Good espresso is hard to find
I go to world-class restaurants here in sunny South Africa - or so I am always told. If this is the case, why is it so damn hard to get a decent cup of coffee? Yet another perfect meal, with that balance of lingering flavours, richness and nearly total satisfaction at the end. I want to close it with an espresso, almost as a digestif. But I don't. I know what the venue will bring me, and it
pains me.
Let me start by explaining how I enjoy the perfect espresso. First I want to notice a tan to reddish brown crema covering the top - and the cup should be served soon enough, and the coffee extracted well enough, that the crema, when pulled back with a spoon, soon envelops
the cup again. Then I want to sip into the stirred, unsugared espresso and get complexity. I want coffee flavours, sure, but I want more. I want nuances, I want subtleties.
This is no different to fine wine. I want to judge the mouthfeel, from light and approachable through to thick and intimidating. I want to feel the initial bite of acidity and maybe taste a little sweetness, and then experience complexities which almost overwhelm the mid-palate and finally a delicious, lingering finish, with only a mere hint of bitterness.
A great heavy Rwandan Musasa with edginess, floral notes, just a hint of earthiness and generous acidity. An Ethiopian Harrarr, thick and deep with its magical blueberry overtones (produced by a taint similar in effect to the wine world's noble rot). A light, chocolatey-creamy
Guatemalan espresso from Las Nubes Estate. This is what I'm after.
ERRORS OF PREPARATION
But what do I get? Watery bitterness, no crema, with the possible highlight being a free chocolate, not quite good enough in itself to justify being ordered. I get coffee that is over-extracted, causing the solids and flavours to be diluted because the coffee has been run through the machine for so long that what flavours the beans might have had to offer have been dissipated by too much water passing through them. The bitter flavours, well hidden in the beans, have been extracted in a careless or ham-fisted manner, signified by white dots in the crema or even a dark halo around the crema. Running the shot for longer might be a futile attempt to fill the cup up, or somehow make it stronger. But strong is not equal to bitter. Visually the volume is an immaterial consequence of extraction technique and not an indication of flavour. I never feel short-changed because my "double" does not fill the cup.
I get under-extracted coffee with a pale crema and sour taste. And if there is no crema, it's because the coarseness of the grinder is so callously uncalibrated for each shot that there was probably a very pale crema which disappeared before it got to the table or, worse, never any real crema at all I get coffee from machines so dirty internally that no matter how well it is poured, bitterness from rancid, sticky coffee oils will be all anyone ever tastes.
I get woody, dull coffee caused by using beans roasted way more than a few weeks previously that have lost all of their complexity due to age and oxidisation. I get pre-ground coffee that has been sitting around for more than a few minutes. (Ever wondered why that wonderful aroma of freshly ground coffee is in the air for three to four minutes and then gone? That's because the volatiles have substantially left the grinds.)
I get skew tamping or uneven packing of the coffee, causing over- and under-extraction simultaneously. A sour and bitter cup all in one: what an achievement! I get coffees that are so mediocre by origin or farming methods that even the most diligent roasting and barista technique couldn't coax interesting flavours out of them.
Over-roasting them to introduce "roast" flavours is a vain attempt to introduce complexity where there is none. (Sorry, my roasting friend, all you did is burn that coffee, and burnt pyralytic flavours are no substitute for good coffee.) I also get good coffees blended with cheaper ones to keep the price down. "Our consumer won't taste this." Yeah, right!
MATTERS OF PROVENANCE
An Antipodean barista trainer once told me that "you can't polish a turd" and she was right. If the beans don't have the flavour in them on picking, no subsequent efforts will help. No roasting tricks or barista technique can deliver that elusive complexity. Coffee has terroir. Macro- and microclimates, distances from the equator and farming techniques have major influences on how the coffee will taste.
Estates matter, and, in our quest, micro-lot coffees from within estates matter even more. Picking at the right level of ripeness is critical. Machine-picked coffees will never achieve perfect ripeness. Wet or dry processing (the manner in which fruit is removed from the cherry to leave the seed or bean) will impact on the flavour.
Drying and milling the beans can be disastrous. Even shipping the beans is risky - ship them with a solvent, for instance, and quality is going to be compromised. Roasting is the next challenge: a paint-by-numbers system doesn't work for wine or coffee and a bespoke roast needs to be learned for each estate for every season's crop. And, last but not least, there's the barista. The usual untrained "I learnt to do this in my tea break at the Oyster Bar in '76, I've been at it for 20 years now" moegoe pouring your coffee should be cleaning the floor, not serving at the altar of our indulgence! (Did I really just say that?)
RESTAURANTS' SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS
One gauge of a restaurant is the first and last thing served during the meal. No, not the starter and dessert, but the bread at the outset and the coffee at the finish - the last taste in your mouth. Bread is suddenly starting to change, with artisanal breads appearing at our top restaurants. But coffee is still thought of differently. How do restaurateurs usually choose which coffee to use? Two methods: the cheapest brand or, my pet hate, by asking the following question: "What free stuff do we get?"
A restaurant with hardly a wine below R100, which agonised over its lettuce supplier on quality and freshness, probably chose its coffee supplier on the basis that they gave it a free coffee machine or the cheapest coffee. What oven did their beef supplier install? The mind boggles.
Restaurants have trained sommeliers and actors, I mean waiters, who speak three languages and attend drama school in their spare time, and the guy making coffee's last position was operating their mop. Why don't they just serve Ricoffy? Even cheaper! Probably tastes better too, the way they do it. Espresso requires a little more effort. And their justification? That no-one ever complains. Perhaps that's because it's not worth the trouble complaining. Why bother? The next cup will be exactly the same.
I dream of a South Africa where everywhere we go we don't wonder whether the coffee will be drinkable, a way of sobering up and staying awake for the trip home, but where we look forward with sensory anticipation to an event to be savoured. What nuances will my favourite restaurant offer me tonight? What notes will be most obvious? What deliciously lingering aftertaste will lift me above the pain of the bill and the dreariness of the trip home? Only then will our restaurants be truly world class.
