“3rd Wave of Coffee”

Posted: February 4th, 2011 ˑ Filled under: Coffee ˑ  No Comments

When I first hear the term “3rd Wave of Coffee,” being very ignorant to the world of coffee at the time, I thought, “There was a 1st and 2nd wave?” “Where was I?” It makes sense once you dig a little deeper. 1st Wave:  Folgers on every table. 2nd Wave:  Specialty Coffee- Peet’s and Starbucks, many roasters entering the scene.  3rd Wave:  focus on high quality, artisan roasting. Single origin and microlot coffees.

Here’s a basic summary taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Coffee, from my research it is quite accurate.

“Trish Rothgeb (formerly Skeie) of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters first wrote about the Third Wave of Coffee in a November 2002 article[1] of The Flamekeeper, a newsletter of the Roaster’s Guild, a trade guild of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Nicholas Cho of Murky Coffee further defined the Third Wave of Coffee in an often-referenced online article [2] and earlier in his interview in March 2005 on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered program[3]. More recently the third wave of coffee has been chronicled by publications such as the New York Times,[4][5][6] LA Weekly[7][8][9], Los Angeles Times[10][11], La Opinion[12] and The Guardian [13].

In March 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly defined the third wave of coffee by saying:

The first wave of American coffee culture was probably the 19th-century surge that put Folgers on every table, and the second was the proliferation, starting in the 1960s at Peet’s and moving smartly through the Starbucks grande decaf latte, of espresso drinks and regionally labeled coffee. We are now in the third wave of coffee connoisseurship, where beans are sourced from farms instead of countries, roasting is about bringing out rather than incinerating the unique characteristics of each bean, and the flavor is clean and hard and pure.[14]

The earlier term “specialty coffee” was coined in 1974, and refers narrowly to high-quality beans, scoring 80 points or more on a 100-point scale.”

So what’s the difference between standard specialty coffee and specialty coffee in the 3rd wave?

Well, in the third wave of coffee there is a strong focus on quality, sourcing the best green beans (often microlots from single origins), and artisan or microroasting. Furthermore, the development and latte art. of new or evolved brewing methods (naked porta filter, cold brewing, vacuum brewing etc.) It’s also a mental and appreciation shift. Similar to appreciation of fine dining and wine, but more cool.  Coffee must be savoured and the flavours must be distinguishable-not burnt.  The other day Austin Anderson, the Director of Coffee at Just Us! Coffee/my boss, said, “Today, there are over 1000 flavours that are distinguishable in coffee.” How amazing is that?

A couple days ago,  I was lucky enough to do a cupping of some of the new microlots and single origin coffees that Just Us! Coffee will be launching this spring.  In particular, I’d like to speak to the “12 Apostles Coffee” from Peru. It was initially described to me as “like passion fruit and kiwi with an amaretto finish.” While, that description sounds nice, I didn’t believe it until I tried it. It was amazing.

When you first taste a coffee that you can so clearly pull out the flavours like that, your mind is blown. I don’t think I can ever go back.