No Standards: How I Learned Coffee and Espresso

Unfortunately, this story starts in a restaurant, where coffee and espresso are butchered almost as much as any given Dunkin' Donuts.  It is amazing how much of a precise focus there is in the fine-dining industry on everything food and beverage.  And then the coffee is served...

I got a gig at a restaurant in Nantucket when I was seventeen-going-on-eighteen.  There is no better reason to learn to drink coffee than being around an accessible source and working in an industry where the hours are long and full of a unique style of intense pressure.  As I progressed through levels of responsibility in the restaurant from busboy to manager, there was an increasing pressure to learn more about almost everything.  I gathered vast information on wine, specific methods of cooking fine food, and techniques on intricate methods of customer service.  But with all the experts, there was no concrete reference on coffee.

My first manager and mentor taught me how to foam milk.  The greatest and most respected methods included how to create the airiest foam with an inadequate machine.  If you could create enough dry milk froth to cover two cappuccinos, you were the coffee expert.  This mentality cultivated an environment where the word 'latte' sent most servers into a confusion akin to if they were demanded to fetch and fry up a dodo egg.  There was no focus on flavor, just technique based on one singular style.  We broke many espresso machines, used only pre-ground coffee, brewed as seldom as possible, and served clientele that supported it. 

I later traveled to Italy.  I arrived in Rome on my first day and tried to get a long shot so that I could have more to drink while I sat there and tried to write.  After years of using coffee shops to plant for hours and having customers demand more volume in their espresso, I brought my coffee culture with me instead of leaving it behind.

There was better espresso everywhere in Italy than what I had previously tasted.  But my focus was owned by the procedure of ordering and drinking espresso, instead of the flavors.  My experience revealed an espresso culture, one where you have a quick drink and move on.  I also took away that it is not only okay to add sugar to espresso, it is the norm.  For some reason, I thought is would be an insult or inauthentic.  Also, cappuccinos are for the morning.  Espresso is for any other time.  If you had not been noticed as the tourist before, they've marked you once you go for your after dinner cappuccino.  And the cappuccinos were great, defined by texture and proportion that I had before never seen.

I returned to the States and tried to continue the lessons I had learned from Italian espresso culture and found the staples so hard to retain.  No one orders just espresso.  The barista would explain macchiato to me so I could confirm that's what I actually want.  You have to know the cafe and what to expect so that you use fluffy 'mall' coffee terms (tall, wet, dry, etc) to get a close to decent drink.  The smallest cappuccino leaves you with twelve ounces of milk.  Two percent.  How depressing.

The next restaurant I worked in had the highest standards.  They compromised on nothing.  Nothing except for coffee and espresso.  At the time, I thought the espresso machine was a joke.  I knew how to use the grinder, hone in on the specifics of volume, tamp the coffee, and vary the brewing time.  And nothing came out good.  My vast experience of pulling shots did not include any of the most vital lessons in Espresso; I had not been taught a word about the vital and specific details of grind, temperature, and pressure.

I even bought a coffee reference book that started to define the various generational cuisines of espresso.  It even had the first solid description that I had ever had on what the ideal expression of an Italian cappuccino should be.  Six years in restaurants, more years having coffee every day, a great love for espresso, and I finally learned what a cappuccino is.

And with my new reference, I almost completely ignored the chapters on cupping, origin, and flavour, because they all seemed so foreign to me.  Loving wine, I could understand how anyone involved in the extreme levels of coffee could know all the finer things, but the restaurant environment cultivated very few opportunities to use this knowledge or grow in its experience.  And therefore, the mentality became one of maintenance.  Getting things up to par without the resources to grow.  Using pods for espresso because it was easy.  Not extracting positive flavours out of coffee, but removing unpleasant ones.  Watching ugly cappuccinos walk out of the waitstation nightly and making their way to the tables next to beautifully crafted desserts.

Then I wandered into a local cafe by a friend's recommendation.  And the cappuccino tasted like the ones in Italy.  There was latte art, which to me is a universal sign of well executed milk drinks.  I was impressed, and quite possibly found myself for the first time in a long time facing a completely new lesson in coffee.  The baristas talked about origin, how vital the grinder is, and flavours never before communicated to me in espresso or drip coffee.  This new generation of coffee had standards and answers based on specific experience that helped reveal the many coffee mistakes I had made over the years.  The fog of assumptions wafted away and there seemed to be a new generation of coffee, exploding with expressions and lessons that had not been present in the diners, Starbucks, restaurants, or even Italy.

Since then, I have experienced tasting stale coffee against real, well roasted, hand crafted coffee.  I have officially cupped, sticking my nose into the beeswaxy scented crust that the ground coffee forms when hot water is poured over it.  I have tasted many ranges of espresso, and still drink bad cappuccinos all over the place when I cannot avoid it.  I've gone out of my way when traveling to experience local cafes.  My focus is now on the factors and flavours after spending so much time being self taught with errant guides.  I also pour my own latte art when I get the chance.

I'll be the first to admit that I do not have nearly the complete knowledge or precise experience that makes me an expert in the matter.  But I do have a great range of unique trial and error that has flowered into an exciting passion.  Fortunately, I now have a more defined lens through which to experience and share the often misunderstood world of coffee and espresso.  I am hoping that this new wave of coffee is truly cultivated because there is so much opportunity to express the true standards of great coffee and espresso.  And I believe there is a generation of coffee drinkers that will respond positively when given a better cup and a way to understand it.