Coffee vocabulary: hand-made coffee ≠ boutique coffee

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"have you ever heard the word SoftBrew? Since the rise of the wave of boutique, more and more new words have been heard in different places. " Looking confused, he is a senior critic of the local coffee industry. He often posts articles on the overseas Coffee Forum website to make suggestions for foreign coffee lovers who are going to come to Hong Kong.

After searching on the Internet, it turned out that it was first mentioned by a New Zealand coffee company in 2011 to describe the cooking methods such as V60 hand flushing, siphon and chemex pot. In fact, isn't that what filtered coffee, which has been used for a long time, means? " He spoke with disdain.

I replied, "as far as I know, SoftBrew is a ceramic coffee coffee that went on sale in Milan in 2010. the metal filter can not effectively block the coffee oil and fine powder, so the coffee is mellow, but it is easy to be overextracted. It's like the French Press, and the metal strainer of Able in the United States. "

The public is at a loss as to what to do

"as for the way soft is used to describe brewing, it may be that advocates want to separate 'manual production' from 'mechanical production' of espresso. But just like coining the word short black without espresso, it is easy for the public to be at a loss as to what to do. " If the misunderstanding is small, it is a crime to mislead the public. I continued: "in fact, filtered coffee, brewed coffee, drip coffee and so on are all common names in the community." In short, it's non-Italian cooking. "

Hand-brewed coffee ≠ boutique

The coffee industry chain is very broad, and the boutique in recent years has not only impacted the downstream industry's understanding of coffee brewing, but also spawned a lot of new words when the upstream farmers communicated with each other. For example, up to now, some people still mistakenly think that "hand-brewed coffee" is equal to "boutique". In fact, boutique coffee is only one level, and it is the cup tester who makes the appraisal. It is true that manual brewing can best express the original taste of beans, and any coffee beans can be used for hand brewing after grinding, but the quality is limited, and the coffee made from shoddy beans is not good. As for boutique beans, they are also suitable for making espresso. The Italian coffee beans used by my friends in the coffee shop in Norway are all the winners of the COE competition.

No matter how good the beans are, if they are not roasted or brewed properly, the coffee will not taste good. So James Hoffman, a British barista, once pointed out that the word boutique, score and craftsmanship, are indispensable. When we introduce hand-brewed coffee to foreign guests, we will use the word craft coffee to highlight the craftsmanship, so as to avoid confusion with specialty.

Photo: Patrick Tam (owner of the boutique coffee shop Knockbox, approved barista of the American Fine Coffee Association and European Fine Coffee Association, American CQI recognition cup tester, Cup of Excellence's first Hong Kong judge)