it. Wow! The carbon dioxide helped to transport the aromas faster to your nasal and retronasal pathways and it gave a tactile stimulus to the tounge. Great!

On the other hand the information I have given so far just isn’t enough to allow to reproduce what I had in mind, so I decided to add more detail to it. Nevertheless, a litle knowledge may be required to understand my thoughts at the end, so we will go into espresso extraction in the beginning. The following parameters come into play if we are talking extraction:

All of the parameters listed above influence one another. So just changing one will result in the need to adjust another one. Undrestanding the corresponding correlation is the key knowledge of a barista.

The grind size is important to control the overall surface of the coffee being extracted. By adjusting the surface you change the capability of dissolving content from the coffee bean into the brewing water. The larger the surface (and thus the finer the grind) the faster a wide range of substances can be dissolved. Having a large total surface is neither good nor bad, since it depends on the coffee used and – as already stated above – in the interaction with the other parameters. But one thing should become clear: creating uniform particles (in general) and a subset of fines is essential, thus grinders capable of doing this (fast and without heating the grounds) can get expensive.

The dose is the total amount of coffee being used for brewing. Again, more coffee means that you have the capability to extract more content in total. A coffee bean consists of 70% of fibre and only 30% of substances that can be dissolved into the coffee. Grinding finer and finer thus doesn’t necessarily mean that more content can be extracted (as well as getting higher in temperature or increasing contact time). There is a maximum of (around) 30% of content that can be taken out of the bean and there is nothing beyond. To make it a litle more complicated the best results are usually shown if a range of 18% to 22% of the content of the bean is dissolved. If lower than 18% of the content is extracted (we are talking about under extraction) the brew might be strong but lacking balance and delicate and more refined aromas are not allowed to shine through (terroir of the coffee). Extracting above the 22% (over extraction) usually results in a weaker brew that tends to be a litle dull. The 18% to 22% range has been defined in the brewing standards of the SCAE and SCAA.

The contact and brewing times are two separate aspects to cover. The brewing time is the more obvious one: it is the total time the pump is running and water is flowing through our coffee bed. In the past brewing time has been considered being a standard (say 25 seconds), nevertheless, this is outdated today. Why? Usually standards (like 7g dose per shot, 18 to 25 seconds brewing time giving 25 ml of espresso) are defined based on the best definition that is possible to date. While dose is still a vital part of the definition the others aren’t any more and are replaced by extraction ratio (based on the weight of the grounds, the weight of the shot produced and the TDS of the brew). The reason is, that we are able to measure these aspects today and that this has become a quite usual tool in the speciality coffee industry (finding accuracy weights in a coffee shop thus is always a good sign). The brewing time usually reflects (roughly) the total amount of liquid that can be produced, again this is neither good or bad. The more important thing is contanct time which is the time of the water actually being in contact with the coffee. As you might guess, this depends on the dose, the grind and the pressure of the water (and not that obvious, on the temperature as well). Since dissolving solids from coffee into water takes time, increasing the contact time (giving more time to dissolve the solids) also increases the chance that more content ends in the brew.

Brewing coffee is a chemical reaction and as we all (might) still remember from the basic chemistry classes in school, chemical reactions can be influenced by temperature. Increasing the temperature speeds up a chemical reaction while decreasing it slows it down. In addition temperature can be used to control how we perceive acidity and other aspects of the brew. The colder the brew the more acidity is perceived, on the opposite astringency might rise. Higher temperature do the opposite, dimish acidity bringing out the sweetness. Aromas are perceived different depending on the serving temperature as well. Again things are not as simple as they sound. Increasing the temperature might result in dissolving more acidic content from the bean than the effect of dimishing its perception might be. The rule of thumb thus might not work out quite well in any situation. Nevertheless, being in control of the brewing temperature has become an important aspect of espresso brewing (0,5°C steps can be perceived easily).

Finally there is the brewing pressure. Again in the past it has been defined as a standard – 9 bar of pressure – which tends to be the pressure used commonly everywhere. Nevertheless, due to new machines like the La Marzocco Strada, which allows for a dynamic pressure control, this stronghold may come down also. We didn’t have the time to play around for long enough on Tom’s Strada to really give a well founded opinion on this but first tests showed that you can brew outstanding shots way outside of the pressure range of 9 bar.

After going through all of the information above the thing to finally mention is extraction ratio. The extration ratio defines the amount of solids dissolved from the bean into the brew. To be able to calculate this value one needs three things.

Weights (of course) are measured using accuracy scales while tds can be measured by a refractometer like Extract Mojo from VST. The calculation of the extraction yield goes like this, if you end up with a value around 18 to 22 you are in good company.

extraction yield = beverage / dose * tds

As I mentioned in the introduction, the thing I want to talk about is the capability of defining how I brew a shot (of a certain coffee) so this can be repeated by others more easily and helps to find a direction. The key of being able to define this is standardizing the aspects of brewing. Defining the extraction yield, combined with dose, drink weight and brew temperature is quite helpfull in the beginning but turned out to be unsufficient to reproduce the exact same results. So how do we go from here?

La Marzocco and VST developed a new gadget, the VST filters. This article is not VST basket specific, I will cover this topic in a separate post after doing some final experiments. Nevertheless, to me these filters provide three major advantages above other filters around.

Beside all the positive effects these baskets have they provide one major thing: they are consistent. Thus one more variable can be removed from the espresso preparation process. In total the following parameters seem to cover the espresso preparation in a way that allows for a more easy reproduction.

This information helps to understand the direction into which to head to get what I find interesting in the coffee mentioned.

Enjoy!

From the speciality coffee perspective, I truly have no sympathies for Nestlé, since the coffee they produce is way apart of where speciality coffee sees itself. The WBC is an event of the speciality coffee industry. The SCAA and the SCAE have been created because they wanted to bring together people having a mission: making coffee better, showcasing how great coffee can be. Having Nespresso as a sponsor devalues the effort that is spent by competitiors for up to a year to get to the WBC, since quality assumptions on coffee couldn’t be more different. Nevertheless, previous sponsors – e.g. producers of syrups – were part of the game from the beginning and they can not be covered by the “speciality umbrella” as well. On the oposite side sponsors are vital to get an event like this running, so where is the border which – in my opinion – should not be crossed? Is it good or is it bad to have Nestlé as a sponsor for the WBC?

It is always easy to blame companies like Nestlé, since such huge companies must be worse, right? To be honest, I just didn’t know for sure, I only had this common sense about Nestlé being evil. As you should know by reading my articels, I always like to back-up the stuff I say. So I did some research on the internet for several days. What I came up with is a huge hisotry of violations done by Nestlé around the world. May it be the destruction of rain forest, controling water availability, creating dependencies on baby food, child labour and of course controling coffee prices.

You can find a lot of information if you follow the links listed below. Each page contains more links that forward you to a heap of further information.

• World Development Movement
• Do the right thing
• Multiwatch (as well as askonline)
• Human Rights (politics, quicksand, rimmel_nestle)
• Greenpeace
• Oxfam (coffee, coffee crisis)
• Utopia
• ARD (Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen, Kinderarbeit)
• Die Wochenzeitung

Talking about coffee quality is not the issue since it might be clear that Nespresso is nowhere near where we are now and where we want to be in the future. The major discrepancy lies within the ethic values, that are very strong in the speciality coffee industry. In the speciality coffee industry we are working actively to pay a fair value to the farmers, create better living conditions, helping in education and – which is a huge signal – creating true relationships.

Nestlé is so far apart to anything we want to be associated with. This brings me to the only conclusion possible: having Nespresso as a sponsor for the WBC is a really bad thing! It would be nice, if more people would speak up and if we could avoid having sponsors like this in the future.

Will publish more information as it becomes available.

Für eine gute Vorbereitung ist es wichtig, mit dem Material zu trainieren, mit dem man auch bei der Weltmeisterschaft antreten wird. Das Problem ist: Mühlen sind schwer, Übergepäck teuer und zudem sind die Mühlen in Deutschland nicht kompatibel zu den 110V, die in Bogota genutzt werden. Was tun?

Ich habe mich an Mahlkönig gewendet, mit der Bitte um ein Sponsoring für Mühlen für das Training in Deutschland und die Bereitstellung von zwei Mühlen in Bogota. Sehr zu meiner Freude kam die Antwort prompt und positiv. Seit einer Woche arbeite ich nun auf zwei Mahlkönig K30 Mühlen und freue mich, die gleichen Mühlen auch in Bogota vorzufinden.

Vielen Dank, ich schätze die Unterstützung sehr!

I will cover the competition in a separate post. For now I would like  to give credits to those people who brought me to where I am now and who made the competition possible.

Thomas Schweiger and Thomas Schiessl were a great support throughout the year and at the competition itself. We were working as a team always, helping each other, exchanging minds, all the support one needs. Again, like last year, Björn Dietrich was part of the show as well and was a great support. Thanks guys!

Huge thanks to Thomas Kliefoth, our national coordinator, who managed to organize a great competition together with some help of the German Barista Guild and the many volunteers working hard throughout the days. Even the participants themselves joined in to help and all this work brought us even closer together in “building up our own competition”. Thanks to all of you, I always enjoy meeting you, you are a very good company.

Finally, we have to mention the sponsors who gave what was needed to get the competition running. Astoria did a great job and was a major factor for the success of the event. For a full list of the sponsors please have a visit at the SCAE German Chapter web page.

In addition we have a lack of coffee roasters, matching the pace that you can find in other places like Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland or the USA (Tim Wendelboe, The Coffee Collective, Square Mile Coffee, Has Bean, Intelligentsia, to name just a few of those really fine places). Yes, there are many many roasters out there in Germany, but those are either selling burned tires (read: totally burned coffee) or still selling Guatemalian coffee, coffee from Brazil or some other country of the world, being the name of the country the only information you can get for that particular coffee. The roasteries where you can get a specific coffee of a certain sub-region/micro-climate (say Costa Rica, West Valley, San Juanillo) that blows your mind with terroir specific attributes that you can’t find anywhere else, were a few only. By saying a few I mean less than five. Supremo, located near Munich, is one of those roasteries that is really setting standards in Germany. Supremo not only provides some of the finest coffees available, they are also deeply into improvement and science. They were building the first (as far as I know, correct me If I am wrong) ever humidor for the storage of green coffee in defined climatic conditions in Europe (e.g. temperature, humidity, air exchange rates). They are experimenting with aging and proper storage of green coffee for a long time. The guys at Supremo are more of the calm and silent kind, they are doing really great stuff but you can’t hear them talking about it all the time.

There are a number of younger roasteries emerging, Kaffeemanufaktur Machhoerndl and Erste Tegernseer Kaffeerösterei are two of them, which I really like to mention as often as I can. Each place has its own signature but both have something in common: you can get really good coffee there. They are selecting their coffees carefully, they know a lot about them and they are taking pride in producing the best product possible.

For me there is still a huge lack of roasteries which are totally addicted to coffee, thus I want to step in to fill at least a minor gap. So, what is backyard coffee to me?

As I said in the introduction, backyard coffee is more of a project. I am not after making tons of money with it, it is about showcasing what coffee can be if you do not accept any excuses. I will not offer coffees, just to have a wide seletion. I will offer coffees that are seasonal, really special in a certain way and are matching my idea and interpretation of what coffee should be. If you are looking for roasting notes and/or darker roast, this is not what you can expect from me. The coffees I roast are roasted to showcase terroir specific aspects and to a degree that preserves the key attributes of the coffee. I am not after selling huge amounts of coffee and I am not trying to win the low-price race. I believe that good products, such as superior coffee, need passion, time and doesn’t allow for compromises. And yes, this is reflected in the price.

The same “rules” that I laid on me are the core principles of several coffee bars, which are serving my coffee. To date there are four throughout Germany and this seems to be a good and sufficient number to me.

green and bean, Ansbach
the coffee shop, Hamburg
Godshot, Berlin
Hoppenworth & Ploch, Frankfurt

I am not looking for as much places to serve my coffee as possible. I am looking for places where the same passion can be found and where every step is taken to showcase great coffees (not only mine, others as well) to the customer.

One other thing is important to me. I believe that sharing knowledge with others is the key to improvement. You can find a lot of my thoughts in this blog but I am more than happy and willing, to get into contact with each of you and to share, discuss and learn together with you.

I hope you like this project as much as I do.

Cheers

Wolfram

The coffee shops you will find on the list meet two criteria, that are important to me: proficient baristas and the availability of speciality coffee. The roasteries that are on the list are also known for selling speciality coffee and are roasting to highlight terroir specific characteristics. Please see the list as it is: an incomplete list of coffee places, representing the places I know and like.

Coffee Shops

• double eye, Berlin (http://www.doubleeye.de/)
• Bonanza Coffee, Berlin (http://www.bonanzacoffee.de/)
• Godshot, Berlin (http://www.godshot.de/)
• the coffee shop, Berlin and Hamburg (http://www.the-coffee-shop.de/)
• Black Delight, Hamburg (http://www.blackdelight.de/)
• Hoppenworth & Ploch, Frankfurt (http://hoppenworth-ploch.de/)
• green and bean, Ansbach (http://www.greenandbean.de/)

Roasteries

• Supremo, München (http://www.supremo-kaffee.de/)
• Tegernseer Kaffeerösterei, Tegernsee (http://www.tegernseer-kaffeeroesterei.de/)
• Kaffeemanufaktur Machhoerndl, Nürnberg (http://www.die-kaffeemanufaktur.net/)
• backyard coffee, Frankfurt (http://www.backyard-coffee.de/)