Coffee has come a long way, and barista and mixologist Ryan Castelaz is playing a big part in this continuing evolution.
Originally from New Berlin, Wisconsin, Castelaz is known as the "Dean of the Demitasse." Well, he is now that I’ve referred to him as that.
Castelaz is the founder of two Discourse Coffee Workshops. He started out in Sister Bay. Now, he has moved to the sugar and cream city of Milwaukee.
Castelaz is sharing his love for java with his book, "The New Art of Coffee: From Morning Cup to Caffeine Cocktail."
He believes you can tell stories with coffee. For example, he created a drink called "The Don" named after Marlon Brando in "The Godfather."
I traveled to Discourse in Milwaukee to find out more. The result was a suitably caffeinated conversation with Castelaz. He told us how a childhood habit of creating concoctions led to a lifelong obsession with redefining coffee.
From singing opera to slinging coffee
"It's a very long and roundabout journey," Castelaz told Wisconsin Public Radio's "BETA."
He said for most of his life, his plan was to become a professional singer. During his sophomore year of college, he studied opera in Italy.
"And when I was in Italy training, I fell really, really in love with espresso culture — like this ritual of going to the bar every morning, putting my Eurocoin coin down on the bar, getting my shot of espresso, taking it down. It became something I felt deeply in love with. And when I moved back to the States, I needed to recreate that culture in my life," Castelaz said.
His mother took him to the store and they bought a Delonghi steam espresso machines. Castelaz brought it back to his college dorm and made espresso for himself and his roommates.
"It became something that I loved. I loved being able to make this thing, care about this thing, share this thing with people. And so that kind of transitioned into me loving coffee and falling down that rabbit hole," he said. "It wasn't until several years later that I kind of came to this confluence of the storytelling that I loved in music and the craft of making coffee and how those two things kind of came together."
Castelaz says the coffee industry, which has success through volume and routine, has often placed creativity in the back seat.
"So if you look at the coffee shops around the country that are doing the most innovative things the most consistently, I think the original thought is, OK, those places are going to be in New York City, in L.A., in San Francisco," he said.
"But then you look at these smaller towns, these lower rent areas, and you see these baristas who are free to think and dream creatively because that overall burden, that volume requirement is much, much lower," Castelaz added.
"And so I think this smaller niche model that is less focused on the profitability and more focused on barista expression is something that is new and exciting, but something that's a little bit more foreign to the traditional model of running a coffee shop."
Castelaz's goal with his first coffee shop in Sister Bay was to explore coffee in a way he felt hadn't been done before.
"What I loved about coffee was this element of community, this element of craft, this element of precision this never-ending journey to find the perfect shot," he said.
When he opened Discourse Coffee in Sister Bay, the questions they faced were how do we build on this?
Castelaz wanted to figure out how he and his team could use coffee as a storytelling element.
"How do we tell unique and engaging stories through coffee and can it be done? And is it interesting to people for it to be done? So it was kind of a discovery process."
The fourth wave gives the barista a voice
The history of American coffee is traditionally divided into four waves, described by Castelaz:
- First wave: "So that first wave is going to be your Maxwell House, your Folgers, things that are really dependent upon that convenience aspect above all else."
- Second wave: "The second wave is going to be shops like Starbucks, Caribou. They kind of split the balance between convenience and quality. You have these creative solutions, but it's still very much a productivity-driven model."
- Third wave: This is "where we've been for about the last 20, 25 years — a term coined by Trish Rothgeb of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters in San Francisco. It's about acknowledging the entire pathway that coffee takes from farmer to barista preparing that coffee."
- Fourth wave: "We give the barista a voice...We've gotten really, really, really good at making good coffee as an industry. And so in the fourth wave...if you think about this like a cocktail bar, like a bartender, what they do, they take amazing spirits from all around the world, and then they translate them into their own voice through their cocktails. It's bringing that mentality into the coffee space of saying, 'Hey, we're going to take these amazing, transparent coffees from around the world. We're going to serve them to you in a beautiful format, but we're also going to play with them and we're going to express ourselves through them.' And that focus on the customer experience, that focus on novel engagement with the customer, with the guest, that is the fourth wave."
Telling stories with coffee
A few years ago, Discourse Coffee created a menu called "Great Films." The idea was to recreate classic American films as a kind of food and drink. One of the movies they chose was "The Godfather." In order to figure out what this Marlon Brando-inspired drink would consist of, Castelaz and his team asked: "If Marlon Brando walked into the cafe, what would he order?"
"So Marlon Brando and his character, the Don, of course, owned Sicilian olive oil plantations. That was kind of where he got a lot of his money. So we knew we needed to use olive oil. We also knew we needed to use tobacco. There had to be some sort of smoky element. He's sitting there with that stogie," Castelaz explained.
"The Don" combines espresso, Sicilian olive oil, egg white, and a tobacco and orange smoking blend. The result is a coffee drink you can't refuse.
"For me, stories have always been a really beautiful way to limit the framework of a drink," Castelaz said. "There are so many ingredients in this world, you know, to just kind of sit at a canvas and throw blankly is very, very difficult. And so what I love about story is it creates confines and it creates direction."