New journal Flavo(u)r for researchers and practitioners

A new open access journal for issues related to Molecular gastronomy has recently arrived: Flavour. According to the editors, the journal "seeks to create a shared forum for the publication of evidence-based research in an open access context that will make it accessible not only to researchers but also the wider community of chefs, policy makers and the public". This is no small ambition.

However, it is a very interesting ambition because one of the main efforts of molecular gastronomy is to bring together researchers and practitioners. The editors' thoughts about this, and other matters, can be found in the "Welcome to Flavour" editorial by the main editors Peter Barham and Per Møller.

Who will be reading Flavour?
Researchers are used to read research papers, but are practitioners like chefs etc.? In Norway, educational research indicates that e.g. teachers less than would be expected, and sought, turn to research for their own development (html and pdf, both in Norwegian). To generalise, they seldom read research literature in their own field, at least when compared with engineers, nurses and accountants. So, what about chefs and other professions that might benefit from results in Flavour journal? I really don't know, but I'd be really interested in seeing who actually reads this journal. What about some statistics on this in, say, a year or two?

That said, I find the journal highly interesting and the fact that it is open access adds greatly to its accessibility. E.g. I found the review by Richard J Stevenson "The role of attention in flavour perception" highly interesting and covers more topics than the title reveals. One particularly interesting topic is what he writes about flavour as a unitary experience (why we find it more difficult to separate single scents than single tastes from a flavour experience). Highly recommended.

Perhaps review papers are a good way of reaching a more general public? My impression is that non-scientists often struggle with the tentative nature of science; that a scientific result is not necessarily a fact that will stand until Judgement Day. The result is that people feel that those inhabiting the scientific community "can't make up their minds". If a journal meant for a non-scientist public is dominated by short papers with singular results rather than reviews painting the large picture, I fear that this might be further cemented. Of course, if you have practitioner-researcher collaborations the picture changes dramatically because the researcher then can help put the research into practical use.

That said, I congratulate the editors with a great start and wish them the best of luck in their future efforts in spreading the good news.

Previous related/relevant posts
The 6X °C egg, or "opposite-boiled eggs" revisited (Feb 2011).
Relevance: Vega & Mercadé-Prieto's effort in visualising texture by generating an informal scale for viscosity.

Why are some considered food lovers whereas others are considered food geeks? (Dec 2010)
Relevance: how people's backgrounds and education affects how they see things

The Kitchen Stories project - Interdisciplinary network of culinary claims

The text below is an attempt at drawing up a new programme/collaboration/network for exploring claims about food and cooking. Hereby, we make an effort to start a new international and interdisciplinary network to explore such claims from various angles. If you are a researcher (from any field), teacher at any level, chef or something else and find this interesting, read on and feel free to contact us. The programme is drawn out by researchers from Finland (here and here) and myself.

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Is it true that you mustn't rinse, but rather brush, mushrooms? Should a steak be seared to keep the juices inside? Can you prevent fruit salad from turning brown by sprinkling it with lemon juice? Such apparently mundane questions have been source of inspiration for food geeks at least since “The Curious cook” by Harold McGee (1990) was published, but most likely much earlier. A closer analysis of such questions reveal an abundance of intriguing, surprisingly complex and unexplored questions which might be vehicles for education and even subject for research within natural and social sciences.

The world of food and cooking is full of statements on how to do things and occasionally why one should adhere to these advices. Many are rooted in tradition or are created today by us all and sometimes appear to us like modern urban stories. Some are rooted in long experience of kitchen professionals or home cooks, and some even in science. When tradition and science meet interesting things might happen. In some cases the phenomenon in question (see examples in the introduction) is well described within one field of science but is less so in another discipline, laying questions open for research. Secondly, such culinary claims, which we have termed “Kitchen stories”, provide valuable opportunities in education at various levels (see below). Thirdly, interesting questions might be revealed by laypeople, craftsmen (chefs, artisans) or even school children which in turn could end up as relevant research topics to be studied within various sciences. Finally, such kitchen stories are valuable parts of our cultural heritage and provide rich research material for scientific fields such as cultural history and sociology (see figure).

Ongoing efforts
Thus far, we have seen several efforts toward the study of such culinary claims within food science (molecular gastronomy, MG) and since publication of Curious Cook several publications do mention such claims as part of the programme of molecular gastronomy (This, 2009; Vega and Ubbink, 2008).¹ Examples of scientific studies on culinary claims are research on beef stock cooking from the University of Copenhagen (Snitkjær et al., 2010; Snitkjær et al., 2011) and INRA Paris (This et al., 2004). Another example is whether it is a good idea (for the flavour of the dish) to separate the peel and seeds from the flesh before using tomatoes (Oruna-Concha et al., 2007). Even though some such claims have been studied within MG/food science we are not aware of studies starting from such claims within other disciplines such as ethnology, food history, sociology etc.² Following up one of the examples above, one might thus ask

• What claims about making beef stock do we find around the world?
• Are the various versions of one claim similar or qualitatively different?
• Do they exist in some countries/areas, being absent in others? How are they distributed geographically and in time?
• etc.

Since producing, cooking and eating/enjoying food is among the most influential phenomena throughout human history such claims should be relevant and important questions to research. Furthermore, a large proportion of such knowledge is rooted in tradition and we are thus in a hurry to collect/record it because much of it lies in the hands and minds of people only. We should not trust that our modern, globalised and urbanised society will hand down this knowledge to the coming generations in like manner as done in past times. Also, examples exist of the potential in using such claims in various levels of education. In France efforts have been carried out in schools, such as “Ateliers expérimentaux du gout” and “Programme "Dictons et plats patrimoniaux"”.³ Also we are underway, through educational research in Finland (Västinsalo and Aksela, 2011) and Norway (Fooladi, 2010), to unveil what potential this might have in science and home economics education.

A collection of possible research topics/questions is given in the appendix. Our opinion is that this should be a dynamic and expanding list, adding new questions and perspectives along the way.

Prospects and invitation

We believe that this project might involve, perhaps even integrate, a manifold of disciplines as well as various research methodologies/paradigms. As shown in the figure, the phenomenon “culinary claims” forms the centrepiece, allowing the various disciplines to maintain their distinctive features, but also to let them meet in a common point of interest. Our goal is to build an international collection of kitchen stories and culinary claims to be developed and benefitted by researchers of different fields (a French collection exists⁴). We would also like to build a network for researchers, teachers, schools, practitioners and others with a common interest in this topic. Currently no funds are available, but several national applications are in. If you are interested in joining this network, let us know. At this point, we have not set any limits to who might join in, regardless of profession. Further, if you are aware of similar type of efforts, we’d be happy to learn about them.

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Notes

¹ Some collections are available on the web, e.g. http://kitchen-myths.com and they appear to be tool to raise interest of public to natural sciences. However, many such efforts often have a rather one-sided perspective in which science carries “the truth” which is used to “debunk the fallacies of tradition”. We believe in a meeting ground for both science and tradition where both can contribute to the other on more equal terms.
² We do not, however, claim that such research does not exist, and would be delighted to see such research.
³ We are not aware of whether these efforts have been followed by educational research.
⁴www.inra.fr/la_science_et_vous/apprendre_experimenter/gastronomie_moleculaire/une_banque_de_precisions_culinaires

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References
Fooladi, E. (2010). “Kitchen stories” - Assertions about food and cooking as a framework for teaching argumentation. Paper presented at the XIV IOSTE Symposium, Bled, Slovenia. www.ioste14.org/publications

McGee, H. (1990). The Curious Cook - Taking the lid off kitchen facts and fallacies. San Francisco: North Point Press.

Oruna-Concha, M. J., Methven, L., Blumenthal, H., Young, C., and Mottram, D. S. (2007). Differences in Glutamic Acid and 5'-ribonucleotide Contents Between Flesh and Pulp of Tomatoes and the Relationship with Umami Taste. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 55(14), 5776-5780.

Snitkjær, P., Frøst, M. B., Skibsted, L. H., and Risbo, J. (2010). Flavour development during beef stock reduction. Food Chemistry, 122(3), 645-655.

Snitkjær, P., Risbo, J., Skibsted, L. H., Ebeler, S., Heymann, H., Harmon, K., and Frøst, M. B. (2011). Beef stock reduction with red wine - Effects of preparation method and wine characteristics. Food Chemistry, 126(1), 183-196. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2010.10.096

This, H. (2009). Molecular Gastronomy, a Scientific Look at Cooking. Accounts of Chemical Research, 42(5), 575-583.

This, H., Meric, R., and Cazor, A. (2004). Lavoisier and Meat Stock. Comptes Rendus Chimie, 9, 1510-1515.

Vega, C., and Ubbink, J. (2008). Molecular Gastronomy: A Food Fad or Science Supporting Innovative Cuisine? Trends in Food Science and Technology, 19(7), 372-382.

Västinsalo, J., and Aksela, M. (2011). Using kitchen stories as starting point for chemical education in high school. Paper presented at the ESERA 2011, Lyon, France.

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Appendix – possible research questions/topics within the Kitchen stories framework

A list of possible research questions is collected below. We are happy to expand the list with research questions/topics suggested by collaborators or others.

Keywords: Education

• How can kitchen stories be used as the starting point for laboratory activities?
• Which chemical contents can be approached through kitchen stories?
• How can kitchen stories be used as approach to teach argumentation and inquiry?
• How students’ thinking skills can be affected when using kitchen stories as a starting point for chemical education?
• How students’ interest towards chemistry can be affected when using kitchen stories as a starting point for chemical education?

Keywords: Chemistry, physics, food history, culinary school education/training

• Research projects on different scientific phenomena behind selected myth such as “The actual reason for flambéing is to add the flavour of the liqueur to the foods, without adding the alcohol.”

Keywords: Ethnology, ethnography, history

• Distribution of culinary claims by geography
• Distribution of culinary claims in time

Keywords: Science theory, education, argumentation, epistemology, history

• What argumentative patterns/traits can be found in kitchen stories and how do these patterns play out according to region/country, type of source, time in history etc.
• What sort(s) of knowledge do cooking claims represent? And how does this relate to epistemic practices of culture, tradition and science?

Keywords: Communication, technology, dissemination, education

• How can kitchen stories be collected, structured, organised (and published?) using digital/web based tools for common benefit?

Enlightening video lecture on argumentation at Penn State University

Twice a semester Pennsylvania State University holds its Ed Waterbury Lecture on science, technology, mathematics, engineering and mathematics education. This autumn, one of my main sources of inspiration concerning argumentation in science was the invited lecturer.

Prof. Sibel Erduran from University of Bristol is a renown researcher, author and lecturer in fields such as science education, argumentation in science education and philosophy of chemistry. Her contribution to a seminar at the University of Oslo a few years ago was the starting point of my interest in argumentation in science education. In fact, this was the main impulse for me getting involved in what we now call "the Kitchen stories project" (see below).

Her 1 hr lecture + Q/A session at Penn State University was on the topic of argumentation in education (mainly middle school) and professional development of teachers, titled "Modeling Epistemic Practices in Teachers' Learning: The case of argumentation". This lecture is available on the university's web pages (open access, hopefully online for a long time).

Sibel Erduran: "Modeling Epistemic Practices in Teachers' Learning: The case of argumentation"

Why argumentation?
The topic of argumentation has gained increasing interest amongst science educators and educational researchers the last decades because, it is claimed, a science education for the population should not only address "declarative knowledge" (atoms and molecules, chemical reactions, laws of physics, plant biology, planets and stars, physiology etc. etc.) because science is about much more than mere facts. Science is just as much about methods for experimenting, how new knowledge is achieved, how scientists work, how scientific results are used for policy reasons and so forth. Examples of such key questions might be

• Why do scientists apparently disagree on things? (climate change, genetic engineering etc.)
• Is there something wrong when they disagree, or is this a part of how science is supposed to work?
• How is scientific knowledge constructed?
• How can we know that scientific results are to be trusted?
• Is scientific knowledge fixed (never-changing) or is it tentative (may change over time)? If it is tentative, why should we then trust it?

Many would say that these are things we need to include in school if we want to have a science education that is relevant to people's lives. Even more so because much of the science that is relevant in today's society is far too advanced for most people to follow (e.g. genetic engineering). Hence, understanding "how science works"/"the nature of science" and so forth might be just as important as being able to recall, say, how photosynthesis works.

Kitchen stories and argumentation
The Kitchen stories project is basically about collecting claims/statements about what to do when you cook (as given by cookbooks, old wive's tales, culinary school instructions, your grandma etc.), and then use this claims for various purposes. The purposes might be scientific study of food phenomena, teaching, historical perspective on food and cooking etc. Examples of such claims might be "sprinkling lemon juice on fruit salad to prevent it from turning brown" or "you should brush mushrooms, not rinse them".

The basic idea behind the argumentation part of this project is that every such claim, or rule, is in fact a fragment of an argument. The claim might be true or not, coherent or incoherent, complete or incomplete. But still it's at least part of an argument, and we can use this to either experiment with food, learn about argumentation, learn about food/cooking etc. I've described the ideas behind this project previously, mainly in a three-part series as well as a conference lecture/paper. The two entries most relevant to argumentation are the conference paper (uppermost) and "Culinary precisions part 2:3. Analysing statements...":

- "Culinary precisions" and/or "Kitchen stories" at science education conference
- Culinary precisions part 1:3. Collecting statements about food and cooking
- Culinary precisions part 2:3. Analysing statements about food and cooking
- Culinary precisions part 3:3. Students as "culinary mythbusters"

I believe that the Sibel's lecture might be a good help in bringing this project one step further, particularly the theoretical parts of it, but perhaps also the practical ones. Thanks, Sibel :)

Miraculin revisited - part 1:2

Introduction in Norwegian: I anledning denne ukas episode om mirakelfrukt på Schrödingers katt på NRK publiserer jeg to blogginnlegg om temaet. Det første er en reprise av et tidligere innlegg, dog utvidet med noen flere smakstester. Det påfølgende er en samling fakta om mirakelfrukt med referanser til primærlitteraturen. Siden denne bloggen normalt er på engelsk fortsetter jeg herved på engelsk. Innlegg nr. 1 av 2 følger nedenfor.

On the occasion of me attending this week's episode of the Norwegian popsci TV series "Schrödingers katt" about miracle fruit I'll post two entries on miracle fruit/miraculin. The first is a reposting on a previous entry, expanded with a few more tasting notes. The second post will be a collection of facts about miracle fruit including references to primary literature. Part 1:2 follows below.

The following entry was previously published 7 August 2010, slightly revised.
Note: the original blog entry has some interesting comments worth having a look at.

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For some time now, there has been somewhat of a hype about the miraculous berry that makes everything sour taste sweet. Some time ago, I ordered a packet of dried and powdered miracle fruit tablets and gave it a try. The following post gives some background and the results of a truly fascinating experience.

The miracle fruit is a a berry containing the glycoprotein miraculin with the unlikely effect that when your taste buds meet this substance, you taste sour foods as they were sweet. That is, your perception of sourness is altered. In certain parts of the world, the substance has been used for quite long, whereas in USA and Europe it has not yet been cleared for use as additive. The berry in itself is allowed, but unfortunately they don't keep for long and are apparently not suited for shipping fresh. However, a freeze dried version made into tablets does exist and this is the version I tried.

There is quite some amount of research on the effect and mechanism of miraculin on our tongue as a google scholar search for "miraculin" reveals. The first scientific report was in Nature as early as in 1968 (correction: first time published in 1965). There is also research indicating that other plants exhibit similar effects, such as curculin from the Curculigo latifolia plant. The miraculin protein structure shown here is taken from the Swiss protein structure homology-modeling service.*

An ordinary google search gives various producers and web shops for buying the stuff. Adding to the fun are the conspiration theory-like suggestions (two refs.) of the sugar industry's ways of stopping miraculin approval in the USA since the product might reduce the population's consumption of sugar (which of course is beneficial for everyone except the sugar industry). There are also efforts being made on producing the miraculin glycoprotein using genetic engineering methods, and I guess the hope is that one might efficiently produce miraculin or a relative using common plants or organisms such as lettuce or E-coli bacteria (same as is done with production of other proteins/enzymes such as medicinal insulin or rennet for cheesemaking).

How does it work (in practice)?

Just pop a tablet of freeze dried miracle fruit in your mouth, let it roll arond until dissolved. It takes about a minute or two and tastes not very much. Rather flavour-/tasteless with some green flavours, tastes somewhat "healthy" if you know what I mean.

And what about the effect?

The effect is remarkable upon tasting various foods subsequent to eating the tablet. The effect lasts for about half an hour.

My sensory impression is that it alters the tongue's sensations, making sour taste sweet. That is, it does not suppress acid/sour taste, but part of the sour taste is converted to sweetness. The sweetness is rather sugary in character. However, some of the sour perception is still there, leaving part of the bite/freshness. It is almost like 70-80 % of the sour is converted to sweet, or somewhat like adding a lot of sugar to the food. In my experience, bitterness is not reduced, as claimed by one of the retailers (see tasting notes below).

The problems might arise later on, however, when you realise how much acidic food you have been swallowing... Below follows a long list of foods and how I felt it tasted (before and) after having the "miracle pill". You'll also find some relevant blog posts and research references if you scroll past the list.

	Apple juice Like sweetened apple squash. Very sweet, too sweet for my taste. Rather cloying.
	Pure ascorbic acid Before: intensely sour/sharp. Sour taste overpowers almost every other conceivable flavour. After: Slightly bitter, resembling sherbet powder. I makes pure ascorbic acid edible (although I wouldn't guarantee any positive health effect, rather the opposite)!
	Balsamic vinegar (inexpensive type) Before: rather acid and far from complex. After: Sweeter and more mellow. Resembles me of balsamico vinegar reduction without the syrupy texture/consistency (not as viscous as a reduction). Takes the vinegar one notch up in terms of flavour.
	Buttermilk Tastes like substantial amount of sugar is added. Well rounded flavour. Like sweetened youghurt but with the tartness and flavour of buttermilk, which is somewhat different from the one you get from youghurt culture. If you like cultured milk products with sugar you'll probably really like this one.
	Grapefruit Before: slightly sweet, bitter, a little sour/tart. After: really sweet with almost no sourness left. The bitterness remains unaltered.
	Grapes Before: Medium sweet, somewhat tannic from the skins. After: Very sweet, but with the acidic bite still present. Doesn't taste sour, but still feels fresh (in a way, the acidity is noticeable without being tasted).
	Lemon Before: Lemony flavour, but very sour/sharp. Acidity is overpowering. After: Sweet and lemony, like lots of sugar has been added. The acidic bite is present, but perfectly edible as it is. Pleasant.
	Lime Before: Lime flavour, but rather sour/sharp. Acidity still overpowering, but less than for the lemon. After: Sweet and rich lime flavour, like lots of sugar has been added. Still has the acidic bite, but perfectly edible as it is. Very pleasant.
	Mango Before: Good, but with marked acidity. Acidity remains on the back of the tongue after swallowing. After: same as grape
	Orange juice Resembles me of sweetened orange squash. Too sweet for my taste.
	"Sour feet" sweets Before: sweet but at the same time rather tart. After: rather similar to before, but sweeter. The acidic bite is less pronounced (or even lacking)
	Tomato Does become markedly sweeter and full-bodied, the flavour resembles tomatoes being more ripe. On another occasion (on Scrödinger) the tomatoes tasted like they were sprinkled with sugar
	Tonic water Before: Sweet, a little sour and bitter. Bitterness on the back of the tongue lingers a little. After: More neutral and sweet, but the bitterness remains.
	White- and red wine vinegar Before: both very sour/sharp. The acidity overpowers most flavours when taken pure. After, white: Like wine gone off. Sweet n'sour, flavour of ferment. Not pleasant at all. Quite revealing since off-/poor tastes is not longer overpowered by the acidity. After, red: Like white, but even less pleasant. Unpleasant aroma and flavour.
	Coffee (Solberg & Hansen, "Black coffee") Before: Black coffee is a rather fruity Brasilian with marked natural acidity (a deliberate choice to enhance the effect of the miracle fruit). After: Very much like coffee with added sugar. In my opinion, the coffee was ruined, and I guess coffees with less acidity would taste less sweet as well. Initially I had very limited faith in this one when it comes to benefit from miracle fruit, ...and rightly so. I hereby apologise to the coffee makers for such an abuse of excellent coffee.
by Chris Blakeley	Tabasco (classic red) Before: Acidic, pungent, burning sensation lingering in the mouth and around the lips. After: Sweeter, still somewhat fruity and still just as pungent and burning.
	Dark chocolate (Freia 70% premium)  Before: A little acidic and bitter. A typical 70% cocoa variety. After: Little difference. The idea was that dark, more acidic chocolate might require less sugar using miracle fruit. In this case, the difference was almost not noticeable.
by Danielle Bauer	Dry white wine Before: A standard dry table wine. After: Sweetish, somewhat cloying, freshness very much reduced. Really not good at all.

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Blogposts on miraculin/miracle fruit

• Cooking issues: A nice posting on miraculing and gymnemic acid (something of an opposite of miraculin)
• notcot.com: tasting using fresh miracle fruit/berries
• taffel.se: well researched post in Swedish ("Anti-syratripp: Mirakulin ger kick åt matnördar")
• khymos: short posting on miracle fruit

Selected scientific papers

Inglett et al.  (1965). Taste Modifiers, Taste-Modifying Properties of Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum Dulcificum). J. Agric. Food Chem., 13(3), 284-287

Brouwer et al. (1968). Miraculin, the Sweetness-inducing Protein from Miracle Fruit. Nature 220, 373-374.

Theerasilp et al. (1989). Complete amino acid sequence and structure characterization of the taste-modifying protein, miraculin. J. Biol. Chem., 264, 6655-6659. (open access paper + "fellow 1988 article")

Paladino et al. (2008). Molecular modelling of miraculin: Structural analyses and functional hypotheses. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Comm., 367(1), 26-32.

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*Appropriate references to Swiss-model protein structure

Kiefer F, Arnold K, Künzli M, Bordoli L, Schwede T (2009). The SWISS-MODEL Repository and associated resources. Nucleic Acids Res. 37, D387-D392.

Jürgen Kopp and Torsten Schwede (2004). The SWISS-MODEL Repository of annotated three-dimensional protein structure homology models. Nucleic Acids Res. 32, D230-D234.

Food Culture Centre for Children Opened in Oslo

First day of September this year Norway saw a new centre for children's food culture located in an old renaissance farm in the middle of Oslo. This is to be a national resource for helping schools and pre-schools to focus on good food and food culture.

In the Norwegian curriculum the subject home economics ("Food and health") is given throughout primary and lower secondary school. Many would say that this subject does not enjoy much credit of being a "serious" subject in competition with mathematics, language, science etc. There does not even exist school books in this subject for primary school pupils(!) and the subject has not enjoyed the benefits of having its own "national centre for education" to support schools and teachers the same way as many other school subjects (e.g. Norwegian Centre for Science Education).

Food writer Andreas Viestad thought that food was too important to be left behind in school and a few years ago he started a project to try rectifying this situation. The result is a renovated mid-1700's farm, Geitmyra, in the midst of our capital with its sole purpose of promoting food culture for children and young people. Our institute Food culture and health at Volda University College has been a close collaborator in development and quality assurance of the pedagogic material. The picture shows Andreas making food together with children at Geitmyra (photo: Mette Randem, courtesy of Geitmyra).

"Geitmyra matkultursenter for barn" (Geitmyra food culture centre for children) two main courses on its menu

• on-site teaching for school classes, kindergartens/nurseries, after-school activities and others
• a database with teaching material, experiments, subject content and recipes for teachers to use as resource in planning and carrying out their teaching (see below)

Opening day

Yesterday's grand opening attracted considerable attention, featuring prominent guests such as Minister of Agriculture and Food Lars Peder Brekk, Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Lisbeth Berg-Hansen and head of Education Agency of Oslo Torger Ødegaard. However, the main guests were pre-school children entertaining with song and school children cooking the centre's first dishes from of organic home grown vegetables and fresh fish.

The web site

The Geitmyra educational web portal facilitates sought-after teaching material for Food and health-teachers, but also a number of cross-curricular topics such as food in history, science in food, learning mathematics through food and cooking, reading and writing in food context, growing organic food and composting, school garden etc. The educational portal is organised according to the national curriculum and is easy to navigate. At the opening day, we have together published a total of 21 experiments, articles and teaching sequences, and still more are to come. Thanks to generous funding from both official and private sources all the web resources are free, although in Norwegian.

I'll come back with a complete list of the material in near future, as well as detailed descriptions of some of the material and experiments. We expect this to be a living and ever-growing base of quality resources for teachers and others to benefit from.

I congratulate all the people at Geitmyra with a successful launch and hope we'll see that the new centre does indeed make a difference for children, teachers and others.

Links

Geitmyra main web site: www.geitmyra.no

Geitmyra teaching portal: www.geitmyra.no/portal

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2c - seminar on profile roasting

In this post I summarise the last seminar I attended at the Norwegian Barista Championships this spring. It was hosted by former world champion barista Tim Wendelboe and focussed on coffee roasting. The following is what I understood from this seminar.

Profile roasting, or roasting profile

As a coffee drinker, I find it interesting to get to know the various roasters' profiles, or roasting personalities so to say. I believe each of the four Norwegian roasters I've gotten to know best have their own rather distinct style. The smallest, Madelynn coffee, have a fairly dark roasting profile resulting in more chocolatey and "brown" aromas with less acidity (and perhaps fruitiness) compared to the other "extreme" among the four of Tim Wendelboe. The coffees from Wendelboe seem to me as extremely clean and rich in acidity, but with slender body. Kaffa roasters, on the other hand, are on the lighter side of roasting but with more full-bodied coffees compared to Wendelboe (some of Kaffa's natural/dry processed coffees are among my all time favourites, I must admit). Finally, Solberg & Hansen being by far the largest speciality coffee roaster in Norway, produces such a wide variety of coffees and roasts that the wide variety might be said to constitute their profile, rather than a specific roasting ideal.

Note that these are my personal impressions and nothing more, but it is quite interesting to note differences in ideal and philosophy when listening to roasters and tasting their coffee. Also, it's even more fun when you start noticing these differences when tasting their coffees.

My understanding is that the term "roasting profile" can have two different meanings. Firstly, it can be understood as the preferred flavour characteristics which the roaster wants to achieve (example). Secondly, it can mean the time/temperature curve (profile, recipe) which is followed during roasting (example). Of course these two are closely related, but they are still two different things. I'm not sure what is the official definition is, if it exists, but it seems that the latter definition predominates among professionals (and on wikipedia). So, what is to be understood if we switch the two words to become "profile roasting"? Not exactly sure, to be honest...

Main issues in roasting coffee according to Tim

Some issues that Tim told about and was discussed were:

• Roasting coffee is a matter of dealing with numerous variables and many of these are constantly changing: ambient temperature in the room while roasting, moisture content in the beans, humidity in the room, conditions of the beans, variations among batches of coffee etc. etc. Thus, if you're serious about quality it is not possible to use one and the same recipe over and over again. Certainly not on coffee different sources and areas/countries, but even so if you should buy the exactly same coffee from the same producer twice! It is a matter of try and fail no matter what.

• Roasting is literally going part of the way towards burning the beans, i.e. combustion. In fact, at one point during roasting the temperature will start rising by itself, which is an indication of the coffee almost starting to burn (technically: endotermic reaction is followed by an exothermic reaction). Coffee Collective in Copenhagen did a post on this in which I commented on the thermodynamics. The harder a coffee is roasted, the closer you get to the state of charcoal, and in the extreme cases you'd simply end up with ashes (see below). The first picture in this post is taken at Coffee Collective during a roasting; a marvellous experience drinking excellent coffee with the family and following the coffee develop.

• Scandinavian coffee is generally lighter roasted than coffee from central/southern Europe and the US. The very extreme was a sample of Starbucks French roast which was really pitch black. At that stage of roasting very much of the character is literally burnt away, and the coffee will taste the same no matter what coffee you put into the roaster (no point paying good money for expensive coffee if you're going to burn away all the flavour). In that respect, the Starbucks French roast was one of the blackest objects I've ever seen and might be a candidate for a pure black object, which is in fact quite difficult to achieve in the chemical sense ;) In the other extreme, very lightly or under-roasted, the coffee might take on green grassy or pea-like flavours. The figure below is a graphic representation of my personal impressions of the roasters I'm most familiar with. I'd say that eventhough Madelynn's coffee is rated rather dark, it is still lighter than much of the coffee you'd get in central/south Europe and the US.

• CO₂ gas is formed inside the beans due to the combustion reactions. Lighter roasts give lower internal CO₂ pressure because less CO₂ is produced. Lower internal pressure gives a coffee that keeps better during storage because the CO₂ is a rather inert gas (does not react) and that way protects the coffee. This is particularly because CO₂ moving out of the beans transports natural oils and fats that are prone to go old/rancid. If you see coffee beans glisten and from oil on the surface, it is either roaster rather dark or it is getting old (or a little of both).

• Whatever mentioned above, apart from Starbucks, concerns small scale speciality coffee roasting. Large scale roasting needs to follow quite different rules because much larger amounts of heat needs to be handled; not higher temperatures but heating of 400 kg coffe up to 250 °C is a rather different ballgame than 40 kg. Not to say when you want to cool it down to ambient temperature in just a few minutes. Thus, large scale operators commonly use water spray to cool the fresh roasted coffee to avoid over-roasting. This results in "opening of the pores in the beans"(?) --> rapid degassing (70% of the CO₂ lost within a day or so) resulting in rapid maturation and rapid staling.¹

To round off this seminar posting series, I thought this illustrative video from Sweet Maria's coffee gives a good illustration of the various steps the coffee goes through during roasting. I can BTW recommend videos from Sweet Maria's Youtube channel in general; lots of interesting stuff.

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¹ Roasted whole bean coffee is at its best between one and three weeks after roasting, after which it deteriorates (non-water-spray-cooled, that is). From the day of roasting and a week on, the coffee might have a smoky aroma from the roasting, hence the recommended delay. Buying your coffee at a supermarket, you'll seldom have any knowledge about when it was roasted, and how long it has been sitting on the shelf.

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2b - seminar on coffee defects

In this third post from this spring's Norwegian Barista Championships I summarise the most interesting seminar I attended. It was hosted by former world champion barista Tim Wendelboe and focussed on tasting defects in coffee.

I attended two seminars by Tim Wendelboe during this year's event, and of the two the one mentioned here was definitely the most rewarding for me personally.

WORKSHOP/SEMINAR: Flavour defects in coffee

(by Tim Wendelboe)

I always tell my students that if a recipe warn them not to do this or that, they should deliberately try doing it at least once (e.g. don't get egg yolk in the egg whites when whipping meringue, don't open the oven when baking sponge cake etc.). If you don't know how things look or taste when they're failed, it's difficult to have any reference for what's successful. So, go ahead - be disobedient! Tim had indeed done so and collected coffees with various defects in which he brewed cups of defective coffee. The cups were brewed as he would have brewed any other coffee; to the best of one's ability. Not only so, he had also done his best effort to single out the various defects so that we could taste each type of defect separately. Elegant, interesting and very enlightening. The defects we got to taste were:

Faded coffee
(this paragraph has been re-written subsequent to a comment)

at least two reasons for this. The first is past crop vs. new crop. Past crop = coffee that has been stored for some while (e.g. last season's crop) before roasting and sale. This is a typical problem if you are served, say, a Costa Rica coffee this summer because the harvest season is August-December. The second reason for fading is a processing defect if temperature has been too high during drying (e.g. using closed greenhouse-like drying houses with too little airflow). The characteristic of faded coffee is on my palate more subtle and not that critical a defect, but results in lower fruitiness and more woody flavour. The acidity might still be there, but the fruit is more or less gone. So if you get a bag of great Kenya or Panama coffee out of season, don't be surprised if you can't taste all they claim it does on the description on the bag. Also, this defect is easy to get your hands on, even among speciality dealers. Get your hands on a bag of Indian Monsooned Malabar or some Old Brown Java Coffee from Indonesia. These coffees are deliberately aged at the green bean stage to develop a flavour which one would consider being a defect in most other coffee.

Unripe beans
many inexpensive coffees are being uncritically strip picked resulting in a mixture of overripe, unripe and ripe beans; everything is picked at the same time and nothing is thrown away. Characteristic defect flavour would be peanut, old nuts and unpleasant acidity. I would add that unripes also would give a pea-like or grass-like flavour (picture by courtesy of www.coffeeresearch.org).

Old/rancid coffee (subsequent to roasting)
(this paragraph has been re-written subsequent to a comment)

develops an rancid aroma just like the really cheap coffees you can buy in supermarkets. I'd recommend to buy the cheapest ready-ground coffee you can get your hands on to experience this. Alternatively you can smell an espresso machine that hasn't been cleaned since yesterday, or leave your French press overnight to find the same rancid aroma. In fact, even though Italian and French are said to produce good coffee, this is one of the defects I've noticed being very common in these countries. One reason is probably that the fat in finely ground espresso is prone to go rancid much faster than coarser grinds more common in countries further north since contact with air/oxygen and light combined with elevated temperatures are promoters of fats in the coffee (and fat in general) going rancid.

Mouldy
this can result from a variety of reasons. In areas with unstable climate (rain) the skin of ripe coffee fruit on the tree might burst/crack due to sudden increase in water content giving rise to mould. Secondly, in cases of natural/dry processing combined with uncritical harvesting (mixing ripes and unripes), humid climate or poor drying might give rise to mould because of uneven drying. Thirdly, dirty equipment and washing basins will give rise to microorganisms/mould. The mouldy flavour is easy to recognise as it simply takes on a mouldy/musty aroma and flavour.

Mixture of different sorts of qualities and states of green
beans. Not a good starting point for making excellent
coffee (picture by courtesy of www.coffeeresearch.org).

Fermented beans vs. "fermenty style"
Fermented defective coffee might have an unpleasant vinegary acidity as opposed to a pleasant fruity acidity found in some high quality coffees in which the acidity has more winey notes. Coffee gone really far in this direction might have rotten onion-like flavour notes. "Fermenty style" coffees, such as natural/dry processed coffees, have by purpose a slightly fermented flavour but this is considered a virtue rather than a defect. It is a matter of taste, I suppose, whether you appreciate this and in my opinion well processed fermenty style coffees might have a wonderful rich fruitiness that I find very enjoyable.

Phenol, phenolic (also termed "rio" or "rioy" off-flavour)

Tim could not give a very clear account of the reasons for this defect apart from indications that it might be due to cracked/burst berries and that only one defective bean will affect the taste of a whole pot of coffee. Among the attending audience, this was by far the most unpleasant defect. My impression was a lingering unpleasant medicinal, iodine-like or "chemical-y" aroma. I looked into this and found a number of papers mentioning this in addition to Illy & Viani's book Espresso coffee (2005). According to a research paper from 1990, the compounds responsible for the off-

flavour are 2,4,6-trichlorophenol and 2,4,6-trichloroanisol (TCA). TCA is also found in corked wine, musty/muddy flavour in sake as well as off-flavoured raisins, so that's your taste reference if you want to look for it. Illy & Viani report, as Tim, that the origins of this defect is not yet clear. I've done a literature search and could not find any info on the origins either, so it seems we are still in the dark on this. However, this blog post by Tim reveals that he has seriously taken on the quest to single out how or why this mysterious and detrimental off-flavour arises and in the seminar he indicated that one characteristic he suspects might be relevant to look for is cracked cherries (resulting in uncontrolled fermentation). This is not a bad bet, taken that researchers have assumed that microorganisms might be a key element. It would have been fun if a roaster rather than researchers was to find the key to the origin(s) of this much discussed defect.

Two different perspectives on defects

Having recently read Illy & Viani's book Espresso Coffee - The Science of Quality (2005), I found that Tim and Illy/Viani have somewhat different ways of seeing defects. Tim's focus is on how the coffee (defect) comes out in the cup: a defect is defined by how it affects the flavour of your brewed cup of coffee. Illy & Viani, on the other hand, have organised defects according to origin of the defect and distinguishing marks on produced coffee. So: Tim's focus is on the cup and consumer, Illy & Viani on science and production. Their list of defects are

• Rio/rioy beans
• Light green immature beans (bitter, astringent, metallic, grassy)
• Earthy beans (earthy, musty, Robusta-like)
• Mouldy beans (musty, in severe cases putrid)
• Black-green/dark-green immature beans (astringent, rotten fish)
• Sour beans (sour flavour)
• Stinker beans (rotten smell/flavour)
• Black beans (harsh and ashy flavour)
• Peasy beans (smell of fresh green peas)
• Whitish beans (bitter, woody)

This list is longer than Tim's but if we compare the two lists we get the following

Clearly, they have different views on what defects are interesting, and the uppermost two defects are characteristic of what happens to coffee after ended harvest and processing, starting from storage of finished green beans to the point in time when you brew your cup. This period is clearly not the focus of Illy & Viani in their chapter on defects. Also, Tim bundles together all fermenting defects but gives various the reasons for this (these) defect(s).

From my point of view, Tim's perspective is the most relevant because it has it's focus on my experience of the coffee in the cup, not to mention what I should look for when I spend money on speciality coffee. Much the same as a wine enthusiast would be interested in when it comes to cork taint in wine.

Key references

Illy, A., & Viani, R. (Eds.). (2005). Espresso Coffee - The Science of Quality (2nd ed.): Academic Press. (google books - publisher - Amazon)

Spadone, J. C., Takeoka, G., & Liardon, R. (1990). Analytical Investigation of Rio Off-Flavor in Green Coffee. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 38(1), 226-233.

Tim Wendelboe - Blog post from February 2011 containing comment on phenol off-flavour: "A day in the life of Jobneel"

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 2a - the seminars

In this second post I summarise shortly the first three seminars I attended during the Norwegian Barista Championships this year.

As mentioned in the previous post, the championships were not only competitions but also a number of seminars and exhibitions (the full programme is given in part 1). The seminars I attended, and thus am able to give some personal reflections upon are described below and in a following post.

SEMINAR: Extract Mojo – Analysis of coffee extracting using refractometer

This 1.5 hr seminar was given by invited contributor David Walsh working with R&D at Marco beverage systems in Ireland (although their web site is a commercial one they've published quite a lot of educational material such as articles and ppt slides). The presentation was in fact much more than a presentation of the Extract Mojo, and the session was a very clear and systematic presentation of coffee extraction in general. Questions discussed and explained were e.g.

• what is an overextracted or underextracted cup, how do they taste? (we got to taste)
• Is there a clear-cut definition of what a properly extracted cup is? (of course there is no definite answer, but guidelines: yes)
• What is the difference between strength of coffee and degree of extraction?
• What factors affect strength and extraction?
• And finally, he gave descriptions, explanations and demonstrations of the Extract Mojo coffee refractometer in practical use.

This was my first seminar during the event, and I'd been happy enough even if I was to go home after attending only this session. Very well put together indeed, clearly presented and I learnt a lot. No doubt I'll need to write one or more posts on matters such as what is a refractometer, how does it work, opinions on use of refractometer in coffee, extraction and how to measure extraction/strength, some principles of extraction as well as how the Extract Mojo works in particular (I'd love to borrow one from someone...). In conclusion: if you stumble upon the possibility of hearing David talk about coffee, you shouldn't hesitate to attend. It's a safe bet. Until then you might want to follow him at his blog The other black stuff. I'll surely do so.

WORKSHOP: Various coffee brewing methods

Stian Horne from Kaffa roasters in Oslo hosted a practical workshop on brewing methods, starting off with a short primer on coffee from plant to cup, rapidly moving on to the practicalities. The concluding message of the introduction was:

the process from production until you buy it from the shop is (ideally) 4-6 months. At home, the last two steps of grinding and brewing takes 4-6 minutes. Hence, you have ample possibilities to ruin a wonderful coffee, the result of 4-6 months careful cultivation and production, in just about 5 minutes if you are sloppy. "Sloppy" might be using dirty equipment, overextracting, underextracting etc. Philosophy: It's well worth getting yourself some knowledge about brewing if you want to make the most out of the coffee you buy.

Stian listed 5 major points in coffee brewing in which each step has its factors to consider:

1. Water-to-coffee ratio (normally 60-70 g coffee per l water)
2. Grinding (fine, coarse depending on brewing method)
3. Choice of brewing method and how this is carried out (extraction time, extraction temperature, turbulence/stirring)
4. Water quality (coffee is 98.5-99 % water, hence water quality should have an impact)
5. Choice of filter (various filters will/might impart different flavours, rinsing the filter to avoid filter taste)

During the 5^th point above he clearly stated that paper filter might impart paper taste and metal filters will impart a metal taste to the coffee. He also referred to blind tastings in which they had been able to identify the use of metal filter. I'm sceptical, but will not protest until someone have been able to investigate this claim closer (in fact, this might be a a great candidate for a Kitchen story/culinary precision). This is definitely a candidate for a blind tasting of my own.

The participants were then presented with a range of brewing equipments and methods and were allowed to test for themselves. We were invited to test the following brewing methods:

• v60/Hario drip filter
• French press
• Chemex
• Siphon
• various other drip filter methods

I gave the v60 + Hario kettle a try and found that even though the Hario kettle is said to give very good control over pouring it takes some practice to be able to pour consistently. Not easy at all. Furthermore, I guess this method leaves quite a number of variables out of your full control as compared to certain other methods in terms of pour speed, water temperature and extraction time. The siphon was, in addition to be a beautiful piece of equipment, said to be the method giving the best control over such parameters. Great fun, even though my v60 cup did not end up that spectacular.

SEMINAR: "Cup tasting - Take a dive into the marvellous world of coffee flavour"

Alf Kramer, previous president of SCAE, did a 1 hour seminar on taste and cupping. When I attended, there were a number of high school pupils (studying for cook/waiter) present and the seminar was most likely affected by this. Alf spent most of the time talking about our senses of taste, smell and touch (mouthfeel) ending up with the conclusion that the English language has a word that we don't have in Scandinavia, namely "flavour". Regrettably, we only have words for taste and smell in our language. Actually, Swedish fellow bloggers at Matmolekyler ran an informal survey in an attempt to find a Swedish word for flavour. Thus far we haven't seen any follow up post in the matters, and we are still waiting in anticipation ;)

Alf also talked about threshold values in sensing as well as sensory adaptation. In cuptasting, such adaptation is relevant since you after a while will not be able to sense the various nuances of the coffee aroma because your sense of smell is "saturated". The seminar was concluded by a triangle cupping (one single triangle).

One fascinating observation was how the attitude of several pupils changed during the seminar; starting out quite sceptical with arms folded, through somewhat interested, to actively involved. The lesson to be learnt from this is that you shouldn't stop being enthusiastic even though your public seems uninterested, little by little they'll come along. Well done, Alf.

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In the next post, "Part 2b", I will summarise Tim Wendelboe's two seminars in defect-coffee-cupping and profile roasting, respectively. Again, two very informative and interesting seminars, particularly the former (....for me personally, that is). Hopefully, I'll be able to couple the defect cupping seminar with some literature information as I'm at the present enjoying Illy & Viani's "Espresso coffee".

Norwegian Barista Championships 2011. Part 1 - general overview

Three days in Ulsteinvik at the Norwegian west coast: Loads of top quality coffee, ample possibilities to learn new things about coffee, interesting seminars, and meeting lots of very nice people. Below follows a report seen through the eyes of a coffee amateur: the things I found most fun, interesting or intriguing.*

I came to this event without many expectation, mostly because I didn't know what to expect. I was quite optimistic because the organisers had made a great effort to promote the event to the general public (see previous post).

I've heard that the Norwegian speciality coffee society is among the most renowned internationally for quality in coffee and roasting. I've got no concrete evidence for this claim, but reading roaster blogs etc. I get the impression that professionals go to Norway in order to learn "the Norwegian way of roasting". Attending the event, I experienced the Norwegian speciality coffee society to be extremely welcoming, including and interested in talking to all sorts of people. They appear to be very hungry for new knowledge about coffee and quite inclined towards the scientific aspects of growing, treatment, roasting and brewing.

The combination of the two above mentioned observations is really not something you encounter very often when approaching groups of professionals (compare with restaurant chefs, wine experts etc.). This experience is probably the main reason for me enjoying the event so much and benefiting so much from spending three days at this year's championships. I can easily recommend anyone being even slightly interested in coffee, drink and/or tasting to join this event next year.

The programme

...consisted of a mix of competitions (mentioned in the previous post), seminars and exhibitions by roasters, equipment/machine suppliers etc. The seminars I did not attend were as follows

• Coffee vs. quality - What should a really good coffee cost and are you guaranteed good coffee if you buy it in speciality shops? (by Andreas Hertzberg, S&H roasters)
• "Beer academy" - For those who want to learn about something else than coffee (by Ringnes brewery)
• Coffee & chocolate - About the similarities between speciality coffee and high quality chocolate (by Søren Sylvest, Chokolade compagniet, Copenhagen)
• Cup tasting and triangle cupping - Traditional coffee tasting and cup tasting competitions
• Latte art with the champion - Norwegian and Greek latte art champions demonstrating latte art

Latte art buddies Kari (organiser & 2^nd prize this year)

and Stefanos Domatiotis (invited latte art guru & seminar holder)

The seminars I did attend were

• Extract Mojo – Analysis of coffee extracting using refractometer (by David Walsh, Marco equipment suppliers, Ireland)
• Various coffee brewing methods (by Stian Horne, Kaffa roasters in Oslo)
• "Cup tasting - Take a dive into the marvellous world of coffee flavour" (by Alf Kramer)
• To cup taste defects in coffee (by Tim Wendelboe, Tim Wendelboe roasters in Oslo)
• Profile roasting (by Tim Wendelboe)
  

Some or all of these will be described and/or commented in one or more upcoming posts.

The exhibitions/stands

...were a great place to chat, learn, taste various coffees, teas and chocolates, discuss coffee flavour, quality, fair trade etc. The three stands I had most benefit from were

Kaffa roasters, Oslo

Great people, open minded and highly knowledgeable about coffee and brewing. Great coffees, mostly single estate (as far as possible - Robert William at Kaffa explained that not all speciality coffee can be single estate, e.g. from Rwanda, but rather from cooperatives because each farmer in certain countries/areas has such a low production volume). The stand included a setup of three Hario v60 drip cone pour-over brewers for taste samples. I've learnt a lot from these people, and hopefully might be able to contribute back at some point. The picture shows Silje Carinamost likely brewing their excellent Tegu from Kenya, one of the coffees used in this years competitions.

Solberg & Hansen roasters, Oslo

the largest speciality coffee roaster in Norway but still with plenty of time and patience to talk to a coffee amateur chemist with loads of questions. Excellent coffee, tea and chocolate, and very welcoming - day after day. I had a number of interesting cuppings at this stand, and joined their informal French press competition to make the "perfect" French press brew. The competitors chose grinding, dosing and extraction time, and the coffee was analysed using their Extract Mojo coffee refractometer. Great fun and very educational to have your brew analysed by a neutral instrument such as this - I'd really like to have one and play around with. My brew for the competition was highly underextracted (= less than optimal amount of flavours extracted from the ground coffee). Also, S&H made the extra effort of bringing porcelain cups rather than the standard paper cups. Highly appreciated. When coffee providers argue that you should wash the filter in order to remove paper taste, serving the coffee in paper cups is just not the best way to serve your product...

Equipment providers

The one equipment provider that really caught my attention was Espressospesialisten which had put up a La Marzocco Strada EP espresso machine with a note saying "It's here to be used. Have fun, go mad"! For the record, this is the most recent top notch $15-20 000 professional espresso machine and has been described as "the barista's wet dream machine". I tried it a few times but cannot say that the resulting espresso was marvellous. I guess the limiting factor was the barista rather than the machine :) Nevertheless, it was great fun. User reviews can be found for both the EP, electronically programmable version shown here, and the MP manual version.

Who came to visit the event?

I was curious to see whether the promoting efforts by organiser Kaffikari had any effect. Lots of newspaper articles in the weeks preceding the event resulted in the community seemingly being very much aware of the championship in their neighbourhood. Still, most people seen at the event seemed to be coffee or cafe/restaurant professionals of various sorts, although there were also a number of non-professionals coming by to watch the finals the last day. There was an entrance fee every day, and perhaps more people would have come by if the event was free the day of the finals (Saturday). Since there were no seminars this day the organisers might not have had much of a loss making this day free entrance anyway...? On the contrary, I believe the community would have had the opportunity to promote speciality coffee to a wider public.

Conclusion

All in all this was a marvellous experience and I am certain that I'll be writing several posts on coffee in the future inspired by my recent experiences. In the upcoming post - Part 2 - I will describe the seminars I attended including reflections on what I observed and learnt. There will probably be a part 3 describing some thoughts on the competitions as well.

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^* The poor photo quality is due to my choice of not bringing a large camera; all pictures are taken using my mobile phone. I apologise for some poor quality pictures