The Perfect Blend
Posted by Cindy Thomas on Fri, Aug 31, 2007 @ 01:34 PM
The Oxford Eagle
August 31, 2007
If the most exotic aromas you’ve caught steaming up from your cup are vanilla and hazelnut, it’s time to breathe in a little deeper. The ritual of smelling, slurping and savoring at High Point Coffee’s roasting and distribution center would rival a wine tasting. Master roasters Marci Carter and Kyle Walker sit down each week with owner, Thomas Blanche to test or “cup” the beans and blends they produce right here in Oxford. “There’s nothing like fresh roasted coffee,” says Carter, squeezing out a puff of air from one of the vacuum-sealed packs with an invitation to share the sniff. The smell of coffee may be as familiar as your mother’s perfume, but these folks can peg it a little more precisely with help from a chart that looks like a color wheel and acts like a doctor trying to narrow down your symptoms. Does it have a fruity aroma? Would you say it’s more apple or blackberry? Is the herby scent like cucumber or garden peas? Is the spice of it cedar or pepper or thyme? This range of various aromas and tastes guides the process of blending and judging the coffee beans after they’ve been roasted at High Point’s facility in the Oxford Commerce Park off Highway 7 South. The center ships out nearly a dozen different orders every Monday to corporate and franchise sites in eight states, including the original Uptown Coffee shop north of the Oxford Square. “We like to check the coffee quality ourselves,” says Blanche, who launched the coffee business five years ago and opened the roasting operation in Oxford this spring, moving it from New Albany. He worked with a San Francisco consultant to set up the roasting center to perfect the process. “It’s a very unique and technical business, and it’s not something that one can just decide to go out and do,” he says. “There’s a lot more than meets the eye.” Ready to roast
It’s midmorning on roasting day, and humans and machine are hard at work. Walker pours a bin full of Sumatra beans into the top of the roaster while Carter adjusts the gas flame inside and monitors the temperature’s slow rise to 425 degrees. The contraption itself looks like a bright red train engine and could have come from Willy Wonka’s factory line. At its feet, burlap sacks plump with dried beans lay on pallets at the center of the room, painted to show origins like Kenya Kona or Costa Rica. There are some 25 origins of coffee roasted here, mixed into about a dozen different blends. “We blend each one with different ratios and different roasts, like a recipe, Carter says. Precision in the roasting process itself has everything to do with the flavor of the beans that wind up in your cup. That’s why, although the computer attached to the roaster can be programmed to gauge the timing on its own, Carter stands over the monitor, adjusts settings for outside heat and humidity, and checks samples of each batch along the way. From the moment they’re released from the holding bin into the hot roaster, the beans are bounced around inside to keep the temperature even and keep any from scalding. The chemical process they undergo through the roasting process transforms them in color, smell, size and weight, allowing Carter to mark their progress at each step. Army green turns to bright golden yellow and finally dark brown. The raw, grainy aroma becomes peanut, then burnt popcorn.
As the little seam in each bean pops open once, then twice, the bean releases oxygen then carbon dioxide, doubling in size while becoming less dense. Those “Pop” sounds are landmarks along the roasting road; depending on the type of bean, they bang like fireworks or gently crackle like Rice Krispies. It’s here that Carter decides to bring the process to a screeching halt. A final cycle stops the roasting with room temperature water and the beans pour out into a cooling bin, stirred with metal arms and fanned from both sides. As they cool down, the dark brown beans don’t yet reward you with that rich coffee aroma. They’ll continue giving off carbon dioxide for a couple of days inside their vacuum bags, which is why every pack you buy at the store has a little round single release air valve on its front. The difference, of course, is that these packs of beans haven’t made a cross-country trek or gotten comfortable on a shelf. “The biggest difference is the freshness,” Blanche says. “If you go into the grocery store, at best it’s about six months old before it hits the shelves. But we can get coffee in Oxford that’s two days old.” lucy@oxfordeagle.com
The Oxford Eagle