Hi All . . .
Gosh, was that sixty degree day yesterday NICE or what? I went out on the bike at lunch and damn near never came back. During my travels, I hung out on the bench in front of Derosiers for a bit eating some pizza (they have an excellent beer selection, by the way), and every person who passed by smiled and told me what a nice day it was for a bike ride. Ahhhhhh . . . I so agree.
This weekend, I’ll be roasting on Sunday sometime, then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by 10:00 Sunday morning to be sure of getting your favorites for this week. Coffees for this time around are on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com)
I have some awesome coffees here (Ethiopia, Burundi, Sulawesi, Road Trip and Indo Limbo) if you need something over the weekend.
In this week’s article, I will explore the subject of what happens to coffee after it is roasted, and why freshness, packaging and storage matter in your daily enjoyment of your cup.
If you want some background on all the steps leading up to this, here are some articles on growing and harvesting, processing and the progression of beans during roasting.
But here, we’ll start from the moment I open the door of the roaster and allow the coffee to flow into the cooling bin. A powerful fan sucks the remaining smoke away from the beans and draws room temperature air across them as a stirrer arm agitates the coffee. Several minutes later, I open another door, and the coffee beans trickle down a chute into a bucket. And within five minutes of that event, the coffee is measured into three-ply bags with a one-way valve and heat-sealed.
Resting Coffee
It is a misconception of coffee roasting that this fresh-out-of-the-roaster coffee is the best coffee can be. It’s not, actually. Coffee needs to “rest” after roasting, for at least 24 hours, but ideally for more like three days . . . and some have described resting their espresso blends for as long as ten days.
I liken what happens to the flavors during this time to the process of aging wine – the coffee takes shape, brightness disappears and the coffee mellows. These changes are quite pronounced, and if you are getting coffee from us the day after roasting, taste it that day and each day over the next week – you should see an obvious change as time goes on.
Outgassing
Freshly roasted coffee also powerfully emits CO2 just after roasting, and the one-way valves on good packaging allow this gas to escape. If I sealed just roasted coffee in an airtight bag, it would literally pop several hours later!
But what this means when you DON’T see a valve on a bag of coffee is that either its not a very good bag (meaning that it is not airtight, and the CO2 gets out on its own) or, as is common with most supermarket coffee, the coffee has been “staled” before packing.
Staling
A secondary benefit of this outflow of CO2 is that it protects the coffee from oxygen – and as the outgassing slows, the coffee becomes progressively more vulnerable to becoming stale. In the process of staling, roasted coffee loses moisture, flavor elements break down, and the oils in the coffee become rancid. It is this rancid oil that gives stale coffee its distinctive aroma. Try to get to know this scent – and you can then check the coffee you are about to buy by holding your nose up to the one way valve and squeezing the bag.
Good coffee packaging is designed to ward off the two biggest enemies of coffee, oxygen and light, and flushing the bags with an inert gas (like nitrogen) helps to also protect the delicate beans. See below for more on packaging.
Visible Oil
All coffee beans contain oils, and you will see coffee where the oil has come to the surface, creating a shiny effect. This is common in dark roasts, where the oil comes to the surface either during the roasting process or very soon thereafter, but oil also will rise to the surface as coffee ages. If you store your coffee at room temperature, watch for tiny droplets forming on your beans – and when you see these, it’s a good time to get your coffee into the freezer (or drink it).
When the oil is inside the coffee, it is protected, and when it comes to the surface, the interaction between the oils and air will hasten the staling of coffee. It is for this reason that darker roasted coffees will go stale faster than light roasts.
Ground Coffee
So, oxygen and light are the enemy, right? Imagine now what happens with LOTS MORE oxygen and light. Bad things happen.
To understand the effect of grinding coffee on staling, consider the surface area of a coffee bean. Then grind that bean. The resulting surface area exposed to air and light increases by several orders of magnitude. For those of you who live here where it is cold, its like the difference in going outside in January with no gloves versus being stark naked. You’d be a LOT colder with the increased surface area.
And this is why coffee should be ground just before it is brewed. The shelf life of coffee goes downhill in a hurry once you grind it. (If you need recommendations on a good grinder, write me back?)
Buying Coffee
As you see here, the clock starts ticking as soon as the coffee leaves the roaster – and it begins to go stale almost immediately. Good packaging can delay the staling, but it doesn’t prevent it – and once the bag is opened, even coffee flushed with gas will stale faster than freshly roasted coffee.
This means that you should buy your coffee as near to the roasting date as possible, but unfortunately most roasters won’t tell you when that was! In practicality, they can’t put the roasting dates on the bags of coffee sold in the grocery store, because then everyone would know that most of this coffee is on the older side – sometimes VERY old.
You are, however, offered some clues. My pet peeve among these is the “Best By” date, an arbitrary point at which that roaster would have you believe that the coffee is no longer drinkable. One local roaster sells its GROUND coffee with a “Best By” date as long as two years after roasting, and trust me, that coffee was history a long time before then.
Another device is to use a lengthy code that contains a roasting date in the format of the Julian Calendar. Here’s a way of decoding those, if you are interested.
The best solution is to know the roasting date. We print ours on the bags (on the bottom – where it says “Roasting Date”), and many of the better roasters who sell mail order pledge to ship the coffee on the day it was roasted.
Also, pay attention to how your coffee is packaged. If you buy coffee in bulk (meaning from bins where they scoop your coffee), it will often be packaged in a plain paper bag, or one with a thin poly liner. Here, I strongly recommend you transfer this coffee when you get home to an airtight container, and then store it in a cool, dark place.
If the bag is more substantive, you can store it in these, but wrap the bag tightly after you open it – and maybe add a rubber band to help keep the oxygen out.
If you have chosen a roaster on the basis of their coffee bags being recyclable or compostable, note that these bags typically have very poor barrier properties – be careful of these if you like fresh-tasting coffee.
To Freeze or Not to Freeze
Should you freeze coffee? My standard answer to this question is that, if you have purchased coffee that was just roasted, protect it well and drink it within three weeks, then no. But, if you don’t know when it was roasted – or it will take longer than this to drink, then freezing is the best way to preserve the flavors. Don’t store your coffee in the refrigerator, as the moisture that flushes in and out of your container each time you open it will hasten the staling of your coffee.
If you intend to freeze the coffee, and it was just roasted, let it rest a few days and then freeze it. You’ll want the advantages of the resting period in developing the flavor.
For more on this subject, here’s an intensive test of the flavor impacts of freezing coffee:
My hope in this article is to give you an awareness of this progression of coffee over time that you can use to make better buying decisions. I know (alas) that you can’t always get your coffee from us, and by dialing in these important considerations, you can purchase coffees that are freshly roasted, store them wisely and get the most out of your cup. Oh, and write me back if you need recommendations on a good grinder.
That’s all for now, folks – have a great weekend!
Kent
Friday, May 27, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Fair Trade Demystified
Hi Folks,
A Happy New Year to you all!
It is a happy coincidence that the new year arrives on a Friday this time around, so my article is reaching you all as you enjoy your very first cuppa of the new year. Perhaps some of you have a new years resolution to drink more coffee than last year, and for those of you planning on drinking a LOT more coffee, you may find a vast panacea of health benefits (according to the Wall Street Journal here).
So, in support of curing all things that may now or in the future ail you, I will be roasting this weekend on Sunday (January 3), then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by 10:00 Saturday night to be included in this round, though we'll have some extras on hand if you don't get this until after that. Coffees for this week are detailed on the website.
Hey, if you haven't seen Starbucks' holiday greeting, have a look. Its very inspirational, and I thank them for it.
Today, I'll continue my series on social issues in coffee production, here taking on the complicated task of trying to demystify fair trade coffee.
A few months ago, I wrote about the global coffee market, and how the fortunes of any coffee farmer are tied to the macro scale forces of supply and demand for an agricultural product (including weather, crop cycles, and the actions of major producer countries) and how this in turn drives pricing structures set on one of two large international commodity exchanges. The end result is that farmers and cooperatives that have relatively fixed costs of production can see the revenue side of their business swing wildly, at times at or below their costs. First and foremost, this jeopardizes the livelihood of farmers, their families and their communities; but it also makes those who grow coffee question the value of continuing to grow coffee. It may make more economic sense to move in the direction of alternate crops that offer more diversity or lower risk.
Enter the fair trade system.
What is Fair Trade?
Fair trade is the common name for a set of global trade standards administered by Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO), which is both an umbrella organization of 24 regional certification groups and the operator of a large producer certification operation. In the US, certification is done through TransFair USA, a non-profit organization headquartered in Oakland, California. It is the logo of TransFair ("Fair Trade Certified") you see on coffee, tea, chocolate and other fair trade certified products available at your grocery store.
The goal of these standards is to ensure producers of certain agricultural products (in addition to coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, sugar, rice, flowers, honey and vanilla) a fair price and a guarantee of a "social premium" that provides benefits to the community. Specific benefits to coffee farmers include:
> Farmer cooperatives receive a guaranteed minimum price of $1.35/pound, a rate that rises as the benchmark "c price" commodity benchmark increases beyond this level. An additional premium of $.20/pound is paid for coffee also certified as organic.
> Cooperatives also can receive pre-harvest credit, an important method of meeting costs growing, processing and transportation prior to being paid for the final product.
> Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited. Since most good coffee is dependent on seasonal workers who hand pick the coffee cherries, this is an important set of guarantees that impacts a far wider range of people than just those categorized as "farmers"
> Importers try to make direct purchase arrangements with grower cooperatives; thus avoiding the markups of middlemen and helping to ensure more transparency in the flow of money.
> Because the mechanism for fair trade business agreements is the cooperative, these groups (or growers) make the decisions on how to channel fair trade premiums back into their communities. Projects with these funds can include, schools, hospitals, water quality or quality improvements in their coffee operations
> The fair trade certification system strictly prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), promotes integrated farm management systems that improve soil fertility, and limits the use of harmful agrochemicals in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers' health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations. (Note that this does not confer organic certification, though some of these are requirements of that system.)
Issues:
The fair trade system is one of several common certification programs at play in the US coffee market, along with organic, shade grown, bird friendly and Rainforest Alliance certifications. Each of these measures growers compliance with a set of standards, then provides some measure of assurance to consumers that they have been met.
The subjects of these standards - fair treatment for growers and workers, natural production methods and forest and habitat protection - are extremely important in the world of coffee, as they sustain the people who grow it, the drive to improve coffee quality and the places in which it is grown. But, I think it is important to view all of these with a measure of balance and understand all sides of a certification like fair trade.
> A System: To receive a certification, a grower cooperative must pay fees to be certified (an additional business expense), and its members must comply with the requirements of the certification. At the end of the day, the price advantage of fair trade (or fair trade organic - "FTO") certifications must make these costs and requirements worthwhile.
> Formulas: There are established prices formulas set for the world under the fair trade system, and in the same way having a single commodity market price for coffee is more or less of an issue for individual regions of the world, the fair trade price structures can be out of balance with the local costs of production. Some have recently suggested that the fair trade rates are far too low, and that a minimum of $2.00/pound is what is needed to provide a truly sustainable income for coffee growers.
> What about non-certified coffees? The fair trade system allows consumers the confidence that certified products have met the standards of this program, but I fear in promoting this system, the impression has been created that everything that is NOT certified is therefore not fair. Though there are certainly plenty of unfair situations out there that would be made better under this system, there are also farmers receiving a more than fair price for their coffee, farmers who are not members of cooperatives (who therefore don't have a mechanism for participating in the fair trade system) and market forces (such as prevailing wages far above the legal minimums) that makes that part of the structure unnecessary.
> Is fair trade (or organic or bird friendly) coffee better coffee? In many cases, the presence of a certification improves conditions on a farm, improving the attention to quality production methods and motivating farmers to produce a better tasting product. But unfortunately, certification systems can also provide a way for low grade coffee that meets a set of business or production standards to come to market bearing a designation that implies quality. Visit WalMart or Trader Joes and you'll see "Fair Trade/Organic" coffee that sells in large packages at prices close to $4.00/pound - I assure you, this is NOT good tasting coffee.
But in the final analysis, I think the fair trade system has been good for coffee, and it has also been the starting point for a number of programs initiated by US roasters that are designed to be more specific to local markets and to have more of an impact on the quality of the coffee itself. These include the Starbucks CAFE Practices program (used n conjunction with dramatic increases in fair trade coffee purchases), the Counter Culture Direct Trade program, Intelligentsia's Direct Trade program and the Green Mountain Farm Identified program. All of these programs use the fair trade system as a starting point, and then layer on additional quality standards and the benefits of direct trading arrangements.
I hope this helps, and please feel free to write back if I can answer any questions. If I can't answer your question directly, I can certainly point you in the right direction.
I wish each of you and your families a happy, healthy and prosperous year ahead.
Kent
A Happy New Year to you all!
It is a happy coincidence that the new year arrives on a Friday this time around, so my article is reaching you all as you enjoy your very first cuppa of the new year. Perhaps some of you have a new years resolution to drink more coffee than last year, and for those of you planning on drinking a LOT more coffee, you may find a vast panacea of health benefits (according to the Wall Street Journal here).
So, in support of curing all things that may now or in the future ail you, I will be roasting this weekend on Sunday (January 3), then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by 10:00 Saturday night to be included in this round, though we'll have some extras on hand if you don't get this until after that. Coffees for this week are detailed on the website.
Hey, if you haven't seen Starbucks' holiday greeting, have a look. Its very inspirational, and I thank them for it.
Today, I'll continue my series on social issues in coffee production, here taking on the complicated task of trying to demystify fair trade coffee.
A few months ago, I wrote about the global coffee market, and how the fortunes of any coffee farmer are tied to the macro scale forces of supply and demand for an agricultural product (including weather, crop cycles, and the actions of major producer countries) and how this in turn drives pricing structures set on one of two large international commodity exchanges. The end result is that farmers and cooperatives that have relatively fixed costs of production can see the revenue side of their business swing wildly, at times at or below their costs. First and foremost, this jeopardizes the livelihood of farmers, their families and their communities; but it also makes those who grow coffee question the value of continuing to grow coffee. It may make more economic sense to move in the direction of alternate crops that offer more diversity or lower risk.
Enter the fair trade system.
What is Fair Trade?
Fair trade is the common name for a set of global trade standards administered by Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO), which is both an umbrella organization of 24 regional certification groups and the operator of a large producer certification operation. In the US, certification is done through TransFair USA, a non-profit organization headquartered in Oakland, California. It is the logo of TransFair ("Fair Trade Certified") you see on coffee, tea, chocolate and other fair trade certified products available at your grocery store.
The goal of these standards is to ensure producers of certain agricultural products (in addition to coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, sugar, rice, flowers, honey and vanilla) a fair price and a guarantee of a "social premium" that provides benefits to the community. Specific benefits to coffee farmers include:
> Farmer cooperatives receive a guaranteed minimum price of $1.35/pound, a rate that rises as the benchmark "c price" commodity benchmark increases beyond this level. An additional premium of $.20/pound is paid for coffee also certified as organic.
> Cooperatives also can receive pre-harvest credit, an important method of meeting costs growing, processing and transportation prior to being paid for the final product.
> Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited. Since most good coffee is dependent on seasonal workers who hand pick the coffee cherries, this is an important set of guarantees that impacts a far wider range of people than just those categorized as "farmers"
> Importers try to make direct purchase arrangements with grower cooperatives; thus avoiding the markups of middlemen and helping to ensure more transparency in the flow of money.
> Because the mechanism for fair trade business agreements is the cooperative, these groups (or growers) make the decisions on how to channel fair trade premiums back into their communities. Projects with these funds can include, schools, hospitals, water quality or quality improvements in their coffee operations
> The fair trade certification system strictly prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), promotes integrated farm management systems that improve soil fertility, and limits the use of harmful agrochemicals in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers' health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations. (Note that this does not confer organic certification, though some of these are requirements of that system.)
Issues:
The fair trade system is one of several common certification programs at play in the US coffee market, along with organic, shade grown, bird friendly and Rainforest Alliance certifications. Each of these measures growers compliance with a set of standards, then provides some measure of assurance to consumers that they have been met.
The subjects of these standards - fair treatment for growers and workers, natural production methods and forest and habitat protection - are extremely important in the world of coffee, as they sustain the people who grow it, the drive to improve coffee quality and the places in which it is grown. But, I think it is important to view all of these with a measure of balance and understand all sides of a certification like fair trade.
> A System: To receive a certification, a grower cooperative must pay fees to be certified (an additional business expense), and its members must comply with the requirements of the certification. At the end of the day, the price advantage of fair trade (or fair trade organic - "FTO") certifications must make these costs and requirements worthwhile.
> Formulas: There are established prices formulas set for the world under the fair trade system, and in the same way having a single commodity market price for coffee is more or less of an issue for individual regions of the world, the fair trade price structures can be out of balance with the local costs of production. Some have recently suggested that the fair trade rates are far too low, and that a minimum of $2.00/pound is what is needed to provide a truly sustainable income for coffee growers.
> What about non-certified coffees? The fair trade system allows consumers the confidence that certified products have met the standards of this program, but I fear in promoting this system, the impression has been created that everything that is NOT certified is therefore not fair. Though there are certainly plenty of unfair situations out there that would be made better under this system, there are also farmers receiving a more than fair price for their coffee, farmers who are not members of cooperatives (who therefore don't have a mechanism for participating in the fair trade system) and market forces (such as prevailing wages far above the legal minimums) that makes that part of the structure unnecessary.
> Is fair trade (or organic or bird friendly) coffee better coffee? In many cases, the presence of a certification improves conditions on a farm, improving the attention to quality production methods and motivating farmers to produce a better tasting product. But unfortunately, certification systems can also provide a way for low grade coffee that meets a set of business or production standards to come to market bearing a designation that implies quality. Visit WalMart or Trader Joes and you'll see "Fair Trade/Organic" coffee that sells in large packages at prices close to $4.00/pound - I assure you, this is NOT good tasting coffee.
But in the final analysis, I think the fair trade system has been good for coffee, and it has also been the starting point for a number of programs initiated by US roasters that are designed to be more specific to local markets and to have more of an impact on the quality of the coffee itself. These include the Starbucks CAFE Practices program (used n conjunction with dramatic increases in fair trade coffee purchases), the Counter Culture Direct Trade program, Intelligentsia's Direct Trade program and the Green Mountain Farm Identified program. All of these programs use the fair trade system as a starting point, and then layer on additional quality standards and the benefits of direct trading arrangements.
I hope this helps, and please feel free to write back if I can answer any questions. If I can't answer your question directly, I can certainly point you in the right direction.
I wish each of you and your families a happy, healthy and prosperous year ahead.
Kent
How to Buy an Espresso Machine
Good morning, folks,
To get the business stuff out of the way, we'll be roasting this weekend on Sunday and Monday, with deliveries and shipments on Tuesday. The coffees for this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
We have a new arrival on the site this week, a rich, delicious estate coffee from Java. This one was used in the yummy Mokka Java blend we sold over the holidays, and we're now offering this as a single origin coffee for a few weeks while it lasts.
Have you been down to The Royal Bean yet this winter? Its such a nice place to hang out on cold days, and Jim and his staff of ace baristas are serving up all of our coffees brewed to order by the cup in case you'd like to do some experimenting. The shop also has an expanding calendar of special events, a new painter's art now on exhibit, and as always, plenty of parking and the play area for the kids. For some details or to be added to their mailing list, please click here.
For today's reading, I'd like to send you over to CoffeeGeek to check out Mark Prince's recent update of his excellent guide to buying an espresso machine. An earlier version of the guide has been on their site for years, but he's just gone through and updated the recommendations and prices. Click here to jump straight to the guide. This is an excellent, very comprehensive set of resources, and I think it is of interest even if you aren't in the market for a new machine just for what it teaches you about the craft of espresso.
Wow - we have changes galore coming down the pike, to include some exquisite new coffees, new labeling, new ways of doing things and more articles in development. Stay tuned.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
To get the business stuff out of the way, we'll be roasting this weekend on Sunday and Monday, with deliveries and shipments on Tuesday. The coffees for this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
We have a new arrival on the site this week, a rich, delicious estate coffee from Java. This one was used in the yummy Mokka Java blend we sold over the holidays, and we're now offering this as a single origin coffee for a few weeks while it lasts.
Have you been down to The Royal Bean yet this winter? Its such a nice place to hang out on cold days, and Jim and his staff of ace baristas are serving up all of our coffees brewed to order by the cup in case you'd like to do some experimenting. The shop also has an expanding calendar of special events, a new painter's art now on exhibit, and as always, plenty of parking and the play area for the kids. For some details or to be added to their mailing list, please click here.
For today's reading, I'd like to send you over to CoffeeGeek to check out Mark Prince's recent update of his excellent guide to buying an espresso machine. An earlier version of the guide has been on their site for years, but he's just gone through and updated the recommendations and prices. Click here to jump straight to the guide. This is an excellent, very comprehensive set of resources, and I think it is of interest even if you aren't in the market for a new machine just for what it teaches you about the craft of espresso.
Wow - we have changes galore coming down the pike, to include some exquisite new coffees, new labeling, new ways of doing things and more articles in development. Stay tuned.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Buying Coffee at the Grocery Store
Good morning, friends,
I’ll be roasting this weekend on Sunday the 24th, then delivering and shipping on Monday. We also have several coffees here for anyone in need before Monday.
The coffees for this week are on the website – and among these, you’ll see an amazing microlot coffee from the Rwabisindu washing station in Rwanda. This is our first experience with a coffee vacuum packed and sealed in mylar bags at origin, and experiments are now showing that this method preserves the original flavors of coffee during shipping far better than traditional jute bags. In the cup, you’ll find a sweet, elegant and complex coffee and a truly special example of this exciting origin.
Those of you who are local will have noticed that our coffee has disappeared from the shelves of local grocery stores. This was a conscious choice on my part, as the more I see of mass market coffee, the more I come to the conclusion that this is just not a good way to sell coffee. I think most grocery store coffee sits there for too long after roasting, and with the way stores work, you’ll never see the actual roasting date unless you are a cryptographer. And since I somehow feel the journey of every bean that leaves our little roastery, I’ve elected to step out of that game.
But, I know that for many of you, this will be the place you’ll buy the majority of your coffee. It takes time and effort to break away and buy specialty products of any kind, be they cheeses from a local shop, fresh produce from a farmers market or fresh coffee from a microroaster. In the cycle of chores we boogie through every week, sometimes the convenience of buying from a grocery store is a necessity.
So, since I still want you all drinking the best, even if it doesn’t come from us, here are some simple tips that should help you navigate the shelves of your local store:
1. Turnover. If the store sells lots of coffee, it will therefore buy newly roasted coffee more often, and your coffee will be fresher, regardless of whether you follow the rest of the advice below or not. See if it looks like they sell a lot of your brand of coffee, and if not, be suspicious. Also, note that the prime shelf space is right there in the middle shelf – and this is where the fast sellers are. Be wary if your favorite coffee is on the bottom shelf.
2. Roasting dates. In a perfect world, all coffee would have a clear roasting date on the bag (like ours), and you would then buy your coffee in the sweet spot of within three weeks of roasting. But, in general, you won’t see these on grocery store coffee – for the simple reason that if they showed them, it would reveal that almost everything on the shelf is past its prime. But, you will often see a coded form of the date that uses the Julian calendar, a sequential rendering of the days of the year. June 1 in this format is 153, while January 1 is 001 and December 31, 365. Dig around a bit on the shelf so you can see how these numbers are used in labeling your favorite coffee.
3. Pick from the back. The stores put the new products in the back so the old ones in front will sell first. Just wait until no one is looking, then reach behind all the bags in front and grab a fresh one from the back. It’s your coffee, and you shouldn’t feel any shame in doing this. Then, with this power, move on to the dairy case, the meat counter and the produce bins – all homes to this strategy from the stores.
4. Is there a valve? Those funny little plastic fittings on the front of our coffee bags are one-way valves that allow the coffee to be packaged just after roasting. Coffee “outgases” CO2 for several days after roasting, and without this valve, well packaged coffee bags would literally pop! What this means is that, if there is no valve, the roaster will have “pre-staled” the coffee by letting it sit for a half day or so before packaging it. This saves them a whopping nickel or so on each bag, so boo hiss on those who do this.
5. Smell the valve. I know, this sounds funny, but the cool thing about these valves is that they let you sample the smell of what’s inside. Put the bag up to your nose and squeeze it – and if what comes out smells funky, you may want to move on to another bag (or roaster).
(I pause for a moment to apologize if I have now turned you into a lurking, bag sniffing, from the back grabbing coffee snob. It’s worth it, though.)
6. Learn what stale coffee smells like. I think coffee is fascinating, because it goes through so many chemical changes as it ages. Very freshly roasted coffee doesn’t have a lot of smell. Several days later, it smells amazing (as it “rests”), and it stays in this place for ten days or so – and then it starts to begin a decline to staleness. The smells between the peak of good flavor and staleness can still be good smells, but with some practice you’ll learn to spot coffee on its way down and can use this skill in combination with the valve sniffing to inform your purchases.
7. Buy local. According to Google Maps, it is 515 miles between here and York, Pennsylvania, which is the location of Starbucks’ nearest roasting plant. Pownal (home of Matt’s Coffee) is right next door. Coffee by Design is in Portland and Wicked Joe is in Brunswick. Look for locally roasted coffee and you’ll almost always find a product that turns over faster and that uses more unique, smaller lot coffees. If you aren’t local to Maine, do a Google search on the name of your town and “coffee roaster” to find my brethren near you.
8. Buy whole bean coffee. Do this simple experiment. Take a coffee bean and measure the surface area. Write this down. Then grind it. Measure the surface area of the particles and write this down. Compare the massive number from the second measurement to the small one from the first. That is the difference in how much of your coffee is being exposed to air, which is the enemy of coffee. This is why I obsess over grinding your coffee fresh – it really matters. And OK, I lied – that wasn’t a simple experiment.
I hope this helps you all enjoy a better morning cuppa. Oh, and what I really meant by all of this is that you should buy your coffee from us. In the interest of full disclosure and all.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
I’ll be roasting this weekend on Sunday the 24th, then delivering and shipping on Monday. We also have several coffees here for anyone in need before Monday.
The coffees for this week are on the website – and among these, you’ll see an amazing microlot coffee from the Rwabisindu washing station in Rwanda. This is our first experience with a coffee vacuum packed and sealed in mylar bags at origin, and experiments are now showing that this method preserves the original flavors of coffee during shipping far better than traditional jute bags. In the cup, you’ll find a sweet, elegant and complex coffee and a truly special example of this exciting origin.
Those of you who are local will have noticed that our coffee has disappeared from the shelves of local grocery stores. This was a conscious choice on my part, as the more I see of mass market coffee, the more I come to the conclusion that this is just not a good way to sell coffee. I think most grocery store coffee sits there for too long after roasting, and with the way stores work, you’ll never see the actual roasting date unless you are a cryptographer. And since I somehow feel the journey of every bean that leaves our little roastery, I’ve elected to step out of that game.
But, I know that for many of you, this will be the place you’ll buy the majority of your coffee. It takes time and effort to break away and buy specialty products of any kind, be they cheeses from a local shop, fresh produce from a farmers market or fresh coffee from a microroaster. In the cycle of chores we boogie through every week, sometimes the convenience of buying from a grocery store is a necessity.
So, since I still want you all drinking the best, even if it doesn’t come from us, here are some simple tips that should help you navigate the shelves of your local store:
1. Turnover. If the store sells lots of coffee, it will therefore buy newly roasted coffee more often, and your coffee will be fresher, regardless of whether you follow the rest of the advice below or not. See if it looks like they sell a lot of your brand of coffee, and if not, be suspicious. Also, note that the prime shelf space is right there in the middle shelf – and this is where the fast sellers are. Be wary if your favorite coffee is on the bottom shelf.
2. Roasting dates. In a perfect world, all coffee would have a clear roasting date on the bag (like ours), and you would then buy your coffee in the sweet spot of within three weeks of roasting. But, in general, you won’t see these on grocery store coffee – for the simple reason that if they showed them, it would reveal that almost everything on the shelf is past its prime. But, you will often see a coded form of the date that uses the Julian calendar, a sequential rendering of the days of the year. June 1 in this format is 153, while January 1 is 001 and December 31, 365. Dig around a bit on the shelf so you can see how these numbers are used in labeling your favorite coffee.
3. Pick from the back. The stores put the new products in the back so the old ones in front will sell first. Just wait until no one is looking, then reach behind all the bags in front and grab a fresh one from the back. It’s your coffee, and you shouldn’t feel any shame in doing this. Then, with this power, move on to the dairy case, the meat counter and the produce bins – all homes to this strategy from the stores.
4. Is there a valve? Those funny little plastic fittings on the front of our coffee bags are one-way valves that allow the coffee to be packaged just after roasting. Coffee “outgases” CO2 for several days after roasting, and without this valve, well packaged coffee bags would literally pop! What this means is that, if there is no valve, the roaster will have “pre-staled” the coffee by letting it sit for a half day or so before packaging it. This saves them a whopping nickel or so on each bag, so boo hiss on those who do this.
5. Smell the valve. I know, this sounds funny, but the cool thing about these valves is that they let you sample the smell of what’s inside. Put the bag up to your nose and squeeze it – and if what comes out smells funky, you may want to move on to another bag (or roaster).
(I pause for a moment to apologize if I have now turned you into a lurking, bag sniffing, from the back grabbing coffee snob. It’s worth it, though.)
6. Learn what stale coffee smells like. I think coffee is fascinating, because it goes through so many chemical changes as it ages. Very freshly roasted coffee doesn’t have a lot of smell. Several days later, it smells amazing (as it “rests”), and it stays in this place for ten days or so – and then it starts to begin a decline to staleness. The smells between the peak of good flavor and staleness can still be good smells, but with some practice you’ll learn to spot coffee on its way down and can use this skill in combination with the valve sniffing to inform your purchases.
7. Buy local. According to Google Maps, it is 515 miles between here and York, Pennsylvania, which is the location of Starbucks’ nearest roasting plant. Pownal (home of Matt’s Coffee) is right next door. Coffee by Design is in Portland and Wicked Joe is in Brunswick. Look for locally roasted coffee and you’ll almost always find a product that turns over faster and that uses more unique, smaller lot coffees. If you aren’t local to Maine, do a Google search on the name of your town and “coffee roaster” to find my brethren near you.
8. Buy whole bean coffee. Do this simple experiment. Take a coffee bean and measure the surface area. Write this down. Then grind it. Measure the surface area of the particles and write this down. Compare the massive number from the second measurement to the small one from the first. That is the difference in how much of your coffee is being exposed to air, which is the enemy of coffee. This is why I obsess over grinding your coffee fresh – it really matters. And OK, I lied – that wasn’t a simple experiment.
I hope this helps you all enjoy a better morning cuppa. Oh, and what I really meant by all of this is that you should buy your coffee from us. In the interest of full disclosure and all.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Supporting Local Business
Hi Folks,
Happy midwinter to you all! I'll be roasting coffee this Sunday (February 7), then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send us your orders by 10:00 Sunday - though we'll run some extras and we also have several coffees here now if you need something before then.
This week is the realization of a packaging change we've been working on for the last few months, and can get a look at the new bag on our website. This has been a group effort, and I'd like to extend my thanks to those who've made this work.
First, a shout out to Charlie Pollock at Pennisi Lamare in Portland for his conversion of our logo into the simple yet elegant woodblock design. I've loved working with these people over the years because of their efficiency and amazing ability to translate words and emotions into art.
Getting the new design onto the bags was no small feat, and after being told over and over that it wasn't possible, Scott at Freeport's Ascensius Press rolled up his sleeves and worked hard to make the vision of this project a reality. With all the chatter over the last few weeks about the iPad and what this will mean for the book and the printed page, I think it is important to recognize a true artisan in the field of traditional book printing.
And last but not least, a thanks to my son Conor for a nice job setting up and photographing the new package for our website.
Which brings me to today's rant/discourse about local business.
The project to change our packaging gave me a nice reminder about what local businesses are in our world. Here in Freeport, we have a long strip of chain outlet stores that are physically and functionally identical to every other version of that chain in the country. They are devoid of originality, local character, craftsmanship and enduring customer relationships. At 6:00 each day, most of them close, leaving a main street in our town that is as stale and bland as a slice of American cheese on Wonder Bread. And this makes me sad.
The character of great towns and cities is to me defined by their small businesses. Family owned businesses that have been handed down over generations. Great recipes unchanged with time. Craftsmanship. Originality. Color. Relationships. THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT.
OMG, what are we doing??? Why are there eight damn gazillion Dunkin Donuts out there? Why must the main streets of so many towns look the same now? Who invented the MALL, for gods sake?
Next month, Tanji and I will go to New York City on vacation, and so much of our time there will be dedicated to the simple bliss of walking streets filled with original, personal, wonderful small businesses. New York is the temple of small businesses, and I am so very thankful that we still have a place like that to go.
As we all work to make smarter decisions with our money in these times of economic hardship, I'd like to throw out a reminder about small businesses - simply that whether these little enterprises fly or fail depends on the outcome of choices made by people. Do I buy my cheese at Shaws where I can get it on sale, or do I take the time go to the local cheese shop where I will pay a bit more? I am hungry - do I drive through McDonalds and enjoy the fruits of the dollar menu, or do I park, go into the local sandwich shop and wait while they make me a handcrafted sandwich? Do I take the easy way out and order a book from Amazon, or do I go to a local bookseller?
Buying local is harder. It takes more time. It can cost more. It may require work or travel to find a local outlet for the things you need. But damn it, we are all worth it. We can't let this country disintegrate into a land of chain stores, malls and strip shopping centers. Local character is fun, but if we don't support it, in too many places it is not long for this world. And I know how much we'll miss it if it goes.
Thanks for listening - have an awesome weekend.
Kent
Happy midwinter to you all! I'll be roasting coffee this Sunday (February 7), then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send us your orders by 10:00 Sunday - though we'll run some extras and we also have several coffees here now if you need something before then.
This week is the realization of a packaging change we've been working on for the last few months, and can get a look at the new bag on our website. This has been a group effort, and I'd like to extend my thanks to those who've made this work.
First, a shout out to Charlie Pollock at Pennisi Lamare in Portland for his conversion of our logo into the simple yet elegant woodblock design. I've loved working with these people over the years because of their efficiency and amazing ability to translate words and emotions into art.
Getting the new design onto the bags was no small feat, and after being told over and over that it wasn't possible, Scott at Freeport's Ascensius Press rolled up his sleeves and worked hard to make the vision of this project a reality. With all the chatter over the last few weeks about the iPad and what this will mean for the book and the printed page, I think it is important to recognize a true artisan in the field of traditional book printing.
And last but not least, a thanks to my son Conor for a nice job setting up and photographing the new package for our website.
Which brings me to today's rant/discourse about local business.
The project to change our packaging gave me a nice reminder about what local businesses are in our world. Here in Freeport, we have a long strip of chain outlet stores that are physically and functionally identical to every other version of that chain in the country. They are devoid of originality, local character, craftsmanship and enduring customer relationships. At 6:00 each day, most of them close, leaving a main street in our town that is as stale and bland as a slice of American cheese on Wonder Bread. And this makes me sad.
The character of great towns and cities is to me defined by their small businesses. Family owned businesses that have been handed down over generations. Great recipes unchanged with time. Craftsmanship. Originality. Color. Relationships. THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT.
OMG, what are we doing??? Why are there eight damn gazillion Dunkin Donuts out there? Why must the main streets of so many towns look the same now? Who invented the MALL, for gods sake?
Next month, Tanji and I will go to New York City on vacation, and so much of our time there will be dedicated to the simple bliss of walking streets filled with original, personal, wonderful small businesses. New York is the temple of small businesses, and I am so very thankful that we still have a place like that to go.
As we all work to make smarter decisions with our money in these times of economic hardship, I'd like to throw out a reminder about small businesses - simply that whether these little enterprises fly or fail depends on the outcome of choices made by people. Do I buy my cheese at Shaws where I can get it on sale, or do I take the time go to the local cheese shop where I will pay a bit more? I am hungry - do I drive through McDonalds and enjoy the fruits of the dollar menu, or do I park, go into the local sandwich shop and wait while they make me a handcrafted sandwich? Do I take the easy way out and order a book from Amazon, or do I go to a local bookseller?
Buying local is harder. It takes more time. It can cost more. It may require work or travel to find a local outlet for the things you need. But damn it, we are all worth it. We can't let this country disintegrate into a land of chain stores, malls and strip shopping centers. Local character is fun, but if we don't support it, in too many places it is not long for this world. And I know how much we'll miss it if it goes.
Thanks for listening - have an awesome weekend.
Kent
10 Tips for Improving Your Coffee at Home
Good morning, friends,
A funny morning here in Maine. We often have “snow days” in winter, where the schools are closed because of too much snow, but this morning we are having a flood day. A night of pounding rain and howling winds has left trees down, roads washed out and creeks high enough to cover roads. Mother Nature reminding us of who is in charge again.
I’ll be roasting this Sunday (February 28), then delivering and shipping on Monday. The coffees this week are on the website.
A reminder for those of you who live locally – I’ll deliver at no charge to your house (in Freeport or Yarmouth) if you order two pounds or more. Pick the Local’s Club option on the website when you order, or just send me an email.
Oh, and would you like your coffee free? Here’s how . . .
Go collect orders for five pounds from your friends and neighbors, and you are now a Coffee Czar! Then, send us an order for six pounds or more (to one address, please) and as the Czar, you’ll get your pound for free! Enter the coupon code CoffeeCzar at checkout.
This morning, I’d like to share ten quick tips on how to improve your daily coffee experience:
1. Grind your coffee just before brewing (yes, we know it is convenient to do it the night before, but the coffee will really taste better this way).
2. Use good water . . . if the water from your tap tastes funky, no amount of good coffee will make that taste go away.
3. If you use a brewing method with paper filters, rinse the filters first – makes your coffee taste like coffee rather than paper!
4. Be courteous to the one who follows. If you make the coffee first in your house at say, 5:30 and the next coffee drinker gets up at 7:00, do them a favor and throw out all the remaining coffee after you drink yours so they can make a freshy. Coffee is at its best in the ten minutes after brewing. The one exception here is if you use a thermal carafe . . . these help a lot.
5. Don’t use boiling water. 212F is a bit too hot for brewing, and it can overextract the coffee. Either let the water boil and then rest for a minute, or take the water off the stove when it starts to make some noise just before boiling. Ideally you’d like the water coming off the stove to be about 208.
6. If your brewing method allows it, stir the coffee as you add water to it (as in French Press or pourover methods). This ensures that all the grounds are wet and the agitation helps with the extraction.
7. Buy a good grinder. Buy a good grinder. Buy a good grinder. (Remember the concept of “subliminal seduction,” where it was said that theatre owners inserted individual frames into films that said “Eat tasty popcorn”?) Buy a good grinder.
8. Don’t ever store your coffee in the fridge. If you get your coffee from us and it was just roasted (the date is on the bottom of the bag), and you will drink your pound in a week, its OK to wrap the bag up tightly and leave it on the counter. If it will take you longer than this, leave the bag out for a few days (the coffee will improve in taste up to about the fourth day after roasting) and then freeze it. Going in and out of the fridge causes a lot of moisture to flush into your bag every time you open it, and this will make your coffee go stale sooner. Buy a good grinder.
9. At the store (if you are one of the very few readers here who don’t get their coffee from us – hint hint), pick your coffee from the back so you get the freshest roasted beans.
10. And last, if you buy espresso-based drinks from cafes, try to watch them make your drink, and get a sense if they are doing it properly. The shots themselves should take about 25 seconds to come out of the machine, and the milk should be gently and controllably frothed to about 150-160F. If you see a milk pitcher exploding with foam in the manner of a Mentos-Coke science class experiment, they have burned and overstretched your milk. Good espresso-based drinks are worth double what you paid and bad ones are just a rip off. The Royal Bean has an awesome espresso bar set up so you can watch your drink being prepared, and their friendly staff will happy to explain what they are doing to you.
In closing, I have a bonus suggestion, applicable to any brewing method or setting. Take a moment to taste your coffee and savor the experience. Close your eyes. Smell it. Wrap your hands around the warmth of the cup. Taste a little, then some more. What does it remind you of? Is it too hot, too cold, too milky or too sweet? Is it perfect?
Its funny as I move around the neighborhood in the mornings how much coffee is being consumed on auto-pilot as cars go by, as though it was an IV of caffeine rather than a food product.
Taking that special moment for the coffee is both an opportunity to taste the coffee and an opportunity for you to just relax in the simplicity of the moment.
Thanks for your support folks – enjoy the weekend!
Kent
A funny morning here in Maine. We often have “snow days” in winter, where the schools are closed because of too much snow, but this morning we are having a flood day. A night of pounding rain and howling winds has left trees down, roads washed out and creeks high enough to cover roads. Mother Nature reminding us of who is in charge again.
I’ll be roasting this Sunday (February 28), then delivering and shipping on Monday. The coffees this week are on the website.
A reminder for those of you who live locally – I’ll deliver at no charge to your house (in Freeport or Yarmouth) if you order two pounds or more. Pick the Local’s Club option on the website when you order, or just send me an email.
Oh, and would you like your coffee free? Here’s how . . .
Go collect orders for five pounds from your friends and neighbors, and you are now a Coffee Czar! Then, send us an order for six pounds or more (to one address, please) and as the Czar, you’ll get your pound for free! Enter the coupon code CoffeeCzar at checkout.
This morning, I’d like to share ten quick tips on how to improve your daily coffee experience:
1. Grind your coffee just before brewing (yes, we know it is convenient to do it the night before, but the coffee will really taste better this way).
2. Use good water . . . if the water from your tap tastes funky, no amount of good coffee will make that taste go away.
3. If you use a brewing method with paper filters, rinse the filters first – makes your coffee taste like coffee rather than paper!
4. Be courteous to the one who follows. If you make the coffee first in your house at say, 5:30 and the next coffee drinker gets up at 7:00, do them a favor and throw out all the remaining coffee after you drink yours so they can make a freshy. Coffee is at its best in the ten minutes after brewing. The one exception here is if you use a thermal carafe . . . these help a lot.
5. Don’t use boiling water. 212F is a bit too hot for brewing, and it can overextract the coffee. Either let the water boil and then rest for a minute, or take the water off the stove when it starts to make some noise just before boiling. Ideally you’d like the water coming off the stove to be about 208.
6. If your brewing method allows it, stir the coffee as you add water to it (as in French Press or pourover methods). This ensures that all the grounds are wet and the agitation helps with the extraction.
7. Buy a good grinder. Buy a good grinder. Buy a good grinder. (Remember the concept of “subliminal seduction,” where it was said that theatre owners inserted individual frames into films that said “Eat tasty popcorn”?) Buy a good grinder.
8. Don’t ever store your coffee in the fridge. If you get your coffee from us and it was just roasted (the date is on the bottom of the bag), and you will drink your pound in a week, its OK to wrap the bag up tightly and leave it on the counter. If it will take you longer than this, leave the bag out for a few days (the coffee will improve in taste up to about the fourth day after roasting) and then freeze it. Going in and out of the fridge causes a lot of moisture to flush into your bag every time you open it, and this will make your coffee go stale sooner. Buy a good grinder.
9. At the store (if you are one of the very few readers here who don’t get their coffee from us – hint hint), pick your coffee from the back so you get the freshest roasted beans.
10. And last, if you buy espresso-based drinks from cafes, try to watch them make your drink, and get a sense if they are doing it properly. The shots themselves should take about 25 seconds to come out of the machine, and the milk should be gently and controllably frothed to about 150-160F. If you see a milk pitcher exploding with foam in the manner of a Mentos-Coke science class experiment, they have burned and overstretched your milk. Good espresso-based drinks are worth double what you paid and bad ones are just a rip off. The Royal Bean has an awesome espresso bar set up so you can watch your drink being prepared, and their friendly staff will happy to explain what they are doing to you.
In closing, I have a bonus suggestion, applicable to any brewing method or setting. Take a moment to taste your coffee and savor the experience. Close your eyes. Smell it. Wrap your hands around the warmth of the cup. Taste a little, then some more. What does it remind you of? Is it too hot, too cold, too milky or too sweet? Is it perfect?
Its funny as I move around the neighborhood in the mornings how much coffee is being consumed on auto-pilot as cars go by, as though it was an IV of caffeine rather than a food product.
Taking that special moment for the coffee is both an opportunity to taste the coffee and an opportunity for you to just relax in the simplicity of the moment.
Thanks for your support folks – enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Finding Good Coffee on the Road
We travel a lot, and in our travels, we are often reminded of the comical intersection of two quotes: Life is too short to drink bad coffee - and - A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The world of hotels, airports and major highways is not the place to experience great craft-roasted coffees and the deft hand of a well-trained barista. At best, we have national chains that offer reasonable coffees and a long menu of espresso drinks, and at worst, gas stations serve hours-old sludge sitting in a pyrex pot on a warmer.
So, what’s a traveler to do, especially one who knows their way around coffee? I have often felt like a spy or a bank robber, slinking around the counter to check the technique of a barista, grilling a cashier about the brewing time of the coffee in an airpot or turning up my nose at the misuse of the words espresso, cappuccino or latte. So, I’ve tried to get better at my investigation – and to tread lightly among those who haven’t yet learned about great coffee.
What follows is a set of tips you can apply to your own travels – bon voyage!
When Was it Brewed?: Regardless of your taste in coffee, you will always find that fresher is better. In most locations serving drip coffee, the coffee will be served in “airpots” (those big black urns with the lever on the top), and often there will be several choices. Ask someone who works there which are the freshest – you’ll notice a big difference.
Also, look for little digital timers hanging off the front of the brewing machines behind the counter (one national chain has these everywhere). Often, the shop will have a standard of not letting coffee be served after a certain amount of time after brewing. Ask them about this – and often they will offer to brew a fresh batch if the coffee is getting close to the expiration time.
Beware the Warmer: As airpots become more common, the old fashioned method of brewing the coffee into a glass pot that sits on a warmer is fading away, but you will still find these in high volume restaurants that go through a lot of coffee. It really is the most efficient way for them to prepare the coffee and take it around the shop to refill customer’s cups. But, the warmer is a terrible environment for coffee, and minutes after brewing the freshness begins to deteriorate. Try to get your coffee right after it is brewed. A good approach for this is to ask them to pour your coffee out of the full pot on the bottom warmer (meaning it was recently brewed) rather than the half-empty one on the top.
Freshly-Ground Coffee, Frac Pacs and Pods: Coffee is a very profitable menu item to restaurants, in large part because it is inexpensive and easy to make. Pay attention next time you are in your favorite diner, and you’ll probably see that new pots of coffee are made by opening a pre-measured plastic “frac pac” coming from a large box of these under the counter somewhere. These are usually very, very low-grade coffees, roasted to a light color (quicker, and less moisture loss) and pre-ground to save time. New pods and other single serving formats are variations on the theme, though the coffee quality can be much higher. If you have a choice, seek out coffee that has been ground just before it was brewed. Ideally, you are looking for whole bean coffee that was taken out of the package that day. Be careful of low volume cafes that let the whole beans sit in large hoppers exposed to the air – this coffee will often be very stale.
Faux Espresso: In recent years, the terms “espresso,” “latte” and “cappuccino” have become the most misused expressions in all of coffee – being applied to everything from instant, add-water beverages to flowery favored drinks being served by large donut chains. In many of these cases, these words are nothing more than marketing messages – and you should not be deceived by them.
We offer here a definition from coffee sage Kenneth Davids: Espresso is used to describe . . . a method of brewing in which hot water is forced under pressure through a compressed bed of finely ground coffee. In the largest sense, an entire approach to coffee cuisine, involving a traditional menu of drinks, many combining brewed espresso coffee with steam-heated, steam-frothed milk.
Take the time to find an independent coffee shop that makes espresso in the right way, and you will never turn back. And, if you see the word spelled as “expresso,” don’t even stop the car.
Independent Roasters and Cafes: If we go back in time about 15 years, most parts of the country didn’t have access to anything resembling a well-made espresso drink, and though whole bean coffee was in vogue, it was usually dispensed in serve-yourself bins that caused the coffee to stale quickly. We can credit one very large national coffee chain for introducing the United States to espresso and to the concept of drinking single origin coffees (those from a single source rather than blended).
But time passed, and the chains expanded – and with that expansion came the need to roast larger and larger batches of coffee, and a progression of stores that lost their local charm. And as a cruel consequence, small, dedicated roasters and cafes came marching in to serve to now elevated coffee tastes of the masses.
And now, with a little homework, you can turn your road trips into a wonderful exploration of these new pioneers – and experience delicious, craft-roasted coffee, creative and inviting cafés and the pleasures of handmade espressos and cups of coffee. Rather than have the extraction time of your espresso determined by a machine setting, you’ll see what it means to be served by a barista who “dials in” their grinding and extraction time every morning. Rather than coffee brewed in large batches and left to rot in an airpot, you’ll have coffee made for you – in a French press or individual pourover cup. And, instead of sitting on one of thousands of identical couches listening to canned music, you’ll settle into a lovely, custom-designed environment that reflects the best in local art, architecture and design.
Pretty good, huh?
So, how do you find these local nirvanas?
A great resource is to browse the postings in the “World Regional” section of the CoffeeGeek forums. Here, you’ll see the writings of people like you who are looking for great local coffee experiences, answered by both locals and travelers like you.
A fun thing to do is to identify wherever you are staying on a Google map, then use the “Find Businesses” link to search on the word “coffee.” This then pinpoints on the map all the local businesses with “Coffee” in the name, and once you sift through the usual suspects, there can be some great surprises to be found here. A tip, though – call ahead before you head out, as we’ve found some of the suggestions from this method to have disappeared.
And last, do a Google search on the expressions “best of” and “coffee.” In many towns, this will lead you to the results of polls done of the readers of local independent newspapers – and some really good suggestions.
Espresso: Espresso drinks are ubiquitous now, and new “super automatic” machines make it possible for any café to serve cappuccinos and lattes. But, the joy of good, well-prepared espresso drinks is the pinnacle of handmade coffee drinks, and it is well worth trying to find cafes that make them correctly.
First, look for the combination of a busy shop and manual grinding and brewing methods. The busy part ensures that your coffee is “ground to order” just before your drink is prepared, and a well-trained barista will know the right way of grinding, tamping and brewing your coffee.
Watch the barista work, and look for care and attention to detail. If the coffee comes out of a plastic container rather than being ground before your “shots” are prepared, the coffee is likely to be stale, as the finely ground particles of espresso are exposed to the air. Watch to see that they pay attention to the steaming of your milk, rather than putting the steam wand in the pitcher and walking away. And, most good baristas now know how to pour the milk into the cup as “latte art,” which you will notice as a pattern looking like a flower or heart on the surface of your drink.
I find that some of the worst espresso out there comes from cafes that have expensive manual machines and poorly trained operators. In hands of someone who doesn’t know their way around espresso, a nice machine can deliver thin, watery coffee that has not been properly ground or tamped.
Finally, if you are a decaf drinker, see if the café has a special grinder just for you. Decaf isn’t a big seller, and some cafes treat this like a poor stepchild, keeping finely ground coffee in a plastic container under the counter. You might want to consider a good herb tea instead.
Happy trails!
The world of hotels, airports and major highways is not the place to experience great craft-roasted coffees and the deft hand of a well-trained barista. At best, we have national chains that offer reasonable coffees and a long menu of espresso drinks, and at worst, gas stations serve hours-old sludge sitting in a pyrex pot on a warmer.
So, what’s a traveler to do, especially one who knows their way around coffee? I have often felt like a spy or a bank robber, slinking around the counter to check the technique of a barista, grilling a cashier about the brewing time of the coffee in an airpot or turning up my nose at the misuse of the words espresso, cappuccino or latte. So, I’ve tried to get better at my investigation – and to tread lightly among those who haven’t yet learned about great coffee.
What follows is a set of tips you can apply to your own travels – bon voyage!
When Was it Brewed?: Regardless of your taste in coffee, you will always find that fresher is better. In most locations serving drip coffee, the coffee will be served in “airpots” (those big black urns with the lever on the top), and often there will be several choices. Ask someone who works there which are the freshest – you’ll notice a big difference.
Also, look for little digital timers hanging off the front of the brewing machines behind the counter (one national chain has these everywhere). Often, the shop will have a standard of not letting coffee be served after a certain amount of time after brewing. Ask them about this – and often they will offer to brew a fresh batch if the coffee is getting close to the expiration time.
Beware the Warmer: As airpots become more common, the old fashioned method of brewing the coffee into a glass pot that sits on a warmer is fading away, but you will still find these in high volume restaurants that go through a lot of coffee. It really is the most efficient way for them to prepare the coffee and take it around the shop to refill customer’s cups. But, the warmer is a terrible environment for coffee, and minutes after brewing the freshness begins to deteriorate. Try to get your coffee right after it is brewed. A good approach for this is to ask them to pour your coffee out of the full pot on the bottom warmer (meaning it was recently brewed) rather than the half-empty one on the top.
Freshly-Ground Coffee, Frac Pacs and Pods: Coffee is a very profitable menu item to restaurants, in large part because it is inexpensive and easy to make. Pay attention next time you are in your favorite diner, and you’ll probably see that new pots of coffee are made by opening a pre-measured plastic “frac pac” coming from a large box of these under the counter somewhere. These are usually very, very low-grade coffees, roasted to a light color (quicker, and less moisture loss) and pre-ground to save time. New pods and other single serving formats are variations on the theme, though the coffee quality can be much higher. If you have a choice, seek out coffee that has been ground just before it was brewed. Ideally, you are looking for whole bean coffee that was taken out of the package that day. Be careful of low volume cafes that let the whole beans sit in large hoppers exposed to the air – this coffee will often be very stale.
Faux Espresso: In recent years, the terms “espresso,” “latte” and “cappuccino” have become the most misused expressions in all of coffee – being applied to everything from instant, add-water beverages to flowery favored drinks being served by large donut chains. In many of these cases, these words are nothing more than marketing messages – and you should not be deceived by them.
We offer here a definition from coffee sage Kenneth Davids: Espresso is used to describe . . . a method of brewing in which hot water is forced under pressure through a compressed bed of finely ground coffee. In the largest sense, an entire approach to coffee cuisine, involving a traditional menu of drinks, many combining brewed espresso coffee with steam-heated, steam-frothed milk.
Take the time to find an independent coffee shop that makes espresso in the right way, and you will never turn back. And, if you see the word spelled as “expresso,” don’t even stop the car.
Independent Roasters and Cafes: If we go back in time about 15 years, most parts of the country didn’t have access to anything resembling a well-made espresso drink, and though whole bean coffee was in vogue, it was usually dispensed in serve-yourself bins that caused the coffee to stale quickly. We can credit one very large national coffee chain for introducing the United States to espresso and to the concept of drinking single origin coffees (those from a single source rather than blended).
But time passed, and the chains expanded – and with that expansion came the need to roast larger and larger batches of coffee, and a progression of stores that lost their local charm. And as a cruel consequence, small, dedicated roasters and cafes came marching in to serve to now elevated coffee tastes of the masses.
And now, with a little homework, you can turn your road trips into a wonderful exploration of these new pioneers – and experience delicious, craft-roasted coffee, creative and inviting cafés and the pleasures of handmade espressos and cups of coffee. Rather than have the extraction time of your espresso determined by a machine setting, you’ll see what it means to be served by a barista who “dials in” their grinding and extraction time every morning. Rather than coffee brewed in large batches and left to rot in an airpot, you’ll have coffee made for you – in a French press or individual pourover cup. And, instead of sitting on one of thousands of identical couches listening to canned music, you’ll settle into a lovely, custom-designed environment that reflects the best in local art, architecture and design.
Pretty good, huh?
So, how do you find these local nirvanas?
A great resource is to browse the postings in the “World Regional” section of the CoffeeGeek forums. Here, you’ll see the writings of people like you who are looking for great local coffee experiences, answered by both locals and travelers like you.
A fun thing to do is to identify wherever you are staying on a Google map, then use the “Find Businesses” link to search on the word “coffee.” This then pinpoints on the map all the local businesses with “Coffee” in the name, and once you sift through the usual suspects, there can be some great surprises to be found here. A tip, though – call ahead before you head out, as we’ve found some of the suggestions from this method to have disappeared.
And last, do a Google search on the expressions “best of” and “coffee.” In many towns, this will lead you to the results of polls done of the readers of local independent newspapers – and some really good suggestions.
Espresso: Espresso drinks are ubiquitous now, and new “super automatic” machines make it possible for any café to serve cappuccinos and lattes. But, the joy of good, well-prepared espresso drinks is the pinnacle of handmade coffee drinks, and it is well worth trying to find cafes that make them correctly.
First, look for the combination of a busy shop and manual grinding and brewing methods. The busy part ensures that your coffee is “ground to order” just before your drink is prepared, and a well-trained barista will know the right way of grinding, tamping and brewing your coffee.
Watch the barista work, and look for care and attention to detail. If the coffee comes out of a plastic container rather than being ground before your “shots” are prepared, the coffee is likely to be stale, as the finely ground particles of espresso are exposed to the air. Watch to see that they pay attention to the steaming of your milk, rather than putting the steam wand in the pitcher and walking away. And, most good baristas now know how to pour the milk into the cup as “latte art,” which you will notice as a pattern looking like a flower or heart on the surface of your drink.
I find that some of the worst espresso out there comes from cafes that have expensive manual machines and poorly trained operators. In hands of someone who doesn’t know their way around espresso, a nice machine can deliver thin, watery coffee that has not been properly ground or tamped.
Finally, if you are a decaf drinker, see if the café has a special grinder just for you. Decaf isn’t a big seller, and some cafes treat this like a poor stepchild, keeping finely ground coffee in a plastic container under the counter. You might want to consider a good herb tea instead.
Happy trails!
The New York Coffee Scene
Hi Friends,
Greetings from New York! Today’s missive comes to you from the lounge of the funky, inexpensive and charming Colonial House Inn in New York’s Chelsea district. We return home Saturday, and I’ll be roasting coffee again on Sunday (March 28), then delivering and shipping the next day. Please send your orders for this week by Sunday morning (though we have a few pounds on hand if you need something Saturday). The coffees for this week are shown on the site.
This location has had the great benefit of being right in the middle of a cluster of cafes that offer coffees from the most famed roasters in the U.S., among them Terroir, Inteligentsia, Stumptown, 49th Parallel, Counter Culture and Ecco, and we’ve centered the mornings on this trip on sampling them all and getting to know the upper echelon of the New York coffee scene. The common denominator for these shops is a fanatic devotion to quality coffee preparation, dedicated staffs who know their coffee and their craft, and the great advantage of being situated in a city with so many people that they can focus their businesses almost exclusively on coffee and not much else.
We first visited 9th Street Espresso’s stand in the Chelsea Marketplace, a renovated former 1890 New York Biscuit Company bakery that now houses a rabbit’s warren of gourmet food shops (they also have two cafes in the East Village). 9th Street takes its espresso very seriously, offering a menu of seven standard espresso drinks (featuring its proprietary Alphabet City blend roasted by Intelligentsia), a drip coffee of the day, and coffee by the pound. No mints, blender drinks, smoothies, commuter mugs or finger food, and straight shots of espresso are available only in ceramic cups (no paper!). The two busy La Marzocco machines, which would have been the showpieces of any other cafes, had their names blacked out, in the manner of a top-secret experimental car. And of course, the espresso was sublime.
The next morning, I ducked out early to pick up some coffees for us at Joe the Art of Coffee, around the corner from our hotel. Joe, with coffees from Santa Rosa, CA’s Ecco Café, operates five comfortable shops around the city, and at it’s Joe University, they offer a nice selection of classes in coffee basics, espresso techniques, cupping and brewing fundamentals. Such a great service. Our neighborhood Joe offered a standard coffee of the day, espresso drinks, tea and a few baked goods. After noon each day, they expand the menu to include a selection of pourover brews (by the cup), but in the mornings, their volume is too great to allow the time to prepare coffee this way. We talked for a bit, and they kindly offered to make me some individual cups of their Ethiopia Sidamo and Papua New Guinea. We enjoyed these a lot.
And for a second cup that morning, we walked ten blocks or so to the almost too cool for its own good Ace Hotel to visit the New York outpost of Stumptown Coffee, best known for ruling the Portland Oregon coffee scene. Stumptown has just started east coast operations in a new roastery in Red Hook, and the Ace location is its first dedicated retail presence in the city. Both Ace and the Stumptown shop have an old American ambiance to them, with the shop’s bartistas nattily outfitted in fedoras, skinny ties and striped shirts. Two busy La Marzocco Mistrals (SO nice!) handle the espresso traffic, and a drip coffee of the day is made in large press pots and then transferred to airpots. A small selection of baked goods is available, but the emphasis is clearly on the coffee. Long lines ran out the door of the café and into the hotel lobby both times we were there.
My explorations the next morning took me a few blocks from our hotel to the quiet, unobtrusive Café Grumpy. This small neighborhood storefront, one of three Grumpy shops in the city, is identified only with a round, rusted iron grumpy face over the door, and it would be easy to miss it if you didn’t know it was there. But here again, it is all about the coffee. Along with its signature Heartbreaker Espresso, a short menu of three daily coffees is prepared on two Clover machines. The Sumatra Lintong Nihuta and Colombia Monserrate were the standout drip coffees of the trip, and I really loved the intimacy of this small shop.
We also made several stops at Think Coffee’s wonderful NYU location, a few blocks from the always-entertaining Washington Square. In the way the other cafes we visited meld so well with their environments (busy marketplace, neighborhoods, bustling downtown), Think is at its heart a college town café. Two large seating areas packed with students socializing, reading and surfing the Internet. A nice menu of espresso drinks and a rotating selection of single origin coffees prepared in press pots. Beer and wine and nice food. And a friendly and welcoming staff. And the energy that comes only with a college coffee scene. Cafes like this are my favorite hangouts in the world, and I wished I lived down the street from this one.
I had met Think’s owner Jason Scher in a class a few years ago, and we had a nice meeting with he and his colleague Matt Fury to talk about the world of coffee and coffee education. And at the end, they did us the great honor of ordering some of our humble coffee to be served in their shop starting next week. It is very rewarding to know that we will share the grinder with coffees from 49th Parallel and Terroir.
There are still way too many Starbucks in New York (though it feels like there are fewer now than a few years ago), and their direction in coffee these days is sad to me. From the door of each of their shops screams a large sign: Bold! Pike’s Place Roast. $1.50.
I have been no big fan of Starbucks heavy handed expansion strategy in recent years, and to my taste, their coffee is roasted far too dark, but I have felt gratitude toward the company for its role in the last twenty years in spreading awareness of specialty coffee in our country. With its network of stores and advertising, Starbucks had a major role in helping people know more about espresso and espresso drinks, and its promotion of coffee origins greatly expanded public knowledge about the linage of the coffees they drank each day.
But this course has now given way to one based on profit. By focusing less on coffees from individual origins and more on a single house blend (with a base of commodity coffees) our industry has lost the benefit of having a ubiquitous player in the market help with educating the public. Sigh.
Stay tuned in the next week for details on a string of new coffees coming over the next month, among them new offerings from Burundi, Rwanda, Sumatra, Brazil, Costa Rica and Ethiopia. There are some truly special coffees coming in this round, and I’ll be sharing the backgrounds on these with you in the weeks ahead.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Greetings from New York! Today’s missive comes to you from the lounge of the funky, inexpensive and charming Colonial House Inn in New York’s Chelsea district. We return home Saturday, and I’ll be roasting coffee again on Sunday (March 28), then delivering and shipping the next day. Please send your orders for this week by Sunday morning (though we have a few pounds on hand if you need something Saturday). The coffees for this week are shown on the site.
This location has had the great benefit of being right in the middle of a cluster of cafes that offer coffees from the most famed roasters in the U.S., among them Terroir, Inteligentsia, Stumptown, 49th Parallel, Counter Culture and Ecco, and we’ve centered the mornings on this trip on sampling them all and getting to know the upper echelon of the New York coffee scene. The common denominator for these shops is a fanatic devotion to quality coffee preparation, dedicated staffs who know their coffee and their craft, and the great advantage of being situated in a city with so many people that they can focus their businesses almost exclusively on coffee and not much else.
We first visited 9th Street Espresso’s stand in the Chelsea Marketplace, a renovated former 1890 New York Biscuit Company bakery that now houses a rabbit’s warren of gourmet food shops (they also have two cafes in the East Village). 9th Street takes its espresso very seriously, offering a menu of seven standard espresso drinks (featuring its proprietary Alphabet City blend roasted by Intelligentsia), a drip coffee of the day, and coffee by the pound. No mints, blender drinks, smoothies, commuter mugs or finger food, and straight shots of espresso are available only in ceramic cups (no paper!). The two busy La Marzocco machines, which would have been the showpieces of any other cafes, had their names blacked out, in the manner of a top-secret experimental car. And of course, the espresso was sublime.
The next morning, I ducked out early to pick up some coffees for us at Joe the Art of Coffee, around the corner from our hotel. Joe, with coffees from Santa Rosa, CA’s Ecco Café, operates five comfortable shops around the city, and at it’s Joe University, they offer a nice selection of classes in coffee basics, espresso techniques, cupping and brewing fundamentals. Such a great service. Our neighborhood Joe offered a standard coffee of the day, espresso drinks, tea and a few baked goods. After noon each day, they expand the menu to include a selection of pourover brews (by the cup), but in the mornings, their volume is too great to allow the time to prepare coffee this way. We talked for a bit, and they kindly offered to make me some individual cups of their Ethiopia Sidamo and Papua New Guinea. We enjoyed these a lot.
And for a second cup that morning, we walked ten blocks or so to the almost too cool for its own good Ace Hotel to visit the New York outpost of Stumptown Coffee, best known for ruling the Portland Oregon coffee scene. Stumptown has just started east coast operations in a new roastery in Red Hook, and the Ace location is its first dedicated retail presence in the city. Both Ace and the Stumptown shop have an old American ambiance to them, with the shop’s bartistas nattily outfitted in fedoras, skinny ties and striped shirts. Two busy La Marzocco Mistrals (SO nice!) handle the espresso traffic, and a drip coffee of the day is made in large press pots and then transferred to airpots. A small selection of baked goods is available, but the emphasis is clearly on the coffee. Long lines ran out the door of the café and into the hotel lobby both times we were there.
My explorations the next morning took me a few blocks from our hotel to the quiet, unobtrusive Café Grumpy. This small neighborhood storefront, one of three Grumpy shops in the city, is identified only with a round, rusted iron grumpy face over the door, and it would be easy to miss it if you didn’t know it was there. But here again, it is all about the coffee. Along with its signature Heartbreaker Espresso, a short menu of three daily coffees is prepared on two Clover machines. The Sumatra Lintong Nihuta and Colombia Monserrate were the standout drip coffees of the trip, and I really loved the intimacy of this small shop.
We also made several stops at Think Coffee’s wonderful NYU location, a few blocks from the always-entertaining Washington Square. In the way the other cafes we visited meld so well with their environments (busy marketplace, neighborhoods, bustling downtown), Think is at its heart a college town café. Two large seating areas packed with students socializing, reading and surfing the Internet. A nice menu of espresso drinks and a rotating selection of single origin coffees prepared in press pots. Beer and wine and nice food. And a friendly and welcoming staff. And the energy that comes only with a college coffee scene. Cafes like this are my favorite hangouts in the world, and I wished I lived down the street from this one.
I had met Think’s owner Jason Scher in a class a few years ago, and we had a nice meeting with he and his colleague Matt Fury to talk about the world of coffee and coffee education. And at the end, they did us the great honor of ordering some of our humble coffee to be served in their shop starting next week. It is very rewarding to know that we will share the grinder with coffees from 49th Parallel and Terroir.
There are still way too many Starbucks in New York (though it feels like there are fewer now than a few years ago), and their direction in coffee these days is sad to me. From the door of each of their shops screams a large sign: Bold! Pike’s Place Roast. $1.50.
I have been no big fan of Starbucks heavy handed expansion strategy in recent years, and to my taste, their coffee is roasted far too dark, but I have felt gratitude toward the company for its role in the last twenty years in spreading awareness of specialty coffee in our country. With its network of stores and advertising, Starbucks had a major role in helping people know more about espresso and espresso drinks, and its promotion of coffee origins greatly expanded public knowledge about the linage of the coffees they drank each day.
But this course has now given way to one based on profit. By focusing less on coffees from individual origins and more on a single house blend (with a base of commodity coffees) our industry has lost the benefit of having a ubiquitous player in the market help with educating the public. Sigh.
Stay tuned in the next week for details on a string of new coffees coming over the next month, among them new offerings from Burundi, Rwanda, Sumatra, Brazil, Costa Rica and Ethiopia. There are some truly special coffees coming in this round, and I’ll be sharing the backgrounds on these with you in the weeks ahead.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Freezing Coffee
Hi All,
A short one this week . . . roasting on Monday (April 19) and delivering and shipping Tuesday. The coffees for this week are shown on the website.
Included there are some nice new offerings from Papua New Guinea and Burundi - both very accessible coffees that are nice to drink all day.
Several of you have asked recently about whether (and when) it is OK to freeze coffee. My short answer is yes, if it will take you longer than a week to consume coffee after you open it. Freezing will stop the staling process, and if you keep it in a tightly closed container, and maintain it frozen, you won't see much loss in flavor. I don't recommend freezing coffee you get from us that was just roasted - leave it at room temperature for a few days to rest (the flavor improves a lot in this process) and then freeze it if you need to. I don't like refrigerating coffee.
Here's a nice article from Home Barista on the subject if you'd like to explore this further:
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
A short one this week . . . roasting on Monday (April 19) and delivering and shipping Tuesday. The coffees for this week are shown on the website.
Included there are some nice new offerings from Papua New Guinea and Burundi - both very accessible coffees that are nice to drink all day.
Several of you have asked recently about whether (and when) it is OK to freeze coffee. My short answer is yes, if it will take you longer than a week to consume coffee after you open it. Freezing will stop the staling process, and if you keep it in a tightly closed container, and maintain it frozen, you won't see much loss in flavor. I don't recommend freezing coffee you get from us that was just roasted - leave it at room temperature for a few days to rest (the flavor improves a lot in this process) and then freeze it if you need to. I don't like refrigerating coffee.
Here's a nice article from Home Barista on the subject if you'd like to explore this further:
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Rising Coffee Prices Explained
Hi Everyone,
I’ll be roasting this week on Thursday (the 16th), then delivering and shipping the next day.
We have some new coffees now, including a nice new Ethiopia Sidamo from the Oromia Cooperative (their leader was featured in the film “Black Gold” if you’ve seen it), a jammy Sumatra Gayo Linge and a floral and lemony Guatemala Hue Hue from the Rio Azul Coop. Coffees for this week are listed on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
Many of you have noticed that we are not in Kansas anymore with coffee prices - with much being reported in the last week about a spike last Thursday in the leading index price of an astonishing 44% over this June and over 60% since last year’s close. The result will be higher prices for coffee by the cup and by the bag - and serious crossed fingers across the industry that things don’t get worse when the harvest numbers start coming in for Central and South America this fall.
I wanted to shed some light on all of this for you, and tell you what this all means for customers of Freeport Coffee Roasting and those few of you who drink coffee from other roasters.
I wrote about a year ago about the relationship between coffee and global commodities markets, and the section that follows here is a slice of that article. I share this as a way of re-grounding you in the way coffee as a commodity can influence the rest of us.
To show you just how wrong predictions can be, I have left intact the section relaying a prediction that the “C” index price for this year would be $1.10 (this index closed at $1.98 last Thursday and it is at $1.95 today when I send this). After the excerpt, read on to see what this all means.
Excerpt from My October 9, 2009 Newsletter . . .
Most people reading this article are average Americans. We have mortgages or rent, healthcare costs, insurance bills, groceries to buy and the need to clothe and shelter our families. Hopefully, we all still have jobs, and in our jobs, we receive a salary or hourly wage that we expect to be consistent. And each month, we count on there being at the least some predictability in an amount of income, an amount of bills and ideally something left over at the end of all that.
The farmers we know locally have things hard enough, with the ways in which weather patterns (especially this year!), insects and shifting food preferences impact their financial equilibrium, and coffee farmers have all these same adventures. But unlike local farmers, who can sell their crops locally or regionally, the output of coffee farmers is almost always heading away from the countries in which it is grown and into the turbulence of global commodities markets.
Here's what I found when I looked up "Commodity" in Wikipedia:
A commodity is some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or milk. In other words, copper is copper. The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Stereos, on the other hand, have many levels of quality. And, the better a stereo is [perceived to be], the more it will cost.
One of the characteristics of a commodity good is that its price is determined as a function of its market as a whole. Well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. Generally, these are basic resources and agricultural products such as iron ore, crude oil, coal, ethanol, salt, sugar, coffee beans, soybeans, aluminum, copper, rice, wheat, gold, silver and platinum.
Commoditization occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its supply base, often by the diffusion of the intellectual capital necessary to acquire or produce it efficiently. As such, goods that formerly carried premium margins for market participants have become commodities, such as generic pharmaceuticals and silicon chips.
Yuck. Do we all consider coffee to be "the same no matter who produces it"? Of course we don't, but on a very important level, the market does - and this is the awful, awful paradox of coffee. A few weeks from now, after the polite grounding, I am going to indulge in a mega rant about the way I think this should be - but not yet.
The "C" Market:
As with the other globally-traded commodities mentioned above, benchmark coffee prices are set by large trading exchanges, here with one for Arabica coffee (most specialty coffee) based in New York, and the other for Robusta coffee, based in London.
The current "C" futures rate is set based on the forecasts of future forces that shape the supply and demand of coffee - to include weather, crop cycles, demand trends, crop yields and business conditions. And this rate is then used as an index against which coffee transactions at every step of the market, from grower to roaster, are priced. Transactions are based on differentials - either a premium or a discount - relative to the "C" price.
In my short time as a commercial roaster, I have seen the C price reach a high in mid-2008 of $1.65, then drop to its current rate of $1.35 (a 20% decline). I read today that the rate for the start of 2010 is predicted to be $1.10 (a 33% drop), based on the bumper crop coming out of Brazil this growing season.
The Big Players:
The output of the world's three largest producers, Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia, has a significant impact on the C price, as they collectively produce nearly 60% of the world's coffee. The forces of nature, such as this year's record rains in Columbia, can drive shifts in the C rate, as can diseases, pests or frosts. Government actions, like Vietnam's surge in Robusta production over the last 20 years, moves the C rate, and can work to the benefit of farmers (when cropland is converted to coffee production) or to traders (as they selectively hold and release coffee to the markets).
The Farmer:
So now back to our farmer. The reason all this matters at the level of an individual grower is that, with very few exceptions, the rates received by growers are also indexed to the C price. And unfortunately, the C price doesn't care about the costs of production in individual countries or regions. It doesn't care about wages, fertilizer, equipment maintenance, the cost of getting to market or the risks of local weather patterns. And when the markets dip, as they have now, farmers with relatively fixed production costs can suddenly find their revenue falling below their cost of growing coffee.
The strategies farmers use to respond to these crises include crop substitutions (growing more profitable crops on the same land), cutting production costs, increasing yields, increasing coffee quality (which can improve the grading of their coffee and increase the price) and conversions to organic growing methods or other growing schemes.
But these strategies take time. They incur costs that may not be possible for farmers of limited means. They carry risks. And they are simply not attainable for everyone. In Costa Rica this spring, we met some entrepreneurial farmers who had invested in micromills for their farms - a strategy that allows much greater control over coffee quality and the elimination of the costs or lower prices resulting from processing coffee at a large, centralized mill. But I remember asking our host about the kind of farmer who can make a micromill work, and he explained that these are people with a unique combination of farmer skills, business savy, daring and mechanical aptitude. And not every farmer is suited for such an investment.
My Concern
I feel like coffee is at a crossroads right now. In the past ten years, a "third wave" of coffee culture has developed in the U.S., Europe and Japan, with amazing improvements in coffee sourcing, roasting techniques, brewing and consumer appreciation of new and different coffees. And with a healthy economy (and a strong coffee market), the incentives were plentiful for coffee growers to push the envelope. Old, lower yielding strains of coffee were replanted. Micromills were installed, allowing special coffees from single plots of land to be isolated, tested and improved to the point of magic. Innovative sorting methods allowed improvements in the processing of coffee, resulting in cleaner, fresher tastes. Environmentally sensitive growing methods improved water quality, reduced water usage and allowed coffees to be grown with fewer chemical inputs.
But every one of these improvements requires the assumption of risk and investment. And if, at the end of the day, the price to be gotten for a pound of green coffee isn't high enough, these investments won't be made, and the great juggernaut of quality will slow or even stop. When our own economy goes south, people here look for ways to save, and the price they are willing to pay for a pound or a cup of coffee goes down. And the traders in New York and London see this trend and lower the C rate. And this then trickles all the way back to the mountains of Guatemala and Sumatra and Ethiopia and the others.
End of Excerpt
What just happened to change things?
Quite a lot of this increase is based on simple supply and demand. The output of Brazil in Columbia is down this year (based on weather and replanting cycles, among other factors), and stockpiles of coffee maintained by large players for their use in playing the market are also down. With less coffee on the market, prices rise. Then, add into the mix the commodity traders who see a ripe set of circumstances for increasing futures prices, and away we go.
And on the horizon, long range weather forecasts for Central and South America suggest a wetter than usual year, and the big coffee countries (who love money as much as the next guy) are threatening to hoard supplies to play the market of climbing costs.
What does this mean for the rest of us?
Its interesting that a year ago, I was talking about what happens when coffee prices go too low, but now here I am on the flip side. What happens everywhere when they go too high?
To put this all in context, I’ll start with the illustration of a family and its groceries.
Consider a household with $100 a week to spend on groceries. Fuel prices go up. Grain shortages cause all things made with corn to go up. Some early winter weather kills some crops and vegetable prices go up. And overall, economists hypothesize that “food prices have risen 15%.” So does our family struggle to come up with an extra $15 a week? I learned a few years ago that in large part, the answer to this question is no. They keep spending their $100, and they shift their buying decisions away from the patterns of before to new choices that cost less (often opting for bulk over nutrition).
So here in the world of gourmet coffee, what we all worry about as roasters and providers of coffee is that as the price of great coffee goes higher, coffee drinkers will shift their allegiances from, for example, a Starbucks latte to McDonalds, or from a pound of Peets Major Dickensons to a can of Chock Full O’ Nuts).
So roasters try, try, try to stave off price increases. Large roasters hedge their bets by themselves playing the commodity markets to lock in future purchases at favorable prices. They dispatch traders to foreign lands to hopscotch over importer and middleman markups. Roasters of all sizes shop around for the best deals.
So you will likely see coffee prices rise, though my understanding is that most chains are planning only for increases of 10%. Large roasters will also make up the difference by using lower grade coffees in their blends (which, in contrast to coffees from single countries or sources, make up the majority of their business).
In our case, I have just raised the price of our coffee from $12.50/pound to $12.99, an increase of under 5%, and because I feel very strongly that I don’t want to pierce the $13 per pound ceiling, that is as far as I am going for now. My own coffee costs have gone up an average of 20% as a result of some advance buying I did, but I know better than to pass this along (and have you all switch to Chock Full O’ Nuts). So, just please buy more coffee from us (thanks).
This circumstance is likely to have a detrimental impact on small roaster-retailers - with their costs of goods going crazy and a finite limit on how much they can charge for their products. If you are out there in the heartland and your local shop tells you they need to bump their prices, please know that the NEED to bump their prices. I hope you will continue to support them.
What does this mean for coffee growers? Going back to my explanation above of how commodity markets impact what farmers receive for their coffee, you can see that a market shift like this can be a very good thing, resulting in a rare boom time for many growers. But increased prices also mean more selective buyers, and the big roasters that drive much of coffee demand will be working hard to stabilize their costs, and that can mean large shifts in purchases from one country to another in search of cheaper blending coffees.
Where do we go from here? Part of the answer lies with nature, and the output from the next crop cycles of the major producing countries (Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia). There is a true supply and demand component to coffee prices and the size of the fall harvest in Columbia and Central America will itself exert an impact on the index prices.
Yikes! What should we do now, Batman?
I don’t think you should change anything now, since great coffee is still an affordable indulgence, even if the price goes up by 10%. But I did want to share this update with you so when you see price and product changes as you go through your day, you will know what is happening.
One thing you will certainly see is more blended coffee at retail. Have a look at the coffee aisle the next time you go to the grocery store, and most of what you see there will be blends, with a few bags from Columbia, Sumatra and Costa Rica. Blends are the great equalizer for large roasters, since no one but them know what is inside, and driving down the cost of “filler” coffees helps to smooth market fluctuations.
So if you want good coffee, buy local. Know your roaster and when your coffee was roasted. Store and brew your coffee with the respect it deserves, and if your local roaster or your local cafe needs to raise their prices a bit to keep offering you the best, support them (and the farmers).
Enough for now - stay tuned for updates as they occur.
Enjoy the weekend!
Kent
I’ll be roasting this week on Thursday (the 16th), then delivering and shipping the next day.
We have some new coffees now, including a nice new Ethiopia Sidamo from the Oromia Cooperative (their leader was featured in the film “Black Gold” if you’ve seen it), a jammy Sumatra Gayo Linge and a floral and lemony Guatemala Hue Hue from the Rio Azul Coop. Coffees for this week are listed on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
Many of you have noticed that we are not in Kansas anymore with coffee prices - with much being reported in the last week about a spike last Thursday in the leading index price of an astonishing 44% over this June and over 60% since last year’s close. The result will be higher prices for coffee by the cup and by the bag - and serious crossed fingers across the industry that things don’t get worse when the harvest numbers start coming in for Central and South America this fall.
I wanted to shed some light on all of this for you, and tell you what this all means for customers of Freeport Coffee Roasting and those few of you who drink coffee from other roasters.
I wrote about a year ago about the relationship between coffee and global commodities markets, and the section that follows here is a slice of that article. I share this as a way of re-grounding you in the way coffee as a commodity can influence the rest of us.
To show you just how wrong predictions can be, I have left intact the section relaying a prediction that the “C” index price for this year would be $1.10 (this index closed at $1.98 last Thursday and it is at $1.95 today when I send this). After the excerpt, read on to see what this all means.
Excerpt from My October 9, 2009 Newsletter . . .
Most people reading this article are average Americans. We have mortgages or rent, healthcare costs, insurance bills, groceries to buy and the need to clothe and shelter our families. Hopefully, we all still have jobs, and in our jobs, we receive a salary or hourly wage that we expect to be consistent. And each month, we count on there being at the least some predictability in an amount of income, an amount of bills and ideally something left over at the end of all that.
The farmers we know locally have things hard enough, with the ways in which weather patterns (especially this year!), insects and shifting food preferences impact their financial equilibrium, and coffee farmers have all these same adventures. But unlike local farmers, who can sell their crops locally or regionally, the output of coffee farmers is almost always heading away from the countries in which it is grown and into the turbulence of global commodities markets.
Here's what I found when I looked up "Commodity" in Wikipedia:
A commodity is some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or milk. In other words, copper is copper. The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Stereos, on the other hand, have many levels of quality. And, the better a stereo is [perceived to be], the more it will cost.
One of the characteristics of a commodity good is that its price is determined as a function of its market as a whole. Well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. Generally, these are basic resources and agricultural products such as iron ore, crude oil, coal, ethanol, salt, sugar, coffee beans, soybeans, aluminum, copper, rice, wheat, gold, silver and platinum.
Commoditization occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its supply base, often by the diffusion of the intellectual capital necessary to acquire or produce it efficiently. As such, goods that formerly carried premium margins for market participants have become commodities, such as generic pharmaceuticals and silicon chips.
Yuck. Do we all consider coffee to be "the same no matter who produces it"? Of course we don't, but on a very important level, the market does - and this is the awful, awful paradox of coffee. A few weeks from now, after the polite grounding, I am going to indulge in a mega rant about the way I think this should be - but not yet.
The "C" Market:
As with the other globally-traded commodities mentioned above, benchmark coffee prices are set by large trading exchanges, here with one for Arabica coffee (most specialty coffee) based in New York, and the other for Robusta coffee, based in London.
The current "C" futures rate is set based on the forecasts of future forces that shape the supply and demand of coffee - to include weather, crop cycles, demand trends, crop yields and business conditions. And this rate is then used as an index against which coffee transactions at every step of the market, from grower to roaster, are priced. Transactions are based on differentials - either a premium or a discount - relative to the "C" price.
In my short time as a commercial roaster, I have seen the C price reach a high in mid-2008 of $1.65, then drop to its current rate of $1.35 (a 20% decline). I read today that the rate for the start of 2010 is predicted to be $1.10 (a 33% drop), based on the bumper crop coming out of Brazil this growing season.
The Big Players:
The output of the world's three largest producers, Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia, has a significant impact on the C price, as they collectively produce nearly 60% of the world's coffee. The forces of nature, such as this year's record rains in Columbia, can drive shifts in the C rate, as can diseases, pests or frosts. Government actions, like Vietnam's surge in Robusta production over the last 20 years, moves the C rate, and can work to the benefit of farmers (when cropland is converted to coffee production) or to traders (as they selectively hold and release coffee to the markets).
The Farmer:
So now back to our farmer. The reason all this matters at the level of an individual grower is that, with very few exceptions, the rates received by growers are also indexed to the C price. And unfortunately, the C price doesn't care about the costs of production in individual countries or regions. It doesn't care about wages, fertilizer, equipment maintenance, the cost of getting to market or the risks of local weather patterns. And when the markets dip, as they have now, farmers with relatively fixed production costs can suddenly find their revenue falling below their cost of growing coffee.
The strategies farmers use to respond to these crises include crop substitutions (growing more profitable crops on the same land), cutting production costs, increasing yields, increasing coffee quality (which can improve the grading of their coffee and increase the price) and conversions to organic growing methods or other growing schemes.
But these strategies take time. They incur costs that may not be possible for farmers of limited means. They carry risks. And they are simply not attainable for everyone. In Costa Rica this spring, we met some entrepreneurial farmers who had invested in micromills for their farms - a strategy that allows much greater control over coffee quality and the elimination of the costs or lower prices resulting from processing coffee at a large, centralized mill. But I remember asking our host about the kind of farmer who can make a micromill work, and he explained that these are people with a unique combination of farmer skills, business savy, daring and mechanical aptitude. And not every farmer is suited for such an investment.
My Concern
I feel like coffee is at a crossroads right now. In the past ten years, a "third wave" of coffee culture has developed in the U.S., Europe and Japan, with amazing improvements in coffee sourcing, roasting techniques, brewing and consumer appreciation of new and different coffees. And with a healthy economy (and a strong coffee market), the incentives were plentiful for coffee growers to push the envelope. Old, lower yielding strains of coffee were replanted. Micromills were installed, allowing special coffees from single plots of land to be isolated, tested and improved to the point of magic. Innovative sorting methods allowed improvements in the processing of coffee, resulting in cleaner, fresher tastes. Environmentally sensitive growing methods improved water quality, reduced water usage and allowed coffees to be grown with fewer chemical inputs.
But every one of these improvements requires the assumption of risk and investment. And if, at the end of the day, the price to be gotten for a pound of green coffee isn't high enough, these investments won't be made, and the great juggernaut of quality will slow or even stop. When our own economy goes south, people here look for ways to save, and the price they are willing to pay for a pound or a cup of coffee goes down. And the traders in New York and London see this trend and lower the C rate. And this then trickles all the way back to the mountains of Guatemala and Sumatra and Ethiopia and the others.
End of Excerpt
What just happened to change things?
Quite a lot of this increase is based on simple supply and demand. The output of Brazil in Columbia is down this year (based on weather and replanting cycles, among other factors), and stockpiles of coffee maintained by large players for their use in playing the market are also down. With less coffee on the market, prices rise. Then, add into the mix the commodity traders who see a ripe set of circumstances for increasing futures prices, and away we go.
And on the horizon, long range weather forecasts for Central and South America suggest a wetter than usual year, and the big coffee countries (who love money as much as the next guy) are threatening to hoard supplies to play the market of climbing costs.
What does this mean for the rest of us?
Its interesting that a year ago, I was talking about what happens when coffee prices go too low, but now here I am on the flip side. What happens everywhere when they go too high?
To put this all in context, I’ll start with the illustration of a family and its groceries.
Consider a household with $100 a week to spend on groceries. Fuel prices go up. Grain shortages cause all things made with corn to go up. Some early winter weather kills some crops and vegetable prices go up. And overall, economists hypothesize that “food prices have risen 15%.” So does our family struggle to come up with an extra $15 a week? I learned a few years ago that in large part, the answer to this question is no. They keep spending their $100, and they shift their buying decisions away from the patterns of before to new choices that cost less (often opting for bulk over nutrition).
So here in the world of gourmet coffee, what we all worry about as roasters and providers of coffee is that as the price of great coffee goes higher, coffee drinkers will shift their allegiances from, for example, a Starbucks latte to McDonalds, or from a pound of Peets Major Dickensons to a can of Chock Full O’ Nuts).
So roasters try, try, try to stave off price increases. Large roasters hedge their bets by themselves playing the commodity markets to lock in future purchases at favorable prices. They dispatch traders to foreign lands to hopscotch over importer and middleman markups. Roasters of all sizes shop around for the best deals.
So you will likely see coffee prices rise, though my understanding is that most chains are planning only for increases of 10%. Large roasters will also make up the difference by using lower grade coffees in their blends (which, in contrast to coffees from single countries or sources, make up the majority of their business).
In our case, I have just raised the price of our coffee from $12.50/pound to $12.99, an increase of under 5%, and because I feel very strongly that I don’t want to pierce the $13 per pound ceiling, that is as far as I am going for now. My own coffee costs have gone up an average of 20% as a result of some advance buying I did, but I know better than to pass this along (and have you all switch to Chock Full O’ Nuts). So, just please buy more coffee from us (thanks).
This circumstance is likely to have a detrimental impact on small roaster-retailers - with their costs of goods going crazy and a finite limit on how much they can charge for their products. If you are out there in the heartland and your local shop tells you they need to bump their prices, please know that the NEED to bump their prices. I hope you will continue to support them.
What does this mean for coffee growers? Going back to my explanation above of how commodity markets impact what farmers receive for their coffee, you can see that a market shift like this can be a very good thing, resulting in a rare boom time for many growers. But increased prices also mean more selective buyers, and the big roasters that drive much of coffee demand will be working hard to stabilize their costs, and that can mean large shifts in purchases from one country to another in search of cheaper blending coffees.
Where do we go from here? Part of the answer lies with nature, and the output from the next crop cycles of the major producing countries (Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia). There is a true supply and demand component to coffee prices and the size of the fall harvest in Columbia and Central America will itself exert an impact on the index prices.
Yikes! What should we do now, Batman?
I don’t think you should change anything now, since great coffee is still an affordable indulgence, even if the price goes up by 10%. But I did want to share this update with you so when you see price and product changes as you go through your day, you will know what is happening.
One thing you will certainly see is more blended coffee at retail. Have a look at the coffee aisle the next time you go to the grocery store, and most of what you see there will be blends, with a few bags from Columbia, Sumatra and Costa Rica. Blends are the great equalizer for large roasters, since no one but them know what is inside, and driving down the cost of “filler” coffees helps to smooth market fluctuations.
So if you want good coffee, buy local. Know your roaster and when your coffee was roasted. Store and brew your coffee with the respect it deserves, and if your local roaster or your local cafe needs to raise their prices a bit to keep offering you the best, support them (and the farmers).
Enough for now - stay tuned for updates as they occur.
Enjoy the weekend!
Kent
All About Flavored Coffee
Hi Folks,
This week, I’ll roast over the weekend and deliver and ship on Monday the 18th. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites. Coffees for this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com). We also have a few bags here if you need something before then.
Shown below is a very cool café menu my friend Bob just sent from his trip to Japan. There are no more fanatical coffee drinkers in the world than in Japan, and if you look closely at the small English printing on the menu, you’ll see some pretty awesome origins among their offerings. Thanks, Bob for sharing!
BTW, if you see any cool stuff like this when you travel and want to send it to us, I’ll be sure your contribution is given a place of honor on the wall of roastery. And speaking of the roastery, let Tanji or I know if you’d like a tour sometime – this is a fun thing to see if you’ve never had a look at how coffee is roasted.
Last week, I asked you all to send your “ask the roaster questions”, and I’ve picked one of these to write on this time. The question comes from James in Portland.
“Why don’t you roast flavored coffee?”
I thought I’d use this occasion to unravel the mysteries of flavored coffee, and its less evil twin, coffee with flavor in it.
First, let me correct the unintended misnomer in the way the question was asked. No one actually roasts flavored coffee, or adds flavor during the roasting process. For what we know as “flavored coffee”, the flavors are added after roasting (and usually after cooling) the beans.
So the better way to ask this is, “Kent, why don’t you flavor your roasted coffee?”
Snarl.
Never, never, never, never in a million years will I flavor the divine beverage that is good coffee. The coffees of the world on their own right present a spectrum of flavors ranging from wine to citrus fruit to lush ripe berries to every variety of chocolate to nuts to broth to flowers and on and on . . .
But I also think that, for those who want or need to add flavors other than milk and sugar to their coffee, “flavoring” the beans is the wrong way to go about it. I’ll tell you a better way at the end of this newsletter.
To illustrate, imagine the tastes of the following . . .
The romantic’s favorite, the chocolate-dipped strawberry.
From your youth (or shhhhh, even now), the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The complex wonder of chicken molé.
Those who “flavor” coffee might prefer a different arrangement. Chocolate flavored strawberries. Jelly flavored peanut butter. Molé flavored chickens!
I wouldn’t be surprised, as flavored coffee producers have no shame. In a quick Google search for this article, I found a site (http://www.coffeeam.com/flavoredcoffee.html) with an astonishing 123 DIFFERENT flavors of coffee, to include everyone’s favorites, Auld Lang Syne (which translates as “old long since”, by the way), Caramel Pecan Roll, Country Christmas (perhaps including Stuffing flavor?), Daffy Taffy, Jack Frost, King Cake, Kozy Fire (watch for splinters!), Mistletoe Joe (Wikipedia: “the common name for a group of hemi-parasitic plants in the order Santalales that grow attached to and within the branches of a tree or shrub”) and Cupid’s Kiss.
So, how is coffee “flavored”?
Most “flavored” coffee you will encounter uses a base of flavoring oils that have been compounded by professional flavor chemists using both natural and artificial ingredients (watch for my favorite, 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine, which lends a nutlike flavor . . . artificially, of course).
As one website I researched stated: “Marketers have found that consumers prefer coffee flavors with sweet creamy notes. The ideal flavor should mask some of the harsh notes of the coffee yet not interfere with its aromatic characteristics.”
(This appears to be code for “we are trying to hide the flavor of the coffee.”)
These oils are highly concentrated, and to get them to the strength needed for blending with the coffee beans, they are mixed with solvents that include water, alcohol, propylene glycol, and fractionated vegetable oils.
You can therefore settle down to your morning New York Times with a cup of Peanut Surprise coffee that includes both the delicious 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine AND traces of propylene glycol (aka the active ingredient in antifreeze).
Once diluted, this tasty stew is blended with the roasted coffee in an isolated room (lest the concentrated nastiness pollute the smell of the real coffee in the other room) using a large rotating drum that looks like a big plastic cement mixer.
Oh. And because, as we learned above, these flavors are scientifically designed to hide some of the flavors of the coffee, any and all coffee can be used as the base for a “flavored” coffee. This includes old coffee, low-grade coffee, extra coffee, etc. Don’t look for Panama Hacienda Esmerelda in your next cup of Cupid’s Kiss.
But as you might imagine, these flavoring oils, solvents and fancy mixers are beyond the reach of smaller roasters, so there is another tool at their disposal.
Kettle drums rumble . . .
POWERBEAN!
I agree, it sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon character . . . an animated pinto bean with a big “P” on his chest who fights crime and rescues damsels and so forth. But no, the POWERBEAN is a hyperconcentrated (again, not such high quality) coffee bean that has been soooooooooooooopersaturated with FLAVOR! The roaster keeps a supply of these in his or her quiver, then combines them in a ratio of 1:8 with regular coffee, stirs gently, then grinds the resulting blend and sends it off to the customer.
Intrigued? Read more here.
Some among you who enjoy flavored coffee may be getting the sense that I am picking on you. I’m not – I am more explaining why I will don’t want to get involved with the conventional ways of adding flavor to coffee.
If you DO like to add flavor to your coffee, I’d recommend instead you use flavor syrups or sauces such as those made by Monin, Torani or DaVinci. You see these a lot in cafes, and they are often used to flavor Café Mocha, seasonal milk drinks and the many summer variations of iced or blended coffee drinks. Some flavors are also available in the supermarket, and you can order them online from Amazon or other sources. Offerings include many flavors, organics and sugar-free variations.
With these syrups and sauces, you get much more pure flavors (in “flavored” coffees, the effect is more of an aromatic than a taste), and you get to pick the coffee! You can add your flavors to light roasted, dark roasted or decaf coffees, and if you want to name a flavor combination after a sports hero, lover or niche holiday, its all up to you.
But, please somewhere along the way give the coffee a chance all by itself, with no flavoring, no milk and no sugar. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for all your support, folks – enjoy the weekend!
Kent
This week, I’ll roast over the weekend and deliver and ship on Monday the 18th. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites. Coffees for this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com). We also have a few bags here if you need something before then.
Shown below is a very cool café menu my friend Bob just sent from his trip to Japan. There are no more fanatical coffee drinkers in the world than in Japan, and if you look closely at the small English printing on the menu, you’ll see some pretty awesome origins among their offerings. Thanks, Bob for sharing!
BTW, if you see any cool stuff like this when you travel and want to send it to us, I’ll be sure your contribution is given a place of honor on the wall of roastery. And speaking of the roastery, let Tanji or I know if you’d like a tour sometime – this is a fun thing to see if you’ve never had a look at how coffee is roasted.
Last week, I asked you all to send your “ask the roaster questions”, and I’ve picked one of these to write on this time. The question comes from James in Portland.
“Why don’t you roast flavored coffee?”
I thought I’d use this occasion to unravel the mysteries of flavored coffee, and its less evil twin, coffee with flavor in it.
First, let me correct the unintended misnomer in the way the question was asked. No one actually roasts flavored coffee, or adds flavor during the roasting process. For what we know as “flavored coffee”, the flavors are added after roasting (and usually after cooling) the beans.
So the better way to ask this is, “Kent, why don’t you flavor your roasted coffee?”
Snarl.
Never, never, never, never in a million years will I flavor the divine beverage that is good coffee. The coffees of the world on their own right present a spectrum of flavors ranging from wine to citrus fruit to lush ripe berries to every variety of chocolate to nuts to broth to flowers and on and on . . .
But I also think that, for those who want or need to add flavors other than milk and sugar to their coffee, “flavoring” the beans is the wrong way to go about it. I’ll tell you a better way at the end of this newsletter.
To illustrate, imagine the tastes of the following . . .
The romantic’s favorite, the chocolate-dipped strawberry.
From your youth (or shhhhh, even now), the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The complex wonder of chicken molé.
Those who “flavor” coffee might prefer a different arrangement. Chocolate flavored strawberries. Jelly flavored peanut butter. Molé flavored chickens!
I wouldn’t be surprised, as flavored coffee producers have no shame. In a quick Google search for this article, I found a site (http://www.coffeeam.com/flavoredcoffee.html) with an astonishing 123 DIFFERENT flavors of coffee, to include everyone’s favorites, Auld Lang Syne (which translates as “old long since”, by the way), Caramel Pecan Roll, Country Christmas (perhaps including Stuffing flavor?), Daffy Taffy, Jack Frost, King Cake, Kozy Fire (watch for splinters!), Mistletoe Joe (Wikipedia: “the common name for a group of hemi-parasitic plants in the order Santalales that grow attached to and within the branches of a tree or shrub”) and Cupid’s Kiss.
So, how is coffee “flavored”?
Most “flavored” coffee you will encounter uses a base of flavoring oils that have been compounded by professional flavor chemists using both natural and artificial ingredients (watch for my favorite, 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine, which lends a nutlike flavor . . . artificially, of course).
As one website I researched stated: “Marketers have found that consumers prefer coffee flavors with sweet creamy notes. The ideal flavor should mask some of the harsh notes of the coffee yet not interfere with its aromatic characteristics.”
(This appears to be code for “we are trying to hide the flavor of the coffee.”)
These oils are highly concentrated, and to get them to the strength needed for blending with the coffee beans, they are mixed with solvents that include water, alcohol, propylene glycol, and fractionated vegetable oils.
You can therefore settle down to your morning New York Times with a cup of Peanut Surprise coffee that includes both the delicious 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine AND traces of propylene glycol (aka the active ingredient in antifreeze).
Once diluted, this tasty stew is blended with the roasted coffee in an isolated room (lest the concentrated nastiness pollute the smell of the real coffee in the other room) using a large rotating drum that looks like a big plastic cement mixer.
Oh. And because, as we learned above, these flavors are scientifically designed to hide some of the flavors of the coffee, any and all coffee can be used as the base for a “flavored” coffee. This includes old coffee, low-grade coffee, extra coffee, etc. Don’t look for Panama Hacienda Esmerelda in your next cup of Cupid’s Kiss.
But as you might imagine, these flavoring oils, solvents and fancy mixers are beyond the reach of smaller roasters, so there is another tool at their disposal.
Kettle drums rumble . . .
POWERBEAN!
I agree, it sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon character . . . an animated pinto bean with a big “P” on his chest who fights crime and rescues damsels and so forth. But no, the POWERBEAN is a hyperconcentrated (again, not such high quality) coffee bean that has been soooooooooooooopersaturated with FLAVOR! The roaster keeps a supply of these in his or her quiver, then combines them in a ratio of 1:8 with regular coffee, stirs gently, then grinds the resulting blend and sends it off to the customer.
Intrigued? Read more here.
Some among you who enjoy flavored coffee may be getting the sense that I am picking on you. I’m not – I am more explaining why I will don’t want to get involved with the conventional ways of adding flavor to coffee.
If you DO like to add flavor to your coffee, I’d recommend instead you use flavor syrups or sauces such as those made by Monin, Torani or DaVinci. You see these a lot in cafes, and they are often used to flavor Café Mocha, seasonal milk drinks and the many summer variations of iced or blended coffee drinks. Some flavors are also available in the supermarket, and you can order them online from Amazon or other sources. Offerings include many flavors, organics and sugar-free variations.
With these syrups and sauces, you get much more pure flavors (in “flavored” coffees, the effect is more of an aromatic than a taste), and you get to pick the coffee! You can add your flavors to light roasted, dark roasted or decaf coffees, and if you want to name a flavor combination after a sports hero, lover or niche holiday, its all up to you.
But, please somewhere along the way give the coffee a chance all by itself, with no flavoring, no milk and no sugar. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for all your support, folks – enjoy the weekend!
Kent
Coffee Snobs – The Sequel
Good morning, everyone,
Greetings from the now somewhat more balmy Maine. With daily highs now in the twenties, it is t-shirt weather and we are getting the kayaks ready. Or not. Soon.
I’ll be roasting this weekend on Sunday the 30th, then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites – though we have a good selection from earlier this week if you need something sooner.
We’ve been working our way through a bunch of samples over the last few days in anticipation of our next coffee order in a few weeks. Stay tuned for more details on an awesome and very different selection this time around – to include an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, a Sulawesi microlot, a delicious FTO Bolivia and another amazing coffee from the Rwanda COOPAC cooperative. And more.
Last week, I sent you all a link to the Coffee Snob video from YouTube (shown here in case you missed it). By an amazing coincidence, that was actually shot in an office in YARMOUTH. What a small world.
Anyway, that pair of coffee lovers has made another appearance . . . this time discussing their favorite places to hang out and drink coffee. Watch here for their take on the local café scene.
Through the magic of technology, we now have the power to influence their discussions. What would you like to hear them talk about? Send your suggestions to me, and if I pick yours, I’ll give you a free pound of coffee of your choice – and even ship it if you are from away.
Oh, and they need names. What should we call them?
Have a great weekend!
Kent
Greetings from the now somewhat more balmy Maine. With daily highs now in the twenties, it is t-shirt weather and we are getting the kayaks ready. Or not. Soon.
I’ll be roasting this weekend on Sunday the 30th, then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites – though we have a good selection from earlier this week if you need something sooner.
We’ve been working our way through a bunch of samples over the last few days in anticipation of our next coffee order in a few weeks. Stay tuned for more details on an awesome and very different selection this time around – to include an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, a Sulawesi microlot, a delicious FTO Bolivia and another amazing coffee from the Rwanda COOPAC cooperative. And more.
Last week, I sent you all a link to the Coffee Snob video from YouTube (shown here in case you missed it). By an amazing coincidence, that was actually shot in an office in YARMOUTH. What a small world.
Anyway, that pair of coffee lovers has made another appearance . . . this time discussing their favorite places to hang out and drink coffee. Watch here for their take on the local café scene.
Through the magic of technology, we now have the power to influence their discussions. What would you like to hear them talk about? Send your suggestions to me, and if I pick yours, I’ll give you a free pound of coffee of your choice – and even ship it if you are from away.
Oh, and they need names. What should we call them?
Have a great weekend!
Kent
Coffee Snobs Episode 3
Hi Friends,
Love that snow, eh? The twin pillars at the end of our driveway have now reached 7 feet and the yard is a sea of deep, white fluff. Fun! Sort of.
I’ll be roasting this week on Sunday, February 6, and shipping and delivering Monday. Please place your orders by Saturday evening to be sure of getting your favorites. Selections this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
I have just two pounds of Brazil if someone needs something before then. We’ll let these go to the highest bidder who responds before midnight Friday (delivery not included).
The big truck pulls in next week with new coffees from Burundi, Ethiopia, Sulawesi, Brazil, Congo and Panama. I'll tell you more about these next week.
Episode 3 of The Office Coffee Lovers is now available here. Do you think it means anything that he is picking up coffee for her? Or is he just a nice guy? Tune in next week to see.
In the manner of a determined mountain climber, global commodity coffee prices continue to march steadily higher, but I am happy to say that we are holding the line for now (thanks to our very helpful importers). This is the result of a complex and interesting set of circumstances, and this article does a nice job of summarizing them, if you’d like to read more.
Thanks for the support, folks. Have a great weekend.
Kent
Love that snow, eh? The twin pillars at the end of our driveway have now reached 7 feet and the yard is a sea of deep, white fluff. Fun! Sort of.
I’ll be roasting this week on Sunday, February 6, and shipping and delivering Monday. Please place your orders by Saturday evening to be sure of getting your favorites. Selections this week are shown on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
I have just two pounds of Brazil if someone needs something before then. We’ll let these go to the highest bidder who responds before midnight Friday (delivery not included).
The big truck pulls in next week with new coffees from Burundi, Ethiopia, Sulawesi, Brazil, Congo and Panama. I'll tell you more about these next week.
Episode 3 of The Office Coffee Lovers is now available here. Do you think it means anything that he is picking up coffee for her? Or is he just a nice guy? Tune in next week to see.
In the manner of a determined mountain climber, global commodity coffee prices continue to march steadily higher, but I am happy to say that we are holding the line for now (thanks to our very helpful importers). This is the result of a complex and interesting set of circumstances, and this article does a nice job of summarizing them, if you’d like to read more.
Thanks for the support, folks. Have a great weekend.
Kent
Degrees of Roast and Rube Goldberg Roasting Contraptions
Good day to you all . . .
I'll be roasting next this coming Monday (President's Day for those who want to raise a glass to Abe and George), then delivering and shipping on Tuesday the 22nd. Please send us your orders by Sunday night to be sure of getting your favorites for this week. Coffee selections for this time around are on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
We've also got a few bags from Monday's roasting (specifically Sulawesi, Road Trip, Brazil, Guat and a tasty SWP Brazil decaf) if you need something before then.
I was surfing around the vast coffee library at Sweet Maria's (always a nice source of inspiration when I am looking for something new to tell you all about coffee), and I came across Tom's excellent update on the transformation of coffee from green beans to different degrees of roast. I think this is really useful in understanding what it means when you consider whether to drink a light or medium or dark roasted coffee:
But what I was really looking for was this awesome collection of homemade roasting apparatuses. Its completely possible to spend next to nothing on a "roaster" and get excellent coffee from it (I bought my Westbend Poppery 2 at a garage sale for a quarter), but you have to one who likes to experiment. Check these out and see what the inventive among us have done with dog bowls, shop vacs, backyard grills, electric fans, colanders, frying pans, old tin cans, window fans, odds and ends and bric a brac.
Then go raid the attic and see what you can come up with. To make it easy on you, if you'd like to try your hand at home roasting, let me know the next time you order, and I'll throw in some green coffee for you.
Oh, and I also have a bunch of jute and burlap coffee bags - let me know if you'd like a few (or if you'd like them all).
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Kent
I'll be roasting next this coming Monday (President's Day for those who want to raise a glass to Abe and George), then delivering and shipping on Tuesday the 22nd. Please send us your orders by Sunday night to be sure of getting your favorites for this week. Coffee selections for this time around are on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
We've also got a few bags from Monday's roasting (specifically Sulawesi, Road Trip, Brazil, Guat and a tasty SWP Brazil decaf) if you need something before then.
I was surfing around the vast coffee library at Sweet Maria's (always a nice source of inspiration when I am looking for something new to tell you all about coffee), and I came across Tom's excellent update on the transformation of coffee from green beans to different degrees of roast. I think this is really useful in understanding what it means when you consider whether to drink a light or medium or dark roasted coffee:
But what I was really looking for was this awesome collection of homemade roasting apparatuses. Its completely possible to spend next to nothing on a "roaster" and get excellent coffee from it (I bought my Westbend Poppery 2 at a garage sale for a quarter), but you have to one who likes to experiment. Check these out and see what the inventive among us have done with dog bowls, shop vacs, backyard grills, electric fans, colanders, frying pans, old tin cans, window fans, odds and ends and bric a brac.
Then go raid the attic and see what you can come up with. To make it easy on you, if you'd like to try your hand at home roasting, let me know the next time you order, and I'll throw in some green coffee for you.
Oh, and I also have a bunch of jute and burlap coffee bags - let me know if you'd like a few (or if you'd like them all).
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Kent
Coffee Farming in Maine
Hi All,
I'll be roasting this weekend in the wee hours of Monday morning, and then shipping and delivering later that day. Please send your orders by Sunday evening to be sure of getting your favorites for this week.
The delicious coffee selection for the week is on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com) and we have a nice selection here if you need anything before Monday.
As improbable as it may sound, right here in Maine, alongside potatoes, Maple syrup, pine trees and lobster, grows coffee!
Well, sort of.
Attached is a photo of our fledgling coffee farm (um . . . in our dining room). She has just survived another winter by the window, so we are justifiably proud of her.
You will however, note a distinct lack of the all-important coffee cherry. Meaning that getting coffee from our finca is but a distant fantasy. If it comes, we anticipate a bumper crop of approximately 17 cherries (34 beans!) three years from now, and after individually butchering the cherries to extract the beans and then somehow drying them property, I would roast them (hopefully) in my little sample roaster, then grind them and with great ceremony brew up about a half cup of something that tastes like . . . yuck.
But its a pretty houseplant, none the less . . . and its a way of appreciating that this stuff does actually come from the earth and not from heat sealed bags. You can get these later in the spring at your local greenhouse if you'd like to try your hand at coffee farming. And shucks, if you act now (actually if several of you act now), three years from now, we can pool our coffee and call ourselves a co-op. Nice!
Have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks for supporting the coffee. Buy some today.
Best regards,
Kent
I'll be roasting this weekend in the wee hours of Monday morning, and then shipping and delivering later that day. Please send your orders by Sunday evening to be sure of getting your favorites for this week.
The delicious coffee selection for the week is on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com) and we have a nice selection here if you need anything before Monday.
As improbable as it may sound, right here in Maine, alongside potatoes, Maple syrup, pine trees and lobster, grows coffee!
Well, sort of.
Attached is a photo of our fledgling coffee farm (um . . . in our dining room). She has just survived another winter by the window, so we are justifiably proud of her.
You will however, note a distinct lack of the all-important coffee cherry. Meaning that getting coffee from our finca is but a distant fantasy. If it comes, we anticipate a bumper crop of approximately 17 cherries (34 beans!) three years from now, and after individually butchering the cherries to extract the beans and then somehow drying them property, I would roast them (hopefully) in my little sample roaster, then grind them and with great ceremony brew up about a half cup of something that tastes like . . . yuck.
But its a pretty houseplant, none the less . . . and its a way of appreciating that this stuff does actually come from the earth and not from heat sealed bags. You can get these later in the spring at your local greenhouse if you'd like to try your hand at coffee farming. And shucks, if you act now (actually if several of you act now), three years from now, we can pool our coffee and call ourselves a co-op. Nice!
Have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks for supporting the coffee. Buy some today.
Best regards,
Kent
Jamaica Trip 2011
Hi Friends,
Rats! Just when it seemed like summer was kicking in (it being one of those years when we skip spring), there we were right back into the rain. But it’s WARM rain, right? Or warmER, perhaps?
I’ll be roasting this Sunday and/or Monday, then delivering and shipping Monday afternoon. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites for this time - and also be sure to check the site for what’s available. We’re at the end of the last order of coffee, and the next time you hear from me, we will have some great new coffees to talk about.
I have just a few bags here if you need something before then - Ethiopia and Sulawesi, as I recall.
Into the Blues
The hallucinations began in mid-November as they always do when the clocks change and lighting fires becomes a daily ritual. Warm air. Warm water. COLD Red Stripes. Reggae music. Days on end with no fleece. Snow cones rather than snowblowers. Exiting one’s home without shuddering. The absence of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Colors and leaves and sun and . . .
So it is natural that our thoughts turn to tropical vacations. Tanji and I have found that the act of planning vacations extends the vacation itself, and provides a psychological boost that helps to withstand the Maine winter.
This time, the fantasy was Jamaica, and learning that it was just four hours away (less than a bad afternoon commute in Boston), got us thinking about and then acting on the idea of going there.
I’ve wanted to see that place for years. I’m a huge Bob Marley fan, and I’ve long harbored a curiosity about the Rastafarian religion, the Jamaican form of island culture and the roots of James Bond. But more than any other question, I really wanted to understand what the big deal is about Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.
My adventure of being a professional coffee roaster is now a scant three years old, but during this time, I’ve come to a solid understanding of coffee origins, the vast variety of coffee flavors and the factors that contribute to an amazing cup of coffee. I know that every growing region of the world is capable of growing amazing coffee - and I know that, for $20 a pound or less, it is possible, with a little homework, to find pretty close to spectacular roasted coffee from any of these. Further, I have come to understand that coffee is subject to the tribulations of nature, that one year’s amazing crop does not guarantee that the next will be as good, and that the price of a coffee in the market is typically directly proportional to its quality.
As I learned about different coffee sources, the Jamaican origin stuck in my mind. How was it, I wondered, that coffee from the Blue Mountain region could consistently be priced at an astronomical $40/pound from year to year - particularly in the face of the recent weather cycles that have thrown growing conditions there for a loop? Does Jamaica produce truly amazing coffee? Is it always that amazing? Why, with so many other awesome coffee to choose from, do the devotees of this coffee continue to pay these prices? And why did one of the industry’s great authorities on coffee recently characterize all Blue Mountain coffee he had tasted for the last four years to have “no fragrance, no aroma, nor origin flavors, just roast taste” and to say “There's nothing there to encourage me to offer it, at any price.”
Because Tanji is a kind soul, she agreed to let me devote a link of this vacation to the Blue Mountains and my quest for an answer to these questions. And after a week living in a bamboo hut on a cliff in the northeastern community of Boston Bay (the subject of another story), we tucked into our little rental car and set out for The Blues.
Defining Blue Mountain Coffee
JBM’s reputation as a superior coffee is in large part due to the regulations and marketing initiaitves of the Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica. These regulations outline a growing region in a four parish area and in a band of altitude between 3,000 and 5,000 feet, and coffees grown outside these areas must carry other designations (such as Jamaica High Mountain, Jamaica Supreme or Jamaica Low Mountain). Our sense is that counterfeiting (meaning, labeling a less expensive lower grown coffee as JBM) is common, but we also heard that the consequences to those who violate these rules are swift and considerable.
Certified JBM is also rigidly graded by bean size (called “screen size” in the industry) and must be sorted to adhere to a very low defect rate. These requirements are no different than the procedures followed by most growers and producers of good specialty grade coffee.
Getting There
It would deny me the pride I experienced in returning our rental car and getting my ENTIRE deposit back if I didn’t describe the drive from Boston Bay to The Blue Mountains. The obvious and direct route on the map, “Highway” B2 was out as an option because of two landslides, so this dictated that we drive a longer route that would take us through a winding valley, into downtown Kingston, then up, up, up, to our destination in the tiny village of Silver Hill at 6,000 feet. Several thousand twisty curves, approximately 1,000 wandering goats, several dozen spaced Rasta pedestrians, hundreds of impatient (and skilled, I might add) passing Jamaican drivers. As we came around one of the many curves, we suddenly found ourselves at a military checkpoint, where we were required to stop for half an hour while the troops marching in the parade ground beyond finished their drills. The parade ground was actually part of the “Highway”.
The Blues are truly stunning. A dense, layered fog swirls around the mountaintops and through the valleys, giving a magical effect to the lush jungle, and water ran all around us. There were few people and virtually no cars - and after the heat and frenzy of the coast, we felt a wonderful calm settle over us. Our home for these days was the funky Starlight Chalet, a nearly empty inn on a ridgeline above the small town of Silverhill. The inn is surrounded on all sides by mountainsides covered with coffee, bananas and cedar, and it is a magical and tranquil place. After the intensity of the north coast, we needed it.
The Small Farmer
In the Blues, the big coffee estates (Wallenford and Mavis Bank) offer tourist-oriented tours where they explain the history of coffee, walk through the processing steps and the fields and then taste their coffees. I wanted something a little more real, so I had connected with the owner of the much smaller Old Tavern estate and made arrangements to meet him the afternoon of our second day there.
That morning, our friend at the hotel kindly introduced us to her friend Manu Robinson, a longstanding “smallholder” farmer in the village of Silver Hill. I’d been wanting a connection like this for a long time, to the smallest and earliest link in the chain of coffee. I wanted to learn about the lives of very small farmers and get a perspective on a farmer’s relationship with the buyer of his coffee, in this case one of the large estates.
We met Manu sitting on a bridge over the sparkling brook that runs through his town, and liked him instantly. He’d been farming coffee in this valley his whole life, and he had the wonderful and instinctive knowledge of the land, the weather and his crops shared by career farmers everywhere. Manu owns three small farms (about 7 acres each) on the mountains above the town, and he offered to show us one of these and tell us about his experiences as a coffee farmer.
Our climb to the farm took us through the fringes of the village, around the grounds of an abandoned school and then up through a progression of small farms growing coffee, bananas, medicinal plants and vegetables. And after about 1,000 feet of elevation gain, we crested the ridge that defines his farm. The coffee was thick, with mature plants of about 7’ tall (kept at that height to allow hand-picking and defence against the wind) running down both sides of the ridge. The harvest season had just finished, so there were still a few ripe cherries here and there - and alarmingly, a number of plants in bloom, an event that should, in a more predictable climate, still be some months away.
This farm is owned by one of the large estates, and they buy all of the output of the farm and set the price to be received by the farmer. My calculation of what Manu receives for his coffee cherries (he relinquishes them to the processing plant down the valley) equates to about $1.20 per pound of green coffee - exactly the same as the farmers we talked to in the Orosi Valley of Costa Rica a few years ago. The searing inequity in this case was that JBM wholesales for about five times what the coffee in Costa Rica did, and yet the farmers were being paid the same. I asked Manu whether the farmers there had ever tried to organize themselves (potentially to talk about collectively finding a way to get more money), but he said that when they had done this, the discussions broke down right away as a result of squabbling among the farmers and that they had not continued. The payment for this year was also cut in half from last year’s payment (I’d guess because of the sunami in Japan, where half their coffee is sold) without explanation to the farmer.
Manu also talked about the effort it takes to run this farm. The coffee is all picked by hand, and transported down the steep, narrow path we had traveled that morning. Fertilizers and insecticides are also transported manually to the site. (Chemical supports appear to be used on all the farms here - and are necessary for the strength of the plants, to fight infestations and diseases and to maintain crop yields. We did not see any organic coffee farming in Jamaica.) The country has experience two significant hurricanes in the last ten years (an unusual cycle, perhaps another consequence of global warming), which have stripped trees bare of fruit and flowers and decimated the roads and paths needed to run these farms. The effect of these on small farmers in devastating, as they are paid by the estates only after they have delivered their ripe coffee cherries.
I liked his curiosity. It was clear that he had not spent any time with a roaster from outside his country, and we had a great conversation about roasting, brewing methods, methods of processing and fermentation in other countries and the coffee market in general.
After an hour or so at the farm, Manu extended an invitation to come to his home, see his roasting operation and enjoy a cup of his coffee.
As we walked, he spoke with great pride about buying a piece of land in the center of his village some years before and then, with the help of good friends, building his house in a long day of hard work.
The house occupies a nice piece of land above the river, with a yard full of banana and coffee trees. In the back yard sits Manu’s pride and joy, a coffee roaster fashioned from a propane tank, rebar and some strips of metal (see the photo link below). The first batch each day takes about an hour and a half, and those after, about an hour. He can roast twenty pounds at a time, and his wife sells their coffee at a small shop she runs in Kingston.
After sending his son to the store for some sugar, Manu served us each a cup of his coffee. It was roasted slightly dark, sweet from the sugar and with a thick, velvety body. We enjoyed the coffee in the yard of a hard working Jamaican coffee farmer, under a canopy of bananas in a valley thick with coffee trees on all sides, above a beautiful river and under a sunny sky punctuated with the famous mists of The Blue Mountains. It was the best cup of coffee Tanji and I have ever experienced.
The Estate
That afternoon, we went to the home and roastery of Dorothy Twyman, who with her son Alex, owns the Old Tavern Coffee estate, a few miles back down the road toward Kingston. The day was Easter Friday (aka Good Friday to us), and the Twymans were holding a lunch party for their friends in honor of the national holiday. They graciously welcomed us and introduced us to their wonderful social circle.
In contrast to the large Wallenford and Mavis Bank estates, Old Tavern is a self contained operation. The coffee is all grown on a single farm (surrounding the house) managed by Alex. They own a small processing facility where the skin and pulp is stripped from the ripe fruit, and after this step, the wet, green coffee is driven down the mountain to be sun-dried on patios in Kingston (it is too cool in the Blues to do it there) and then brought back to the house to be roasted. Dorothy does all the roasting on a pair of Deidrich 3K roasters, and all of the farm’s output in roasted. Alex has 12 full time employees and brings others (usually family members of his staff) to the farm on a seasonal basis to help with picking and maintenance of the trees. He strikes me as a very caring employer. Old Tavern Estate coffee sells for $30/pound in country and $42/pound by mail (which includes shipping).
After some time at the party, Alex collected all the children (15 or so), and we set off to explore the farm. Our journey took us through terraced hillsides densely planted with coffee that had been strategically pruned to ensure maximum yield and wind protection, and then down through progressively smaller paths, across several creeks to a beautiful jungle waterfall. The kids played in the water, and we talked all things coffee.
And it was a great finish to the day that started with Manu in the mountains high above.
Is it Worth It?
By this point in the trip, I now had enough input to answer my original questions about the coffee and the farming of JBM coffee. We had tasted about ten different variants of the coffee, spoken with cafe owners and farmers, and had an up close look at their growing operations.
Other than our cup at Manu’s farm (embellished certainly by the setting), I was not impressed with any cup of JBM coffee we had on this trip. As is typical of coffee on the road, about half the cups we had were the victim of improper preparation or storage - but the others were just not special. The texture and body were nice, but the coffees themselves were not distinctive, and to my taste, very ordinary tasting. Not a bad cup, but not a great one, and certainly not worth over double what we charge for any of our coffees.
We also met a number of travelers on this trip who swear by this coffee and who believe it is worth the money - and it is, of course, customers like this around the world who keep this coffee alive. My sense is that, for many such people, they see JBM as a consistent single origin - and that they have had little exposure to the amazing (and far lower priced) single source coffees from other countries. They believe (as they Coffee Board would like them to) that this coffee is of the same quality each year (trust me, its not) and their experience is embellished by seeing their coffee shipped in fancy stenciled barrels (another marketing device).
So no, I can’t recommend the coffee. My wish for the farmers of Jamaica is that they be freed of the estate system, and that they had a way to learn about the nuances of coffees from different plant varietals and parts of their farms - and then be paid well to isolate these coffees rather than send them into a pool.
I am encouraged by the news that this year the Wallenford and Mavis Bank estates will transition from government control to private ownership - and I hope that with this change will come some attention to quality.
We’ve posted some pics from the trip here on Flickr if you’d like to have a look.
Thanks for reading and for your support. Have a great weekend!
Kent
Rats! Just when it seemed like summer was kicking in (it being one of those years when we skip spring), there we were right back into the rain. But it’s WARM rain, right? Or warmER, perhaps?
I’ll be roasting this Sunday and/or Monday, then delivering and shipping Monday afternoon. Please send your orders by Saturday night to be sure of getting your favorites for this time - and also be sure to check the site for what’s available. We’re at the end of the last order of coffee, and the next time you hear from me, we will have some great new coffees to talk about.
I have just a few bags here if you need something before then - Ethiopia and Sulawesi, as I recall.
Into the Blues
The hallucinations began in mid-November as they always do when the clocks change and lighting fires becomes a daily ritual. Warm air. Warm water. COLD Red Stripes. Reggae music. Days on end with no fleece. Snow cones rather than snowblowers. Exiting one’s home without shuddering. The absence of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Colors and leaves and sun and . . .
So it is natural that our thoughts turn to tropical vacations. Tanji and I have found that the act of planning vacations extends the vacation itself, and provides a psychological boost that helps to withstand the Maine winter.
This time, the fantasy was Jamaica, and learning that it was just four hours away (less than a bad afternoon commute in Boston), got us thinking about and then acting on the idea of going there.
I’ve wanted to see that place for years. I’m a huge Bob Marley fan, and I’ve long harbored a curiosity about the Rastafarian religion, the Jamaican form of island culture and the roots of James Bond. But more than any other question, I really wanted to understand what the big deal is about Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.
My adventure of being a professional coffee roaster is now a scant three years old, but during this time, I’ve come to a solid understanding of coffee origins, the vast variety of coffee flavors and the factors that contribute to an amazing cup of coffee. I know that every growing region of the world is capable of growing amazing coffee - and I know that, for $20 a pound or less, it is possible, with a little homework, to find pretty close to spectacular roasted coffee from any of these. Further, I have come to understand that coffee is subject to the tribulations of nature, that one year’s amazing crop does not guarantee that the next will be as good, and that the price of a coffee in the market is typically directly proportional to its quality.
As I learned about different coffee sources, the Jamaican origin stuck in my mind. How was it, I wondered, that coffee from the Blue Mountain region could consistently be priced at an astronomical $40/pound from year to year - particularly in the face of the recent weather cycles that have thrown growing conditions there for a loop? Does Jamaica produce truly amazing coffee? Is it always that amazing? Why, with so many other awesome coffee to choose from, do the devotees of this coffee continue to pay these prices? And why did one of the industry’s great authorities on coffee recently characterize all Blue Mountain coffee he had tasted for the last four years to have “no fragrance, no aroma, nor origin flavors, just roast taste” and to say “There's nothing there to encourage me to offer it, at any price.”
Because Tanji is a kind soul, she agreed to let me devote a link of this vacation to the Blue Mountains and my quest for an answer to these questions. And after a week living in a bamboo hut on a cliff in the northeastern community of Boston Bay (the subject of another story), we tucked into our little rental car and set out for The Blues.
Defining Blue Mountain Coffee
JBM’s reputation as a superior coffee is in large part due to the regulations and marketing initiaitves of the Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica. These regulations outline a growing region in a four parish area and in a band of altitude between 3,000 and 5,000 feet, and coffees grown outside these areas must carry other designations (such as Jamaica High Mountain, Jamaica Supreme or Jamaica Low Mountain). Our sense is that counterfeiting (meaning, labeling a less expensive lower grown coffee as JBM) is common, but we also heard that the consequences to those who violate these rules are swift and considerable.
Certified JBM is also rigidly graded by bean size (called “screen size” in the industry) and must be sorted to adhere to a very low defect rate. These requirements are no different than the procedures followed by most growers and producers of good specialty grade coffee.
Getting There
It would deny me the pride I experienced in returning our rental car and getting my ENTIRE deposit back if I didn’t describe the drive from Boston Bay to The Blue Mountains. The obvious and direct route on the map, “Highway” B2 was out as an option because of two landslides, so this dictated that we drive a longer route that would take us through a winding valley, into downtown Kingston, then up, up, up, to our destination in the tiny village of Silver Hill at 6,000 feet. Several thousand twisty curves, approximately 1,000 wandering goats, several dozen spaced Rasta pedestrians, hundreds of impatient (and skilled, I might add) passing Jamaican drivers. As we came around one of the many curves, we suddenly found ourselves at a military checkpoint, where we were required to stop for half an hour while the troops marching in the parade ground beyond finished their drills. The parade ground was actually part of the “Highway”.
The Blues are truly stunning. A dense, layered fog swirls around the mountaintops and through the valleys, giving a magical effect to the lush jungle, and water ran all around us. There were few people and virtually no cars - and after the heat and frenzy of the coast, we felt a wonderful calm settle over us. Our home for these days was the funky Starlight Chalet, a nearly empty inn on a ridgeline above the small town of Silverhill. The inn is surrounded on all sides by mountainsides covered with coffee, bananas and cedar, and it is a magical and tranquil place. After the intensity of the north coast, we needed it.
The Small Farmer
In the Blues, the big coffee estates (Wallenford and Mavis Bank) offer tourist-oriented tours where they explain the history of coffee, walk through the processing steps and the fields and then taste their coffees. I wanted something a little more real, so I had connected with the owner of the much smaller Old Tavern estate and made arrangements to meet him the afternoon of our second day there.
That morning, our friend at the hotel kindly introduced us to her friend Manu Robinson, a longstanding “smallholder” farmer in the village of Silver Hill. I’d been wanting a connection like this for a long time, to the smallest and earliest link in the chain of coffee. I wanted to learn about the lives of very small farmers and get a perspective on a farmer’s relationship with the buyer of his coffee, in this case one of the large estates.
We met Manu sitting on a bridge over the sparkling brook that runs through his town, and liked him instantly. He’d been farming coffee in this valley his whole life, and he had the wonderful and instinctive knowledge of the land, the weather and his crops shared by career farmers everywhere. Manu owns three small farms (about 7 acres each) on the mountains above the town, and he offered to show us one of these and tell us about his experiences as a coffee farmer.
Our climb to the farm took us through the fringes of the village, around the grounds of an abandoned school and then up through a progression of small farms growing coffee, bananas, medicinal plants and vegetables. And after about 1,000 feet of elevation gain, we crested the ridge that defines his farm. The coffee was thick, with mature plants of about 7’ tall (kept at that height to allow hand-picking and defence against the wind) running down both sides of the ridge. The harvest season had just finished, so there were still a few ripe cherries here and there - and alarmingly, a number of plants in bloom, an event that should, in a more predictable climate, still be some months away.
This farm is owned by one of the large estates, and they buy all of the output of the farm and set the price to be received by the farmer. My calculation of what Manu receives for his coffee cherries (he relinquishes them to the processing plant down the valley) equates to about $1.20 per pound of green coffee - exactly the same as the farmers we talked to in the Orosi Valley of Costa Rica a few years ago. The searing inequity in this case was that JBM wholesales for about five times what the coffee in Costa Rica did, and yet the farmers were being paid the same. I asked Manu whether the farmers there had ever tried to organize themselves (potentially to talk about collectively finding a way to get more money), but he said that when they had done this, the discussions broke down right away as a result of squabbling among the farmers and that they had not continued. The payment for this year was also cut in half from last year’s payment (I’d guess because of the sunami in Japan, where half their coffee is sold) without explanation to the farmer.
Manu also talked about the effort it takes to run this farm. The coffee is all picked by hand, and transported down the steep, narrow path we had traveled that morning. Fertilizers and insecticides are also transported manually to the site. (Chemical supports appear to be used on all the farms here - and are necessary for the strength of the plants, to fight infestations and diseases and to maintain crop yields. We did not see any organic coffee farming in Jamaica.) The country has experience two significant hurricanes in the last ten years (an unusual cycle, perhaps another consequence of global warming), which have stripped trees bare of fruit and flowers and decimated the roads and paths needed to run these farms. The effect of these on small farmers in devastating, as they are paid by the estates only after they have delivered their ripe coffee cherries.
I liked his curiosity. It was clear that he had not spent any time with a roaster from outside his country, and we had a great conversation about roasting, brewing methods, methods of processing and fermentation in other countries and the coffee market in general.
After an hour or so at the farm, Manu extended an invitation to come to his home, see his roasting operation and enjoy a cup of his coffee.
As we walked, he spoke with great pride about buying a piece of land in the center of his village some years before and then, with the help of good friends, building his house in a long day of hard work.
The house occupies a nice piece of land above the river, with a yard full of banana and coffee trees. In the back yard sits Manu’s pride and joy, a coffee roaster fashioned from a propane tank, rebar and some strips of metal (see the photo link below). The first batch each day takes about an hour and a half, and those after, about an hour. He can roast twenty pounds at a time, and his wife sells their coffee at a small shop she runs in Kingston.
After sending his son to the store for some sugar, Manu served us each a cup of his coffee. It was roasted slightly dark, sweet from the sugar and with a thick, velvety body. We enjoyed the coffee in the yard of a hard working Jamaican coffee farmer, under a canopy of bananas in a valley thick with coffee trees on all sides, above a beautiful river and under a sunny sky punctuated with the famous mists of The Blue Mountains. It was the best cup of coffee Tanji and I have ever experienced.
The Estate
That afternoon, we went to the home and roastery of Dorothy Twyman, who with her son Alex, owns the Old Tavern Coffee estate, a few miles back down the road toward Kingston. The day was Easter Friday (aka Good Friday to us), and the Twymans were holding a lunch party for their friends in honor of the national holiday. They graciously welcomed us and introduced us to their wonderful social circle.
In contrast to the large Wallenford and Mavis Bank estates, Old Tavern is a self contained operation. The coffee is all grown on a single farm (surrounding the house) managed by Alex. They own a small processing facility where the skin and pulp is stripped from the ripe fruit, and after this step, the wet, green coffee is driven down the mountain to be sun-dried on patios in Kingston (it is too cool in the Blues to do it there) and then brought back to the house to be roasted. Dorothy does all the roasting on a pair of Deidrich 3K roasters, and all of the farm’s output in roasted. Alex has 12 full time employees and brings others (usually family members of his staff) to the farm on a seasonal basis to help with picking and maintenance of the trees. He strikes me as a very caring employer. Old Tavern Estate coffee sells for $30/pound in country and $42/pound by mail (which includes shipping).
After some time at the party, Alex collected all the children (15 or so), and we set off to explore the farm. Our journey took us through terraced hillsides densely planted with coffee that had been strategically pruned to ensure maximum yield and wind protection, and then down through progressively smaller paths, across several creeks to a beautiful jungle waterfall. The kids played in the water, and we talked all things coffee.
And it was a great finish to the day that started with Manu in the mountains high above.
Is it Worth It?
By this point in the trip, I now had enough input to answer my original questions about the coffee and the farming of JBM coffee. We had tasted about ten different variants of the coffee, spoken with cafe owners and farmers, and had an up close look at their growing operations.
Other than our cup at Manu’s farm (embellished certainly by the setting), I was not impressed with any cup of JBM coffee we had on this trip. As is typical of coffee on the road, about half the cups we had were the victim of improper preparation or storage - but the others were just not special. The texture and body were nice, but the coffees themselves were not distinctive, and to my taste, very ordinary tasting. Not a bad cup, but not a great one, and certainly not worth over double what we charge for any of our coffees.
We also met a number of travelers on this trip who swear by this coffee and who believe it is worth the money - and it is, of course, customers like this around the world who keep this coffee alive. My sense is that, for many such people, they see JBM as a consistent single origin - and that they have had little exposure to the amazing (and far lower priced) single source coffees from other countries. They believe (as they Coffee Board would like them to) that this coffee is of the same quality each year (trust me, its not) and their experience is embellished by seeing their coffee shipped in fancy stenciled barrels (another marketing device).
So no, I can’t recommend the coffee. My wish for the farmers of Jamaica is that they be freed of the estate system, and that they had a way to learn about the nuances of coffees from different plant varietals and parts of their farms - and then be paid well to isolate these coffees rather than send them into a pool.
I am encouraged by the news that this year the Wallenford and Mavis Bank estates will transition from government control to private ownership - and I hope that with this change will come some attention to quality.
We’ve posted some pics from the trip here on Flickr if you’d like to have a look.
Thanks for reading and for your support. Have a great weekend!
Kent
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