From the food stories on SWR television
On 5 November 2018 at 6:15 p.m. CET, SWR Fernsehen broadcast the 30-minute report 'Cappuccino und Co.- Der Kult um den Kaffee' (Cappuccino and Co - The Cult of Coffee) in the series Essgeschichten, which will be broadcast until 4 November 2019 in SWR Mediathek.
SWR editor Maja Hattesen and her team accompany our business partner Dr. Steffen Schwarz from Coffee Consulate in Mannheim to all kinds of locations:
For example to the German Coffee Championships in Bremen, where the wonderful cups of Walküre Porzellanfabrik from Bayreuth will be used. There, Schwarz has already identified his arch-enemy: the mean coffee maker, bursting with self-praise. "Today we know that a barista is tattooed, has a thick beard and horn-rimmed glasses...", he says. And smiles.
As a natural scientist among all the many self-promoters, Dr. Steffen Schwarz is certainly a special case. The doctor of medicine draws on a wealth of experience in biology, chemistry and biochemistry when he gets down to business. And that's what it's all about for him. Or almost everything. Because, as you will soon notice, the human being always comes first in everything he does.
Kaffeerösten: “Eine Art thermische Verdauung.””
And so we learn - shortly after he explained to the viewer that roasting is basically nothing more than thermal digestion - how hard it is for coffee farmers like Andres Quintanilla from El Salvador, who is also personally known to us, whose harvests were recently destroyed by natural disasters by up to 40 percent.
Schwarz comments on a YouTube film that the farmer brought back for him, saying that his green coffee sacks are now being pulled from one side to the other across a raging river spanned by a rope bridge as a lifeline. Sandra Schwarz, his wife, is responsible for the direct trade in this respect together with the management of Amarella Trading e.K. This is of the greatest benefit to producers in the countries of origin.
"The DNA of the whole game" is the exchange that takes place continuously between the farmer, the roaster, the distributor, the barista as the preparer and the consumer, explains Schwarz, who is convinced that this is the only way to compete against industry and wholesalers who want everything possible. Just not a really very good individual speciality coffee. It's the masses that do it.
global warming: a climate and coffee killer
He is also worried that if the average temperature on earth continues to rise by 2° Celsius within 20 to 30 years, around 70 percent of the area currently under coffee cultivation will be destroyed. This is because the coffee plant, which mainly thrives along the equator, would then react very sensitively with all kinds of leaf diseases such as coffee rust or pest infestation by the coffee beetle.
In the meantime, barista Nicole Battefeld from Berlin has won her part of the championship in Bremen and we have successively got to know her competitor Barista Thomas Burckhardt from Kaiserslautern, Barista Arianne Csollak Tyllios from Stuttgart, Barista Norman Magolei with his Riechstein, the meditating latte art artist Markus Badura from Deidesheim and coffee connoisseur Goran Huber or let them have their say.
Not far from the Bremen exhibition grounds as the venue for the event, coffee logistician Vollers does his business: "Every second bean arrives in Bremen," says SWR editor Maja Hattesen about her moving images. And concludes with three examples of locations she also visits.
visited on site
The first is in Filderstadt at the home of farmer Gerhard Daumüller, who, as a herbalist, has embarked on a journey into the land of humus with Dr. Steffen Schwarz. In numerous test series, the duo optimizes soil qualities with coffee grounds and the so-called silver skins left over from roasting. During a visit to a coffee plantation, Daumüller himself had discovered that wherever soil is mixed with such fertilizer, the result is very rich in worms and nutrients. Snails, on the other hand, stay away from the fields prepared in this way: For them, the caffeine is simply toxic.
Hattesen's second example is in Speyer. There in the Palatinate, Sabine and Jochen Springer have opened their café roastery Springer's Kaffeemanufaktur in a small side street. They successfully defy the numerous vendors in the better walk-up locations. Because they roast their own coffee, says Sabine Springer. Every other argument is powerless against quality.
Finally, we go to the café roastery echt HAMMER in Neckarsulm, which, in addition to its own self-roasted coffee, also prepares its own pasta. And Steffen Schwarz is sitting there again, just as he likes it best: Talking shop in the circle of 'his' frahling lovers.