Third wave of coffee

Third wave coffee treats coffee beans as an artisanal ingredient and seeks to convey the flavor in the brewed coffee.

The third wave of coffee is a movement to produce high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity. This involves improvements at all stages of production, from improving coffee plant growing, harvesting, and processing, to stronger relationships between coffee growers, traders, and roasters, to higher quality and fresh roasting, at times called "microroasting" (by analogy with microbrew beer), to skilled brewing.

Third wave coffee aspires to the highest form of culinary appreciation of coffee, so that one may appreciate subtleties of flavor, varietal, and growing region – similar to other complex consumable plant-derived products such as wine, tea, and chocolate. Distinctive features of third wave coffee include direct trade coffee, high-quality beans (see specialty coffee for scale), single-origin coffee (as opposed to blends), lighter roasts, and latte art. It also includes revivals of alternative methods of coffee preparation, such as vacuum coffee and pour-over brewing devices such as the Chemex and Hario V60.

The term "Third Wave" was coined in 2002, and refers chiefly to the American phenomenon, particularly from the 1990s and continuing today, but with some roots in the 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s. Similar movements exist in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia. More broadly, third wave coffee can be seen as part of the specialty coffee movement.

History of term

Trish Rothgeb (formerly Skeie) of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters first wrote about the third wave of coffee in a November 2002 article of The Flamekeeper, a newsletter of the Roaster's Guild, a trade guild of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Nicholas Cho of Murky Coffee further defined the third wave of coffee in an often-referenced online article and earlier in his interview in March 2005 on National Public Radio's All Things Considered program. More recently, the third wave of coffee has been chronicled by publications such as The New York Times, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, La Opinión and The Guardian.

In March 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly defined the third wave of coffee by saying:

The first wave of American coffee culture was probably the 19th-century surge that put Folgers on every table, and the second was the proliferation, starting in the 1960s at Peet's and moving smartly through the Starbucks grande decaf latte, of espresso drinks and regionally labeled coffee. We are now in the third wave of coffee connoisseurship, where beans are sourced from farms instead of countries, roasting is about bringing out rather than incinerating the unique characteristics of each bean, and the flavor is clean and hard and pure.

The earlier term "specialty coffee" was coined in 1974, and refers narrowly to high-quality beans scoring 80 points or more on a 100-point scale.

By region

United States

In the US, the market is very diverse. Most third wave coffee is served in independently owned and operated coffee shops. There are a large number of roasters and some stand-alone coffee shops or small chains roast their own coffee; compare brewpub. There are a few larger businesses, more prominent in roasting than in operating – the "Big Three of Third Wave Coffee" are commonly held to be Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea of Chicago, Illinois; Stumptown Coffee Roasters of Portland, Oregon; and Counter Culture Coffee of Durham, North Carolina, all of which engage in direct trade sourcing. Intelligentsia has seven bars – four in Chicago, three in Los Angeles, together with one "lab" in New York. Stumptown has 10 bars – five bars in Portland, two in Seattle, two in New York, and one in Los Angeles. Counter Culture has eight regional training centers – that do not function as retail stores – one in each of: Chicago, Atlanta, Asheville, Durham, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By comparison, Starbucks has over 23,000 cafes worldwide as of 2015.

Both Intelligentsia and Stumptown were acquired by Peet's Coffee & Tea (itself part of JAB Holding Company) in 2015. At that time, Philz Coffee (headquartered in San Francisco) and Blue Bottle Coffee (headquartered in Oakland, California) were also considered major players in third wave coffee.

In 2014, Starbucks invested around $20 million in a coffee roastery and tasting room in Seattle, targeting the third wave market. Starbucks' standard cafes use automated espresso machines for efficiency and safety reasons, in contrast to third-wave competitors.

Earlier history

Antecedents of third wave coffee include Peet's Coffee & Tea of Berkeley, California, which in the late 1960s began artisanal sourcing, roasting, and blending, and the Seattle coffee scene of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, which saw the birth of artisanal American espresso bars, some of which evolved into nationwide chains, notably Starbucks, which are retrospectively titled "Second Wave". (Peet's primarily retails beans for home brewing, features dark roasts, and did not serve espresso until 1984.) These in turn were predated by Italian American espresso bars, primarily serving immigrant communities, and 19th century "First Wave" coffee importers.

Other milestones include the 1974 founding of George Howell's Coffee Connection in Cambridge, Massachusetts (influenced by Peet's); the 1982 foundation of the Specialty Coffee Association of America; and the 1980s movement of Dallis Bros. Coffee in New York towards specialty roasting.

See also

• Specialty foods