It’s a hard road to find a perfect coffee
Kiwi baristas are at odds with Aussie researchers who reckon we’re making our coffee wrong, writes Emily Brookes.
Anew study claims to have designed the ‘‘perfect’’ cup of coffee – but some New Zealand baristas aren’t having a bar of it. Research co-authored by Melbourne barista Michael Cameron and a group of international scientists, found Australian cafes used too much coffee, applied too much water pressure, and ground their beans too fine, creating an over-extracted and inconsistent shot.
But, in Wellington, coffee professionals are dismissing the advice from across the ditch.
‘‘The headlines where they’re saying what we’re doing currently is wrong are a bit misleading,’’ said Peoples Coffee head roaster Rene Macaulay.
‘‘The question, is what is the criteria for being better, and with coffee, with wine, with steak, we all have our own standards.
‘‘It’s subjective,’’ Macaulay says. ‘‘What is your criteria for being better? One person’s will be bitterness, another person’s will be fruitiness.’’
Kiwis, he says, tend to like a stronger espresso, but in a coffee-obsessed city like Wellington that has more cafes and eateries per capita than New York, all preferences can be accounted for and each cafe has developed its own method for making what it thinks is the perfect shot.
‘‘It is possible to find the perfect balance – it just depends on what balance you are looking for,’’ says Luisa Metelka, a roaster at Flight Coffee.
‘‘We’re a light-roasted roastery, so we’re looking for some acidity, a lot of sweetness and a little bit of bitterness, but it really depends on how you like your coffee.
‘‘Some people prefer a traditional roast and they find the bitterness in the coffee quite comforting.’’
And a customer’s definition of the ‘‘perfect’’ cup may be different from their barista’s, says Macaulay.
‘‘Lots of customers in New Zealand think a strong coffee is a good coffee, so the basis of what is good is purely the strength of it.
‘‘That is kind of the opposite to what people in the industry would perceive as good and quality, so even in the industry there’s a huge tension between what we like and what our customers like.’’
Most ‘‘coffee geeks’’, as Macaulay refers to himself and his peers, prefer filter coffee.
‘‘There’s a lot more water to coffee in the ratio and there’s a much subtler flavour,’’ he says.
‘‘That’s where you can really draw out your art of roasting and sourcing good quality beans and brewing them well.
‘‘But most customers haven’t caught up, they’re not used to having that flavour and associating it with coffee so it’s just not as popular. People are used to dark cappuccinos.’’
Each cafe knows what its customers want, and one of the most important elements of a successful business is turning out the same product, every time.
‘‘Making coffee is basically like making a cake,’’ Metelka says. ‘‘You have to follow a recipe.’’
But even if cafes did want to try a new recipe, there’s more too it than that.
Although Metelka says she would ‘‘love to try out’’ the guidelines suggested in the Matter study, which include lowering water pressure from the standard nine or 10 bars to six, and changing the size of the grind, that would require using The Hangar’s machines in a very different way than they were designed to be used.
‘‘The way they’re achieving [the ‘‘perfect’’ shot] is by using the machine in a way that’s different to the manufacturer’s normal approach,’’ says Macaulay. ‘‘If your machine can’t do it, it just can’t do it. And it requires a whole retraining of baristas.’’
With coffee machines and grinders – typically owned by coffee roasters and loaned to cafes – running at upwards of $15,000, changing the way you make coffee is an expensive proposition.
However, another aspect of the scientific study appeals to Macaulay.
The article’s approach used less coffee and created less waste, which was an important consideration given that the coffee bean growers like the organic and fair trade farmers Peoples works directly with in Africa and South America, are being severely impacted by climate change.
‘‘It’s a reality that the better quality coffee that we’re currently drinking is going to become less and less available,’’ he says. ‘‘The problem is, what cafe will be happy to say to their customers, ‘your coffee tastes different today because we’ve changed the way we make coffee to save the planet’?’’