The Bean Vagrant

Espresso; an overview, with references to various aspects of  modern speciality coffee, and terms like Artisan and Third Wave.

Espresso is a delicious, concentrated coffee beverage, brewed under pressure (around 9 bars), usually somewhere within 19-30 seconds, depending on the specific coffee. It is composed of complex and highly fragile nuances of aroma, flavour and texture. When prepared with skill, and great, freshly roasted beans, all the exquisite flavour potential of the chosen coffee can potentially be coaxed into the cup. It should ideally be intense yet balanced, with a natural sweetness, often with subtle fruit flavours, and free from the harsh bitterness often associated with badly made coffee or espresso.

Great espresso is both magical and often elusive – a true delicacy.

Coffee is a very special thing. Just like wine, good espresso (and indeed, good coffee in general) will have different natural flavour characteristics depending on various key factors. At origin, these factors include the soil, the cultivation, the altitude, the aspect, the varietal, and the harvesting and processing of the beans at the farm. The way the coffee is then roasted is also a crucial stage in order to preserve and highlight these flavours. This spectrum of naturally occurring flavours in great coffee, whilst quite subtle, is as wide and varied as you can imagine!

The vast majority of coffee produced and drunk in the world is lower quality ’commodity’ grade. Speciality grade arabica coffees, on the other hand, by their nature make up a much smaller percentage, but are of a higher quality, and have the potential to demonstrate how varied and delicious coffee can be. Their flavours will often be remarkably different to the conventional homogenous ’coffee flavour’ that people might expect, because great coffee can be more interesting and exciting than that! True speciality coffee is traceable to individual farms, and more seasonal. It is produced, harvested, and ideally also roasted and prepared, more carefully. This type of coffee is used for espresso within the modern artisan (or ‘Third Wave‘) coffee movement, and baristas like myself aim to showcase the natural characteristics of these coffees.

The modern artisan coffee movement often champions the use of fantastic single estate (and even single varietal) coffees for espresso. These can make wonderfully characterful espresso on their own, although traditionally a blend is thought more suited for espresso in order to create the most balance, harmony and complexity. These are hotly contested differing schools of thought! I happily use single estates and seasonal blends for espresso – they can both be amazing, and both have things to offer - if the coffees are good.

Great espresso is often best on its own, unadulterated. This is where the true magic of the drink can be  fully appreciated, and where the specific characteristics of the beans used, and the quality of the preparation, is revealed. Straight, without milk, is where the shot’s flavour is most intense and sincere, but where its success or failure is most evident, as even a little milk can begin to soften any flaws in the espresso.

That said, espresso is also delicious when combined with small amounts of perfectly steamed milk (microfoam), that is velvety smooth, and served at just the right temperature. This combination of milk with espresso creates classic drinks like cappuccino, caffe latte, macchiato, and equally important modern variations like Flat White, amongst others like the piccolo, Gibraltar, stumpy, and cortado (the precise origin and definition of these latter drinks is quickly becoming as elusive and as contested as the classics …but that’s half the fun!). With all these drinks, if you care about the quality and flavour of your coffee, the aim is for quality rather than quantity in both the espresso and its combinations with milk. Hence, within artisan coffee, you will often see minimal amounts of milk and smaller cup sizes (rather than the pint-sized cups that many cafes serve) that preserve the flavour of a beautiful espresso, and work in harmony with it rather than smothering it. Equally, artificial flavourings and syrups become unnecessary for many people when they get used to great coffee; if you’ve got a high quality, expertly crafted, delicious coffee full of exciting flavours, why cover it up, or try to make it taste like anything else?!

The modern movement.

There are many parallels, but also many crucial differences between ‘traditional Italian’ style espresso and modern artisan or Third Wave espresso, even though the essential brewing process is the same (the following points are generalised, and not necessarily definitive). Traditional Italian espresso is blended, often with a high proportion of more commodity grade coffee, and often with robusta as well as arabica to aid easy crema formation. It is often roasted more darkly, rested for much longer after roasting before use, and pre-ground into the dosing chambers of grinders where it sits until use, rather than being ground fresh ’on demand’ per cup. It could be said that Italian espresso blends tend to aim for more standardised, generic roasty-bitter-sweet characteristics that taste ’like Italian espresso’ rather than exhibiting specific, defined origin flavours, as such. Recipes for Italian blends are often closely guarded, and the customer is not able to know exactly where the coffee is from – there is no ‘traceability’.

There’s nothing wrong with this more traditional approach as such, but contrary to popular belief, it is not necessarily the be-all-and-end-all or the pinnacle of what can be achieved with espresso; the modern specialty movement seeks to further evolve and improve the potential of espresso at every stage.

Artisan or Third Wave espresso (and coffee) uses only top-grade arabica coffees that are traceable to the exceptional farms and cooperatives that produce them. There is a justified pride in this traceability, due to the quality, and often the reputation, of the beans from these particular farms. The aim is to highlight and showcase their diverse, naturally occurring origin flavours (often fruity), and preserve this by treating the coffee as a delicate, fresh, gourmet product at all stages from farm to cup. There is therefore much more emphasis and careful attention to seasonality with these coffees (using the freshest crops from different origins), and it is roasted by smaller ‘microroasters’. These craft-roasters often roast more lightly (because roasting darker destroys the subtle origin flavours present in high quality coffee), and they always roast in small batches. Artisan coffee is used FRESH, within just two-four weeks of roasting, and it is ground fresh to order, by the cup. Both seasonal blends and single estates are represented within artisan espresso. The knowledge and skill of the barista in the preparation is crucial in both Italian and 3rd wave espresso – but it is generally highlighted and utilised further within 3rd wave coffee.

Espresso is just one brew method for these coffees. With Third Wave style coffee, you will also often see various other manual by-the-cup filter brew methods being employed, like pour-over cones, cafetieres, Aeropress, Chemex, syphons, and others, some old, some new. With any method, the aim is to deliver a single, handcrafted cup that exhibits and preserves the subtle natural flavours and characteristics of these fresh, speciality coffees.

This artisan or 3rd wave coffee movement has developed worldwide since about 1990, and is constantly striving to push coffee quality, preparation, and knowledge to new heights. The movement is more established in countries like New Zealand, the USA, and Australia, but it has emerged more recently in the UK. It is developing rapidly here, and flourishing - the UK scene, although quite small, and less well established, is in many ways fast becoming world-class, even world leading (although you still need to find the right places!).

Sometimes people misinterpret all this as some sort of coffee-snobbery or elitism. For me though, it’s just about a genuine enjoyment of good quality, well crafted, delicious coffee! Caring more about the origin, quality, flavour, freshness and preparation of anything we eat or drink doesn’t need to make it pretentious!

More about this movement, and the term Third Wave specifically.

The term Third Wave coffee was coined around the millennium, with reference to this movement within speciality coffee as described above. What this phrase refers to is less about the generalised defining differences between traditional and modern espresso styles as outlined above however, and more to do with the 1st wave being when coffee initially became more mass-available to the general consumer as instant coffee, etc, the 2nd wave was during the 1960′s onwards, when coffee became a little more specialised but also began to be commercialised and transformed into the style created by the big, globalised coffee-chain brands (of which prominent features include big cup sizes, syrups, and artificial flavorings), and then the 3rd wave, as described above, is what some quality-focussed people within the coffee industry are doing now, in terms of aiming to redefine what coffee can be, by focussing on quality and craftsmanship, by making improvements at every single stage from farm to cup, by treating coffee as a fresh, seasonal product, and as a culinary craft - in the same sort of way good chefs treat great food and ingredients.

Interestingly, there are varied reactions to the term ‘Third Wave’ amongst even those coffee professionals working within speciality coffee, and not everyone finds it a useful term. There are various perspectives on this. The modern movement generally is diverse, and in a constant state of flux and evolution. Some people feel we have already moved beyond the initial third wave, into further waves. Some people, even though they work within the artisan area that the term alludes to, find the phrase somewhat vacuous, self-aggrandising, elitist, cliquey, or unhelpful, and as such, dislike it. Similarly, some people feel that the term, and the movement it describes, is often hijacked by those who care less about sincere genuine skill and quality, and more about just associating themselves with something they see as ‘cool’ or ‘in’. And equally, because there are also those (individuals and organisations) who hijack it purely for the purposes of marketing spin or commercial gain.

Regardless all these differing, and often relevant, standpoints, I and many others still feel the phrase is a valid, useful and helpful one. I hesitate about defending the term as such (the term, not the movement it refers to), because of the validity of some of the points listed above, but I do think it is still a worthwhile phrase, when not mis-used. It is a generally accepted term, and concept, in the industry that provides a simple, easily recognised umbrella phrase that encapsulates all the key defining aspects of what the modern, speciality, artisan movement is about, as opposed to other styles, despite its varied niches.

A challenging brew-method.

Achieving truly great espresso is a challenging endeavour that is dependent on numerous factors being carefully controlled at every stage of the process. So many variables can affect the espresso and hinder the delivery of the original potential of the beans. The espresso process is notoriously unpredictable from shot to shot, and achieving consistency and repeatability is one of the holy grails within the craft. Even good espresso is something of an acquired taste, and if something is amiss, espresso can be  concentratedly bad, meaning that unfortunately many people’s experience of espresso can be a negative one. Even the best beans in the world can be ruined (or at least not allowed to show their full potential) if the barista is not skilled, when a good barista uses below-par machinery, or when a shot just simply fails to reach the heights it might have, for all sorts of reasons.

…But when a successful shot is prepared with great, fresh beans, on quality equipment, by a skilled barista who cares, espresso can, potentially, be a delicacy.

Still unsure what espresso actually is? Welcome to my world! Understanding espresso (and coffee generally) as a beverage and as a process, can be infuriatingly yet wonderfully complex and confusing! The above description is just one of many that could be equally accurate. For a less biased and more straightforward definition, you can look it up on wikipedia.