“Brand” coffee (Illy and more) versus freshly roasted coffee

I received a suggestion (thanks G.Serban) to copy my post from the blog forum regarding the discussion on Illy and freshly roasted coffee, which you can find here.

I wrote another article about what freshly roasted coffee really means, but nuances always appear on the topic, especially since not all coffees originating from Romania, freshly roasted, reach a high level. But most of them do.

To be honest, I’m a little sad because the bakers and most of the people behind the counter are silent. Apart from a few who were more radical, even on the forum, and openly spoke the green truth, the others probably think «what’s the point of having problems with ProBrands or others, I prefer to stay in my bank». Well, dear bakers, isn’t this your job? Isn’t this the key to the very slow development of the phenomenon of fresh roasted beans in Romania, that is, the coffee brands that in every advertisement say they are the most «flavored», «not just black», «illysime», «true Italian espresso», and your products remain in the shadows and in their tiny niche? This lack of communication and public attitude still represents a great disadvantage, with all its consequences. Look, that’s why Cezara went to Starbucks 🙂

I present to you an extremely widespread opinion, concentrated in the words of user Ioni, from the Espressoman forum:

«Who knows why there aren’t more coffee roasters in every city?! Haven’t people really learned that freshly roasted coffee is the best? It doesn’t matter where it is brought from, how it is transported, in what conditions it is stored, how it is roasted, how it is cooled, we only know that it smells very good and sometimes we find a good coffee in a cup, sometimes not, and this is because there are many variables that are not always favorable […] I also wonder, rhetorically of course, if Illy’s 114 quality controls from coffee harvesting to packaging are not useless, because so many controls, professional tasters, coffee blends for a result that is difficult to obtain; a few pastries and that’s it. Illy coffee is served in the best hotels in the world, here on the forum or on the blog I have read about users who have drunk the best Illy coffee in bars in Italy or Romania. I don’t think they wrote at all. Everyone consumes what they want, but you cannot ignore and underestimate a company that is at the top and whose goal is the best possible product.»

In the case of Ioni, who by the way I don’t think «works at Illy», something happens that applies to many beginners: getting the brand’s values ​​out of your head is much more difficult than training your taste buds on quality coffee. These brands hire high-cost advertising agencies with unlimited creative and persuasive power, taking advantage of people’s disinterest in what they drink. Somehow I recognize myself in what Ioni says, at the time when we barely had the courage to write about our topics on Softpedia, in 2007. Back then my colleague Torin was light years ahead of us in terms of tastes and experience, telling us what freshly roasted coffee means, and I teased myself with various combinations of robusta, but branded, or Arabica artfully packaged in bags with «double aluminum protection». I was going to visit the Bristot headquarters, where among other things the manager is an excellent consultant and specialist in the coffee sector, Nimrod, and we tasted various confections which, together with his sparkling words, thrilled me as if I were drinking the rarest coffee in the world. This is the power of branding, especially applied to a beginner’s skin. Then I began to follow Torin’s lead and try various freshly roasted coffees from the late Monkaff, advertising some varieties as «acidic», when in reality they were more acidic, excellent quality coffees. As I became more aware of what I drink and the fact that I can have the freedom to choose which origin I want, and not what a brand imposes on me, I started to consume more and more freshly roasted coffee, making the financial (more psychological) leap from 30-40 lei/kg of coffee, to 80-100 lei/kg. Over time, by changing the bakers, the origins, the doughs, I simply discovered another world, and all the brainwashing done by the brands evaporated. It wasn’t easy, it probably took a year, but I did it

Just like in the old blog article, those who drink dolcegusto accused me of #!* on their tastes, so I could receive some criticism here too, but Ioni and those who share the opinion in the quote, remember one thing: see you in a year of consuming alternative/freshly roasted brands! Everything you think now about Illy and other brands will seem like brainwashing!!! If you like it at the moment, it’s your taste and should be respected. But make this effort and change 5 roasts in the next 3-4 months, possibly having more sweet/chocolaty/floral coffees, to start with, (not acidic/»sour», because they are weirder at first) and make a CORRECT brewed shot, possibly double but in two cups, 30ml each, so that someone else in the house can taste it too. I guarantee you with my hand on my heart that you will not be able to contradict physics, more precisely, that no pressurized and mega pressurized package will be able to hold the beans for months as in the first 3-4 weeks after roasting. On this occasion you will train your taste buds and discover flavors that Illy or other brands don’t even dream of, unless you have never visited the factory and never fried from them. I don’t think this is necessarily debatable, i.e. the quality standards that the big brands respect and the quality of the beans as a whole. But the fact that when the coffee is consumed many months have already passed since it was roasted, added to the fact that they are roasted in batches of hundreds of kg, not by hand (and I cannot do otherwise), definitively sacrifices the aromas that those beans could have had.

If after 3-4 months you come back with the same opinion, it means that you really work for Illy. Just as it is not possible to overturn the Pythagorean theorem or the theory of relativity, neither can these physical limits I speak of be counterbalanced by a can of inert gas. It probably keeps better than in a bag, but there’s still a long way to go before it’s freshly fried.

My advice is to change roasters and varieties often, but don’t buy 5-6 varieties at once, but a maximum of two, with which you can practice as much as possible. There have been small complaints against some roasters about oil on the beans, roasting too hard, even a few stones, etc. There may be isolated incidents, since we are talking about artisans, but that does not mean that it is the rule.

This is the beauty of coffee: it is an extraordinarily vast and diverse world with many flavors given by the altitude of cultivation, the vicinity of the crops, the region from which the beans come, the countless blends you can make, including yourself, etc. And so on. And then, if we’re talking about an agricultural product, why stick to one/two brands? Why should we let ourselves be convinced by some standards imposed at will by a brand? Why not buy tomatoes from the garden and get yourself a shiny bag of Italian or Dutch tomatoes? Why not make a cake with fragrant apples from the orchard and buy some frozen apple stew? Why is the European Union hindering Romania when our producers want to approve various traditional foods? Because that’s what we have to do, let’s set ourselves up the way the corporations want us to and act on every piece of information sent to the android.