- 89% of you, our GCN audience,
drink at least one cup of coffee every single week,
and I think that's quite a low percentage--
- Yeah.
- Because this small sample size right here,
100% of people drink at least one cup of coffee
every single day.
- Yeah, that's true.
And no matter which data set you choose though,
coffee is clearly a big thing for cyclists.
And that's kinda the reason why we're so excited
to be able to start selling our own GCN coffee,
which is roasted in this building, right behind us.
Now there is a slight problem with that GCN coffee,
and that is that the first batch is running out.
It's because it's a single origin coffee,
which means there is a finite amount of beans
from that particular farm.
So, we've come up to choose some more.
- We have, and whilst we're here,
we're also gonna get some practical tips
for all of us here,
on how to make the perfect cup of coffee every single time.
- Yes, sorted!
(dramatic theme music)
- [Dan] Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood got passionate
about coffee over a decade ago,
a passion which eventually drove he
and his wife Lesley to open up
Colonna and Small's coffee shop,
a stone's throw from our offices in Bath.
It's fair to say that Maxwell has become somewhat
of an expert in the world of coffee,
so we asked him if he could teach us
how to make the perfect brew.
- I can, but I think the best place to start
is to taste coffee.
- Yeah.
- So if you've done it before,
shall we do a cupping?
- I did do that last time we chose the coffee,
but that was the first time I've been cupping.
- This does sound good though, doesn't it?
- Yeah, absolutely, well it is the industry standard
for tasting coffee.
We can taste lots of coffees side by side,
and people often surprise themselves
with what they pick and what they don't like.
So what we have here are eight different coffees
from different places in the world.
Coffee's very seasonal,
so we're tasting coffees like this all the time.
We're both testing if we think our own coffee
is tasting how it should.
So, quality control.
The idea is you need at least a couple of cups of coffee,
in case one cup,
there's something wrong with it, effectively.
- Are we consuming all of these?
I'm gonna be wired!
- Well, it's up to you whether you spit or swallow.
- Oh, okay.
Well, I'll decide as I go.
- Now this is a very coarse grain,
the idea is this whole process
is gonna take us like 20 minutes.
So we're gonna smell them
when they're extracting with water.
And then we're gonna do something
which we call breaking the crust.
At four minutes, we're gonna break through the crust
that's on top,
then we're gonna wait another six minutes
to the ten minute point,
where we go and have our first slurp.
So a lot like wine,
the idea is by slurping the coffee off of the spoon
we aerate it, and we can taste more aroma.
You don't have to slurp,
but you'll often hear a professional cupping,
who has really high-pitched slurps,
and it's often like a badge of honour.
- This is what we can expect from Maxwell,
is a high-pitched slurp, as a professional.
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- It's about trying to learn more about what you do like,
by understanding how to taste.
- Wow, the Geishan, definitely smells really different.
- Yeah, it does, right.
There's two things about that, that are different.
So the Geisha is extremely aromatic,
this is what we call a natural coffee.
So they leave the cherries on to dry in the sun.
- Right.
- And you get those more tropical, fermented.
You get any fermenty kinda?
- Yeah, I mean I wouldn't know
how to describe it to you but - Yeah
- That one smells
like a kind of, you know-- - Coffee.
- If you're a good sort of wine taster,
does that make you a good coffee,
is there a sort of cross-over between?
- Maybe, it means you're used to tasting things
and trying to think about them.
- The subtlety - And being, yeah,
and really if you've never tried to vocalise it before,
you know, like you'll hear people,
you'll get people who are good,
they can pick up the differences,
but they just don't know what words to use.
- Yeah.
- So, people who are into wine are often used to that.
The problem is, it's all about a flavour library,
so there's been some research on this, you know:
If you really know about cheese
or you really know about wine,
a lot of being good at it is you've spent years
learning what a Sudan Rume tastes like.
Yeah I was talking before about the Q grader,
which is our qualification in coffee.
It was quite famous that a couple
of wine experts went on it,
without knowing anything about coffee,
to say, "look, we're great tasters."
And they failed.
Because it's as much--
- I can't imagine how smug you all were, in the coffee room.
See!
- You thought you'd come in here,
into our world.
And we're gonna start this side,
because these are the ones we put the water on first.
So essentially, you're gonna come down,
and you're gonna smell whilst you stir
to the bottom, three times.
- Wow, that doesn't smell like what I would expect
coffee to smell like.
- No, how would you describe it?
- I'm gonna need another go.
(laughs)
- Go on.
So I would describe this as smelling quite floral.
- Okay. - Yep.
And then the second coffee, the Kenyan,
I would describe as much more fruity smelling.
- Yes, I think I would agree with that.
- You gotta get involved, Dan.
- I've gone back to floral there, right?
- Correct, yeah you're good at this.
- Oh, well done. - You are good at this.
- I'll take that, I'll take that.
- That's Ethiopian.
- [Simon] Yeah, I'm gonna stick my nose out here,
can I describe this one as nutty?
- [Maxwell] Absolutely, yep, that's from Peru.
- [Simon] Yeah?
- You're flying.
Yeah, Peru's known for those sort of smooth,
nutty flavour profiles.
- And this one doesn't smell
like it did smell
when it was ground, if you see what I mean.
- Exactly, right.
- Tea, the one you thought was tea.
- That' right, yeah.
- What does it smell like now, Si?
Coffee?
(laughs)
- It's pretty fair to say, if you're getting more
of these heavy compounds,
it's probably a slightly darker roast.
You're gonna take a small amount
of coffee on the spoon.
I slurp it through my teeth, to aerate it, right.
Then it sprays in my mouth,
that's how I get more aroma.
(slurps loudly)
(laughs)
I told you.
So then rinse the spoon off between,
and then work your way along alright.
(slurps)
I'm actually gonna drink,
because I haven't had that much coffee.
So I would just do one flight across,
get a taste for it, get your palate acclimatised,
and then come back and start thinking about the differences.
You okay? - I am.
(laughs)
I wasn't expecting that!
I can't believe it, I thought it would be much less--
I thought it would be-- - Much more subtle intake.
- More of a slurp
- Sounds like a jet engine!
(laughs)
- [Dan] Time to give it a go ourselves,
less jet engine, and more
(slurps) slurp.
(laughs)
- Alright.
- Okay.
(laughs)
- Dan wins, I think.
- You spit it out this time?
- Yeah, I'm gonna (slurps)
hit my limit in a bit.
I'm just figuring out which one's the best.
(slurps)
That's good.
- The way that we timed that made it sound like
I did the proper slurp. - Like you did the slurp.
- Keep that one in.
- Is that the Peruvian one?
- Mmmhmm.
- [Maxwell] What do you think of the Sudan Rume?
I always describe this as tasting a bit like a curry.
But, I mean sort of like a Thai curry.
So like coriander.
- I reckon that's my favourite so far.
- Yeah. - Then the Sudan Rume.
- Sudan Rume, okay.
- [Dan] It was clear that Si's palate was far more
refined and sophisticated than mine,
but we still hadn't found out what,
apart from the bean,
goes into making the perfect coffee.
And it turns out that this explanation required
the use of a pie-chart.
Maxwell explained that the perfect coffee would
be different from one person to the next,
but there are four key areas
that you need to consider in the process.
The biggest part, 50%,
is of course that coffee bean itself.
The green coffee or origin.
You can't make a good coffee from a bad bean.
The next key part is the roasting process,
which is, in essence, the cooking process
that brings out the flavour of the bean.
- So the roaster is often in this sort of,
it's a kind of mysterious bit of black magic.
Like, there's basic light and dark,
so light brown to black.
But that in the middle there,
you've got all these roasters around the world saying,
"Okay, well I do a slightly longer roast,"
or, "I do a slightly shorter one,"
or, "I use more heat the beginning, or more air flow."
That's the world of roasting, right.
And that's why you might prefer a coffee roasted by us
to another roast, or you might not.
It'll be our style of roasting.
But this has a big, big impact.
- [Dan] We'll get to see
that roasting process firsthand shortly.
Interestingly though, the brewing segment of the pie chart
is smaller than you'd imagine.
This is of course how you choose to make your coffee.
- And of course, you know,
most people have never visited a coffee farm.
So you know, a customer in the UK or America,
is very aware of this, 'cause it's what they do.
Most people's water in their house is the same, right?
So they don't get to see this one very often.
They buy from their favourites.
So really, most people are playing
with this one and this one.
Whose coffee did I buy?
And how did I make it?
The interesting thing about brewing though,
is that again, there's only so much you can do.
So what I've seen over the years is,
I was involved in barista competitions,
and I did courses, is people went away
thinking that they just needed to figure out the way
to get it to taste the way they wanted.
When actually the coffee they'd bought
was never gonna taste fruity, for example.
'Cause they've bought a Brazilian coffee, which is nutty.
Does that make sense? - Yeah.
- But the key with brewing is just understanding
how different devices work.
I'm confident you can make good coffee
on almost any brewing device,
it's just about understanding the device.
- [Dan] Conversely, there's one part of the pie chart
that some of us wouldn't even think about at all.
The water used to make your coffee is crucial to its taste.
- It makes sense, right, when you think about it.
A typical filter coffee is 99% water and 1% coffee.
Alright, so coffee's much more dilute than you think.
But coffee's a really strong, potent ingredient, right.
Then espresso is probably 10% coffee to the rest water.
So you've got 90 to 99% water.
So we roast coffee, and we ship it to all around the world.
But I'll go and taste my coffee in someone else's shop,
and I'm like, huh, this doesn't taste at all
like it does at our roastery.
And so everybody knew water was important,
but I did a lot of research
with a chemist at Bath University,
looking at exactly what minerals in the water
affect the flavour, right.
And basically, there's a couple of key things.
You do need some minerals, calcium and magnesium,
they help you pull flavour out.
But the problem in hard water areas,
like where we are in the South West,
is that hardness,
there's something called bicarbonate in the water,
and it just wipes out all the acidity, right.
So if you were to have a cup of coffee in my shop,
and you got some baking soda,
and you dropped the tiniest pinch in,
it would just wipe the coffee out.
- No way!
- Yeah, and so, for example,
you can have the best green coffee,
roasted perfectly, and then you use really hard water,
and lose most of it.
That's what happens in coffee shops.
People buy the best equipment,
they go on the barista courses,
but because this one isn't being accounted for,
and they think it's them.
They're like, "Ah, maybe I'm just not a very good barista."
But it's not, it's the water.
- [Dan] Right.
- The go-to options right now are bottled water.
The thing is, a bottled water like Evian for example,
the very minerals you pay for,
that make it taste full and rounded,
wipe out the coffee.
So the key thing about water
that people got wrong for a long time,
is they thought the water they like the taste of
would make a good coffee.
So your favourite drinking water isn't necessarily
gonna make you the best cup of coffee.
- [Dan] Right.
Within their premises here in Bristol,
Colonna's do their own roasting of the green origin beans,
and once again, there's a lot more that goes into that
than you might think.
We have got Beth to talk us through the roasting process.
So we've already seen the beans sucked up in this machine,
up to that container there at the top.
We've got a couple of screens here
with some quite detailed information
about temperature et cetera.
So what are we looking at, and what is the process?
- So, obviously this is the roasting machine,
and I'm basically in control of the gas fuel
and the air flow through the roaster.
So my job is basically when the roaster's going on,
to balance the gas input and the airflow
to really make sure that the bean comes out
at our designated time, designated temperature,
and to get real continuity every time that we do that.
Every bean is totally different,
so different origins, different processes,
different varietals.
Everything means that each roast's
gonna be totally different.
So you can get some continuity between the same roast
of the same coffee.
So, for example, this is a Peruvian coffee,
it's really super sweet, got a little bit
of acidity up front,
so I decided to go for a relatively mellow profile,
nothing pushing it too hard.
Just to keep all those like, mild notes in there.
Each coffee that we get in,
I kinda decide what elements of the bean
I want to highlight.
So has it got a really good acidity,
or is it really super sweet?
And then that dictates how much gas and air I use.
- I had no idea how much of a personal process it was.
In the same way that Maxwell
has won a barista competition in the past.
Beth's won a roasting competition last week,
last year should I say,
and you've got another one coming up soon.
- Yeah, this week, so, fingers crossed.
This part of the roast is all about
the bean slowly coming up to the temperature
of the machine.
So, you can't really do anything,
you just hope that the energy that you've got in there
will give you a nice smooth start.
So this line behind is what I'm aiming for,
and then my new blue line
is the temperature inside the drum.
So now throughout the roast,
I'm probably gonna be decreasing the gas,
and increasing the airflow.
So as we progress through the roast,
we have some variation away from the line.
So, from the curve that we're trying to hit.
So I've just been making adjustments over here,
trying to get it back on track as much as possible.
- [Dan] Well, we'll see how close you get.
- Yeah, I know, no pressure.
Roasting on camera's the worst.
(laughs)
So we'll let them go around for about 30 seconds,
and then we actually found that they cool
a lot quicker if you just stop it, so then I'll--
- Oh really?
- Yeah.
- Did you hit your numbers?
- [Beth] I did actually.
- [Dan] Nice one.
- [Beth] There was never a doubt in my mind.
- [Dan] So with the tasting
and the roasting covered off,
what about making the perfect brew?
- But a cafetiere, there's no paper,
you get more sediment, bigger body.
- Yeah.
- Then you have something like a pour-over,
like a V60, have you heard of those?
- Yes, that's what I've got.
- That's what you've got.
- That's, yeah, my method of choice at the moment.
- Full paper, so you get none of that sediment.
- No.
- The only thing is, paper does have a taste,
and if you really wanna go down the rabbit hole,
people start to have that,
"Ah, I prefer the taste of that paper."
But what I like about the aeropress,
it's not a lot of paper, okay,
and it's super versatile.
Do you have a preference?
Do you like it strong, or do you like it?
- I like it strong, generally.
I wouldn't drink a full espresso, but.
- Okay.
- Well, it depends on the day, depends on the moment.
- So it's on a quite a course setting.
- [Simon] Yep.
- We're gonna bring it round to a much finer setting.
The idea is just to cover all of this,
some simple stuff really,
cover all of the coffee with the water.
So it's all dissolving.
And then what I'm gonna do,
is I'm gonna rinse the filter,
'cause that way we get rid of any paper taste.
- [Simon] Ah, okay.
So if you were using a pour-over, you'd do the same?
- The same. - Okay.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Then I close it down, the aeropress,
to get rid of any excess space,
and then what we're gonna do is just press it down
for about 20 seconds.
And obviously, the finer you grind,
the more pressure, yeah exactly.
- That is a good brew. - Can I try it?
- You can indeed, yeah.
- Yeah, really, really good.
So I like all strengths of coffee.
For me, I like espresso, I like filter,
as long as the coffee's good
and it's well extracted,
then that's the goal.
- Great stuff, thank you very much.
There's some mega tips in here.
- My pleasure, thanks for coming to visit us.
- Cool, well, obviously, Dan and I,
we don't just wanna kind of leave having taken
all of your information and then going.
- That wouldn't be fair.
- No, is there anything that we can do,
you know, to help out?
- There is actually,
if I take you out onto the production floor,
we're a little short staffed.
- Yeah, that's brilliant. - I'd love a hand.
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
yeah, come on, let's do it.
So what would you like us to do Maxwell,
like roast it, or do some tasting,
or anything like that?
- Well I don't think we're quite there yet.
- No? - I mean what I would really,
what would really be very helpful to us,
if you could label all these bags for us.
Think you could do that?
- Label the bags?
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So the idea is you get it symmetrically
in the middle with the red label
on the front. - Yeah.
- And then we've got the information label on the back.
Probably a couple of hundred bags to do.
- To be fair that probably does sound like something
that we might be able to do, doesn't it?
Yeah, happy days!
Great! - It's been great.
When you're finished, if you let yourselves out.
- Yeah!
- Yeah, it is closing-up time.
- Yeah, alright.
Thanks! - Thank you!
- No problem!
- Do you wanna do the red ones or the white ones?
- [Dan] I'll do the white ones.
That's pretty good. - Thanks, mate.
- [Dan] For your first go.
- [Simon] I feel like we should probably do a poor job,
just so that the viewers know that it's us
that's done it.
That it's the
special package. - Ah, I've got one there.
- [Simon] That's the one I did.
- Anyway, we hope you've learnt as much today
about how to make the perfect brew as we have.
I've certainly learnt a hell of a lot.
As you could well gather over the video,
it is Colonna's here who make our specialist coffee
that you will find on the GCN shop,
hence why it is so good.
And if you would like to personally taste
just how good it is,
we've put a link straight to the coffee section
of our shop, in the description just down below.
- Yeah, and if you do buy some,
make sure you let us know what you think.
Everyone, of course,
has their own personal coffee preferences,
but we're pretty confident, aren't we?
That this is an absolute belter.
- Well, it's not had a bad rating yet on the shop, has it?
- No, it hasn't, absolutely.
- Talking of personal preferences when it comes to coffee,
Lasty actually asked a few of the professional riders
what coffee they have before a stage of the grand tour.
And you can find that video just down here, somewhere.
Oh, getting ahead of me.
- So I make
196 to go.