Alfredo was born in Montevideo in Uruguay, his mother married a Brazilian, and at some point, they went to live in Brazil. One of the first places he moved was to the north of Minas Gerais, and one of his earliest memories was the scent of coffee every morning there. The places where he lived, in the backyard, had coffee trees, they used to pack the berries, dry them, wash and clean them, and every morning they would drink that coffee with milk.
He says that:
“I do remember very clearly, the entire house smelling too fresh coffee, and that was wonderful, and I think those memories stayed with me for my entire life”
When he moved to the United States, he heard about specialty coffee, and he fell in love with the idea of the control of the quality from the beginning to the very end, the small farmers producing different variates, and all the care that go into that, and especially the quality that we can taste in the end.
When his family moved to Italy, the first method he used at home was the little Bialetti, and somehow he fell in love with the Moka Coffee, and that became part of his morning ritual. Almost every morning when he still really much prefers to go to a coffee house, for him the one here in Portugal is Fábrica, every time he can, he is there.
Alfredo says:
“It is interesting that both coffee and music, the scent of the coffee, go right to the limbic system of the brain, which is the area of the brain that processes emotion and everything related to that. After that, you get to taste it, and you get to touch the grains, and all the other senses interact, and at first, the impressions, the sensations are the same as they would be with music”.
For him, the thing with making coffee and trying to understand specialty coffee is that it becomes an obsession in terms of the ability to manipulate certain variables, which seems not that important if you are not into that the way we are. A great cup of coffee for Alfredo is made with low acidity, more sweetness, and less bitterness, but for him when we get into the sweetness of it, is where it gets tricky, he thinks that extraction starts first with the acidity, then the sweetness and then the bitterness, but it all depends on actuality in how fast it comes out and the temperature of the extraction.
By the end, Alfredo gets fascinated experimenting with all those senses with his Moka Pot, and he thinks that one day the next step probably will be to try to have an espresso machine, but for now, he is really happy with his morning ritual with the Moka Pot.
You can check the whole video with Alfredo on our Instagram.
