by Carlo Odello *

Consumer Reports, operating in the field of mass consumption product assessment in the United States since 1936, have just tested 37 leading coffee blends on offer on the American market. Their report reads:

None of the 37 caffeinated and decaffeinated varieties tested by Consumer Reports coffee experts earned an Excellent or Very Good rating.

And that would be fair, as we know that the American market is accustomed to all sorts of products, mainly of mediocre quality (mind, the same could be said about us). The following statement is less convincing:

However, java lovers can still find at least a few Good cups of coffee. Starbucks House Blend and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast perked to the top of the 14 caffeinated blends that earned a Good rating from Consumer Reports.

At 26 and 23 cents per cup respectively, both the Starbucks House Blend and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast offer a good combination of taste and price. Both have an earthy, woody taste, but Starbucks was found to be a fairly bitter to very bitter darker roast, while the Green Mountain has green/sharp flavor.

In other words, the findings point out that, despite their earthy and woody aroma, Starbucks and Green Mountain lead the ranking of the tested coffees. Which could make sense, as such blends might at any rate be the less unappealing in the ambit of American coffee for mass consumption. But it is surprising to find out that Consumer Reports’ assessment is however positive. That means that two intolerable faults, such as earthy and woody aromas, are tolerated after all.

Such America is absolutely different from the one influenced by the Third Wave (or is it already Fourth Wave?) and by specialty coffee which, leaving aside some twisted principles, pursue total quality. And by no means equal to those Italians who continue proposing high level products, either exported from fatherland or produced in the States by operators of Italian descent.

Yet if, as we love doing, we compare ourselves to the United States we will realise that mediocrity is promoted by many in our country, too. And that such people, forgive me if I sound a little old fashioned, are active in educating the mass to appreciate faulty and disappointing coffee. This time the States do not rank first.

* Trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters

by Carlo Odello *

A flash of lightning across the serene sky of the American coffee scene: Starbucks, the giant of the 16,000 cafes scattered between the four corners of the earth, gambles its name.  As Jason Daley’s optimal article for Entrepreneur Magazine reports, this summer the colossus from Seattle opened a new cafe.  However, it was not called Starbucks; instead, they named it, "15th Ave Coffee and Tea," decorated in a completely different style and operated by a completely different mindset than the traditional cafes.

Why would an international chain whose very trademark became its driving force, a shamelessly global business that serialized the cafe concept, suddenly try to play it local?  One simple motive: it needs to return to the community and connect to its territories to make the consumer perceive it in a different way.  It is no longer the great homogenous chain, the coffee empire over which the sun will never set; instead, it is becoming a social place in service of the community.

The good news for Italian baristas: you are ahead of Starbucks. You are already local, you already serve your communities, you are already part of the social fabric; more accurately, you help build it.  Besides, the Seattle colossus admitted it: Italy is a difficult market, with a capillaceous presence, rooted and diffused in its tens of thousands of cafes.  Frankly put: a nightmare for the commercial logic of Starbucks.

The bad news for the Italian baristas: you are behind Starbucks.  Most of you do not do any marketing whatsoever.  The overwhelming majority of your cafes all look the same: even though they are not part of any chain, they are still characterized by that conformity typical of franchises, almost always offering the same banal and homologous products.  And yet, one could do so much more with very little: in addition to paying closer attention to the coffee, which wouldn’t hurt anyone, why not start thinking of ways to make these cafes truly unique?

Dear Italian baristas, take from Starbucks a different way of marketing. You have the advantage of being local, something for which the American giant now aspires. One step further and you will be in the future.

* Trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

 Why do I have to drink just 25 milliliters of coffee? There are moments in which you need to drink and our organism is satisfied only by a high quantity. And in these moments it is possible to commit two crimes: to water down wine and to order a ‘long’ at the bar.

Let go of the first and consider the second. What does happen in the 99% of cases in which you order a long espresso to the barman? He will let the liquid flow from the espresso machine till the cup is full. And if you have asked for a long in a big cup, he won’t make a different thing, and if he had a little good sense he will stop at three quarters.
The crime is then done: the espresso is not short or long, the Italian espresso, the best in the world, is of 25 milliliters because the blend is projected like that. Instant substances, suspended and emulsified, will reach the right balance in the cup to the strike of the 25th milliliter.

If it will be less, it means that a part of the components is not already pass in the extraction water, if it will be more the extraction will have effect of ever growing shares of unpleasant substances. But there is more. When the coffee is long the cooking is anomalous during the extraction phase and so the disgust grows. In many countries out of Italy, where less than 50 millilitres is not served, they maintain the grinding coarser and so they reduce the problem (more or less).

But what we can do if we want a real long coffee? The best long coffee that I have drunk in the world is the Peruvian ‘gota a gota’, made with a coffee syrup obtained with a particular coffeemaker. To make this coffee concentrate the real adepts need a couple of hours, keep on adding little quantity of hot water on the ground coffee and waiting that it goes down drop by drop. But then they have got coffee for a whole day: they just need to dilute the syrup with some hot water. And everyone can drink as much coffee has they want to. The only important thing is to use quality coffees as well as the washed Peruvians.

At home we have got different possibilities: the Neapolitan coffeemaker, the percolator, the siphon and the filter in last place because it isn’t useful to give quality. But if we have got an espresso machine, which you can find almost everywhere, or we are at the bar, how can we have a great long coffee? It is easy: a big cup and hot water apart. You extract the espresso in the right quantity and add as much water as you want. An excellent espresso holds till five parts of water, so you can have a big cup of 150 millilitres, like the cappuccino one. Pay attention however: do not you think you can do it without quality coffee just because you are drinking it long. Especially in this case you have to choose blends rich of washed coffees, better if there are some citrus aromas which are the best ones for dilution.

by Carlo Odello *

From Portland to Vancouver, via Seattle. Three cities, three states, two nations. But one great love for the quality of life and fine food. A love that express itself in a choice of high-level restaurants, expression of the diverse world cuisines that meet in this cities. A passion that involves the wine too, with its continued holding of more or less mundane events that bring in these cities the best producers worldwide.

And a visceral love for coffee. A fervent activity which is reflected in thousands of coffee shops, owned by the most important chains or independent. Yes, indeed: the independent ones, run by entrepreneurs who, in total financial autonomy, have decided to make coffee their business. And in many cases almost a reason for living. People that welcome you in the coffee shop with a pride and an enthusiasm that leaves you amazed.

Baristas who are not there by chance, people who made a precise choice and who prepared themselves for this. People ready to pull out a few thousand dollars to learn how to make a business plan for their shop, to understand how to manage it from a financial point of view, to develop a marketing that will give them a possibility more with respect to the fierce competition. Baristas who treat their equipment as objects of a liturgy: difficult to find a dirty machine, the metal always shines, the hoppers of the grinders are impeccable.

In any case there is something that leaves you a little confused. Because if it is true that the bow must be well tended if you want the arrow to go far, it is equally true that you must take a good sight. In most coffee shops you have the impression that the search for the perfection has led to a race in which who fills the filter the most wins. If you do not specify that you want a single espresso you will nearly always have a double, even triple one, considering that it is extracted from 20 grams of ground coffee. The feeling, as some Canadian friends confirm, is that they have misunderstood the concept of espresso: it has to be powerful, but someone said that power is nothing without control. Certainly, most of the cups go into cappuccinos, lattes and other beverages.

Yet, well begun is half done. And then, let’s start again, we said in the International Institute of Coffee Tasters. Well, we said, let’s see if we can bring the word of Italian espresso in such a complicated context. So we took the occasion of the invitation by Caffè Umbria, which for years has been working only with the Italian standard. So with the help of Pasquale Madeddu, Emanuele Bizzarri and Jesse Sweeney the first two Espresso Italiano Tasting courses were born. For the first time we went overseas, more precisely in Vancouver and Portland.

Our impression? At first a little difficulty by the participants to understand exactly the Italian standard, but at the end of the course, satisfaction on their part for the experience. It was helpful to them to hear the voice of Italy and they have finally taken the right measures of what is truly an Italian espresso. That’s the beauty of America: it is the land of opportunities. You just need to know how to catch them. The door is now open and some strange ideas about espresso have been eradicated, at least in the minds of our first students.

* Trainer and member of the board of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

We are not resented with Coffea canephora, but this time we just can’t help to consider some of its characters that, not only justify its use in our national cup, but make some people consider it necessary. We refer to its dowry to give body to the coffee which is unique for some roasters (especially for those who want to save money and do not want to fight with baristas), but easily substitutable by Arabica of some origins, mature and perfectly roasted for some other roasters.

Just put aside malice and consider only the technical part of the issue: the search of concentrate, thick coffees, almost colloidal. Those coffees that stand with success the horrible sugar test. Are still in fashion or are they as the kind of wine perfect to be tasted but that we do not drink?

Until about twenty years ago we looked for drinkability of wine: it was said that it had to be fresh and fruity. Then slowly the thesis of the major critics arose: fleshy, concentrated, muscular wines.  The companies sacrificed on the altar of economic business all their asset to increase the density of strains in the vineyard, to reduce the amount of water in the must, to build barriques since with a touch of American-woody their wine was "trendy". The result? The reduction of volumes consumed. Indeed, could you dine with an Amarone, an Australian Shiraz or a Chilean Cabernet with an alcohol content around 15%? Now the wine to drink is coming back, most suitable to French and Italian oenology that focus on elegance, not on surprise.

At this point we wonder if it is better to reconsider the coffee, does it really matter to have a "tablet" of coffee frequently having to suffer traces of earth, wet bark, damp basement floor, pharmacy and iodized phoenix usually accompanied by a good astringency? Please go back and teach people the style, offering an Italian espresso with a very fine cream, a taste and touch profile characterised by silkiness and a flavour distinguished by valuable notes of flowers and fresh fruit, and a hint of dried fruit and spices.

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

There is a strange combination in the chemicals of foods, which can be very useful to understand how the coffee industry is less mature than that of wine.
Both drinks contain the trichloroanisole (and their companions), perceptible at the level of one part per trillion (threshold of perception in the air, in coffee and wine is a little higher), which is seen by our sensory system as a threat and then declined in the most categorical way.
In fact, even a suburbs medium-level restaurant refuses to replace a bottle of wine to a customer if it is corked, while for coffee, people close their nose and drink. Yet from a data base we have been filling for years we understand that a significant amount of coffee on the market has trichloroanisole concentrations well above the threshold of perception, even 500 times. Yet they continue to circulate without limits.  
However, if we go on talking about defects we can consider geosmin’s smell of rotten wood and earth, pyrazine that gives a vegetable taste (pea, chicory, depending on what accompanies it and on the levels of presence), dimetilsulfide and dimetildisulfide, both donors of fetid scents, or the more calm vinylguaiacol that, when highly concentrated, confers smoke and burnt taste.
These are just some examples, because in the course about the defects in the coffee, which the International Institute of Coffee Tasters is developing, the tasters will have the opportunity to try about twenty, spending an unforgettable day. It is necessary to make this step to create an embankment to the product of poor quality circulating unpunished on the market to accurately identify and tell the barista that he can drink it himself!  
Precisely for this reason many topics related to sensory vices and virtues of coffee, as they originate and by which compounds are given, will be discussed during the modules of the Professional Master of Coffee Science and Sensory Analysis which will be held on next 22-24 September.
 

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

For the moment being it’s a niche, but we believe it’s bound to become big. We are speaking about single origin coffees. A recent investigation conducted by the University of Padova highlighted that also consumers are able to distinguish between a blend and single origin coffee. In this case too, from a sensory point of view, the winner, with statistically relevant results, was the blend. This clearly means that our roasters are truly very good at choosing coffees from all over the world, at making each type express its best characteristics and at creating unbeatable blends. However, there has been a genuine interest for single origins and this makes us think that this trend will lead to having a coffee menu at restaurants, a better-aware consumption of coffee at the coffee shop and to valuing the ritual of coffee at home.

The debate must be a serious one. Otherwise, the origin simply turns into a meaningless coat of arms thus losing its natural value. In this respect, the first thing to do is focus on how the issue is currently tackled: mentioning the origin conveys a false sense of homogeneity. Basically, when the end users read on a package “Brazil”, they immediately think that all the coffee from this big producer has its own common and homogeneous characteristics; specific features which make it possible to distinguish it from other coffees. This is not the case. But even when we speak about Guatemala Antigua, which is more specific, we cannot claim that there are specific traits which make it easy to distinguish it from other coffees of the same category. More than that, roasting methods have a major impact on the final result, something similar to the crucial influence that the fermentation technique has on the grapes and the type of wine. Put it in other words, we could have greater sensory differences between two coffees from Costa Rica which went through different types of roasting procedures compared to the differences between a Costa Rica and an Ethiopia which have been roasted in the same way.

So, if for wines there is Barbera (vine variety) of the Monferrato (area) of a certain producer, we should have something very similar for coffee. It is extremely important to never neglect the brand which conveys its philosophy and know-how to the final product. If we really want to value this new market segment, then the product should come with some explanatory notes on the specific characteristics of the origin, on the roasting methods and on the sensory traits that can be spotted when drinking the product from the cup. The info provided should be correct and mirror reality, it should not be general and some sort of poetry coming from creativity. A lot of work must be done on this: we are spotting severe mistakes with taste being mixed up with aromas and, especially, there is no correspondence between what is written and what is highlighted with sensory analysis. This disappoints the consumer and jeopardises not only the credibility of the reference but also of the entire market segment.

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

Several of us kept asking ourselves the question during the course for the managers of the permanent training centres of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters  which was held not long ago in Brescia.

One of the attendees told us that during his training courses he has the habit of telling to the barista who gives him a wrong espresso: “If your coffee is like this, I wish your clients did not pay you”. Several people stressed that the barista who is not able to select the right blend and process it with expertise does not only a wrong to the world of coffee, thus encouraging alternative consumption, but also does a wrong to his colleagues in that the clients lose their passion for the coffee shop.
Therefore, an incompetent barista does harm to the roasters who market a good quality blend, to his own coffee shop, to his colleagues and, it goes without saying, to consumers.

Expressed in these terms, the situation seems to be extremely negative. Let us try and give a look at things from a different point of view. The espresso is without doubts the most difficult way to prepare coffee. It makes it possible to have the highest level of extraction of the contents of the cells – both good and bad – of approximately 50 coffee beans. In addition, it gives the highest concentration of the active sensory components. More than that: the quality of the blend is inversely connected with the ease of preparation. Put it in other words: the higher the quality, the more difficult it is to extract it in the right way. This is for sure an element of  decline of the coffee from the coffee shop: the barista wants an easy blend, the roaster might as well be happy because he save on the resources necessary to produce it, the consumer is left unsatisfied and moves on to alternative consumption or to preparing coffee at home or at the workplace. The coffee shop loses resources and its staff is less and less qualified.

Efforts should be made to try and reverse this vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle: reward the baristas who do an excellent job, stimulate their ambition, make them feel professionals. In this respect, the Italian Espresso National Institute  is doing a good job in that it has qualified more than 2.500 coffee shop operators. No doubts that also competitions are stimulating. But do these competitions really go in the right direction and do they really use assessment mechanisms which make it possible to reliably define the barista who is able to prepare a cup of perfect espresso? Trying to tackle this issue thoroughly would lead us very far away from the topic we started debating.
Falling back into line: just as the success of wine has been driven by the efforts to improve quality through bitter criticism and self-criticism, by the same token, the future of the espresso at the coffee shop rests in the hands of three components of the process: the machines manufacturer, the roaster and the barista. Of the three, the barista is the most important in that the barista is able to influence the other two. Nowadays, in any ‘trattoria’ a corky bottle of wine is immediately replaced with the apologies of the owner. Unfortunately, this is not what happens at the coffee shop with a flawed cup of coffee.

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

Without competition, there can be no improvement. This is a genetics law but it is true also for the business world. However, many companies in the coffee sector are not that keen on competition, especially if it is on the sensory impact of the blends. Think about wine, a product from which coffee should draw inspiration if it wants to a step further towards the life of consumers. There is an incredible number of guides with all sorts of comments - expressed in differing ways - valuations at exaggerated rhythms and competitions with tens of editions left behind.

In our business, the International Institute of Coffee Tasters has recently finalised an unprecedented investigation on quality at the bar: 907 surveys in bars in the entire Italian territory, 20 bars in he city centre of Milan and Rome examined by means of the environment and sensory analysis.

On the one hand, the joy of the winners has been expressed in quiet tones, on the other, the anger of the excluded has been strong to the extent that the poorly appeased acrimony reached the governing bodies of major institutions. We should be happy about this because it is anyhow a reaction which means that something will happen. We would like this to turn into food for thought for everybody on what to do to improve rather than to boil down to plain expression of sorrow.

These are our thoughts while we are busy with the organisation of another big event at an International level: the second edition of International Coffee Tasting. The first edition, in 2006, was a success. Not only in terms of the number of attendees. Some companies bought entire pages on newspapers to advertise the award they won. Other participants asked if it was possible to display the logo of the competition on their product. Let alone the company that received an order of coffee from a big Dutch agent in order to supply 5000 families with the gold medal product.

International Coffee Tasting is the first and only competition in the world of this kind. Its rules are based on the strict rules applied to wine tasting and defined by the International Organisation of Vines and Wine. Expert tasters from the International Institute of Coffee Tasters taste, anonymously, the coffee and the data is processed with the support of the most modern statistics techniques.

What else can be done? Well, we are already aware that the anger of the excluded will show once again.

by Luigi Odello

Secretary General of the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, he is also a lecturer at the University of Udine, Verona and at the Cattolica in Piacenza. In addition he is the Chairman of the Taster Study Center and Secretary General of the Italian Espresso National Institute

In the next few years it will not be easy to keep up with innovation in the coffee sector, but, no doubts, it will be a fascinating time. In this issue of Coffee Taster, we shall deal with sensorial trends and what the big companies say with regard to the methods they use to monitor quality. Not far from now, at EISday2008, the annual conference of the Italian Espresso National Institute on the 24th of February, we will focus on the findings of the biggest ever research which has been conducted into the quality of coffee.
This is precisely what made us think about evolution/innovation in our sector: how many operators are ready to benefit from it? And how many will suffer from heavily negative consequences? The fact is that, outside the micro cosmos of each operator, there is a world which is changing at an unbelievable pace, but many people seem not to realise this.
Many producing country are moving towards a European-type of qualification of their productions. This will lead them to offering a better product and to wanting more money. At home people will increasingly use single-dose coffee or coffee in beans as a result of the existence of new technology machines which are more reliable and effective. People at home will drink a better quality coffee and the same will happen at the workplace. At home, and perhaps even at the restaurant, coffee will be part of a new ritual: single origins coffees will become more and more popular, a pleasure to share with friends, maybe extracted with a moka pot so that you can actually see the coffee coming.
It is, therefore, reasonable to wonder whether roasters and, especially, baristas are ready for this. The former will find themselves dealing with producers of green coffee and with a different style of coffee consumption, both inside communities and at home. Most probably, those who have not done it yet will have to establish direct contacts with the producers of green coffee, meet a new type of demand for home consumption and for serving and take care of their coffee bars – currently suffering from a reduction in consumption which could become even worse in future - in Italy with a different approach. For many Italian roasters, coffee bars are a strategic sector which is being governed by new mechanisms. The methods for attracting clients and handling them will change. The magic word will be training.
The International Institute of Coffee Tasters, which has always adopted this approach, is currently a reference point at an international level – with a tested method and with effective training instruments. Through its research activity, it is also an attentive observer of the evolution of consumption and quality of coffee as well as the relevant machinery. In 2008, in addition, we will have a new edition of “International Coffee Tasting”: could there be a better occasion for monitoring world evolution?