Tag: espresso

Although Korea’s coffee market has matured in recent years, there are many places capitalizing on the trend but cutting all the corners they can. This is the third post in a four-part series by Steve Ward designed to teach you how to find the good hole-in-the-wall Korean coffee shops that are dedicated to producing quality coffee.

In spite of all this, I’m no coffee snob. Seriously. I’ve made coffee from stale beans plenty of times, drink Maxim once a week or so and have even used the same kettle my wife made ginger tea in to boil water for my coffee (it took, like, 15 washes before it tasted right again). I can certainly appreciate the opinion of those that don’t think coffee is worth the trouble. As we’ve arrived at the final post in this series and the last two rules. I figured it’s about time that I gave a tip that absolutely anyone, caffeine addict or not, would appreciate. And it carries with it the recommendation of a place that will probably shock everyone to hear me recommend.

Tip #9) Ever wonder why ‘tall’ is Starbucks version of ‘small’? Well, actually it’s not. Allow me to introduce you to Starbucks’ ‘short’ size. If you’re not interested in coffee (or if you’ve already had too much) and just need a place to kill an hour of time before meeting someone without spending a bunch of money, go into a Starbucks of your choice and order a short Americano or coffee of the day. That is if you can’t stomach espresso (which would probably be the cheapest). You’ll save some money but not feel like you’re freeloading by taking up one of the comfy chairs while you wait.

Even if you already knew about the short size (it’s kinda old news), this particular hack can elevate you to coffee-snob status by ordering a short cappuccino. A cappuccino larger than 6 ounces is not, in fact, a classic cappuccino due to the difficulty in properly frothing milk in an amount above a certain volume. Besides this, the tall and short size cappuccinos have exactly the same amount of espresso in them. So unless you’re just a really big fan of warm milk (which is the only thing that’s added to make a tall cappuccino), there is absolutely no point in ever ordering a tall cappuccino.

Beyond this, there are several ‘Starbucks hacks’ that you can find pretty easily with Google. Starbucks has, apparently, a whole slew of beverages available off-menu to make loyal customers feel cool, I guess. I haven’t ventured too far into this territory, but I have confirmed that the short cappuccino is alive and well in Korea’s Starbucks chains and, in fact, I recommend it.

So for meeting someone by a subway station or going on a coffee date, finding a Starbucks is a pretty safe bet as they are everywhere. You can actually order a ‘short’ size of anything on the menu (or so I’ve heard).

Tip #10) That all being said, just try new things. If, after trying espresso, you find that you really like americano, great! I know that I said americano is an abomination before, but I meant it in protest to the common sentiment of Korean coffee shops, restaurants, etc, that americano and regular coffee are the same thing.

I’m not against people following their own tastes. In fact, what I am trying to help you do, most of all, is to find your own taste, not just blindly rely on common wisdom.

And when you do find the real deal; a truly artisan coffee shop that takes the time to explain the subtitles of the different beans and roasts, by all means try their hand drip, syphon, dutch and even a properly cold-brewed iced coffee. These places are getting easier and easier to find and each one has a style all it’s own. Some are trendy, some are gritty. Some have big aspirations, offering latte art classes, etc, while others focus more on their roasting and make crappy latte art, but amazing coffee. I have found almost all of them to be welcoming and happy to talk to someone interested in learning about their craft.

When I really got into coffee it was because I was trying to get healthy and stopped drinking anything that had calories in it. I had previously been a wine, then scotch enthusiast (and still am somewhat of a scotch enthusiast) and I really enjoy tasting the various tastes, literally, of the land, from countries all over the world.

Coffee has just as much to offer as wine and scotch in terms as connecting us with faraway places, and the soil found there. Coffee was the world’s most traded commodity by a long shot up until the 20th century when the world’s craze for oil kicked off. And since then it’s still held its ground as #2. Some scholars are even suggesting that we may have coffee to thank for the Enlightenment as it started about the same time as Europeans transitioned from drinking alcohol and getting silly in their leisure time to gathering in coffee houses to chat. There’s all sorts of history and knowledge wrapped up with the world of coffee and, most importantly, community.

Take the road less traveled. Favor new coffee shops, flavors, brewing methods, etc, over the tried and true. Talk to the owners about their coffee and bring your friends. Aside from all the free on-the-house espressos I’ve gotten by engaging with the employers and owners, it’s just plain more fun and helps you to feel more connected to the local community and planet.

If you are a coffee-phile, or found yourself intrigued by this series of posts, do yourself a favor and pre-register for the Coffee Expo Seoul 2012 at COEX April 26-29th. 

Although Korea’s coffee market has matured in recent years, there are many places capitalizing on the trend but cutting all the corners they can. This is the third post in a four-part series by Steve Ward designed to teach you how to find the good hole-in-the-wall Korean coffee shops that are dedicated to producing quality coffee.

Today’s set of tips are grouped together by the theme of roast. While most coffee shops don’t openly advertise the freshness of their roasted beans, there’s a reason. Roast is actually of critical importance and, when it comes to making your own coffee at home, the very first thing on the list for improving your own home-brewed coffee.

Tip #6) Importing roasted coffee beans from some famous company does not, by itself, make quality coffee. Just because a coffee chain is from the U.S. or Italy or wherever, it doesn’t mean the coffee is better. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. While there are certainly legit questions to be asked about the labor practices of the big international coffee corporations and the way they treat the coffee growers, this rule is purely about the disrespect they show their own customers by using insultingly stale beans.

In general, the darker the roast, the more the structural integrity of the bean is broken down, and the faster the natural taste of the bean will escape (high-level coffee snobs will say 2-3 weeks. I say 4…. but I’ve been known to stretch that farther than I’m willing to admit publicly, and with appropriately bad results). I know those dark beans look so shiny and good, but that shine is the oils, which are supposed to be on the inside of the bean.

Here’s the rub: Most of the overseas coffee chains in Korea roast their beans in their headquarters’ warehouses in their home countries and put them on the slowest, cheapest boat possible to get here, meaning the coffee beans they are going to use to prepare drinks for the customers they claim to care about so much, can be six months old upon arrival.

If they are not upfront about the freshness of their beans, there’s a reason. Drinking stale coffee isn’t going to hurt you. You won’t get food poison from it if you drink it three years after the roasting date. So technically they can put the expiration date as some far off date. It’s just a ripoff. You’re not getting value for your dollar.

Several times I have rummaged through the beans on display for sale at two of the biggest foreign coffee shops in Korea and I have seen expiration dates a year or more away. Considering the slow boat across the Pacific they took to get to Korea, which adds months on top of THAT… <shudder>

The next rule will probably bring all the serious coffee geeks out of the woodwork to argue with me…

Tip #7) All else being equal, favor coffee shops with a roaster (that’s actually in use) over those that get their beans from somewhere else.

Wait! Don’t immediately scroll to the bottom of the page to start arguing with me in the comments. Hear me out. I am well aware of the fact that just having a roaster doesn’t necessarily mean you have the skill to use it, and there are certainly lots of shops around that put a roaster in the window pretty much as decoration.

It’s happening more and more these days, as it is seen as a guaranteed means to a profitable business. The youth will flock to you to fork over their money and hang out far from the reach of their parents. Ajummas will come to kill time while their kids are all at hagwon. Owning a coffee shop is an attractive business for a retiree looking for an easy, secure, investment to live off of into retirement. Coffee shops are a good place to spend time, so why not

I’m not saying these shops are going to be winning any awards for their roasts. All I’m saying is that I have had better experiences favoring small roasters than I have from similarly small and locally-owned shops that do not roast their own beans.

Of course, a special exception is granted to the cafes that fly their beans in via air mail like Chan’s Bros., and I think Chan’s Espresso Bar, does.

Tip #8) Again, if you’re chasing a caffeine buzz, opt for light roasts. Aside from having more subtle and nuanced flavors, dark roasts have had more of their caffeine burned off in the roasting process.

The final two tips in this series will be geared towards those with little interest in coffee, or maybe don’t even like coffee at all, but still find themselves in coffee shops from time to time.

Although Korea’s coffee market has matured in recent years, there are many places capitalizing on the trend but cutting all the corners they can. This is the first post in a four-part series by Steve Ward designed to teach you how to find the good hole-in-the-wall Korean coffee shops that are dedicated to producing quality coffee.

Imagine this Situation: You’re on a lunch date and it’s going very well. After finishing up at the restaurant, your date agrees to continue the conversation over a cup of coffee. You walk onto a street where you see two mom-and-pop coffee shops across the street from each other and a Starbucks a ways down the road. What do you do?

I’m going to help you answer that question. My intention in this series is to arm you with the knowledge to identify certain warning signs that you might not be getting the best bang for your buck at a given cafe. These ten tips are warning signs. Think of them like the infamous ‘Brown M&M’ clause Van Halen always put in their tour contracts; each tip is really just a signifier of the attention to detail that a cafe puts into its craft. If they cut corners in just one of these very visible areas, they will probably cut corners in other, if not all, areas.

Additionally, you can think of this series of posts as a sort of ‘starter guide’ to coffee appreciation, much the same way as you might take a wine tasting class if you wanted to learn a little bit more about wine.

I am not the first person to have blogged about the Korean coffee scene. In fact, other bloggers have been doing a great job. Korea’s history with coffee has been covered by The Marmot’s Hole, and if you’re looking for the cream of the cup, so to speak, you can head over to FRSHGRND and check out the places he explored (it’s slightly out of date since he moved away, but his google map may still be the best way to locate a good coffee shop near you, if you’re in Seoul.). Kiss my Kimchi has reported on some nice ones, and of course Eat Your Kimchi is in the fray as well, beating everyone else by making a segment on Arirang TV about it.

I myself have learned about some fantastic coffee shops from the above. However, there is a gap in the existing body of work, so to speak, about the Korean coffee scene: How do you seperate the real deal from the imposters? How can you know at a glance which, if any, of the three coffee shops right next to each other will be any good?

It was a random walk through the fabled Land of Oz Garosugil when I knew I HAD to write this.

I ended up in the area with time to kill, so I hadn’t had a chance to do my due diligence on the reputable coffee shops and was on my own. Exploring the back alleys of the neighborhood and was drawn in by a sign advertising hand-drip coffee made from premium Jamaican Blue Mountain beans for a ridiculously low price. I assumed it must be some limited time promotion to get new customers to this trendy-looking new cafe. But no, actually, the “premium” beans they were serving were robusta.

Tip #1) if you see the word ‘Robusta’, give the place a pass. Luckily, this occurrence should be pretty rare. In fact, I’m surprised I even need to mention it at all, but apparently I do.

It’s true that, according to the intertubes (specifically Wikipedia), Robusta beans make up about 20% of the world’s coffee trade, but the vast majority of these end up in instant coffee or as cheap filler beans in some proprietary blends. They have more caffeine, but that is to the detriment of the taste. Anyone proudly advertising their premium robusta beans fully deserves to go out of business, which they inevitably will.

I might welcome robusta in the high octane QuikTrip brand coffee at 3am on a drive across Kansas, but it is unacceptable if I’m paying more than 1,000 won and have any expectation of actually enjoying it.

Tip #2) If you’re looking for a good cup of coffee rather than just a cheap caffeine boost, avoid any place that is a coffee shop + something else (ie, Beer/wine + Coffee, Bakery and coffee, Pasta and espresso, etc, etc, etc).

I’m going to be bold and say that the plain old regular coffee I make at home is better than 90% of the coffee shops in Korea. That does not necessarily mean that if I opened my own coffee shop, that I could maintain that statement. The reason is that it takes me a good 15-20 minutes to make that cup of coffee. If I owned a coffee shop, that would give me time to serve 3-4 customers per hour. I would be exhausted by the end of that hour. How many customers per hour do you think your typical Caffe Bene sees?

Making a good cup of coffee takes time and dedication; art, if you will. It just isn’t economical for a place devoted to serving quality coffee to also have to deal with the hassle of setting up beer taps, uncorking wine bottles and checking whatever red bean/donut hybrid is cooking in the oven. A coffee shop that tries to be more than a coffee shop is spreading itself too thin.

Most people haven’t had the chance to try quality coffee. Even most coffee lovers out there take it for granted as a bitter drink to be diluted with milk and sugar. Or, in Korea’s case, coffee is associated with those little packets of sugar and creamer with a sprinkling of instant coffee on top. The ‘Bakery Cafe’ and ‘Hof and Coffee’ take advantage of this fact. It’s not necessarily an intentional deception. In fact, they may not know the difference themselves. Fundamentally it doesn’t matter to their bottom line because people don’t know any better… or just don’t care.

Stay tuned for the second part of this series, in which we will learn what exactly espresso and americano are. In the mean time, if you’re a fellow fan of the bean, go ahead and mark your calendars now for the Coffee Expo Seoul 2012 at COEX April 26-29th (I have no connection with the expo whatsoever, I’m just a fan).