We're Moving!

Happy 2008 to all of our loyal customers! Freshcoffeenow.com is excited to announce that next Monday we are moving our roasting center to Burlington! For those of you from far away places, Burlington is the town that is next door to Winooski, our current location. It is the largest town in our small state, and it will be a great place for us to operate in. For starters, we have about twice as much room to warehouse coffee. We also wont have to walk down 25 steep stairs when getting coffee to and from our roaster.

For the customer, the biggest difference is that we won't run out of coffee as often (although certain Fair Trade co operatives, and Jamaican coffees will still be hard to find). We also won't be bothered with the restaurant that was above the old roasting facility, allowing us to focus more on coffee, our website and the wholesale business. This should make everything a bit smoother, and our jobs a bit more fun.

Here's some "before" pics of the new space. Look for more pictures next week as we install the roaster and bring over some coffee!

The Price of Excellence, Part I

Please excuse this interruption of the usually scheduled blog: Joe has been on vacation in Alaska for a couple weeks, and while I am down here roasting beans in his place I figured I could simultaneously hijack his blog and see what happens. Shhhh! Don’t tell him, and he might not notice…

As you can imagine while selling coffee for living, I field all kinds of questions about coffee every day. If they are technical questions about roasting, making espresso or the specific qualities of any particular bean, I immediately refer the person asking to Joe. He knows a lot more about that stuff than I do! I find that when I try and quote him, much of it gets lost in translation. More and more often though, and especially lately, people want to know about Jamaican coffee. Some questions include, but are not limited to, “is it really the best coffee money can buy?”, “why do you run out so often?” and “why is it so damn expensive?” So while I’m here “borrowing” Joe’s blog, I figured I could give a brief history of Jamaican coffee, and at the same time try and answer some of everyone’s questions.


A Brief History of Jamaican Coffee

Coffee was brought to Jamaica way back in 1728, while it was a British colony. The first governor, Sir Lewis Hawes, brought this addictive little bean over to see if it would take on the newly conquered island. Suffice to say that it did! For the next 200 years, coffee grew on the island and wasn’t considered anything special, although they did import quite a bit of it and it was the favorite of the Queen of England (the current Queen, Elizabeth II, only drinks Blue Mountain coffee).

By the early 1900’s Jamaican coffee was becoming recognized as some of the best coffee you could get into your cup. They started producing more and more coffee, and at some point after World War II the sheer volume they were producing was leading to poor quality as not enough attention was being paid to the important details of growing the crops. This led to the English government forming the “Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica” in 1953.

Jamaica would shortly thereafter become independent of the UK, but adopt the Industry Board into its’ fledgling constitution. From there, the current system quickly developed. The government created five co-operatives that every farmer in the region had to sell their beans to: Moy Hall, Wallenford, Mavis Bank, Langley and Silver Hill. The board started grading the beans on their shape, size and texture, creating 4 categories for the coffees: #1, #2, #3 and triage, from highest to lowest quality. After the farmers sold the beans to the co-ops, the co-ops would then process them, barrel them and sell them.

Why “Blue Mountain?”

The coffee is called “Jamaican Blue Mountain” because it is grown in the Blue Mountain Region of Jamaica. The Blue Mountain range gets its name from its’ low lying cloud cover, which forms a mist that often makes the trees on the mountain look green. Coffee grown in the region is required by law to be grown between 2000 and 5500 feet above sea level. The mountains reach 7500 feet in height, but the area between 5501 and 7500 feet is recognized as “preserved forest” by government law. The growing conditions in the Blue Mountain range are considered ideal by coffee growers world wide. Between the rich soil, heavy rainfall and easy drainage off the sides of the mountains, this coffee is basically perfect.

Why it is so rare, and expensive?
Click here for Part II...

Cheers,
Matt

The Roast Master

I loved my little, red 1979 Volvo 242 - her two doors and wool seats and lack of air conditioning - she was always dependable; an absolute joy even in 100 degree heat. On sunny days, I'd get into my car and go to the café where I worked to amp up on some double espresso shots for an hour or so. When I got back into my boiling car, I was buzzing. Everything had that 60's high-school yearbook fantasy picture fuzz on it. Driving while impaired on caffeine, I tried not to hit anyone while flying through the city in my ancient, beat-up Volvo, singing and restlessly agitated by the caffeine.


That café had an unbelievable machine from space. The agtron control system and mass spectrometer used to determine roast degree was impressive. She was dialed in, roaring, turning, and exiting. Blue, silver, chrome, brass, and coffee oil. For some, a coffee-roasting machine is like a big steam engine.... like a huge tractor when you were a kid. Some people when they see it say, "Wow, that’s a big coffee maker!" or "Hey look, a gigantic coffee grinder!"

Roast science has been evolving for a while now, and people discovered that coffee is the most aromatically diverse food or drink on the planet. There are over some 850 volatile aromatic compounds, many of which are still misunderstood. The roast master controls the induction of heat and air over a time period, and this determines how these sugars,chemicals, and compounds react with each other, and ultimately determines the quality of the roasted product.

Density and moisture content are major factors when roasting. Also, barometric pressure and humidity effect how air and temperature work with the beans in a roast chamber. Whether you are using a drum roaster or a fluid bed air roaster, this technical information can affect the quality, finish, and degree of roast.

Each coffee from its different growing region has unique properties and is analyzed, tested, tasted, graded, and so on. I take information like density and moisture content and roast the coffee to magnify its individual characteristics. I try not to dark-roast coffee because it loses a lot of delicate aromatic and taste properties due to carbonization of sugars and other factors. Many customers favor a dark roast, so I do try to make a blend of a few coffees with different taste profiles and roast them a slight degree darker then a medium roast to get a rounded full-bodied cup while still preserving the aromatic and taste properties.

If this information is useless to you - don’t worry! My French roast rocks! Try it!

My first Word!

I remember my mom, each morning, in her fuscia night gown, coming down stairs into the kitchen to make coffee. She would point at the coffee jar on the counter and say “mmm, coffee…” It said COFFEE on the side of the jar in gold letters. So, at a really early age I learned to read, and my first word was coffee. My mom told me this, years ago. Being the smart lad I am I tried to prove it to one of my co-worker friends the other week. I said to her, “I’m serious, my first word was coffee, go ahead… call my mom!” I gave her the number and she called. My mom answers the phone and was asked,

“What was Joe’s first word?”

Mom says, “I don’t remember what it was.”

I grab the phone, “Mom, it was coffee, remember? You told me this a while ago!”

As it was clear I was disgruntled, she said “Joey, (she calls me Joey sometimes) I don’t think it was coffee, I could be wrong.”

“Mom, you told me it was coffee ok, so for future reference when I have someone call you and ask what my first word was, it was coffee, ok?”

I hung up the phone in disbelief and continued to tell my friend that my mom said she remembered all the sudden. The ploy was unsuccessful.

My parents must have had a hidden agenda while raising me. I was named Joe. Joe means coffee: “cup of joe” and so on. My last name is Consentino, very similar to cappuccino. It even rhymes.


Interest in coffee began early for me. I attended school for my early years, of course. When I turned 16 all that learning had become boring, so I started working at cafés’ and coffee roasteries. I was mystified by the steaming, shiny machine on the counter, which I wasn’t allowed to touch until I was trained. I am still mystified. I find myself staring at the milk as it cyclones in the pitcher. Its velvet texture, shiny when I swirl it, touches the espresso. It mixes with the cocoa and sugar and works itself under and around. I get so much pleasure making drinks for people who are exited to get something special. We try giving people a great experience here in the café, as we do with our online customers. Our coffee rocks. Try it!

Joe