It seems like a lot of people who come into Qualia for the first time have never seen unroasted coffee before, much less observed the roasting process itself. While many people peek in the back to admire the machinery, watching the actual roasting process is a lot like watching laundry dry. However, I had an unusually interested onlooker during today’s roasting session.
Peeping Mantis
I hope he was preying for a good roast.
Qualia is featured in a column in the August issue of Washingtonian. Unfortunately, the magazine doesn’t have the column on-line, so I will have to paraphrase it for you: We Rock!
It may be awhile before our hearing returns, but Qualia’s staff survived our first Caribbean Festival, a parade along Georgia Avenue that includes a stream of flat bed trucks loaded with oversized sound systems turned up to 11. It’s actually a very lively event with deep cultural roots and exotic fanfare. Here are some pictures from in front of the shop.
Qualia Coffeehouse officially opens on April 24.
3917 Georgia Ave, NW Washington DC
More good scientifical news about coffee.
livescience.com – Tue Mar 31, 1:37 pm ET
That cup of coffee that many gym rats, bikers and runners swill before a workout does more than energize them. It kills some of the pain of athletic exertion, a new study suggests. And it works regardless of whether a person already had a coffee habit or not.
Caffeine works on a system in the brain and spinal cord (the adenosine neuromodulatory system) that is heavily involved in pain processing, says University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Robert Motl. And since caffeine blocks adenosine, the biochemical that plays an important role in energy transfer and thus exercise, he speculated that it could reduce pain.
So the researcher, a former competitive cyclist, divided 25 fit, college-aged males into two distinct groups: subjects whose everyday caffeine consumption was extremely low to non-existent, and those with an average caffeine intake of about 400 milligrams a day, the equivalent of three to four cups of coffee.
Unexpected results
After completing an initial exercise test in the lab on a stationary bike to determine maximal oxygen consumption or aerobic power, subjects returned for two monitored high-intensity, 30-minute exercise sessions.
An hour prior to each session, cyclists – who had been instructed not to consume caffeine during the prior 24-hour period – were given a pill. On one occasion, it contained a dose of caffeine measuring 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight (equivalent to two to three cups of coffee); the other time, they received a placebo.
During both exercise periods, subjects’ perceptions of quadriceps muscle pain was recorded at regular intervals, along with data on oxygen consumption, heart rate and work rate.
“What we saw is something we didn’t expect,” Motl said. “Caffeine-naïve individuals and habitual users have the same amount of reduction in pain during exercise after caffeine (consumption).”
The results are detailed in the April edition of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Co-authors included Steven P. Broglio of the University of Illinois and Sigurbjorn A. Arngrimsson of the Center for Sport and Health Sciences, Iceland University of Education.
“Clearly, if you regularly consume caffeine, you have to have more to have that bigger, mental-energy effect,” Motl said. “But the tolerance effect is not ubiquitous across all stimuli. Even brain metabolism doesn’t show this tolerance-type effect. That is, with individuals who are habitual users versus non-habitual users, if you give them caffeine and do brain imaging, the activation is identical. It’s really interesting why some processes show tolerance and others don’t.”
Regarding the outcome of the current research, he said, it may be that tolerance to caffeine plays no role in the way it diminishes pain during exercise.
Motl said one of the next logical steps for his research team would be to conduct studies with rodents in order to better understand the biological mechanism for caffeine in reducing pain.
“If we can get at the biological mechanism, we can begin to understand why there may or may not be this kind of tolerance.”
Will it help you win?
Motl previously has conducted other studies on the relationship between physical activity and caffeine, and considered such variables as exercise intensity, dose of caffeine, anxiety sensitivity and gender. A future research direction might be to determine caffeine’s effect on sport performance.
“We’ve shown that caffeine reduces pain reliably, consistently during cycling, across different intensities, across different people, different characteristics. But does that reduction in pain translate into an improvement in sport performance?” he said.
Meanwhile, the current research could prove encouraging for a range of people, including the average person who wants to become more physically active to realize the health benefits.
“One of the things that may be a practical application, is if you go to the gym and you exercise and it hurts, you may be prone to stop doing that because pain is an aversive stimulus that tells you to withdraw,” Motl said. “So if we could give people a little caffeine and reduce the amount of pain they’re experiencing, maybe that would help them stick with that exercise.”
The Washington Business Journal featured me in their Top Shelf column published yesterday. Here’s what they had to say:
“Caffeine High » Joel Finkelstein has been selling his home-roasted coffee as a hobby for years now. Soon he will be in the caffeine business full time.
Finkelstein has decided to rent a commercially zoned row house at 3917 Georgia Ave. NW in Petworth to sell his coffee line, Fresh Off The Roast. The former freelance journalist also is opening a full-service coffee shop. His coffee was previously available at the now-defunct Western Market, an open-air market in Adams Morgan.
Finkelstein says he approaches coffee as a connoisseur’s drink (he can talk for hours about roasting beans yourself and the freshness and flavor it brings), and he plans to distinguish his product by roasting and selling beans that he knows the exact origins of — often right down to the farmer’s name.
Finkelstein is aiming for a March opening for his yet-to-be-named store. He is brainstorming with some George Washington University marketing students on ideas for names. Talk about low overhead.”
Most of the new dry wall is in and work on the bar has started.
I know it has been awhile since I have posted. I have been busy wending my way through the DC bureaucracy. We are now in the second round of reviews. So keep your fingers crossed. I have also been testing out new equipment and brewing methods that I will be using in the shop. I will be posting about some of my findings soon.
Before and After
It took a little longer than expect, but I really have to give my contractor, David Robertson of Something Different Contracting, recognition for making the roasting room a really beautiful space.
Ara & Bica in their new home.
