Into the Darkness

In my fours years as a professional roaster, I have learned that coffee drinkers are creatures of habit.  Like robots, we stumble from bed to the stove or the coffeemaker, where we prepare the stimulant that launches our senses and starts our days.  For many people, the brand and style of coffee has been the same for years, as has the style of preparation and often the cup in which it is consumed. 

Among these habits is for many the standard that all coffee must be dark-roasted.  I know this habit all too well, having been nursed with a steady diet of Peets from my teens until I moved east.

But I confess now that when someone tells me they are a “dark roast drinker”, this elicits a feeling somewhat akin to pity.  I want to give that person a hug, guide them to a quiet place to rest and listen to their troubles. 

But really what I want to do is convert them to all the wonders of coffee that are out there for those who drink their coffee at a lighter roast level.  I want them to sit down in my pew, drink my kool-aid and read my little comic books about how repent and change their ways.

Perhaps I need to see someone about this?

Dark roasted coffee is ultimately a food that some prefer cooked more than others.  This puts it in the same class with well-done meat, muffin tops, dark beer, caramel, cooked carrots and braised radicchio.  It is not bad, just different. 

Starbucks has built their whole corporation around dark roasted coffee, but in large part their coffee needs to be roasted this way so that it can be detected when served with large volumes of milk. I was amused recently to see that they just introduced Starbucks Blonde, in recognition of the (by their count) more than 40% of coffee drinkers that prefer a lighter roast.  The company was founded in 1971, so it is funny that it took over forty years to come to this realization.  Let me see, 40 years times $12 billion (annual sales) times 40% (amount of lost revenue due to dissing light roast drinkers) equals roughly $192 BILLION dollars in lost money due to an obsession with dark roasted coffee.

Is it worth it, I ask you?

What is Dark Roasted Coffee?

In my roaster, there is a probe (metal rod) that extends into the swirling bed of roasting beans that gives me a digital readout of the current temperature of the coffee as it progresses through the roasting process. I use this information, along with a visual inspection of the coffee, to evaluate the coffee as it roasts and the point at which stop the process and drop the coffee into the cooling bin.  My choices of these temperatures (and visual state of the coffee) determine the “degree of roast” of the coffee in a spectrum from light to dark.

For those who know our coffees, here are examples of the numbers I see on this readout:

* 425: The preheated roaster before I put any coffee into it.

* 200: The lowest number I see during the roast process when the temperature of the room temperature coffee I added to the roaster equalizes with the heat of the roaster.

* 375: The start of the “first crack” (an expansion of the bean caused by the release of steam and CO2)

* 412: Stopping point for a light roasted coffee such as an Ethiopia Sidamo

* 418: Stopping point for medium-roasted coffees like our Honduras or Guatemala

* 428: Stopping point for our current espresso blend; “second crack” starts here (a fracturing of the cell wall of the coffee beans)

* 440: Stopping point for our Indo-Limbo French Roast

Sweet Marias provides an excellent visual guide to the roasting progression here.

The flavor dynamic dark roast lovers enjoy is that of caramelized sugar brought on by darker roast levels.  These tastes are very much analogous to those of caramel candy, which begins as white sugar and then attains a darker color as these chemical changes occur, or dark beer, where barley (or other grains) are taken to darker levels in the malting process.

The dark roasting progression also introduces mild to severe burnt tastes to the coffee, and causes the oils in the bean to rise to the surface (causing it to stale faster, by the way).  In addition, dark roasting expands the coffee a lot, so you will note that a pound of our Indo Limbo takes up a lot more space than a pound of our Honduras.

Let there be Peace

You know those Thanksgiving dinners where the turkey comes around the table on a platter, and you take a little white meat and a little dark too?  And you enjoy them both?

Well shucks, let’s do the same thing with coffee.

For you lofty light roast drinkers (um . . . myself included), give the dark side a break.  Understand that there is good dark roasted coffee to be had out there, and that, done properly, these roast levels can still reflect plenty of origin character and nuances of the coffee.  REALLY understand (please) that the term “espresso” is not synonymous with “carbon” and that light or medium roasted espresso can taste really awesome and not burnt at all. 

And those from the noir side of the aisle, you aren’t on an island, stuck there in Darkroastlandia with nowhere to turn.  There is a world of coffee out there waiting for you, if you would only give it a chance.  Don’t start your voyage off the island by drinking a delicate light roast, as you are likely to think of it as weak, tea-like or sour.  Seek out coffees with a fuller, bolder taste like a nice medium roasted Sumatra or African, and work your way down from there.  

Coffee is too great and too diverse to be polarizing.  Enjoy the ride.

The Lifecycle of Roasted Coffee

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

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

The Post-Roast Life of Coffee

Good morning, Friends,

This weekend, I will be roasting on Sunday, September 20, then shipping and delivering on Monday. Please have all mail orders, local deliveries and wholesale orders in by 10:00 Sunday. We have a few bags here if anyone is in need before then.

I wanted to write today on what goes on in coffee in the hours and days after it is roasted . . . and what this means for you.

Last weekend, when I was getting ready to roast, I got a panicked call from a wholesale customer saying that they had a larger than usual crowd of espresso drinkers that morning, and had run out of espresso. They asked if I had any extra on hand (sadly the answer was no), and then increased their order for the week ahead.

But this wasn't as simple as getting enough coffee to make it through the remaining hours of the afternoon until I could deliver the next morning - it was a problem that was likely to impact the coffee they served over the next 3-5 days or even a week.

Why?

In the 24-48 hour period after coffee roasts, the newly roasted beans emit a steady flow of "outgassing" carbon dioxide, and the beans go through a series of chemical changes that have a very positive impact on the taste. Thus, we try hard to plan the espresso purchases of the wholesale customers so that their coffee is roasted 3-5 days before it will be used. After "resting" for this period of time, the coffee mellows, much in the way wine does as it ages, and the acidic brightness of the coffee (that can become very pronounced with espresso extraction) fades dramatically.

So for this customer, the question was how to get through not only that day, but the better part of the week ahead.

A comment Tanji and I hear often is "wow, it must be great to be able to always drink all that coffee right after it is roasted." But we also "rest" the coffee we drink, because the differences in taste from day to day over the first week after roasting are noticeable, and I should say, very wonderful.

A lot of you around here get your coffee from us the day after roasting (your roasting date is always stamped on the bottom of the bag), so you can experiment with this phenomenon at home. Try a cup the day you get the coffee, then focus on the taste every day for the next week (or beyond). You should see the progressive mellowing and merging of flavors during the first 3-5 days, and then, if your coffee goes into the second week, you will experience the slight dulling of the tastes of the coffee and maybe even the beginnings of the coffee going stale.

So why does this happen? Much of these changes (especially with espresso) are related to the taste of carbonic acid trapped in the newly roasted beans by the carbon dioxide. When we describe coffee as "acidic," this is one of the acids you taste (and it is present in all coffees at varying degrees). As the CO2 leaves the coffee, it takes some of this acidity with it, and the sharp, piquant taste of newly roasted coffee begins to subside.

This outgassing is responsible for other phenomena too. In the first two days after roasting, coffee brewed by any method will "bloom", or foam, as a result of an intense burst of CO2 being released by the just ground coffee. The valves you see on higher end coffee bags (like ours) are there to allow coffee to be packed just after roasted, then provide a way for the CO2 gas to escape from the bag (otherwise the bags would pop!).

The CO2 also helps to protect the coffee from going stale by forming a cushion of escaping gas around the beans. This gives the beans a temporary break from being assaulted by air (which, along with light and moisture, is a natural enemy of coffee).

A quick word on packaging. The point of a good coffee package (or canister or other sealed storage method) is to guard the coffee from air, light and moisture - thereby keeping it fresher longer. So packaging is an important contributor to the taste of your coffee.

If you buy your coffee by the pound, as most people do, look for a multi-ply bag (that protects the coffee from the air) with a valve (meaning it was packaged right after roasting), and then if you keep your coffee in this bag, roll it up tightly after each use and wrap it with a rubber band. Stay away from coffee sold in bulk bins (a lot of exposure to the air - and is likely to be stale before you buy it) and from simple paper bags or those just lined with wax (almost no protection against the elements). If you need to buy in bulk, buy from a seller that turns over a lot of coffee - and if you used a paper bag with no lining, transfer the coffee into a sealed container when you get home.

Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!

Kent

Myths and Habits in Coffee

Good morning, everyone,

I am now back from the road, and the roasting schedule should be back to normal for a while. I'll be roasting this Sunday (August 16) and shipping and delivering on Monday. Please send your orders by the end of the day Saturday. We also have a few bags from this week's roasting if anyone needs coffee before Monday. Have a look at the website to see what is available this week (www.freeportcoffee.com).

Someone I work with asked me yesterday if I had enjoyed a relaxing two week vacation. Not really, I replied - I am not a relaxing vacation kind of guy. Tanji and I covered over a thousand miles in New Brunswick and Quebec (yes, with some R&R along the way) and my annual mountain bike trip with one of my sons took me through all the states of New England.

When I travel, I always have an eye on coffee. Are there small cafes that serve well-prepared drip coffee and espresso drinks? Are there regional roasters? What is available in the grocery stores? And what is the coffee experience of those who live in a place?

My wish for the world is that there would be more knowledge of good coffee - leading to a better coffee experience for those who drink it and more demand for the coffees grown by small farmers outside the commodity markets. But this is hard in the heartland, where coffee is one of many product offerings in stores and an important profit center in restaurants. And this trip was no exception. We saw just one local roasting business (La Brûlerie du quai in Carlton, Quebec), some grocery store offerings from the larger Van Houtte roaster and a smattering of espresso drinks on cafe menus.

Long drives offer one more opportunities to think than usual, and in the endless forests of northern Maine and New Brunswick, I considered some ideas of how to gently increase the knowledge of coffee and therefore the experience of the coffee drinker.

Coffee education comes in several forms; one is to know more about where these beans come from (and the differences in taste between different origins), how they are processed and the best ways of preparing coffee. But another is unlearning some misinformation and habits that are relics of our parent's generation. I'd like to share some perspectives on these.

Myths

Coffee is "fresh" if it is in packaging: False. Good quality packaging (we use a three layer bag) and nitrogen flushing will delay staling, but it doesn't stop it. And older coffee in the best package will go stale very quickly once the bag is open. Try to purchase coffee that is within one month of roasting.

Dark roast has more caffeine: Yes and no. Coffee swells a lot when it is roasted dark (that's why the bags of dark are so big), so if you measure your coffee by volume (as most people would at home) and use the same amount as you would for a lighter roast, then your cup will have relatively less caffeine. If you measure by weight, you'll likely have more.

Oily beans are better: Almost always false. All coffee beans have oil in them and when your beans are shiny, it just means the oil has come to the surface. Oil emerges when coffee is roasted dark - and also as coffee ages. And, when the oil comes to the outside of the bean, it goes rancid faster (the smell you associate with stale coffee). Especially beware very oily beans sold in bulk in a store with low turnover.

Espresso is a type of bean: False. Coffee comes from countries, not from "espresso." When you buy a shot of espresso or a drink made with espresso, the coffee is usually a blend that has been developed to work well when prepared in an espresso machine.

Espresso is a roast level: Again, false. There is out there in coffee land beans sold as "espresso roast," and sadly this often means a very dark roast level. This is done in large part so that the coffee taste can be detected when it is drowned in large quantities of milk. (Our Giddy Goats is roasted medium, and you won't see any oil on it unless it gets old.)

If it comes out of an espresso machine and it is brown, it is good espresso: Don't get me started on this one. Far and away the greatest misuse of coffee is the business that jams out its espresso in five second shots, adds a bunch of oversteamed milk and then charges the big bucks for a "cappuccino" or "latte." I see this happen far too often on $10,000 espresso machines and I want to cry. A good shot of espresso takes 25-30 seconds.

Decaf has no caffeine: False. By standard, decaf can have 3% caffeine. And in practice, it seems to sometimes have more than that.

It is too expensive to change the way I am doing things: False. I can improve your coffee experience for far under $10 (write me back if you want specifics). If you spend too much time on CoffeeGeek and other websites (as I have), you can believe that you need the swanky gear to make good coffee. What you really need, more than anything else, is a desire to make good coffee.

Caffeine is bad for you: I would never tell you this, but then I am not a doctor. Here's some more information for you: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20187977/ns/today_health/

Habits

At some point, I talk with almost everyone I encounter about coffee - and the habits of coffee consumption repeat themselves with amazing regularity. I'd swear there was an addiction at play here! :)

Drinking the same coffee: I hear this one expressed as "we always buy . . .". I'd guess this has a lot to do with a confidence in a certain brand, origin or roast style - perhaps with some bad experiences that made someone regret experimentation. Here, I'd say if you feel the urge to tiptoe beyond your comfort zone, stay in reach of what you are used to; try a less dark roast, another coffee from the same part of the world or coffee from another origin that is roasted the same way as what you usually drink. I'll be happy to offer some suggestions or send some samples with your next order if you'd like to give this a try.

Brewing the same way: This is the most common habit of all, and the brewer of choice is usually an automatic drip coffee maker. If that coffee tastes great to you, then by no means change it. But, if you have a feeling something isn't right, then try some experiments. Use more coffee. Use less coffee. Grind finer or more coarse. Take the coffee off the burner when the brewing is done and put it in a thermos or carafe. Taste the water you are using to brew - does it taste funny in the same way the coffee does? Change the water source or filter it. Change brewing methods.

Storing the same way: Try to get a sense of what stale coffee smells like, and then pay some attention to how you store your coffee - including what you use to store it, how tightly you seal the bag or vessel, whether it is kept at room temperature and if you are storing it around other foods with strong smells. There's an article in the preparation section of our site with some more suggestions.

Grinding the same way: Yes, the grinder police are back - but just for a moment. Make sure you match your grind size to the brewing method you are using. Use a coarser grind when the coffee will be in contact with water for a long time (as with a French press) and a finer grind when the contact is shorter (as in espresso).

Accepting office coffee: Coffee fuels the productivity of the modern worker. Feed the worker bad coffee, get bad work. Good coffee equals good work. If your workplace still has one of those dreaded machines where someone makes coffee first thing in the morning and others reluctantly drink the increasingly concentrated dregs throughout the day, fight back! Start an office coffee club. Make your own. Go out on strike unless they buy you all a Keurig. Go to the Royal Bean before and during work.

Obsessing over coffee quality while traveling: I had a conversation with some people about this one yesterday, and I realized that I had only snapped out of this habit less than a year ago. Here, you end up in a hotel somewhere and the only available coffee is awful. You then get up earlier than you should and drive or walk endlessly looking for a great cafe that isn't there, then settle for Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or something worse. I did this for so long, and some of the successful adventures were awesome. But too many were not. My solution was to get a funky little camping grinder and tea infuser and make my own. But don't give up on the searching; doing some research in advance of your trip can help you know whether the killer cafe pulling SO shots of DP Ethiopian Ademe Bedane on a vintage manual piston La Marzocco is there to be found.

Thanks as always for your support, folks. Enjoy the dog days of summer!

Kent