Coffee is complicated. Nevermind the endless methods for brewing that bloggers and baristas are constantly tweaking and innovating, the staggering plethora of bean varieties is enough to make your head swim. Like fine wines or craft beer, specialty coffee has an incredible amount to offer if you know where to look and what to taste. So, where am I looking? What am I tasting? Coffee comes from the coffee plant (who woulda thunk?) and that plant can grow in a lot of places; mainly South American, Central America, Africa and many Southeast Asian countries. All of these locations have different soils, different climates and ever-changing elevations along with a multitude of other variables that differ not only country to country but in between farms only a few miles apart. This is the biggest reason one coffee will taste differently than another. Generally speaking, coffees from Central and South America are more breakfast-y; simple, mild and full of nuttiness, floral notes and usually sweet and easy to drink. Coffees from African countries are often more vibrant, ranging in bright florals and citrus to juicy berries and dark fruits. Southeast Asian countries produce beans with more denser profiles, and often carry a lot of earthiness and dark chocolate notes with them. Of course, there are always glorious exceptions to these generalizations. For example, our own Colombian Asojardin displays incredibly sweet strawberry and juicy fruit flavors uncharacteristic of many more nutty and chocolaty Colombian brews. Geography isn't the only thing that dictates a coffee's flavor. How the beans are picked and processed determines a lot of the final product. Coffee needs to be fermented and washed to be able to be roasted and served, and there are a few ways to do this. 'Dry' or 'natural' processed coffees are left to ferment in the dried coffee cherries themselves before being pulped and washed and dried again. These types of coffees can often be more inconsistent because the quality of the seed is hidden by the fruit as it is processed, but the procedure results in beans with a much denser, juicier flavor and mouthfeel. Beans that have been 'wet' processed are pulped first and then fermented in big tanks that allow for more hands on control and offer greater consistency. These types of coffees are much more clean tasting and are generally more delicate and vibrant. Personally, I've always been a sucker for natural processed African coffees, who doesn't want to drink a cup of coffee that tastes like blueberry pie? Now, when we talk about what a coffee tastes like and start rattling off things like pie or orange peel or marzipan, they aren't necessarily these giant, in your face flavors that come from chomping into a fruit or adding some syrup or artificial flavoring. Rather, they are more suggestions that help describe how the coffee tastes as a coffee. Just like how a sommeliere would describe a wine or a brew master would describe a beer, baristas will describe the profile of a coffee the best way they can verbally to help a customer or fellow taster understand how the coffee displays itself to the senses. It is still coffee, but this is how Coffee A is different than Coffee B. Is this a lot of information? Yes. Is it overwhelming? Probably. How am I supposed to make sense of it? Taste coffee. Work your way backwards and make your own observations. If you liked one coffee, ask yourself 'why?'. Ask the barista about the coffee, read its flavor profile and where it came from. Ask the person next to you what they tasted, did you taste the same thing? Do the same if you find coffees you don't like, what qualities made it less appealing? Identify characteristics in your own words and ideas. Don't let someone tell you that you've tasted something incorrectly or even differently, but understand how different people can approach the same flavors differently when verbalized. Coffee tasting can become very social and incredibly informative even in a casual setting and it will always make things clearer at the end of the day. Everyone is always learning, even the most experience baristas and professional tasters will always keep and open mind about the endless profiles a coffee can offer That being said, I still have a personal belief that the best coffees are fine enough that they don't need to be fussed over. As long as you enjoy the cup in your hand and it's good, well then that's the whole point. Sit back, look out the window and sip. Now, isn't that nice? Stay cool good people!
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Coffee is mysterious. Seriously, for how much we create and consume this incredible beverage there are always surprises and inconsistencies that leave us scratching our heads at the end of the day. Roasting patterns, extraction variables, flavor profiles, brewing techniques - as soon as we pin down one thing and think we finally "get it" something else will pop up to throw us a curve-ball. There exist a lot of theories about the mysteries of coffee roasting and extraction and how certain variables will affect the outcoming cup, and there are a lot of really cool gadgets to help us quantify proper extraction and consistency. At a recent education class at Royal New York, we learned how we can use certain equations and tools like a refractometer to objectively determine if a cup of coffee is brewed as close to "perfect" as it can be. By altering parameters like grind size, water temperature and brew time, we were able to construct some really amazing cups of coffee that were brewed withing prime extraction yields in a lab setting. It was incredibly interesting and educational, but what happens when your kitchen isn't a laboratory? Trial and error - almost anything goes. While we learned how to brew cups that were defined as "good" by numbers and percentages, an equally valuable lesson learned was that if the coffee isn't delicious, then the numbers don't always matter. Deliciousness can't really be universally quantified, so if you don't like the way your coffee turned out, change something about the process you used to brew it and try again - it's really just a constant experimentation with your taste buds that may never totally be over and done with. I have been told that preparing coffee is equal parts science and intuition; there's a time and a place to be clinical about it and other times when you're alone in your kitchen to just say 'screw it' and try something stupid and crazy. Change the grind size, alter the water temperature and fiddle with the brew time. There are plenty of guides and canned theories that you can find online (even on this site!) that can get you started in the right direction, but something will go wrong, and you will have to fix it. It's okay though, I believe that you can do it! Don't be afraid to taste some really bad coffee as you gain your footing, like many things in life it's how you learn what not to do. Seek your own answers and you will find yourself in a wonderful relationship with a beverage that hugs you from the inside out :) Stay cool everyone! So I've been chatting a lot the past few weeks about our new blends and how we're especially excited for El Jefe, our dark roast that we're using for cold brew. But, what exactly makes a blend so tasty for one reason or another? And why does it matter if it's cold brewed or not? Today's all about filling you in on the gist of what goes on behind the counter and why it matters. When we started thinking about roasting and blending our own beans for our cold brewed iced coffee, we knew what we wanted it to taste like but had to figure out how to accomplish that. By sampling a wide variety of coffees from a long list of origins, we settle on a blend consisting of 70% beans from a farm in Brazil and 30% bean from El Salvador. The Brazilians beans, like many varieties from the major coffee exporter, offer the blend a beautifully creamy milk chocolate flavor and a very bold and straightforward structure. By itself, it's a coffee that tastes a lot like.... well, coffee. Beauty in simplicity, right? The other part of the blend, the El Salvadorian beans are what highlight the coffee into something truly incredible. The Central American beans offer the blend a wonderful brightness and acidity that lift the basic flavors off the ground and give them a good tumble. A finish of citrus and some sweet toasted almond to compliment the chocolatey base and mmmmph, you've got something pretty gnarly (in a totally good way). So, why cold brew? What's the point, what makes it better? I'm so glad you asked. When coffee is brewed, a lot of stuff happens - enough to write a few dissertations on, so I'll try to be brief. Basically the short of it is that the water used in brewing passes by the grinds of coffee and pulls away parts of it in the process. These things that come with the water are dissolved solids, and only make up a very small fraction of what makes your cup of joe so dark and delicious. A lot of stuff gets dissolved in the process, and the way you brew the coffee can affect what ends up where. Hot coffee brewing is like packing in a hurry - the water is moving fast and needs to get into the cup quick, so in its heated state it takes along everything it can get a hold of without really looking for what it needs, and it ends up taking a lot. One thing it takes lot of is acid - heat really allows for a lot of acid to become extracted from coffee which results in more higher, fruitier notes to be present in the coffee. This can be a great thing, as it can balance out a heavy cup or accentuate the delicateness of something a bit lighter. When we brew coffee with cold water, it slows things down a great deal. The coffee grinds sit in cold water for 24 hours, so it's more like taking a whole week to pack up for a weekend trip. The reduced temperature doesn't allow for the water to extract as many solids as it does hot, and so what it does extract becomes even more prominent in the end cup. Cold brew extracts much less acid that hot extraction, some people claim as much as 67% less, and so a lot of brighter high notes don't speak as loud as the bigger, heavier notes like cocoa, tobacco and earthy tones. This is a pretty vague summary as to all the exciting science behind hot and cold extraction, but it's a beginning to explain what makes our cold brew so big and bold and satisfying on a hot summer day! Stay tuned next week for more coffee science and education, Stay cool until then! Remember Ruby? She's our pretty little red roaster who's been working harder than a racehorse the past few days. Last week I trundled a huge load of green coffee beans into our roasting space, and this week I finally made something of it. We've been roasting around the clock with excitement as the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and it tastes amazing.
Today I found myself cruising down the Parkway with some good tunes teasing my eardrums, the sun shining warm on my face, and the sweet aroma of about 600 pounds of unroasted coffee beans in my backseat tickling my nostrils. We got coffee. A lot of it. And it tested my car's suspension. It's a bit odd to think of a time like this as only the beginning of something bigger, as we've never had to figure out what to do with so much bulk stock before. In the last few days the Boxwood staff has been busy slurping up spoonfuls of new coffees and mixing profiles together in efforts to create exciting new blends to offer all of you beautiful people. With some help from our awesome friends and suppliers at Royal Coffee New York, Boxwood is proud to announce that we now have our own signature blends that will be replacing our current supply of our House blend and cold brew blend! These new coffees were carefully constructed to be a little bit of something familiar and a lot of something amazingly delicious - seriously, just try a sip and you'll love them. Next week you can look forward to seeing new coffees in your cup and on our shelves, we're so excited to share them with everyone and we revere your feedback. Let us know what you think! In the fashion of new and exciting things, we are also exceptionally pleased to announce Boxwood's new Live Music Series! Every Friday night, our shop will be the home of some serious jams and groovy tunes complimentary of local performers with serious talent. This week's performance will be provided by Michial Miller, an incredibly talented solo artist who rocks the guitar and keys - check out his work on Soundcloud to get a taste of what's to come! While we continue to run our pretty little roaster (I think I'm going to start calling her Ruby, what do you think?) around the clock to get our store well-prepped to for boatloads of new and delicious coffee, we've got some more tricks up our sleeve. Keep an eye out on our menu and our counter in the coming days for new drinks and offerings that will make you go, "oohhhhh... that's good." Hint: They're caffeinated. Stay cool! We’ve been busy at Boxwood, and we’re excited to spill the beans (heh) on all our efforts and ideas for our customers whom we love so very much. We will now be pumping out newsletters every week to let you all know what cool tricks we’ve got up our sleeve and how they will be benefitting you! Our first post is chock full o’ cool info, so be sure to read up! Recently, we at Boxwood realized that operating just a café wasn’t enough to satisfy our thirst for delicious coffee. We needed to raise the bar and grant ourselves more freedom to offer the very best we could to our customers’ taste buds. We didn’t want to sell someone else’s coffee, we wanted to sell our own coffee. That meant creating a roasting company. Cue a really expensive impulse purchase. Our shiny red coffee roaster arrived brand-spanking new a few months ago and we got to work. Since March we have been busy learning the ins and outs of coffee roasting to create beautifully crafted and perfectly roasted coffee beans. We started playing around with a few single origin beans from Honduras, Columbia and Malawi and began to make roasts perfect to offer our customers. Fresher than grandma’s apple pie out of the oven, we put them up on the pour-over board and stocked our shelves with swanky new bags. The response from everyone has been incredibly gratifying, it’s a fantastic sight to see customers enjoying the fruits of our labors! With this success, we pushed our luck further. In April we joined the farmer’s market in Summit just around the corner from the shop and brought a plethora of coffee out to the masses every Sunday from 8am to 1pm. Our home-roasted single origins are selling great as pour-overs and in the bags, and we’re also selling out of our regular hot brew and cold brewed iced coffees as well! Having customers stop by to watch us pour coffee and just talk about anything java related has been an awesome experience with us – connecting with the people drinking our coffee fills our caffeine-sputtering hearts with so much joy and satisfaction. You guys rock, and we love you. In our efforts to show you how much we love you we’re going let you in on everything we can about what’s next on our big To-Do List. Our roasting operation is just beginning to pick up speed, and we are super excited to get it running at top gear. There’s plenty of green coffee stocked up and ready to be roasted and brewed, and we want you to brew it! Keep an eye out in the café and on the website for information about a brand new online store we are launching. Now you can order bags of coffee to be delivered right to your door at your convenience, or have them sent to someone you care about as a gift! All your friends and family should be drinking good coffee too, you know. And for those of you who are truly faithful coffee junkies, we are also unveiling a subscription service that allows you to receive coffee at your doorstep automatically every two or four weeks as long as you desire! Sign up for a given length of time and never worry again about running out of your favorite specialty coffee beans again! We have already begun the process curate our own coffee blends to brew non-stop in house and sling some wicked shots of espresso. Those are some big works-in- progress, but we’re pumped to accomplish them and we’ll keep you updated on the work we’re doing! Feel free to stop by and ask us questions about what’s to come and what’s already changed if you missed it, and of sign up to receive our weekly newsletter if you haven’t already! Stay tuned to hear some info on in-house brewing guides, coffee tastings and other cool things we plan to provide in the coming weeks. It’s going to be a fun summer, stay cool! |
AuthorHayden Kaye is our Master Roaster and head of the Say Interesting Stuff department. Archives
December 2017
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