Drink a good cup of coffee

[Looking for a good cup of coffee]

As a nation that drinks tea, we have a basis for accepting coffee drinking, which also pays attention to aroma, taste and mouthfeel. In fact, from the perspective of mature coffee markets with tea drinking habits, people who drink tea and red wine are more likely to be interested in fragrant coffee. Scientists have extracted more than 800 chemical components from roasted coffee beans, one-third of which are aromatic substances. Its aroma is far better than wine, sesame and cocoa. Our magazine publishes tea magazines every year, and it is natural for us to enter the world of coffee.

Just like we started to explore the world of tea and pursue a cup of good tea ten years ago, when we enter the door of coffee, our first instinctive curiosity is, "What is a good cup of coffee?" Different from our daily experience of visiting coffee shops and paying attention to the style of the barista, the decoration style, and the beauty of the cups, the determining factors of a good cup of coffee are very hardcore, involving the entire coffee industry chain, from the planting and processing of raw beans, roasting technology, to extraction.

Ye Weiwei, the 2017 World Coffee Roasting Championship China champion, said that the quality of raw beans accounts for 40% of the proportion of good taste, roasted beans account for 30%, coffee machines, grinders, water quality and other factors account for 20%, and the role of baristas accounts for 10%. Everyone in the coffee industry may have different expressions of the proportion, but it is a consensus that the quality of raw beans and roasted beans together determine the basic aspects of a cup of coffee.

Illustration: Clam Zhounanping

To understand the structure of good coffee, we need to face how to evaluate the pros and cons of each link. The difference between coffee and tea is that coffee is a beverage of industrial civilization. Since the introduction of coffee machines after the Industrial Revolution, the specifications and processes of coffee have been standardized to adapt to machine production. For example, the moisture content of raw beans, roasting parameters, extraction parameters, etc. can all be measured by machines and given a recommended data range. These are not only used by professionals, but enthusiasts can still use these devices to make a cup of coffee more accurate.

In recent decades, coffee has evolved from green beans, roasting to extraction, and has become an internationally recognized competition like the Olympics. Therefore, there are both microscopic parameter tests and macroscopic coordinate positioning. Even if you know nothing about coffee, you can find the general direction of a good cup of coffee based on these clues.

The ultimate good coffee is like a symphony of taste and smell. Just like the introduction of Du Jianing, the champion of this year's World Coffee Brewing Championship, when you drink her cup of coffee, you first feel red apricots and white wine, then pleasant cocoa and champagne flavors, and finally soft violets. As the temperature drops, the aroma of each sip changes. When it drops to room temperature, its flavor is a distinct orange flavor, and the aftertaste is cocoa crumbs. According to the rules of the competition, these moving descriptions must be drunk by the judges to score. They exist, but they also require professional training to identify.

Illustration: Clam Zhounanping

Understanding the origin and flavor of coffee is the goal pursued by many people, but it also keeps some people out. Xu Baolin, a judge of the International Green Bean Competition, and Zhang Yinzhe, the Chinese champion of the World Barista Championship, are both teachers of coffee tasting. They explained the mysteries and fallacies of coffee flavor. In fact, the identification of coffee flavor is a memory problem. The flavors described are the pairing of coffee aroma with the taster's memory bank. Professionals are trained based on this, and it is not mysterious. It is difficult to taste the origin and estate accurately, and it is an impossible task for professionals.

To understand a cup of coffee, you have to drink it enough. For ordinary people, it is completely possible to taste it quietly without being too tired. There are controlled experiments that prove that Chinese people can tell whether coffee is good or bad. You should have this confidence.

In addition to the elements of a good cup of coffee, we also want to know its connection with China's past, present and future. Interview subject Zhu Xuesong has been engaged in the coffee industry for 24 years, and Yuan Huiguo and Wei Lingpeng have nearly 20 years of industry experience. From raw beans, roasting to facing consumers, they recounted the tortuous experience of the tea-drinking nation's acceptance of coffee in the past 30 years. In fact, the coffee industry has always believed that the Chinese taste buds after the reform and opening up are a huge opportunity. It has something in common with tea and represents a Western lifestyle. However, until now, the per capita consumption of coffee cups in China is far behind mature markets such as Europe, the United States and Japan.

Photo by Cai Xiaochuan

The consumption level is one reason. Zhu Xuesong's customers are "forced" to be only high-end restaurants and five-star hotels with foreign business. This largely determines the appearance of coffee in China when it is introduced nationwide - it is admired by the public. The quality is not good either. Until more than a decade ago, Chinese consumers did not have the concept of fresh roasting. Yuan Huiguo once asked guests to compare the aroma of coffee beans from chain coffee shops with the aroma of freshly roasted beans from his own company to teach everyone what the smell is.

China's coffee soil is very poor. People who love coffee like Wei Lingpeng had access to very scarce raw beans in the early days. He later grew into a famous coach and judge in China's coffee industry, but those who sought to learn from him only wanted to open a coffee shop. The general public had no understanding of or interest in in-depth coffee knowledge.

Even when specialty coffee and light roasting became popular in mature markets, the sourness of light roasting kept Chinese taste buds away before the local flavor and multi-layered aroma could be tasted. Chinese people do not appreciate sourness. Not only do they not drink sour coffee, they also do not like dark chocolate with high cocoa content. Sweet milk chocolate is popular in China. Wei Lingpeng also served as a judge at international coffee competitions. He said that the acidity of coffee roasted by foreign contestants is higher than that of Chinese.

We are focusing on coffee at this point in time because the clouds have finally cleared for Chinese taste buds. Just like the consumption upgrade in various fields, the requirements of wealthy Chinese for coffee quality have increased rapidly. We interviewed Gu Qinru, a coffee bean hunter who has been very active in coffee producing areas and international competitions in recent years. She has personally experienced the Chinese market's pursuit of high-quality beans.

She said that when they detected great coffee flavors abroad, green bean buyers from other countries simply gave up. They would also say that the flavor was great and tasted good, but it was hard to sell at such a price in their country. Chinese people attribute coffee to the same tasting category as red wine, and are willing to buy some high-grade beans. This trend can also be seen in life. Geisha has been the star of coffee in the past fifteen years and is expensive. It is on the menus of many coffee shops in China.

Coffee is becoming popular in China, and the background is the rise of the consumer population. (Photo by Cai Xiaochuan)

As a nation that is particularly ambitious and likes rankings, we are curious about the coffee level of China as an emerging market. We interviewed Zhang Yinzhe and Ye Weiwei, who are the highest ranked in the world barista competition and roasting competition in mainland China. They talked about their training experience and the reasons for the gap with the world champions, which also reflects the state of China's acceptance of coffee.

While we were working on the cover of this issue, the World Coffee Brewing Championship was held in Boston, and Du Jianing won the championship, the first world champion in the coffee field in mainland China. Song Shiting went to Nanjing where Du Jianing's team was located to interview the team about the origins of the competition. These contents may seem far away from the public, but continuing to participate in international competitions is actually a form of communication, which is conducive to the faster improvement of the level of coffee production in emerging markets.

Du Jianing at the 2019 World Coffee Brewing Championship.

We are focusing on coffee at this point in time because it is a perspective that records social progress. It is undeniable that one of the reasons for the coffee boom in the past two years is that capital has created a coffee market. Sun Yu, the founder of Fisheye Coffee, has both practical experience in operating coffee shops and has also conducted coffee research in investment companies. He said that one of the major backgrounds of the coffee boom is that the post-90s and post-95s have entered the golden age of consumption. Unlike their predecessors who looked up to coffee, the post-90s and post-95s who grew up in an era of rapid economic development regard Starbucks, McCafé, etc. as a daily beverage.

The change of perspective makes coffee not only a petty bourgeoisie life, but also a daily caffeine intake, and its quality is higher than that of traditional instant coffee. The new drinking scene brings business opportunities and a new understanding of coffee. Under the influence of capital, the traditional discussion about the third space of coffee and boutique coffee has even become a thing of the past. The topic at the forefront is how high-quality coffee can be introduced to the public. The takeaway coffee war that lasted from last year to this year, the coffee stalls in office building lobbies and supporting shopping malls, the coffee that convenience stores are launching one after another, as well as capsule coffee, drip coffee, coffee liquid and freeze-dried coffee using new technologies are all the excitement of this wave.

A rapidly developing economy needs a cup of coffee to boost its spirits, but it also needs a new track to achieve growth and return capital.

The charm of coffee is also because it can carry people's emotions and urban culture. Xu Jingjing wrote an article "Why We Love Coffee Shops" which not only contains the mental journey of colleagues writing articles in coffee shops, but also the experience of how regular customers in coffee shops like Mao Danqing integrate coffee shops with their own lives. Coffee shops are a magical field that inspires creative inspiration, a space for exhibitions, academic lectures and cultural criticism, a warm and affectionate station in lonely life, and a living room for acquaintances like a late-night canteen. The interviewees also shared what coffee shops around the world that impressed them look like and what kind of people they would go to if they were to meet up with them.

Illustration: Clam Zhounanping

We also thought that the most direct reason why everyone was attracted to this issue was that it could provide a reference for visiting coffee shops. We visited shops in Shanghai, Beijing and Xiamen. In addition to the store visits later, in the main article "What is a good cup of coffee", the Wei Lingpeng team in Beijing and the Zhang Yinzhe team in Nanjing not only accepted interviews as coffee experts, but also shared a lot of coffee knowledge and competition experiences. Wei Lingpeng's team includes Pan Zhimin, the champion of the World Barista Competition in China, and Li Zhen is the roaster of five of the top six in the Chinese division of this year's Barista Competition. In Zhang Yinzhe's team, Zhang Yinzhe is the champion of the World Barista Competition in China for two times, and Du Jianing is the champion of the World Coffee Brewing Competition. They also have coffee shops in Beijing and Nanjing, and use the research in the competition in store operations. Wei Lingpeng has a SOECOFFE in Beijing, and sometimes he will run into the store manager Pan Zhimin making coffee. Zhang Yinzhe has UNIUNICOFFEE in Nanjing, where you can drink the beans they competed in. We conducted detailed interviews with other coffee shops. Their love for coffee and their fighting spirit to stay in business have created the city's coffee shop culture and supported the city's economy.

[Looking for a good cup of coffee]

Everyone is watching

• Summer street sign, sunglasses

• How far is Huawei mobile phone from becoming the "world's number one"?

• Do today’s idols still need works?

When it comes to making a cup of coffee, is it more important to have good equipment and good coffee beans, or to have good skills or a good attitude? Du Jianing , the cover ambassador of this issue of Sanlian Life Weekly and the champion of the 2019 World Brewing Championship (WBrC), said: "You need to understand it well and have the ability to express it, so that you can show the best side of the tools." Maybe the six tasting standards in the coffee competition are far away from us, but the joy of tasting a cup of coffee is the same.

Click on the picture above to listen to champion barista Du Jianing talk about her coffee life.

If you have anything to say about this issue’s cover story, please leave a message.

Selected comments will have a chance to be published in the reader comment area of ​​the next issue of the magazine↓↓↓

This is the location!

This issue

More

| Cover Story |

• Looking for a good cup of coffee (Yang Lu)

• What is a good cup of coffee? (Yang Lu)

• How does coffee get hot? (Yang Lu)

• Bean Hunter Xu Baolin (Yang Lu)

• Exploring the myriad ways of coffee extraction (Wang Wenqing)

• Why we love coffee shops (Xu Jingjing)

• Opening a coffee shop in Beijing (Xu Jingjing)

• Soloist: The “Order” of Good Coffee (Xu Jingjing)

• September on DE PLUS: “Coffee is just a drink” (Xu Jingjing)

• Big and Small Coffee: “A Useful Coffee Shop” (Xu Jingjing)

• World-renowned coffee estate (Wang Wenqing)

• Shanghai, the threshold problem of coffee shops (Song Shiting)

• Building a barista "dream team" (Song Shiting)

• Ludao Specialty Coffee Journal (Liu Shuying)

• Yunnan coffee beans: Reshaping the taste of Asia (Liu Shuying)

• World-renowned boutique coffee shop brand (Wang Wenqing)

| Society|

• Hot topic: Searching for Wu Xieyu: The hidden dark side of human nature (Wang Haiyan)

| Economy|

• Market analysis: How far is Huawei from becoming the world's number one smartphone? (Xie Jiu)

| Column |

• Xing Haiyang: There are many risks in pharmaceutical stocks

• Yuan Yue: The advantages of being an old father

• Bu Jian: Ye Mingchen's Intelligence

• Zhang Bin: Australian Sports 2030

• Song Xiaojun: Another "early" report

• Zhu Wei: Wang Xiaobo: He Should Still Have a Poetic World (5)

⊙The copyright of the article belongs to "Sanlian Life Weekly". You are welcome to forward it to your circle of friends . Please contact the backstage for reprinting .

[Looking for a good cup of coffee]

▼ Click to read the original text, enter the weekly bookstore, and buy more good books.