The Exchange: Episode 3 - The Coffee Roaster & Coffee Blending Part 2
- Mark is still older than Todd
- Seasonality and blends
- Blends as taste profiles vs. ingredients
- Haphazard buying
- Faith in customer discernment
- Too many blends and the "unique why?"
- Espresso "only" blend?
- Classic blends, helpful history
- Seattle espresso run discovery
- Dark roasts and dark roast blending
- Aged coffee
- Workable, flexible, and supremely crushable
- Milk is a reality
- Blending for price point
- Top end coffees don't always work for blends
- Olam's internal blend competition
- The theater and music analogies
Also Available on iTunes and Full Transcript Below
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The Exchange is Presented by Olam Specialty Coffee
Hosted by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey
Directed by Mike Ferguson
All music is available and used under Creative Commons:
Opening Theme, You ask for Cornflakes, I give you Coffee & Cornflakes by Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Closing Theme, Coffee with Mr. Jenkins, by Glass Boy & Mr. Jenkins.
Talk to us!
Mike: Hello, welcome once again to The Exchange, present by Olam Specialty coffee, hosted by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey. I'm Mike Ferguson.
Mike: In this episode, Mark and Todd talk about beer, music and coffee blending theory, with a little history thrown in. The title of the Mark Pendergrass book that Mark can't remember is, "Uncommon Grounds." And now, Mark and Todd.
Todd: So, let's shift a touch here, I'm curious, you have a few more seasons in the field than myself, what is ... give me the three things that you've seen as just the worst mistakes that can be made when it comes to trying to create a legacy around a blend, right? You got a roaster who's hitting a stride, has a product, has their marketing lined up, their message is concise, it's right, from a supply stand point, what are the three biggest mistakes that you see?
Mark: Well, I'll tell you what I've seen, I did it to myself in one of the cases, was back when we talked about it on the first episode when I was doing organics in the early 90s and it just weren't available, was using a natural Ethiopian organic in a blend, so intended to have you around. It wasn't available, A, and B, it fell off, like a cliff on the second half of the year. When the blend was great it was great, when it wasn't great, it was not great and for a customer standpoint, that was a complete disaster to the point that ... this was before I even had the mindset of, "A blend can be seasonal, it doesn't have be a year round." But using a coffee that is either hard to find year round, or has a real strong drop off point at one point. Or, blending without the mindset of, "I need a substitution that is of a like profile on the second half of the season when the coffee drops off." So that there are interchangeable parts to the blend.
Mark: I think one of the bigger mistakes that roasters make when they're new is; they make a blend and they wanna say, "Oh, the blend is 60 percent this, 40 percent that, 30 percent this." And for me, single origin is about naming the coffee or the farm or the variety, a blend is about naming a profile, and a profile may not have those same ingredients all the time, as long as the taste profile stays consistent. It's going in with that theory, it's the theory that the parts are interchangeable but the flavor, what the target flavor of this coffee is, is a constant. How about you? What do you think about that?
Todd: Yeah, no, I go back to very similar things in terms of; I probably ... the sort of, lazy inventory management, if I can say that without sounding too aggressive, but the buying haphazardly upfront with the foresight of eventually having to dump a coffee and using blends as a way to deal with that, and taking faithful blend buyers for granted and being overly opportunistic about bottom feeding coffees and trying to [inaudible 00:04:07] margin where you might have ... for years, people were faithfully buying blend X and they were putting coffees into it that fit that, sort of, let's call it an avatar type profile that tastes of very specific consistent notes, inter-seasonally, and maybe the market shifts out of your favor or maybe you just get to a point where your faith and confidence in your customers discernment is in question, and you start trying to sneak coffees in under the radar. While it's often very difficult as I was mentioning earlier, it seems very difficult for a pedestrian coffee consumer, or specialty coffee consumer to really describe the experience they're having. It's still intensely personal and really quite an intimate thing, and you just see this blow up on people and it's hard to watch-
Mark: Right.
Todd: [Whether 00:05:19] caused by a long position on coffees that there's no other way to let go or deal with, or it's more of a aggressive act if you will, to find a bit more room or to be more opportunistic. That's the biggest thing to me, I think the other thing is just saturating the list with too many blends-
Mark: Oh, without a doubt.
Todd: Without a reason. You know?
Mark: Yeah.
Todd: Without a unique, "Why?" For each one, "Why do I buy this versus this?" I mean, the industry has always, and even though it's come so far, it still seems to just need clear indicators whether the end consumer and or retailers need clear indicators as to, what is this for, right?
Mark: Sure.
Todd: I think that's why, until relatively recently, a lot of roasters if not most would sell a quote, unquote, espresso blend.
Mark: Right.
Todd: Even titled expressly as that, espresso only, right? Because it's not to say you can't make espresso out of anything.
Mark: Sure.
Todd: But you know, it was the indicator to someone, "Hey, this is good for that." Right? And-
Mark: Well, sometimes if you messed around you would, on a whim, brew their espresso blend as a drip brew and you'd be like, "Wow, this is actually a really nice drip blend."
Todd: Sure, but [crosstalk 00:06:58]
Mark: It accidentally had a dual purpose that they didn't market it for.
Todd: Sure, but it's interesting because in my first barista gig, my impression was; because of that indicator was like, "Oh no, this is for espresso, you can't do that with it."
Mark: Right.
Todd: And no one told me, so flash forward and it's laughable, it's silly but I still think that we under value where consumers and even some of our partners in other segments, where they are with relation to that stuff, you know? In terms of knowing what to do with something, and then knowing why it matters to them to fold it into what they're doing. So, that's a big mistake I feel like I see. Another shift, let's talk about the nuts and bolts of blending. Obviously, depending on the complexity of your plant, your roaster-y, what kind of tools do you have or don't have, in terms of managing the process of blending, there's very little out there in terms of teaching best practice for blending up front, behind, obviously there's some artistic justification for the latter or the prior. What are the basics that you go over when you're working with someone who's relatively new? What are your recommendations?
Mark: Well I'll tell you, there's a couple areas that I recommend and it's also how I learned how to blend coffee. One is; I'm fascinated by the old classic blends. If you have a chance to talk to an older person in the industry, older than me, somebody who had been roasting in the 50s and 60s, or if you have access to texts about the 40s and 30s it's interesting to read about the coffees that they blended with and why they blended. I started categorizing the world war two US army blend, what they used as a coffee, the original Dunkin' Donuts blend, the [inaudible 00:09:10] blend, why did they do it that way? It's fascinating, it'll expose you to coffees that you wouldn't normally look at, I always say start there, start with something that already is well known, and try to recreate it yourself and see what you like about it, what you don't like about it, and how you would tweak it to put your spin on it. You could get the old [inaudible 00:09:37] guide, you can look at ... I'm losing the text, but I'm sure Mike Ferguson will let us know the Pendergrass book, has a bunch of stories in there about that.
Mark: As well as just talking to people, if you could find out what they did for hotels in the 20s and cruise ships and railroad lines, those kinds of blends are interesting and they could be made into classics or reborn with new life in them. That's what I like to look towards the past to look towards the future.
Mark: The second thing is; look at companies that blend interesting blends and try to figure out what their thinking was as well. I came across it by example, I used to take a group of people at the SCAA when we would go to Seattle on a morning coffee run, usually new members, they don't know a lot of people, meet at the front of the hotel at 7am, we're going to run a 10k and we're going to stop at eight espresso bars, do a shot and keep running, and do another shot and keep running. We went to all the classic, Vivace, and Vida, and Lighthouse and Stumptown when they were roasting there, but we were on the hunt and every time I would keep going back to the Vida espresso as being like, just something really unique about it.
Mark: Although the Vivace [Schomers 00:11:14] blend is very classic and everyone covets it, I kept finding myself falling in love with the Vida. When I went to read about it, I noticed that the base of that espresso was a java which I had never heard anybody using that as a base for an espresso, and it just worked. I started messing with my version of that blend just as a hobbyist, to pull shots and do it, and their blending was quite unique and it actually worked out quite well. You wonder how they came up with it, did they just stumble upon the blend? Did they read about it? Those are the things that stick out in my head.
Mark: The other story about blending that is fascinating, and I wanted to open this subject up to you as well, Todd, because I know that this is something that we don't want to talk about, is dark roasts and dark roast blending, because the fact remains out here on the West Coast for almost every company, the demand for dark roast is very, very high and no matter how you tried to avoid it, you're going to get consumers demanding it, so you may as well make it great. I've played with all types of different coffees, dark, and messed around with them, and I heard from a customer on a phone that's a roaster that I highly admire for their blending capabilities, mentioned to me one time that they think and they believe that using aged coffees in dark blends was the best thing you could ever do, they've always been doing it and I had never used an aged coffee in that sense before, I've always used aged coffees in espresso because it adds a certain element that you can't get with non-aged coffees. But as you know, a little age goes a long way, it's a very pungeant addition.
Mark: When I went and experimented with doing this as a dark roast, it was amazing. It was incredibly sweet and rich and caramelly, burnt toffee kind of flavor, and when you added milk it just completely transformed this, which most people who consume dark coffees are adding milk. It was something that I'd never ever come across on my own before, and it's something that taught me more about dark roast blending. Those are my standouts, how about you, Todd?
Todd: Yeah, no, it's interesting you bring up talking about dark roast blending and it's by no means a demand that's only made on the West Coast, I can assure you. I think that given the emergence of the real initial specialty culture on the West Coast and that the roasting style was a much more developed roast, as that was exported to the east coast, we see a big contingent of early specialty coffee drinkers coming to the bar and saying, "Give me the real coffee, give me the dark roast." And so there's almost this challenge of; that should be the best thing on the menu and certainly over the years, even as the emerging preference has been towards a lighter, more bright cup, we still see a huge portion of guests asking for a much more intense, darker roast coffee and as you inevitably come into a place where you have to work some coffees off your position and get them off your floor, you really can spend quite dearly in this part of your offer list because using great, fresh, bright green coffees with lots of character as a more developed roast [inaudible 00:15:21] is delicious.
Mark: Sure.
Todd: It's something that I ... it's interesting, I was cupping a table of coffees and yesterday, towards the end of the day, really nice, 85 point, 86 point micro-lots coming from the North-West of Honduras, and I won't bore you with the details but really nice coffees that very few, if any people will go out and really develop near into second crack in their roasting profiles. This was a coffee that just went over in the sample roaster, and it's just crazy how delicious it was. It was just ... all the notes of apple and strawberry and raspberry just turned into this real nuance dark chocolate type of profile you get when you have these really high cacao drinking chocolates or solid bars-
Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Todd: and the richness and heft, it was just so clear how appropriate this green coffee was for this type of profile and I realize, hand in hand that we have to have the opportunity of not realizing everything it might taste like at a lighter roast, but I totally agree, I think that there's so much potential there, but I mean, my recommendation on where to start is to define the character, we probably come off like a broken record at this point with it, but start with the, "Why?" It's obviously the way to begin any marketing discussion, but I think it's also ... the way to begin any buying decision is; where does this belong and do we need it? Why do we need it? What are we trying to prove here?
Todd: I think that the very most basic of solutions that come into line when your most specialty roasters are kind of, on the verge of fitting out your offer list with a couple of blends is; well, we need something that's going to be a workable, flexible and supremely crushable espresso coffee, what I imagine, when you describe Vida's coffee and that buttery smooth, really workable from the barista standpoint coffee that you put in a hopper and in two minutes you pull a few shots and it has this fat, wide strike zone that you can do a lot with and it's going to produce a range of characteristics that are all very good on their own, and really pair well with milk because most retailers are as much in the milk business as they are the espresso business, so that's really, from there you can get into more challenging blends and more esoteric reasons for them, but that's always where I'd begin. I know we're coming into the end of our episode here, but I think we'd be remissed not to talk through at least briefly, one of the biggest backups for blending historically, and certainly another challenge if we're honest and practical about this, but also blending for price point, you know?
Mark: Yeah.
Todd: If this [inaudible 00:19:01] in anybody's offer list or menu is going to make up for somewhere in between 60 and 80 percent of their volume, whether one or multiple blends, or more house espresso blended coffees, I guess what are the prudent ways to buy for price, and to manage cost and value from your angle, you know, obviously depending on the volume of the purchase, the flexibility in terms of; what's available and how you might be able to buy in terms of on origin side, if we're buying spot, but I guess, what are the things to keep in mind when you're asking the question, "Hey, can I get away with this"? Or, "How do I manage the price into my target range?" Is it, investigate new origins? Investigate new grades? What are the macro things that you put on a buyers' radar?
Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that there's a couple things to look at there, one is that when you're blending, even though we're using the term like blending for price, or budget blending, using top end coffees don't always work great in blends. In fact, sometimes they make them too muddled, too cloudy, too confusing, and grade blends, you could be a little bit more relaxed on the grade of coffee, so a logical person would say, "Oh, I saw a classic commercial blend that was Columbian, PNG and Costa Rica." And the Costa Rica would be the only thing that they spent money on, they used regular Columbian [inaudible 00:20:56] and they used the PNG Y grade, so I'm going to step it up and use a top end PNG and a top end Columbian and a top end Costa Rica, and you're not better blend, in fact you're getting a much more confusing blend.
Mark: It's backing up and thinking, "What coffee is the show piece? And what do I need to blend around it to make it better?" And that better may be body, and body you'll have to spend a lot of money to get body, it may be sweetness and you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money to get sweetness, it just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. We here at Olam, I don't know where you guys are, I was going to get an update from you, but we do contests here, competitions in the office, and again, trying to think of being a roaster and having the roaster mindset, the challenge for the trading and the QC team here was to create a blend that the overall finished product price was two dollars a pound, that's roasted price of two dollars a pound, the best quality blend you can make. In the end, each trader was able to come up with a really solid, I mean a really solid blend that the individual components, you know, while some of the coffees maybe 84 plus, the other components may not have been. The finished, blended product on average was 85 plus and the cup score.
Mark: They didn't have to spend a lot of money on these green coffees, they were able to accomplish this. Now, for the listeners here, we're going to be posting all of the recipes of the blends that did well in the competition up on the website at olamspecialtycoffee.com, where you can actually see these recipes and pull samples and make them yourself, and see if we're right or if we're wrong. You don't have to necessarily look at top grades for all of your coffees in a blend, sometimes the characters needed in that blend need to be softer and sweeter, and not so bright, not so punchy, because it becomes too much. Those coffees tend to be found at a better deal, and like I said earlier, if you look at these historic blends that have been delicious over time that airlines contracted and the US army, they were using very interesting coffees that were not necessarily expensive, but end up together being so delicious and looking at those types of blends, those recipes, and mimicking them with coffees that you can find today, some might have used coffees that they used aren't even being produced anymore, but to find the equivalent is a great place to start, to create something that's budget friendly, solid tasting and that good session coffee that we've been talking about all episode.
Todd: Sure, yeah [inaudible 00:23:55] on the music analogy, if you think about it on the cupping form the same way, harmony and balance, these are not simply the result of everything being posted up at 10 on a scale, you want the supporting cast with the main character and you wanna be strategic about how these coffees can fit together like puzzle pieces, often leading you to some opportunistic buying as you fill in for those supporting roles. No, it's definitely where the discussion begins on our side as well, and it's always awesome and satisfying from my perspective to be able to responsibly pair coffees, create value and see the expansion of someones business success in the process.
Mark: Yeah. If you used your music analogy I would say, versus a bunch of people soloing or coming in with their moment in the sun, a drummer, a base player, everybody going for almost like an avant garde or type of freeform jazz versus a James Brown rhythm section, which to me is the ultimate blend.
Todd: Yeah, you said it. It's interesting, just to bring it to a close, there's been a huge shift just sharing personally where I used to visit cafes and I would ask for the crazy single origin on pour over, or I would ask for the limited run espresso, and it's not to say I don't, but I feel like more and more, you test the new café or you're going in and trying to see what are particular roasts or partner at retail might be about and it seems like really, the way to tell philosophy is in these blended coffees and these core coffees. If any listeners are out there, and that's not been an approach, I would certainly challenge you to make it. Don't undervalue these parts of your program, if you cut up your volume or cut up your sales by numbers I guarantee this is a huge, if not the foundational part, of what you do, and it deserves that amount of care. Mark, it's been great chatting, I appreciate you taking the time as always.
Mark: Oh, yeah. Again, thanks for tuning into The Exchange, presented by Olam Specialty Coffee. For The Exchange, I'm Mark Inman.
Todd: And I'm Todd Mackey.
Mark: And we'll see you on the next episode.
Mike: You've been listening to The Exchange, presented by Olam Specialty Coffee, presented by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey, directed by Mike Ferguson. Our opening theme was; "You asked for coffee, I gave you coffee and cornflakes." By Mr and Mrs Smith. Our closing theme; "Coffee with Mr. Jenkins." By Glass boy + Mr Jenkins. Both used under and available from creative comments. If you have questions you would like Mark and Todd to consider answering during the podcast, send an email to theexchange@olamnet.com. That's theexchange@olamnet.com, thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on The Exchange presented by Olam Specialty Coffee.
