Thoughts on coffee

Counter Culture Coffee is my favorite coffee roaster.  Located in Durham, NC, their coffee is phenomenal and their business model is inspiring.  They are one of the “big dogs” in the specialty coffee world.  Over at the Roasters Guild website, someone posted a question about storing coffee-best practices.  Here is the co-owner of CCC’s (Peter Giuliano) response:

1. The best way to store coffee is in parchment. Oh you mean roasted coffee! Yes, yes, dark, dry, room temperature, in a washable or disposable fairly airtight container. I always recommend that people keep the coffee in the package they bought it in, especially if it is a valve bag. I feel the more times you transfer coffee from bag to bag to container to container, you lose any CO2 flush the coffee has managed to build up.

2. Have you ever seen most people's refrigerators, or better yet smelled them? I feel that coffee does not belong next to last night's enchiladas. Plus there is no point, if the coffee is reasonably fresh. I do believe that freezing might inhibit oxidation if you wanted to store coffee for, say, months by tying up any residual moisture. But that is a pretty weak benefit if you ask me.

3. When people ask me how long coffee will remain fresh, I always ask what they mean by 'fresh'. I explain coffee will not make them ill no matter how old, unlike cheescake (I learned this lesson the hard way). I then compare coffee to bread. Bread will stay edible as long as it's not moldy, but it's way better on the first day you buy it than the fifth. Same with lettuce, donuts, tortilla chips, and apples.

Most people have two different categories in their mind: fresh food and staples. Fresh food is what you go to the grocery to buy a few times a week (meat, fruit, dairy), staples are always there in the pantry (flour, sugar, rice, canned tomatoes) which are good until they go bad. We have traditionally put coffee in the "staple" category whereas I believe it belongs in the "Fresh Food" category.

4. To me, he best coffee brewers are pourover: melitta and chemex. French presses are great. I am geekily attracted to the technivorm.

As for espresso machines at home, I have an opinion about that. Do you remember back when we were kids, Pac Man in the arcade was super cool- a wonderful experience. When it came out on Atari, it was totally disappointing. Now that technology is better, I have Pac Man on my PC at home, and the screen looks the same as it did in the Arcade in 1982. But it feels different, not as good. This is the way I feel about espresso.

I feel that espresso not just a cup of coffee, but a communal event. In Italy, people stop at a bar for an espresso, some conversation, the local news, some stamps, whatever. That sense is entirely lost making espresso in your kitchen. Plus, home equipment is just always inferior when it comes to pressure and temperature stability. Why the modern host feels like it is a cool thing to offer cappuccinos to their guests is beyond me, especially when there are a multitude of other coffee preparations more suited to the home kitchen that are equally spectacular.

Now then, a problem is that it is often difficult to find great espresso out in the world. This is its own problem, and the solution may not be for all the people who care to install espresso machines in their kitchen. It is our duty to put pressure on marginal coffeehouses to make great coffee, and patronize and reward the coffeehouses that do. Save the coffeehouse. Take the couple grand you would spend on a good home espresso machine, buy a moka pot for the Italian vibe (not espresso but a legit Italian experience nonetheless) and spend the rest at a local great coffeehouse getting great shots, or making noise every time you don't. By the way, I deeply respect those who are passionate about their home espresso machines, but those guys usually have their own opinion about what is the best espresso machine and are not asking me.

People tell me sometimes I am a pain in the ass. Sometimes I understand exactly what they are talking about.

Peter

Citation: Peter Giuliano Roasters Guild website thread reply, 9 June 2003.  <www.roastersguild.com>