The Quest

God in a cup. God shot. These terms refer to the perfect cuppa, the beverage so good that only the hand of God could have brewed it. God in a cup, is also the title of a book on specialty coffee by Michelle Weissman that chronicals her trips with coffee buyers to the many places in the world where people grow coffee. The book is a good read and I recommend it, but what I’m talking about here is coffee itself.

As we know, perfection is not attainable. That simple truth applies as well to the perfect cup of coffee as it does anything, but we can always hope.

This morning I had the opportunity to taste something very good, though. As is often the case, this happened by sheer chance. I had the last little bits of three jars of different coffees that I just threw together to drink them up.

I got the cup I had hoped for when I bought the coffees, though I’ve been trying different combinations of the three for a few weeks. This time I didn’t bother to write down the proportions, so I’ll probably never duplicate this blend. I won’t even try.

The coffees I used were single grower coffees from Ethiopia, Java and Mexico. Each was pleasant but not quite to my taste. I’d bought them for blending but the truth is I’m not a very good blender. I just don’t know enough and am too cheap to roast beans for trial and error testing, the results of which mostly get tossed out. My next coffee order will be for single origin coffees that I like more individually.

One problem with that kind of testing is that I only drink one cup, that’s an 8-9 ounce cup, not one of those 20 oz. Starbucks monsters. One cup is what my stomach and nerves can handle. It’s also about what I can drink and not be so addicted to coffee that I get headaches if I miss a fix.

The small quantities effect my coffee buying. Coffee is a remarkably fragile food. It has some 900 different flavor components, many of which disappear quickly after the coffee has been roasted. The stuff we buy at supermarkets or even in pricey shops like Starbucks has generally aged beyond it optimum flavor window. Coffee achieves its maximum flavor between 2 and 10 days after it’s been roasted. You would be incredibly luck to get coffee that fresh from most merchants.

Fresh coffee, that’s drunk within that window of flavor is a different drink that most of us are used to. For one thing, fresh coffee is remarkably sweet. The bitterness we normally associate with coffee is a taste that’s left over after the volatile flavor components of fresh coffee have disappeared. I found that once I started drinking fresh coffee I no longer needed cream. Cream softens the bitterness of typical coffee but with a cup of fresh coffee, it not only isn’t needed, it actually masks the subtleties of the brew.

Home Coffee Roasting

I roast my own coffee, but that’s mostly because I drink so little. To get really fresh stuff I’d have to continually mail order it from a good specialty house every week and wouldn’t get through a bag before it lost its flavor. And green coffee, even very high quality stuff is remarkably inexpensive, generally between $5 – $6 a pound before shipping.

Green or un-roasted coffee beans will retain their flavor for months. By roasting 3 ounces at a time I always have fresh coffee. I seldom let it sit around for more than two weeks. A nice bonus is that I can enjoy a variety of coffees. There are, however, some downsides to home roasting:

Problems with home roasting

Professional roasters can do a really good job of blending, far better than I can do myself. Their roast consistency is better than mine, too. The vastly bigger batches they roast are less finicky than the tiny ones I do.

Roasting coffee requires a roaster. For the tiny amounts I roast, that’s not that expensive, around $80. But to roast larger amounts, bigger roasters quickly run into the many hundreds of dollars.

Roasting coffee also requires some practice. Expect to discard several of your early batches, or at least just drink the stuff an bear it if you just can’t force yourself to throw it out. Even a year into the process I still under or over roast an occasional batch. That’s not very often anymore but it still happens.

And, roasting is time consuming. It’s not a turn it on and forget it procedure. I need to stay by the roaster to insure that the coffee gets roasted to the degree I want. It seems that humidity has a strong effect on small batch coffee roasting and the humidity where I live can vary greatly from day to day.

Is it worth it? For me, yes. A good cup of coffee is an incredibly complex and flavorful drink. I enjoy a much greater variety of coffees than I would if I had to by pre-roasted. And, I’ve gotten into the ritual of roasting as well as the ritual of brewing.

I used to throw a pod into my machine, set the timer and have the coffee maker brew the coffee automatically. That’s certainly convenient. Unfortunately, the cup that such machines brew can’t come close to the a cup of freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee. Quality vs. convenience can sometimes be a tough choice and if you’re happy with the product you drink now, you will certainly save time by sticking with it.

Grinding Coffee

That brings up another point about fresh coffee. Not only does fresh mean freshly roasted, it also means freshly ground. Grinding coffee causes it to lose flavor very, very quickly. Use pre-ground coffee and you will get a stale cup. There’s no getting around that fact. Vacuum sealing it or nitrogen packing it doesn’t really seal in full flavor and after you first open the package the rest of the coffee immediately begins to lose flavor anyway.

Grinding forces another expense on fresh coffee lovers, a grinder. To get the most flavorful coffee, you will want a burr grinder, which will cost a minimum of $80 – $100 for a decent machine. You can easily spend 4 times that. A blade grinder, one with the whirring blades just isn’t as good, though it’s much better than pre-ground. They are much cheaper, though, running $20 – $40. Most people start with the cheaper blade grinder and eventually move up. I did, and I’m glad. There is a noticeable difference if flavor in the cup each produces.

I’m not even going to go into different types of coffee makers other than to say that each brews a noticeably different cup of coffee. Drip, espresso, french press, vacuum brewers, stove top espresso makers and other specialty devices each have their fans. My wife has a beautiful and expensive espresso machine. I normally use a vacuum pot, though I certainly enjoy coffee brewed by other methods. But that’s another topic.

Coffee resources

For more information try Coffee Geek, which offers a number of articles and forums focusing on specialty coffee, brewing, roasting, and equipment. About.com covers the basics of both coffee and tea. To learn about green coffee you should browse Sweet Maria’s a purveyor of raw coffees and supplies. The site is rich in information, though its poor design makes some of that information difficult to find.

The book Home Coffee Roasting: Romance and Revival does an excellent job of describing coffee and its roasting. Even if you don’t want to roast your own, the book has great chapters on the history of coffee, from its origins in Ethiopia to the rise of European coffee shops to modern coffee culture. The author, Kenneth Davids also has a coffee review blog that serves as an great resource for finding specialty roasters and great coffee, as well as a good general coffee reference.

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