LONDON — Hugo Castaneda (PICTURE) not only has a cool name, he also has one of the best jobs in the world — he drinks coffee for a living. Well, to be more accurate, he gets paid to taste coffee.
Every day, the sprightly laboratory manager at British coffee house Costa Coffee is responsible for making sure that the coffee produced at his company’s roastery in London is fresh and consistent, before it is shipped to Costa outlets all over the world, including Singapore.
With the help of statistics and, of course his expert palate, Castaneda has to first make sure that the coffee beans that arrive from producer countries such as Peru, Nicaragua and Vietnam are of a high standard before they are accepted by the roastery. After they are processed and roasted, Castaneda and his team of three other tasters test the coffee again to make sure it is still in tip-top condition. (His colleagues include Gennaro Pelliccia, whose tongue has been famously insured for 10 million pounds.)
Costa roasts about 10,000 tonnes of coffee at its London roastery every year, and Castaneda’s team rejects about seven per cent of the coffee that passes through their laboratory. (Typically, the rejected coffee goes to the instant coffee industry, or the pharmaceutical industry, where the caffeine is extracted.)
“To have a consistent product at all times, we have to take coffee (from different countries) with similar sensorial properties,” Castaneda explained during a tour of its London roastery.
“It is a big responsibility because it is easy for the industry or the employer to see if you have got the wrong quality concept,” he added. “And because of that, we can tell that we have the right quality systems, we are good at what we do, and we are one of the best in the world. But it is a lot of work; every single day it’s training, testing and profiling.”
It helps that Castaneda is a bit of a coffee fiend. He spent his growing years helping his grandfather on his coffee plantation in his native Colombia, where he learned how to grow coffee, what the best coffee tastes like, and how to manage the plant to produce coffee. Even at the office, casual conversations invariably revolve around coffee.
“It is a bit boring (to keep talking about coffee), but you realise that you remember something that you’d forgotten, or something you hadn’t realised. The only way is by talking, reading, and being aware of what is in the industry — the latest trends in coffee, innovation, combining products with coffee, milks, syrups and thousands of ingredients that can be combined with coffee in a good way and be pleasant. It is a whole world, it is an economy, it’s agricultural.”
And it is never too late to fall in love with coffee, said Castaneda. New drinkers who wish to learn what truly good coffee tastes like, could start by comparing the flavours of coffee made with Arabica beans with those made using Robusta beans.
“The one that gives you pleasant perceptions is the one that tells you that the coffee is of a good quality,” he said. “Sweetness and acidity — those perceptions are very pleasant to humans. Typically, the Arabica gives you natural sweetness … The Robusta has less acidity and less sweetness, and more harshness and bitterness. It is a completely different coffee.”
He continued: “If the coffee is too burnt, you are also going to get flavours that are carbonic, heavy and very bitter. Those coffees are typically not good quality coffee. It doesn’t mean the coffee is bad, but that it was roasted wrongly. If it is too bitter and in good roasting point, it means the coffee quality is not very good.
“Good coffee is the one that can give you pleasant flavours, full stop.”
