Musings on the Economy and Coffee

Good morning, Friends,

We’ll be roasting coffee next on Sunday, March 8, and then delivering and shipping on Monday the 9th. Please send your orders by 8:00 Sunday morning.

Wow. Its quite a ride this country is going through right now, isn’t it? I use the New York Times as my homepage, and its an amazing progression of news I see each day. I know that we as a country are all waiting for something good to happen.

So, since our leaders aren’t coming up with anything in the good category (though I think many of these programs will bear fruit), I wanted to share a trend I am seeing – really in the hope that you will see it too and then spread the word.

My daily travels put me in touch with a lot of people, including the scientists all over the world I ask to help me with my conferences, and the universe of people I connect with at the café and around town in the world of coffee.

And I have noticed something cool of late. People are getting kinder and kinder by the day. When I ask people to help with my research or to speak at a conference, they respond with open arms and a graciousness I have never seen before. And when I meet strangers for the first time at The Royal Bean or around town, I see generosity and compassion and an honest desire to want to know others and to help them.

And yeah, these connections don’t put food on our tables and pay the rent, but there is a way that they are worth much more than money. Are you seeing this too?

You were waiting for me to tie this to coffee somehow, weren’t you?

Last week, I was watching “Lost” on the Internet with Galen, and the show had as its single sponsor the Discover Card. They showed just one ad (over and over), featuring a friendly sort of guy asking the question “Do you know how much you spent on coffee last month?”

Boo hiss, I say to that company. There’s been a lot in the press lately about how fru-fru coffee drinks are the first thing many people cut out in a down economy, but please! Sure, cutting out the ice and the sugar and the flavorings (which can run the price of a drink up to $6 in a downtown chain store) makes sense, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

Good coffee made at home will cost you about a dime a cup. A great hand brewed cup at your local café is less than $2, and a handmade cappuccino made with high quality fresh roasted beans is under $3. Maybe you won’t indulge every day, but I submit that great coffee is still a good deal.

Another thing I have been reading about lately is that a certain large national coffee chain is now quietly removing the big comfortable chairs and couches from their stores. The message (and the intent) is that they don’t WANT you to stay there. They don’t want you to get to know other people or read a book or work on your computer. At our local version of this chain, I endeavored during one of our recent power outages to go there and use my computer. No WIFI. I bought my son a fru-fru drink for five bucks and asked if I could use the “free” WIFI. Answer, no. I was told that I needed to go online, sign up for an account, get a special card, then bring it back, buy something and THEN I could have “free” WIFI.

Um . . . go online, where, exactly?

So the message here is not one of compassion and community. The message is come in, spend a lot of money, sit until you are uncomfortable, then leave in a short time so we can do the same thing to someone else.

Your local café will serve you better than this. Way better.

We’ve had a long, hard winter here in Maine, and our house has been without power for eight days of it (three separate power outages). When this happens, most people in our town and the town next door bear the same fate, and many people (like me) who work from home end up in the more generous of local cafes as a place to work for the day.

And I am very grateful we have a place like that to go.

In closing, I’d like to throw out a reminder of the things we are trying to do at Freeport Coffee Roasting to make it possible for all of you to enjoy freshly roasted amazing coffee from around the world during these hard times:

- Want to try a coffee? Samples are free – let me know what you’d like to try. (Shipping for these is not free, however, so this works better for locals)
- Shipping IS free on all orders over $40
- Check out the CuppaJoe Recession Buster Coffee, just $9.99 for a pound

And in general, our coffee is less expensive than the whole bean coffee you buy at the store. In the manner of yogurt, ice cream and tunafish, the once sacred one pound bag of coffee is shrinking. You’ll see that what is offered at the store is typically $9.99 or $10.49 for a 12 ounce bag (the metric pound?). This equates to $13.32/$13.98 a pound, and most of ours are just $12/pound (and ours are absolutely fresher).

Thanks for listening to all this. I guess in general, the message I would like to convey is that I hope you’ll support local businesses through these times. This includes coffee roasters, cafes, local farmers, fishermen, those who make cheeses and keep chickens and the stores that sell these things. Let’s not come out of the recession into a world of chain stores and mass-market foods!

Enjoy the weekend, everyone, and thanks for your continued support.

Kent

Reply

Forward

The Strange Tale of Kopi Luwak

Good morning, everyone,

Since we have a long weekend ahead, I'll be roasting on Monday the 16th and then delivering and shipping on Tuesday the 17th. Please have your direct and wholesale orders in by the end of Sunday night.

I'll run some extras and have them here next week - and there are also a few bags here if anyone needs coffee over the weekend.

This week, I'd like to share what is perhaps the strangest story in all of coffee, that of Kopi Luwak, a coffee roasted from green beans that have (politely speaking) passed through the digestive tract of a cat-like creature living in Indonesia.

I won't take credit for writing what is shown below, and I have attributed the articles and reviews as listed. Also, I have included some links at the very bottom you can use to order your own "poop coffee." Go on, I dare you. In fact, I double dare you. (and if you buy some, can I taste just a teaspoon full so I can say I have tried it?)

If this is not enough adventure for you, I invite you to seek out Kopi Muntjak, coffee extracted from the feces of a "barking deer."

Yuck.

Enjoy your weekend.

Kent

From Wikipedia

Kopi Luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈluwak]) or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid) and in East Timor (locally called kafé-laku). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee, which is made from coffee berries which have been regurgitated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

Origin and production

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it has been proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated, still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. Some sources claim that the beans may be regurgitated instead of defecated.

In early days, the beans would be collected in the wild from a "latrine," or a specific place where the civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory, and these latrines would be a predictable place for local gatherers to find the beans. More commonly today, captured civets are fed raw berries, the feces produced are then processed and the coffee beans offered for sale.[citation needed]

Economics

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States. It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year.[1] One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia, has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 (=US$48.00) per cup, selling approximately four cups a week, which has gained nationwide Australian press.[2] In April 2008, the brasserie of Peter Jones department store in London's Sloane Square started selling a blend of Kopi Luwak and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00) a cup.[3] It has also recently become available at Selfridges, London, as part of their "Edible" range of exotic foods.

A 2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare led to the extermination of thousands of these civets in China,[4][5] but the demand for the coffee was not affected.

Research

A popular and intuitive hypothesis to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested.[citation needed] At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or overripe, while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly brewed cup. As this may be true for the beans derived from wild-collected civet feces, farm-raised civets are likely fed beans of varying quality and ripeness, so one would expect the taste of farm-raised beans to be less.

Further research by Dr. Massimo Marcone at the University of Guelph (CA) has shown that the digestive juices of the civet actually penetrate the beans and change the proteins, resulting in their unique flavor.

Similar Coffees

Kopi Muncak (also Kopi Muntjak) is a similar type of coffee produced from the feces of several species of barking deer, or Muntjac, that are found throughout Southeast Asia. Unlike civet or "weasel" coffee, this type is usually not produced from captive deer and most commonly collected in the wild, especially in Malaysia and in the Indonesian Archipelago.

Further information is available online by doing a Google search on "cat poop coffee."

Winter Reading List

Hi Friends!

Brrrrrr . . . it is FOUR outside as I write this today.

We are roasting coffee this weekend on Sunday, February 8 and then delivering locally and shipping on Monday the 9th. Please send in your orders by Sunday morning at 8:00 (though we will roast extras of some coffees and have them available through the week).

I'd like to ask all of you a favor. Tanji and I are always striving to improve this business and to offer coffees and service that are are what you all need. Could you please take just a few minutes and respond to the survey below? This would help us know more about what is going on in your world of coffee, and your input would help us a lot. The survey is complete anonymous, and if you have other coffee lovers you would like to pass this along to, we'd love their feedback too.

Just click this link and the survey should open in a new window.

Special offer! If you live in the Freeport or Yarmouth areas, and you have never purchased coffee from us, we're offering you a single pound of any of our coffees for just $5.00. The small print is that you will need to stop by here at the roastery and pick it up, and this may subject you to my entheusiasm about coffee and a free cuppa or two. Email me back if you'd like to do this (and tell your friends too!).

Giddy Goats Espresso! The alchemists in our espresso lab have emerged with the very amazing Giddy Goats Espresso Blend, and we will be doing our first production run of this one on Sunday if you would like to order some. It is now in the online store and if you are ordering direct, it's $12.50 a pound.

I have a new email address - please change your records to this one. God in a Cup

Since we are now in the depths of winter and are settling in before the fire for another few months, I'd like to share some suggestions with you of some great coffee books. Shown below are some of my favorites, and I have shamelessly borrowed the descriptions here from Amazon. Many of these can be ordered used from them if you'd like to save a few quid (with the couple of exceptions shown).

Enjoy the weekend, everyone! Thanks as always for all your support.

Kent

Books

Uncommon Grounds The History Of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast: Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast (For God, Country and Coca-Cola) approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discoveryAthe most appealing of which, Pendergast writes, concerns an Ethiopian goatherd who wonders why his goats are dancing on their hind legs and butting one anotherAto the corporatization of the specialty cafe. Pendergrast focuses on the influence of the American coffee trade on the world's economies and cultures, further zeroing in on the political and economic history of Latin America. Coffee advertising, he shows, played a major role in expanding the American market. In 1952, a campaign by the Pan American Coffee Bureau helped institutionalize the coffee break in America. And the invention of the still ubiquitous Juan Valdez in a 1960 ad campaign caused name recognition for Colombian coffee to skyrocket within months of its introduction. The Valdez character romanticizes a very real phenomenonAthe painstaking process of tending and harvesting a coffee crop. Yet the price of a tall latte in America, Pendergrast notes, is a day's wage for many of the people who harvest it on South American hillsides. Pendergrast does not shy away from exploring such issues in his cogent histories of Starbucks and other firms. Throughout the book, asides like the coffee jones of health-food tycoon C.W. PostAwho raged against the evils of coffee and developed Postum as a substitute for regular brewAprovide welcome diversions. Pendergrast's broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup. 76 duotones.

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee by Michaele Weissman: From Ethiopia to Panama to Portland, journalist Weissman shadows today's vanguard coffee guys in their pursuit of the perfect, caffeinated beverage. With increased demand for specialty roasts superior to the mass-marketed offerings at Starbucks, Weissman illustrates how the origin, flavor compounds and socioeconomic impact of a cup of coffee are relevant now more than ever. Alongside industry leaders from some of the U.S.'s top roasters—Counter Culture, Intelligentsia and Stumptown—Weismann treks to the birthplace of coffee, remote plantations, and international competitions where the best coffees in the world are cupped (or tasted), scored and where winners like Panamanian grower Hacienda La Esmeralda's revered Geisha coffee earn $130 per pound. Visiting both ends of the producer-consumer spectrum, she sheds light on the partnership between those who sell premium coffee and the impoverished who farm it—examining how specialty standards enable improved production, exceptional beans, fair prices and fatter pockets across the board. On the imbibing end, Weissman penetrates today's amped-up coffee culture: its sleek coffee bars, tattooed coffee-geeks behind the counters, fiercely competitive roasters working alongside champion baristas. Tagging along behind the main characters in today's specialty coffee scene, Weissman travels from the exotic to the expected to artfully deconstruct the connoisseur's cup of coffee.

Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon: This surprisingly gripping travelogue is filled with tales from the "coffeelands," barely-on-the-map locales in Africa, the Americas, and Asia where coffee farmers struggle to survive. Written with knowledge and good cheer by the founder of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, the book reads more like a trippy adventure than a business trip, though the issues Cycon raises are vital, prescient and little known ("99 percent of the people involved in coffee... have never been to a coffee village"). While learning first-hand about the hardships involved in growing and selling coffee beans-the world's second most valuable commodity, after oil-the author finds himself in Guatemala praying to an effigy in a Mickey Mouse tie and cowboy boots; eating armadillo leg in Colombia; working to heal landmine victims in Nicaragua and war widows in Sumatra; and meeting with all manner of farmers, bureaucrats and dignitaries. His dispatches are highly enlightening, demonstrating how few national governments provide coffee growers with water, education, health care or even protection from harmful pesticides; further, coffee growers' income is subject to the whims of financial speculators half a world away. Reading this eye-opening book, it's impossible not to reconsider-and feel grateful for-the myriad people behind your morning cup.

The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying - Revised and Updated by Corby Kummer: With coffee bars springing up on every urban corner, this engrossing guide couldn't arrive at a better moment. Kummer writes on food for the Atlantic very well, thanks, because he injects his own physical experience with his subjects into the exposition. Here, he takes us through the coffee bean's progress from tree to tummy, eyewitness-style. He tells us what it's like to pick coffee because he went and picked it, what it's like to cup coffee (the method by which roasted beans are qualitatively sorted) because he cupped with the pros, what it's like roasting coffee because he tried it at home as well as scrutinized it being done as a business, etc. He analyzes and advises on grinding and brewing methods; he appreciates espresso and its appurtenances; he describes the coffees of different growing countries; he discusses caffeine and its health effects; and then, he wraps the book up with coffee-complementary dessert recipes and a resource section. Kummer's Baedeker of the exquisitely bitter brew is, as the old slogan says, good to the last drop.

The Professional Barista's Handbook: An Expert Guide to Preparing Espresso, Coffee, and Tea by Scott Rao: FROM THE AUTHOR: When I began in the coffee business fourteen years ago, I read every book I could find about coffee. After reading all of those books, however, I felt as if I hadn t learned much about how to make great coffee. My coffee library was chock-full of colorful descriptions of brewing styles, growing regions, and recipes, with a few almost-unreadable scientific books mixed in. I would have traded in all of those books for one serious, practical book with relevant information about making great coffee in a café. Fourteen years later, I still haven t found that book. I know many other professionals as well as some obsessive nonprofessionals would like to find that same book I ve been looking for. This book is my attempt to give it to them.

Espresso Coffee, Second Edition: The Science of Quality by Rinantonio Viani and Andrea Illy: "Overall this book serves as a complete overview not only of espresso coffee but also of coffee in general. With its comprehensive overview of the parameters important to coffee quality and coffee consumption on human health it becomes a good reference book for both food scientists and nutritionists in the field." - Massimo Marcone, University of Guelph, Canada for FOOD RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL (2005) "A vital resource for anyone wishing to deepen their knowledge of coffee and its production, this book, with its industrial and historical perspectives, manages to combine the delivery of complex scientific data with pure enthusiasm for the product." - CAFE CULTURE (July 2005) ".the book's precision with the details of coffee science is unparalleled. It balances scientific prowess and readability without overwhelming the reader, whether new to the coffee world or a veteran." - FRESH CUP (June 2005) NOTE: This is a very, very scientific book. I feel like there is no more comprehensive tome on coffee anywhere, but it is not for the faint-hearted. It is also priced more like a textbook, so if you are curious about it, I'd recommend trying to get it first on an inter-library loan rather than buying it sight unseen.

Home Coffee Roasting, Revised, Updated Edition: Romance and Revival by Kenneth Davids: In the past decade, coffee roasting has gone from a fringe trend of true believers to an increasingly mainstream audience. Long considered the bible of the home-roasting movement, Home Coffee Roasting has been completely revised throughout with new, up-to-date sections on the latest developments in home-roasting equipment and provides step-by-step guidelines to the coffee-roasting process. The new edition also features: -A much expanded resources section for green beans and home-roasting equipment -The best techniques for storing green coffee beans -The new home roasters: how to evaluate and use them -Tips on perfecting a roast -Information on how to create your own blend. With over a dozen home-roasting machines newly on the market, and an ever-expanding number of stores and internet sites catering to the home coffee-roasting market, now more than ever Home Coffee Roasting is the essential book for every true coffee lover.

Espresso: Ultimate Coffee, Second Edition by Kenneth Davids: "Kenneth Davids writes with authority and panache. There's no one I'd rather read and learn from. He'll turn your kitchen into the espresso bar of your dreams-and the more aspiring baristas who read this book, the safer the country will be for the new world of lattes sweeping the nation." --Corby Kummer, The Atlantic Monthly "Kenneth Davids's new book blends the myths and history with the technology and culture that create this nouveau art form we call 'espresso.' It's the perfect companion while enjoying the pleasures of this magnificent beverage." NOTE: If you buy this one, make sure you are getting the second edition, as the first is quite outdated.

The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop, Revised and Updated Edition by Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger: A freshly updated edition of the best introduction to one of the world's most popular products, The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary covering coffee from its first use in Ethiopia in the sixth century to the rise of Starbucks and the emergence of Fair Trade coffee in the twenty-first. The book explores the process of cultivation, harvesting, and roasting from bean to cup; surveys the social history of café society from the first coffeehouses in Constantinople to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village; and tells the dramatic tale of high-stakes international trade and speculation for a product that can make or break entire national economies. It also examines the industry's major players, revealing how they have systematically reduced the quality of the bean and turned a much-loved product into a commodity and lifestyle accoutrement, ruining the lives of millions of farmers around the world in the process. Finally, The Coffee Book, hailed as a Best Business Book by Library Journal when it was first published, considers the exploitation of labor and damage to the environment that mass cultivation causes, and explores the growing "conscious coffee" market and Fair Trade movement.

And then, here are some links (from our website) of some great online resources and forums:

Coffee Review: This site is the online presence of the wonderful Ken Davids, whose great books gave many people their first look at the depth of the coffee scene. In addition to reviews of the most outstanding coffees available, the site is an extraordinary resource into the growing regions, preparation methods and nomenclature of the industry.

CoffeeGeek: The CoffeeGeek website, now boasting in excess of five million readers a month, is a portal into community-based features including a user-fed library of consumer brewing equipment reviews (the very best place to start if you are considering a purchase) and a seemingly endless online forum with discussions of every topic you can imagine. Use the search feature to drill down and get answers to your questions.

Espresso My Espresso: This is fun site, with the main attraction a 97-chapter personal journal that charts author Randy Glass' journey from newbie to home roaster to espresso aficionado and beyond.

Home Barista: If espresso has seized you and made you want to know more, this is a great place to start. The equipment reviews go well beyond performance characteristics of machines and grinders and help you really understand why good espresso is worth the investment of time and money. This is also a great resource for learning about the techniques you need to master to produce great espresso at home.

SCAA: The Specialty Coffee Association of America. This important trade group represents the growing sector of the coffee industry that roasts, serves and trades the highest quality coffees. The site has some great resource material and outlines the services and events provided by the association.

ICO: The International Coffee Organization (ICO) was originally started by the United Nations as a vehicle for linking coffee producer and consumer countries. Today, the ICO has a membership of 77 member countries (45 coffee exporting and 32 importing), and their site is a nice source of high level statistics and information about the global industry.

Bikes to Rwanda: The website of an amazing program launched by the owner of Portland, Oregon's famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters that spawned a custom-designed affordable bicycle that enables Rwandan coffee growers to dramatically improve their ability to move their coffees from farm to market.

Starbucks Gossip: Imagine an online forum where Starbucks employees from far and wide share their candid thoughts (good and bad) about the company. Its kind of like spying, but there's some fun stuff here to read.

Troubleshooting Coffee

Hi Friends,

I’ll roast next on Monday, November 10, and any orders received by Sunday night will be delivered and shipped on Tuesday the 4th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).

The holiday season is coming! Next week, I’ll have a full rundown of our new holiday coffees (5-6 of these) and some special offers for you. As a reminder, if you have a large order coming that will need custom labels, please get in touch with me ASAP. I’ll be ordering green coffee and bags in the next few days, and I am trying to line my ducks up so I don’t have to order again before Christmas.

Oh. I have 8 Barack O’Java labels left – and when these are gone, that blend will become the Jamlii Holiday Blend. If you want a souvenir bag of Barack for your shelf (or to drink it in celebration!), order now – first come, first served.

Today, I am writing about troubleshooting coffee. I’d like to share some ideas on things you can do at home to fine tune your brew and to deal with those perky little strange tastes that arise from time to time.

Lets start with a refresher on making coffee. You have a certain coffee, you store it in a particular way and in a particular form (ground or whole bean) and you then measure out an amount of coffee. You get water from somewhere and heat it to a certain temperature and introduce the water into your brewing device. Maybe there are other elements to your brewing device, like a filter. You may brew it into a cup (made of something) or into some kind of holding container, which may be insulated or not and which may or not sit on some kind of a warmer. Maybe you drink it now or drink iater. You put stuff in it (or not). Maybe it stays warm or stays cool.

Then you taste it.

Coffee is a very, very complex substance, and they say there are more than 700 separate chemicals found in coffee – many of which change with time, temperature, moisture and other factors. Some of these changes happen before I ever see the coffee, and many happen after it leaves me and goes to a café or to you. And a lot of these impact flavor.

If something doesn’t seem right about your cuppa, it may be the coffee, but it can also be factors that are under your control . . . and by changing these, you can dial in your own perfect brew.

So, based on the above refresher, here’s a step by step list of some things to consider if you want to make changes at home:

Choice of Coffee: The spectrum of available coffee out there runs from the lighter roasted origins from South and Central America through to French Roasts (and even darker, though not from us), and within this spectrum, you can find rich, fruity, light, sweet, bright and all sorts of other sensations. Changing the beans you buy really can change the whole experience. Write me back if you want some ideas?

Storage: As a rule of thumb, if your coffee is relatively freshly roasted, and you’ll use your bag within a week, seal the bag and leave it at room temperature. If you will use in longer than a week, freeze it (not the fridge)

Ground or Whole Bean: Pre-ground coffee goes stale really fast! If you buy pre-ground, the freezer is your best bet across the board. Love, the Grinder Police.

Amount of Coffee to Use: The rule of thumb here is two level tablespoons of ground coffee per 6 ounces of water. Note that brewers, carafes, etc. will use this amount as a “cup of coffee” measure (as in, this is an “8 Cup Coffee Maker”), but in reality, most of us use cups larger than this. If your coffee taste seems off, you can play with the amount you are using upwards or downwards, and don’t assume if your cup is bitter that you are using too much coffee. You may in fact be using too little.

Water: Our water comes from a well source in Freeport, and we notice a pronounced difference in the taste over the course of a year. A while back, I was getting a funny taste in my coffee, and when I drank a glass of tap water next to the coffee, there was a similarity in the off tastes. If you think your water source is the culprit, try getting some water from somewhere else (I am NOT recommending out of a plastic bottle) and tasting them side by side. There are a lot of ways out there to filter out the bad tastes, and you may want to experiment with using filtered water to brew your coffee.

Water Temperature: If you heat the water on the stove for making coffee, note that the temperature of a rolling boil (212’) is really too hot for coffee. You’d like the ideal temperature to be closer to 200, so maybe get in the habit of boiling the water and letting it sit for a minute or so before you brew – you should notice a big difference.

Brewing Device: I’ll save a discussion of the different ways of brewing coffee for another day, but for here, I’ll just say that results are very different from device to device – and you may find that using a different apparatus gets you closer to the coffee you want. Have a look at this link on the Coffee Review site for an excellent discussion of the methods available: http://www.coffeereview.com/reference.cfm?ID=164.

Other Elements: You might use a paper filter or a gold filter or some kind of metal filter as part of your brewer. Paper filters can leach flavor and should be rinsed before using. Other filter types need regular cleaning to eliminate the tastes of old coffee oils.

Cup: The material your favorite cup is made of makes a difference, and if you use a metal or plastic cup, give it a sniff, and chances are you’ll discover a strong smell you don’t equate with delicious, fresh coffee. Those metal travel mugs a lot of people drink from on the way to work can develop a buildup very quickly, and they are great at holding the scent of teas. It might be necessary to go at this gunk with espresso machine cleaner or cleanser, as these are very tenacious substances.

The Coffee Pot: If you brew into a glass coffee pot that sits on a warmer, you will have trouble if the coffee stays there longer than a few minutes – switch to storing the coffee in some kind of a thermal carafe and you’ll notice a big difference. If you are the person who gets up late in your household and you come downstairs to find something akin to sludge waiting for you in the family pot, treat yourself and brew up your own fresh one. You have rights too!

I hope this helps. I am happy to answer any questions about this, or if you are in Freeport or Yarmouth, I’ll come over and have a look at what you are using if you like.

Enjoy the weekend, and thanks for all your support.

Kent

Coffee Processing Methods

Hi Friends,

We are roasting next on Sunday, October 5, and any orders received through noon that day will be shipped or delivered on Monday the 6th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).

We have sadly run out of the wonderful organic Honduras, but we have a nice new organic from Costa Rica you might like to try – details are on the store page on the website. Not on the site is the amazing Barack O’Java. You can order this through us or through the Obama headquarters in Yarmouth, Portland, somewhere in Michigan and northern NC. When ordered through us, we donate $1 from each pound to the campaign and orders through their offices get a $5 donation. Go Obama!!!

I am sending these messages now from my home email address, as some of you have spam filters that don’t like hearing from the ISP behind freeportcoffee.com.

As promised, I am writing today about the processing of coffee – taking you all the way from the harvest through to the roaster. Coffee travels a long road to reach your cup, and I think it is interesting to understand the many steps along the way.

What is Coffee?

What we call “coffee beans” are the seeds of a woody perennial evergreen tree grown in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. These seeds are found in a fruit typically referred to as “cherries,” though they aren’t actually related to the more common fruit of the same name.

Usually, these seeds are found in pairs facing each other – you can imagine this pairing by placing the flat surfaces of two beans together. In about 5-10% of the cherries, only one bean is found, and these “peaberries” are more rounded and oval in shape.

Broadly speaking, there are two main species of coffee, formally known by their Latin names, Coffea Arabica (aka “Arabica”) and Coffea Canephora (aka “Robusta”). The specialty coffee we enjoy in the US is virtually all Arabica, and you are unlikely to encounter Robustas unless you drink very inexpensive instant coffees or blends. About 70% of world production is now Arabica, but Robusta, which is cheaper to grow, continues to flourish in commodity markets. I tasted it in its pure form exactly once, and it reminded me of a cross between cough syrup and paint thinner. Yuck.

The cherries are covered in a thick skin, and between the skin and beans is a sticky layer called mucilage. We’ll learn more about these below, as the methods for removing the skin and mucilage have a lot to do with the taste of your coffee.

When we talk about “processing methods,” these describe what happens in the removal of the skin and pulp, the removal of the mucilage and the drying of the bean. The other steps I’ll discuss have a lot to do with product quality, but you aren’t likely to hear about them in the descriptions of coffees; these are more the responsibility of the growers, processors, importers and roasters.

Picking

Coffee cherries grow in tight clusters along the branches of the tree – and an important thing for you to know is that the cherries don’t all ripen at the same time. Green and red cherries can both be found in abundance on the same branch.

The cherries can be picked from the tree selectively by hand (meaning only taking the ripe red fruit), “stripping” the branch (a faster method where all fruit is pulled off a branch at once) or through mechanized methods that shake the trees to loosen the ripe fruit so that it falls into a collector below.

So you can see that in the first method above, the fruit collected is all ripe and is all picked by hand. And, in the other two, some number of unripe cherries ends up in the mix. From here forward, the degree to which the unripe fruit is sorted out has a major impact on coffee quality.

The decision for the farmer on which method to use is based on a tradeoff between his or her cost of production and the likely price to be received when the coffee is sold to a broker or processing facility. In small farms, it is much faster to strip the branches, but the quality (and probably the price) goes down. To pick more selectively, the price needs to justify the longer labor hours (or expense of picking machines).

Processing Methods

The expression “processing method” for coffee refers to one of three techniques used to remove the fruit surrounding the coffee beans (pits of the fruit). The method used is, for the most part, a matter of local convention, though the care taken in executing the method can vary greatly from place to place.

Dry/Natural Processing:

In the oldest method, “dry” or “natural” processing, the just-picked cherries are spread on open terraces or raised “beds” (elevated tables with screened surfaces to allow air to circulate around the coffee) and then dried in the sun. A careful program of monitoring and turning the beans assures they all dry evenly, and at night the beans are stacked and covered to guard against moisture.

When the cherries are dried to a target moisture level, the fruit is stripped away and the beans moved to storage to await milling and shipping.

Dry processing is used in areas with abundant sunshine and low rainfall – and most coffees from Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen and Indonesia use this method. You’ll find these coffees to be sweet, complex and full bodied. Most espresso blends (ours included) use dry processed Brazils as a “base” coffee to provide these characteristics.

Wet Processing:

“Wet processed,” or “washed” coffees go from the harvest through water-based sorting steps in which unripe and defective cherries are sorted out of the mix via differences in weight and buoyancy. The cherries then pass through a “pulping” machine that removes the skin of the fruit and the pulpy layer beneath. These machines range in size from homemade, hand-cranked apparatus used by small farmers and cooperatives all the way up to the scale of major industrial machinery.

What remains are coffee beans covered in a dense, sticky layer called mucilage. The coffee moves to fermentation tanks where soaking for 16-36 hours softens and loosens this layer so it can be removed. The amount of time the beans remain in each tank varies a great deal from region to region, and new research is coming out shortly that will compare fermentation methods to see which has the greatest impact on cup quality and flavor. I’ll pass this along when I see it.

While passing through the fermentation process, additional sorting of the beans for defect removal and grading can be done based on bean density.

These now clean beans move to a drying step, either outdoors in the sun or using mechanical dryers, with the choice of method based on local weather conditions and access to drying equipment.

Washed coffees are typically “cleaner” tasting, fruity and sweet.

Pulped Natural Method:

This is a hybrid of the two methods above, with the cherries undergoing the pulping step, but then dried without undergoing fermentation. Coffees processed in this way have a nice sweetness and body like those of the natural process, but they retain the citrus-like “acidity” of the washed coffees.

Environmental Issues

The processing of coffee can yield very substantial amounts of waste, including the pulp of the cherries and sugar-infused fermenting water – and in many cases, these have been dumped into local rivers, having a dramatic impact on aquatic ecosystems. The handing of these wastes via composting or reuse is now an important element of more progressive farms and “beneficios” (processing stations).

Milling, Shipping and Distribution

What results from the processing steps is now called “parchment coffee,” or “pergamino.” The coffee beans are covered in a thin yellow hull, and they will be kept in this form until just prior to shipping. By keeping the coffee in this hull, the moisture content of the beans can be maintained in the often very hot conditions of the ports used to transport coffee.

Before shipping, the beans go through a final milling step to remove the parchment layer, are packaged into 60-70K bags and then transported via ship to destination ports around the world. (If you ever need one of these bags for a project or just to hang on your wall, drop me a note and I’ll save you one.)

In the US, coffees enter the country typically via the large west coast ports (Long Beach, Oakland or Seattle), New Orleans (they lost a LOT of coffee during Hurricane Katrina) and New Jersey. Importers take over at this point and become the conduit by which reaches roasters like me.

Defect Evaluation by Importer and/or Roaster

An important part of the purchase decision for a coffee broker making the decision to buy coffee in an origin country or a coffee importer buying from a broker is related to the cleanliness of the coffee. In this case, we’re not talking about a “clean” taste sensation (as in the washed coffees above), but more an assessment of how well the coffee has been sorted to remove defects. In a very low-grade coffee, you would see immature beans, beans damaged by insects and mold, and broken beans. A score based on the number and type of defects found in a sample in part determines the value of the coffee and whether it will achieve “specialty” grade status. All of our coffees (and those of most reputable roaster) are true specialty grade coffees.

That’s all for today. Thanks again for your wonderful support, and feel free to write back with any questions or if I can help in your purchasing or brewing of great coffee.

Kent

Coffee and Disneyland

Hello, Friends . . .

We are roasting next on Monday, September 29, and any orders received through noon that day will be shipped or delivered on Tuesday the 30th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).

Barack O’Java has now become our best-selling coffee, and we’ll continue to offer this through the November election. We donate $1 of each package sold to the campaign. For the very few of you who have asked, I am sorry but we don’t offer a McPalin coffee.

I write you this week from the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, where I am running a conference. Imagine the strange bedfellows of very small children, frazzled parents and several thousand pharmaceutical scientists, and this is my world for five days. Because of a last minute construction project here at the hotel, we enter our conference through the main entrance of “Goofy’s Kitchen,” weaving our way through an armada of parked strollers and costumed Mickies, Goofies and Daffies (who enable the Disney Corporation to get $30 each for a breakfast buffet). In the morning, the gazillion kids are fired up for a day in the park; in the afternoon, they assume a slumped position as they sleep by the hundreds in their strollers.

Predictably, the coffee here sucks.

I knew before I came on this trip that there would be no hope for coffee at Disneyland, so I came equipped with a small electric teakettle, a hand grinder, a filter brewer and two coffees – a Guat and an El Salvador Peaberry – both roasted the day before I left. They have poured well on this trip. And yes, I am obsessed with good coffee. :)

So, I can’t invoke your pity by complaining that I have to drink the whitebread swill they serve here, but I will take the liberty of using Disneyland as a metaphor for the menace that is generic coffee.

I think now and then about coffee as a food, rather than a beverage unto itself. And when I think about coffee in this way, I consider coffee as it is served at places like Disneyland.

It comes from no place; it is only “coffee.”

It was roasted by no one; it is only “coffee.”

It has no brand; it is only “coffee.”

It was not ground in a grinder you know about, and it was prepared only in a “coffee maker.”

It is not special. In this setting, it is allowed no adjectives.

Would we allow this to happen with any of our other favorite foods?

Would we eat only “Cheese”? “Meat”? “Sauce”, “Juice”, “Sandwiches”, “Bread”?

“Food”?

I come to Disneyland harboring two addictions, caffeine and good coffee. It would be easy enough to bring some No Doz to satisfy the former, but the latter is harder, and it is often a need that is impossible to satisfy on the road. Airports, business hotels, gas stations and roadside diners insist on serving only “coffee.”

In the world of specialty coffee, roasters and cafes think a lot about coffee education. We know that most of the coffee drinkers in our country still drink this very generic brew – and that in many other countries, instant coffee (made largely from cheap, bitter Robusta beans) is still the market leader. Some simple rules about coffee buying and preparation can really change the experience of coffee for people, and even for those who won’t move all the way into the higher end coffees like those we sell, the daily cup will be better.

One of the great joys I have about supplying The Royal Bean cafe is that I get to spend a lot of time hanging out and watching the interactions between the staff and the customers. Quite often, someone who is new to the café will not have had the opportunity to choose from among multiple coffees when they order – and this gives Jim and his staff a great opening to talk about the flavors and textures and smells of different coffee origins in relation to each other. These talks are so cool, because the minute that customer tastes a new coffee, they learn something – and using this learning takes them to a greater appreciation of the value of taking more care in buying and brewing their own coffees.

And inch-by-inch, these folks will go out in the world to places like Disneyland, and ask for something more. And maybe, just maybe, someday, they will make a difference and those who would genericize this wonderful beverage will try a little harder to serve coffees labeled by origin country and roast level.

On our website, at the bottom of the coffee stories blog, there is a long article I wrote about finding good coffee on the road. This quest can be a lot of fun, and I hope you will read this someday and engage in your own explorations when you travel.

I look forward to being back in Maine this weekend. Enjoy the beautiful fall days you are having there . . . and as always, thanks for your ongoing support.

Cheers,

Kent

All About Grinding

Hi All,

We are roasting next on Monday, September 8, and any orders received through noon that day will be shipped or delivered on Tuesday the 9th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com ).

We have a tasty new organic Costa Rica, Lomas Al Rio, and if you’d like a small sample thrown in with your order next time, let me know.

This week’s sermon is about the proper grinding of coffee. I spend a lot of time talking to people about how they prepare coffee at home, and this subject comes up more than any other, even those about brewing methods.

I’d like to try and simplify the role of grinding for you, and then offer some suggestions of how to get the most out of the method you use, when to change your grind settings and then (if you are so inclined) how to take the next step and buy an upgraded grinder.

Why Does Proper Grinding Matter?

In every coffee brewing method, the ground coffee is exposed to hot water – and the amount of time it is exposed to water is different, depending on the method you use. At one end of the spectrum is the French Press, where the ground coffee steeps for about four minutes, and at the other is a shot of espresso, where the pressurized water goes through the coffee in around 25 seconds.

All those settings on grinders result in different particle sizes – coarsely ground coffee has large particles, and fine ground coffee has very small particles.

Now, take a single coffee bean and measure the surface area. Write it down (not really, but bear with me). Take an identical coffee bean and grind it coarse. Measure the surface area of all the particles. Write that down. And last, take another identical coffee bean, grind it very fine and then somehow measure the surface area of all THOSE little particles – write that number down.

What you’ll see on your list is a small amount of surface area for the whole bean, a much larger number for the coarse ground coffee, and a really large number for the fine grind.

When you expose ground coffee to water, this surface area is what is exposed. Meaning that, if you dunk a bunch of whole coffee beans in hot water, you’ll be lucky if it turns a little murky in color. There is very little exposed surface area (and the pores aren’t open as they are through grinding). Grind those same beans coarse and expose those to the same amount of hot water and you’ll get something more like coffee. Grind them fine, and you will also get coffee, but since there is WAY more surface area, much more flavor will be extracted from the same amount of coffee.

Still with me?

Matching Degree of Grind to Brewing Method

So, what we are trying to do with grinding is to match the grind setting with the brewing method. The French Press needs a coarse ground coffee for best results. Here, if you grind too fine, you are exposing TOO MUCH surface area, and you’ll end up with a bitter brew.

If you took that same coarse ground coffee and used it for drip (with exposure to the water for 30-60 seconds), you’ll get very weak coffee, and using those grounds in an espresso machine will result in a tea-like shot that pulls very quickly.

Use an espresso grind in a French Press, and you have SO MUCH surface area that the coffee is horribly over-extracted (and it will also clog the screen).

“Dialing In” Your Grind Setting

If you go over to my buddy Jim’s wonderful Royal Bean café (in Yarmouth – the BEST place to hang out and enjoy great coffee) before they open in the morning, you’ll see the staff at their three grinders working hard to adjust their grind settings for the day. They grind, brew a cup, taste, adjust the grind, taste again and do this over and over until each machine has a grind setting that results in the very best taste.

You can do this too. If your coffee is too bitter (and you know you have good, freshly-roasted beans), grind a little coarser and try it again; maybe you were over-extracting the coffee. Too weak? You might not have enough surface area exposed for your brewing method – grind finer.

The Problem with Blade Grinders

The most affordable and therefore most common household grinder is the blade grinder. I spent 25 years using these so I know them well.

Most people use these by adding the coffee beans, holding down the trigger and then keeping it there for an amount of time that varies by day (and by member of the household). This results usually in a lot of powder and some chunks of different sizes. As we’ve learned above, the powder will cause over-extraction of the coffee and the chunks will be under-extracted. In your cup will then be a bad-tasting stew of bitter coffee and weak coffee. Not good.

Burr Grinders

Ideally, what you want in a grinder is a way of adjusting the grind setting so that your particle sizes are consistent. This is best achieved with burr grinders, where two sets of “burrs,” or grinding disks are adjusted at a distance that allows consistent results for each setting. The big grinders at the supermarket, espresso grinders, and good quality home grinders are all based on this technology. Buyer beware – there are “burr grinders” on the market for as little as $25, but these have stamped or molded burrs rather than those machined of steel. They aren’t worth it, as the burrs will go dull very quickly. You’ll need to spend about $100 to get a good one.

Getting Good Results

With a blade grinder (I know some of you well enough to know you’ll never upgrade), PULSE the button rather than hold it down – and be consistent in how the number of pulses every time. Open the chamber and see what the coffee looks like after every few pulses, and work toward particles that are the right size for the brewing method you use.

With burr grinders and grinding at the store, don’t get stuck on one grind setting. Experiment a little, and see how it affects the taste of your coffee. Grind finer, and see if you enjoy the increased strength. Grind a little coarser and see what happens.

Upgrading Your Grinder

As I mentioned above, to get a good grinder with commercial-grade burrs and the range of settings you’ll need, you will need to spend at least $100 – and if you are a gearhead, consider taking the leap to the next step above that (starting at $200-$300), as you’ll probably end up there sooner than later.

I’d recommend starting with the CoffeeGeek consumer reviews (http://www.coffeegeek.com/reviews). Here, you can explore recent, very in-depth commentary from people like you using different equipment. They have a whole section devoted to grinders, and there is a huge amount of very easy to access information there.

Then, find a grinder you like, and alongside the review will be a list of good online discount sources for it. Look at a few sources to make sure you are getting the right price.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I know this was a long one.

Next week, I’ll change gears and talk about a coffee-growing country. Is there one you’d like to hear about?

Thanks again for your support – enjoy the weekend.

Kent