Barista? Roaster? Brewer?
Who is the kings and queens of the coffee flavour?
This has been one of the most interesting but also difficult task for s coffee professional to explain to general public.
Why does "Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Chelchele-Halo" taste like a floral white fruit wine, where "Ethiopia Sidamo Guji" taste like a hot berry cider? The topic has been widely discussed. Every couple years down the track, a new theory comes up and evolve a new discussion on the same topic. This could be confusing…
Let us park a few thoughts in our head to help us visualise how coffee comes about.
To put it simply, if we think coffee as wine:
- COFFEE = WINE
- CHERRY = GRAPES
- TREE = VINE
- FARM = VINEYARD
- PRODUCER = GROWER
- ROASTER = MAKER
- BARISTA = SOMMELIER
Many people think that roasters and baristas are the queens and kings of the coffee business. Generally, they deserved their fair share of spotlight – there really is a degree of magic in transforming a pile of green coffee bean into roasted coffee bean. After all, it is not as simple as ROASTING/BROWNING them on top of your stove, as the result will be no where near.
However, there is another person (or a group of individuals) who deserves if anything some sort of the same spotlight, and definitely a crown of his/her own; the producer who provide roastery the raw material, green bean.
It is easy to get lost between the bags and flashy marketing, but coffee is pretty much like wine where it is an agricultural product.
Since it is such a big topic, We are only going to do an introduction this time and expand the multiple topics later in each of the blog post.
The whole journey is what we called "Seed To Cup" and the true understanding toward coffee and its flavours.