RoastMonkey

There has been an amazing effort in the specialty coffee community to avoid publicly criticizing coffee roasters or shops. I can't exactly say why, although clearly the community has taken a very cooperative approach to raise the level of discussion around coffee, but in the coffee world no one ever wants to public criticize anyone's coffee (there is plenty of backstabbing behind closed doors, of course). You will find extensive reviews of individual beans from roasters on coffeereview.com, but they only publish reviews of the coffee they like. The only recognized authority in the field I have ever heard critically review individual roasters is Willem Boot, but only on his web site which is accessible to paying members. I think tastings are a great way to suss out the roast profile of individual roasters. Having the ability to try multiple coffees side-by-side from an individual roaster can help appreciate that particular roasters pallet. Eater DC just published a list, including Qualia, where you can attend tastings: http://dc.eater.com/maps/spots-for-coffee-tasting-cupping I think this should be an ongoing discussion and we have been looking for ways to encourage our customers to provide us with more feedback on the beans. Our mail-order website has the option of leaving reviews for individual offerings. No one has so far.

I haven't made it to Grace Street yet, but my roaster tried it and liked their coffee. All due respect, but the phrase "over roasted" represents a misunderstanding of the roasting process. Roasting coffee for brewing is the process of heating the beans until the majority of the moisture content is released and they become friable (easily broken apart or crumbled). So, coffee is either roasted or it's not. Calling a coffee over roasted suggest there is only one right way to roast coffee. How coffee is roasted is really a matter of personal taste. The way I have come to think of it is that each roaster (referring to both machine and man or woman) has a signature profile which is largely seen in the broad strokes of the flavor palette, namely the balance of acidity and body. If the roaster is sophisticated, within that palette they will also paint a more detail portrait of the delicate aromatic and other flavor compounds. In terms of signatures, I personally find a lot of third wave roasters, such as Counter Culture and Ceremony, focus on the organic acids almost to the exclusion of other types of flavor compounds such as sugar, protein, glutemate and fat. This makes sense because there are dozens of organic acids that form in the roasting process and highlighting them offers a lot of distinction in good quality beans. However, my personal preference is for a roast profile that balances these organic acids with the other flavor compounds that form in the roasting process. I see this as something of a middle road between the dark roasting that used to be so prevalent, necessitated by the combination of low-quality beans and extended production chains, and third wave roasting, a knee-jerk reaction to those burnt beans and enabled by huge advances on the agricutlural side. In my more cynical moments, I tend to believe that these latter two approaches are less about flavor and more about shelf life. While obviously I find our approach to roasting the most appealing from a flavor perspective, the logistics of Qualia were built entirely around delivering our beans within three days of roasting so customers can use them at their peak, between three to eight days of roasting. We can do this because we sell our coffee retail only. If we were selling our coffee for wholesale, I cannot imagine how we would continue to approach the roasting process the way we do. Once shelf-life enters the equations, you have to make adjustments to the roasting process that necessarily sacrifices compexity for consistency, just as is true for any form of fresh produce.

Happy to announce that I am deep in the planning stages for our second location. It has been a long road to get here, having just celebrated our 7th anniversary in Petworth, but the time has given me a lot of opportunity to think about the design and approach to the coffee shop. We will continue to do all of our roasting at the current location. The second location will operate purely as a coffee shop, serving coffee in all forms along with a menu of locally sourced baked goods. We won't be doing any food prep on site. However, we will be challenge some of the traditional coffee shop conventions with a more open, more customer service-focused counter design and innovative offerings that highlight the depth and breath of our single-origin coffee sourcing. The new location will be housed at the Gale, a residential complex in Eckington, NE DC. The neighborhood offers a healthy balance of both commercial and residential buildings which should keep the shop relatively busy throughout the day without ever being packed. Given that we won't be preparing food on site, seating will be minimal and wifi won't be offered (I can't imagine any new coffee shop opening with free wifi in the future). Joel

I just noticed that Drift was listed as "Permanently Closed" on Google listing. I reported it to Google that this is incorrect, but Ferhat, you might want to claim listing to speed up the correction. Joel <--- This is wrong

All the prices are posted on our web site here. The subscription is $50.50 a month and includes a shipment of two 10 oz bags every two weeks (12 payments/yr for 26 shipments/yr). We chose the 10 oz size (20 oz per shipment) with the hope that people wouldn't end up with a backlog of coffee, finding themselves in the situation of trying to finish their previous shipment while the new one gets less fresh. For the subscriptions, we ship the same day it is roasted, but it a roasters selection of beans and there is not currently an espresso-specific option. All of our current offerings are also available by mail order a la cart, mostly at $12 or $13 per 12oz bag. We ship everything within one day of roast. We can ship two bags for $5.70. Ordering more doesn't bring the shipping cost down. In terms of espresso options, are inventory changes constantly. If you want recommendations please just PM me when you are ready to order. I should note that our roast style is different than Blue Bottle. We don't roast darker, but we roast longer. Like other specialty roasters, our goal is to bring out as much of the complexity and individuality of each coffee we source, but to my taste, other roasters emphasize acidity at the cost of body and we have tried to find a different balance of flavors.

I give Don full credit for this idea, which I think is brilliant, to put together a starter kit for people who want to brew better coffee at home (or at all). We generally don't stock a lot of retail items, but I am sourcing all the pieces someone might need. I have a shipment of inexpensive (roughly $22), but accurate gram scales coming in next week. We already carry Baratza Encore grinders and can have anything in the Baratza line drop shipped direct to you at Manufacturer Advertised Pricing (which Baratza is rigid about maintaining). We carry a selection of Hario brewing cones as well as paper filters and the nylon filters which are manufactured exclusively for us. Everything Don got from us, plus a bag of beans, fits in a USPS flat rate box that ships for $17.90. Perhaps even more exciting is that we have started working on a series of brewing tutorial videos to help newbies get the most out of their gear.

I really appreciate everyone who has tuned into this thread and hope you have learned something new about coffee that can help you appreciate your next cup a little bit more. I really want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Don and Darkstar for hosting this thread and keeping it rolling with their insightful inquiries and observations. I invite you all to say "hi" next time you come into Qualia.

Hey squidsdc, Thanks for your questions. I can assure you that you are not the only one who struggles with the lack of good decaf on the market. There are a number of problems I face as a roaster in dealing with decaf beans. For one, it's expensive. We are paying not only for good beans, but also for the cost of the decaffeination process, which we generally do not pass on to the customer (seems like that would just be adding insult to injury). On top of that, our decaf sales are unpredictable, sometimes a batch sells out in a day and other times it sits on the shelf half the week. Decaf is the one offering we consistently end up throwing away. Put all that together and we lose money by even stocking decaf coffee. So my feeling about decaf isn't one of disdain, just frustration. I talk a lot about freshness because I think this is paramount to a good coffee experience. I have a lot of people tell me they prefer dark roasts to light roasts because they like a strong or bold coffee. However, a light or medium roast can taste just as strong or bold as a dark roast if it is roasted properly and if it's fresh. Unfortunately, because the process of decaffeinating coffee unavoidably breaks down some of the physical structure of the beans, decaf loses flavor faster and thus has a smaller freshness window than regular coffee (see earlier discussion about freezing, because it is not helping your coffee). Coming back to the importance of freshness, we always encourage our customers to buy just enough coffee to get them through a week or two. If you bring your own container (preferably something air tight), we can sell you any quantity of coffee you want, no matter how small. Another option, if you are DIY-inclined, is to roast your own coffee at home. In its unroasted state, coffee has far more shelf life. Decaf is particularly easy to roast at home because it roasts at a slightly lower temperature than regular coffee and sheds almost no chaff, a papery skin that usually sloughs off during the roasting process.

Really Don! Leave the bad coffee puns to the professionals. We could call the pizza place "Pie in the Sky."

Don, I want to come back to the question you asked me earlier in the chat about being focused on producing a quality product when the marketplace really doesn't demand it. When I started out in this business, I had the naivety to think that all I had to do was produce a good quality product and the customers would come. I mean I started down this road because I wasn't happy with the quality of coffee that was (and still largely is) available in the market. But the longer I do this, the more I have had to accept the fact that, for most people, coffee is a matter of convenience, not taste, ie the exploding percentage of the market moving to k-cups and other pods systems. In my most cynical moments, I think I have expended far too much energy in sourcing good coffee and honing my craft, rather than marketing myself. But, on reflection, I got into this business because I like making good coffee, not because I enjoy selling myself. What makes it worthwhile to continue on isn't because I want to get rich (although making a living at it might be nice) but because I hope to produce something meaningful. So, basically, I do what I do for purely selfish reason with the hope that enough people appreciate it that I can sustain it financially. That said, I do see a lot of room to improve the public understanding of what good coffee is and why they should demand it. I hope that is a conversation that I can have here and elsewhere. While it is tempting to castigate Todd Kliman for focusing attention on the most cartoonish aspects of the specialty coffee market, I often see the specialty coffee community lending itself to such characterizations, especially in DC where the coffee scene seems to be perennially behind the curve. Case in point, the recent announcement that Dolcezza's new location will be featuring nitro-driven cold brew, a national trend (we had cold brew on tap all last Summer) that hardly seems worthy of a headline. The piece also contains the claims that nitrogen changes the flavor of the coffee and that it adds creaminess to the body, both silly assertions that go completely unquestioned.

Darkstar, I am fond of many of the t-shirts in my collection, but I tend to prefer the iconic ones and this one is classic: Inspired by GI Joe It's always difficult for me to pick one coffee to point people to, because I think taste is so personal, so I will give you three instead. Ethiopia Harrar Mesela. This is NOT the blueberry bomb we have had in past years. It is a far more delicate and complex brew that still has a distinct fruit note. Slight sweet with a big body and what I might describe as precision fruitiness. Sumatra Ketiara Adsenia. This is a single-varietal coffee from a small group of women growers high in the Bener Meriah mountains. It is some of the finest Sumatra coffee I have ever tasted. Mildly earthy and peppery, medium bodied, with some sweet tobacco notes. Colombia Porvenir/Placer. This was one of several small lots we sourced from a new importer this year that represents some of the best and most distinctive beans coming out of that region. This has all the rounded, balanced flavor you would expect from a good Colombian coffee along with some really pleasant acidity and floral components making it a little more interesting. But, of course, I love all my beans equally.

Hi Jasonc, Thanks for joining the chat. This is a great question and it is something I think about more these days. Of course, the purist in me would say good coffee should be enjoyed byt itself without competing flavors, but we sell some really great bagels from Georgetown Bagelry and at this point in my life, I can't imaging eating a bagel and cream cheese without washing it down with a good cup of coffee. Also not so bad with a pastry, but I actually find that the sweetness of the pastry emphasizes the bitterness of the coffee, which a touch of milk can ameliorate. Here was one that surprised me though: coffee goes really well with tart apples, go figure. If you want to talk about pairings, it is really going to depend on the coffee. We did a pairing a couple of years ago with doughnuts and we discovered some really intriguing flavor combinations. Chefgunshow and I are in the process of planning a dessert and coffee pairing, coming very soon to Boundary Rd.

As promised, here is my Seattle SCAA 2015 Coffee Travelogue. Enjoy. I visited several coffee shop each day I was in town. I only had one rule: they had to offer single-origin, brewed-to-order coffee. This actually weeds out a lot of the less serious shops and helps cut down on the number of bad cups I buy. To help me organize the shops I visited for myself, I developed a four star system. One star: This describes the bulk of indie coffee shops that generally make pretty good espresso, but the brewed coffee rarely rates better than inoffensive. I think of these as CNS (Closest Not-Starbucks) Coffee Shops. Two Stars: These are either roast-their-own operations or they feature multiple roasters. Generally these took more care in how they prepared their coffee and there was some attention to freshness, but generally still produced only mildly interesting brews. Three Stars: This rating is reserved for shops that consistently offer a selection of fresh roasted coffee and produced better than average cups of coffee. Four Stars: These shops produce consistently good, sometimes great cups of coffee with depth and complexity. Broadcast Coffee Roasters (two locations, off-site roasting) One Star Cup: Rwanda, Colombia Stopped at the 20th Street location our first morning as it was the closest coffee shop to where we were staying. They roast coffee off site and also appear to source some beans from other roasters. They received a coffee delivery while we were there, but the beans were already four days off roast, so I suspect they don't roast daily. I also stopped into their Capitol Hill location. Both cups of coffee I had a broadcast were more like tea than coffee with little body and pretty flat in terms of flavor. Vita Coffee (on site roasting) One Star Cup: Ethiopia Stopped at their main roasting location in Capitol Hill. Vita is pretty old school, one person described as their own local version of Starbucks. We didn't find it to be quite as burnt as that, but they still seem to lean on dark roasting to carry the cup flavor. Pretense levels is fairly high here. Victrola Coffee (on-site roasting) Two Stars Cup: Kenya Also located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and probably the most iconic of new wave roasters in Seattle, the emphasis here is pretty heavy on espresso-based drinks. They generally offer a couple of single-origin, brew-to-order coffee, but this is clearly not a focus for them. The cups I had here on this and previous visits were very light and floral and seemed to be brewed very weak. Stumptown (on site roasting) One Star Cup: Colombia There location and aesthetic is spot on indie and they roast in the basement, but the cup quality was relatively poor. Starbuck Reserve Roastery (on site roasting) One Star Cup: Ethiopia, Brazil This is Starbucks flagship high-end store directly targeting indie coffee. It is pretty much a tourist trap and the aesthetic is still very corporate, more like coffee Disneyland than coffee CBGB. The coffee is really, really expensive (over $20 for two cups), just as poorly roasted as other Starbucks coffee, but significantly fresher. This means it will still taste pretty toasty, but won't have that cardboard off-flavor I usually experience with Starbucks coffee. Tougo (multi roaster) Three Star Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia This place was a standout for the lack of pretension and the consistent quality of their offerings. It was a 100%, but they source from a number of different roasters and generally offer two or three brewed-to-order options, although they seem to stick mostly to the high acidity, light body roasts. Fuel Coffee (single roaster) One Star Cup: Ethiopia This place squeaked on to the list. They do offer brewed-to-order, theoretically, but may not want to make it if they don't have an extra barista on duty. The coffee was definitely not worth going out of the way for. Slate Coffee Roasters (roast off-site) Three Star Cup: Ethiopia, Kenya If you can cut through the thick layer of pretension of this place, it's kind of a fun experience. They offer "innovative" menu items like a deconstructed latte. We stopped by on Sunday and it was full, although the place is a tiny box so that is not hard. We ordered two cups of coffee and waited maybe 15 to 20 minutes for our cups. They were fairly tepid when we got them, but I suspect that was by design. They were slightly better than other cups we had at some of the better shops, but lacked body or real complexity. Ballard Coffee Works (roast off site) One Star Cup: Panama This is the Ballard location of Seattle Coffee Works which roasts downtown, which was on the cutting edge of the third wave, but now feels a little outdated. They seem to be trying to update their aesthetic and offerings, but mostly as a reaction to their competition. Coffee was pretty average. Caffe Umbria (roast off site) One Star I didn't actually get a cup of coffee here, although it met my criteria. Helpfully, they had beans on display and it was clear that the roasts were dark and poor quality. While I believe good coffee shouldn't be cheap, many of these shops charged in the range of $4 to $6 for a brewed-to-order cup of coffee (a few even more). This appeared to be more an inconvenience charge for the extra barista time, than a recognition of the hard work of farmers. Philosophically, I found the pricing unjustified, especially in many cases where the cup quality fell short.

Hey Darkstar, I'm not sure there is really any perfect analogy for coffee. There are so many variables in each step along the way from growing to harvesting to processing to shipping to roasting to brewing, that is sometimes almost seems overwhelming. I guess that is really where human intellect and experience come into play. I mean I have made plenty mistakes over the past eight years. I've bought coffee from the wrong people, stored coffee improperly, roasted through half a bag of coffee before finding the right profile, and other boneheaded moves. But hopefully I have learned from those mistakes and now know many of the warning signs to avoid them. In a sense it is true there is any number of things that can get messed up in the brewing process, but my experience has been that when roasted reasonable well and used when still relatively fresh, brewing doesn't have to be super precise, the coffee will still shine through. True you may be able to brew it better, but it can still be good without a whole lot of fuss. One of the reasons that I have adopted the fresh produce analogy for roasted coffee is that for so long roasters have promoted the idea that coffee was a bulk good that had unlimited shelf life. In that sense, it is analogous to spinach or tomatoes in that it's possible to extend their shelf life by sacrificing their natural complexity.

Oh, no, Don! Now you have invoked my inner science nerd. It's true the water used to brew your coffee is vital. We tend to get focused on the new coffee gadget and sometimes forget about the fundamentals. We have a pretty sophisticated water filtration system at Qualia and I would never dream of brewing coffee without filtered water or spring water, but I'm sure lots of our customers are out there using tap water (boiling fixes it, right?) or even distilled water and wondering why their coffee doesn't taste like it did at the shop. DC tap water especially is high in lead and just yields a very poor extraction. In terms of freezing, again Don is correct that the science isn't in on this, although a number of people have done formal and informal studies which offer something of a consensus, not necessarily that freezing in inherently harmful, but that it just doesn't seem to help. One fairly rigorous examination suggested that freezing coffee immediately after roasting did help preserve the coffee a couple extra weeks. My personal philosophy is that fresh roasted coffee does a really good job of preserving itself and it seems easier to enjoy it within that window of time than to resort to questionable gimmicks to add a few days to its shelf life. Many of the volatile compounds are held in fats, coffee oils that in a light roast remain inside the bean and with a dark roast leak out on to the surface. Theoretically, the vacuum would pull these oils from inside the bean where they are protected toward the outside where they can potentially be exposed to oxygen. Even if kept in an airless environment, once you open that package, the volatile compounds will very quickly oxidize. It seems like a lot of the packaging methods designed to preserve coffee, also make it more susceptible once you open them.