First, we now have some snazzy Fremont Coffee Company t-shirts available. It’s a white FCC logo on a high quality, black American Apparel t-shirt. We’ve got S, M, L, and XL shirts available. You can now be the envy of the coffee cognoscenti everywhere:

Second, coupon codes for the online store are now available. Coupon codes are a new feature in Ecwid, the store software I use, and although it’s a new company it’s worth repeating how much I like that service as an online retail platform.

Anyway, for April we’ve got two coupons available that are reusable all through the month. Use 10APRBEANS to save 10% off your total order of any of our whole bean coffees, and 20APRSHIRT to save 20% on our spiffy new t-shirts.

Lifehacker has a pretty handy article on understanding what it means to buy food labeled “organic”. In particular it helps parse the dozens of certifying organizations and criteria. Check it out to get a better sense of what’s going into your shopping basket.

From the article:

“100 Percent Organic” products must show an ingredient list, the name and address of the handler (bottler, distributor, importer, manufacturer, packer, processor) of the finished product, and the name and seal of the organic certifier. These products should contain no chemicals, additives, synthetics, pesticides or genetically engineered substances.

“USDA Organic” products must contain at least 95 percent organic ingredients. The five percent non-organic ingredients could include additives or synthetics if they are on an approved list. The label must contain a list that identifies the organic, as well as the non-organic, ingredients in the product, and the name of the organic certifier.

“Made With Organic” products must contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients. The label must contain a list that identifies the organic, as well as the non-organic, ingredients in the product, along with the name of the organic certifier.

After reading the article, you may be wondering where coffee fits into this scheme of things. You may be wondering if there’s an extra level of complexity and you’d be right. I’ll talk about that in-depth in an upcoming post.

If I’ve failed to purchase bottled water, I draw the tap water the night before. This achieves two things: the chlorine will partially evaporate, and the temperature will rise to room temperature. The heaters in coffeemakers will raise the temperature a certain number of degrees. They don’t have holding tanks like commercial machines. A twenty-degree difference between newly drawn tap water and room temperature will result in nearly a twenty degree increase in brewing temperature.

I used to just bring my own coffee with me when I traveled (I know, I know) but a few years ago hotels began to replace normal filters and pouches of coffee with pre-packaged coffee that came in an unbleached pouch that doubled as a filter. I’ve toyed with some of the tips offered in this article but some are new to me–my favorite is the above tip about letting the hotel tap water sit overnight, since most of the time I loathe the overchlorinated water in hotel taps and the rubbery coffee it makes in the hotel coffee machines.

Coffee Kids has been around a long time, and they do good work. They create project lists to fund specific activities in coffee-growing regions that help to educate the populace and diversify the economy. This could mean anything from funding a new school to extending a microloan to help a farmer’s wife open a local side business. Because each community has a different range of problems facing it, Coffee Kids takes these communities individually and suggests projects tailored to address that community’s issues.

In addition to an annual cash contribution, our shop is going to donate 15% of the proceeds from our Fremont Farmer’s Market blend to fund various Coffee Kids projects. Later this year we’re going to try to host a lecture or two in the store from a Coffee Kids representative to talk about what the organization does and how it works (along with a cupping). And we have more planned for this year with Coffee Kids, so stay tuned.

We offer all the same single-origin, Fair Trade, and organic coffees that we offer in the retail store. We roast to order and orders are shipped the same day they’re received (if you order before noon PST). All shipping is via USPS Priority Mail to the continental 48, and we accept all major credit cards.

I want to give a shout-out to Ecwid while I’m at it. Ecwid is the software that powers our online store, and I have to say that I’ve worked with online retail platforms as small as a homemade SQL database and as large as Amazon.com, and I’ve never seen an online sales solution as simple to work with as Ecwid. If you don’t have many SKUs and just need a simple way to sell your stuff online that isn’t Ebay, I can’t recommend it enough. The software is handled via a web interface that looks like a simple Wordpress CMS, and you can integrate it into your existing CSS site by just dropping in a few lines of code; if you’ve ever written a blog, you can build a store in less than a day. Oh, and it’s free.

But what makes a good espresso blend? That’s not an easy question to answer. Not just because there are literally hundreds if not thousands of equally good blends that can be created, but because when you’re running a shop there are more parts to the question than what coffees taste good together. A better way to phrase the question might be, “what makes a good espresso blend that I can consistently sell?”

The Flavor Factor

All other factors put aside, if your espresso simply doesn’t taste good, then nothing else matters. Selecting beans that work well together can be a fun but also frustrating challenge–some coffees that taste great on their own don’t play well in espresso, and coffees you might overlook as a single-origin offering might really shine when joined to the right blend. Beyond that, there are a thousand tiny things that can radically change a potential espresso’s cup profile: roast level of the individual coffees, dosing amount in the portafilter, water temperature, and so on.

This is the hard work. It takes time, and the ability to roast each coffee to a given roast profile consistently, and a proper palette, and just the raw patience for continuous trial and error. But it’s also the most fun part, experimenting with and really getting to the essence of individual coffees.

Yeah, But Can I Get It?

Creating an espresso blend isn’t just about flavor, though. For any given blend you like the flavor of, you’ve got to find out if you can get it consistently at the volume you’ll need for your store at a price that you can afford. Many coffees–especially the best coffees–simply aren’t available all year, and may have a lot of competition for the lots. You might create an espresso that features a really distinct estate coffee that make for an amazing shot of espresso, but if that estate’s farm only produces 100 bags a year and you have a busy shop, you won’t be able to offer that espresso once the lot runs out. One thing some roasters do to address this is deliberately build a flavor profile around five or six coffees in a balanced percentage, to ensure that they’ll never need so much of any one coffee to risk running out of inventory; that is, they can offer it consistently because they don’t need as much of any coffee, so it’s more likely to be available.

Price is also a critical factor. One of my favorite espresso blends that I ever created was a blend that used a rare-ish Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence coffee as a base and featured a heavy percentage of Kaapi Royale, a high-grown Indian Robusta. The shots were amazing, but it costs me over $8/lb to make, meaning I’d have to raise all my retail drink prices by $1.50 to sell it without losing money. And daily customers aren’t going to pay $3.99 for an Americano, no matter how good it is (nor should they).

The Certification Issue

Things get even more complicated if you plan on offering an espresso that’s 100% organic or Fair Trade. Your available choices are more limited, with some regions of the world cut out entirely (such as most African coffees), and what’s available is not only going to be more expensive, but–to be blunt–may not be the best-tasting coffee from a given region. It can be a gamble, but it’s also a proven sales booster to offer an espresso with certifications, so the roaster has to weigh the pros and cons.

Choosing Which End to Start From

Many roasters create an espresso blend by starting from the logistical end: they look at the coffees that are available all year round within a certain price range, and then start blending from there. Others start from blending whatever they can find to create the best flavor, and then working backwards to find what coffees they can realistically source to fit that flavor profile. I admit I do the latter, which isn’t always the most reasonable way, because it can frequently mean finding a great blend but having to start all the way over if one of the coffees is too expensive or too rare and there’s no adequate substitution. But my primary concern is always sourcing the best-tasting coffee I can possibly find, and then figuring out later how to get it and keep it. Price, certifications, etc., all come later.

But whichever end you start from, the result should be the same: the best-tasting espresso you can get year-round at a price that’s reasonable.

For most of this year I’ve been relegating my blogging to my “personal” journal and in the background I’ve been doing what it takes to help get the roastery off the ground–just the day-in, day-out grunt work of obtaining permits, troubleshooting ductwork and utility lines, solidifying my list of suppliers, getting a credit account for the business, etc. etc. I’ve been a coffee roaster for a long time but I’ve never started from scratch on the business end, and let me tell you: it’s a long journey to get from an empty basement of a retail operation to a production roastery.

But we’re open, Fremont Coffee customers seem to be positive on our coffees, we have our first few wholesale accounts, and all those early kinks seem to be pretty much worked out. That includes updating Fremont Coffee’s website, http://www.fremontcoffee.net, as well as the new look for Way of Coffee. Hopefully they’ll both be easier to read and navigate.

I’ve always disliked it when bloggers come back from a long period of not posting just to apologize for not posting, so I just want to note that I’ll be moving all blogging duties to this blog over the next week or two. That does mean that Way of Coffee will have more elements of a personal blog than a news site, but I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want Way of Coffee to become yet another news content aggregator, and that’s admittedly what it became by the time I took a break from posting in January–there was a lot going on getting the roastery setup, but I didn’t think the world would be excited by tales of beauracratic runaround.

So starting now Way of Coffee will essentially replace my personal journal (although it will remain coffee-focused–not surprising since my life involves coffee quite a bit) and FremontCoffee.net will be where we post news relating to the roastery, including cuppings, art shows, new products, and more.

This is a preliminary result of a 21-year study conducted by Danish and Swedish researchers who monitored the health habits of about 1400 middle-aged men and women.  While there’s no definite evidence yet of a hard link, observations are showing a 65% reduction in the likelihood of developing of dementia or Alzheimer’s among the study group.

From the New York Times article:

Dr. Kivipelto and her colleagues suggest several possibilities for why coffee might reduce the risk of dementia later in life. First, earlier studies have linked coffee consumption with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which in turn has been associated with a greater risk of dementia. In animal studies, caffeine has been shown to reduce the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, coffee may have an antioxidant effect in the bloodstream, reducing vascular risk factors for dementia.Dr. Kivipelto noted that previous studies have shown that coffee drinking may also be linked to a reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease.

There’s no indication that coffee will have a protective effect for those already developing dementia, but in the meantime, it’s always good to have an excuse to make another pot.

(Note: when talking about tea as a source of antioxidants and flavonoids, we mean”real” tea, that is, tea consisting of camellia sinensis leaves.  “Herbal teas” and tisanes aren’t really tea and don’t provide any antioxidants.)

But did you know that coffee has roughly four times the antioxidants of tea?  A study by Switzerland’s Nestle Research Center found that green coffee beans contain about 1,000 antioxidants, and more are added over the roasting and brewing process.  The end result is that a serving of coffee has more free-radical fighting power than tea, wine, or cocoa.

Unfortunately for the lovers of finer coffees, Robusta coffees are a greater source of antioxidants than the higher-quality Arabica coffess–so believe it or not, that cup of diner coffee is doing some heavy lifting fighting that “he-man breakfast special” you just ate.  But Arabica coffees are no slouch in the flavonoid deparment, so the next time you want to make a healthy beverage choice, you may just want to make a trip to your local roastery.