Thursday, January 05, 2006
Hill & Valley Coffee in context
The State of Gourmet Coffee in the UK - how we got here
The mid 1990s saw the speciality food boom echo across the North American continent from the West Coast and in coffee the explosion originated in Seattle, in the eclectic coffee houses and gourmet coffee shops such as the original Starbucks. Still today, the Pacific North West would lay claim to the highest standard of coffee on the North American continent.
A new awareness of the variety of coffee both in origin and the way it could be served and drunk saw small enterprise grasp the banner and the independent coffee house and small town roaster was reborn. Suddenly Coffee House owner became at once a credible and viable lifestyle for free spirits across the 50 states.
With the support of the Specialty Coffee Association of America a new breed of entrepreneur became entranced with the variety of different coffee available in the exotic locations throughout the globe where coffee is produced and the constant demand was for the highest quality beans, showcased in imaginative ways. Continental Europeans have long felt that they held the high ground in the quality of coffee that they buy, although any trip around a French hypermarket would leave you at a loss as to where the fresh roasted beans were.
In the UK, despite journalistic hype and designer magazine articles the most popular beverage remains instant or soluble coffee, and monstrous multi national food companies exert a huge degree of influence over consumer choice. In the past 6 years cappuccino / latte bars ( they don't sell much espresso!) have multiplied first in London and now almost everywhere, but as yet the UK public at large has not quite figured out what it is they want in gourmet coffee. There is still an awful lot of flavoured milk being sold as “coffee”, and misinformation is the norm.
Where might it lead?
We at Hill & Valley feel that, just as it took the "wine bar boom" of the late seventies and early eighties to launch discriminating wine buying in the UK, a similar phenomenon may happen in coffee. Once the mystique of the roasting and blending process is stripped away, consumers should be liberated by recognising the different taste characteristics that can be brought out in a correctly brewed coffee. More people may begin to demand the freshest beans possible, which is the sole way to guarantee the release of the volatile flavours in the cup and not at the roasting factory. Conventional channels of retail distribution cannot support this need, and a direct relationship between drinker and roaster is the logical consequence to ensure delivery as soon as possible after roasting.
There is no doubt that the interests of “big food” and “big shop” run counter to this trend and the offer of beans in all supermarkets remains derisory. Unlike in Germany, Switzerland and the USA, no attempt is made to allow the consumer to grind his own beans at the store, the absolute minimum requirement for an attempt to preserve coffee flavours intact for the drinker at home. The “real” coffee market continues to be dominated by mass produced (large batch roasted) pre-ground (pre-deteriorated) coffee in fancy packaging (glamour not taste) roasted in 3 or 4 monstrous factories dotted around the UK.
The current trend for various "ethical" brands of coffee does nothing to improve consumer knowledge of the simple truths behind a good cup of coffee. Hopefully as we engage more and more individuals in this debate, we can remove the patronising approach to growers and make more people aware of the virtues of drinking coffee produced by enterprising small businesses, whose absolute priority is delivering a high quality product, not holding out their hand for a conscience-salving handout.
Secrets of the Trade
Dominated as it is by monstrous global food companies, the roasting sector has up to now done all it can to hide it's processes from the consumer. (Some soluble coffee factories are harder to get inside than a nuclear power station!) The consumer has been led to believe that the process must be complicated and hard to understand.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but a realisation of the simplicity is a threat to the stranglehold of the brand. Coffee people in producing countries are almost without exception open hearted folk. Coffee cherries have to be picked by hand, often in mountain locations, and then nurtured on their processing journey to the hard nutty green bean. It is the work of the gardener, not the alchemist. Next time you are in the supermarket look at the packets of blends - where did the coffee come from? Would you drink wine that comes from "various countries"? How do you know what makes it taste like that? Could it taste better? Should it taste better for that price?
At Hill & Valley we will tell you everything you want to know about our coffee. We can bore you to death with it, if you like. The few blends we offer are not secret recipes - they are our opinion of what goes well with what - that's all. Our single origin coffees are just that. We try where we can to ensure tracability from individual family owned farms or growers co-operatives who seek accolades for their high quality. Where this is not possible, we support producers in evocative areas, such as the highlands of Ethiopia and coffee grown by failing tribal peoples in Indonesia. But only if the coffee measures up in the cup! We don't sell a "Kenya Blend", but we do have a Kenya AA Main Crop most of the time. We ask you to trust in the fact that we do not want to keep secrets from you. All we are is the means for you to appreciate the grower's craft in your cup. It is they who deserve your praise, not us, or any secret techniques that we may pretend to employ.
Come Discover with us!
We'd like you to go on a voyage of discovery in coffee and we'll try to help you along the way. Like us you'll find certain combinations that "hit the spot" and you'll stick with them for a while. You'll dabble, like us, and experiment. That's the fun. You shouldn't blend wines from different growing regios, but you as sure as hell can and should try blending coffees sometimes! We'll help you through the secrets of brewing - they are few. Grind just before brewing; use good water; get the right temperature; extract at the optimum rate for the machinery; wash up well. That is the route to coffee perfection.
The real secret about making great coffee is that it is not expensive or especially slow, but it can be wonderfully ritualistic. Espresso drinking in the morning in Italy is a ritual. A Cafezinho in Rio is a ritual. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony where coffee is roasted, brewed and drunk is the original coffee ritual. Take joy in your own coffee ritual, whatever it is - and never forget the many bare hands that your coffee had to pass through before it got to your lips.
Beans - why beans, not ground?
Simple - grinding takes away freshness. The outer skin of the bean is nature's way of guarding the flavour within. Once this seal is broken, a big part of the goodness flies away before it gets to the packet, never mind your cup. Each roasted coffee bean is a flavour capsule that the roaster has carefully allowed to stabilise with the volatile aromatics locked inside. We could try to explain the chemistry, but you can prove it yourself. Grind some coffee beans. Smell it. Come back in five minutes. Smell it again. Where did it go? Not in your cup. At Hill & Valley we will only sell you beans. Of course, if you don't see the importance you could try going to Majestic and try to buy some opened wine, but you may feel a little silly, and we don't really want to share it with you. So, please if you don't want to hurt our feelings, buy yourself a grinder from the vast array now available and never ask us to send you ground coffee.
Our role in the market today
When we started selling fresh coffee beans online in 2000, along with one or two others in the UK, we were pretty much pioneers in the field. That is not the case any more and we sincerely hope that this means that the sector overall is growing to the detriment of mass produced coffee. Those that buy their coffee in bean form from an online seller remain an extremely select band and in terms of the overall market for coffee in the UK, the whole sector remains statistically insignificant. In the last two years or so there has been a tendency of all these small roasters to buy from the best one or two importers and diversity of offer is not always what it should be. This seems a little unfair on the consumer, who deserves to be guided towards real choices.
The problem with coffee is that the subtle nuances of flavour between fine types can be undetectable, except to an experienced taster in control conditions. Variation in roast, water, brewing concentration and freshness / grind frequently masks these differences. This means that any offer of variety to the consumer must genuinely show detectable differences, ie. a real choice.
For this reason in 2006 we have decided to somewhat change our approach to our product range. We will be offering fewer coffees at any one time (rarely more than 8 or 10), but we will be offering distinguishable “styles” and rotate within those style bands frequently. In particular we hope to bring back coffees that you cannot find elsewhere from time to time and will be even more rigorous with ourselves on the issue of freshness, both green and roasted.
We have also decided after a certain amount of soul searching to withdraw from selling on our green beans in small quantities suitable for roasting in popcorn poppers and other kitchen devices. There are others supplying this market now, often with the same coffees, and having spent 20 odd years in trading green coffee, we hope you'll excuse us if we concentrate elsewhere. We have kept our bulk sales of green beans available to support semi-professional roasters who have to buy in smaller volumes.
The mid 1990s saw the speciality food boom echo across the North American continent from the West Coast and in coffee the explosion originated in Seattle, in the eclectic coffee houses and gourmet coffee shops such as the original Starbucks. Still today, the Pacific North West would lay claim to the highest standard of coffee on the North American continent.
A new awareness of the variety of coffee both in origin and the way it could be served and drunk saw small enterprise grasp the banner and the independent coffee house and small town roaster was reborn. Suddenly Coffee House owner became at once a credible and viable lifestyle for free spirits across the 50 states.
With the support of the Specialty Coffee Association of America a new breed of entrepreneur became entranced with the variety of different coffee available in the exotic locations throughout the globe where coffee is produced and the constant demand was for the highest quality beans, showcased in imaginative ways. Continental Europeans have long felt that they held the high ground in the quality of coffee that they buy, although any trip around a French hypermarket would leave you at a loss as to where the fresh roasted beans were.
In the UK, despite journalistic hype and designer magazine articles the most popular beverage remains instant or soluble coffee, and monstrous multi national food companies exert a huge degree of influence over consumer choice. In the past 6 years cappuccino / latte bars ( they don't sell much espresso!) have multiplied first in London and now almost everywhere, but as yet the UK public at large has not quite figured out what it is they want in gourmet coffee. There is still an awful lot of flavoured milk being sold as “coffee”, and misinformation is the norm.
Where might it lead?
We at Hill & Valley feel that, just as it took the "wine bar boom" of the late seventies and early eighties to launch discriminating wine buying in the UK, a similar phenomenon may happen in coffee. Once the mystique of the roasting and blending process is stripped away, consumers should be liberated by recognising the different taste characteristics that can be brought out in a correctly brewed coffee. More people may begin to demand the freshest beans possible, which is the sole way to guarantee the release of the volatile flavours in the cup and not at the roasting factory. Conventional channels of retail distribution cannot support this need, and a direct relationship between drinker and roaster is the logical consequence to ensure delivery as soon as possible after roasting.
There is no doubt that the interests of “big food” and “big shop” run counter to this trend and the offer of beans in all supermarkets remains derisory. Unlike in Germany, Switzerland and the USA, no attempt is made to allow the consumer to grind his own beans at the store, the absolute minimum requirement for an attempt to preserve coffee flavours intact for the drinker at home. The “real” coffee market continues to be dominated by mass produced (large batch roasted) pre-ground (pre-deteriorated) coffee in fancy packaging (glamour not taste) roasted in 3 or 4 monstrous factories dotted around the UK.
The current trend for various "ethical" brands of coffee does nothing to improve consumer knowledge of the simple truths behind a good cup of coffee. Hopefully as we engage more and more individuals in this debate, we can remove the patronising approach to growers and make more people aware of the virtues of drinking coffee produced by enterprising small businesses, whose absolute priority is delivering a high quality product, not holding out their hand for a conscience-salving handout.
Secrets of the Trade
Dominated as it is by monstrous global food companies, the roasting sector has up to now done all it can to hide it's processes from the consumer. (Some soluble coffee factories are harder to get inside than a nuclear power station!) The consumer has been led to believe that the process must be complicated and hard to understand.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but a realisation of the simplicity is a threat to the stranglehold of the brand. Coffee people in producing countries are almost without exception open hearted folk. Coffee cherries have to be picked by hand, often in mountain locations, and then nurtured on their processing journey to the hard nutty green bean. It is the work of the gardener, not the alchemist. Next time you are in the supermarket look at the packets of blends - where did the coffee come from? Would you drink wine that comes from "various countries"? How do you know what makes it taste like that? Could it taste better? Should it taste better for that price?
At Hill & Valley we will tell you everything you want to know about our coffee. We can bore you to death with it, if you like. The few blends we offer are not secret recipes - they are our opinion of what goes well with what - that's all. Our single origin coffees are just that. We try where we can to ensure tracability from individual family owned farms or growers co-operatives who seek accolades for their high quality. Where this is not possible, we support producers in evocative areas, such as the highlands of Ethiopia and coffee grown by failing tribal peoples in Indonesia. But only if the coffee measures up in the cup! We don't sell a "Kenya Blend", but we do have a Kenya AA Main Crop most of the time. We ask you to trust in the fact that we do not want to keep secrets from you. All we are is the means for you to appreciate the grower's craft in your cup. It is they who deserve your praise, not us, or any secret techniques that we may pretend to employ.
Come Discover with us!
We'd like you to go on a voyage of discovery in coffee and we'll try to help you along the way. Like us you'll find certain combinations that "hit the spot" and you'll stick with them for a while. You'll dabble, like us, and experiment. That's the fun. You shouldn't blend wines from different growing regios, but you as sure as hell can and should try blending coffees sometimes! We'll help you through the secrets of brewing - they are few. Grind just before brewing; use good water; get the right temperature; extract at the optimum rate for the machinery; wash up well. That is the route to coffee perfection.
The real secret about making great coffee is that it is not expensive or especially slow, but it can be wonderfully ritualistic. Espresso drinking in the morning in Italy is a ritual. A Cafezinho in Rio is a ritual. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony where coffee is roasted, brewed and drunk is the original coffee ritual. Take joy in your own coffee ritual, whatever it is - and never forget the many bare hands that your coffee had to pass through before it got to your lips.
Beans - why beans, not ground?
Simple - grinding takes away freshness. The outer skin of the bean is nature's way of guarding the flavour within. Once this seal is broken, a big part of the goodness flies away before it gets to the packet, never mind your cup. Each roasted coffee bean is a flavour capsule that the roaster has carefully allowed to stabilise with the volatile aromatics locked inside. We could try to explain the chemistry, but you can prove it yourself. Grind some coffee beans. Smell it. Come back in five minutes. Smell it again. Where did it go? Not in your cup. At Hill & Valley we will only sell you beans. Of course, if you don't see the importance you could try going to Majestic and try to buy some opened wine, but you may feel a little silly, and we don't really want to share it with you. So, please if you don't want to hurt our feelings, buy yourself a grinder from the vast array now available and never ask us to send you ground coffee.
Our role in the market today
When we started selling fresh coffee beans online in 2000, along with one or two others in the UK, we were pretty much pioneers in the field. That is not the case any more and we sincerely hope that this means that the sector overall is growing to the detriment of mass produced coffee. Those that buy their coffee in bean form from an online seller remain an extremely select band and in terms of the overall market for coffee in the UK, the whole sector remains statistically insignificant. In the last two years or so there has been a tendency of all these small roasters to buy from the best one or two importers and diversity of offer is not always what it should be. This seems a little unfair on the consumer, who deserves to be guided towards real choices.
The problem with coffee is that the subtle nuances of flavour between fine types can be undetectable, except to an experienced taster in control conditions. Variation in roast, water, brewing concentration and freshness / grind frequently masks these differences. This means that any offer of variety to the consumer must genuinely show detectable differences, ie. a real choice.
For this reason in 2006 we have decided to somewhat change our approach to our product range. We will be offering fewer coffees at any one time (rarely more than 8 or 10), but we will be offering distinguishable “styles” and rotate within those style bands frequently. In particular we hope to bring back coffees that you cannot find elsewhere from time to time and will be even more rigorous with ourselves on the issue of freshness, both green and roasted.
We have also decided after a certain amount of soul searching to withdraw from selling on our green beans in small quantities suitable for roasting in popcorn poppers and other kitchen devices. There are others supplying this market now, often with the same coffees, and having spent 20 odd years in trading green coffee, we hope you'll excuse us if we concentrate elsewhere. We have kept our bulk sales of green beans available to support semi-professional roasters who have to buy in smaller volumes.
# posted by Charles Massey @ 2:41 pm 
