Today I bring you my reflection on the latest episode of Report about coffee, aired on Sunday 15 December 2024.
I am honest, I will not have much tact or filters, but I will write everything that I think. This is not to attack or humiliate anyone, but only with the aim of giving a deep shock to as many people as possible, to move in unison towards a sector, and therefore a product, of higher quality.
My only goal, throughout my career, is always and only to bring knowledge and passion for the world of coffee.
I’ll start by saying that I found it really interesting, as it is real and representative of an entire sector, as well as of the Italian situation regarding the professionalism, training and healthiness of the coffees prepared and offered to the general public.
Finally, I believe that all the topics have been touched upon in a simple and clear way, understandable to anyone, both those who “chew” coffee in a technical way, and those who simply love to drink it.
1.
Let’s start by specifying that even if Naples is the main city on which the investigation revolves, the very poor quality of coffee is a National problem. There are no places, countries, villages, regions or provinces where coffee is better than others.
In fact, along the entire peninsula there are terrible and excellent coffee roasters and cafes. The problem is that the excellent ones represent only a very small percentage of the entire sector.
So enough with those sentences:
“Good coffee is only drunk in Naples, because there is good water”
“The best coffee in Italy is drunk in Trieste, because this is where the raw material comes from”
“The best coffee is drunk in Milan, because even less dark roasts are appreciated”
These are just rumors born out of pride and a sense of belonging to one’s hometown, but without any real foundation.
2.
Consequently, I would also like to say that they are fed up with the phrases: “Only in Italy can you drink good coffee”, “Abroad they don’t understand anything”, because, spoiler, those who don’t understand anything are precisely us Italians.
In fact, in Italy there is no culture about coffee, we all think we know about it, but no one would even be able to say what a coffee is, let alone really know it.
What we can be proud of, however, is the fact that we invented two of the most used extraction methods in the world: the espresso machine and the moka pot, but unfortunately we stopped at the invention, without knowing how to use them.
While abroad, especially in countries such as Finland, Norway, Belgium, Scandinavia, Sweden, Holland, Canada, Australia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Brazil, Colombia and many others, the culture of coffee is very high, even more than that which we Italians have on average for wine, all the personnel in the sector are highly trained and professional and use the equipment impeccably.
Just because we have never had the opportunity to taste quality coffee in our lives and have therefore taken for granted that what we drink is the “normal” and “correct” taste that a coffee should have, does not automatically mean that that coffee becomes quality.
We’ve simply always drunk rubbish and so we don’t even know what a really good coffee should be like.
Think how sad… we drink coffee every day and several times a day, but we don’t know quality coffee.
3.
Now the time has come to talk about training, the real one, not the “street” one.
Let’s start from an essential assumption: every single profession needs training, whether it is half an hour or decades, all single jobs require a learning process, at least basic information.
Let’s be clear, to work in a bar you don’t need a degree or years of study in theoretical physics or aerospace engineering. We’re talking about 4/6 hours of training, often offered by the roaster to all his customers, so even for free.
Obviously, in 4/6 hours no one becomes an expert, but the basic theoretical and practical information is transferred that is useful at least for preparing an espresso or cappuccino in the best possible way and above all healthy for the final consumer!
If you want to become a real expert, it takes a little more time, but we are still talking about several days of training at most. I personally have done about twenty in total in the last five years, each on different topics.
Once you have obtained all the theoretical tools, you have to put them into practice, live and breathe the raw material, daughter of nature and in continuous change, become passionate about this product, fall in love and add a new piece to your knowledge every day, participating in workshops, fairs and events. The important thing is to rely on more experienced professionals, so you can compare and correct yourself.
However, the fault is not only of the barista, but also and above all of the owners of the coffee shops, who do not know how to select workers, train them and create an integration path, because first of all they do not know what skills a barista should have.
4.
But be careful, the problem is not only downstream, i.e. the bar, but upstream: everything starts with the roasters, both because they are the first ones who do not know the raw material at all, and because even if they do know it they prefer not to make the baristas aware, so they can continue to sell them rotten coffee, without anyone complaining.
I know, it seems absurd to think that the roasters, those who cook the raw material, do not know it. But it is a sector in which most of the businesses are hereditary and family-run, where the father has taught the son and the son often has not studied in depth. It is not uncommon for us at various fairs to speak with roasters who do not even know how to read a roasting curve, who do not know the roasting defects or what happens to the bean during the process. Often they do not even know the differences in the different origins of raw coffee, botanical species and varieties.
5.
Where there is no training, there is also a lack of cleanliness.
I am happy with the Report episode especially for this point, because in almost no bar are the equipment clean, which is why for years now I have stopped going out to drink coffee, except in a few selected places.
Why cleaning is important:
- Healthiness of food offered to customers;
- Taste of the product;
- Make equipment last longer;
- To save money on your bill. If the coffee machine is clean and without problems, it works at its maximum potential and will consume a certain amount of energy. If it is not clean, in order to function correctly, it must use more energy to achieve the result we are asking for, overcoming all the obstacles it finds in the various processes, making us spend more money on electricity.
Can I say it?
The lack of cleanliness in the premises is not acceptable. You are a civilized person who was lucky enough to live in an industrialized country, respect that!
When you point these things out to an untrained barista, he always responds, “There’s no time.” If you can’t work clean, it doesn’t mean you work hard, it means you don’t know how to do your job.
If we wanted to make some comparisons:
- Do you wash your wine glass after using it?
- Do you clean the pasta pot after cooking?
- Do you degrease your pans after cooking any food?
Why don’t you apply the same reasoning to coffee?
Coffee contains oils, fats, sugars and many other substances. If they are not removed carefully, they go rancid. I don’t think any further explanation is needed.
6.
Now let’s lighten the conversation a little by talking about the false myths that still make me laugh so much:
- “The cups must be hot”
This is a big NO, both because you risk burning your fingers and lips, and because you burn the coffee during extraction, increasing the bitter sensations. The tradition of the boiling cup was born during the cholera to disinfect the ceramics. However, the cholera is over, so we might as well go ahead and overcome this period.
- “Why did you choose this coffee for your place?” asks the journalist, “For the high quality” replies the director of the historic Trieste coffee shop.
No, you chose this coffee for the low price, just like the vast majority of baristas.
We have had so many appointments with potential bar clients in the last 26 years of working in the sector. Virtually never is there any talk about the taste of the coffee, the roasting, the quality or other characteristics of the product. The average barista wants to know three simple things: the price, if the roaster also gives money to start the working relationship and if in addition to the coffee he offers all the equipment, the curtains and signs and often even the furniture of the place for free.
- “I’ve been doing this job for thirty years”
Think that every morning for the last thirty years you woke up, started working and never did a single step correctly. Think that you could become a good barista in just 4 hours of training or reading some books on the subject or watching useful YouTube videos, and yet for thirty years you have always done the same thing wrong.
- “We Neapolitans have genetically modified taste buds”
In order to deny the fact that we are simply used to drinking poor quality coffee, we even convince ourselves that we have undergone a genetic mutation that has allowed us to appreciate disgusting things!
- “The coffee grinder, the filter, the shower head, etc. should not be washed because otherwise you will remove the coffee aroma and then it will only taste like water”
So in other words we understood that coffee has no real taste in itself, but it is the dirt in the equipment that gives it the taste.
I don’t think it works exactly like that…
But I want to conclude by leaving you with something nice.
Fortunately, there are many coffee shops that work with passion, with awareness, after years of training and only with high quality products.
The world of coffee is changing radically and we can neither resist nor stand still, but we can only embrace this change to let it guide us towards something unexpected.
On this beautiful new site you will find an Italian map of all the best Italian places that deal with his majesty the coffee!
Marketing, E-commerce e Social Media Manager
Coffee Lover
