RoastMonkey

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

Curious, would you say the same about Starbucks?

I think drinking a cup of hot, black Starbucks coffee - from just about any bean or roast - is masochism.

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.

These independent coffee lists are great, but I see exactly one independent (Chinatown Coffee) in the large business district that stretches from the White House to the Capitol Building.  So for all the people that commute to work Monday - Friday and get off the Metro at Farragut North/West, McPherson Square, Metro Center, etc. (which in my experience is the vast majority of the Red, Orange, and Blue Line people that use Metro to get downtown), what are your options.  Starbuck's, Peet's, or chain restaurant/sandwich shop that is serving breakfast (Corner Bakery, Au Bon Pain etc.).

In the handful of times I've been to the Peet's by Metro Center they serve a decent cup of coffee for less than $2 (for a small).  

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

Own a piece of DC restaurant history

That was fast. Let the vultures descend.

This is happening later this month. You can get more info and purchase tickets here.

I will be brewing coffee to accompany all the great food. Come out and support this wonderful effort.

Here's a blurb:

"Hosted in our nation's capital, an epicenter of world cuisine, over 20 of our nation's best chefs will team up to prepare ethnically inspired small bites for over 200 guests onThursday, April 24th. Chefs use Common Threads' core after-school program, Cooking Skills & World Cuisine, as their inspiration. Each week in the program, our students "travel" with their imaginations to a different country far outside their neighborhoods, by learning about and preparing healthy recipes indigenous to that specific country."

Anyone attended a Whiskey Guild tasting event before? Anyone attending this one in October?

Whisky Tasting and Dinner Event

Join The Whisky Guild as we gather to sample, celebrate and showcase the world's finest whiskies. Distillers, brand ambassadors, and masters of whisky will be in attendance to guide you through sampling from close to 100 different spirits. With your ticket purchase, you will receive admittance to the event, a world-renown Glencairn tasting glass, gourmet buffet dinner and the opportunity to attend a special Master Class hosted by the most gifted people in the whisky industry. Come sample new whiskies, or rediscover an old favorite, all while enjoying breathtaking views of the Potomac River!

New whisky enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike will enjoy this fantastic event!

I'm confused how this got posted as a separate thread (and where the title came from). I originally posted it in the thread labeled Independent Coffee Houses.

Just in case anyone was under the impression that running a cafe is easy or straightforward, an interesting behind-the-scenes look at Big Chair in Anacostia:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/2014/02/16/eedd1496-9022-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html

Also note that Nurish, the new cafe from Kera Carpenter (Domku) recently opened in the Anacostia Arts Center.

https://www.facebook.com/NURISHDC

I recently spent a few days in Seattle and with the help of a relatively functional bus system, managed to get to a dozen coffee shops while there. My preference is for brewed coffee and will always pick from brewed-to-order options when available. My experience in Seattle was not that different from what I have grown accustomed to in DC, which is that most places offer a very limited menu of single-origin brews and focus most of their energy on espresso based drinks. I also find that a lot of specialty roasters hue to a profile that highlights acidity at the expense of complexity. The thing I find especially problematic about these roasts is the lack of body in the cup. That said, I did find a few good cups in Seattle. Here is a rundown of the places I visited:

Reading back through this thread, there are a few points worth explaining, especially in reference to some of saf's comments:

First of all, one misnomer I would love to quash is that lattes are synonymous with coffee. This is not to imply that lattes are somehow inferior, but saying "coffee" when you mean a "latte" is just inaccurate. I think of lattes as a coffee-based cocktail. To make an analogy, a Manhattan is not bourbon.

Secondly, while there is not really a standard size for lattes, most boutique shops weigh in at 6-8oz in an attempt to find the right balance of milk and coffee. We have a "12oz latte" on our menu and generally offer a triple shot to maintain the ratios, but only a handful of folks take us up on that. At 12oz, you have five times as much milk as coffee, so there isn't a whole lot of coffee flavor. In this context, a dark roast makes more sense since the flavor is prominent, if one-dimensional, but as mentioned in one of my earlier post, really what you are tasting is the roasting process and not the natural flavor of the bean, which to me personally is way more interesting.

Lastly, milk steaming is a true skill that when done correctly perfectly sweetens and texturizes the milk. There is very narrow temperature range for achieving this result, between 145 and 150 degrees. Above 150 degrees, proteins start to break down diminishing both sweetness and microfoam. Take it much above 160 degrees and you scald the milk.

This is why we serve our lattes the way we do, but that's not to say that people can't enjoy their drinks prepared differently. If someone requests an extra hot 12oz latte, that is exactly what we strive to serve them.

Tim Carman has a great series of articles in today's Post about coffee brewing (and the obsession that it can sometimes provoke).

A glass-lined vacuum flask (A.K.A. thermos which is actually a brand name) has better thermal properties and is easier to keep clean, but they are bulkier and much easier to break.

The best option I have found are the Zojirushi thermal flasks. They have amazing heat retention, are durable and although steel, have a teflon inner lining that protect against the metallic off-taste of unlined S/S.

Eagle Rare is my cabinet staple. It's a readily available, 10-year, single barrel for under $30. I can't think of any reason I wouldn't have a bottle on hand.

I also really like the Evan Williams Single Barrel and Henry McKenna Single Barrel when I can find them. See a trend here? I can enjoy a good blend, but have never found them as satisfying as single barrel whiskeys. In that way whiskey is very much like my other beverage of choice, coffee. Always go for the single-origin over a blend.