Ah! The fleeting perfection of a perfectly-brewed espresso. Un cafe. Few pleasures in life are so simultaneously complex and simple. An espresso is truly for the moment. Unlike a fine wine, it does not improve with age. Enjoy immediately.
The unctuous crema, the rich aroma, the uplift in spirit—they all stew together in the moment and crescendo, reverberating for up to an hour afterward with suprising echoes of pleasure.
The amount of effort that goes into producing my espresso is startling, from Juan Valdez picking the rusitico in Colombia, to the roaster in Vienna, the UPS person en route, and finally my stove top, where I do the final bit of loving labor .
I take nothing for granted as I add my precise measure of sugar and tip my cup to the chilly walls of an early kitchen.
6 responses so far ↓
1 meg // Dec 10, 2002 at 12:00 pm
ahhh… real coffee! i hate the bitter, black water that drips into a pot and gets served as coffee. fucking maxwell house and crap like that. espresso is the only way to go.
2 Elliott // Dec 10, 2002 at 6:20 pm
I have ordered a lot of gourmet coffee in the last year, and I lived with a coffee roaster, so I have a lot to say about coffee. Please, indulge me, and forgive me if I am telling you anything you already know.
The roaster in Vienna? Freshness is crucial to coffee. Without refrigeration, roasted coffee is stale in a matter of days. A vacuum sealed bag lasts at most two weeks.
Here’s a tip: fresh roasted coffee exudes gases. This is the reason vacuum sealed bags have that little valve on them; they would burst otherwise. If the coffee in the bag feels like a brick, it was stale when it was packed.
The trouble is, there is not a limitless supply of really good coffee beans. This is why Starbucks cannot be first rate: they need too many beans. So for fresh coffee, you are at the mercy of a disribution network, or you need to be near a roaster that has access to first-rate green beans. The other alternative is to source the first-rate green beans and roast your own. You can use a skillet (keep it moving), but the best thing for it is a hot-air popcorn popper. A lot of roasters will sell green beans at a discount.
I prefer light-roasted arabian coffees, like Ethiopian Yrgacheffe and Yemen Moca, but there are really good Central American coffees, too, and some of them are certified organic and shade grown as well. Organic and shade grown are relevant factors to taste, too, because coffee grows in the shade naturally; coffee that is grown in full sun is fertilized heavily and the starches in the beans do not mature properly, giving a bland, bitter taste.
I enjoy a pot of french-press coffee every day.
Here is a link to a good coffee roaster:
http://www.lgcrc.com. The Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company does a great job delivering fresh coffee, and the beans are first rate.
And another:
http://www.thanksgivingcoffee.com. The Thanksgiving Coffee Company does a great job with Central American coffee.
3 Scotty The Body // Dec 10, 2002 at 6:45 pm
I get the beans, on occasion, air-shipped via UPS to my door from the master roasters at Julius Meinl in Vienna, Austria. Otherwise, I order fro Puerto Rico Coffee Company in NYC or get it from my local neighborhood roaster.
Right now, by big trip is Arabica beans. They can be unbelievably good.
Good tips though on the other roasters; I’ll give them a try.
4 Scotty the Body // Dec 10, 2002 at 6:48 pm
Oh yeah, and re: Starbucks, they roast their coffee way too dark; it’s burnt. Sometimes, that burnt flavor can be yummy in some sort of freaky, milky, sweet coffee drink, but, on the whole, I skip that crap.
5 Elliott // Dec 11, 2002 at 1:23 pm
Yeah, I know what you mean about dark roasts. You taste the roast, not the coffee. Sometimes a bit of dark roast is good in a blend, but not much, maybe 10%.
Anyway, air freight from Europe, that’s impressive.
Tell me, what do you use for an espresso maker? My wife and I have one, but it is old, and I am not too impressed by it. It sputters at the end of the cup and ruins the crema.
6 scotty the body // Dec 11, 2002 at 2:16 pm
I use the classic standby, the Italian champion of the everyman—the stove top espresso maker. It produces a so-so crema, actually—not really impressive next to the high quality commercial makers. The crema is there, but fails to pass the four second rule. What is the four second rule, some of our readers may wonder? I shall explain:
When you have a freshly and perfectly brewed cup of espresso, it should have a layer of substance across the surface of the coffee that looks like tiny, tiny bubbles. This should be over the entire surface and hazel-brown.
This layer is called crema, and should have sufficient mass that when a spoonful of sugar is placed in the cup, the crema should suspend the sugar for four seconds, no more or no less, before parting and allowing the sugar to sink to the bottom of the cup. The crema should then re-form and re-seal the surface.
My maker only produces 1 second crema, so I’m not in compliance, but I don’t exactly feel like dropping big bucks on an espresso machine when I could go get one at the corner coffee shop that is acceptable.
Incidentally, here are some amazing espresso/coffee facts:
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