June 2022 Newsletter
Following on from last month's newsletter, we're starting to see substantial price increases in the quotes from green coffee suppliers. The sad thing about this is that virtually none of the increased prices are going back to the farmers, most of it is going to freight. Of course, the same thing has happened with a variety of imported goods so it's not like coffee is the only thing affected.
So our prices will be going up, but probably not until August at the earliest, and not across the board. Where we have existing stocks we'll wait until we have to buy the new crop beans. Some of the increase will also be due to the increased cost of gas used for roasting, but we'll wear that until the bean costs hit.
Now, on to the important part of this newsletter.
Coffee roasting and blending is an art that has established Italy as the premier producer of espresso blends over the last two centuries. The development of this art is, weirdly enough, why Italian roasters have never really embraced specialty coffee.
Steam based espresso (moka pot style coffee) was already popular in Italy from Edwardian times. After World War II, with the invention of the spring lever machine and pressurized extraction by Achille Gaggia, (resulting in a heavy bodied liquid with a rich crema), the popularity of espresso coffee exploded.
The quality of the beans available to Italian roasters after WWII had dropped a lot since their occupation of East Africa ended. Lever espresso machines tended to emphasize both features and faults, so Italian roasters had to learn how to accentuate the flavour while minimizing the faults of the low grade coffees they had access to.
The other thing they had to learn to do (even more than pre-war) was to blend these low grade beans to produce desirable flavours. Quite often the reason a coffee is cheap is that it has a one dimensional taste; too acidic, too bitter, too thin bodied.
Or the reverse: no acidity, extremely heavy body, rubbery taste. The last being a fair description of cheap robusta, which came to prominence during this time. My own theory on the only reason for Italian and French acceptance of the truly dire taste is the vile flavours of the unfiltered cigarettes that they all smoked affecting their tastebuds.
The Italian roasters worked out how to both roast and blend these beans to get balanced results which suited the local palates, Illy in the northeast, Lavazza in the northwest and Barbera and Kimbo in the south. They knew what they were doing, as evidenced by their continued existence over a century later.
For the last of our Reasonably Priced Specials I thought that I'd have a shot at emulating the Italian Roast Masters and producing an espresso blend from modestly priced green coffees. It turned out to be harder than I thought. First, even "modest" greens are expensive for what you get. Second there isn't a wide choice at present. Third it couldn't be done with a single roast level. Still, 35 years experience has got to be good for something and with a heap of test roasting, blending and cupping we got it done.
Presenting the Master Blend Espresso:
$52 Per Kilogram
Strong
A complex coffee with evenly balanced acidity, flavour, body and aftertaste which works well as a straight espresso or with added milk.
Limited quantity, limited time available.
Until August,
Alan
