Magnum Opus: Welcome to the Third Wave of Specialty Coffee
WORD OF WARNING: You are entering a specialized world where coffees are graded and auctioned for cup taste quality. This is opposed to coffee that is harvested for high scale yield or high margins (think Starbucks and other coffee houses).
Third Wave Coffee meets the standard of a jury of Q-graders (the coffee equivalent of sommeliers for wine) rendering it suitable for auction. The coffee must receive a minimum rating of 80 to reach a specialty status. However Arabica usually gets a grade of 90.
One coffee auction is the “Best of Panama”, which is annually held by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP). In June this year, the highest auctioned lot (equivalent to 300 pounds of coffee) was purchased at US$107.86 per pound, totaling US$ 32,358.00. The lot was purchased by Junior Taiwan Coffee House.
MAGNUM OPUS: We were introduced to specialty coffee by Jonathan Choi, owner of Magnum Opus (on Aguirre st. cor. Elizalde, BF Paranaque). A former IT worker at Hewlett Packard, one day Choi was sent to Guangzhou, China, by the company. There, he met a coffee Q-grader.
The coffee Q-grader served him a coffee named Hacienda la Esmeralda Geisha. The coffee itself was from Panama, but Geisha was its name. Choi adds, “Before, I would drink my coffee like anyone else, for the caffeine, whether it was instant, brewed, cappuccino, latte or whatever. But when I tasted this Q-grader’s coffee, even my untrained taste buds knew that this was something I had to introduce to the Philippines.”
Choi said specialty coffee must be grown from 1900 to 2000 meters above sea level and requires a distinct amount of rainfall, among other requirements. If any requirement is absent, the coffee won’t pass. Every step in the process matters, including sorting out the reddest cherries and drying them properly (three to five days on a veranda in good weather; or three days on the veranda and 80 hours in a mechanical dryer). Next is the sorting of beans so that every coffee bean size is uniform. Lastly, the roasting is quite specific. Coffee is deemed specialized with a minimum grade of 80, but the Geisha variety that Choi tasted consistently gets a 90 grade.
I went to Magnum Opus several times, trying different coffees, before deciding to ask Choi for an interview. I tried The Belgian Heartbreak, their bestseller; the Americano coffee and a few others. But the El Salvador San Emilio, which was served in a carafe, really hit me.
When the waitress served the El Salvador I requested sugar and cream. She replied, “We encourage people to try it as it is.” I braced myself for horrible, unsugared, uncreamed coffee. Instead, I was jolted by the surprisingly delicious taste of its pure, sheer coffee bean with its own natural sugar and flavored notes.
Choi explained, “We only serve natural coffees — no flavors, no powders added, just the bean. But the bean has so many unique notes — coffee, coco, lemon, cherry, all these are what make the coffee unique. Arabica coffee has about 2000 compounds, and 800 may be produced while roasting. Some compounds are fruity citric acids like apple, others are acidic like vinegar. Plus, there are carbohydrates and sugars with notes of caramel, chocolate and other fl avors, all from the Arabica bean, which is considered the superior variety.”
While admitting that they would lose money if they served coffee lots on auction, Choi said their specialty coffee has Q-graders’ approval and is used in all of Magnum Opus’ coffees. Also, all their coffees are double shots because “They give you a real coffee experience.”
Everything in Magnum Opus is designed to emphasize the coffee. The fi rst three pages of the menu, for example, only list coffees. The food comes at the fourth page. I noticed the food servings are small, but coffee quenches hunger and I’ve never left the place hungry.
FOOD OPTIONS: The 115 sandwich is one-sided, reminiscent of Danish sandwiches, but far lighter. The only heavy dish is the Monte Cristo sandwich. The bread is custom made and sliced thickly because it is made into French toast. It then goes onto the griddle and smoked ham, chicken rolls and two cheeses, cheddar and emmental. It is then topped with their own, homemade cherry jam. I enjoyed the feeling of one fl avor followed by another in succession, each complimenting the previous, or adding a sweet dissonant surprise, as if a single sandwich were different meals.
The New York cheesecake is deliberately small and unadulterated, making it a perfect pair with coffee. The Apple Strudel is delicious and even more so, their cookies which I once bought fi ve of (as take out) and ate all of them at home. “At Magnum we don’t have two coffees that taste similarly. We have a range.” The commonality is that the coffee is specialized and its history is traceable. During this interview they had Aricha, which was grown in a mill in Ethiopia from the Yirgacheffe region. Choi said, “We know the cooperative where it’s from, we know the process. Instead of washing and stripping the coffee it is sun dried. We know the variety, that it’s indigenous to Ethiopia. And we know it was grown at 1900 to 2000 above sea level. It has notes of peach, mangos, fruity notes.”
This traceability enhances how the coffee is made. Choi said, “You use exact rations to the coffee. We actually have recipes that we calibrate day to day for our coffees. So that’s cup quality. It fulfi lls the elevation of the product, at the level that it was grown.”
THIRD WAVE COFFEE: Coffee has been categorized into three waves. The fi rst wave dates back to the 19th-century with Folgers as everyone’s morning caffeine surge. The second wave started in the 1960s with Peet’s, Starbucks and regional labeled coffee. The third wave has roots in the 1960s but the term “third wave” was coined in 2002. It involves improving the quality of the taste of the coffee bean at every stage from planting to harvesting, sorting to packaging and roasting.
The Third Wave would be impossible without the Q-graders, a job most people don’t know exists. The job requires a course on coffee capped by intense three-day tests on 20 aspects of coffee in the areas of cupping, roast identifi cation, green grading, sensory skills and sensory triangulation. By passing the test, the Q-grader gets a three-year license after which, he must renew it with a calibration test. If he fails twice, he loses his license and it’s back to square one. He must go back to the basics and study coffee all over again.
It is things like these that lead Choi to say that he doesn’t consider Magnum Opus a café. A café offers paninis, salads, pastas, donuts, sandwiches, a particular ambience, et. al, aside from coffee served in paper cups for people on the go. By contrast Magnum Opus is a destination place for a delicious coffee experience alone, with a good book, or with friends. It’s a place to work in or hold meetings in. There is an al fresco area where, in the late afternoon, you can sit on a table and have your coffee and listen to your favorite music on your iPhone. Or maybe you just want to think. Sometimes, you may just feel a bit low and you cheer yourself up with something excellent, like specialty coffee at Magnum Opus.
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