Notes on Craft Coffee

The best cup of coffee I have ever had was served in a paper cup by a man who could not have cared less about the cup it was in. He ran a small roastery in a converted garage in Lisbon, and the coffee was grown at altitude in Ethiopia and roasted the previous Thursday. He handed it to me without ceremony. It was extraordinary.

The worst cup of specialty coffee I have ever had was served in a carefully chosen ceramic vessel by a barista who explained the processing method, the elevation of the farm, and the specific flavor notes I was expected to detect. The coffee was fine. The experience was exhausting.

When the pursuit becomes the point

Craft coffee has a knowledge problem. The industry has, quite reasonably, spent the last twenty years building expertise — in sourcing, in roasting, in extraction science. The baristas at good coffee shops now understand their product at a level of detail that would seem extraordinary in almost any other food service context. This is genuinely good. Better knowledge has produced better coffee.

The problem is that knowledge, once accumulated, tends to want to be expressed. And there is a version of specialty coffee culture that has confused the expertise involved in making good coffee with the experience of drinking it. These are not the same thing.

What hospitality means

I have been thinking about a concept from restaurant culture: hospitality as the act of making someone feel at home, which is distinct from the act of impressing them. A great host reads the room. They share their enthusiasm when it is welcome and restrain it when it is not. They understand that the guest's comfort is more important than the host's expression.

The specialty coffee shops that I return to are the ones that have figured this out. They make extraordinary coffee without making you feel like a student. The knowledge is present in every decision they make, and mostly invisible to the person drinking. The cup does the talking. Everything else gets out of the way.

That is a harder thing to build than a great pour-over. It requires a different kind of skill — not technical mastery but the mastery of not showing your mastery. The best service is the service you do not notice because you were too busy enjoying yourself.