December 2013 - detailed look at the quality lifecycle

Date Posted:1 December 2013 

Xmas and New Year operating hours

Operating an online business means you are running 24 x 7 and in a physical sense we work almost that many hours - roasting till midnight at least 6 days a week, every week including public holidays that occur throughout the year.

Without fail, from late November through to around the end of January, freight services become heavily congested and transit time performance starts to blow out resulting in longer delays for receiving your orders. This is due to increased freight volumes and short-staffed freight companies.

We pride ourselves on our ship every order, every business day performance - our team fully understand the importance of speedy processing of your orders.

Of course, from time to time we are let down by freight companies and so far this year in late 2013 it is as bad or worse than what we have experienced in previous years.

On 17 December 2012, Australia Post misplaced 2x full pallets of our customer orders - over 500kg of coffee was "lost" for 3 weeks - that was a single day's collection.

The parcels eventually arrived at their intended destinations, but it completely destroyed the Xmas coffee experience for many of our beloved customers. In such circumstances, we drive AusPost very hard but of course they simply cannot solve the problem easily and their ability to locate and manage such disasters is very limited - they just wait for parcels to naturally flush out of their systems - which in our minds is not a very professional approach.

Monday 9th December 2013, the same thing happened again. AusPost will not admit to a problem for fear of having to accept some form of legal responsibility - but it highlights the common problems that occur with freight services this time of year.

FINAL DAY OF DESPATCH - Monday 23rd December 2013

FIRST DAY OF DESPATCH - Thursday 2nd January 2014.

The mycuppa store will remain open and accepting orders throughout the Xmas to New Year period.

We are roasting coffee during the period between 23/12/2013 and 2/1/2014 to ensure our cafes, private label and mycuppa customers have stock upon resumption of standard business hours in the first week of Jan 2014.

The reason we are not sending parcels between Xmas and New Year is simply because there are either no business parcel freight collection services or very limited on most of the business days between Xmas and New Year.

We also know from our experiences over the last 7 years that freight lodged between Xmas and New Year just sits in storage warehouses for many days - which we deem as a risk to coffee quality if the storage conditions are not controlled to the correct temperatures.

Our advice to you is simple - please allow a couple of extra days transit time for your order at this time of year as transit times are at the worst possible levels. Get in early !

Quality - is it really improving ?

An over used term in today's developed society.

It's something to be expected in everything we use whether it's our mobile phone, a car, the service provided by Bank or the standards of the food ingredients we purchase from suppliers or providers.

Technology provides the tools and processes to assist us in continuously improving our quality outcomes.

Whether it's in the form of additional controls or automation, technology is only useful when it's managed by the knowledge and experience of a human.

The other significant factor affecting quality is competition - it creates the stimulus and drive to push further.

Improvements at origin

When it comes to the world of coffee beans, you are in fact dealing with some compelling contrasts between the poor, un-developed regions/countries that grow and process coffee versus the sophisticated equipment used to roast raw coffee beans and of course the complexity of espresso machines to extract and brew the final product.

Weather also plays an important role in the coffee quality.

During 2013, some origins did not perform as well compared to previous year's crops.

We have processes in place to detect this early through our close relationships with brokers.

Most people would be surprised to learn that coffee is prepared by some of the poorest people in our planet.

These farmers live in high-altitude, mountainous terrain that can be literally inaccessible  with just basic and mostly dangerous dirt road access.

They grow coffee in areas where it may be impossible to use mechanical machinery, so the majority of the work is performed by hand - picking, sorting, processing, etc.

In most cases the water used for washing or pulping of the coffee cherry is at a critical scarce premium and needs to be re-used.

The evolution of coffee farming is advancing at a relative slow rate.

Yes, there are constant improvements through education programs that improve farming practices, etc. however, the constraints are simple and at times over-whelming - lack of capital and cash to invest, lack of basic infrastructure such as electricity and raw materials, etc.

Coffee brokers and coffee roasting companies work in similar styles - searching for ever increasing quality objectives in their sourcing procedures.

With the sharp growth in specialty coffee segments around the world, the competition for the best coffees becomes intense.

Even a willingness to pay top $$ for good lots of raw coffee does not guarantee access and supply - many coffees are forward contracted 6 months, 12 or even 24 months ahead which is quite amazing considering climate and weather heavily influence the growing and harvesting.

More raw coffee is now being shipped from origin in lined bags.

The concept of the open-weave jute or hessian bag is slowly being enhanced by the addition of grainpro or ecotact plastic liners.

Grainpro liners have been around for 8+ years. Only the very expensive, high quality coffees were prepared and shipped by this method and it was not used by every coffee growing origin.

Pressure from coffee roasters is changing the attitudes of brokers in requesting liners be used at origin to protect and preserve the quality of the raw coffee beans.

Whilst shipping bag liners are a great initiative and definitely help, it is not a reliable solution.

Around 80% of the coffee we purchase at mycuppa has either grainpro or ecotact liners.

We would prefer it to be 100%, but some of the coffees we love and cherish just do not ship this way as yet.

The major problem with the liners is the holes and damage to the liners.

I would say just 20% of the lined bags I open still have integrity - the other 80% have small holes or punctures which can reduce the effectiveness of the barrier protection provided by the liner.

When it comes to liners, I guess it is helping, but it has a way to go yet.

Roasting coffee beans for Quality

Coffee roasting platforms have advanced considerably in the last 5 years.

Computer profilers provide the roast master with a critical tool that can help control the quality of the roast batch.

The challenge today, at the end of 2013, is that there is still a big division within the coffee roasting fraternity regarding the use of profiling tools.

On one side you have the old-timers who think it's about sensory skills and on the other side you have the motivated and enthusiastic innovators looking to push boundaries by diagnosing their roast batches and seeking quantum improvements.

Because Australia has an over-crowded, saturated coffee roasting market, it seems almost everyone jumps on the bandwagon when it comes to "computer controlled profiling".

The reality is unfortunately vastly different and it really comes down to definition.

There are a large number of older style coffee roasting platforms in use around Australia.

Sure, it is possible to hook up a notebook computer next to the roaster and log the temperature and/or time, but that is only monitoring a roast - it is not intelligently controlling the roast performance as by the time a roast master sees a problem developing it is unfortunately too late to correct it.

The basic logging or monitoring is certainly not providing the level of consistency because the roasting platform is still manually controlled by the operator so each batch will be different.

Quality can only be offered by computer systems that control burner, air-speed, rotation, etc.

Most new roasting plants have optional profilers and some of these work well and others are less precise because they employ basic or simplistic logic that does not address the highly dynamic nature of coffee roasting.

Many computer profilers promise accuracy, but few deliver.

During 2013, we spent considerable time analysing the performance of our roasting tools.

What we found is ..............yes, we are constantly achieving back-to-back 99.5% consistency - we are talking about a maximum of 5 seconds variance over 900 seconds between batches and that is about the best anyone in the world can achieve in terms of consistency on coffee roasting platforms.

I have absolutely killed myself for months trying to squeeze the gap on that last 5 seconds.

We added another toolset to our roasting portfolio that acts like a microscope, giving us incredible detail on a roast batch in real-time but it does not close that 5 second gap.

What we found was that heat soak from the roasting platform is something that affects our microscopic hysteresis.

This is a physical aspect that can only be controlled by waiting a ridiculous amount of time between batches for everything to stabilize to a control point.

This is simply not practical for any commercial roasting company.

So, what does the last 0.5% do in the cup ?

I'm afraid to say - absolutely nothing. This final level of precision is undetectable except using an expensive refractometer and conducting clinical lab type experiments with total disolved solids (TDS).

When it comes to the reality of grinders and espresso machines, I doubt even the most experienced cuppers could detect the difference in blind coffee tests.

What does it mean for Quality in 2014

We have the confidence in knowing our coffee roasting performance is at the best level in the industry.

We use the most advanced techniques, systems and tools available today and combined with our professional sourcing procedures we have a winning combination.

We have de-constructed our roasting curves, tried alternatives and re-built our profiles to produce a longer finish to our coffees - the most desirable aspect of coffee consumption being after-taste.

Thank you for all your support in 2013, the team at mycuppa wishes you and your family a safe and happy Xmas.