coffee pro to home roasters: “loathe yourselves”!
November 27, 2006 – 10:42 amthis blog is deeply humbled to discover that what home-roasted sublimity it has discovered, by experience or by accident, is actually illegitimate! not worth the sale of cheap greens from pro to amateur! because, you know, excellence is kept under lock and key by certificate-toting triple-waveists. who knew?
of course, there are what the new york times calls “snobs” (this blog pleads guilty, well-meaning defenders notwithstanding). and then there’s simple arrogance. but that’s what we love about this whole communal, coffee-centric wave … if it weren’t for the tough love from britain’s quality clarion we would never have known to loathe ourselves!
p.s. keister-kovering kaveat: the actual newspaper piece being, er, roasted has yet to be actually found on these exhaustive interwebs. thus, we know not the identity of the offender. meaning: open season on hyper-reactive, curmudgeonly takedowns!
UPDATE: hoffmann has the scan! our culprit: steven macatonia of union coffee roasters. not only is he a “self-styled Roast Master,” but he has conquered the tortuous art of “sneering” one’s answers instead of, you know, just saying them out loud. as in:
home roasting is “a level of obsession sneered at by Roast Master steven macatonia. ‘i will not supply the green beans i buy to anyone,‘ he says.” (emphasis added)
wow. an even thicker wrapping of assured self-promotion than we had dared to fear! but wait … closer parsing appears to show that it’s not just home roasting that he’s so openly sneering at — it’s the “level of obsession”. in other words, macatonia doesn’t take his coffee that seriously! which could make his words the classic reaction of a man who feels threatened by the free flow of knowledge to amateurs, no? insert kim jong il analogy here…
even for a brit tabloid, the tone of the whole piece is, shall-we-say, a bit freak-of-nature-ish. british ’snobs’ agree!
UPDATE: hoffmann questions the reporting. a legitimate loophole!
UPDATE: and you thought this blog was snarky … ahem.
9 Responses to “coffee pro to home roasters: “loathe yourselves”!”
i’m trying to find the article tis tough but as soon as i do i’ll send you a copy.
viva home roasters
By steve Leighton on Nov 28, 2006
tried searching for it myself, but no luck.
By bz on Nov 28, 2006
Jim Seven found it (show off)
http://jimseven.com/?p=300
By Stephen Leighton on Nov 28, 2006
sweeeet. many thanks.
By bz on Nov 28, 2006
I am indeed a show off. (it was bloody hard work to rip out of their online site is why!)
Anyway - I know Stephen Macatonia a bit, he’s a really nice guy. Buys great coffee, and though he was raised in more of a dark roasting style I like how he roasts a lot of his coffees. He’s a total coffeegeek, and I strongly suspect that the paper (I hate the Daily Mail with a great passion) has done a typical job of twisting his words to meet with the style of the article. I feel a stiff letter to the journalist coming on.
By James Hoffmann on Nov 28, 2006
dang it, hoffmann. it’s easier to poke at guy if you don’t go humanizing him for us.
seriously, the journalism does come into play. using the word “sneer” is something we in the u.s. media would never do, for example. someone can ALWAYS contest the claim that he was “sneering” when he said something. besides, what IS a sneer exactly? and how does one sneer words? try it sometime. it’s hard.
same goes for the “level of obsession” phrase — it comes from the reporter, not steven.
on the other hand, there are direct quotes in that piece. and most aren’t the short sound-byte types, which can indicate that something was yanked out of context. they’re lengthy and nuanced. “will not” and “anyone” are pretty categorical terms. my question would simply be, of those portions between quotation marks, did he say it or not?
in the u.s., we record everything now. every interview. this is to ensure people get quoted completely accurately and also to back up a reporter against the all-too-frequent claim that “he misquoted me.”
i’m sure he’s a nice guy. i’m sure he’s a far better roaster than me. but i would bet that such an i’m-the-arbiter attitude persists among even very nice professionals.
By bz on Nov 28, 2006
Ah now, this is where it gets tricky….
I am sure he did say those things, but it seems likely they were presented in such a way “sneering” etc… so as to go along with the tone of the article.
Union are passionate guys, with a clear agenda in their marketing and their style of coffee. Few people realise they were Torrs & Macatonia which merged with Seattle Coffee Company which was later bought by Starbucks. So these guys were roasting for Starbucks in the UK before the plant for Europe moved over to Holland. They have a lot of experience, but also keep very tight control over their operation - I can see why not letting some “amateur” home roaster bake your prized beans and the write them up on the internet as rubbish doesn’t appeal (not that I am saying that is what would or does happen).
My gripe is with the whole article.
By James Hoffmann on Nov 28, 2006
good points, all. i guess the aversion to selling greens appears to me sort of like media and music companies not wanting to offer their stuff for download on the internet.
it’s just profoundly short-sighted.
to them, the product is too “precious.” what outsiders can see — that insiders apparently can’t — is that (a) it’s part of the future, (b) it’s a business opportunity it would be foolish to ignore, and (c) the freer the market, the better the end product — even if there’s chaos and abuse along the way.
same applies to better coffee. if someone will pay a fair price for your precious greens, why not sell? steve is learning from home roasters, why can’t steven?
indeed, the whole article was a bit odd.
By bz on Nov 28, 2006
Kind of reminds me of Pret a Manger (a sandwich chain here - I have no idea how far they’ve spread).
They print the menu on the back of every packet, along with detailed instructions on how to make it taste exactly how they do.
The end result - everyone looks at it, reads it and thinks “sod that! far too much work, I’ll just buy it instead”.
Was very effective.
I’ve always felt roasters should be open what is in their blend and should be proud of their skills and expertise - justifying you paying them to roast it for you.
(Of course there is the importance of support and supply in a commercial environment which is of equal value to the coffee - no point giving them great product and then poor kit and no knowledge)
By James Hoffmann on Nov 28, 2006