The Exchange: Episode 7 - The Coffee Roaster & Cupping Part 2
- An Inman rant on language.
- Clear and universal descriptions.
- Vinyl seats and Grandma's peach tree.
- Cupping language vs. marketing language.
- Sorting mat and defects handbook.
- Moisture meters.
- Color analysis.
- Density.
- Profiling software.
- Reasonable specifications.
- Water activity.
- Learning and calibrating.
- Importance of cupping with peers.
- Cupping through cooling.
- Everybody can taste.
- Cupping other roasters' coffees.
- Production cupping vs. tasting.
Available on iTunes and Full Transcript Below
PLEASE REMEMBER TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST IF YOU'RE AN ITUNES USER AND/OR FOLLOW OUR PODCAST ON SOUNDCLOUD
The Exchange is Presented by Olam Specialty Coffee
Hosted by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey
Directed by Mike Ferguson
All music is used under Creative Commons:
Opening Theme, Coffee On Ice by Seriousfun | cc-nd cc-nc cc-by Closing Theme, Summer Coffee by Theo Arnisound | cc-nd cc-nc cc-byEmail Mark and Todd with thoughts and questions, or to arrange to send in your roasted coffee for review at:
Mike Ferguson: Welcome back to the exchange presented by Owen Specialty Coffee and hosted by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey. I'm Mike Ferguson. This is Episode Seven, and once again we're concluding the topic in two parts. Mark and Todd are finishing a conversation that began in Episode Six on cupping and quality insurance. Last episode we interrupted Mark just as he was about to go on an Inman-esque rant about one of his pet peeves, and that's where we join them now. Here they are, Mark and Todd.
Mark Inman: -that I personally feel don't belong on a normal evaluation form but are clearly used for marketing purposes.
Todd Mackey: And to that you're talking about essentially descriptors that are [crosstalk 00:01:01].
Mark Inman: Language.
Todd Mackey: Wooing the customer into [crosstalk 00:01:04]
Mark Inman: Yeah, I'm a big stickler. I'll give you my little rant here. I was going to save this for later, but the whole time you've been talking of it it's been gnawing at me. I'm going to... This isn't the wine talking yet, but it might be a precursor to that. We, meaning the industry, has created a clear set of language to communicate the attributes of coffee, and that's the SCA Cupping Wheel that we've had for... there's an updated one now, but we've had it for a long time. Similar to the Davis Wine Wheel for those people who have heard of that before.
Mark Inman: It's a list of aromas and taste and defects and qualities within coffee. But it's a specific set of language that should be universal. When you're traveling to El Salvador and you're cupping with people there, they're using that as a tool, and that tool should be used by you. What I have seen in the past, which drove me up the wall and still drives me up the wall today, I'll give you an example. Two cuppers, I'm not going to say who they are, but they're contemporaries of mine, a/k/a fellow old people.
Mark Inman: This was at a time when all of the buyers were trying to really up this whole Indiana Jones image, or tortured artist image as a coffee buyer. We were at a COE event. If you've ever been to a Cup of Excellence event you go evaluate the coffees, you do your form, then you meet in a room and you go through what you experienced and how you cupped. You're in a room with cuppers from all over the United States, as well as the country that you're working in. You have the national cuppers from whatever country you're cupping in, and usually a handful of foreign cuppers. It could be Japanese cuppers and Europeans cuppers.
Mark Inman: The language is the form or the wheel. That's what people are using. During this era, which is probably one of the most nauseating eras in coffee, I had one cupper who would say... He was on this whole Jim Morrison kick, where it was, "Yeah, this coffee tastes like a '78 Firebird with worn out vinyl seat."
Todd Mackey: No that can't be true.
Mark Inman: You see the national cuppers, "Wait a minute. What's he saying?" And they're trying to ask the question of "What do you mean by vinyl seats? Is that the taste of petroleum?" "No, no, no, no, you know like the worn out seats with a little character, but they just have a little bit of soul in them." Then we get to another coffee and it would be... he was on this whole auto kick. "This one is like a '71 Capri. Just bad engine and just leaks oil. Not up to par." You could just see the cuppers from not only the country but from other countries like Europe and Japan just throwing up their arms like, "What in the hell is this person talking about?"
Mark Inman: The whole goal was, "I have more of a pallette than you do, and I'm tasting from an abstract, artistic perspective, where you're dealing with pedestrian comments." It came off as annoying. The other thing that annoyed me, or got me was "this coffee has a distinct note of this peach that was grown on my grandmother's farm on this area in South Carolina." It's like, we can all relate to that. That's a great universal note that we should all write down. Because we've all been to your grandmother's farm and have tasted that peach. Luckily, I believe that time has passed, and we're not doing that anymore, but my strong feeling is when you're cupping for evaluation purposes, for buying purposes, for competition purposes, stick to the wheel. Because it's the language that we should all relate to.
Mark Inman: Now, when you go back and you roast for the public, go nuts, because then you're setting the tone for what your coffee is talking about. It doesn't have to follow any rules and can get as esoteric and avant garde as are those two examples I gave. Because that's entertaining to customers and is endearing and will feed that mistake of this buyer's, really he's an artist, and he's cutting through the jungle and discovering the hidden gems of the world. You feed that while fantasy. But in an industry setting or a professional setting, you're not doing a service to anybody by using those descriptors because they're not relatable.
Todd Mackey: Yeah. There's a time and a place for a point of view when you get into actually creating your why and messaging out words to your consumer. You can easily, you describe every coffee that you're seeing as a certain car with a certain interior and a certain lingering smell, or a certain vibe or music coming through.
Mark Inman: Like for that example, if you're selling to auto heads, I saw this really cool packaging recently, it looks like a paint thinner can and it has each label was a car. It was a Le Mans car or a stock car. Somebody posted it on social media. Yeah, if you want to go nuts with car themes and you're speaking to car people, have at it, man, that's really cool. But when you're in Peru and you're having a person, a farmer or a few sea person at a mill trying to understand the language, to be on the same page with you, to sell you coffee or to get feedback, that's not helping anyone to do that.
Todd Mackey: Sure. I'm sorry to riff on the whole auto marketing thing, but that can style that's like carburetor cleaner or something, it's almost like a tapered can, that could be cool. I didn't see anything like that but someone's got to take that gem and make something out of it. But the bottom line here, just to land the plane, is those marketing cuppings should be their own thing. It's almost like its own isolated variable saying, "How are we going to sell this coffee is the question, instead of are we going to sell this coffee, or are we going to buy this coffee, or is this coffee tasting as it should?" I think that's entirely appropriate.
Todd Mackey: Regardless of where anybody comes down on the question of do really poetic or esoteric descriptors, are they helping or hurting when it comes to marketing? I think that there's a lot of justification for saying one and/or the other. Companies that market on the color of a particular package for a product. There's companies that market on a description. There's room for both. Maybe you cup those Fridays to determine what color goes with it. Maybe you cup to determine how you describe it and sell. Maybe you do both. Either way it shouldn't be something that's intermixed with your purchasing decisions or-
Mark Inman: Oh no, definitely not. And I think you do need to be careful though about being too crazy with your language on your packaging because if it's not relatable, if it's something that the end consumer is saying, "I'm not getting those qualities at all," then they're going to feel like "Well, I'm wasting my money because I'm not picking up the attributes that I'm supposed to be picking up, and I'm spending a premium. So maybe I'm better off buying a cheaper coffee because I can taste those attributes. It's simpler."
Mark Inman: You have to have a couple of those notes where someone's like, "Aha, I actually do taste that. Yeah, I got it." Then that marketing's working beautifully. But if you go too nuts. I've seen some packages that are outright ludicrous, and not everybody is a registered silver pallette out there. I would say be relatable as possible.
Todd Mackey: Yeah, more people are going to feel confident and have a good experience when they say, "Wow, this is coffee. I taste coffee," then when they read, "Lavender and elderflower," and they're like, "I taste coffee." The only thing better than a great description is when that great description matches the cup. That's what's going to really endear someone. In the northeast, we still see a lot of consumers when they see this type of description on package, we still see people curious if there's some adulterant in it, some flavoring.
Mark Inman: That still happens out here too. When you say chocolaty, they're like, "Well does this have chocolate flavoring in it?" No, no, no. That's not. If you're hearing that a lot, then it's time to eliminate that off your package.
Todd Mackey: Yeah, for sure. It's a fun digression we're making, but let's get back to quality assurance, quality control. The marketing thing is not a small piece of it. It's a huge piece being that it's the prevailing message that goes out for any company, at least it better be going out to the majority of people who they engage with. Beyond that, getting back to the lab, and as companies grow, one huge aspect of quality that we have not touched on in the slightest so far is physical analysis. When you're starting as a young company, really bootstrapping it, a lot of this equipment can be price prohibitive. The sense of importance to a lot of young upstart companies to spend the money to really outfit a green coffee lab with these tools. The sense of importance isn't there yet.
Todd Mackey: But as they level up, there's a lot of physical aspects that are monitored by larger, more complex companies. There's good reason there. What is your recommendation and what do you recommend as a way to start with this? What are your biggest recommendations against certain approaches, potentially negative, that physical specs can run into? Then, how would you suggest, to what level for a small to mid-size roaster would you suggest really investing in this side of your quality assurance program?
Mark Inman: Sure. I'll start from the best to the more superfluous and take it in that direction. I think the firsthand foremost is a sorting mat, a black mat, or a black piece of paper. And a defect book. I don't think enough buyers or QC people actually physically grade coffee as much as they should. That to me is one of the most powerful tools in negotiating price because maybe the grade is not what you have been told it is or you think it is, and you can negotiate price down or spot massive problems with a lot of coffee. That is a very simple investment of a defect handbook and a large black mat, and physically going through the samples and pulling out defects one by one.
Todd Mackey: Yeah, you're talking about not even $50 USD.
Mark Inman: No, nothing. But you should be doing it, especially if you're buying in quantity. Because again this is the largest expenditure you're going to be in charge of in your company, and you want to make sure you're actually buying what you're being told is available. Or if you are noticing that certain origins, their defect count is much higher and you don't really like that, maybe it's an origin you don't need in your lineup. There's a tradition of well, these are kind of funky by nature, and that's just how it is. That doesn't mean you have to necessarily play in that arena if you don't want to.
Mark Inman: I think the second tool that is important is a moisture meter. Although I don't think it's crucial initially. I think it does help, especially if you're buying at origin, so you're getting a preship sample, and then you're getting a landed sample that the coffee is not nose diving in moisture or doesn't come in with extremely high moisture where mold can be an issue. I don't think that that's something right away is necessary. If you have it, it's great. It's great to have. It's a wonderful tool. Most importers will measure that for you. There's no vested interest in them not to be perfectly upfront with the moisture content. It's not a huge expense you're talking about. $400 I think for a decent moisture meter that will work.
Mark Inman: Color analyzers. There's a handful of brands out there. I think those are great if you're roasting in very, very large volumes for very, very large clients that need you to hit a certain roast color spec over and over and over again, and your profitability is based on not losing extra moisture that you don't need to lose. It's an extremely expensive investment. I don't necessarily think it's a worthwhile one for most of the people listening to this podcast. I have never seen a need for it as a roaster. But I've never really worked for a master roasting company. I don't know. I've never had one.
Mark Inman: You can get buy with color tiles and things like that. Other than that you're talking, again, roaster, your grinder, your spoons, your cups, your forms. I don't know any other hardware that I would think are necessary. Todd do you have ones that you were thinking about specifically?
Todd Mackey: Yeah, I think a couple of tools for roaster that really from a quality standpoint can take you leaps and bounds further. One very basic is just having a 500 ML graduated cylinder and scale where you can be monitoring the densities of the coffees you're being offered, you're picking up, and that you're roasting. Just like batch size control is going to be one of the largest prevailing aspects as to how you might approach a coffee in the roaster. You're talking even less money, really. You probably are, already if you're cupping you already have the good scale that goes to a tenth or a hundredth of a gram. To get a plastic graduated cylinder on amazon.com is almost nothing. You're talking about less than what it would cost you to get a grading book and a black sheet or a black or mat or whatever works.
Todd Mackey: This is going to be the type of thing for me that is going to be a guiding light when it comes to setting an expectation for profiling a coffee before you even drop a batch. Other than that, I think that in my opinion we're seeing profiling software ala Cropster and others as a way that some of the finish roasted tools like a color meter, Agtron, Javalytics, we're seeing control of process more integrated and more attentively followed. I think that that's... it's not only a substitution for something binary like color is it this range or out. But it's also something you can with analyzing finish colors, you can hit a variety of profiles at the same finish color whether whole bean and/or ground for a given coffee.
Todd Mackey: That doesn't necessarily answer the question when we're in specialty with finish quality as really the prevailing value proposition that justifies the added premium that we're asking for and we're ultimately delivering upstream. I think that those do prevail in my mind as the right first step. If you have a large industrial roaster, and you'll see this in large industrial, commercialized roasting companies where they might have Agtron color meters at three or four different specific points in their process where a coffee is pulled from the silo immediately post-roast, it's measured once it's ground, it's pulled before it's packaged, and then it's pulled both leaving the warehouse, and maybe even pulled and third party is auditing the finished roasted color from a distributors warehouse.
Todd Mackey: You see this can be really complex. Moisture would be another part of that. I do think that for small to midsized specialty roasters, process control can really remove the need for some of that really cost-prohibitive hardware while also increasing the capacity to control the sensory aspects of the coffee, which ultimately matter to the space that they're sitting in much, much more.
Todd Mackey: The only thing otherwise, it's not a tool by any stretch, but it's certainly a philosophy that when it comes to physical quality, needs to be applied is that you just have to be reasonable when you're creating specifications. It's fine and good, and I don't know if you've run into this, but I've definitely had customers come to me and say, "Well, I need a coffee that cups 85 plus, but it needs to be 11.1 to 11.3 moisture. It has to be this color, this defect inventory, this particular density." Another that we haven't touched on we can get into is water activity, which is the measure of respiration, or free humidity also related to shelf stability and the longevity of a freshness of a coffee, as well as the stability in shipment.
Todd Mackey: Ultimately you can lay those out but at a point someone in my position is going to say, "I can't sell you that, A, because maybe I don't physically have that; but, B, because origin won't deliver those specs.
Mark Inman: It can't guarantee that they can...
Todd Mackey: Exactly. Maybe there's a price at which they could. But more often than not, you're talking about something that's unrealistic that most sellers are going to scoff at and say that's really not a possibility even when coffee is cared for at the very upper, upper reaches. Have that type of sober approach where you know what matters when you monitor the physicals around your grand and your finished roasted coffee and create a spec for both if you're outfitted to do so that is realistic and that does actually have its limits at places that are "actionable," where, cool if a coffee falls out of this moisture, I don't want it because it's not going to be workable. Or similar, that kind of thing.
Todd Mackey: Have you don't much with water activity? I know there are a lot of open areas of study. I know a lot of folks also looking at and monitoring coffees under blacklight for consistence and taking really detailed physical notes there. But obviously there's still a lot to be learned. These are metrics that have only really been started to be looked at in recent years. The amount of data is still mounting. I'm curious [crosstalk 00:22:24].
Mark Inman: I have customers who've tested the water activity. That was a little bit after my time as a roaster. I wasn't really involved in measuring that, but do have clients today that do that.
Todd Mackey: For sure. We kind of got into calibration with the industry in your extreme frustration with the overmarketing of coffee during professional cuppings when we should be scoring, calibrating and working in a more collaborative way with our industry peers. A good closing segment, maybe segment is an understatement on how long we could riff on this, but the way to bring things to a close. We're talking about cupping, we're talking about physical QA, process around creating a meaningful marketing strategy around describing coffee. All of these things are a part of how we cup coffee, and the sort of respiration of any given roasting company's QA/QC process.
Todd Mackey: Let's say you're a relatively young roaster in the scene. You are excited to be cupping coffees. You've built a space that's comfortable. It encourages you to get in there. You're cupping regularly. But you're part of a small team. You're looking for ways to build yourself up to agree more and/or calibrate with the industry around you that you're a part of. What are the best ways that you in your experience have done so? Ways that you constantly find yourself encouraging new folks to the coffee business to get involved. And anecdotal stories or things you've learned over time as to how to approach that idea of appraising coffee as adequately calibrating with your peers. Take it away.
Mark Inman: I think attending as many roasters guilds retreats. If you can get into COE Jury, that's important. If you could judge a good food awards event. Any exposure to your peer group in cupping is a good thing. I know that for many it's intimidating. But don't let that stuff get in your head. This is about cupping with your peers, evaluating coffees together, understanding how other people use language to describe coffees. Things that they're picking up that you may not be picking. That was always a huge learning lesson for me. Things that people were finding or issues that they were having.
Mark Inman: I learned a long time ago, I would cup the coffees on the first round, maybe go around a second round. But there are people going three, four times around the table. They were reporting how that coffee changes as it cools and what they were experiencing. That opened eyes to I need to be a little bit more patient on the table. I need to spend more time going through that coffee, not just blasting through it, getting my initial impressions and thinking that that's all that matters. This coffee's dynamic and it's changing as it cools. As a seller, am I selling coffee through a drive thru where the client is in the car and drinking that coffee over their commute where the coffee is going to get cool. Or am I just doing an espresso bar where people pop up and do a shot and walk away. It doesn't matter what that coffee tastes like as it cools.
Mark Inman: Those are the things that I think are important to learn about. I think doing things like the Q grading course is important professionally and just personally to stretch your knowledge about cupping and cupping protocol, and how to evaluate coffees in different formats. I don't think that there's anything that's a bad idea. I think where things become problematic is when you get your ego involved and you're trying to sell yourself as somebody with superhuman powers at the cupping table. Everybody can taste. It's like a muscle. If you want to run a marathon or if you want to be good at crossfit, the way to do it is just to do it a lot. That's the only secret. Nobody has some magic secret talent. Don't get sucked in by that. It's just practice, practice, practice.
Mark Inman: If you find peers in the coffee industry that are friends of yours and they're not necessarily competitors, having a weekly Skype cupping session where you guys send each other coffees and you cup them and then you get together and talk about them. I think all that stuff is very positive, and the more you can do it... Or, how do you market it once you've got it? Once you've evaluated the coffee for purchasing, what's the successful language for selling that coffee? I think that's were you get to have a little more fun and be a little more loose.
Mark Inman: But there's certainly language that works and language that doesn't work in that marketing spectrum.
Todd Mackey: One thing I loved that we did when I was working in the roasting sphere years ago is we'd always bring in coffees from other roasters. People that might have had the same lots to see what they would do with them. Coffee from other roasters we respected that we knew were putting out good product. Coffee that we were curious based on how someone was describing and marketing a coffee. That '71 Capri with vinyl seats, what does that mean? Okay, let's taste it, let's see.
Todd Mackey: Even beyond that, just the opportunity to sit as a sensory judge for barista competitions or brewers cup, is also a fantastic way to come up, become calibrated, and get to taste and classify a bunch of really progressive coffees made by these companies' best people in a really competitive environment. To expand the number of sensory data points that you can pull from, all of that stuff is really, really invaluable. Yeah, to put a wrap on it, what did we miss, Mark? Do you feel like we've left this incomplete in any way?
Mark Inman: Just briefly, I always had a hard time with the concept of production cupping in the sense of cupping coffee that you've roasted for production in a traditional cupping bowl and spoon and all that. Especially when you get into things like dark roast where if you've ever cupped a dark roast coffee in the bowl it's just mud. There's nothing to evaluate. It's very hard in that medium to do that. For me production-wise I always went to brewing as a way of evaluating. A, that's how my customers experienced the product, and B, I can test that product in a number of ways right there on the fly. If I brewed in French presses or if I brewed using pour overs, I can take some of that liquid and add cream and sugar to it. I could add just cream, I could taste it black and say, "Okay, in these formats, this is what works, this is what doesn't."
Mark Inman: It allowed me to recommend also, this is a great coffee with, say, cream and sugar, or this is a coffee that you are a cream and sugar person, you want to try it without, give it a whirl on this coffee. But you won't know that unless you play with that coffee. I have always been a fan of production brewing, not necessarily of production cupping.
Todd Mackey: Mark, I am running dry over here. My can is empty. I don't know how you're doing on your wine, but I think we're coming into a close here. Any final remarks for our listeners tonight on QA/QC program set up.
Mark Inman: Any questions that you have if you want further elaboration that you email us at the exchange at olamnet.com. That's O-L-A-M-N-E-T dot.com, and we'd be happy to elaborate on anything that we overlooked tonight. But, no, for the most part I think we've covered it.
Todd Mackey: And that's on-air as well as by email. We'll be happy to respond with specific questions off air if there's anything we can help directly with the exchange at olamnet.com, we'll look forward to hearing from you. But, Mark, it was awesome to join you. I really appreciate getting to chat through this as always.
Mark Inman: Yeah, our first night show, and I think it went well. We both stayed relatively sober so we didn't make full of ourselves.
Todd Mackey: I appreciate. We'll see what Mike does, what ends up on the cutting room floor, and we'll go from there. Thank you everyone for tuning into the exchange by Olam Specialty Coffee. Mark, I hope you have a wonderful night. I look forward to doing this again.
Mark Inman: You too, Todd.
Mike Ferguson: Yes, you've been listening to the exchange presented by Olam Specialty Coffee, a podcast that is reminiscent of my father's yellow 1976 Ford Pinto Stallion with cloth seats in the month of June. The exchange is hosted by Mark Inman and Todd Mackey and directed by Mike Ferguson. In honor of the official end of summer in just a few days, our opening theme was Coffee on Ice by Serious Fun. And our closing theme, Summer Coffee by Theo [Arnisow 00:32:14]. All music is used under creative commons. Remember you can email Mark and Todd for any reason except to borrow money at the exchange olamnet.com. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time at the exchange presented by Olam Specialty Coffee.
