Great Coffee

Great Coffee, Culinary Art, Sustainability.

All things are made new!

New Years resolutions are great. Change is awesome. Positive changes bring positive cash flow. Welcome to 2006. What will this year hold for you and your café? What are you holding for this year? A new year is the perfect time to make some positive changes and improvements. Time to revamp your menu, change up your brewed coffee selections, change your decaf and redouble your efforts to become an espresso and coffee destination. In this month’s newsletter we have included some great areas to focus on to improve and make positive changes. Each one by itself does not seem very impactful but combine a few or all of them together and you will see your customers getting excited again and anticipating new and improved things. Excited and interested customers come more often, buy more each time and excitedly tell their friends to frequent your café. Do you routinely have two or three new customers a day coming in saying their friend told them they had to try your place? Are you busier every month than last month? Are you constantly hearing customers say that your cappuccino was the best one they have ever had? Are you as busy as you want to be? If yes to all these then get back to your café and order more coffee! If you did not say yes to all of these questions then read on and make some serious changes to your café. And if you want to really kick it into high gear then take advantage of our Café Training on site at your café. Happy new year!

Great coffee deserves a great brewing method. Most brewing methods can produce a great tasting cup of coffee. This month we are going to focus on the amazing French Press method of brewing. Very few cafes serve coffee in a French press. Yet it is one of the most talked about and popular brewing methods used by coffee aficionados. French Press brewing holds some similarities to espresso brewing. Both methods use only a metal screen to filter out the coffee particles while still allowing a great deal of the aromatic oils and flavor compounds pass through into the cup. There is no paper filter to trap all of the great tasting flavors so more of them make it into your cup.

If you want to truly taste the full range and flavor of a great coffee brew it in a French press. Conversely if you want to taste how truly nasty a really bad coffee is try it in a french press. So brewing in a French press gives you the most flavors and lets you taste the true coffee flavor without any paper filter or bleach tastes. But French press brewing is MUCH more dependant on exacting coffee to water ratios and the right grind size.

So how do you brew the perfect French press coffee? Just like all coffee brewing methods you have to start with the two key pieces: fresh roasted whole bean coffee and filtered clean water. The ratio for great French press coffee is similar to regular filter brewing: 2 tablespoons whole bean coffee to 6 ounces of water. But for a truly great French press cup you add just a bit more coffee. We find that using 2.5 tablespoons of whole bean coffee per 6 ounces of water yields a richer, sweeter cup. Experiment to meet your preferred taste.

The grind size for French press is critical. Because there is no paper filter the grind needs to be quite a bit coarser than regular drip coffee. So here is why we always recommend that you buy areal bulk coffee grinder and NOT get those automatic grinder into the brew basket types. With a real bulk coffee grinder where you pour exactly the amount of coffee you need into the top and it grinds it out the bottom you can change your coffee any time you want, change your brewing method any time and sell whole bean coffee to customers who need it ground. So yes they cost $600-900 for the mid range ones but they will pay for themselves in a few months and your coffee will taste SO much better. For those of you lucky enough to have a Malkoenig Guatemala or Kenya grinder (lucky us!) the best setting is number 6. For those of you with a grindmaster, crathco or Bunn grinder then try first using the French press or percolator setting. Or use the ‘Course’ setting if it has one.

So grind your fresh roasted coffee on a course setting using the 2.5 tablespoons per 6 ounces of water ratio. Pour the ground coffee into the bottom of a French press and pour in the correct amount of hot water from your coffee brewer. The water should be no more than 200 degrees. Put the lid and plunger of the French press into the press. Push the lid down all the way then gently push the plunger down until it touches the top of the coffee water. Then push it down a bit more until the screen is about ¼ inch into the top of the brewing coffee. This serves to keep the coffee under water and brewing.

Make sure you are using a timer because even 30 seconds too long makes a very bitter brew. The brew time for French press should be 3.5 to 4 minutes maximum. At the right time press the plunger down slowly until it stops. Do not press too fast or it may spurt out. Now pour the brewed coffee immediately into a serving cup where you can drink it. DO NOT leave it in the French press as it will continue to brew and get very bitter and nasty. You will notice a nice bit of crema like oils on top of the coffee. This is natural and is the most aromatic and flavorful part of the coffee. ENJOY!

Now for some real fun go out and buy 4 or 5 20 ounce french presses and start offering French press coffee service to your customers. They will love having their own individual brewed French press coffee at their table. Charge something like $4.00 because of the extra labor and service involved. Make sure they get it for here in a ceramic cup to fully savor the flavor and experience. And watch your sales and customer excitement bloom!

Intriguing New Coffees

So it’s getting colder and you want something nice and rich and smooth to warm you up and get you cozy. Well in celebration of the winter season we have some superbly complex and intriguing coffees. So we’ll shut up and let the coffees speak for themselves. (A pretty good marketing slogan for Great Coffee…)

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Oromia -Fair Trade Organic
Ethiopia is home to some of the most impressive and sought after coffees in the world. Ethiopia is the birth place of coffee. Ethiopians have been cultivating great coffee for hundreds of years and have had time to perfect it. The OROMIA co-op that we buy our Yirgacheffe from is world renowned for it’s exacting production standards, outstanding taste in the cup and their strong democratic and socially progressive and environmentally friendly methods.

Our Yirgacheffe Oromia is heavenly in the cup. It has a very vibrant and self assured flavor that has highlights of robust florals like hibiscus and homeysucle with a touch of sweet citrus notes. It is strong in flavor and rich in complexity. It has a sweet balanced acidity that presents itself first and then follows with a very pleasing smooth body that keeps you satisfied. It is absolutely perfect prepared as a french press as all of the strong and delicate flavor combinations come through. If you think you know Yirgacheffe try this one and be prepared to be wowed. It is a light roast to highlight al the varietal characteristics. This is a fully washed coffee so the taste is remarkably clean and fresh. And best of all we have it for only $34.75 a five pound bag.

Ethiopian Sun Dried Sidamo Oromia –Fair Trade, Organic
From the exact same Oromia co-op as our Yirgacheffe this Sidamo is a mouth wowing example of the power and flavor intensity of the natural sun dried processing method. This is almost the exact same coffee beans as the fully washed Yirgacheffe just the processing method is different. But the taste is completely unique. The sun dried Sidamo is a fruit bomb of mouth filling intense ripe berries like raspberry and blueberry. It has a very striking sweet and tangy acidity and a thick rich body that feels very syrupy and fruity. It also has very clean citron notes and a touch of some savory herbs and grasses to liven things up. This is one of our current staff favorites. It is a very complex and intriguing coffee that is very unique and distinct. It is great as French pres and makes a great single origin espresso. Make sure you pull it to about 1.75 ounces for a double (a little short) in about 23-25 seconds to get all the sweetness and fruit intensity. And it is only $34.75 a five pound bag.

To the Cappuccino be true. So there seems to be a lot of debate about what the Capuccino is. So here is the Barefoot definition of a Cappuccino (that just happens to be the exact same one the Italians and the World Barista Competition use)

A Cappuccino is the perfect ratio of hot espresso and steamed milk. The Cappuccino is a drink not a “type” of drink. Therefore there is only one Cappuccino and it only comes in one size. There is no such thing as a large Cappuccino just as there is no such thing as a large Machiatto.

A Cappuccino is 2 ounces of espresso and 4-5 ounces of steamed milk served in a ceramic cup where the total beverage is 6 ounces in volume. So the ratio is 1 part espresso and 2 parts steamed silky milk. The steamed milk should be equally silky and creamy throughout the entire drink. It should NOT be hot runny milk on the bottom with a “cap” of dry tasteless styrofoam like milk. That is just a bland tasteless latte. The milk should be silky, creamy, thick and smooth with zero visible air bubbles and since it is a drink the whole drink must be drinkable and NOT require a spoon to make or drink. If you have perfect espresso that is dark and rich and has tons of crema and you make silky smooth milk you can pour latte art and showcase your Barista skills and wow your customers. (they tip more and will tell their friends about the cool latte art) So if your cappuccinos do not look like the photo and sound ike the description then change your training and your standards. If you want to learn how to make cappuccinos that will blow peoples minds and make them say out loud “WOW that was great. I want another one right now!” then take advantage of our Café Training program and increase your customer loyalty and revenue today.

Coffee as a Tasty Art

This month’s coffee recipes are to go back to the basics and focus on serving correct Cappuccinos and serving great coffee in French Presses. We guarantee that if you do these things in your café you will see a definite increase in customer excitement, loyalty and sales. We have had customers that took large sizes of Cappuccinos off of their menus and at first they had customers get confused. But then the customers tried a well made, correctly sized Cappuccino and they were amazed that it could taste so sweet. Now these cafes have customers who will drive 15 minutes out of their way to get real Cappuccinos and their daily sales have gone up noticeably because their customers can not get a real Cappuccino that still tastes excellent at other cafes. Go ahead we dare you. Stay true to the Cappuccino and serve great coffee in French presses and you will get more customers who come more often, spend more money and are far more loyal. That’s what we all want right?

Sustainability makes great business sense. It is not only great for people and the planet is great for your business as well. One way you can practice environmental sustainability and increase customer loyalty is by buying travel mugs with your logo printed on them. These are walking advertisements for your café and enable your customers to stop wasting paper cups, lids and jackets. And your logo and address is in front of every person that sees it. Our favorite travel mug also doubles as a french press and is awesome. It makes the best French press coffee we have ever had. The company that makes them is called Planetary Design and they are at www.planetarydesign.us make sure you get them custom printed with your logo and phone and address. They cost about $16 each custom printed and sell them for $30 and we get free advertising and save hundreds of trees a year. If you are looking for a more low cost entry into custom printed travel mugs then take advantage of our travel mug partner program. We will pay for part of the cost of the mugs so that you can get 36 custom printed stainless steel travel mugs (NOT the French press mug) with your big logo on top and a small logo of ours on the bottom for only $195 complete. Contact us for more information on this program.