Coffee is the number one beverage in the world, with over 400 million cups consumed per day and several hundred different designs of “Death Before Decaf” mugs selling well in Etsy stores worldwide. But most coffee drinkers don’t know that much about the beverage, which has a more complex and involved journey than you may think. Marc Murphy uses this episode of Food 360 to learn a lot more about this delicious, addicting drink from the men who would know: Giorgio Milos, Master Barista at Illy Coffee, and Todd Carmichael, the thrill-seeking co-founder and CEO of La Colombe, a specialty roasting company.
Giorgio tells Marc that coffee is an experience, not just a drink. The passion and care with which it is made is paramount. “Coffee is...even more complex than wine,” he says, pointing out that with coffee, you don’t buy the final product like you do with wine. “The barista is the winemaker of coffee. So a barista or home user can make a very great cup of coffee or a very bad cup of coffee...with the same good coffee.”
The journey from seed to cup is a long one, as Giorgio knows well. “A master barista, as I am, is a person who knows the agricultural production, knows how to taste the coffee...all the technical aspects of roasting, grinding, transformation. And also a master barista is someone who can share and teach.” He teaches Marc all about the coffee bean, which isn’t a bean at all, but the seed of the coffee fruit, usually called cherries. The coffee plant itself grows for a year before sprouting a beautiful flower that usually falls off within a few days, leaving the cherry behind. Nine months later, the cherry is ripe and ready to be harvested. Then it has to be washed and processed right away, just like grapes for wine.
But even carefully grown and processed coffee beans can be ruined in the roasting, as Todd tells Marc. “Coffee that...me and two other companies were bidding $479 a pound [for]. That’s how good that coffee was...But in two minutes on a roaster...you burn it, it’s going to taste like butt.”
Todd’s been through quite a bit for a d**n fine cup of coffee, even getting stabbed and shot at, because “coffee is in the isolated parts of isolated countries,” he says, growing on mountains where militia groups might hide, or where opium or poppies are planted. “But that’s where your farmers are. So you want to get in, take care of them, and then get out of dodge.” When he went to Haiti looking for the right beans after the devastating 2010 earthquake, the destruction he saw galvanized him to act. “As a farm kid, [I know] that selling your produce, your products to the market is what helps you survive. Without that, you lose the farm. And so what I saw when I saw the earthquake was there's going to be some coffee farmers who are going to lose their farms...the remedy would be more than just buying a container of coffee. It meant getting involved in the communities.” He was named Esquire’s American of the Year in part for his work reviving the coffee industry in Haiti. “Being on the ground is the number one ingredient to make sure that there’s no tears in your coffee,” he says. “You have to be there.”
Pour yourself a fresh cup and join Marc to learn how La Colombe’s draft lattes were inspired by shaving cream, how to engage all your senses when drinking a cup of coffee, what country is the most caffeinated, and plenty more to pore over in this episode of Food 360.
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