Page 82 - #57 English

Origin
Story /Daniel Millard Humphries

COFFEE’S
TRANSPORT

& STORAGE

FRESH

KEEPING YOUR COFFEE

The explosion of specialty coffee in East Asia and Southeast Asia has been wonderful to see,
but is there a blind spot in Asian quality coffee practices that is holding back the entire industry?
In many ways, Asia is ahead of many other parts of the world when it comes to certain aspects
of specialty coffee. There tends to be a very high degree of attention to detail at the roasting and
coffee shop/barista level. In my travels from Shanghai to Taipei to Singapore, I’ve seen many beau-
tiful shops with extremely top-level grinders and espresso machines. The baristas show a great deal
of care and attention when preparing their drinks, and the latte art is probably the best in the world,
on average.
At the roasting level, too, I see roasters making very detailed graphs charting the rate-of-rise
of their roast curves, agonizing over 10 seconds here or 2 degrees there, trying to get the best pos-
sible flavor out of their roasts. And everyone is aware that different origins, processing styles, and
varietals can lead to huge differences in flavors. The Asian market, for example, is keenly aware of
the best Geishas in the world, like I’ve mentioned in past articles.
But there is something so fundamental and basic underlying all of these extreme quality pro-
cedures. It’s simple, it’s not sexy at all, and almost everyone seems to be overlooking it: how is the
green coffee stored?

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