Artisan—Roasted, Speciality Coffee Explained (Part 1)

All the dictionaries out there state the word Artisan as denoting goods produced on a small scale using traditional methods by skilled craftsmen. That sounds about right when you think […]

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All the dictionaries out there state the word Artisan as denoting goods produced on a small scale using traditional methods by skilled craftsmen.

That sounds about right when you think about specialty coffee roasting as opposed to commercial grade roasting (think of supermarket and other large commercial brands)

Origin Coffee Roasting

Mike MacDonald – Origin’s Head Roaster

Go for the green

The highest quality coffees have unique characteristics determined by varietal, terroir, climate, and the care and attention paid by the farmer pre-harvest, during picking, and when processing the coffee.  Lots of green coffee – even coffees from the same country, the same region or even the same farm – can have substantially different levels of quality and different character. Speciality beans meet specific higher minimum quality standards and the best of these coffees are typically produced in smaller lots which cannot be used by larger roasters without blending them to reach the volumes they need (often blending with lower quality lots from the same producer or even other origins). The best speciality roasters will select specific lots from each producer.

Roasters Tip: If the coffee packaging does not state where the coffee is from, along with farm specs, then it’s probably not specialty-grade coffee, and consequently not from an Artisan Roaster.
Be aware that words describing origin or region are sometimes used by non-speciality roasters to make a commercial coffee sound like it’s “high quality”. But the only true measure of speciality coffee is in the cup. For example, even if a bag of coffee says “Ethiopia Sidamo” or “Guatemala Antigua” (country+region), that does not necessarily imply anything in terms of quality (or what the price should be). It’s like saying a bottle of wine was made from grapes from Stellenbosch –an “origin” which could include wines from top cellars like de Trafford, Saxenburg, Rust en Vrede or De Toren costing R1,000, 2,000 or even more per bottle together with everyday, much lower quality wines at R50 a bottle. No one expects these to be the same even though they are all made from red wine grapes grown near Stellenbosch.

Speciality Coffee Roasting

Mike MacDonald – Artisan-Roasted Speciality Coffee

Turning green beans into roasted coffee

So the best artisan roasters start with better quality green than most commercial roasteries. These high-quality coffees have a great deal of flavour potential, which needs to be unlocked through various chemical reactions in the roasting process. A dedicated and experienced artisan roaster has spent years building the skills and experience to unlock the full potential of each of the coffees they select. That does not mean that the larger commercial roasteries are not skilled at producing a consistent product, but there are certain advantages to working by hand with smaller batches in a smaller roastery.

Roasting machines, and particularly drum roasters are basically rotating cylindrical ovens. They normally have temperature probes attached at various points to track temperature development in all roasts.

Temperature tracking and manipulation in the roasting process is the key to optimizing a coffee’s flavour profile. Most compounds in coffee have a particular flavour or sensation that can be identified via cupping. In this way, the roaster uses their skills (including ongoing experimentation) and sensory evaluation to achieve the result they want and feel is best for that coffee (and sometimes a specific brewing method). Sensory evaluation become one of the most important aspects of a coffee professional’s job. Sensory evaluation will occur at a more intensive level with Artisan roasted coffee compared to commercially roasted coffee, and in my opinion is one of the most fun parts of the job.

 

Continue reading about “Artisan-Roasted Speciality Coffee Explained” in Part 2

 

Joel
Born in Montréal, Quebec, studied further west and in France, then moved to the mountains and ocean of Seattle. While working in IT at Microsoft, I instead fell in love with the beauty and amazing possibilities of all things local – coffee, food, wine, beer, baking, craftsmanship – and with the possibilities of renewed urban living and neighbourhoods. Cape Town became home and I was inspired to contribute to the burgeoning of Cape Town city life and the “artisan” scene. I wanted to share a vision of what a cafe and great coffee could be as a special place to connect with others. I remain inspired by coffee, by people and by travel in the world at large… 40+ countries under my belt so only another 100 or so to go.
Joel’s World Barista Championship Reflections

Winston is on his way to Seoul Korea to represent South Africa at the World Barista Championships in a couple of weeks’ time. We at Origin are all very excited […]

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Winston is on his way to Seoul Korea to represent South Africa at the World Barista Championships in a couple of weeks’ time. We at Origin are all very excited to have him represent us, and Cape Town, South African and African coffee and all of our barista & coffee professionals. It’s given me an opportunity to reflect on how Winston and Origin ended up here, and how we can focus ourselves anew for the future.

I am sometimes asked how it is that we have managed to nurture five South African barista champions, and many other successful competitors over the years. Origin champions won national titles twice in the earliest years of our national barista competition, twice in the middle years, and again last year with Winston. I have given a lot of thought to the question, and a number of themes emerge.

Origin has, since day one, been striving to reach the standard of the best cafes in the world – in terms of roasting, in terms of barista skills and in terms of customer experience. We did not, particularly in the early days, reference what else was going on at the time in Cape Town / SA coffee, but rather the best that we knew of worldwide. I am not suggesting that we have yet reached that goal (and those standards get higher and higher all the time), but rather that our constant drive to get there is a key factor in our WBC journey. We keep challenging our ideas of what Cape Town / SA coffee and our best baristas can be.

From the very beginning we also had strong commitment to the baristas themselves. We recognized that one of the key limiting factors to what could be achieved here was the development of the barista as a skilled professional deserving of respect. To this end, we were early drivers in the establishment of SCASA and the SA barista championships. We have trained over 3,500 baristas at Origin, mostly for our wholesale customers, but including many who have passed through the Origin team itself. Training others in barista skills makes one a better barista and a better competitor. Winston is the current head of our barista academy with a focus on training our customers’ as well as our own baristas. I believe this role makes him a stronger barista professional and a better competitor.

SA_Baritsa_Champion_2017

Winston Thomas competing at the SA Barista Championship

At Origin we expect a lot from our baristas. We pay them substantially more than the market (and hopefully even more as the coffee consumer becomes more demanding…but cup prices have to increase to support that). We give them opportunities to learn, to take on more responsibility and to grow into bigger roles in our company. For those that push themselves hard, we invest further in their growth with initiatives like bringing Klaus Thomsen (a former WBC champion) to help train Willem as the first SA competitor at WBC,  sending our champions to compete (and win) at the African barista championships and giving our senior baristas the chance to travel and explore the best of coffee and cafes in other countries like Australia and the UK.

Sometimes it seemed that only those who were exceptionally self-motivated and driven to excel rose to the top of our team. There have fortunately been many who have gone there. But in a way maybe that tough-love aspect, the giving of responsibility, the availability of resources to those who grab them, and leaving it to the individual’s will to succeed, has been a factor in these champions’ success. That said, we are now investing a lot more in developing a more structured approach to skills development in our barista team. We are always searching for the next great barista to join our team and hopefully who will one day be the next South African champion. If you think you belong on our/his team, please speak to Winston.

We have had a very strong level of commitment to diversity, because of where I grew up – in proudly multicultural Canada and in particular Montreal with its unique cultural challenges. My father’s family were also immigrants in difficult circumstances, refugees from war, moving between countries. I believe our diversity creates a stronger team and stronger individuals. I am proud that our champions have included an Afrikaaner from Cape Town (Willem Piennar), an Angolan refugee (Jose Vilandy), an English speaking South African from Durban (Wayne Oberholzer), a Zimbabwean refugee (Lovejoy Chirambasukwa) and now a young and ambitious local man from Strand, Cape Town (Winston Thomas).

Team Origin at the SA Barista Champs

Team Origin at the SA Barista Champs (Adrian Europa, Winston Thomas, Joel Singer, Neil Gouws)

Finally, at Origin, we are a collective of individuals working together for our company’s and our individual success. It takes all of us to create a champion. Firstly we have to recognize the importance of our roasting team in producing coffees that can help win competitions. We have invested heavily over the years in the skills and experience our roasters Mike MacDonald and Jorge Alberto, including sending them to countries of origin (Brazil, Rwanda, Tanzania) to learn more about the producers and their challenges and to judge at Cup of Excellence to develop their tasting skills and knowledge. Our coffee sourcing partners Mercanta, who have worked with us to find so many competition winning coffees over the years. The many colleagues and friends of Origin who put so much time into helping our baristas with their training and preparing for competition. The hard-working team that helps make our café busy thereby giving our baristas the opportunity to pour a lot of coffee every day for a pretty demanding set of customers. The team behind the scenes that handles all the details that make running Origin possible. Our competitors stand on the shoulders of all those who came before – previous champions, the many trainers, roasters, baristas and other key people over the years at Origin, and so many others.

And last but not least we have to celebrate the extraordinary commitment of time and effort by each of our champions over the years to honing their craft. They have had to keep up their day jobs (to a reasonable level!) while preparing for regional, national and world competitions. I have watched them all from Willem through to Winston – working exceptionally hard to win. I, and many others with pretty informed opinions, think Winston is one of, if not the strongest national champion we have ever produced. We at Origin are behind him and have faith he will be the highest placed South African barista ever in World Competition.

We think he might even win.

Joel
Born in Montréal, Quebec, studied further west and in France, then moved to the mountains and ocean of Seattle. While working in IT at Microsoft, I instead fell in love with the beauty and amazing possibilities of all things local – coffee, food, wine, beer, baking, craftsmanship – and with the possibilities of renewed urban living and neighbourhoods. Cape Town became home and I was inspired to contribute to the burgeoning of Cape Town city life and the “artisan” scene. I wanted to share a vision of what a cafe and great coffee could be as a special place to connect with others. I remain inspired by coffee, by people and by travel in the world at large… 40+ countries under my belt so only another 100 or so to go.
The myth about the price of drinking a cup of coffee out in South Africa

RESPECT THE CONSUMER The team and I at Origin welcome all customers to share their opinions, to decide how and where to spend their hard-earned money, to choose which café […]

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RESPECT THE CONSUMER

The team and I at Origin welcome all customers to share their opinions, to decide how and where to spend their hard-earned money, to choose which café serves them the cup of coffee and at the price they want to pay. In light of these decisions, we aim to provide a guide as to what goes into the price of a cup of coffee.

A WORLDWIDE VIEW OF THE PRICE OF A CUP OF COFFEE

Numbeo is a fascinating website and claims to be “the world’s largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide”. They provide information on living conditions around the world, including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.

Interestingly, one of the items Numbeo track in their Basket of Goods & Services used to calculate relative cost of living is the price of a cappuccino in various places around the world.

Most South African consumers may be surprised, after years of increasing coffee cup prices at their favourite cafes, that on average South Africa is ranked as the 87th cheapest cup of coffee out of 122 countries in the survey, where 1 is the most expensive. Other surveys I have seen (such as in Monocle) have reflected a similar view.

Statistics from Numbeo dated 24 February 2017

Aside from our close neighbours above, here are the stats for a few other countries –

Perhaps, before deciding to visit beautiful South Africa on holiday, coffee-mad tourists should consider whether they can find their fix at better value while traveling in Colombia, a coffee producing country selling at $1.28 per cup, for example, or Egypt averaging at $1.13, or the cheapest of all Algeria $0.63. Or, go straight to where it all began: the average cup in Ethiopia is ranked at 118th at the going rate of $0.89.

THE VIEW ON GREAT COFFEE IN SOUTH AFRICA

One should note that most of the cups in the averages above, use commercial or fine commercial coffee and not speciality coffee. These coffees are traded on commodity markets where farmers are often paid very low prices for their hard work. They are at the mercy of the high levels of market volatility (dramatically changing prices for their crop), and from which they do not get rewarded enough for producing higher quality coffee. Most of those average prices for a “regular cappuccino” above are also likely based on a single shot espresso.

South African coffee has changed so much since we launched in 2006. At Origin, we have put in a lot of passion and hard work. We have roasted coffee used to pour more than a million cups of coffee. We have trained over 2,000 baristas who pour our (and many other café’s) coffee. Together with the work of the many other roasteries, the cafes and venues that have committed themselves to serve better coffee, I believe we have transformed Cape Town into a truly world-class coffee (and café) city, with the rest of South Africa soon to follow.

A flat white (double-shot) at Origin sells for R27, 25% more than the South African average. No matter how much better coffee is in South Africa ten years later, I believe that what we serve is far beyond the local average, and an exceptional cup of coffee even by the standard of other top cafés around the world. At an equivalent of $2.04, that Origin flat white is still the 66th cheapest rank out of 122 countries in the survey.

For the health of the farmers who grow all coffee, and of our local baristas and roasters, I think it’s critical that consumers really understand and are conscious of the fact that despite any views they may have to the contrary, the cost of going out to drink a cup of coffee in South Africa is relatively inexpensive compared to the rest of the world. We are fortunate for the quality and price of our coffee as consumers.

So what can you do? The best thing you can do for the local industry and for coffee farmers is to support ethical cafes and roasters who pay their staff well and who source better, speciality-grade, traceable coffees and are willing to pay more for them.

Origin is committed to paying higher prices to farmers for producing the highest quality green coffees. We are committed to achieving technical mastery of the roasting process. We have committed ourselves for over ten years to train an entire generation of South African baristas. We are committed to paying the baristas who work in our cafes living wages which far exceed what many of our competitors pay their peers, including those which you may support regularly.

The next time you pay R27 for a cup at Origin, consider the facts and the true value of what goes into that cup.

Joel
Born in Montréal, Quebec, studied further west and in France, then moved to the mountains and ocean of Seattle. While working in IT at Microsoft, I instead fell in love with the beauty and amazing possibilities of all things local – coffee, food, wine, beer, baking, craftsmanship – and with the possibilities of renewed urban living and neighbourhoods. Cape Town became home and I was inspired to contribute to the burgeoning of Cape Town city life and the “artisan” scene. I wanted to share a vision of what a cafe and great coffee could be as a special place to connect with others. I remain inspired by coffee, by people and by travel in the world at large… 40+ countries under my belt so only another 100 or so to go.
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