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2010-09-02
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It became quite an embarrassing moment 1 day when I was made known that in the past, a fair few people (even a couple of non-Asian readers) used to follow me around drinking coffees in Hong Kong's cafes! It was a little unexpected. Yet somehow, 1 day I decided to stop posting regularly, and I had my own reasons for doing so: 1stly I wasn't really there to judge coffees from the outset. I was barely trying to act as a Stimulus for the local coffee scene, so that more cafes can become aw
But as one becomes more and more familiar with faces, baristas or befriended shop owners who recognise you back, it became a pain to criticize anything they do online. Unless it was really good, then you will happily give them the unequivocal support!! On the other hand, I guess I've been lax with my ratings lately, tryng too hard to be friendly, encouraging and mildly critical if they could catch what I say, just because everyone only loves hearing the good news and not the bad part. Many cafes such as this one, I didn't even bother rating it despite having tried dozens more ever since from many months ago ~ I know they won't be happy hearing what I'm about to say. But thinking back, may be this could make for an interesting review.
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COFFEE OF THE WORLD AND SHEUNG WAN -
One of the open secrets within the Sheung Wan area is that the same Local Coffee Roaster, supplies the coffee beans to 3 individual cafes within this area, forming a triangle of cafes (鐵三角) at this part of town - namely the well known COCO ESPRESSO, BARISTA JAM, as well as GRAZE. And they certainly share common similarities with each other.
1) GRAZE not only sources beans from the same supplier as Coco Espresso, but they use nearly the same coffee blend.
2) GRAZE uses the exact same La Marzocco GB/5 2 Group Espresso Machine as Barista Jam, with Dual Boilers, Pre-infusion system, full PID and Electronics loopback monitoring and controls over Temperature, Solenoid operated Pressure Stats, Adjustable on the fly Steam Pressure, Saturated Brewing Group, etc. This is a high end coffee machine costing the upper end of 5 figures, which unlike most other heat exchanger machines used by other cafes, even including Holly Brown, Coco Espresso, Oscar's Espresso, Dane's, Soulmate, etc, has full Electronic on-the-fly control and Adjustments of most of its variables without the need to peel off the Front Panel for minute modifications and it should be absolutely stable without temperature surfing. Just press the buttons!
Having had the rare opportunity to exchange coffee information with a well reknowned Coffee Roaster and licensed World Barista Judge of the 2010 Competition recently in a cafe, who was stopping by over Hong Kong back from London's recent competition , we had a quick chat about the updates and information as to how coffee these days have changed slightly in nature in approach, initiated by 3rd Wave coffee enthuasists, which bears little relation to textbook coffee knowledge established from more than 100 years ago in Italy. And it should also be noted that since roughly 2 years ago the Judging Standards have also evolved to cater for these inevitable changes. For example although studying the Crema component of a coffee was never really considered truly indicative of an Espresso base's potential, as it can in maximum only score 12 Points out of a possible 62 Points for each Espresso. which gives it only as much weighting as serving espresso correctly with the right utensils and napkins, which also nets you max 12 points - the relevant point that was stressed is how nowadays there has been so many varying styles of extracting coffees sourced from different regions or via the upcoming new Machineries which have been invented for these purposed (and yes, these haven't landed in HK yet!) - it is now on the onus of the Trained Barista to be able to understand and express how their Single Origin or Blended coffee beans ought to be made, to extract their full potential taste and impressing the sensory judges with their coffee understanding. Sometimes, this might even involve having a lighter coloured and sacrificed crema layer, because it suits the particular Estate's coffee better - it doesn't indicate that it is wrong to carry less crema, because as long as it can reflect what the Barista is trying to achieve from their own understanding and also managing to impress the Sensory Judges with their knowledge and calibrations all that matters is the taste, which scores the majority of points. Afterall, the winner of the WBC 2010 Michael Phillips did exactly just this to win his well deserved trophy.
Let's not delve into the Technicalities of crema colours or persistency factors, which are more hardcore and beyond the scope of writing on Openrice, as they describe how Crema Judgment really should work and what it implies, as it is not a means to an end. May be I should start a blog on that topic 1 day. Let's just say that a lot of the information online nowadays are either spreaded rumours or not entirely up-to-date, as coffee is actually changing every minute and year little by little, gradually detaching itself from the Italian heritage or published prints for good reason. And do you think I should trust a World Barista Championship Judge on what he says in person infront of me, or just on internet hearsay ?
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SINGLE ESPRESSO -
My Single Espresso finally arrived and on the top sat a mid-reddish-brown crema layer, which was smooth and rollingly elastic correctly but not overly porous thick, about just right for this type of narrow-necked demitasse cup. After adjusting for the difference of cups used, its roughly around the same as an espresso served at Coco Espresso which uses a wider demitasse. (Coco's is also without much stable or thickish crema inside the cup, its actually quite thin, as these are only observed during the extraction process itself before it dissipates in the cup, due to the Blend characteristic). Its a 100% Arabica beans without the Robusta, the latter often used to established a fuller body at the compromise of better taste, a trend of the Southern Italian style but slightly out of date with current coffee trends and slightly considered a taboe nowadays at anything beyond a 10% ratio. My espresso was a tad over-pulled too long into Lungo territory but still acceptable volume wise, still well under the traditional Italian's older definition of a 30ml shot by default, which nowadays when using normal sized portafilter baskets is considered well extracted out of range and long into the 3rd extraction stage (or if you go by the 7 layers theory, the last 2 layers are undesirable). Perhaps around 20-25ml per shot is more suitable, depending on your grind dosage, blend and basket size used.
Remembering that this is a Coffee Blend nearly exactly the same as Coco Espresso, and that the Machine is also used by the coffee geek Willian @ Barista Jam with super stable full loopback circuitry boards controlling each single aspects, also knowing that often overly emphasised Crema colour and level are deemed to be visually correct ~ yet why oh why did my Espresso still tasted so bitter, undrinkable and also burnt in taste with that smokiness trait. That's compared to the similar Coco Espresso's lovely and mildly acidic espresso of the same beans, which Johnson only makes do with a lower end machine with a fluctuating temperature, which he used his skills to tame?
By using the Elimination Process, we can arrive to 1 or 2 conclusions. The Barista at Graze, or more like an unqualified coffee maker, whilst not completely clueless just doesn't seem to understand how to finely calibrate his Machine's settings correctly, especially the temperature side of things to suit. Nor does he have the right palate to distinguish between what is deemed bad or acceptable. This is unacceptable for someone using a super stable GB/5 machine. And this Elimination Process which I'd come to learn does not involve much guesswork, it involves just simple logic and which higher grade baristas such as William from Barista Jam or Cafe Corridor's Felix knows fully well the theory, or perhaps a few more people I haven't mentioned.
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FINAL WORD:
This might sound cruel to bring up an topic just to present a personal view point, but I have avoided bringing up this subject for the last year and hopefully, fellow baristas wouldn't mind me referring to this old piece of information. As many coffee lovers have been aware, the local media has published a lot of information about new cafes such as Holly Brown which has recruited the top gun baristas in Hong Kong, who either received a trophy on the podium or had previously competed in national competitions. The most well known of these being Tracy, the No.1 Winner of the locally helded Hong Kong Grand Barista Championship in 2009.
The local magazines might have goddified and glorified her to no ends for winning the local arm of the competition, but did anyone even bothered reporting the fact that in the grander and multi-national 2009 Australasian GBC competition in Sydney, our Hong Kong Representative actually arrived dead last and amassing only 193.75 Points, vs the eventual No.1 Winner Jesse Hyde who had won convincing with over 300 Points, whilst others sharing the podium spots scored somewhere around the 260-270 points range. Even the lowly ranked Thailand competitor Peeka Piyawan received 253.00 points in his feat.
Final Results Link:
http://www.danes.com.au/gbc-history/
There is actually a massive delta in performance and it really highlights the vast distance between HK's barista's coffee knowledge, understanding and on stage performance (language barrier aside) vs the Rest of Australasia, and that's not even including Japan which does no compete in this event, nor the rest of the World which only competes in WBC, not GBC level. And we are talking about the No.1 Barista Winner in Hong Kong competing, not just some wannabe amateurish coffee writer like myself online. So sorry to Tracy for abruptly bringing this topic back up as it might sound discouraging or disrespectful, but this is the real scenario guys. And by the same token, it should only give us more 團結的 incentive to improve tremendously this year and be prepared to fight on a more competitive level, which I can already feel we have stepped up our game majorly in 2010, before our eventual local winner and final representative from next week's HK GBC competition, will fly over to enter this year's Australasia 2010 Competition in Sydney latter in September... Go kick some arse, girls and boys !
張貼
