Like fine wines, gourmet coffee blends all the rage with customers who like to know where their food comes from

By JIM HADDADIN

Source: The Telegraph

Of many coffee growing regions in Costa Rica, Tarrazu is situated at the highest altitude, which yields more dense beans. King David’s Costa Rica Tarrazu is sourced from a single estate in the Tarrazu region. It tastes light and citrusy, with fruit flavors and a decent body.

The beans for this coffee come from Finca Santa Isabel, a 2,220-acre farm in the south of Guatemala. The beans undergo a very light roast to showcase the natural flavor, which is distinct compared to other Guatemalan coffees. It has a red wine aroma and fruity, sparkling raspberry taste, with a light body and sweet lemon finish.

Sourced from the Konga growing zone in Ethiopia, these coffee beans are “dry-processed,” meaning they are left to dry inside the fruit. This imparts a strong berry flavor, highlighted by a light roast.

Mark Small swept his hand across a sea of churning beans, shipped approximately 9,100 miles from Papua New Guinea and roasted fresh for customers of a small coffee shop on Route 101A.

Nearby, about 24 pounds of Sumatra green beans were spinning slowly in a drum, being heated by infrared burners and undergoing around 600 chemical reactions to transform into another perfect pile of crackling, brown coffee beans.

It’s a process that plays out a few dozen times a week at A&E Coffee Roastery & Tea in Amherst, which roasts as much as 1,000 pounds of coffee beans in a typical week. The small batches are prepared each morning and sold inside A&E’s small cafe. They’re also delivered around the region to individuals and wholesale buyers.

While independent coffee roasters like A&E were once hard to find, the Nashua area is now home to at least half a dozen businesses that specialize in producing small batches of fresh, premium-quality coffee.

Some coffee drinkers still prefer a regular cup of joe from a clogged drive through, but coffee connoisseurs in southern New Hampshire now have their pick of some of the most exotic coffees in the world, freshly roasted and brewed.

“I think it’s a great time for people who enjoy coffee,” said Small, who has been roasting coffee for A&E for about two years. “There’s a lot more options out there, and there’s room for everybody.”

Like fine wines, coffee beans have inherent flavors that are influenced by factors like growing altitude, rainfall and soil composition. Small says coffee roasters aim to enhance those flavors by adjusting the time it takes to roast a batch of raw coffee beans, the temperatures the beans reach and the airflow within the coffee roasting equipment.

Aficionados like Small say having precise control over these factors can produce a much higher-quality product than the typical can of coffee that’s available at the supermarket.

And like any food product, coffee can begin to turn stale the longer it sits around. While a supermarket product might have been roasted months earlier, small-batch coffee roasters churn out fresh bags of java each week.

“Like bread, it’s good when it’s fresh,” said Sam Brest, owner of King David Coffee Roasters in Nashua. “Once you roast, the clock is ticking. Depending on how picky you are about your coffee, that timeline may be different.”

Brest has been in the roasting business for 13 years, and he currently operates out of a renovated mill building at 48 Bridge St. He said independent roasters have the ability to buy some of the highest-quality coffee beans on the market, unlike mass-market coffee producers. And these days, many coffee drinkers value the distinction, he said.

“Some consumers really do have a lot of knowledge,” Brest said. “They know what they’re looking for. … Other people don’t, and I educate them. I talk to them about the different coffees. I give them something to try.”

Brest buys only “specialty-grade” coffee beans from his distributor, meaning they’re listed as being in the top 6 percent of the coffee crop. His beans arrive in 154-pound sacks from 12 countries, each with their own distinctive characteristics.

One of King David’s roasts is made from Tanzanian “peaberries” – coffee beans that did not split open inside the fruit, imparting a more intense flavor.

Others are notable for the way they’re processed. For example, one Costa Rican coffee on his shelf undergoes a “Swiss water process” to be stripped of caffeine. It’s 100 percent chemical free and uses charcoal filters to process the beans.

With packaging equipment onsite, Brest has developed between 150 and 200 wholesale accounts in about 20 states. Most are linked with Brest’s other brand, Cohas Coffee, which specializes in specialty maple-flavored coffees.

King David is also open to walk-in customers, and Brest ships small orders to individuals and organizations who order by the pound on his website.

After learning the ropes of coffee roasting, Brest now takes the most delight in the subtle characteristics of his lighter roasts.

“The lighter roasts have more flavor than the darker roasts – the light or medium roasts,” he said. “When it’s darker, it’ll taste stronger, but you lose those citrus notes, for example. They go away. [When] you’re roasting darker, the sugars begin to caramelize, and they get a little sweet and a little chocolatey, depending on where the coffee’s coming from … but you lose all those subtle notes, which I personally enjoy.”

Other roasters, like A&E, have established a business model that capitalizes on inviting customers into a cafe setting to taste their products. A&E hosts tasting nights and highlights a product line that is all organic, and mostly Fair Trade-certified.

A&E has been in business for more than 10 years. It buys coffee beans from 16 points of origin and produces its own espresso blends and coffee roasts. For each batch, roasters jot down the time and temperature at various points to track how the flavor is influenced.

These days, many customers who walk into the shop are already well-versed in the nuances of each variety, and they know what they’re looking for, Small said. And many bring the same mind set to coffee as they do to food — they’re interested in where it comes from and how it’s made. The audience overlaps with the farm-to-table movement, he said.

“Coffee is almost the same way,” he said.

Steven B. Ruddock, of Riverwalk Roasters Cafe and Coffee House, agreed. He said the Nashua business has started providing information about the individual farms where coffee beans originate on its Facebook page. The page keeps the business in contact with about 1,100 people.

“I’d say about 10 percent of our customers are interested to that extent,” he said. “They’re like wine drinkers.”

Riverwalk also promotes organic and Fair Trade products, an asset that has helped the business curry favor with many local church groups who buy coffee in bulk.

But Riverwalk is staying more focused on its food service business than on developing wholesale accounts and online sales. It recently added beer and wine to the menu, and Riverwalk is scaling up entertainment, like live music.

The components help create an atmosphere that counters the drive-through experience at Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, Ruddock said.

“It’s a new model we’ve created, we think,” he said.

Riverwalk roasts about 120 pounds of coffee every four days. The wholesale price of raw coffee beans has dropped significantly in the last few years, allowing them to experiment with unusual varieties from smaller farms. And customers can appreciate the difference.

“It’s amazing,” Ruddock said. “It seems to me that your average customer who just knows they like their morning coffee is becoming more discerning.”

Barry Goldman, the owner of Coffee Coffee in Salem, says he’s also seen an increase in the market for specialty coffee since he began roasting independently in 1966.

His new coffeehouse opened about 18 months ago. The eatery offers more than 40 varieties of small-batch coffee, all of which are organic and sourced directly from small farms.

“My business has increased every single month that we’ve been here,” Goldman said.

Jim Haddadin can be reached at 594-6589 or jhaddadin@nashua telegraph.com.