Bean encounter

Tahira Yaqoob

• Last Updated: November 17. 2009 5:01PM UAE / November 17. 2009 1:01PM GMT

Judges analyse a competitor in the first National UAE Barista championship, held as part of the Speciality Coffee and Tea Convention in Dubai last week. Paulo Vecina / The National

Stephen Morrissey’s eyes glaze over and he gets a faraway look as he murmurs rapturously: “You will never taste anything like it.”

He jealously nurses his prized packet of coffee beans, the world’s most expensive at Dh364 per half pound, and scoffs at the suggestion anyone would know what to do with them: “You have to have a fairly advanced knowledge of how to make coffee to realise the potential of the cup.”

If there was any doubt about his true passion, one only has to look at the name of the coffee – La Esmeralda, named after the bewitching beauty in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame – to realise the power the black gold has over aficionados.

A cup of the stuff costs $10 (Dh36.7) in the US – and that is before any Emirates Palace-style gold flakes have been added.

Indeed, the Dublin-born Morrissey, who peppers his sentences with words like “varietals” and “microclimates”, believes coffee is wasted in the hands of those who think it is enough to simply stick it in a machine. He thinks everyone whipping up a brew should be made to follow the kind of technical scoresheet used by judges to measure the standards of baristas worldwide.

He is not alone. Last week he was among hundreds of coffee experts who descended on Dubai for the city’s first Speciality Coffee and Tea Convention.

They came, they swilled, they spat out. And one thing they all agreed on was that while the coffee-quaffing scene is a burgeoning market in the UAE, there is a long way to go before we can declare ourselves true connoisseurs.

“If I gave you a bag of the finest roasted coffee beans in the world, you could do a thousand things to ruin it,” says Morrissey, 27, the winner of the 2008 World Barista Championship and now the director of education for Intelligentsia, a Chicago-based roasting firm.

He started out as a musician seven years ago, but while studying and working part-time in a coffee shop, Morrissey discovered a talent for making pretty patterns in the foam.

Realising that his knack for turning out hearts and flowers in cappuccinos far outstripped those of his musical abilities, he decided to turn it into a career. Four years ago, after coming a lowly third in the World Latte Art contest (yes, there really is such a thing) he resolved to become the best brewer on the planet.

“That was the first time I saw baristas who even had their own tamper,” he says, referring to the device used to flatten coffee in a portafilter before brewing it. “I now have 30 of my own.”

The championship is there to educate and present a standard, he says. “It comes down to simple things like cleaning your machine and using freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee.

“The level here is high but I think there is a lack of knowledge about how to brew coffee,” he says of the UAE. “To learn how, you just need to care, source good coffee, brew it well and be passionate about it and you will have an advantage. If you give me bad coffee to begin with, there is nothing I can do with it.”

John Sherwood, one of the barista competition judges, goes so far as to say that serving up a bad coffee is the equivalent of going to a restaurant and “having your food thrown in front of you”.

He adds: “It is the same as having cooks and chefs. Chefs take more pride in their work, and their technical ability – plus the preparation they put into their job – produces a totally different quality.”

But it seems appreciation is growing, helped in part by the proliferation of international coffee chains springing up in the UAE. Starbucks opened its first outlet in the Emirates 20 years ago; now there are more than 250. More than 50 Caribou Coffee joints abound, while Gloria Jean’s, Costa and Dome outlets are rife. The impact they have had cannot be underestimated, and has turned the trend for tea seen elsewhere in the GCC on its head.

The UAE is the only nation in the region where coffee sales outstrip those of tea, with most of us downing an average 3.5kg of coffee a year, nearly twice as much as our neighbours.

Nearly 6,000 tonnes of coffee were sold in the UAE last year, while sales of both coffee and tea in Starbucks soared from Dh143 million in 2007 to Dh170m last year.

Ric Rhinehart, the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, puts its popularity down to a combination of factors: a high disposable income, which is often linked to high spending on coffee as a “luxury” item, the large number of expatriates importing habits from their countries of origin and a desire in Middle Eastern society to emulate western customs.

Couple that with the fact that coffee is deeply entrenched in the history of the region – it was thought to have been discovered in the ninth century and was widely drunk throughout the Middle East by the 15th century – and Rhinehart predicts the next few years will witness an explosion in the varieties and specialist brews available.

“Substantial potential for growth exists,” he says. “The industry is primarily driven by multinational brands but there is clearly an opportunity for independents.

“Coffee has enormous potential in the speciality and consumer markets. I have seen evidence there will be a connoisseurship in the Middle East and a focus on quality brands and products not sold on the mass market.”

It cannot come soon enough for the Dubai-based Mate Nezval, a self-styled “coffee whisperer” who claims the beans talk to him. He was chosen as one of a panel of seven technical and sensory judges to decide who should go forward as the UAE’s first entrant in the global barista contest next year.

Nezval, 27, whose Hungarian family owns a coffee machine production firm, says: “As soon as I hear the grind or the steam, I know what to expect.

“There are some notes when the milk is being steamed – it is like the milk is talking to you. A high noise when beans are being ground means the blades are too close together. When I hear that, I am already thinking I am not planning to return, even before I have tasted the drink.”

As a technical judge, he has to pay attention to such minute details as how many grains of coffee are spilt when contestants fill their portafilters, their method in using a tamper and even whether they cross hands while making coffee – a big no-no in connoisseur circles.

“If you are crossing hands, you cannot see what you are doing,” he says. “Are these rules important? If you follow them, there is a higher chance the coffee will taste nicer than if you do not.

“It is so easy to make bad coffee. The important thing is, even if you have made a wonderful espresso, being able to do it all over again.”

Gwilym Davies, last year’s world-champion barista, pooh-poohs the suggestion there is such a thing as the perfect espresso. The 42-year-old former civil servant from London was once an avid instant coffee drinker. Now he doesn’t let the stuff pass his lips.

“Coffee is not just a taste, it is a beautiful thing of habit,” he says. “Espressos are a way of showing off beans from, say, a farm in Colombia.”

He talks through the process as he brews an espresso, flushing old granules from his machine and measuring out an 18g shot (between 14g and 24g are ideal), then pressing it down with a tamper.

He scowls as a little ripple appears on the surface of the coffee. “When the water hits it, it needs to be flat so it gives an even resistance. That way it will extract more and the espresso has more texture.”

To demonstrate, he strains off the liquid into three glasses. Tasting the first, a thick sludge, is like sucking on lemons; the second full-bodied fluid with a caramel-coloured crema is “the perfect flush”; and the final glass, with a watery liquid and cream-coloured top, is “over-extracted and bland”.

“I would rather have something that tastes of blueberries and toffee,” he says. Coffee should contain a balance of citrus notes as well as an earthy quality, he adds.

Using ground coffee or beans more than a fortnight after they have been roasted is a huge faux pas. So is letting your coffee maker get dirty or using boiling water. As for decaffeinated coffees, “I’d rather have a cup of tea,” Davies gasps.

Is there such a thing as coffee snobbery? “One of our aims is to break that down,” he says without a hint of irony.

Cindy Chang, the executive director of the World Barista Championship, says: “Coffee is not something you need to survive. It is a luxury item. To fully appreciate it, you need to look at mouth feel, flavour, body and acidity.”

Is there any barista behaviour which is frowned upon? Picking one’s nose is obviously out, as is experimenting too wildly with flavours, in the style of one former contestant who tried to brew coffee with kangaroo meat, Chang says. (Needless to say, he did not win.)

Ultimately, she says: “If you have experienced good coffee, you are going to want to go back to that place.”


tyaqoob@thenational.ae

* The Main Ingredient, a new column in our Food section, begins next Wednesday. The writer and pastry chef Denise Roig will focus each week on a single ingredient – from peppercorns to pineapple, brown sugar to red rice, drawing on her experience and that of UAE-based chefs and home cooks to share tips and easy-to-follow recipes.