Coffee as we drink it

The vast majority of our population are coffee drinkers. Ironically, not many can tell you what constitutes a good cup of coffee. Ask anyone around you this question may cause them to stare into a void blinking uncontrollably. Some may be able to utter something like “got to smell nice lah!” referring to the aroma, alright, fair enough, or “must be black enough” referring to the colour, er..., or “has to be very kau” referring to the strength... I guess. Well, that’s about all you may get.

Prior to recent years, before Délifrance, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Starbucks Coffee and alike set their foot on our shore, most of us or our father or grandfather or great grandfather has never savour a real good, premium gourmet coffee before. Our colonial master, the British, do not fancy coffee. Hence, coffee appreciation among the upper class was nonexistent. There was no demand for exotic coffee from other part of the world. Even good quality, high grade premium coffee beans from our neighbour, Indonesia, has altogether bypass our region heading straight into the European market. We are literally clueless about the world of coffee for generations.

Malaysian, however drinks one particular type of coffee, which grown on our own soil. It is mostly found in some part of West Malaysia. The coffee is a high-yield crop known as liberica species. This coffee, if consume without any special treatment, is highly unpalatable. In another word, the liberica species is rather inferior compare to the arabica or even the robusta species. You can safely guess that it is not highly sought-after among the coffee lovers. However, the liberica coffee still managed to find its way into the local coffee house, fondly known as Kopitiam to most of us. If ever we have any coffee experience at all, it is the Kopitiam’s coffee experience.

In the early days, people of this land were not particularly rich. The proprietors of the kopitiams realised that most of their customer will welcome anything that is affordable or cheap, hence serving good quality coffee is not the priority then. To reduce cost, the proprietor of the kopitiam has to source for the cheapest coffee bean available and the liberica beans happen to fit that requirement. As mentioned earlier, the liberica coffee is highly unpalatable, if they served it straight, it will definitely fail to impress their customer. To solve this problem, some clever roasters (those days, almost all kopitiam roast their own coffee just right behind their coffee house) has devised a method that involved adding sugar and butter (margarine is use today to cut cost) during the roasting process to create a drinkable beverage that is dark and heavy bodied taste, in some case, coffee may also roasted together with grounded wheat, salt, oat, burned corn etc, for cost cutting purposes. This method is widely adopted by almost all roasters in the region.

The roasted concoction mentioned above has creates a beverage known as kopi (coffee in Malay language). If you order a cup of kopi in a kopitiam, however you will ended up with a cup of milked coffee instead. How is this come about? This is a hint that initially the proprietor of the kopitiam did not feel comfortable with the concoction they have created to be served straight black. To hide any undesirable flavour in their kopi, they added lots of condensed milk (fresh milk is expensive). Hence, by default, kopi is served with milk. If you desire black coffee, you should order kopi-O, O is black in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. Again, be aware that it is sweeten with sugar, the proprietor still find it uncomfortable to serve you a straight black unsweetened coffee. You must order kopi-O-kosong, kosong is “nothing” in Malay language, to get your black unsweetened coffee. Just a word of caution, if you are use to good quality arabica coffee and cannot settled for anything less, just avoid kopi-O-kosong.

There is a co-relation between economy performance and gourmet coffee consumption. The largest gourmet coffee consuming countries are all developed nations. The best crops available will always ended up in the hand of the one with the greatest economy muscle. For example, when the Japan’s economy reaches its peak in the 1980’s, almost all Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, one of the world’s most expensive coffee, were purchased by the Japanese, the rest of the world has been deprived of the Blue Mountain coffee for more than a decade. Looking at our nation, we did not experience an exciting economy performance for most part of the 19th and 20th century. To most ordinary folks, meeting end needs is more important than savouring a good cup of gourmet coffee. With only the liberica coffee at our disposal, we have slowly, from one generation to another generation, got acquainted and developed fondness to the unique taste of our kopi. I personally believed that we love kopi not due to its quality or exquisite taste, but rather it is an acquired taste.

In the 1980’s, our country has propelled itself towards an industrialised nation. The economy prospers over the next two decades and the quality of life had improved tremendously. Travelling abroad for business, education and leisure were at an unprecedented scale. It was during this period that we got exposed to what people around the world have taken for granted, a taste of a truly great cup of gourmet coffee.

One company that has played a pivotal role in introducing gourmet coffee in our region is Délifrance from Singapore. Délifrance started their first café bakery at Clifford Centre, Singapore in 1985. In 1990, their first café in Malaysia started in Lot 10 shopping centre, Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur. To many Malaysian my generation, Délifrance was the place we had our first sip of cappuccino, café latte, café mocha or Americano. It was also the place that sale the most expensive coffee around town and it got a lot of people the shock-of-their-life-time experience when their espresso served.

After Délifrance, came along The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Dome Café, Starbucks Coffee, Gloria Jean's Coffees, to name a few. These players, with their unique trend setting concept, style and taste, have managed to garner some followers. However, gourmet coffee appreciation is not widely spread in our society yet. Due to the high price these establishment charged, it is only confined to city dwellers, mainly high income group. Unlike Taiwan and Japan, where gourmet coffee are served in coffee house every corner island wide and enjoyed by every level of the society, Malaysia still lagging behind by maybe one whole generation. Another problem is Malaysian cannot shake off our taste for the kopi. Like a breast fed baby boy, who never tasted anything other than his own mother’s milk, will take some months, or years, to get use to other type of foods. Worst still, with the mushrooming of our home grown brand, the Ipoh Old Town White Coffee chain, 120’s outlets to date, and their clones, it will take Malaysian more time to reach the same level of coffee appreciation like other countries such as Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, The States, etc.

To end this post with a less depressing note, there are some individual in Malaysia who are doing their bit to elevate our level of coffee appreciation. It is a daunting task looking at the unfavourable condition here. However, with their passion and love for coffee, it is worth every effort discovering a new coffee loving soul. I will be searching for them and will highlight their stories in due time.