THEY’RE ROASTING presidential candidates on Bill Hill, which is not nearly the same as grilling them.

Ashlawn Farm Coffee has introduced an Obama Blend, a “sweet, balanced” combination of “dark and light roasted coffees from Kenya, Java and the Americas,” and American Hero Coffee, “a light-roasted, highly caffeinated” brew that’s “edgy, strong,” made from beans grown in Vietnam. The latter’s redolent, you might say, of Sen. John McCain.

But what about a Hillary Brew?

That, says Carol Dahlke, Ashlawn co-owner and roaster, is … uh … in development.

In development. Hey… they aren’t trying to find a civet cat, are they?

Sure, while most every other coffee roaster in the land releases new roasts seasonally — you know, to align with new coffee crops and all that — Starbucks’ latest blend is different, apparently. Word is, it’s not… you know, burnt. More, Howie would have us believe this is a pivotal event in Starbucks’ history, even suggesting that it’s a peek into a future that isn’t steeped in an espresso + milk monoculture:

“We’ve been so focused on espresso … that we haven’t done anything to reinvent brewed coffee,” Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz said in an interview.

Profoundly true. Not only has Starbucks done virtually nothing to reinvent brewed coffee — or even support it — their general disregard for drip coffee, press coffee and the like spilled over into the marketplace, where thousands upon thousands of competing independents likewise ignored the possibilities of unique origin coffees. Unless, of course, they could chuck it in a portafilter with decent results. It’s fair to say that only very recently, I’d say the last five or six years — or a time line roughly consistent with the rise of the Cup of Excellence auction program — that the indie retailers have promoted non-espresso coffee with particular enthusiasm. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

And then Howie slips in this dubious bit…

Mr. Schultz says he believes Starbucks has underplayed its expertise in selecting and roasting coffees, something its main competitors don’t specialize in.

It’s left as an exercise for the reader whether Schultz is suggesting Starbucks’ ground-game at origin is better than that of Peet’s, Green Mountain, Stumptown, CounterCulture, Intelligentsia, The Roasterie, Terroir, Thanksgiving, and a few hundred assorted smaller roasters, or whether he doesn’t view them, individually or collectively, as his competitors. Either way, it’s a low blow. And one that may well come back to haunt him.

“Everybody thinks that caffeine is the main bitter compound in coffee, but that’s definitely not the case,” says study leader Thomas Hofmann, Ph.D., a professor of food chemistry and molecular sensory science at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. Only 15 percent of java’s perceived bitterness is due to caffeine, he estimates, noting that caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee both have similar bitterness qualities.

“Roasting is the key factor driving bitter taste in coffee beans. So the stronger you roast the coffee, the more harsh it tends to get…”

This isn’t news to anyone who’s roasted coffee that they know to be exceptional, and ended up with something that could grow hair on a wildebeest’s chest. (And yes, that includes me. Er… as the roaster, not the wildebeest.)

The bit that leaves me scratching my head, however, is this:

“We’ve known for some time that the chlorogenic acid lactones are present in coffee, but their role as a source of bitterness was not known until now,” Hofmann says.

I have a number of books on coffee — books that have been popular references for years — that, I believe, speak at some length to the links between chlorogenic acids and bitterness. Maybe I’m missing something here. Or maybe there’s more to come still from the research.

You may recall that I was pretty chuffed with Green Mountain’s 2006 eCafe Gold Competition auction lot — Ethiopian Shanta Golba Natural Process Sidamo. If you don’t recall (or don’t wanna click) here’s the particulars:

Extremely fruited, with peach and blueberry aromas, and a little whiff of cocoa and cinnamon when wetted. Fruit plays large in the flavor, too… blueberry, strawberry, spiced peach and cardamom, with a dark chocolate understory. The finish, while not everything it was a year ago, it still sweet and resonant, and fades to a pleasant, dusky leather. Yeah, this is one of those coffees you think about dabbing behind your ears, too.

You may also recall that Barry Jarret of Riley’s Coffee got some of the green, too, and I was keen to get my hands on his roast to compare them side by side. Well, I did. And I did. And to sum up, I could simply say, Barry Jarrett is a coffee roasting genius.

Barry’s roast of the Shanta Golba is everything that Green Mountain’s offers, and more. The fruit tones in the aroma are more distinct, more pure, more alive. The acidity — while mild overall, as is the Green Mountain roast — is crisper in Barry’s roast. The flavors in the cup are rich, and exceptionally fruit-forward. Strawberry is a predominant note, backed up by peach and blueberry. And where the finish of the Green Mountain cup takes on dusky notes, Barry’s roast remains purely fruited. It’s as if Green Mountain’s jammy cup were made of dried fruit, and Barry’s, fresh: in the finish there’s nothing lost, nothing diminished at all.

Highly recommended.

If you’re lucky it’s still available at Riley’s Coffee. Go get some.

Given that any long-bean coffee takes a certain amount of care in roasting to avoid tipping — scorching the exposed ends of the bean — I have to think that roasting Bourbon Pointu would be something of a nightmare.

Still, I’d love to give it a try. ;)

Notes and Links

1. Image source, Ueshima Coffee Co., Japan.

My first batch, an Antigua that I’d noted as having lots of brown sugar and some lovely orange zest notes (I know this ’cause I attach my tasting notes to the bags of green beans,) despite a very promising fragrance just-ground, proved woody and dull and lifeless. I checked the date on the bag… and found none. That means that the coffee in question arrived before I’d got clever enough to date all of my incoming beans, which was sometime in 2004. So, no wonder.

A second batch — a remaindered sample from the latest Ethiopia eCafe Gold auction — yielded lots and lots of chaff (natch, it’s an unwashed, dry-process coffee) and roasted incredibly uneven… some beans were entering second crack while others were only just thinking about first. Ack! Thpt!! Try again.

After dumping the chaff collector, and with a slightly smaller batch, my third attempt yielded gold. Incredible fruited fragrance of peaches and cherries and a whole market of exotic spices, tastes of dark cocoa and raw honey and a sweet, lingering burnt sugar aftertaste. Yum. The roast was still fairly uneven — point of fact it was pretty damn ugly — but the cup was wonderful.

The FreshRoast set me back about 60 bucks when I bought it some time in — gosh, 2000? 2001? — and it still can make for a pretty spiffy cup. At least 30% of the time… ;)

It’s little surprise, then, that home roasters everywhere — in wintry places, especially — find themselves drawn like so many moths to the flame of a coffee roaster due to hit retailers soon… the Behmor 1600. Its spec sheet is promising: batches of up to one pound, a number of programmed roast profiles and the ability to tweak them on-the-fly at roast-time, quiet operation so you can hear the audible cues of roast progression, and built-in smoke abatement technology.

This latest entry into the home coffee roaster market was unveiled at the recent SCAA show in Long Beach, and was promptly awarded “Best in Show” among new consumer products. That’s an auspicious beginning, and one that’s especially gratifying to Joe Behm, the eponymic roaster’s inventor. But where — and how — did a field application engineer for a semiconductor company become a man on a mission to build and sell home coffee roasters? I decided to find out.

To hear him tell it, Joe first discovered the flavors of specialty coffee on a Costa Rican holiday some ten years ago. Traveling through the cloud forests and coffee farms of the Monteverde region of Costa Rica, Joe found coffee as he’d never known it before. “Honestly, this stuff was nectar of the gods,” says Joe. “It was amazing. I brought 15 pounds of coffee back with me. When it was gone I looked around locally and I just couldn’t find anything like it.” It didn’t take long for Joe to factor the equation of coffee freshness and flavor and decide that, if he wanted coffee like he’d experienced in Costa Rica, he was going to have to roast his own.

This stuff was nectar of the gods. And when it was gone I looked around locally and I just couldn’t find anything like it. — Joe Behm

It didn’t take Joe long to realize that none of the home coffee roasters on the market offered everything he was looking for. Air roasters are smokey, and loud. The small-scale drum roasters on the market hid beans from view while roasting — and were expensive, besides. Neither gave him the features he really wanted, and so he started tinkering.

Joe’s first efforts involved fitting a roasting chamber into a Ronco “Showtime” Rotisserie oven. And in fact, he designed and patented a device to adapt a roast cylinder into the “As Seen on TV” oven. But there was still a lot of room for improvement… so much so that he started with a blank slate.

Article continues… see next page.

• Stephen Morrissey is barista trainer at Bewleys Coffee Co in Dublin Ireland, and his site — Flying Thud — documents his adventures in coffee. Lots of espresso porn, of course, but he’s also a fan of the drip. His posts will make you pine for European coffee shops you’ve never been to.
• Barrett Jones is a Canadian national barista champ and until recently worked the bar at Vancouver’s most excellent Caffe Artigiano. His site — Dwell Time — offers a glimpse of the extraordinary Vancouver coffee scene.
• Stephen Leighton’s blog — Has Bean — offers the perspective of a coffee guy who sources and roasts some fairly stupendous coffees, which sadly I know by reputation, only. (The reputation is certainly deserved: UKBC winner James Hoffman poured his way to the top of competition with a Has Bean custom blend.) Stephen’s been known to drop by here from time to time to offer an insightful comment or two.
• And last but not least — Barismo — a Boston based group blog contributed to by Jaime, Ben, Ben and Silas. Their writing spans coffee roasting, cupping and delivering a top-tier coffee experience in the coffee house. Oh! And they have a shiny cool tamper design.

Go visit one and all. Frequently. Maybe they’ll each get the hint to post more often.