Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/131835
T his month, San drinking crappy freeze-dried Francisco's café-satuinstant coffee at home. I rated Mission District really didn't know anything will get a 292-square-foot about coffee when I moved addition in Caffe Linea. to California. I liked coffee Though the shop may be with sugar in it and consmall in size, its place in densed milk—I thought that the Bay Area roasting comwas pretty swell. munity is substantial: Caffe Linea represents the return What happened once to coffee of Andrew Barnett, you decided to pursue a specialty-coffee veteran food? best known for Ecco Caffe, I was very fortuthe high-end roasting comnate; I was living pany he started in 2000 and in Marin [about an hour sold to Intelligentsia Coffee north of San Francisco], and in 2009. With Caffe Linea, the federal government and Barnett will focus on highMarin County were using scoring coffees, roasted federal money to train people delicately to bring out their to be dinner chefs. The pronatural sweetness. gram was called CETA. The The cherry's inherent guy running our program flavor is just one of the many was named Lothar Vogel; he coffee characteristics that started with this group of 20 rouses passion in Barnett, apprentices, and at the end who began working as a of six months there were barista in the 1970s, took a eight of us left. He gave us 12-year break from the cofa really good foundation: He fee world, and then returned was telling us to use local, as a café owner and roaster. fresh, seasonal ingredients In his 20-year second stint and a really pared-down in coffee, Barnett has been menu, and this was way back a major player in the qualin 1974. That really had a ity-minded segment of the profound impact on me and industry: In addition to his SEARCHING FOR QUALITY: (clockwise from top) Barnett in Brazil's Espirito would go on to affect how I Santo state; cupping at the 2008 Brazil Cup of Excellence; and with his roasting ventures, he has think about coffee—what's roaster at Ecco Caffe. served on Cup of Excellence key for green coffee is findjuries since the competition's early years and also logged time as ing the best ingredients and knowing your farmers when possible. a World Barista Championship judge. Barnett talked to Fresh Cup You don't have a great cup if you don't have wonderful, delicious about how his passion for food led him to coffee, what he looks for ingredients to start with. in espresso and much more. COURTESY OF ANDREW BARNETT Q: A: Q: A: No, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, an inner-city kid. I went to the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for high school and graduated pretty young— I was 17. I moved out to the Bay Area then and apprenticed as a dinner chef at the Casa Madrona Hotel in Sausalito for two years, where I got interested in food. Q:A: Q:A: When did you start working in coffee? You're Bay Area-based now; did you grow up there? Did you drink coffee as a child? My work in Chicago, my academics and my background hadn't directed me toward coffee. We were It was after the apprenticeship; in 1977 I started working at a San Francisco café called Higher Grounds. This place had a two-group Gaggia lever machine, and this was a time when there just weren't a lot of espresso machines in North America. We also had an espresso grinder, which we never changed the grind setting on … eventually I learned you could do that. I thought I was getting pretty good at making espresso, but it scares me to imagine what I would think if I tasted that coffee today. I stayed on with Higher Grounds for four or five years while I got my degree in printmaking at San Francisco State. continued on page 38 Fresh Cup Magazine • freshcup.com 37