Coffee

Clover 1s

We brew our coffee on the Central Coast's first Clover. What distinguishes the Clover from other brewing methods? Using a Clover allows us to maintain a full menu, featuring coffee from different origins, varietals, and processing methods, each possessing radically different flavors, without actually brewing large batches (and leaving them to sit) at once. By grinding and brewing a single cup at a time, we ensure that you receive the freshest possible beverage. Also, the Clover provides a similar taste profile to the French press—as essential flavor oils remain unfiltered with the absence of a paper filter—but the Clover uniquely features a vacuum chamber for less sediment and a cleaner cup. A cup of coffee can also be produced much more quickly on a Clover and affords the barista many of the same levels of control that a roaster enjoys during the roasting process. Controlling the temperature, dosing, grind size, and brewing time all ensure that each cup of coffee receives the special attention it deserves.

Coffee: Bean to Cup

A cup of coffee is a reflection of the region where it's grown, and of every hand that has a role in the bean's development. Producing a truly exquisite cup of coffee is no less challenging than the process of developing a fine wine. Coffee beans are grown and harvested in regions along the equator—across the highlands of Ethiopia, along Guatemala's volcanic slopes, and on the island of Sumatra. Each region—and individual farm—produces a distinct product: mellow, earthy, full-bodied, spicy, or with a hint of citrus. As these complex flavors blossom on the tongue, they blend, complement and underscore one another producing a symphony of flavors you might never have expected in a single cup.

Coffee beans, properly referred to as "cherry" or "fruit," have a maturation period of three to four years. During this time the coffee is grown much like any other fruit, in large expanses of orchards on plots of land as small as a few dozen hectares and as large as a few thousand. However, in many regions of Africa, coffee trees grow wild. Most mature coffee trees achieve a height of five to seven feet. There are several different varieties of trees, the primary two being Arabica and Robusta. We primarily serve Arabica, Robusta being the product of a hundreds year old cross-pollination experiment intended to produce a variety of coffee that matures quickly and produces large quantities of coffee; as a result the quality of the beans is generally lesser.

After the fruit has ripened, harvesting begins. Different farms approach this process differently, generally depending upon the size of the operation. The best farms hand pick their beans, though many businesses use a method of mechanically harvesting their crop. Mechanical harvesting is an indiscriminate process, meaning that fruit that isn't yet ripe will be gathered alongside its more mature fellow beans. Anything we serve will have been harvested by hand.

From here, the process becomes a bit more technical, belying the romantic life the fruit once led, nestled for years in the welcoming boughs of a coffee tree. The fruit is processed, meaning that the pit of the cherry is removed. This can be achieved by drying the fruit, spreading the green beans across huge concrete patios and raking and rotating the them in the sun. The purpose of this process is to remove moisture from the fruit, a goal which is achieved as the sun rots the bean. An alternative process called washing entails floating the beans in water. Generally, the latter method is more common in regions with greater infrastructure supporting coffee production. In Costa Rica and Nicaragua, for example, the government owns and operates plants that process the beans for farmers. The processing stage of the bean's development may sound uninteresting, but it is an important step in terms of how the coffee will eventually taste. Washing the beans will bring out their fruit properties while simultaneously minimizing the acidity. Keep in mind, that in coffee-speak, acidity is not negative; it actually refers to the beverage's brightness on the tongue. At this stage, it's also possible to alter, magnify or hide the bean's myriad flavors, both good and bad.

After being harvested and processed, coffee travels up to thousands of miles to a roastery, where the formerly green beans achieve the rich color and intoxicating scent commonly associated with coffee. The quantities of coffee imported into the United States differ vastly from company to company. Folgers, for example, purchases about 400 million pounds of coffee each year. Intelligentsia buys closer to four million pounds. The manner in which the beans are brought into the United States also differs. Intelligentsia has a term for its relationship with coffee producers titled direct trade. At this phase in their long and complicated lives, beans spend anywhere from three months to a year in burlap bags, awaiting the roasting process, which is not unlike popping corn or roasting the proverbial chestnuts on an open fire. Roasting is almost always done in small batches, perhaps 70 pounds at a time. Beans are placed in a large spinning drum, not unlike a cement mixer, ensuring that they are both agitated and evenly spaced throughout the process. The roaster very precisely controls both the intensity of the flame and the duration of the process, thereby bringing out the best notes and flavors of each batch. It is at this stage that the bean becomes soluble.

Unlike the green beans, which have a lifespan of about a year before they decrease in quality, once beans have been roasted their lifespan diminishes rapidly. At Joe Momma's we receive beans within two days of the day they were roasted. From there, the coffee is ground and brewed one cup at a time on the Clover or—in the case of espresso—ground and brewed one shot at a time. When purchasing our beans, Joe Momma's takes into account both the quality of the coffee and the social accountability of the company that produces it. When we receive a coffee it's as good as it's ever going to be, and it's our job to do justice to the quality of the beans.

Organics & Sustainability

There are several reasons to seek out organic foods and products, the first of these being a desire to preserve your personal health. Consuming food tainted with pesticides, chemicals and fertilizers isn't exactly an appetizing prospect. In this respect, coffee consumers needn't be concerned. Even if pesticides are applied to a coffee bean the lengthy processing period ensures that the bean will contain no trace of these chemicals by the time is reaches consumers. This means that, where coffee is concerned at least, purchasing organically is a boon to sustainability rather than the consumer's individual health.

When you consume coffee you don't want to be part of a negative environmental cycle, and when we serve a cup of coffee or shot of espresso, we don't want it to come at the expense of the health of the environment or the nearly 100 million people that make their living growing coffee, regardless of the quality. It's often difficult to determine which farms grow organic. In many cases small farms can't afford pesticides and fertilizers, and are therefore producing beans that meet environmentally friendly growing standards, but they can't afford to purchase the organic certification.

For this reason, we rely on companies like Intelligentsia, who maintain relationships exclusively with farms that farm organically and provide their growers with a fair wage. Intelligentsia has a term for the relationship that it maintains with its coffee growers—direct trade. Representatives from Intelligentsia visit these farms, often dozens of times over a prolonged period of time. They demand complete economic transparency from the coffee growers, meaning that they know what each worker at the farm is paid for their labor. Some coffees boast the label "fair trade."

The way fair trade works is that an international oversight committee establishes a minimum price for what purchasers in the United States pay for a pound of coffee. Fair trade is an important start for world's millions of coffee growers because it demonstrates consciousness on behalf of the laborers. However, this process fails to provide oversight into how the money trickles down to the lowest level employees. Farm owners receive a higher wage, but that doesn't guarantee that the pickers receive any financial boon. Intelligentsia's direct trade program remedies this problem.

Links