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>>Alon: Published last week actually. So here are the
highlights. This is what you're going to get out of the
book. It's actually very challenging to find a couple of
sentences that characterize what I did here. But the coffee world is a
very complicated one. It's a very universal one. And
so, this book will sort of give you a view of what's
going on in the coffee world today in a way that might
surprise you. It's very easy to digest. There are a lot
of photos. Chapters are like four to six pages. You can
sit down for ten minutes; learn something interesting
about region of the world. Given that I'm a database guy,
there are a bunch of data [laughter] -- visualizations, info
graphics -- stuff like that. [inaudible] And one of the big features
that you're going to see there is subculture of baristas
highfalutin, envelope-pushing baristas that are really
advance the coffee world in ways that are quite
impressive. And so, you're going to see a lot of that. You're
going to see what you thought are the hot beds of coffee
are not the hot beds of coffee anymore. And you'll see
new hot beds -- where they are; what's going on -- in the
book. I try to meet a lot of the people that are
actually driving innovation in the coffee world and
you'll see their stories. Given that you're going to
spend so much time in cocktail parties. This book will
give you a bunch of good stories to share. Get a crowd around
you in a cocktail party. Coffee -- there's a lot of
history in coffee and there are books that you can --
they're so thick you can actually kill with them about
coffee history. What I tried to do is distill it to the
absolutely necessary, hopefully in a reasonably engaging
fashion. So you'll get the idea of coffee history. Now,
when you talk about coffee history, you have to remember
one thing -- there is no such thing as coffee history
really. It's coffee legend with some analysis that people
think of as history. Feel free to make up your own
stories. If you tell them often enough, they might stick. So here's what I'm going to
do today. As ala Googler. I'm going to tell you why I did
this. I'm still trying to figure that out. I'll tell
you what I did and some of the lessons learned. This is
not a sequence. This is -- they're all going to be
intermixed, okay?And I'm taking questions. Anybody who
has any questions about coffee or all of this process -- let's make this
interactive. So, it all started in Caffe del Doge . This
is a café on University avenue in Palo Alto. It's been
renamed to Cafe Venetia a few months ago. And I used to go there
every Sunday with my son and ask for a cappuccino . And
after awhile I realized there's too much milk in their
cappuccinos. But it's a Italian cafe and you don't
complain in an Italian cafe unless you can do it in
Italian, right?So it took me about six months until I worked up
enough courage to say, "you know. your cappuccinos have a
little too much milk. Give me something different." So
they said try the macchiatone. It's a Venetian specialty. It's
basically think of it as in the middle between a
macchiato and a cappuccino. So macchiato with a
little bit more milk. So it's the perfect combination of
milk and espresso. And it's called different things in
different places in the world actually. So several
people have honed in on this concept. So I had this drink. It
was great. It was perfect. I went and I blogged about
it that day. Remember the days when people used to
express themselves in more than 140 characters. So I
wrote a blog about the macchiatone hoping to share my
excitement with the world. And then I started traveling
around the world for work and explaining to people about
the macchiatone realizing that nobody knows about the
macchiatone not even the coffee professionals of the
world. So a couple of weeks later, I did a search on macchiatone . I thin you'll recognize
this search engine. [laughter] And I came up -- I think this
is still true today, okay? So, this is like an unknown
concept. It took me to teach Google. And I checked on
competition as well. And Bing has six of the top ten
results on Bing are me, wondering if they'd heard about the macchiatone. Some of them
made it to the ACM website. There was a period where the ACM
website was copying a bunch of blog posts from any computer
scientist who cared to blog. So all of a sudden macchiatone and ACM came
up. Pretty weird. So I realize I was onto something.
Okay? Not a lot of people know about this. And I wanted
to discover why is it that only in very special places
in the world you can find the macchiatone. In fact, what
happens is the macchiatone is known in a very narrow
strip of Italy, between Venice and Verona. If you go outside those boundaries, you are
-- nobody's going to know what you're talking about. So I even
had an Italian colleague from the University of Washington.
I sent him -- well, I didn't send him. He was in
Naples; I told him to go ask for a macchiatone in Naples. The guy -- he
was thrown out of the cafe telling him this is an American
invention. We don't know about this here. [laughter] So that was a
curiosity. So still going back to why I did this. At
the time I started, we were starting Google Fusion
Tables. We're still running Google Fusion Tables. So I needed a personal application
domain where [laughter] I could really beat on my team on a regular
basis. This is a beautiful map that you can create in
thirty-second with fusion tables that shows where coffee
is produced in the world. Actually the coffee tables that
we created -- fusion tables -- are one of the most accessed
tables because we put them in some of our examples
and it becomes very useful for people who are trying
out fusion tables. You would think when we started -- when
we did a search on fusion tables for coffee, two tables
came up -- my tables. Today, when you do a search -- so
it's a sign of something. Yeah?
>>Male #1: That looks like the Northern Territory Canada has copied us.
>> Alon: That is true. >>Male #1: [inaudible]
>>Alon: See, I think that's what I mean. I needed a personal example.
>>Male #2: [inaudible] >>Alon: National parks yes.
In a few years actually. This is one of the things I learned in my port. In a few years
you're probably going to be growing coffee in
Canada. The places in the world where you're growing coffee are changing. But we'll get
to the sad part later. This is where coffee is
consumed in the world. Very different. You'll see that the Scandinavians lead the way in
coffee consumption. [laughter] >>Male #3: Wow
>>Alon: And of course, coming from the most advanced coffee culture in a tech
company, I had a really good home base to start
from. So, the coffee we have here at Google is
of the best in the world. I can now tell you this after going through a lot of suffering
and a lot of time on airplanes. This was to me
very inspiring. The 9 o'clock get together of
a bunch of folks -- now, this moved to building 47, right?
>>Male #3: That's right >>Alon: You took the machine with you. You
ruined the entire culture. [laughter] >>Male #3: We did
>>Alon: To me actually I got a lot of work done at Google
just hanging out around the espresso machine trying to catch certain senior executives
to get a few seconds of their time.
Male #3: So you published this in your book so
people can copy Sanjay's and Louis' badges and get inner access.
>> Alon: Yes. Yes. Yes. I think even worse than that. I even did an analysis of the
Google query log using insights for search. So using a
publicly facing tool and I tried to understand what
people are searching for when they looking for
coffee. So there's actually a chapter in the book about Google. This is one of the things
that makes this book stand apart from any other
coffee book [laughter] or Steven Levy's for that matter. I also
discovered during my -- during working on this
book that I'm uniquely qualified to do this, because in my team I have a grandson of a
Columbian coffee farmer who may decide to reveal himself or may not. A son of somebody
who worked for Hills Brothers -- one of the big
American coffee companies which now explains why he only drinks tea. A former owner of
a cafe in Seoul, Korea. These are people in
a relatively small team. I discovered this as
I was doing this work.
>> Alon: Okay, so I started -- so with all this reason to do this, I started doing my
coffee search. I actually really wanted to use
this as the title of my book, but people told me not to. I don't know why. When you come
up with a title for a book -- coming up with
a good title for a book is the hardest thing to do.
What I did is I delegated it to my wife and she
came up with the title you're seeing here. So
I made a plan. I was going to hit all these places to try to understand how coffee and
culture play off each other in the world, okay?
So some of these trips were part of my other --
my actual day job. Places where I gave talks or attended conferences. And some maybe not,
okay? I had to -- I took time off and visited them.
So very quickly I discovered this thing that really captured my imagination. So actually
I heard about this from Emily Rock who was a
Googler. And her ex-boyfriend is actually a well-known
guy in the coffee world. So there are competitions. There are competitions between
baristas for what's called the World Barista Championship. So this is Mike Phillips -- he's
actually an American. What they do is they spend--.
You might wonder, 'what is the World Barista Championship and what do they do?' So
they have a 15 minute show. You can see these things on the web where they have to create
four espressos, four cappuccinos and four what
they call signature drinks. And there's a score sheet that, you know, would make, you
know, it's pretty detailed. And it would make the
in terms of service that we publish to our users
to look short and sweet. So they're judged on
the quality, on the taste, on the balance, on
the story, on the crema . All kinds of things.
>>Male # 4: Suspenders?
>>Alon: What? >>Male # 4: Suspenders
>>Alon: And sometimes they actually use -- they accentuate their show with
clothing, with the music that they have. It's become a complete -- these guys are really
shows men. It's pretty amazing. And there are
people from 50 -- over 50 countries that compete in this. There are national
championships and world championships. Going through London last year. They have other
competitions. So latte art championship. This one is a a better one. So this year I went
to SIGMOD. The big database conference. I'm in
databases. And I've become a very useful guy to know. So this conference was in Athens.
So there's a really, really good cafe in
Athens. So I took people from SIGMOD to this wonderful cafe because there's the five
time Greek Barista Champion is from this cafe. and he really sources the best
beans in the world. And the guy says the Stephanos will be here soon, but I'm the Latte
Art Champion of Greece. Okay. You're going to
make coffee. And so, he was making coffee for
all the SIGMOD people who were really enjoying this experience. This is one of his creations.
And the reason he was so happy to do this was
because the week after was the World Latte Art
Championship. So he was practicing. I brought him a bunch of guinea pigs to practice his
latte art on. So SIGMOD finished. All the SIGMOD people went home. I went to the World
Latte Art Championship. I'm dedicated to the project.
[laughter] And what do you know, this Greek guy won the
World Championship. I'm like, "hey dude, I made
this happen."[laughter]I got a big Greek hug
after the thing. And I really felt this was sort of the putting my SIGMOD and coffee
personality together. It was a great moment. This is the 2007 world barista champion to
ever make coffee for me. He's from London. I
went to visit him at his grocery. You want to
make me coffee? What do you think? So actually, this is a good -- some of you know
the answer, but how -- which country do you think won the most world barista championships
since it started in 2000? So there have been 11 of them so far.
>>Male #5: Scotland. >>Alon: Scotland
>> Male #6: USA. >>Male #7: Canada
>>Male #8: Italy [laughter]
>> Alon: Somebody said Italy, right? Wrong. The Italians never made it to the top 10.
>>Male #8: Aw, c'mon
>> Alon: Sorry. You guys are too full of yourself. You
know everything. [laughter] Buy the book first. So, none
of you got the answer. Not even the people who
know the answer 'cause I've told them. It's Denmark. Denmark and
after that Norway and the UK. Actually, this guy was the first English dude to win it.
And the US won for the first time. Mike Phillips.
This guy won for the first time in 2010. So the hot beds of coffee are moving away. This
is one of the nice things about the coffee world. You can walk up to the World Barista
Champion, this is like two hours after he won the Championship, and get
a picture. This is Mike Phillips. This guy is
Gianni. He's a very special guy in the coffee world. He just goes around knowing all the
baristas. There's actually a section about him in the book as well.
>>Male #8: He's Italian
>>Alon: He is Italian. [laughter] Main contribution of Italy to the World
Barista Championship. Not only that, the machines that they use for the World Barista
Championship are either Italian or Italian. They compete between La
Marzocco and Nuova Simonelli-- okay?So.
>> Male #8: There you go.
>> Alon: And coffee is grown in Italy everywhere. [laughter]
People think coffee is grown in Italy. You'd be surprised how many people think stuff like
that.
>> Male #8: Tomatoes don't come from there either.
[laughter] >> Alon: This is a guy practicing for the
World Barista Championship 2020. [laughter] This is my
little boy. This project affected my family in
more than one way. [laughter] So he's six years old now;
he was five when he did this. He learned that in order to bond with his dad, he has
to learn how to make espresso.
>> Male #9: How many coffees does he have a day?
[laughter] >> Alon: He can make quite a few. He doesn't
like the stuff. He'll have a nice foam milk. So
far, I don't know. So yes. He's a great espresso maker. There's another kind of
competition which is on the growing side, okay?
And this is actually in Brazil. So what they do there is -- these are farmers. They
submit samples of their coffee and there's a
jury that comes and judges these coffees, gives
them scores. There's a national jury. So for example, in Brazil, there were 250 farmers
who entered. The national jury narrowed it down
to 50 samples. And then came the international
jury. Okay? So I schmoozled my way on to the international jury in Brazil last year. And
what you do here is, you get eight coffees --
eight or ten coffees every round -- and you start by -- let's see, well, that's me doing
my thing. But you start by smelling. There's
a lot of smelling going on. So you start by
smelling it when it's just ground. It's very interesting. Then you pour water into it and
you wait four minutes and you start smelling it
again. You remove the crema from the top at which point the aroma starts exploding in
a very, very nice way. And then, you go start tasting. You go around
the tables and you taste and you taste for about
45 minutes. And the coffees actually change their
tastes during this time. Some of them lose their structure. I learned this term from
listening to the coffee people. And then, after these 45 minutes, you fill out a form
and you give a score. You go into another room
and you have a discussion. It's just like a program committee discussion
in a conference. And people start throwing all
kinds of words. The flavors of the coffee. They throw out all kinds of flavors. That
was coffee. That was not, you know, what you guys
just said. And then, they start talking about the acidity. The acidity is really the spirit
of the coffee. The acidity can come in all kinds of ways. And then you go back and you
do another eight coffees and another eight coffees
and you do this all day. It's kind of fun actually. You slurp. It's just like wine.
You spit most of it out. And this is the deliberations of the jury. And then at the
end of the week, we went through round one, two,
and three. We gave an award to this very lucky person. The interesting thing about this is
that the coffees that get the Cup of Excellence stamp on them, they participate in an Internet
auction. So roasters from all around the world can bid for these things. So this guy, for
example, sold his lot for something like 25 dollars a pound. Compare this to three that
you would get on the market for -- that's the
running price, okay? So these guys really --
now, he's not selling his whole, you know, crop
for this, but again, it's more the glory -- I mean, this guy is one out of 350,000 farmers
in Brazil; he's the "Cup of Excellence". It helps
the -- that's the other interesting thing here -- it creates direct
relationships between farmers and roasters and
importers. So before this what happened is all
the farmers in Brazil take their coffees and they put it into four big bins. And what you
get is, you get four choices of coffees from Brazil. Where in any country that grows coffee,
you get hundreds of really interesting different flavors of coffee.
So now, they can work directly with the roasters. The roasters can come invest in
a particular farm, work with them multiple years
and really create a relationship. And that completely changes the dynamics of the
coffee world. And this happened in the last ten years. We always think as tech people
we're advancing the world at a speed no one can
catch up. But the changes in coffee world in the
last 15 years have been mind boggling. I went -- this is in Costa Rica. So this is
-- this is how coffee comes, okay?This is where
coffee comes from. These cherries which you can actually chew on. And in fact, people
for many years only chewed on them before they
realized there's something good in here we can
roast and put in our lattes. This is what they
come from. So it's a very colorful activity if
you like. So I tried to cover -- I tried to follow coffee history a little bit. I went
to Ethiopia. So those of you who know Yirgacheffe
is a region that's known for its very wonderful coffees. You can see Yirgacheffe. I went to
the Yirgacheffe. This is a really interesting experience. After the -- from Ethiopia, coffee
moved on to the Arabian peninsula, to the Ottoman
Empire. I tried to go to the Ottoman Empire. Turns out it's too late. [laughter] But I
went pretty close. This is the old city in Jerusalem where
you go there and you think you're in the Ottoman Empire. Actually, it's
kind of interesting. The story of how coffee came
into the world is kind of vague. So the legend that everybody knows about is how the goat
herder who saw his goats prancing and he said, "Oh, why are they dancing?They were eating
some red cherries. And he said I'll have some of that. [laughter] Actually about he said
let me wait a day. See what happens to my goats. If they're
still alive tomorrow, I'll also have some of
that. [laughter] But actually, what turns out is what is
the leading theory today is that discovering coffee was actually due to the Chinese, which
is kind of not what you would expect. What happened was in the 15th century, there were
a bunch of fleet -- very big ships that came
from China to Yemen. They were looking for all
kinds of great things from Africa. They were bringing giraffes back for the emperor and
stuff like that. There were 200 ship fleets. And they came to Yemen
and they brought their tea with them. And the
Arabs saw that you can actually put a leaf in
hot water and get something good out of it. And very abruptly , the Chinese stopped
sending -- they decided one day to stop this fleet. And the Arabs were like, "hey, where
is our tea? We need this tea. " So they started
looking around, "where are we going to find some tea?" So
they walked over -- not walked over -- they went
over -- in the Red Sea there's a very narrow passage from Yemen to Ethiopia. And they
started looking around and they found the leaves of the coffee tree in Ethiopia. After
awhile, they realized there was something actually better than the leaves. There was
the bean and you could roast it but that took another hundred years.
So that's the leading theory how coffee became something that we drink today. In Ethiopia,
3,000 years ago, people were chewing the bean. They were making golf ball sized snacks out
of it before they went out to war. That is how they
consumed coffee. So, I also, you know, in my
dedication to the project, I paid a lot of money for coffee. So until 2009, my 7 dollars
was the most I paid for a cup of coffee. I broke that record quite -- 65 dollars. But
the vast majority of that is the parking tickets.
I did this in LA. And San Francisco. So the problem was I parked before I had coffee.
But the real record was in Japan where I paid
140 dollars for a cup of coffee and the reason
was I was visiting the Barista Champion of Japan and she told me, "well, we're just really
close to Tokyo. Why don't you come out and visit our cafe." And it turns out
really close to Tokyo was like a 2-hour train ride from Tokyo which cost me 140 bucks. But
when I got there, I got a free espresso. [laughter] But
it was really good. The Japanese are one of the best -- the Japanese
and the Norwegians are the two cultures that are pushing coffee to their extremes. In Norway,
it's because people have money, so they can pay
more for coffee. In Japan, it's because people are used to paying more for good stuff. It's
part of their culture. I got a life. So now on
Facebook, I see a person with 80 or so mutual friends with me, it's guaranteed to be
a coffee person. One of my celebrated days was
when the Specialty Coffee Association of America decided to follow me on Twitter.
[laughter] That's pretty cool. Two weeks later the European Specialty Coffee Association
decided to follow me on Twitter. There are a bunch
of cafes in San Francisco that follow me on
Twitter. That's actually cool. I don't actually tweet that much. Apparently that
doesn't matter. Then I went to a bunch of exotic
places. On the plane to London on the way to the World Barista Championship, I saw this
photo. And this is an Icelandic family. So this woman,
Ingibjörg, is the -- she was the Icelandic Barista Champion
in 2010. Her brother, Tumi, was the coffee tasting
champion of Iceland. They're -- I'll tell you
about that competition in a moment. [laughter] Now, their
father -- you know, there aren't that many jobs
in Iceland today. [laughter] Their father -- he's a
minister by training, he's a tourist guide, and
he teaches elementary schools, and he teaches web 2.0 at the University of
Iceland. I made the mistake of telling him about fusion tables. And two days later he
sent me an e-mail saying, "oh, you have a bug
here, a bug there."[laughter] Don't bug me with your bugs. But we fixed them all. So
he was looking for something to do, because his
children were winning awards in coffee and he
had a lot of time on his hands. So there's a
competition called Coffee in Good Spirits where you
create interesting drinks with alcohol and coffee. [laughter] This is one of the big
competitions that goes on every year. And he entered the
competition and what do you know, he won the Icelandic Coffee in Good Spirits Championship
beating out all five other people. [laughter] So these guys
were pretty upset because now their dad was coming on their glory trip to London for the
World Barista Championship. But apparently he
behaved well. So I met them in London. And I
said you guys are great. It's a great story. I need to write about you guys. So they said
why don't you come to Reykjavik. I said why not. So I hopped on a plane and went to
Reykjavik. And so, they -- I need to explain. This is their summer house [laughter] So they
hosted me for dinner at their summer house. This is in -- outside the city of Selfoss.
Selfoss is a city of one hour away from Reykjavik. It's known mostly for being the
burial place of Bobby Fischer, the chess player. But this is
you go out of Selfoss and he showed me. See that house over there?That's where we're
going. So I'm sitting there with a family of,
you know, six -- they were each one brought their girlfriend or spouse or whatever. And
here I am sitting basically at the tip of the
world with all these people discussing the right balance between coffee and alcohol in
an Irish coffee. And this is one of the more
interesting moments of this trip -- of this whole experience. And this is Carlos making
-- these are -- these were fantastic. Notice,
you get judged on the separation here. So this
line here has to be very clean, okay?These Irish coffees are just like totally sublime.
I wish I could make anything that looks like
that. This is another -- this is a store owner in -- bookstore owner in Selfoss. He was -- so
Carlos took me here on his way to the summer house. This guy used to be a member of
Parliament of Iceland. Until one day he responded to an e-mail saying exactly what he thinks
about his party members. He didn't realize he
was CCing the entire party. [laughter] Two days later he
was an owner of the bookstore. [laughter] Icelandic politics are pretty rough.
Male #10: [inaudible]
>>Alon: So, this is another very different experience.
Sarajevo. So I actually -- when I was sitting in Ritual Coffee in San Francisco one day,
I sat next to a guy who heard I was writing a book
on world coffee culture. And he said, "you have to
go to Bosnia" And I'm like, "Dude, I'm not going
to Bosnia, right now." But I remembered the comment.
And then, when I was in Vienna, I was sitting in one of the Grand Cafes in Vienna. The waiter
come up to me and says,"You know, you're writing a coffee book. I have a story
for you. I'm not sure it's a very good story but what the heck; it's free." He says, "one
day I was sitting in Bosnia in Sarajevo in a cafe. I had coffee.
I got up; I wanted to leave the cafe pay and leave. And I go to the waiter. He
tells me, "Mister, I will pay for your coffee but
never come back to this cafe again". I drank, I
paid. What am I supposed to do. In Sarajevo, we don't just drink our coffee and go. We
sit here for hours. If you leave here now you're
insulting me". So once I heard that story, I
said, "OK, I need to go to Bosnia. I started through
my social network. I found people in Bosnia that actually hosted me very nicely. And apparently,
the coffee culture in Bosnia is probably the deepest
that I've seen anywhere in the world. Maybe close to
Ethiopia. But really everything around there is about -- I mean, a lot of social
interactions are deeply ingrained around coffee, okay?And that led to one of my finest
moments. After publishing many SIGMOD papers, I
was invited to publish a paper in Barista Magazine. [laughter] That was really -- and
they heard I was going to Bosnia. The coffee in Bosnia
isn't very good. The coffee people are not going there. But I published my paper about
my trip to Bosnia in Barista It was one of my finest, finest, and proudest
moments. I also went to some of the classical -- where is the Italian in the crowd.
[laughter] One of the classical locations. This is a
nice one. If you're interested in chocolate and
coffee coming together, go to Torino. They have invented, 200 years ago, the drink called
the Bicerin, which is a combination of chocolate, espresso and milk. It's wonderful. Everywhere
you go in Torino, people will give you or that's the
main thing, this Bicerin, that Bicerin. My wife
enjoying. This is in the cafe that the original Bicerin Cafe in Torino. So it's a
very different kind of experience. So I also went
to some of the more classical places in Europe. And you know the one thing about coffee is
-- people ask me where is the best coffee in
the world right now and stuff like that. Coffee
is really a combination of the quality of coffee and the experience -- who
you are having the coffee with. And there are
places in the world that are based on -- emphasizing the experience. So the entire
city of Paris is based on the fact that the
experience is enough and the coffee can be really, really bad. [laughter] So I just
wanted to point that out. There are a few other cities that I will not mention. But
Italy is fine. I really do enjoy the coffee there. Usually if I'm close enough, I will
drive into Italy just to have the coffee. Male #11: [inaudible]
>>Alon: And I went to Italy three times. [laughter]I
want to thank Peter Norvig here who made the mistake of telling me he was going to Italy
and came back with some great photos that are
in the book of cafes in Venice. Okay? There are
a few people who contributed photos to the book. So I want to thank them all. One of
my big surprises was Australia. Go to Melbourne.
Melbourne is -- if I had to retire and just spend my time going between cafe and cafe,
I would now move to Melbourne. There is no other
place in the world that is such a -- sorry New Zealand. New Zealand has a fine
fine coffee culture. In fact, it was one of the countries that inspired me to write this
book.
>> Female #1: Yeah yeah yeah. [laughter]
>> Alon: But sorry, Australia is -- this guy created, on his own, espresso machine that
has six group heads. And he's got six grinders
to go with it. So they doesn't want to mix up
grinds and group heads. He's got a grinder for
every group head. The guy is a real hacker when it comes to coffee machines. He's Proud
Mary Cafe in Melbourne. Sydney is pretty good, too. So everywhere in Australia. So there
are two kinds of countries in the world. Those
who were sort of born before coffee. And so,
they -- the evolution of the culture and coffee took place and coffee is varying in quality.
And then, there were countries coffee came after it was already at a certain level. So
for example, Australia, a bunch of Italians moved in the 1950s, they jump started
a really good coffee culture already. Yes. Had to do this, too. In Cambodia, I had the
worst cup of coffee possible. But then I noticed that in the hotel menu, they had a
coffee body rub. So what you're seeing here is
a bunch of ground coffee. This which I swear was the same as they served in the cup. [laughter]
This was oil. So they spend an hour just rubbing
coffee grounds into you. Which, you know, is actually
pretty good. Smelling like a tall latte for two days. [laughter] I would do it again.
In fact, I did it in Costa Rica after that.
United States of America, okay. So this is one
of the -- I have a section in the book about the United States. It's a sad story for the
first 200 years. Fortunately, due to Alfred Peet
. This is his first store in Berkeley. He turned things around; he showed people that
coffee is actually an art and should not be judged by the level of the commercial on TV.
And basically all the great coffee we know about today is the inspiration of Alfred Peet.
That's not to say the roast -- Alfred Pete actually had a relatively dark roast and he
actually trained the Starbucks guys how to roast and
brew coffee. But the idea that there is so much going into
coffee came from Alfred Peet and then a whole bunch of other people made
it into what it is today. So today you can go to
places like Four Barrel or hang out at Google and have Four Barrel coffee and you're really
getting some of the best coffee in the world. How did I approach the coffee world? I didn't
know anybody in the coffee world. When I started
I had to get my way in. Of course there's the
infinite charm of a database expert trying to
help you with your data needs, right? [laughter] So I
approached people with fusion tables and saying "hey, I can map your data and show you all
kinds of things." Sometimes that worked. But when
that didn't work, there's always schwag. I traveled
around the world giving people various Google schwag
items; that really opened any door I wanted. This is my host in Bosnia. I gave her more
than a hat. But she was so happy. And then, she had a birthday a little later that her
mom made her a Google cake with a Google hat and
you can see happiness. [laughter] So if you see -- so there are a lot of coffee people
going around meeting at highfalutin coffee conferences comparing their Google schwag
now. And that --
>>Male #12: That's your fault.
>> Alon: I take credit for it. This is it. The only thing to notice here is, this is
the only coffee book ever written that has a quote
from Vint Cerf. [laughter]And I don't know if
you can read it. But it is really well-said. And then, there's the World Barista Champion
and the editor in chief of Barista Magazine.
>>Male #13: No Italian.
>> Alon: No Italian, [audience groans] but there's a chapter
about Italy. I say really nice things about Italy.
>> Male #14: Isn't Vint really Italian? >>Alon: Huh?
>>Male #14: Isn't Vint an Italian name? >> Alon: Maybe it is. Maybe.
>> Male #14: Sounds like it. [inaudible] [laughter]
>> Alon: Maybe. So that's it. That's -- I'll take any -- you know, the one lesson
that I wanted to convey is the coffee world is
moving really, really fast. Coffee is really from the moment you take these cherries off
the tree until you dip them in the cup, the process
is really difficult. It's being pushed forward by a
network of people in the world. It was really amazing to be part of that community and see
how things are changing. I really appreciate the
coffee that you have here at Google. [laughter]
>> Male #15: Great book and good talking. I think you should be
on the Discovery Channel, have your own show. I have a question. When I was a kid growing
up, mom made us instant coffee and we loved it.
And now, I hear in parts of the world, instant coffee is coming back into style. Do you run
across that anywhere?
>> Alon: No. So I grew up on instant coffee and I liked it. And when I was doing my
military service, having a cup of instant coffee was something I would actually spend
an entire hour crafting and putting together.
There's a return of drip coffee, so where people pour, you know, non-espresso type preparations
of coffee. And that's certainly making a
comeback. But I have not heard instant coffee make a comeback.
>> Male #16: How about Vienna?When I went there --it was a while ago-- I was shocked
at the fact that just side by side with the Soccer Cafe there is
a Starbucks?
>> Alon: Yes.
>>Male #16: What happened?
>> Alon: So there's a chapter about Starbucks in the book. And I try to be nice just in
case they come to me and say they want to sell
the books in Starbucks. But I think Starbucks
should be credited with really taking espresso worldwide and shows that there is potential
here. A lot of the -- what people call the third wave
coffee. Think of Starbucks as being second wave. Think of instant coffee as being first
wave. So a lot of the third wave coffee people are here because Starbucks sort of, you know,
upped the ante and made it very ubiquitous. So
now you see much better coffee coming up right next to Starbucks.
>>Male #16 Do you think Vienna needs a Starbucks?
>>Alon: I don't think Vienna needs a Starbucks. I think the Viennese probably realized
it, too. The best coffee I had in Vienna was Espresso pub where
they have these very colorful displays of all
their capsules with different colors. You go
in there and tell them you're writing a book. They give you a free espresso and that was
the best coffee I had. So the coffee itself in Vienna was not great. >>Male #17: I'm from
Oslo in Norway. Is the aeropress coffee spreading around the world?
>>Alon: Yeah. So a few years ago I don't think it even existed. Certainly. Aeropress
is one of the great ways to have really high quality coffee. Especially if you're traveling
and you want really good coffee. In fact, there is an Aeropress World Championship.
Congratulations on coming from Oslo. I had the
best roaster in the world is from Oslo. In fact, the first World Barista Champion is
from Oslo. Yeah?
>>Male #18: Have you had Kopi Luwak and what did you think?
[laughter] >> So the most frequent question I get
as I was writing this book is, "did you hear about that cat that -- or the monkey that
has the thing". So there's a lot of misinformation
about it. Yes, so it's called Kopi Luwak. There's a civet cat
that goes around -- what's interesting about the civet cat is it actually goes in the fields.
It knows how to choose the right cherries. And
then it digests -- eats the cherries. Comes out from the other side and hopefully then
cleans very thoroughly. And then, it's -- I didn't like it. I had it. There's a section
in the book about it. The -- what's happening is that people realize they can make a lot
of money doing this. So instead of having civet
cats run wild in the fields choosing the cherries,
they put them in cages and they start feeding them cherries and they charge the same prices.
So it's one of the poster child, gimmick coffees that you see all over the world. There's a
great quote from George Howell who's one of the big names of coffee in the U.S. I'm not
sure I can -- well, I'm among friends. He says Kopi
Luwak is coffee from *** holes for *** holes. [laughter] I'm
just messing with you.
>> Male #19: When you had that competition in
Brazil where you were tasting all the beans, how do we normalize for all the different
ways to roast beans?
>> Alon: They all roast together. So it's a
very uniform roast. But you could argue that that doesn't actually bring out the expression
of every coffee. So every coffee could be brought out with a slightly different roast.
But that would be--
>> Male #20: What was the tasting competition? >>Alon: Huh?
>> Male #20: The tasting competition? >>Alon: The taste?
>>Male #21: What does it take to be a tasting champion?
>> Alon: So what they do is, it's really interesting. What they do is they give you
triangulation tests. So they give you three cups
of coffee and two of them are identical and one
is different. So the trick is to guess which one is different. So you have eight sets of
three. And the person who guesses the most is
the winner. And if there's a tie, then time matters. In fact, the Ritual Coffee here has
like the 3-time U.S. champion Ben Kaminsky. And
actually, this year, it was really interesting because there was this Greek guy who said,
"you know? I'm not going to taste. I'm just going
to look." So he looked at the coffee and he -- [mumbles inaudibly] --
and this was very amusing in the first round. And you can amusing in the second round. But
he won the world championship [laughter] And so, I was talking to the guy who invented
the competition right after that. He said, "well,
we're changing the rules next year. And so, what they're going to have is, they're going
to -- first of all, the cups are not going to
be white. So they're going to be black. So you can't actually see that much. And they're
not going to have that much lighting on the --.
Male #22: Use blindfolds [laughter]
>>Alon: The thing is when he looked, he could actually
do it faster. So he actually won on time against a guy who actually tasted the coffee.
[laughter] But it's interesting competition. It's really
hard. Even the winners. The winner of the world championship got four out of eight correct.
If they hit five or six, it's like "Whoa". It's really hard. [laughter]
>>Female #2: I got to ask. Do you do the Caribbean?
>> Alon: Do I cover the Caribbean. No, I don't. I cover central. Sorry. So let me
start with apologies. [laughter] I apologize to the
nation of India. I have many Indian friends. I would like to go to India; they have an
interesting coffee culture. Second edition. I apologize to the country of
Canada that has a great coffee culture, but I
didn't find the great story to tell about Canada. I
didn't want to just go around and just say, "oh,
here's a bunch of cafes in Toronto or Vancouver. I
wanted a really interesting story. I apologize to New Zealand. I do not apologize to Italy.
I think I gave you all the respect you deserve. [laughter]And the entire Indonesia -- you
know, that whole region. I just did not go to
it. I have a day job. Sorry. So there are probably a few other apologies. But.
>> Male #23: So, I was reading about Brazilian coffee. Apparently historically it's not great
quality. But it sounds both like you're optimistic and it seems to be coming up in
quality in the past couple of years. One of the stories
I heard because of the processing practices
of the past, there's an unusual taste or flavor
associated with Brazilian coffee. Is that still true?
>> Alon: We have a Brazilian in the room who can [chuckles] comment. Louis.
>> Louis: I have a feeling you probably know more about Brazilian coffee than I do at this
point. [laughter] Yeah, Brazilian coffee has never been
very good until the last ten years. And then the phenomenon Alon just mentioned in that
local producers began sort of getting direct access
to markets and getting better quality. The majority of the coffee grown in Brazil is
still crap, but there's a few ones that are really
fantastic.
>> Male #23: I believe that. That's why I was
curious about the change over time. At one time, the practice in Brazil was just to strip
the tree rather than pick the cherries.
>> Louis: Yeah.
>> Louis: I grew up in the coffee farm. And we made very bad coffee [laughter].
>> Louis: But I don't know that there's a signature taste from Brazil.
>>Alon: So Brazil is so big. >>Male #23: It's so big
>>Louis: So much stuff. And if you go from the north of the Brazil to the south, the
weather variations are just so crazy.
>>Male #23: The story I remember hearing is because there's so much, you know, difficulty
in processing coffee, a lot of it would mold. And so, that taste of the mold in the coffee
became a distinctive signature flavor. And I
was curious, you know, civet cats is one thing, mold
is another thing. And I wonder if you notice other regional variations due to sort of odd
factors like that.
>> Louis: Brazil has this historical -- we only learned about espresso in the last 15
years, right?We all did this cloth filtering process for coffee. But unlike the filter
drip coffee we have around here, it's very
fine-ground. So that's -- and you know, my family had.
[laughter]
>> Alon: There is a particular flavor called Rio which is -- and it's something that for
example in the Arab countries is actually very
prized in coffee. But you know in the cupping competition if you would identify Rio in the
cup, it would be eliminated. So a lot of these things are subjective. But Brazil is such
a huge country and the farms are so large. I
mean, we went to a farm that produced more coffee than the entire country of Bolivia,
which is substantial. And it's grown in relatively low altitudes compared to a lot
of the other places. So the flavors tend to be
sweeter, more chocolatety, caramelly things. And so, it provides a good base for a lot
of espresso. You'll see a lot of espressos with a lot of
Brazil in them with a few other things.
>> Louis: The taste for roasting, it's lighter roast.
>> Alon: Yeah.
>> Louis: Do coffee growers generally like coffee?
>> Alon: That's changing. So if you go to what I would call the leading coffee growers,
they're actually learning cupping and learning barista activities and -- it's actually really
interesting to see. When I went to Central America, you know the coffee grower that I
was visiting -- Aida Batlle-- she's a fifth generation
coffee grower. She just got this highfalutin espresso
machine. And she got a certificate from the Barista Association of America that she's
a certified barista. It's actually really interesting
to see the producers and the baristas are coming together.
In fact, this year was the first time a barista from the producing country won the
championship from El Salvador. It was mind-boggling presentation.[inaudible]
[laughter] But you can go see it on the web. It's really
-- these people do amazing things. This guy for
example, he had his coffee roasted in England, all right? By some highfalutin roaster. And
he wanted to figure out how many days since the
roast date would be the best date to serve the
coffee. And furthermore, the competition was in
Bogotá, Columbia, which is a high altitude that
changes the way the creme acts and so on. So what he did was, he took a
bunch of coffees that he got from the roaster and he went up to a high
mountain in El Salvador and he basically prepared the coffee every day until he figured
out that two weeks from the day of roasting was
the right time for this particular bean. And so,
he went to Colombia and he extended all this and he won the
championship.
[laughter].
>> Alon: Just amazing..
>> Louis: How do you like to roast your coffee?
>> Alon: I'm waiting for your recipe, man. I
like it light. But it's actually harder to roast light.
>> Louis: It is. >>Alon: It's more brittle. So I'm waiting
for the -- we have -- Louis and I have the same
roasting machine. So I've gone through -- you know, I bought an espresso machine. I bought
a roaster. Almost the entire chain of coffee
production is in my home except I don't grow the coffee. Hector, a few years ago, bought
us a coffee plant. On the Internet. It was
blossoming doing very well. It takes about three or four years until it starts producing
fruit, but then he went to Colombia for two weeks before
Christmas and it died. The water we gave it was not the right water.
>>Louis: I have one final question. If you have to pick between the place that has
mediocre coffee but good atmosphere and culture the other way around great coffee but some
nasty place?
>> Alon: So the great coffee is not in any nasty places. I enjoy Oslo. I enjoy, London
actually has great cafes. Melbourne is not a nasty
place. Personally, I would say c'est la vie -- that's
obviously because of particular. I would not -- I don't think I could survive in Paris
anymore. There are a few good cafes emerging. Once you start getting into the coffee world,
actually your life becomes harder, because you
can't just walk into any cafe and have coffee. It's -- and that's why the aeropress is getting
popular. Because people who care about their coffee, they bring their hand grinders, their
own beans, their aeropress. That's how they survive trips.
>> Male #24: So the coffee culture besides complementary environment culture is complementary
culture of bakery. La brioche, or croissant which are very different
from different countries. From your experience which one
is the most interesting, most different.
>> Alon: So where?
>>Male #24: Like cultures, bakery for coffee.
>> Alon: So a lot of times good bakery culture is, you know, makes up for bad coffee.
So that's why Paris exists. That's in Vienna you can go to places where, you know, the
coffee is not great, but the pastries are really good. I found, for example, Melbourne
have really nice food in cafes. There's certain places where you really find some
reasonable food. You can sit there for longer. London -- again,
the all the nice cafes in London are Australians and
Kiwis who moved to London to open cafes and teach the Brits what to do. But then, like
in the U.S., the great cafes don't actually have
food. They might have a scone.
>> Louis: You're the envy of every Googler.
[laughter].
>> Alon: Thank you very much.
[Applause]