The method on testing the quality of coffee valve

18 Sep 2019

Following by last blog, we will continue to explore coffee culture around the world. Today we are going to Australia and Asia. Will it be different from European countries?

I haven’t had the chance to travel in Australia yet, but I knew that Starbucks was not successful in this country since the local specialty coffee has developed mature. Someone writes that ‘Eight years after Starbucks launched in Australia in 2000, it had to close over two-thirds of its outlet’. It went back into the 1950s, the independently owned café stores started to grow in Australia, currently 95% of the cafés in here are independently owned. People usually think that the passion on coffee comes from the European immigrants. An author wrote that he found that every single café in Australia have its own decoration style indicating what it wants to present or achieve, and that was a point very attractive to him.

For the coffee flavour, long and short macchiato, ristretto, Vienna and Vienna mocha are most popular drinks on this land, then flat white and long black are created by Australians through the information I had read, which shows that they want to have their own coffee name. Quite straightforward, huh? Different from the French, Australian prefer drinking coffee in the paper cup so that they can carry the cup around. To spend on a professional barista course is another common activity for Australian.

Turning to Japan, it is the third largest coffee consumer in the world following after America and Germany. In the 19th century, Japan had started to corporate with Brazil, therefore 90% of blue mountain coffee bean are preferential exporting to Japan. Initially, coffee is brought to the island by the Dutch, which is treated as medicine by Japanese at that moment. Later on, coffee was Americans` military supplies during the second world war, which was commercialised after war in Japan. When Starbucks entered into Japan in 1996, such coffee chain store became more popular than local store, and the amount of local store decreased sharply. However, in the 2000s, coffee made from chain store, local store and convenient store were all very popular among the public.

In addition, I want to mention that what Japanese local coffee store leave me an impression through blog post and picture I have seen—people like to share their opinions and really happy to talk with consumer. A barista in China thought that this kind of business model influences the development of coffee store in China too, this form of bilateral communication is widely accepted. So far, the Japanese coffee culture that has experienced three rounds of coffee has been fully formed. People can freely choose their favourite coffee and enjoy the best coffee in different situations.

Due to rich of Robusta coffee bean in Vietnam, people here love to enjoy coffee with the condensed milk. Similar as the coffee culture in Australia, the coffee culture in Vietnam was affected by French immigrant. The traditional way to make Vietnam coffee is to add condensed milk in the cup first, and then brew coffee directly into this cup. In Thailand, coffee was a Royal drink when it first entered into this country since the coffee tree was planted in imperial palace. Like in Vietnam, when Thailand decided to plant coffee for exporting, they produced Robusta coffee bean as well, and they way they make coffee is also the same as Vietnamese. The first instant coffee made by Nestle was first introduced in Thailand in 1988, in order to solve the problem that people cannot spend much on coffee, or do not know how to make coffee properly.

When it comes to China, the coffee atmosphere in mainland is deeply affected by Japan and Taiwan region. The first pour-over coffee shop was opened in Shanghai by Taiwanese, and Shanghai became an assembly point for such small coffee shop. That cultivated a bunch of coffee lovers in mainland China at the same time. Nowadays, barista in China is usually communicating as a regional base, and they are all aiming to develop the coffee into a next level together. Here I would recommend a Taiwanese Youtuber, who is the owner of a coffee shop in Taiwan:

Hope you feel that have learned something from today`s blog—I was a bit surprised from that coffee culture in some countries were influenced by immigrants or coloniser. Next time, I am going to share the some coffee competition with you.

Lastly, here we will provide you a test process for measuring the quality of coffee exhaust valve:

1.Material preparation

a)Coffee bean from the same batch under the same roasting condition

b)Team A: 5 packaging bags using WOJIN`s valve

c)Team B: 5 packaging bags using valve of Company B

2.Test process

a)5 tests in total

b)75 test days in total, every 15 days will be seen as 1 period

c)Take one bag of coffee beans from both Team A and B after each period

3. Test method

a)Take 100g of coffee bean and put into packaging bags from Team A and B (10 bags in total)

b)Pack and seal these 10 bags

c)Take 5 cupping tests after each period from both teams, COMPARE the coffee flavour and record in detail

4.Important information

a)Please do not open the coffee after sealing

b)This test is for testing valves from 2 different suppliers

c)Tested coffee bags will be removed

5.Result

According to the coffee flavour change recorded from 5 cuppings in 5 periods, you will find that the wojin coffee valve works better on storing coffee and keeping the flavour.

Tag: coffee valve

Originally published 18 Sep 2019, updated 18 Sep 2019.