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.

Read also:

• Espresso Italiano Roasting: roasting and blending from the tasters’ point of view
• Coffee in future
• Why can I refuse wine when it is corked, but I have to pay a corked coffee?

*from the correspondent Antonello Monardo

The Brazilian coffee market is managing with an excess of offer. To avoid the situation to strike against producers, the minister of agriculture of Brazil, Reinhold Stephanes, argues that it is necessary to retire from the market something like 10 millions of sacks. A measure that will be adopt both this year and next one. It is estimated a sum of a billion of Brazilian reis for this operation (380 million of euro), of which 300 millions  will derived from commercialization and the rest from other sources. *

Antonello Monardo is living in Brasilia since 1992 and he his delegate of the Italian Brazilian chamber of commerce and industry. Working for café gourmet and special, he won the gold medal at the International Coffee Tasting 2008. He works on and manages classes for barmen and barwomen, he takes part to conferences and events in universities, spreading the culture of the quality coffee.

Read also:

• 4.8 billion capsules to be produced in Nestlé new facility
• Brasil: aumenta a exportação de café torrado, consumo interno em leve aumento
• The markers of non-quality

do correspondente Antonello Monardo *

O mercado do café brasileiro está tendo que lidar com um excesso de oferta. E para evitar qualquer perturbação para os produtores o ministro da Agricultura, Reinhold Stephanes, afirma que é necessário retirar do mercado 10 milhões de sacas. Medida que será adotada este ano e no próximo. Estima-se que será investido nesta operação um bilhão de reais (aproximadamente 380 milhões de euros), dos quais 300 milhões disponibilizados pela comercialização  e o restante de outras fontes.

*Antonello Monardo, mora desde 1992 em Brasília è delegado da Câmara Ítalo-Brasileira de Comércio e Indústria. Torrefador de café gourmet e especiais, ganhador da medalha de ouro do International Coffee Tasting 2008. Organiza e ministra cursos para baristas, participa a palestras e eventos em instituições e universidades, divulgando a cultura do café de qualidade.

Read also:

• Brasil: aumenta a exportação de café torrado, consumo interno em leve aumento
• Brasil: café no tratamento de desintoxicação
• Café brasileiro: aumenta importação de café da Alemanha (+17%), boom da Espanha (+94%)

The new IIAC website is on line. We are adding content right now. We would like to publish our members’ pictures. Send us a picture of you with IIAC certificates, possibly at your workplace. We will publish it in the new members’ gallery. You can send your picture to news@coffeetasters.org.

Read also:

• International Coffee Tasting 2010: updated website
• Espresso Italiano Roasting: roasting and blending from the tasters’ point of view
• Goodbye Mr Illy, friend of the 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

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.
 

Read also:

• Good or bad, you pay it all the same
• I’ll be a barista when I grow up
• World Report

The International Institute of Coffee Tasters will organize three Espresso Italiano Tasting courses (license courses)  in cooperation with Caffè Umbria. This is the first time these courses will be offered in the United States and in Canada. Courses are scheduled for Seattle, Vancouver B.C., and Portland. More information: www.caffeumbria.com/v2/news.html.

Read also:

• Italian Espresso and North America: let’s re-open the game
• Espresso tasting courses in Poland
• Espresso Italiano Tasting course in English

IIAC Japan will organize three license courses in September:

• Tokyo (09)
• Osaka (10)
• Fukuoka (11)

More information: info@coffeetasters.jp, ph. +81 3 54116191.

Read also:

• Coffee tasters: new associations in Japan and Brazil
• Special tasting license course in English (Milan)
• Espresso Italiano Tasting courses in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver

do correspondente Antonello Monardo *

Continuam no Brasil as reivindicações dos produtores de café. Depois da "Marcha do café" que aconteceu em março na cidade de Varginha (Minas Gerais) promovida do movimento "S.O.S. Cafeicultura" que reúnem 25.000 associados, a protesta chegou no coração do Pais com uma grande manifestação em Brasília.

Os sindicados e as associações de categoria de vários estados brasileiros, acusam a falta da parte do governo, de uma política de amparo para os produtores brasileiros vêem o próprio café vendido por um preço muito a baixo dos principais concorrentes colombianos.

*Antonello Monardo, mora desde 1992 em Brasília è delegado da Câmara Ítalo-Brasileira de Comércio e Indústria. Torrefador de café gourmet e especiais, ganhador da medalha de ouro do International Coffee Tasting 2008. Organiza e ministra cursos para baristas, participa a palestras e eventos em instituições e universidades, divulgando a cultura do café de qualidade.

Read also:

• Brasil: a protesta dos produtores de cafè
• Café brasileiro: aumenta importação de café da Alemanha (+17%), boom da Espanha (+94%)
• Brasil: O governo está pronto a retirar 10 milhões de sacas de café

from correspondent Elisabetta Wierzchowska *

The first Starbucks venue was inaugurated on one of Warsaw’s main streets on 8th April soon followed, on 17th April, by the second premises in Wroclaw, a city with 640,000 inhabitants situated in south-west Poland. Both coffee shops were crammed straight away, mainly by school students who associate Strabuck’s image to the fulfilment of their American dream.

The interviews clearly indicate that youths consider the Seattle based chain as a positive sign of globalization. Many of them crowd the venue because, as they declare, they have already experienced Starbuks during trips abroad to Spain and Great Britain. The image of these youngsters queuing in front of the premises brings back memories of communist days, when shops supplies run short, even primary goods. While nowadays young people patiently wait for their turn to get hold of a cup featuring the famous Starbucks logo.

Very interesting is the sensory assessment, given by the young customers, comparing Starbuck’s products to those of Coffee Heaven, number one Polish chain in the country, launched in 2000 and now boasting 86 venues located throughout Poland and other Central European countries.

The boys and girls that took part in the interview declared they prefer Starbucks rather than Coffee Heaven because it is "better, less adulterated, more genuine, and you can taste more coffee in the coffee". The young consumers also appreciate the fact that coffee is served in a china cup, and not in a paper one  as usual happens in many Coffee Heaven cafés, because it makes them feel more comfortable and at home.

A main feature to bear in mind to understand why youths prefer Starbucks involves their habit of drinking coffee with 30, or even 40, cl of milk.  At Starbuks’ you can choose your favourite milk from a selection: from skimmed to soya. Such a broad range is assessed very positively by young consumers as they like accompanying their favourite drink with milk as well as with syrup, mainly caramel.

And what about espresso? They declare they drink it only when it is essential to stay awake, just on special occasions…Much better a coffee with ice-cream or the big favourite, American coffee. In other words, young Polish generations enjoy their coffee with plenty of milk and syrup, the coffee type which was launched by Coffee Heaven over the last years and that could now be affected by Starbuck’s competition.

* Elisabetta Wierzchowska is a biologist fond of Italy and of its life style.  In 1996 she set up a venue with her husband. In 2006 she started to import and distribute Italian coffee, with the aim of divulging our country’s culture in Poland. She is also a taster for the International Institute of Coffee Tasters, an Espresso Italiano Specialist and a sensory analysis panel leader.

Read also:

• Italian baristas, smile: you are already in the future (if you want to be)
• Espresso tasting courses in Poland
• Costa Coffee opens its 1,000th store in Moscow

Nespresso has launched Ecolaboration, a platform for sustainable innovation and creating shared value. Nespresso commits itself to three targets by 2013: to source 80% of its coffee from its AAA Sustainable Quality Coffee Program; to treble its capacity to recycle capsules, to 75%; and to reduce the carbon footprint of a cup of Nespresso by 20%.

Read also:

• 4.8 billion capsules to be produced in Nestlé new facility
• Schultz, Starbucks CEO: Italian baristas are very good, Italian coffee is awful
• The markers of quality