The Science Behind Coffee Withdrawal

It’s not a lack of coffee that gives me a headache, it’s all the stupid questions that seem to swarm around my uncaffeinated moments. Surely I can’t be required to know with 100% accuracy if I’ve already changed my six-month old daughter’s diaper or not when I haven’t had any coffee. That’s downright unreasonable, right?

Obviously, not having coffee doesn’t have much effect on me, but others aren’t so lucky. Headaches, lethargy, and irritability are just of a few of the side effects of forgoing caffeine. But have you ever wondered why this is? A recent article from Food & Wine examines the science behind the headaches.

As Food & Wine notes, caffeine is still addictive (which sounds a little judgy to me, but whatever), and with not feeding the monkey comes withdrawals.

According to the article, caffeine works by adhering to adenosine receptors in your brain, keeping the neurotransmitter from binding to those receptors. Adenosine slows down brain activity and causes you to feel sleepy, so when caffeine keeps it from binding, it keeps you from feeling sleepy. The brain compensates by creating more and more adenosine. So once you stop drinking coffee, all that adenosine comes back withe a vengeance, causing a strong desire to sleep and a throbbing headache.

So whenever you are feeling foul because of a dearth of coffee, blame your brain. It’s conspiring to make you feel worse. Or don’t ever stop drinking coffee. That’ll show your stupid brain who’s boss.

It’s like that old saying goes, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder, but it makes the head ache stronger.”

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

*top image via StickyComics.com

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East One Coffee Roasters Bring Unfussy Coffee And Fare To Brooklyn

On an unassuming corner in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carrol Gardens, at the intersection of Carroll and Court Streets, used to be home to a beloved red sauce joint called Casa Rosa. It opened in 1979 and ran a steady business as a local favorite until 2013, when its owners closed down shop for good. But Casa Rosa was never replaced—in fact, the storefront remained vacant for years. That is, until Tom Cummings saw it had come on the market.

“People have, for a while now, been peeking in through the boards and construction to see what’s coming,” Cummings says. Now it’s no secret—East One Coffee Roasters has arrived. “We’ve been soft open for just a few days,” he adds. “And the neighborhood seems to be excited.”

Cummings and his longtime partner, Morten Tjelum, envisioned East One as a space of intersection for exceptional coffee and approachable food—they’re open in the morning to supply patrons with a caffeine fix all the way through dinner service.

“Older women have come in this week,” Cummings says. “And they are like my mom—they tell me about the neighborhood, and we can chat for hours about food and coffee.” East One isn’t Cummings’ first coffee rodeo, however. “I was living in Denmark and the coffee scene wasn’t very good—around 1996,” he says. He spent that time owning an American restaurant in Central Copenhagen before selling it to work for IKEA, where he stayed for 15 years.

“But I couldn’t shake the coffee thoughts I was having,” Cummings says. “So I decided to do the independent thing and we opened New Row Coffee. You know, it’s quite simple, I’ve been in food all my life—from watching my family cook when I was young, to having my own places all over. But this was when I became truly introspective and thoughtful, and coffee just felt like my life was taking me towards it.”

It was also taking him toward New York, where he’d be inspired by Ninth Street Espresso before opening Free State Coffee, also alongside Tjelum. Here they fiddled with batch brews and deepened a passion for their product. “Coffee is all about bringing multifaceted people that can do great things,” Cummings says. “And so we brought that to New York.”

Waiting for them was James Stahon, East One’s head of coffee (the three met through Sprudge Jobs), who now roasts on-site in a gorgeous glassed-in area with a Diedrich IR-12.

“I tasked James to find blends that were acceptable to the mass palate of New York,” Cummings says. “But isn’t a typical city roast so often found in this town. We wanted to stretch that palate—and that’s the longer term vision for us.” East One currently serves an everyday coffee for local New Yorkers, but will soon buy seasonally from individual lots and offer those coffees as lighter-roasted options.

“We currently work with Crop to Cup, who let me work before we had our own space,” Stahon says. “We source three coffees from them—Sonar, a blend from Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Tanzania; Guji, which is an Ethiopian Sidamo; and then Prism which is the filter blend, [and] also Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.”

He explains that the process of finding a flexible coffee, for use as both drip and espresso offerings, was lengthy. “I started the sourcing process not at the best time—it was in the off-season so I couldn’t find fresh arrivals,” Stahon says. “We did so many cuppings looking for the perfect components. I didn’t want that fermenty taste—we wanted a quieter taste.” Now he feels as though he has it.

Next on Stahon’s agenda is finding single-origin coffees to “exercise the muscles of taste,” he says. “We want to challenge ourselves and our clients but to remain approachable. And that means slightly stepping outside of what you think coffee could be.”

Selina Ullrich, East One’s coffee and operations manager, echoes Stahon. “This neighborhood is also ready to be challenged. You can actually make progress with a good explanation,” she says, adding that there’s a certain pleasure in watching customers move from “this won’t stress you out coffee” to more complex cups.

In appreciation of the role water plays in the coffee process, East One will support international charities focused on clean water initiatives. One of the first examples is Three Avocados, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering access to clean water in coffee-growing regions.

For those in the area, this may just be your new favorite neighborhood cafe. But with a strong local base, it won’t be long before the East One corner is a destination worth traveling to.

East One Coffee Roasters is located at 384 Court Street, Brooklyn. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Daniel Scheffler is a Sprudge staff writer at large. His work has appeared in T Magazine, Travel And Leisure, Monocle, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Butt. Read more Daniel Scheffler on Sprudge.

Photos courtesy of Ethan Covey

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Roaster VIDEO Guide: How to Blend Coffees

There’s no doubt about it: roasting blends is trickier than roasting single origins. But every roaster needs to master this skill if they want to operate commercially.

Fortunately, Mill City Roasters have created an excellent video tutorial on the topic. And as you learn more about it, you’ll discover that roasting coffee blends will help you understand roasting in general, and coffee flavours, in even greater detail.

So get your notebook ready, because this curated video guide is full of useful advice.

All commercial roasters need to be able to roast blends. Credit: Aaron Gustafson via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

How to Roast Coffee Blends

This comprehensive video will tell you everything that you, as a newcomer to roasting blends, need to know. Although the video is actually an hour long, we’ve set it to start at 25:20, which is when Mill City Roasters actually begin looking at how to blend.

They team start off with the basics: why should brands have blends? Which coffees work better as blends, and which coffees work better as single origins?

Then the video moves onto more complex aspects of creating blends. How do you create the best balance in a blend? How do you decide on, and refine, a ratio? How many coffees should be used in a blend – and how can you create more continuity when changing those coffees (due to seasonal availability)?

It then starts to get a little more advanced when the pair look at when to blend – pre or post-roast. While both are popular options, Joe Marocco convincingly makes the case for the former.

SEE ALSO: Roasting VIDEO Tips: How to Make Coffee Blends

Even More Technical Details

Want to learn even more technical details? Here’s another clip from earlier in the same video, and it also looks at the details of blending. Specifically, it answers a question from the viewers: how should you roast blends that have beans with different moisture levels? (Hint: think less about moisture, and more about density.)

We’ve set the video to begin as soon as Dave and Joe answer that question. But remember that, if you keep watching, the video will move on to discuss aroma in roasting.

SEE ALSO: Roaster Basics: How to Roast Hard & Soft Beans

Please note: Perfect Daily Grind does not own the rights to these videos and cannot be held accountable for their content.

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Talking About Talking About Taste And Smell With Linguist Ilja Croijmans

Meet Ilja Croijmans, a Dutch scholar doing pioneering research into the language that humans use to describe smells and tastes. People in the business of beverages and, for that matter, anyone who is fastidious about flavor will be intrigued by his findings, which are summarized in his report “Odor Naming Is Difficult, Even For Wine And Coffee Experts.” Croijmans, who is completing a Ph.D. at the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, published the 2015 article with Asifa Majid, his university mentor and an affiliated principal investigator with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

But take note, Team Coffee, the research revealed that wine experts were more consistent in describing the wines they tasted than coffee experts were with coffees. And Speciality Coffee Association of Europe-trained professionals were about as consistent in their coffee judgments as laypeople. Say whaaa? Excusez-moi? Sprudge lobbed such protests (along with more scientific questions) at Croijmans—himself a Scotch whisky fan known to brew sour stout at home and keep an AeroPress at work.

In the article, you say that articulating odors is a challenge for speakers from “WEIRD”–that is, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic–cultures compared to some others. Why is that?

One possibility we investigated is that this is because WEIRD cultures don’t have the words to talk about smell. For example, the Jahai, a hunter-gatherer community in Thailand, have about 12 words for smells that can be compared to our words for colors. Those words are short, abstract, used very often, and can be applied to many different smells. For example, “the smell of bat droppings, smoke, ginger root, and petroleum are all described with the word cŋɛs,” as found by another cited study in the article. But in WEIRD cultures, we don’t have a vocabulary for smells like the Jahai, so we come up with other strategies. When we describe smells, we often use comparisons or references to source terms, for example “tastes like chicken” or “smells like flowers.” This might be part of the explanation: We don’t have the words to specifically talk about smells.

Another possibility is that we just don’t get enough practice describing smells in our daily lives. This is why odor and flavor experts are so interesting: They get plenty of practice putting their sensory perceptions into words.

In view of this cultural discrepancy, you conducted a study to see if the specialized training that flavor experts from WEIRD cultures undergo could make them better at naming smells than laypeople. What did you find?

We asked wine experts, coffee experts, and laypeople to describe the smell and the flavor of different wines and different coffees as well as more “simple” smells, like lemon and cinnamon, and tastes, [like] sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Then we looked at how consistent they were—that is, how many of the same words the different experts mentioned for the same coffee or wine. What we found surprised us: Only wine experts were more consistent in describing smells and flavors—but only smells and flavors of wines, not of coffees or the other smells and tastes. However, the same finding did not hold true for coffee experts and their consistency in naming smells and flavors of coffee.

Photo courtesy of Ilja Croijmans

You had 22 wine professionals (each holding a WSET Level 3 Award), 20 coffee professionals (holding an SCAE Diploma), and 21 laypeople come to Nijmegen. Can you describe the methodology used to test their coffee palates?

I prepared five different coffees for each participant by grinding the coffee very shortly before the experiment and preparing it in the same way you would when cupping coffee. I asked the participants to smell each coffee, describe the smell, then taste the coffee, and describe the flavor. Importantly, I instructed all participants, including the wine experts and laypeople, to slurp! This is something that comes naturally to coffee experts because it is important for the flavor of coffee but is not so natural for laypeople.

What was most important for us was that the coffees were distinct—for example, using a Brazilian and an Ethiopian, both of which have very distinct flavors. We expected this to provide enough opportunity for participants to say interesting things about the smell and the flavor of each coffee. In addition, the coffee had to taste the same on each day, so I would carefully monitor the temperature of the water because this influences taste. We used coffee roasted in exactly the same way for each participant, from the same batch of beans. To achieve this, we worked with coffee roaster Björn Aarts. Also important was for the differences between coffees to be somewhat comparable to the differences between wines. We did this by looking for parallels between coffee and wine production; different grape varieties parallel different coffee varieties, and we used both wines and coffees from different origins and continents.

And how do coffee experts compare to wine experts?

Interestingly, coffee experts did not agree on coffee smells and flavors the way wine experts agreed on wine smells and flavors. In terms of this agreement, coffee experts were more comparable to laypeople. What we did find is that coffee experts use significantly more concrete source terms, like “fruit” or “peanut,” than laypeople, and fewer evaluative terms like “nice” or “disgusting.”

What accounts for the differences?

One hypothesis is that wine language is much more incorporated in our culture. You find wine descriptions everywhere, but not coffee descriptions. It could be that wine experts get more opportunities to talk about wine. With current developments in the coffee industry, with more and more coffee descriptions everywhere, it’s interesting to keep track of the developments. Perhaps once coffee language is more engrained in our culture, like wine language, we can repeat the experiment to see if the coffee experts have “caught up!”

And the differences between professionals and laypeople?

Overall, you see that experts use much less evaluative descriptions than laypeople. For laypeople, the fact that something tastes good or bad is incredibly important, but this seems less important for experts; they judge it based on the different flavors, whether there is balance, et cetera.

What implications does your research have for coffee professionals?

It is extremely hard to improve your sense of smell or taste in terms of sensitivity, but it seems possible to become more sensitive to particular smells if you train enough. For example, think of a specific coffee fault that you could train your sensitivity for by smelling over and over again. The research isn’t very conclusive, but it seems you can become more sensitive through training, though this is restricted to that specific smell. I can offer a wine example because this is what most research has been done on: Wine experts seem to be able to become more sensitive to this thing called “ladybug taint,” the smell that wine gets when ladybugs contaminate the grape juice during fermentation. Wine experts are more sensitive to that smell—they actually seem to smell it better than laypeople.

In terms of language, we show a somewhat similar picture. It is important to practice your language by talking to other people about the smell and the flavor of coffee. Take every opportunity to talk about what you smell and taste. If our hypothesis is true, this will improve your ability to describe coffee, and that would make the entire expert community agree more on the language of coffee.

What might this mean for everyday coffee drinkers?

If all coffee experts agree on how to name flavors and smells of coffee, drinkers might benefit because they could more easily learn what they like in a coffee. It would then matter less which barista you went to for your espresso because they would all speak the same “coffee language,” and be able to explain in the same terms how their coffees taste. So this would improve consumer-directed language, and the consumer’s expectations would be better met. Having a consistent vocabulary further professionalizes the field, too. Ultimately, coffee drinkers would benefit in every way.

So what comes next to further this research?

I already hinted at this, but it would be interesting to see what happens in 10 years in the field of coffee, and then repeat this study! Coffee and coffee expertise is a topic that deserves much more attention in the same way wine and wine expertise already receives attention from the scientific community. Besides the parallels between coffee and wine, there are also marked differences between the two beverages and expertise types—these differences alone deserve research.

Read more about Ilja Croijmans here and follow him on Twitter.

Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge. 

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¿Qué es el Programa Q Grader? ¿Deberías Considerarlo?

La personas certificadas como Q grader  tienen casi un estatus mítico en la industria del café de especialidad – pero no hay razón por la que no te puedas convertir en uno también -.

La certificación es útil para comprar café, seleccionar perfiles de tostión y métodos de producción/procesos, entender el origen del café, y más.  Esto nos permite comunicarnos de forma objetiva sobre la calidad a través de toda la cadena de distribución del café.

Hablamos con varios Q graders para averiguar más sobre este programa. Sigue leyendo para que sepas que es realmente un Q grader y si  deberías obtener una certificación Q grader.

English Version: What Is The Q Grader Program & Should You Do It?

La mesa de catación. Créditos: Balzac Brothers

¿Qué es el Programa Q Grader?

Primero que todo, veamos que es Q grader. Ellos son  personas certificadas por el Instituto de Calidad del Café (CQI) como personas capaces de analizar el café Arábica a través del olor y el sabor – algo que normalmente se llama “cupping”. (Para el café Robusta, querrás convertirte en un R grader).

Un catador primero califica el café basado en varios atributos, como aroma y dulzura. Luego, ellos unen esto para crear una puntuación final  sobre 100, y es esto lo que decide el valor de cualquier café particular. Un café de 80 o más puntos es clasificado como especial, pero algunos tostadores de especialidad solo aceptan de 84 puntos o más en origen único.

En 2004 se lanzó el primer programa Q grader, y no es una tarea fácil. Son seis días completos de entrenamiento intenso en un labotarotio certificado por SCA.

Los participantes aprenden técnicas olfativas (análisis olfativo )y  habilidades de análisis sensorial, así como protocolos de catación, cómo triangular cafés (encontrar el “raro” en 3 cafés), cómo combinar ácidos orgánicos y cómo identificar tuestes ​​de muestra.

Parte del kit “Le Nez du Café” usado para el examen olfativo . Créditos: Balzac Brothers

¿Por qué Convertirte en Q grader?

Quería saber por qué las personas se convierten en Q graders, así que decidí hablar con Danner Friedman de Balzac Brothers, un importador estadounidense que ofrece la certificación Q grader. Para él, el programa es valioso porque permite que todos hablen el mismo idioma. Te permite -me dice- dar con confianza una opinión objetiva y estandarizada.

El piensa que es útil a lo largo junto con la cadena de distribución, ya que este provee una manera de identificar áreas para mejorar – y formas para hacerlo – en los cafés. Como importador, puede entonces comunicar esto al agricultor y exportador. Sin embargo,  si estos agricultores o exportadores fueran también Q graders , ellos podrían hacerlo solos.

También es útil para tostadores – y no sólo para aquellos que toman decisiones de compra. Un Q grader obtiene un profundo conocimiento de cómo se ejecutó un tueste en particular y si fue la elección correcta del perfil.

Catando café,  Créditos: Olympia Coffee

¿Para quién es el Programa?

Jodi Dowell Wieser, Co-fundadora de  Gather Coffee Co, un centro de capacitación Q grader y de análisis en Honolulu, Hawaii, piensa que el programa Q grader tiene grandes beneficios de enseñanza. Me dijo que en solo 6 días este puede ayudar a cualquiera a progresar – Independientemente de cuánto tiempo han estado en la industria – gracias a la exposición a diferentes cafés.

“Este programa permite a todos probar cafés de diferentes países, y calibrarlos al aprender el mismo vocabulario para evaluar el café”.

Dicho esto, ella anima especialmente a los propietarios de negocios y otros profesionales del café a convertirse en Q graders. Para ella, saber cómo probar con precisión el café y calificarlo es el fundamento de cualquier papel en la industria.

Tanto las partículas secas como las preparadas son analizadas en una catación. Créditos: Café Lomi

VER TAMBIÉN: Cómo Catar Café y Desarrollar tu Paladar

¿Es realmente Necesario el Certificado Q grader?

Está claro que convertirse en un Q grader ofrece beneficios significativos para los profesionales del café en toda la cadena de distribución, pero ¿es necesario?

Jeremias Paul, Co-fundador y tostador en Roaster en Broom Wagon Coffee, Estados Unidos, participó en el programa Q grader justo después de entrar en la industria de café de especialidad. Mirando hacia atrás, me dice que esto no es realmente necesario. Sin embargo, tampoco es una mala idea.

Dijo Jeremías, “Te ayuda a evitar, desde el principio, hábitos engañosos o conceptos erróneos sobre ciertos cafés”.

Él ve el convertirse en Q grader como una inversión para la empresa. Y esto significa que es esto es lo que quieres hacer con él. ¿Cuáles son tus objetivos de negocio y / o carrera? ¿Conviertirte en un Q grader te va a ayudar a lograr estos? ¿Y valdrá la pena la inversión?

Normalmente los cafés se catan a ciegas, con solo un número que los identifica Créditos: mikii911

Accesibilidad: el Problema con los Programas Q grader

Jodi me comentó que el programa de Q garders fue originalmente diseñado para agricultores y productores. Su propósito fue capacitarlos para entender la calidad de su café. Y hoy en día, es el estándar de la industria.

Sin embargo, seguimos viendo a muchos productores que no saben lo que hay exactamente su café, qué vale o cómo mejorarlo. Mientras que algunos tienen acceso a las clases de Q grader, no todos los pueden pagar.

Brandon dijo que una cosa que le gustaría ver el programa de certificación Q  grader fuera más accesible  para productores y pequeños tostadores.
Desde hacerlos disponibles en regiones productoras hasta subsidios para
productores e inclusive más módulos en línea, él cree que hay muchas maneras de
mejorar.

¡Salud por un gran café! Créditos: Balzac Brothers

La industria del café  de especialidad necesita hablar el mismo

idioma, uno que permita a los profesionales comprender objetivamente y explicar
la calidad.

Y no necesitas ser ya un experto para invertir en tu conocimiento. Así que si quieres aprender más sobre la evaluación del café, ¿por qué no consideras convertirte en un Q grader?

Escrito por  Angie Molina Ospina.

Tenga en cuenta: Balzac Brothers es un patrocinador de Perfect Daily Grind y fue consultado en la creación de este artículo. Ellos recibieron una copia de cortesía del artículo antes de la publicación, pero no han ejercido ningún control editorial sobre la copia final.

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The Coffee Guide To Munich

Munich, home of Oktoberfest and lederhosen, Viktualienmarkt, and weisswurst. And…coffee. Yes, the southern Bavarian city has a drinking tradition besides beer! If you’ve ever been to Munich, you might have even come across the name Dallmayr, a famous coffeehouse and roaster (among other things) for more than 300 years.

Munich’s Viktualienmarkt

Munich is also known as the “northernmost city of Italy.” The inhabitants of Munich love to stroll around, to sit outside, to see and be seen. If the Italian coffee tradition is still slightly out of reach, Munich is interested and learning.

For your next visit, coffee fan, you might want to take more time to explore the city beyond the usual sights, because Munich’s specialty coffee scene has been evolving over the past five years, with two new cafes just opened in fall 2016. Since 2015 Munich has also been home of the 2016 German Coffee Championships, which took place in November, and the city’s coffee future is bright.

Mahlefitz

Peter Schlögl, owner of Mahlefitz, has a background in wine. The way to specialty coffee, as we know, is not far from there: both offer broad varieties in flavors and approaches. Mahlefitz, Schlögl’s roastery and cafe, opened in January 2014. His roasting style, as well as the interior design of the cafe, are very much inspired by Scandinavia. The chairs, for example, are vintage from 1950s and ’70s Denmark. The roasts that come through his Loring roaster—one of only two of its type in Germany—are light, bright, and juicy.

The keen-eyed might notice one detail, something many specialty shops aim for (but usually concede to customer demand): there’s no sugar here. If you try the espresso, though—pulled with a Synesso—you can taste the sweet precision that goes into every shot. That said, you should definitely try one of the cakes for your sweet tooth, or, if you’re up for something more savory, a freshly made sandwich or the housemade granola.

After three years in business with Mahlefitz, Schlögl is ready to launch a mobile version. “It is my approach to offer as much as possible of the coffee supply chain, from green coffee to the cup,” he says. “With the espresso bike, I want to take the next step.” The bike will begin traversing the city later this year.

Mahlefitz is located at Nymphenburger Straße 51. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Man Versus Machine

It was my second time visiting Man Versus Machine and my second time talking to Marco Mehrwald, one of the owners. This time, though, I was at Man Versus Machine’s new location in Munich’s Maxvorstadt district, right next to a new university. Both of the cafes show the love for Japan and its culture shared by Mehrwald and Cornelia Mehrwald, his wife and co-owner (exemplified by the huge, folding, indigo-blue fabric on the wall of the new cafe). The Mehrwalds’ personalities can be seen in their beverages and coffee equipment (such as several Japanese teas and Hario filter-brewing gear), as well as in their design choices: the instruction they gave Jon Contino, the designer of their striking logo—a crocodile—came out like this: Scandinavian freshness meets California skate culture meets Japanese attention to detail.

Besides the light-roasted coffees—via the Probat roaster in Man Versus Machine’s first location, in Munich’s Glockenbachviertel—shipped to coffee lovers and specialty cafes all over Europe, as well as the specialty tea also offered in the new cafe, the espresso at the new location is made with a custom-designed Nuova Simonelli Black Eagle. For filter coffee, you can choose between a BUNN batch brewer or hand-filtered with an AeroPress, Kalita, or syphon. The Maxvorstadt spot also offers the famous Franzbrötchen, another personal touch from the Mehrwalds, since the famous pastry originally hails from Hamburg, where both used to live.

Man Versus Machine has multiple locations. Visit their official website and follow them on Twitter and Instagram.

Café Blá

Blá means “blue” in Icelandic, and this cafe’s interior and design details reflect the color in a consistent but restrained way. As I sit down with Stephanie Bjarnason, the owner of Café Blá, I notice her shirt is the same color. Bjarnason is an engineer who turned her dream of having her own specialty cafe into a reality at the end of October. Both her personality and that of her homeland, Iceland, shine through in the cafe and also her conversation.

“Coffee, filter coffee, is always the focus in Iceland,” she says. “When someone asks you to meet for tiu dropar—’10 drops’ in Icelandic—they want to meet for coffee. Every household even used to roast its own coffee, in a pan on the stove.” As it is back home, Bjarnason’s focus is on filter coffee. Of course, she offers espresso—pulled from the blue La Marzocco GB5—and with the help of Vits der Kaffee (see below) even created the cafe’s own espresso blend: Àlfrún, which means “secret of the elves.” (The secret in this case is notes of citrus fruit as well as chocolate.)

As for Café Blá’s single-origin coffees, two varying filter roasts and espresso roasts are offered, with one of them—right now an Ethiopia Samii—being used for both filter and espresso. For the indecisive customer, Bjarnason will be glad to prepare a Duo (espresso and filter) or a Trio (espresso and cappuccino and filter). What would a Nordic-style coffee experience like this be without cinnamon buns? When ordering coffee at the counter, they sit nearby right at eye level — you literally can’t (and shouldn’t) overlook them.

Café Blá is located at Lilienstraße 34. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Vits der Kaffee

Located close to the famous Viktualienmarkt, Vits der Kaffee might be the oldest coffeehouse offering both classic-style coffees for the neighborhood visitor as well as a broad variety of specialty coffees from around the world. Business consultant Alexander Vits opened the roastery-plus-coffee bar over 10 years ago. Now the coffeehouse is evenly split: half is still devoted to the classic coffeehouse experience for everyone looking for the German tradition of cake and coffee, including the brown wooden Viennese-style coffeehouse chairs.

The other half is a modern specialty coffee business doing direct sourcing and trading (with partners as far away as Peru), holding courses, and serving filter coffees brewed with a broad variety of gear that is also available for purchase. While talking to Wolfgang Helmreich, roaster at Vits, we drank two cups of Panama Esmeralda, a washed Geisha and a natural Catuai. “We are aiming for transparency with everything we do,” he says. “The sourcing, the roasting on our Coffee Tech Ghibli R15, as well as our wholesale business to cafes and restaurants in Munich and Germany-wide.”

Vits der Kaffee is located at Rumfordstraße 49. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook.

Standl 20

Johannes Bayer, who worked as a barista at Vits while studying, is probably known best to coffee fans as the roaster behind JB Coffee. He is also now the owner of a cafe, Standl 20, which opened in May 2015. Bayer says he’s been in the roasting business for many years already (his studies in education never came to be used) selling his coffees all over Europe, but he’s been underrepresented in Munich itself. After using a short video to introduce the cafe concept behind Standl 20 to the landlords who rent the market stands at Elisabethmarkt, Bayer now runs the only coffee stand at the market, serving coffee from within a tiny space that’s especially cozy during wintertime, when I visited.

Bayer wants to push the creative part of coffee by offering a variety of signature drinks—served hot or cold, depending on the season—with either a Marco batch-brewed filter coffee or an espresso pulled from a custom Kees van der Westen Mirage as their base. The newest addition to the menu is a mokka, which is prepared traditionally in hot sand.

Standl 20 is located within Markt am Elisabethplatz. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Melanie Böhme is a freelance journalist based in Frankfurt, Germany. Read more Melanie Böhme on Sprudge.

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Garage Coffee Tokyo: Slow And Steady In Shibuya

On the outskirts of central Shibuya—just past the towers of H&M, Don Quijote, and the Bunkamura department store—is a curious space with a small van inside it. That van contains an espresso machine, a grinder, a hanging plant, two stuffed animals, and a few other miscellaneous bits and pieces. If you can find this van, you’ve found Garage Coffee.

Owner Shinichiro Yamashita says the shop is named for its short history—before Garage Coffee, the space was literally a parking garage. When that endeavor went south, Yamashita was invited to turn the space into a dedicated coffee shop and roastery, and he opened Garage Coffee in June of 2016.

Yamashita says his van is ideal for coffee deliveries and outdoor events, but it’s also a subtle nod to his humble beginnings with Motoya Express, a van-based coffee catering service. At that time, he liked the freedom of the work more than coffee, but eventually he discovered roasting and opened a small coffee shop in the quiet neighborhood of Heiwajima to follow his passion. The old Fuji Royal at the back of Garage Coffee has been his trusty sidekick ever since.

“Although I get better at roasting with time,” he says, “I’ve really come to realize that, no matter how good you get, the beans are everything.”

This is part of the reason Yamashita serves a comparatively small range of coffee: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Burundi Buzira, and two blends. These days he’s less interested in variety and more interested in serving a selection of his favorites, which run the spectrum from light to dark.

When I first met Yamashita, he said he saw light roast as sashimi (raw fish) and dark roast as grilled fish: While one pursues a purity of flavor, the other looks to craft something new through cooking and experimentation. And playing with these ideas is clearly his favorite thing about working with coffee.

“Roasting is just really interesting,” he says. “I get excited when we get new beans to roast, and I love the anticipation of discovering the potential in a new coffee. I also like that blends offer a chance to create something new. It’s fun.”

The interior of Garage Coffee feels like a rehearsal space for a ’90s indie band: a chain-link fence, simple bench seating, plastic drums for stools, and walls dotted with posters and postcards. There are even a few amps by the wall, playing the day’s soundtrack.

Although the cafe space is usually quiet and relaxed, Yamashita says the pace of the neighborhood took some getting used to: There are more tourists and fewer regulars. He loves the variety of people that visit, but he misses connecting with the local community. The area has both benefits and drawbacks. He says it’s a popular location he never thought he’d find himself in and attributes the luck he had finding the location to the changing identity of Tokyo’s population.

“I don’t think coffee has changed a lot, but I do think that people are changing,” he says. “They understand coffee more and know more about it. There’s also more media, both domestic and international. The change hasn’t been big, really—it’s been slow and steady.”

And when I think about it, slow and steady is a good description for Yamashita and Garage Coffee as well. In his little coffee shop with his little van, he has introduced a slower pace of life into one of Tokyo’s busiest locations, while finding steady work doing the thing he loves most.

Garage Coffee is located at Shibuya-Ku Maruyamacho, Hotel En Garage, 1-1. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Hengtee Lim is a Sprudge staff writer based in Tokyo. Read more Hengtee Lim on Sprudge.

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¿Cuáles son los Principales Retos que Enfrentan los Productores?

Ser productor de café significa vivir una vida de incertidumbre. Si bien pueden tomarse medidas para mejorar la calidad, y por tanto los precios, la verdad es que las tendencias
del mercado y el rendimiento/calidad de la cosecha son impredecibles. Nada es seguro hasta que el café se empaca y catado, y se paga el precio.

Los productores de café son notoriamente mal pagados en una industria relativamente rica.

Parte de esto se debe a la estructura de la cadena de distribución. Otra parte de ella se debe a los riesgos inherentes al cultivo del café, desde el clima impredecible hasta las plagas y la escasez de mano de obra.

No podemos esperar cubrir todas estas cuestiones en un solo artículo, pero aquí están algunos de los mayores y más apremiantes desafíos que enfrentan los productores de café de todo el mundo.

English Version: What Are The Main Challenges Faced by Coffee Producers?

Productores de café en El Manzano en El Salvador. Créditos: Campos Coffee

Plagas, Enfermedades y Hongos

Las plagas, las enfermedades y los hongos se han convertido en una amenaza real para muchos productores. La roya es una de las enfermedades más famosas, y ha estado afectando los cultivos de café por más de un siglo. En 2012, golpeó duramente a Centroamérica. Y durante los próximos dos años, causó más de USD$ 1 Billones en daños (USAID).

VER TAMBIÉN: Como los Ixil Están Combatiendo la Roya de Forma Orgánica

María Pacas, productora de café de quinta generación con Café Pacas, El Salvador, me dijo que ha notado que los niveles de los cultivos han disminuido en los últimos años debido a la epidemia de 2012. En la región de Ixil, Guatemala, destruyó el 75% de la cosecha de café.

Si bien la roya no afecta a todas las variedades y especies de café, normalmente son las que producen café de mayor calidad y se venden a precios más altos – están son las más susceptibles. E incluso los agricultores que optan por plantar especies y variedades de café resistentes a la roya, aceptando menores ingresos a cambio de un menor riesgo, siguen siendo vulnerables. Como organismo vivo, la roya está constantemente cambiando.

Después de 2012, muchos agricultores de Honduras sembraron Lempira como una cosecha de reemplazo resistente a la roya. Pero a principios de este mes, se informó de que la WCR había recategorizado a Lempira como susceptible a la roya – y advirtió a los productores de Honduras de “el posible desarrollo de un ataque severo una vez que se establezcan las lluvias”.

En Facebook, WCR respondió a la situación afirmando que “un problema subyacente es que hemos estado confiando en las mismas variedades para la resistencia a la corrosión durante demasiados años”. Sin embargo, el cambio de los cultivos es costoso, especialmente cuando los árboles tardan cinco años en producir las mismas cantidades de café. Y la investigación lleva tiempo.

Otro gran problema es la  broca, que agujerea dentro la cereza del café y pone los huevos en el endospermo de la semilla. Pero los agricultores tienen que estar atentos a mucho más que la broca: otras plagas comunes incluyen la escala de café verde, cochinillas, termitas, minador y muchos más. Todos estos afectan tanto la calidad como el rendimiento de los cultivos de café.

VER TAMBIÉN: La Broca del Café: Una Trampa Casera que Cuesta Centavos

La Roya: Una enfermedad foliar devastadora que amenaza el café en todas partes. Crédito: Patrick Murray

El Cambio Climático Causa Problemas para la Arábica

Los productores no tienen control sobre los cambios en el medio ambiente, pero cuando su cosecha sufre como resultado, ellos también. Ellos  necesitan su temporada de cosecha para cubrir los costos fijos que han incurrido durante todo el año.

En la actualidad, el cambio climático está llevando al aumento de las temperaturas y los nuevos patrones de lluvia – algo que está poniendo a las especies de café Arábica bajo amenaza. Hay cuatro especies principales: Arabica, Robusta, Excelsa y Libérica. Arábica es ampliamente considerada como la de mejor calidad, gracias a sus sabores aromáticos, por lo que atrae precios más altos. También representa aproximadamente el doble del mercado internacional del café (ICO).

Sin embargo, el Arábica es más sensible a los aumentos de la temperatura, que reducen su crecimiento, capacidad de florecer, y la consiguiente capacidad de producir fruta. Necesita crecer a temperaturas más frías que las otras especies. Esto significa que generalmente se cultiva en altitudes más altas.

A medida que el clima cambia, la tierra fértil disponible para Arábica disminuye. De hecho, el Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) ha pronosticado una disminución del 10 – 20 % en el rendimiento total de las cosechas para 2050. Además, las plagas que una vez encontraron las altas altitudes de las fincas arábicas demasiado frías para sobrevivir ahora pueden prosperar ahí. Y el Arábica es más sensible a estos que el Robusta.

Es fácil escuchar datos como este y no ser capaz de imaginar el impacto real en la finca. Pero mientras que este cambio ocurre lentamente, durante años, todavía es visible en árboles más débiles y un mayor número de plagas.

El cambio climático afecta las alturas en las que crece el café. Crédito: Angie Molina Ospina

Cambio Climático y Lluvias impredecibles

Además, esas lluvias fuertes y repentinas tienen un impacto fuerte e inmediato. Los productores dependen de una temporada de cosecha seca – algo que, en un momento dado, en la mayoría de los países podrían dar casi por sentado. Ahora, sin embargo, es una historia diferente.

Las lluvias fuertes pueden causar problemas durante la cosecha y el procesamiento: cerezas se dividen en el árbol y pierden su mucílago, fermentación durante el procesamiento, y más. Esta es una preocupación particular cuando los productores usan procesos como honey, natural / seco, ya que estos necesitan mucho tiempo bajo la luz solar directa para secar completamente.

También pueden conducir a cosechas impredecibles. Las cerezas del café maduran nueve meses después de que las flores del café florecen (con Arábica – varía de especie a

especie). Sin embargo, Eko Purnomowidi, un productor de café en Java, Indonesia y socio de Olam Specialty Coffee, me dice que los cambios en los patrones de las precipitaciones estacionales han causado una errática floración en los últimos años. Esto significa que las cerezas de café maduran en diferentes momentos.

¿El resultado?Los recolectores también tienen que recoger las cerezas de café en diferentes momentos. Si lo manejan mal, podrían terminar recolectando cerezas de café inmaduros, lo cual tendría un impacto negativo en el sabor del café y los compradores de especialidad estarían menos interesados.

Alternativamente, la fruta demasiado madura empieza a desarrollar notas de hierbas menos atractivas. Y si las cerezas caen del árbol, porque han sido dejadas demasiado tiempo antes de cosechar, pueden fermentar en la tierra y causar sabores desagradables en la taza. En el peor de los casos, puede resultar en defectos de grano negro o parcial  – e incluso sólo un grano negro completo en una muestra de 300 g descartará el estado del café especial.

Estas cerezas de café están madurando en diferentes momentos. Créditos: All about coffee and more

Escasez de Mano de Obra

Hemos estudiado las cuestiones relacionadas con el cultivo del café en sí. Ahora veamos los productores de café y los trabajadores agrícolas.

Heleanna Georgalis, Directora General de Moplaco, Etiopía, me dice que uno de los mayores riesgos que ve es la falta de mano de obra. El procesamiento del café requiere trabajadores en todas las etapas del proceso.

Sin embargo, la edad promedio de un productor de café está creciendo, y el número de ellos está disminuyendo. Los niños de familias productoras de café, viendo las luchas que enfrentan sus familias, suelen optar por emigrar a la ciudad para encontrar mejores oportunidades.

Además de esto, los agricultores a menudo hablan de la dificultad de encontrar recolectores de café para cosechar las cerezas de café del árbol. Ya hemos hablado de la importancia de recoger el café cuando está maduro, pero sólo es posible hacerlo cuando hay suficiente personal.

En la mayoría de los lugares, la recolección de café es estacional y a veces incluso un trabajo nómada. Se paga a los recolectores sobre la base del peso de las cerezas que recogen, y  necesitan trabajar 8 horas al día en laderas empinadas para su pago. Luego, al final de la cosecha, tienen que encontrar otros trabajos o mudarse a otras regiones. Es fácil ver por qué la gente elige otras formas de trabajo.

Evelio Francisco Alvarado, gerente general de Anacafé, me dice que el trabajo representa el 50-65% del costo de la producción de café en América Latina. Pero cuando hay pocos trabajadores disponibles, el precio aumenta. María Pacas también me dice que este aumento en los costos la ha forzado a automatizar algunos de los procesos de Café Pacas.

Sin estos recolectores de café, el café sólo se fermentaría en la rama. Crédito:  Campesino Specialty

Fluctuación de Precios e Ingresos Inciertos

Tanto los productores de café de grado comercial como los de especialidad se ven afectados por las fluctuaciones de precios, aunque existen diferencias en el cómo. Comencemos por ver el café comercial.

El precio de grado comercial (precio C) se basa principalmente en el NY Commodity Exchange. Pero Evelio Francisco Alvarado explica que este precio fluctúa regularmente. Por ejemplo Brasil: de 2010/11 a 2013, los precios del café cayeron a menos de la mitad, mientras que los costos siguieron aumentando. Desafortunadamente, el precio de C se basa en la oferta y la demanda – no el costo de la agricultura.

Es más, debido a estas fluctuaciones, los productores son incapaces de predecir las tendencias de precios y planificar el futuro. Evelio me dice que Anacafé lo considera crucial, ya que los productores necesitan conocer sus costos de producción y ver sus fincas como una organización real y rentable.

VER TAMBIÉN: Perspectiva del Productor: 4 Claves Para un Cultivo Exitoso

Jhon Espitia, agrónomo y caficultor en Colombia, me dice que esto se vuelve más complejo cuando miramos el impacto del cambio climático. Los productores saben que, si se centran en el café de alta calidad, pueden intentar entrar en el mercado especializado. Esto suele estar relacionado con el aumento de los ingresos, pero también requiere mayores inversiones en términos de recursos y esfuerzo. Los productores están intercambiando un riesgo por otro.

El mayor temor de un productor que está considerando trabajar en café especial es que no obtendrán lo suficiente a cambio de sus esfuerzos. O que, tal vez lo harán un año, pero el siguiente, el clima les impedirá producir café de calidad y perderán el precio premium.

Cerezas de café maduras secas en los patios de la Finca El Manzano / Mina Seca Cuatro M, El Salvador. Crédito: Cuatro M

Habilidad Limitada para Valorar el Café

Relacionado con las preocupaciones sobre el precio y la calidad es el hecho de que muchos productores son incapaces de valorar su propio café de la misma manera que los compradores y los consumidores. Esto puede dificultar tanto la mejora de los métodos agrícolas como la negociación con los compradores.

Heleanna explica que esto es especialmente difícil para los pequeños agricultores, que se centran principalmente en sus necesidades básicas para que puedan sobrevivir día a día. Para ellos, lo que el consumidor quiere es de poca relevancia para su vida.

Y para aquellos capaces de enfocarse en la calidad del café, todavía necesitan adquirir nuevas habilidades: la catación y el conocimiento sensorial, la comprensión del mercado y, a menudo, el marketing, o al menos una manera de hacerse visible para los compradores de café especiales. Esta es otra razón por la cual el café especial puede ser un riesgo.

“Los agricultores más grandes y las grandes cooperativas se preocupan, y tratan de producir café mejor, si el incentivo de precios está ahí”, dice Heleanna. “No olvides que los consumidores quieren lo mejor sin tener que pagar por ello. Y aunque los consumidores realmente pagan mejores precios, esto no se canaliza hacia el productor. Es el importador que se beneficia, en la mayoría de los casos. “

Una familia de productores de café indígenas en Cauca, Colombia. Crédito: Angie Molina Ospina

El cultivo del café es un medio de vida para millones de personas en todo el mundo. Estos desafíos tienen un impacto real en sus vidas, ya sean propietarios de grandes fincas o

pequeños propietarios que producen sólo 30 de 60 kilos al año.

No hay una solución fácil a estos desafíos. Pero como consumidores, compradores, tostadores y baristas, necesitamos pedir más que una taza de café. Tenemos la capacidad de elegir dónde gastamos nuestro dinero – y preguntar cuánto se paga a los productores.

Escrito por Angie Molina Ospina.

Traducido por Alejandra Muñoz y Editado por Karla Ly

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