Category — Opinion

It almost goes without saying that the key metric of any given coffeeshop is going to be the quality of its espresso. You can have funky couches, game nights, and your own private-label ice cream, but in the end, if your espresso isn’t up to par then your coffee business is on borrowed time. Not just because it’s what’ll define your local reputation, but because wholesale sales are often what drives a shop’s profitability, and espresso is always going to be your key wholesale driver.

But what makes a good espresso blend? That’s not an easy question to answer. Not just because there are literally hundreds if not thousands of equally good blends that can be created, but because when you’re running a shop there are more parts to the question than what coffees taste good together. A better way to phrase the question might be, “what makes a good espresso blend that I can consistently sell?”

The Flavor Factor

All other factors put aside, if your espresso simply doesn’t taste good, then nothing else matters. Selecting beans that work well together can be a fun but also frustrating challenge–some coffees that taste great on their own don’t play well in espresso, and coffees you might overlook as a single-origin offering might really shine when joined to the right blend. Beyond that, there are a thousand tiny things that can radically change a potential espresso’s cup profile: roast level of the individual coffees, dosing amount in the portafilter, water temperature, and so on.

This is the hard work. It takes time, and the ability to roast each coffee to a given roast profile consistently, and a proper palette, and just the raw patience for continuous trial and error. But it’s also the most fun part, experimenting with and really getting to the essence of individual coffees.

Yeah, But Can I Get It?

Creating an espresso blend isn’t just about flavor, though. For any given blend you like the flavor of, you’ve got to find out if you can get it consistently at the volume you’ll need for your store at a price that you can afford. Many coffees–especially the best coffees–simply aren’t available all year, and may have a lot of competition for the lots. You might create an espresso that features a really distinct estate coffee that make for an amazing shot of espresso, but if that estate’s farm only produces 100 bags a year and you have a busy shop, you won’t be able to offer that espresso once the lot runs out. One thing some roasters do to address this is deliberately build a flavor profile around five or six coffees in a balanced percentage, to ensure that they’ll never need so much of any one coffee to risk running out of inventory; that is, they can offer it consistently because they don’t need as much of any coffee, so it’s more likely to be available.

Price is also a critical factor. One of my favorite espresso blends that I ever created was a blend that used a rare-ish Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence coffee as a base and featured a heavy percentage of Kaapi Royale, a high-grown Indian Robusta. The shots were amazing, but it costs me over $8/lb to make, meaning I’d have to raise all my retail drink prices by $1.50 to sell it without losing money. And daily customers aren’t going to pay $3.99 for an Americano, no matter how good it is (nor should they).

The Certification Issue

Things get even more complicated if you plan on offering an espresso that’s 100% organic or Fair Trade. Your available choices are more limited, with some regions of the world cut out entirely (such as most African coffees), and what’s available is not only going to be more expensive, but–to be blunt–may not be the best-tasting coffee from a given region. It can be a gamble, but it’s also a proven sales booster to offer an espresso with certifications, so the roaster has to weigh the pros and cons.

Choosing Which End to Start From

Many roasters create an espresso blend by starting from the logistical end: they look at the coffees that are available all year round within a certain price range, and then start blending from there. Others start from blending whatever they can find to create the best flavor, and then working backwards to find what coffees they can realistically source to fit that flavor profile. I admit I do the latter, which isn’t always the most reasonable way, because it can frequently mean finding a great blend but having to start all the way over if one of the coffees is too expensive or too rare and there’s no adequate substitution. But my primary concern is always sourcing the best-tasting coffee I can possibly find, and then figuring out later how to get it and keep it. Price, certifications, etc., all come later.

But whichever end you start from, the result should be the same: the best-tasting espresso you can get year-round at a price that’s reasonable.

[I haven't gone anywhere...for some reason WordPress keeps eating my posts. Going to try to tackle this technical issue but if it seems like there's a recent posting drought that's why. -a]

The UK paper The Guardian ran a story today about a “50 GBP cup of espresso” (about $80), served at the Peter Jones cafe in London’s Sloane Square shopping area. Why the expense? Because the espresso blend, dubbed “Cafe Raro”, is made up of two of the most expensive coffees in the world: Jamaican Blue Mountain, and the infamous Kopi Luwak, or “weasel poop” coffee.

It seems like every few years Luwak coffee makes waves in the news as it finds a new market of adventurous consumers fascinated by the novelty. The truth is that it is a good coffee that is difficult and expensive to produce, but it largely seems to sail on a reputation of lurid gimmickry. Normally I’d be tempted to accuse the Peter Jones store of the same, but the Cafe Raro offering comes under a white banner: the proceeds from selling shots of the coffee go to benefit the UK’s MacMillan Cancer Support.

So while I don’t think the store is out to cash in on a foodie craze, I will say this: I doubt it’s a good espresso. Jamaican Blue and Luwak both have extremely soft bodies that would yield a weak mouthfeel in a shot, and both have subtle notes that I can’t help but think would get in each others’ way. The roaster in me considers it a crime to dilute by blending any truly distinctive single-origin coffee, even if it’s with another expensive single-origin. Having never tasted it, it’s all academic, but that’s my educated guess.

The most recent post on That Other Coffee Blog about roasting with an audience got me thinking about my own experiences roasting coffee in a public (or semi-public) environment. At my last shop our roasting room was actually set apart from the retail floor; we used to have our 12k Samiac sitting on the retail floor, but roasters make a lot of noise, and we discovered that we were annoying the customers with the smoke and noise as much as we had trouble focusing with the goings-on of a busy shop all around us. Perhaps more importantly, as our wholesale business grew we started running out of room for the green coffee bags.

So we moved roasting operations to a room in the back, into the conference room we used to rent out. Customers would still frequently wander back to the roasting room and ask what we were doing. Invariably they would ask if I was “grinding beans” in the roasting machine. I’m not sure why grinding is always the first conclusion people jump to–I don’t know of any food production industry that requires a 1350lb, burning cast-iron monstrosity to grind anything–but there you are.

The pros of roasting for an audience are pretty clear…you become an ambassador for your coffee knowledge, you help educate customers about the finer points of specialty coffee and the time and effort it takes to produce, and you build a reputation as a coffee pro. The disadvantages are a little less obvious, but they’re definitely worth considering. Frequently stopping to answer questions can take your attention away from the beans, and I’d be lying if I said that it never happened that I burned a batch because I was explaining to a customer all the ways a roaster prevents burning a batch. Also, the more busy the wholesale side of things gets, the more pressed for time you are on a daily basis. I did occasionally have to politely ask interested customers to come back another time as I was busily packaging hundreds of pounds of coffee for a wholesale shipment.

Now I’m in a somewhat ideal situation: my roasting room and cupping lab is in the basement of our retail space. On busy days where focus is important, I can kind of shut myself in and work uninterrupted. But we also have a street-facing garage door that we can open, so there’s plenty of opportunity to hold roasting demonstrations and cupping sessions. In short, I can be as public as I like, which is great. I like roasting for an audience, but I also tend to get “zoned into the beans” and once I get into that flow I like being able to run with it.