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 20^th 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.

Darkstar, your last question could not come at a better time. One of the great things for me about traveling is getting to try coffee I didn't roast and to see things from the customers' side of counter. We went to a lot of coffee shops this past week (see travelogue) and drank a lot of different coffee from a lot of different roasters. And I have come away with a new perspective and perhaps even some new understanding.

But first I need to explain my perspective on roasting. There are definitely wrong ways to roast coffee, but there isn't one right way. Each roaster has their own signature that defines the broad strokes, like acidity and body, of their coffee and within that signature, each of us is trying to bring out as much of the subtle complexity and distinction of that particular bean.

The classic "strong coffee" signature is defined by dark roasting with lots of toasty roast flavor often with some underlying chocolate notes and maybe a full bodied mouth feel.

The new wave "floral coffee" signature is defined by tons of acidity, very light body and generally citrus and tea-like undertones.

There is a third type of roast signature, one which I strive to exemplify with Qualia, which finds a balance between these to extremes. Our signature is marked by a mild acidity, medium bodied with both chocolate and floral notes in evidence.

So, why are the two extremes so dominate in the market, while the middle path is so rare? This is a question I still struggle with after all these years in the business. I believe that the first roast signature represents the limitations of large-scale roasting and the fact that dark roasted coffee has a much, much longer shelf life than lighter roasts. But the second signature seems more like a knee-jerk reaction to the first, an effort to distinguish the new wave from the old guard, than a comprehensive, unified theory of roasting.

In all honesty, I chose the middle path, not out of some grand principle, but because the other two roast styles simply don't appeal to my sense of taste. So to paraphrase SVT: good is in the taste buds of the drinker.

Welcome to the chat SVT and thanks for you questions and clear passion for coffee, in all forms. Just to clarify a point from you set up for any readers, a manual espresso machine uses a hand operated pump to force water through a tightly packed puck of coffee at high pressure, a semiautomatic machine uses an electric pump to do so at nine bars of atmospheric pressure, an automatic machine uses a volumetric pump that measures the amount of water to use for you and a superautomatic does all that plus grinds and tamps the puck for you.

Now to your questions.

1. Vacuum storage for coffee beans is generally discouraged because as you note, placing the beans in a vacuum coaxes volatile compounds out of the beans where they are potentially more susceptible to oxidization. But it's worth noting, that if you put fresh roasted coffee into an air tight container, CO2 gas will build up in the container. Unless the coffee was just roasted, it's unlikely to break open your container, but you should hear a little pop as the gas release when you open it.

2. The Aeropress is a really great option for traveling and for convenience and it would not be a big leap from how you are brewing with that to brewing manual drip in the morning. You would still be heating up your water, grinding fresh beans and then brewing, but drip coffee takes closer to 4 minutes of brewing time, so maybe some days when you have more like ten minutes to get out the door. While I have generally discouraged the use of autodrip machines, seeing them as a relatively expensive option that rarely work well, touring the SCAA expo floor this past few days, I can safely say there are a number of new, coffee-geek approved, automatic brewers, that while still pricey, actually make a very good cup of coffee.

3. In terms of struggling with the concept of terrior in coffee, you are in good company, we all do. While the science explaining the interplay between varietal and environment has evolved greatly, there is still so much that we don't know. In that sense, we are very reliant on the experience and experimentation of growers. To give an example, the Colombian government has widely promoted the use of a coffee tree varietal called castillo. However, after a couple years of distributing castillo widely, it became evident that while the trees thrive in Colombia, the beans they produce are less flavorful than some of the less productive trees that grow beside them. Another thing that the growers are learning about and experimenting with is fermentation times, how long coffee cherries are left to sit in water and ferment before the beans are removed and sun dried. So while terrior and choice of varietal are obviously very important, they are only part of the equation.

Which really segues into your final comment, because all things being equal in the growing and milling process, we still have ample opportunity to succeed or fail in the roasting and brewing process. But, I firmly believe that what makes coffee really fascinating (interesting enough to dedicate a career to, at least) is the way it constantly changes, potentially morphing into something even more interesting and tantalizing. Instead of worrying about whether I have made the best cup of coffee, I much prefer to enjoy the coffee as it is in my cup that day. If it tastes different, not better or worse, just different the next day, I will enjoy the new flavors I am experiencing.

I see this as the tragedy of Starbucks and other large-scale roasters for whom consistency is more important than revealing the changing nature of coffee, which is more like fresh produce than most people realize.

Although I am working on a comprehensive travelogue of coffee shops I've visited on this trip, I do have a top four list I can share with you in response to Porcupine's requests.

Tougo Coffee, a multi roaster operation with two locations, one in the convention center (which I actually didn't get coffee from) and one on 18th Ave near Capitol Hill

Slate Coffee Roasters, a nationally ranked coffee company with a precious storefront in Ballard. Although their roast style doesn't appeal to my tastes, what they do they do really well.

Neptune Coffee in Greenwood is a multi roaster shop. It is spacious and nicely appointed with a quality selection of coffees.

Victrola Coffee on East Pike near downtown is worth the visit as a bedrock third wave roaster.

Mistead & Co is a more pretentious, less grounded alternative to Neptune Coffee, but it is a lot closer to central Seattle, so I will add that to the list as well.

Thanks for another incisive observation. Going to as many coffee shops as you do, you probably have a wider breadth of knowledge than me in terms of real-world trends. So let me pose this to you. How many coffee shops do you go into that have an espresso machine, but don't really know how to use it. I mean they can make brown liquid come out from it, but it doesn't taste like anything that would generally recognized as true espresso. I'd wager there are far more places (not even including restaurants here) that own an espresso machine without not really knowing how to use it properly.

The number of coffee shops that have a roasting machine in house are far fewer, but the same principle applies. You can own a roaster and you can get brown beans to come out of it, but that is not the same thing as knowing how to use it to produce a proper roast. So it wouldn't be surprising to me on balance that the average coffee shop with roaster you walk into is producing bad coffee.

The second part of my answer is that there is a distinct advantage to not roasting in house so that you can focus attention on doing one thing, brewing great coffee. Trying to juggle the demands of a roasting operation and a storefront coffee house, which in many ways are at odds, is something I constantly struggle with. The only reason I chose this model was that I am, at heart, a roaster, but wanted to have better control over how my coffee was presented. Owning the coffee house also lets me focus my roast style on flavor and not shelf life.

Darkstar, I like Victrola, aesthetically, but I am always a little underwhelmed by the cups of coffee I have had there. My rule for trying any place is that they offer single-origin coffee brewed by the cup and I generally don't get espresso, so I can't speak to their espresso program (I feel like espresso is well covered though). I would say the bulk of indie coffee shops, even those roasting their own tend to produce what I would describe as a inoffensive cup of coffee (I am working on a rating system). Victrola falls in that category. But I feel like the biggest issue I have with Victrola and other shops like it is a lack of freshness transparency, essentially not having it clearly stated what their freshness policy, how long from roast do they serve their coffee. Ironically, the Starbuck's Reserve Roastery does have a very clear policy on roast freshness, it is a really stupid one, but they do have one, more on that later.

When coffee was roasted is so important to how flavorful it is that I am really surprised that more independent coffee shops and roasters don't make more of an effort to make this information apparent to the customer or for that matter their staff. Often when I ask, the barista seem really confused by the question.

Ultimately, I find myself trying to guess how old the coffee is so that I can assess whether it is lacking in flavor from being old or poorly roasted.

Anyway, that is really my frustration and I have been to half a dozen or so shops since Victrola, only finding a couple that were noticeably different. Actually the cup I had at Stumptown roasters was indistinguishable from the one I had at Victrola.

After Victrola and a bite of lunch, we headed to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, which located less than a block away. The place is kind of a circus crammed full of tourists (I posted a picture to instragram and couldn't manage to get a shot that didn't have a couple of other phototakers in the frame). They had four single-origin offerings to choose from, two they recommend brewed and two they recommend for espresso. I order an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (brewed in a vacpot) and Brazil Mogiana (brewed in a Clover).

So, to their freshness policy: they let all of their beans rest for 7 days after roast before brewing them. While the barista was able to answer an impressive number of questions I had for him, he could not explain the logic of letting the coffee sit for so long before brewing, especially given that they still tend to roast the coffee on the dark side, which will also make the beans off-gas relatively quickly. It has been awhile since I have had a traditional cup of Starbucks coffee, but I would suspect that these were roasted a shade lighter, but still darker than would generally be considered optimal for highlighting the unique character of a single-origin lot.

My tab was over $20, so if Starbuck has learned anything from the indie coffee shops, it is how to overcharge. However, what I found particularly inexplicable about their pricing was that it was based on brewing method and not the bean. This seems like the antithesis of the specialty community's effort to highlight origin and the importance of paying farmers a living wage.

While it is clear they are still working out the kinks of that set up, I don't see it ever really supplanting indie coffee shops. The place still has a very corporate and out-of-touch feel to it and the barista, while friendly, did seem all that excited about the coffee they were serving.

When I have a little more time, I will do a write up about some of my coffee experiences during this trip, but meanwhile I want to point you toward the post from my last visit to Seattle a little over a year ago now.

Hi Rieux, Thanks for the Qualia love and thanks for asking about the impact of coffee rust. As I might have mentioned once or twice before, what I do as a roasters is entirely dependent on the hard work and diligence of farmers. So just a quick primer on coffee rust or what is also sometimes referred to coffee leaf disease. This has had a direct impact on farmers we work with as well as the industry in general. In the past decade, it has spread to through out the Americas and even to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. And as the earth warms up, it has begun to thrive at higher elevations where it used to be too cold for it to grow.

I have two specific examples of how it has impacted farmers we work with directly.

Three years ago we bought the entire crop (450 lbs) of coffee from a very small coffee farm in Nicaragua. The next year they produced three times as much coffee (we still bought 450 lbs and it was excellent). Last year, they had to destroy every coffee plant on the farm due to rust. While the farm was small, it was home to a dozen varietals of coffee. Most farms have just one, two or three varietals. They are replanting, but it's unlikely with the same diversity of plants.

For the past couple of years we have been getting beans from a small group of growers in Haiti's Artibonite regions. They grow two varietals in equal balance, Blue Moutain (it came to Haiti before making it's way to Jamaica, BTW) and Typica. While Blue Mountain is an interesting varietal, it doesn't really stand on its own self and really needs the typica to add some complexity. Unfortunately, last year coffee rust moved in and hit the typica plants hard. The good news was the Blue Mountain was much less effected. However, it threw off the delicate balance of the coffee we had the first year.

So, I want to come back to Don's question about brewing...by cheating: Here is my blog post of French press. I also have detailed descriptions for making your own hand-pour coffee and for cold brewing.

Darkstar, I think that Baratza and Jura-Capresso both make good home grinders, while there are a lot of home-products companies that make burr grinders (in contrast to blade grinders) that are of middling quality or straight-up junk. Mazzer makes some very fine grinders, but they only make espresso grinders while the Baratza and Capresso's are good for grinding everything from home espresso to French press.

Our mail order web-site is here: freshofftheroast.com.  It is functional, if barely (any merchant site designers on this forum who work for coffee?) and lists all our current coffee offerings (when I update it in a timely fashion). You can order two bags and shipping is $5.70. Ordering more doesn't make shipping cheaper. We also have a subscription service if you want us to just send you two bags of coffee every two weeks. We get mail orders from all of the country (and from some military bases internationally), but I would say at least half our orders are from people in and around DC.

Wow, out of radio contact for 12 hours and all kinds of questions to respond to now. Well, it's good I am on my second cup of coffee of the morning (it's still morning here in Seattle).

So, I want to come back to Don's rather deep inquiry; it is something I have thought about quite a lot, both willingly and through sleepless nights, but I just haven't had enough coffee or, maybe whiskey would be better, to confront it right now.

So, to darkstar's question about freezing coffee, at the very least, as your friends have discovered, it really doesn't noticeably preserve the coffee. Freezing is a good way to slow down biological activity, but coffee degradation is virtually all physics, the breakdown of volatile compounds which is only slight delayed by cold. On the other hand, freeze exposes the coffee to extreme changes in temperature which can actually hasten the breakdown of flavor-enhancing compounds, so net, this probably has an overall negative impact on coffee quality.

When freshly roasted, coffee does a really good job of preserving itself Kept at room temperature out of sunlight, no special measures are needed. Packaging can help, but even airtight containers don't arrest all forms of degradation.

Hands down, the best way to experience coffee is to buy it fresh and grind it right before you use it. A good grinder (we carry Baratza burr mills) will make a noticeable difference in the coffee you make at home, but the difference between grinding at home and preground coffee is so significant, that I encourage customers to buy whatever home grinder is in their budget. Buying good quality, fresh roasted coffee preground is like buying a nice wine then serving it warm in a dixie cup.

I like Baratza grinders because they are a good value, ranging in price from $129 up to $900, they tend to offer a lot of bang for the buck compared with competing products (i.e. Rancilio Rocky, which I can confirm porcupine I have also had a rocky relationship with, pardon the pun). But generally, I don't suffer brand loyalty. However, I generally discourage my customers from buying any burr grinder that costs less then 100 bucks. Why? Because there are a lot of burr grinders out there for half the price of a good one that both don't work very well and don't last very long.

We also carry French press from a Canadian glass manufacturer called Grosche (they can be found on Amazon). I have a hard time distinguishing any significant difference between presses from different companies, but we do find the Grosche products to be particularly attractive. They also supply relatively inexpensive replacement glass for the units we carry.

Finally, we carry Hario glassware, very simple cones that you put on top of a carafe or cup to brew your coffee by pouring water through a filter. Again, no particular reason for carrying this particular brand of filter holder versus any other. We have nylon filters manufactured to fit these cones and I think they make a big difference. Compared with paper or cloth filters, nylon is a single layer and absorbs less of the coffee oils which enhance the flavor of your brew. This is similar to the benefit of a French press without having small particles of coffee continuing to steep in your cup.

Gulp, looks like it is time for my next cup of coffee.

This post was written at Victrola Coffee Roasters on Pike Street in Seattle.

Darkstar, Thanks for the thoughtful interrogatory (oh, I guess I am still a writer). Standard cupping procedure requires us to assess several factors, five to be precises: fragrance/aroma, acidity, body, flavor and aftertaste. While the smell of the coffee is important, it isn't the core of taste, so I will set that aside for now. To me body and acidity are two sides of the same coin. These really constitute the mouthfeel of the coffee and are what I think most people notice immediately about any particular coffee they drink. These will really be apparent on some level whether you are drinking the coffee black or with cream and/or sugar. If these elements in balance, you have what I would describe as a good cup of coffee. So the flavor is really where a great cup of coffee distinguishes itself from a good cup of coffee. Some coffee, taking Don's experience for example, are balanced and have distinctive notes, in the case of Sidamo, distinct chocolate and cherry. On the other hand, a great coffee has a chorus of flavors that tantalize the tongue. With a great coffee, it make be difficult or impossible to really place the flavors as they seem to change and morph, which is where I start to describe them as layers, because they don't reveal themselves all in one sip.

The more complex coffee, the harder it is to describe what specific flavors you are tasting and the more imaginative often the notes become.

Speaking of great coffee, I will jetting off to Seattle in a few hours to attend the 2015 SCAA conference. I hope to be experiencing some great coffee while I am there. I will be checking in with the chat as I can and maybe even posting a mini-travelogue, if folks are interested.