Pimp My Roaster

I roast professionally and have done for some time now. However, I came up from the home roasting community, a group that likes to build, innovate and general figure out how to do things better. I currently employ an engineer who also likes to tinker. Together, we have conceived and effected a number of improvements to the commercially built 3kilo coffee roaster that arrived newly built from the factory in August 2010. Those modifications have allowed us to take a very scientific approach to our roasting process. The roaster came with one thermocouple (a thermometer that a computer can read); we installed five more. The roaster came with sophisticated electronic controls for the burner pressure, drum speed and air circulation fan; we installed circuit boards that allow the computer to track the position of those controls. My engineer designed software that generates a graphical representation of these parameters for every roast we do. A typical one looks like this:

While our roaster is manually controlled, we use a computer to generate a detailed picture of the roasting process or profile.

As much information as this set up provides, somehow six thermocouples just doesn’t seem like enough. When roasting coffee there are two forms of heat applied to the beans: convection from heated air moving through the roaster, conduction from the gas flame under the drum, and transference which is heat shared among the beans. We can manipulate two of these by adjusting the size of the flame and the speed of air moving through the drum. Up until now, we have been able to get a sense of the balance of conduction and convection by measuring the air temperature before it enters the drum and when it leaves the drum. While helpful, it’s become clear that this proxy strategy doesn’t tell the whole story.  So recently we began our next modification which will allow us to measure the temperature of the metal drum directly. It’s already apparent that with this latest modification, sparks will fly, literally.

Cutting a notch into the drum spindle so that we can pass the thermocouple cable through the gear box.

This is by far the most complicated thermocouple install given the fact that the drum is rotating at roughly 60 RPM. Because of this, we are using a revolving connector that will allow the thermocouple to spin with the drum, but still supply a consistent signal to our computer tracking system. The first step, as seen here, was to cut a channel into the drum spindle so that the thermocouple cable can pass through the motor gearbox. I will add to this post as this modification progresses over the next couple of weeks. Our next step will be to bolt the tip of the thermocouple to the inside face of the drum.

Kopi Luwak – Crap is Crap

Oddly the package states Peaberry, but the beans inside didn't resemble any peaberry I have ever seen.

I just received a small bag of Kopi Luwak, affectionately known as cat poop coffee based on the fact that the coffee cherries are processed in the guts of Indonesian civet cats. First, I should say, I don’t condone the purchase of Kopi Luwak. In response to recent media-assisted popularity, this grossly over-priced bean has fueled a new industry of civet farms in which the cats are kept under truly deplorable and cruel conditions. That aside, this coffee is really no better than reasonable priced beans processed in more traditional fashion. Don’t believe the hype. Kopi Luwak may have a compelling story, but that is all it is. We tasted this coffee next to our own wash processed Bali beans. Granted we didn’t roast

the Kopi Luwak (and it wasn’t roasted well), but there wasn’t even a hint of the complexity present in our in-house roasted Bali.

Price of our Bali is $12 for 12 ounces. On Amazon you can find Kopi Luwak for about $180 to $200 a pound.

The roast is light, too light in my opinion. The overwhelming flavor is an astringent woodiness with no real depth or layers.

Fair-Trade Coffee Ain’t All That

There is an interesting editorial in the Financial Post about the lack of fairness to poor farmers in the system that certifies fair-trade coffees. Read it here: http://t.co/VJUPrgS. The author raises some issues that I have been made aware of through conversations with growers and other members of the specialty coffee community, such as the expense of Fair-Trade certification and the commensurate lack of access for poor smallholder farms.

However, from a more selfish perspective, Fair-Trade coffee also presents a number of drawbacks, such as lack of information and lower quality beans. Because certification is only available to relatively large cooperatives, specific details about individual lots of coffee are generally sparse. And, while farmers may participate in a fair-trade coop, they may not sell all their coffee through the coop. For high-quality growers, they can often fetch a higher price on the specialty market than the set premium available through the coop. As a result, they will sell their lower-quality beans through the coop and reserve the better stuff for the specialty market. There is also the fact that because coffee from the whole coop is sold together, good and bad quality beans are often mixed together, leading to mediocre quality lots.

Trickle Down That Works

I like to tinker. For devoted readers of this blog, you already know that my first roaster was home made. Since going pro, I have been developing a custom-made filter that I think allows more flavor oils to come through in the cup. Working over the past two years with several different manufactures, I have developed a filter made from food-grade nylon mesh that combines the best elements of a pour-over and French press and produces a rich, full flavor profile, considerable brightness and little or no sediment in the cup. So far, I have been very pleased with the results, a reusable filter that allows one cup brewing and preserves the inherent complexities of the coffee.

Hand poured coffee overcomes the limitations of automatic coffee makers and our custom-made filters allow more of the flavorful coffee oils to come through in the cup without increasing the amount of fine coffee particles in the cup.

Freezer Burn: Don’t Do What Johnny Don’t Does

Here’s a question I actually get asked quite a bit: How should I store coffee beans? If we are talking about fresh coffee that will be used up quickly, ie within a week or two, then no special measures are really needed. Because freshly roasted coffee slowly releases CO2 over the first couple of weeks, it does a pretty good job of protecting itself against oxidation, the main culprit of staling. Keep it out of the sun and away from sources of heat and you should be good.

Glass canning jars are an economical and easy way to keep your coffee from being exposed to the staling effects of oxygen.

In regard to freezing, I generally recommend against it. I have yet to see any evidence or explanation about how freezing coffee would delay staling of the coffee. In addition, it creates the risk of condensation on the beans. If you go through your coffee slowly, say only drinking on weekends, I generally advise the use of mason jars, which are relatively cheap, air tight and easy to clean. The smaller the jar the better. I have found the half-pint jar hold just enough coffee for a medium-sized pot of coffee.

Roast Trip Pit Stop in Richmond VA

Heading back from North Carolina, we decide to stop for a coffee break at Lamplighter Coffee in Richmond, VA. Lamplighter is more of a cafe than a dedicated coffee shop, but do roast their own coffee (Tallbike Coffee) on a Probat located a few blocks away.

Tall Bike Coffee is roasted off site by the owners of Lamplighter Coffee in Richmond VA

The espresso on offer was a single-origin natural process Sidamo and I have to say it was excellent, nicely balanced with good density and distinct, but not overwhelming, cherry notes. The brewed coffee was a different story. Apparently, much of their business is food and so they don’t have space to offer individually brewed cups of coffee. So I tried the house blend, a combination of three beans and three different roasts. It wasn’t really bad, but it wasn’t really good either. It tasted thin with a faint hint of smokiness from the dark roasted bean of the mix. They had half a dozen beans from different origins by the bag, so it seemed a shame not to offer them brewed to order. I picked up a bag of their Costa Rica Fruto de Oro, which according to the bag was roasted four days before. It should have just been hitting its stride, but the beans had virtually no aroma and when brewed up there was just a hint of grassiness and nothing else in the cup. Best guess is this batch was baked. This can happen if the beans are heated too slowly at the end of the roast or if the beans are not actively cooled once the roast is stopped.

Hipster hangout Lamplighter Coffee in Richmond VA

So ends this travelogue. My experience on this trip reaffirms my conviction that most “good” coffee shops focus their attentions on espresso while brewed coffee is treated like an unwanted stepchild.

Roast Trip Chapel Hill North Carolina

Big Yellow Ambex at Jessee's Cafe

It’s day two of our trip to North Carolina and we took a short drive to Chapel Hill to visit the small shops along Franklin Street. Our first coffee stop was an unexpected find just past the main drag called Jessee’s, where they roast their own beans. While it did not appear to be the most sophisticated roasting operation (and clearly doubles as an eatery and bar), this was by far the most satisfying cup of coffee on our trip thus far. I started off with a French press of Java which had nice body and brightness and just all around good mouth appeal. Also tried a press of Costa Rica which a some mild brightness with floral and nut undertones. Neither rocked my world, but these were very respectable cups of coffee that quite frankly put to shame our next stop.

The teeny, tiny bar at Caffe Driade

After strolling down Franklin a bit more we drove to the rather high-minded and the beautifully picturesque, but utterly disappointing Caffe Driad. This is a coffee shop that could be easily mistaken for a garden shed (a very nice one). The real draw is the outdoor space which is expansive and lovely on a 60+ degree day. They had several tempting beans on offer including two high-scoring Honduran beans as well as offerings from Papua New Guinea and Mexico. The Hondurans were unfortunately more than two weeks off of roast and so, instead, I selected the PNG, roasted a mere 10 days earlier. The cup (actually I should say glass as it was served inexplicably in a pint glass) was relatively unremarkable with little discernible origin character and all the body of a strongly brewed tea. The GF’s cappuccino was tasty enough but not really distinctive in any way.

A pint of Papua New Guinea at Caffe Driade in Chapel Hill

I should note that my main target for the day, given several recommendations, was 3 Cups. The coffee-slash-wine bar has the distinction of only serving brewed coffee, eschewing the usual espresso-based focus of other “fine” coffee shops. Unfortunately, once we got to Chapel Hill, we found out that the Franklin Street location had closed, that we would have to drive to a strip mall to find the new location and that they are closed on Sunday anyway. Ho, humm.

Roast Trip Durham North Carolina: Day One

It is my first weekend off in over two years and we are in Durham North Carolina for a friend’s wedding. So, of course, I am sampling some of the local coffee offerings. First stop this morning was the Joe Van Gogh on Broad St., which reputedly roasts their own, but I’m guessing it must be off site as there really wasn’t any sign of roasting equipment in the storefront. Like a lot of shops they have the espresso machine right up front, so I went for the SO El Salvador Natural they had on offer. It was quite nice with citrusy brightness and distinct fruit tones. I prefer a little more balance and body in my espresso, but this espresso didn’t disappoint. I am more a brewed coffee snob than an espresso snob and unfortunately the hand poured cups I had were a let down. I had a cup of Ethiopia Amaro Gayo and another of Flores Bajawa, both beans I am very familiar with and both of which have distinctive character and body, but came through as flat and lifeless. Going by the roast dates on the bins, they had been roasted within the past few days. They didn’t taste baked either, so I have to suspect that the problem was in poor extraction. So if anyone from Joe is listening, try dialing down the grinder a bit and it might even make sense to move away from using a bulk grinder, an imprecise tool for grinding 30 grams of beans.

Our next stop (after some of the mornings caffeine had percolated out of my system) was Scratch, which uses locally roasted (but nationally available) beans from Counter Culture. I hadn’t had much to eat still, so I went for a macchiato this time. In line with my previous CC experiences, the espresso is bright to the point of being lemony. It’s also a little darker a roast than I generally like, but I think they want to ensure that it peeks through a lot of milk. Wasn’t really up for another cup of coffee, but Karen, the coffee program manager, offered up a sampling of the drip coffee they had on hand, a Burundi Kayanza microlot. This was decidedly more flavorful than my morning cups, but didn’t have nearly the sweetness and full bodied mouth appeal that I am accustomed to with beans from the region. Should have checked the roast date, but the lack of body in the cup makes me think the roast was a bit on the fast side.

The Endangered Future of Ethiopian Coffee

Along with other members of the local specialty coffee community, I recently had a chance to sit down with representatives of the Ethiopian government to discuss problems with the import of beans from that country.

A little background: over the past few years, the Ethiopian government has implemented new rules meant to ensure that coffee farmers received payments for their coffee in a timely and consistent fashion. This was in part a response to reports that small farmers were not receiving promised payments from exporters and in part due to a concern that the government itself was getting shortchanged by deals being cut in the private market. As a result, the government required all coffee to be sold through an existing national commodities exchange with the idea that it would provide a level playing field between farmers and exporters. However, this had several unintended consequences. While cooperatives were still allowed to export their own coffee lots, private mills (processing facilities that take in raw coffee cherries and turn out green coffee ready for export) were shut down by the regulation changes. Effectively, all coffee growers who weren’t a member of a coop were forced to send their coffee through centralized government-owned mills. Unfortunately these facilities did not have the capacity to process the quantities of coffee they were suddenly facing in a timely manner, which has lead to delays of weeks to months between when buyers pay for their coffee and when the coffee could be shipped out of the country. The mills also were not set up to separate out small lots of coffee so that beans were being pooled, lowering the overall quality of available exports.

Part of the problem was that the government grossly underestimated the portion of the market made up by specialty coffee (as compared with the bulk of the market comprised by large-scale commercial roasters that produce the junk coffee that is sold in tin cans, pregound or freeze dried, and goes into flavored coffee products such as nescafe or McCafe’s). The changes mainly impacted the specialty market which as a result bought less Ethiopian coffee last year. This resulted in a large drop in general revenues generated by green coffee sales. As it turns out, specialty coffee buyers, in fact, make up a substantial chunk of coffee purchases. We pay much, much higher prices per pound of coffee than large commercial roasters. So although specialty coffee is a relatively small part of the market, it makes up a disproportionate share of revenues.

As a consequence, Ethiopian coffee has begun to lose market share as specialty coffee roasters have started looking elsewhere for beans that could replace the quality of coffee they had been getting from the origin. This may also lead to Ethiopian coffee losing some of its prestige which makes it more attractive even to large-scale roasters. In Ethiopia, this has caused some coffee farmers to cut down coffee plants in favor of crops that they can reliably sell.

The significance of this cannot be understated. Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and is home to many heritage varietals as well as some of the oldest coffee plants in the world. Coffee is also a crop that requires long-term stability to thrive. All of these factors have raised concern within the specialty coffee community (and increasing worry within the Ethiopian government) that Ethiopian coffee will be marginalized.

However, the problem they now face is bigger than just reestablishing these interrupted lines of trade. They must also rebuild the trust of the specialty coffee community, which had spent decades developing direct relationships with growers, much of which disappeared over night. Those in attendance at this week’s meeting offered suggestions and recommendations. The government has strong financial incentives to take heed, but whether they can move rapidly enough to staunch the loss of market share remains very much an open question.

Is My Coffee Too Fresh?

Welcome to the first in our new series: Infrequently Asked Questions. This is not an issue that comes up given the general lack of availability of freshly roasted beans in the current market, but coffee needs at least 24 hours and more usually 48 hours rest after roasting to lose the “grassiness” caused by the off-gassing of CO2. Most coffee takes somewhere between three to five days to peak in flavor, although that can vary quite a bit. Some beans, especially if dark roasted, can peak within a couple of days of roasting, while light roasted coffee may take up to a week. Of course, none of this is really relevant in a marketplace where coffee usually sits on the shelf for weeks, or gasp months, before making it into consumers hands.