The European Coffee Post

For those of you who don't know Chris and me at all, we like coffee. We like to think that we turned on friends and enemies to the quality of the Denver coffee scene, make it a point to visit coffeehouses of note in new cities, and continue to plan for expanding our home coffee brewing capacity and quality, even to the point of considering starting a coffee cart for dance events :-) Being in Europe seemed to be a great way to further the scope of our world coffee tradition knowledge. And drink more coffee.

To that end, we looked up the 2010 World Barista Champion representatives from the countries we were planning to visit. We haven't had a chance to catch any so far, but we'll be in Paris and London, home to those countrie's champs, and we'll be sure to update from there. Here's the rundown of the coffee so far.

Germany: No much to say, really. Coffee is a distant third to beer and wine, and the coffee that you do get is made almost exclusively from super-automatic machines (meaning they grind the beans, make the espresso, steam the milk, everything). You order a drink and you get what the machine makes. I don't think, in a week and a half in Germany, that we had a handmade espresso drink. Which means that the coffee was pretty utilitarian and boring. We drank more french press there (ours that we brought), and even were able to get some coffee ground to the correct consistency for the french press in Wernigerode. There is no indication, in general, of super high quality coffees, independent roasters, etc.

Austria: Vienna is home to a very strong history of coffeehouse culture. They're called coffeehouses because you can get coffee there. These buildings are amazing on the ambience factor. Just take a look online at the Palmenhaus or Cafe Sperl, or any of the others. Once again, though, I didn't get the sense that they made the coffee by hand. The bars are all set off to the side, and they have table service. It's very different from Italy (see next paragraph). Austria's coffee drink of choice is the melange, basically a café latté. They also have Kleiner and Grosser Brauners. Although the menu listed this as the offered espresso, we both felt it was most like a long (lungo) pull, something more akin to the aeropress, with crema, but less body and concentrated flavors than a shot, and a very different, lighter mouthfeel. Chris has really taken to the after-dinner espresso, and this satisfied that niche for her. I like melanges, so I was happy, and I still ordered cappuccinos, because I like coffee and I'm not ALWAYS picky about it. We still did french press.

Italy: If you've been following along, you'll already know that, for some reason, Italy is pushing a lot of our buttons. Neither Chris nor I realized how much we thought Italy would be different than it has been. It's certain that Italy is suffering by comparison to Austria, but we try to be objective. Austria is a familiar place, and Italy is basically a total unknown. Still and all, we've spent a lot of time drinking coffee since I was in Italy last, and Italy looms large in the conscious of any serious coffee drinker. The espresso was invented here in the very early 20^th century. All of the terminology you hear in the coffee shop you frequent is derived from Italian. So it's with a somewhat heavy heart that I say Italy has been a mixed bag coffee-wise. Remember that it's a question of expectations as well. Chris and I have spent (or wasted, depending on how you feel about such things) a lot of time and money on high quality coffee experiences. And the coffee renaissance of the Pacific Northwest (and Intelligentsia in Chicago and L.A.) is still a regional movement at the highest levels of coffee making. Only recently has NYC had any coffee shops of note. It's still growing, but it's still small, boutique-y, and, as such, the quality is very concentrated.

I haven't seen one La Marzocco machine here yet. I've seen Faema, Wega, Kimbo, La Cimbali. I saw one Rancilio in a mall cafe. No Mistral, no Marzocco, certainly no Synesso, no lever machines of any kind. Semi-auto or automatic, mostly automatic. We did some research for recommendations in Rome and came across a good article explaining the coffee experience there on www.coffeegeek.com. Just google search for the article. Of the whole city, there were only 2 recommended above maybe 4 other contenders. We went to both of them and neither on was really good. In fact, one was really bad.

That surprised me. Rome is a big city, and I thought there'd be more cafes of note here. But here's what I think: The coffee's good enough. Maybe someone already said this somewhere in America, but American coffee must have been so bad for people to be working so hard at making it better. David Schomer, the Vivace guy, one of the guys behind the Synesso, holds northern italian espresso as the pinnacle of the art form. We tried coffee in Florence. It was good. On average, way better than the coffee being made in some small town or suburb with a really nice machine. I've come into little coffee shops to a really nice Marzocco machine, got my hopes up, and then there's a plastic tamper, or no tamper at all, and then I black out, and wake up surrounded by friends and family.

The baristas in these places, like the Termini Train station, know how to make a good shot of espresso. They can make a cappuccino with warm, preheated milk. There nothing boutique about it, and the highest level of quality is compromised. (Writing this, I'm starting to miss my vacuum press. I haven't had a really great regular cup of coffee in a while. I've been surfing the web for possible second machines for home, something semi-auto to learn on, but now I just want to fire up the Olympia, get some Herkimer flown in, and make some of my own really good coffee.)

First, an espresso is a single shot here. The standard in America is a double shot. I read the other day that lots of American baristas try to put too much coffee in their shot, that a double should have about 14-15g of coffee. Toph says baristas at Seattle Coffee Works put up to 23g! This from the Illy master barista. I can't wait to get back and try it. Our machine at home really only works for single shots, so I feel a kinship already to the Italian coffee mode, but I'd be putting in way too much already. They have the beans already ground in the hopper, and it's just one flick of the hopper slide for a single shot. Then they use the tamper built on the the grinder, roll it around, and lock it in. I can't tell if Reg Barber took me for a ride! After reading for a couple of days on other home machines, reviews and such, one of the common themes is that, oftentimes, home machines require a higher level of competence due to compromises in the quality/consistency of the machine versus commercial grade machines. If you're like me, you consider the quirks of your machine to make you a more aware and competent shot-puller. If you're a busy barista, you don't want to deal with the idiosyncrasies. I'm not trying to justify the coffee making standards over here. It seems easy, and I'm certainly not going to complain. I'm positively a wall flower over here now, and I don't want to get into it with a barista because my 20mls of coffee didn't stack up. But here's the kicker: There's no progression. When I think of espresso, I think of an experience that starts with walking into a store and ends after you leave, with the flavor still lingering. I feel like a judge of a barista comp every time I go into a store, evaluating the space, the presentation, the tamp, the crema, etc. And I haven't had a shot of espresso in Europe that grew into something greater, or changed at all, as you neared the finish. The foam of caps and macchiatos is thicker somehow, which I do like. I see very little cap art here. Oh, and if you ask for a latte, they'll just give you a glass of milk.

So we'll be in Spain in a couple of days, and then to France, Germany again, Belgium and then the UK with Ireland tagged on. I'll post again when there's something coffee related to share. Our campsite's caps have been consistently fine, so we're not hurting too bad :-)