RoastMonkey

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. 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. 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. 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.

Hey porcupine, I feel you. I got so addicted to fresh coffee, I opened my own damn coffee shop. I think you have a couple of options. If getting to Qualia is inconvenient, we do ship. Actually, we get a surprising number of mail orders from folks who live in DC. There are also an increasing number of by-mail subscription or other on-line retailers who sell coffee from multiple roasters nationally. My second thought is home roasting. The green coffee is much more durable. You can buy several months worth of coffee and only roast it when you need it. However, this does take some planning. As a general rule, coffee actually improves a couple days after it is roasted. This has to do with the fact that just-roasted coffee slowly releases CO2 gas and some of that off-gassing needs to occur before you can get proper extraction. Again, just a general rule, coffee is best three-to-five days from roast (results may vary, Don). I often see a big drop off in flavor around eight-to-nine days off of roast, but I have had coffees that have actually peaked that far out, as well, so really treat these as very general rules. The key for me is that while the coffee is changing, when it is at it's best is an entirely subjective experience. So, one person might really like the coffee at day five and another prefer day three. For me, I enjoy seeing how the coffee changes over time. Actually, that is really one of the most interesting things to me about fresh coffee is how it is a little different every day. But, I'm getting off track. There is one other option (and no, Don, it isn't freezing the beans). Keeping your coffee in an air-tight container will keep the delicate volatile compounds from breaking down as quickly. If you want to be really fussy about it, which I totally encourage, weigh out as much coffee as you need for each day and store each daily batch in it's own sealed container. There a couple brewing methods I don't like, namely percolators (extracts too much) and Chemex (extracts too little), but otherwise, I think you should use whatever method fits your routine. I personally use manual drip because it suits my ritual in the morning: put on the hot water, feed the animals, do the dishes, then spend four minutes listening to the crazy on C-SPAN while I brew a pot of coffee. I like French press, but don't use them at home because inevitably one of our four cats will knock it off the counter. So, like I said, whatever fits your lifestyle you should use. More important is developing the recipe you use to get a consistent and satisfactory result. Again to point to my secret blog, I have guidelines for several brewing methods there.

Don, To address your last questions first, if you grow coffee at higher altitude/cooler temperature, you still need shade to ensure quality. The reason this is even an issue is that a decade ago, some farmers were cutting down shade trees on their farms so that their coffee trees would get more sunlight and therefore grow faster. This was famously bad for the bird population, but also people quickly realized that this was bad for the quality of the coffee. In terms of where coffee comes from, that is a pretty general question, so I am just going to give you some more homework: this web site created by our friends from Nicaragua has a comprehensive description of how coffee is grown and processed at origin. Now, back to your questions/observations about good versus great coffee. You are, of course, correct that not every coffee that Qualia offers should be considered a great coffee. To put my answer in a personal context, a great coffee has both a delicate balance of flavors AND deep complexity while a good coffee should still have good balance, but may only have one or two layers to it. Like wine, a great coffee is best appreciated on it's own, while a good coffee is good for drinking along with food or maybe for adding milk and sugar. I wonder how other people define the difference between good and great coffee.

Darkstar: I want to address your question about fair-trade coffee separately, because in a sense certification whether Fair Trade, Organic, Rainforest Alliance or UTZ serves a different purpose then tracing coffee to its origins. Speaking from a highly cynical perspective, all they do is make you feel good about you purchase without having to think too deeply about what you are buying. What they don't do is actually ensure that farmers are paid a living wage, the environment is protected or that you receive a pure, unadulterated product. The reason they fail to deliver on their promise is not out of an effort to deceive consumers, but because they are reducing the complexities of an international traded commodity into a 15-second sales pitch. More informed experts than myself have written extensively about how the Fair-Trade certification process fails in many places to capture the real and often desperate conditions in which farmers are really living. Ultimately, specialty coffee roasters have moved away from relying on (not abandoning them) because they don't provide as much information as we need to make our purchasing decisions. To your question about how we know that the coffee we are buying are sustainable, both economically for the growers and environmentally for the land, short of visiting the farms and sitting down with the farmers, we can't really have that kind of first-hand knowledge. What we can do is pay well above market price for our coffee. I'm not rah-rah capitalist, but there is some very straightforward math here. We pay more for better quality, importers pay farmers more, farmers have an incentive to grow better coffee. This is a feedback loop that benefits everyone along the supply chain. Incidentally, the same growing practices that produce better coffee are more environmentally sustainable as well. For example, shade grown coffee develops slower, giving the fruit more time to absorb nutrients, leading to a better tasting bean. So by simply demanding higher quality and more information, and being willing to pay for it, specialty roasters help farmers not only make a living wage, but give them an incentive to grow better, more sustainable coffee.

Thanks Darkstar for your questions on sourcing and traceability. It's a complicated issue that can be really difficult to summarize given the many different levels in which we maintain relationships. Without going back to the beginning, once I opened Qualia, I was in a position to buy coffee by the sack, the vast majority of which ship directly from the country of origin and weigh between 60 and 70 kilograms. While then as now, I order the bulk of our coffee from US-based importers (mostly warehousing in NJ) who have purchased the coffee directly from growers or mills at origin. Just to be clear, we work with specialty coffee importers, who focus on high quality beans and make up only a small fraction of worldwide coffee sales. However, from the very start of Qualia, we have also been in the fortunate position of being able to work with small, single-origin importers. Many of the relationships we developed early on have flourished and grown together over the past six years. For example, we have worked very closely for several years with a group of Nicaraguan farmers who were just starting to organize as I was in the process of opening the storefront. In fact, the DC-based founder of the group, came to me weeks before we were ready to open our doors and asked me to roast several batches of beans he had just brought in from Matagalpa in his carry-on luggage. Now his group represents dozens of small farms throughout Matagalpa and Jinotega, all of whom are fetching much higher prices for their coffee than they ever imagined. The advantage of being a small-scale roaster is that I can work with an individual farm, one that may only produce a few hundred pounds of coffee beans annually and maintain the integrity and distinction of that lot, while a larger roaster requires ten times as much of any particular coffee to make it practical for them to buy it. Over the years, we have also worked with single-origin and in some case single-estate importers from Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Colombia and even Ethiopia and our results have been mixed. Just as there are many farmers/importers who are looking to build a quality brand, there are others who just want to turn a quick buck. I have had to be a little cautious when approached by potential vendors. We, of course, roast and cup everything in house before we buy, but there have been a few times when the samples we were supplied didn't match the coffee we were sold. Traceability is also essential in this process, especially as we start to work a larger variety of small vendors. Coffee is a high value crop in many countries and it is not unheard of for shipments to be stolen at gun point. However, the financial value of coffee cuts the other way as well. Over the past couple of years we have been able to purchase coffee lots from places like Rwanda and Uganda, where coffee revenue has played a key role in helping war-torn regions rebuild and promote stability. Over past year, we have worked with a group of Christian missionaries who have been helping farmers in Colombia's Valle de Cauca region make the transition from growing coca to cultivating coffee. Access to smart phones and the Internet has made the world a smaller place and allowed us more direct access to the people growing the coffee we drink. Coffee may be a huge industry, but the majority of it still grows on farms that are only a few hectares of land. To me, this gives us small-scale roasters the advantage of being able to highlight these well-managed coffees and bring attention to the farmers who do so much of the hard work of bringing them to us.

Hey Don, Yes, I would definitely agree that each coffee has a unique terroir due to soil content and other environmental factors. There is also the issue of varietal or cultivar. Although the specialty coffee market deals almost exclusively with arabica beans, within the species arabica there are dozens of different varietals including global ones such as bourbon and typica and regionally specific ones such as castillo or mokka. Certainly the nature part of the equation can't be overlooked, but there are several other factors that contribute to the final cup profile including, how much rain and sunlight the plants get, how the coffee cherries are harvested, how the beans are removed from the cherry and finally how the coffee beans are sorted for defects. These can actually alter compounds in the coffee bean and impact the final flavor profile. All of these things play off each other and there are arguably too many variables to reasonably take them into account for an individual lot of coffee. Since you've already brought up sake, it reminds me of the story behind how the sake brewmasters figured out that the type of yeasts that were living in the different brewing houses was determining whether the sake made there was good or not. Recently coffee growers have started to look more critically at the fermentation process that is necessary to remove the bean from the fruit. Apparently different fermentation times can have a noticeable impact on the flavor of the end product. And this is only looking at wet processed coffee in which the cherries are soaked in water for just a few hours in order to make the beans easier to remove. Dry processed coffee in which the cherries are left on the beans for weeks while they sun dry create a completely different flavor profile and will require separate exploration. And that is all factors that affect the flavor profile before it ever gets to me, the roaster, much less the barista or whomever is brewing it into a cup. But, to diverge for a moment, the response from Terry Theise's chat (Don, I am so glad you posted that link; it's a great read) that really spoke to me was this one: "I don't tend to think in lofty concepts like 'the future of wine', but like anyone who loves the stuff I ponder what's happening to it. Somewhere in one of my catalogs I muse that there'll always be a small loyal audience for the very finest, most mystically intricate wines, and also a very large audience for fake-boobs lap-dance wines, but I wonder about the many wines in between: the lovely, useful, not-great but infinitely good...not wines of moderate virtue but rather wines wherein moderation IS a virtue. Who will buy them? Lately I have come to feel we place insufficient emphasis on the simple desires of the body, on the wines that make us sensually HAPPY, that deliver us joy. It isn't always "fun" to drink great wines, you know. And I doubt many people would select a great wine to answer the question 'What am I thirsty for?'" I feel like I could apply this almost word-for-word to coffee. There is a lot of dreck out there, but there is also a lot of really good, enjoyable beans being produced right now that sometimes gets overshadowed by rare and over-priced and over-hyped coffees, like geisha or kopi luwak. The difference in price between the good-to-great coffee and the dreck is relatively modest while the difference in price between the latter and the high-profile coffees is enormous and rarely, if ever justified.

Hi porcupine, I do not have that one, but thank you for pointing it out. I will definitely be adding it to the collection.

Before answering those questions, I would like to thank darkstar for moderating this chat and for being such an ardent supporter of the local coffee scene. I also want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Don for hosting this chat and, of course, for creating this forum where food industry and the folks who support us can meet and interact. I'm very excited to be a part of this community and look forward to answering any questions DR.com members have about coffee, the coffee business or my collection of satirical coffee-themed t-shirts. Darkstar, to your question about our focus on single-origin coffee (in contrast to blends which mix coffee beans from multiple countries), from the very beginning of my obsession with coffee, I was fascinated with the natural variety of flavors that beans from different countries exhibit. An expertly cultivated coffee bean has more than 400 flavor compounds, making for enormous potential complexity. For me, as a budding coffee snob, that was what made coffee worth exploring beyond just finding a satisfying cup of joe. It wasn't a deep intellectual conviction as much as simple curiosity that drove me to seek out the best single-origin coffees I could find. When I launched Qualia, which grew out of my home roasting/farmers market experience, I focused on single-origin coffee beans more out of practicality than principle. Roasting in such small batches, offering such a wide variety of coffees and rotating our inventory seasonally makes it logistically very difficult to sustain anything like a consistent blend. But over time, as I have shifted an increasing amount of my attention to how we purchase our coffee, the impetus to maintain the integrity of each bean has evolved into a core philosophy, which I describe in greater detail on my secret blog here. To summarize very briefly, there is a story behind every coffee, about where it came from, who cared for it and how it got to me, and that story is important because it explains why each coffee has a distinctive flavor. In terms of freshness, which is also, I think an important aspect of what makes Qualia unique, we sell all of our beans within three days of roast and all the coffee we use for brewing in house is within a week. That policy is not about selling our coffee while it is still good or fresh enough, but rather ensuring that our customers get to experience the coffee when it is at it's best, the short window of peak freshness. But from a purely selfish perspective, this means that I get to roast the coffee the way I want to, the way I think will bring out the most flavor, without worrying about shelf life.

I do classes whenever I find a space that will host them. I did one in January and one in February, both of which were packed. I would be happy to do a free one for DR.com members if someone wants to provide the space. My basic message is look for origin info. Even if you don't know anything about the particular origin, a roaster who provides specific information about their sourcing is probably taking a lot of care in their roasting as well. Also, my experience is that coffee lots that come from a well defined geographical area tend to be better. I put this down to the fact that as you mix beans together from a region or a whole country, you are mixing together beans of different levels of quality, which brings down the overall quality of the entire lot. goodeats poses a really fundamental question, one that I was seeking to answer for myself when I first started roasting and selling coffee at local farmers markets. The conclusion I have come to is that roasted coffee is essentially much like fresh produce. Anyone selling a natural product must make comprises between providing a fresh and flavor product and shelf stability. To put it succinctly, in order to have coffee sit on the shelf longer with less flavor loss, you sacrifice much of the inherent complexity of the beans from the start. My standard analogy is to compare the spinach you get at the local farmers market, picked that morning, with the stuff in the bag in the supermarket. While the first is full of flavor, it wilts after just a few days, while the bagged stuff remains crisp for a week or more, but has little flavor to start. While I think Todd Kliman's recent post reflects more his own willful ignorance on the subject than the current state of coffee in DC, there is a part of me that understands why he wrote it. Within the specialty coffee community, there is an adherence to a roast style that highlights acidity over body. Everything in roasting is about finding a balance between the flavors that are intrinsic to the beans. One roaster may choose to highlight the bright, floral notes, while another may seek to bring out the syrupy, chocolate tones. While all those flavors will be there, if roasted properly, it's possible to roast in such a way that the acidity virtually masks the body and vice versa. For some time now, I feel as if the industry standard has leaned toward the former and disparaged the latter. To my palate, there should be more of a balance between the two to produce a satisfying cup of coffee. However, there are plenty of folks who would vociferously disagree with me on that.

Roasting good coffee at home, no doubt. Roasting great coffee at home, doubtful. As DarkStar mentions there are just too many variables you cannot control for in a home roasting setting to reach the full potential of the coffee, understanding that coffee has more than 400 flavor compounds. Tim Carman just published an article about local coffee roasters in which he quotes me comparing roasting coffee at home to baking bread at home. The point I was trying to make is that even if you start out with the exact same ingredients, a professional roaster has access to the equipment and expertise that no home roaster can hope to replicate. This is going to make me seem pretentious, but the vast majority of people, including most of the people on this forum, have never experienced a truly great coffee. You really can't appreciate what your missing if all you have ever had access to was just good-to-mediocre brews. That's not to say we are either the sole arbiter or purveyors of great coffee, but when you have that first transcendent cup of coffee, you will know the difference. Joel

Speaking as a professional who owns a coffee shop across the street from where a Starbucks recently opened (inside a new Safeway), our experience is pretty neutral. I can absolutely say that Starbucks has not helped us. They probably have mainly sucked up our casual neighborhood clientele, but foot traffic has grown substantially in the months before and after they opened, making it difficult to correlate any changes to the Starbucks itself. I would take anything written up in Fresh Cup with a giant grain of salt The few articles not actually written by marketing departments, are heavily influenced by them. I know that Starbucks likes to promote research showing that independent coffee shops do better where they open stores, but that seems like a specious interpretation of the data. In reality, Starbucks doesn't open a storefront in any neighborhood that hasn't already reached a critical mass of customers, at which point those indies are already doing better. From my own experience, we invested and struggled in Petworth for years until the neighborhood reached the point that it could actually sustain a coffee shop, while Starbucks smartly waited for the right moment to move in. Our business picked up significantly about nine months before they opened and you can bet they have all the market data they need to anticipate the right moment. In that sense, DarkStar is correct that indies are always years ahead of Starbucks, which just means Starbucks can wait until we figure things out then steal all our best ideas. Joel

No, I wouldn't. I think Starbuck's processing isn't fundamentally different from any other coffee roaster, although the execution isn't one most specialty roasters would be boasting about. I don't like over roasted coffee, but I can tolerate it. The problem I have with Starbuck's coffee is how incredibly stale it always taste. But Starbucks isn't really that unique in serving stale coffee, so I think most people don't realize that the defining flavor of the coffee they are drinking is mainly due to denatured proteins and carbonized sugars (all the aromatics and volatile compounds that fresh coffee exhibit are long gone a week or two after roasting). However, the stuff that McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, etc sell is more a coffee product than actual coffee. That's not to say it can't taste good or, at least, enjoyable. It just doesn't taste like real coffee.

I think calling the aforementioned beverages, "coffee," is a bit like calling Velveeta, "cheese." They are so highly processed (homogenized, stabilized and genericized) that they little resemble the natural product.

So glad you brought this up. I have been trying to find a space in the central business district for more than 2 years, even went on Kojo Show to discuss the barriers I have faced. There are very few small footprint spaces that landlords want to rent downtown and when they do come up they give preference to large chains with lots of bank. Without boring you with the details, I recently spent 2 months negotiating a letter of intent with a landlord downtown, only to be summarily dropped when a larger vendor came along. I know that isn't really an answer to your problem, but it maybe explains why there aren't more indie coffee shops centrally located.

I'm a bit confused by all the love for a large national chain that produces a middling product. There are so many indie coffee shops you could and should be supporting before going to Peets. This is only a partial list, via DCist.

Since my last post, we have added a number of restaurants to our client list. These establishments make what, in my experience, is an uncommon commitment to quality. They all follow these criteria: 1) They have a grinder 2) They grind the coffee just before brewing 3) They offer brewed-to-order coffee service 4) Bulk brewing is used only during peak brunch service when coffee is consumed in a short period of time. On our side, we don't have minimums and we deliver our beans within 24 hours (if not same day) as they are roasted. By not having minimums and delivering once a week, we can ensure the coffee is used when it is still fresh and flavorful. Restaurants where you can currently find our coffee includes: Chez Billy DC Reynolds Petworth Citizen Daikaya Dino's Grotto