funny experience

[topher]

I had a funny experience today. I went with our sales person on a sales call and met the owner of an Italian restaurant soon to open. He informed me that he was Italian so he really knew coffee. To back up his story he told me that he had served thousands of espressos in New York. He opened a bag of espresso that I had roasted the day before and had a funny look on his face. He then asks me if I add oil to the coffee after I roast it. I informed him that the oils come out in that espresso as it is roasted. He proceeded to inform that he was going to teach me something about coffee. He asked his buddy to go and grab a bag of his espresso from the fridge(since he knew coffee I kept my mouth shut about coffee storage). He returned and poured out a sample of his and placed it next to mine. He said that the oils come out because it is burned and that is why his coffee is better. I then produced a bag of my light roast espresso and explained there are several different roast profiles for coffee. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. I am not sure where I was going with this but I was ready to pull my hair out!! I also asked if he liked all the robusta in his blend and he said..Yeah I love all that good stuff...thats when I bid him good day....

 

[coffeeloverlisa]

Bueno!

My heart goes out to you x 1000.

Good for you for keeping your cool. You are a class act.

Cheers,

Lisa

 

[Alun_evans]

Haha, yes just because he is Italian does not make him an expert on coffee...just as being from Sri lanka does not make you an expert on tea or being from New Zealand makes you an exopert on Lamb or Kiwifruit!!! My mentor was an Italian Roaster- he was a scholor and a gentleman. However I know of a number of Italians in the business who know less about coffee than I know about the secrets of the DiVinci Code! Problem is these guys can preach and people actually believe them (Italians in Coffee I mean, not the Papacy in teh DiVinci Code- although they can preach up a storm as well i guess )

 

[ArabBeaker]

sounds like the Italian maestro is not going to learn any time soon either. Sometimes we demonstrate our inability to learn by our failure to listen. Its hard to use the ear gate when the tongue is being overworked. They do make great cars though.

 

[shadow745]

The Italians also make some really fine coffee equipment. We use a Nuova Simonelli Aurelia and have to say it is exceptional. Nicely built, with lots of well thought out features and of course kicks a$$ on the brew temperature stability and steaming capability. Not trying to advertise for NS, just saying the Italians take great pride in anything they build and it shows. In coffee and cars!

 

[ElPugDiablo]

Italians are very proud of their espresso, and rightly so. I don't know about rest of the world, but most of North American roasters do something different than what is done in Italy so it is easy for Italians to poop poop espresso in the US. I am Chinese; I can say in no uncertain term that 99.999% of Chinese restaurants in the US/Canada do a version of Chinese food that is not done in China. My daughter's boyfriend is from Brazil, and he has the same opinion of Brazilian restaurants in the US. I have an employee who is Ethiopian, the birth place of coffee and coffee ceremony is in their blood, and she doesn't think much of espresso period, well, my espresso. So yeah, I can see this guy has a ingrained notion of what espresso is and is not.

 

[topher]

He told me his blend was part Lavazza, part Illy and the third part is a secret...sigh...I like the part where he said to his buddy, " YO! go grab dat bag of espresso out of the friggen fridge!" He also informed me that the coffee that was in the fridge was 3 months old...YUUUUMMMMYYY