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A good cup of joe
One man’s quest for a better cup of coffee—and a sustainable, fairer coffee industry.
by fran mcmanus & Photography By Cie Stroud
“Know your farmer!” is the rallying cry of the artisan food movement. Simple enough when the farmer lives in your community. Not so simple if his or her farm sits on a mountainside thousands of miles away. Add in rutted roads, foreign tongues, and a shadowy maze of middlemen and you begin to understand the challenge that J. David Waldman has taken on.
Waldman is the owner and roaster at Rojo’s Roastery, a friendly neighborhood café and artisan coffee roaster in Lambertville. Rojo’s has the warm, slightly worn, industrial decor that is popular with businesses eager to display a sense of authenticity. One glance around the café, however, puts to rest any question of whether Rojo’s is selling style over substance. The bright red 1956 Probat roaster in the corner, burlap sacks of unroasted coffee beans piled high on the shelves, and wide range of single-origin roasts packed in custom-made multi-layer laminate bags make it perfectly clear that Waldman is a man who is serious about his beans.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
By defining Rojo’s mission as “palate driven with strong social and sustainability values,” Waldman places himself firmly in the midst of what’s called the Third Wave of coffee—a new generation of coffee entrepreneurs who marry high tech and refined palates with social justice and a taste for adventure. Third Wave roasters offer financial rewards and technical assistance to coffee growers who aspire to raise high-qual ity beans. The pioneers of this movement work directly with growers to teach them how to taste coffee and understand the effect of farming practices and handling on flavor. “Until recently most farmers had never tasted their own coffee,” Waldman explains. “They have no idea literally or analytically what their coffee tastes like. So in the last five years a lot of the best roasters have been going to origin to teach them how to taste, so that we have a vocabulary we can feed back to them to explain that we want more sweetness or we want more balance.”
Rojo, a nickname given to him by music legend Willie Nelson, refers to the red beard and hair Waldman sported in his earlier incarnation as a studio musician. Many years and several careers later, Waldman applies his musical sensibility to the art and science of coffee roasting, blending bass, treble and mid-range notes to create coffees that are complex, harmonious and flavorful. He views great coffee as a collaboration between grower and roaster and describes the roaster’s challenge as “identifying sustainably produced beans that have an outstanding potential taste profile and then discovering and unlocking the intrinsic underlying complexity, nuance and taste.”
BRINGING GROWER AND ROASTER TOGETHER
Organic and Fair Trade labels were developed to assure buyers that a coffee’s production
methods and terms of sale meet certain criteria, but neither label guarantees exceptional flavor. So, although he sells some Fair Trade Certified and organic coffees, Waldman’s ultimate goal is to have a direct relationship with the farmers who grow his beans. At present, only a small percentage of his beans come from direct relationships, but Waldman is steadily increasing that percentage through his membership in Cup of Excellence and the Roasters Guild.
Cup of Excellence (COE) gives Waldman access to coffees from some of Central and South America’s finest growers—many of whom farm on small acreage. In each member nation, this prestigious competition brings together the highest-quality coffees as judged by an international panel of coffee experts. The highest-rated coffees are sold to COE members in an online auction where growers receive the entire winning bid minus a 10 percent management fee. “We are paying multiples above what we pay for some of the finest coffees we get from the better brokers. And our prices reflect it, but our customers are fine with that,” explains Waldman, who likes COE’s dual focus on rewarding quality and creating relationships. “There is live video feed during the auctions of all the grower families together in the trading room so you can see directly how you are affecting them.” He receives letters and photographs from the farm families whose beans he purchases. And each lot comes labeled with details—the grower’s name; varietal; farm size; elevation; and the town, region, and country of origin—that help Waldman and his customers understand some of the variables that contribute to the flavor of their morning brew.
The Roasters Guild offers Waldman additional opportunities to engage in direct buying. He buys coffee directly from a Guatemalan grower he met through the Guild. He also joins with other Guild roasters to make joint purchases from growers with whom someone in the group has a direct relationship. And Waldman hopes to build more direct relationships this January when he travels with the Roasters Guild to Guatemala to see the harvest firsthand.
As a trade guild of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the Roasters Guild offers training and networking opportunities that have helped Waldman develop his palate and roasting skills. Through the guild, Waldman has taken courses in subjects including agriculture, farm economics, identifying bean defects, cupping and roasting. He has demonstrated the sensitivity of his palate through tests such as blind triangulation and identifying relative concentrations of sweet, bitter, sour and salty in unmarked samples.
And he has gained a community of friends and mentors who share information and give each other feedback. “That’s how you learn,” says Waldman. “You can send samples to certain friends and they’ll tell you what they think—what they like about the bean or how I roasted it. You get a lot of good, honest feedback.”
FINDING THE FLAVOR
Guild training builds on knowledge Waldman gained from many years of home roasting when he filled volumes of logbooks with handwritten observations and modified his roasting machines to gain greater control over the process. A self-described fanatic, Waldman had been experimenting with brewing techniques for many years, using a French press in the 1960s, and buying his first vacuum extractor in 1970. By roasting his own beans, he was able to gain greater control over expressing the nuances of taste.
“The roaster plays an incredible role in developing taste profiles and accentuating and de-accentuating different parts of what’s available intrinsically in the bean. You can’t create a flavor that doesn’t exist, but if there is something that you want to bring out or something that you want to suppress, there are some ways within limits that you can do this.” Accentuating flavors within the bean defines Waldman’s lighter roasting style. “I am not interested in there even being a hint of when the roast taste starts masking or overriding the underlying intrinsic flavors.”
Most coffee on the market is either Arabica (Coffea arabica)—the high-altitude, lower-yield, flavorful bean favored by specialty roasters—or Robusta (Coffea canephoro var. robusta)—the lower-altitude, high-yield, brash bean used in instant coffees and cheaper blends. Waldman uses only Arabica, which he roasts and sells from single origin. “We are passionate about single origin because you get to understand the effort of the farmer and what a bean tastes like coming from one part of the world.”
To further his goal of showcasing the skill of his growers, Waldman works to develop the palate of his customers and move them toward appreciating coffees that are more subtle and complex. In support of his motto “Rojo’s—Raise your coffee IQ,” Waldman encourages his customers to build their flavor vocabulary by cataloging taste impressions of common foods, many of which can be detected in the aroma and taste of coffee, such as apricot, black currant, lemon, hazelnut, caramel, tangerine, clove, cinnamon and green apple. Customers may attend cuppings and arrange for tasting workshops where Waldman guides them through a sampling of coffees from around the world that exemplify concepts such as acidity, balance, body, complexity and earthiness. All of this helps Waldman develop a common flavor vocabulary with his customers so that he understands what they like and is better able to give them a coffee that meets their expectations.
But the most delectable and satisfying way to raise your coffee IQ is by sampling Rojo’s array of single-origin coffees. Each day they offer about ten different single-origin coffees by the cup brewed by French press, Chemex, Cona Vacuum or Clover—the high-tech single-cup brew-on-demand machine that can be calibrated to deliver maximum flavor from different varietals and roast profiles. For home brewing, over 20 single-origin coffees are available by the pound, along with brewing devices ranging from one-cup SwissGold filters to the ultra-sophisticated Technivorm electric drip brewer. Coffee and equipment are also available through mail order and selected coffees are available at local stores and restaurants.
BETTER QUALITY; BETTER LIVES
Coffee is the second most highly traded global commodity after oil. Yet most of the world’s estimated 20 to 25 million coffee farmers work small plots of land. And much of the world’s coffee is harvested and processed by hand. In coffee’s long journey from mountain side to cup, there are many opportunities for improper handling and economic exploitation. Waldman believes that better-quality coffee and better lives for coffee farmers will come through greater transparency and direct communication. “The only way this model works is by developing a relationship between the roaster who represents the consumer and the farmer who wants to know how they can make more money. Any roaster will pay more money for a better bean—at least among our small group of roasters,” says Waldman. “It starts by working with one farmer. Maybe do one farmer every couple of years. It’s not going to happen right away. It’s a big change. It takes time.”
In the meantime, coffee drinkers can do their part by expanding their palates to embrace
the many regional and seasonal flavor variations that the world’s coffee farmers have to offer. These variations remind us that there is a person and a place behind every pound of coffee. And that by drinking better coffee from caring roasters like Waldman, we, too, can play a role in improving the lives of coffee farmers, no matter how long and rutted the road may be from their home to ours.
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WHAT MAKES A GREAT CUP OF COFFEE?
When assessing a cup of coffee,Waldman looks for balance among top notes (acidity and tang), mid-range notes (flavors such as chocolate, nuts and fruits), and bottom notes (foundation flavors that hold a coffee together),
with a pleasant aftertaste. He lets a cup sit for a few minutes before tasting because heat masks flavor and good coffee should be balanced and pleasant even at room temperature.
How to Make Great Coffee at Home:
Use freshly roasted beans, ground just before brewing. If your water is hard, use bottled water.
Weigh beans in proportion to cup size. The American standard is 7.25 grams of ground coffee per 150 milliliters of water.The European standard is 8.5 grams per 150 milliliters.
Bring water to a boil and let cool down. The optimal temperature varies between 196° to 204° Fahrenheit. The general rule is darker beans get cooler water, lighter-roasted beans get hotter water.
Use proper grind size for your brewing method. For drip, particles should feel like coarse sand with no chunks or powder. If it is chunky, you ground it too fine. If your coffee tastes weak, you probably didn’t grind it fine enough or the water was not hot enough. If the coffee tastes bitter, you probably ground it too fine and/or the water was
too hot.
Watch your extraction time.Too long gives you bitter coffee, too short makes it weak. A 3- to 4- minute extraction is good.
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A ROASTING PRIMER
Coffee beans are the seeds of the coffee plant, a tropical shrub or small tree that is cultivated in over 40 nations. After processing, coffee beans are stored and shipped green (unroasted). In a process known as cupping, roasters sample lightly roasted green beans to determine flavor potential and faults. It is up to the roaster to develop that potential through a delicate balance of heat, motion and time.
Waldman typically roasts his beans for 13 1/2 to 17 minutes, depending on the bean and intended final use.To start, room-temperature beans are loaded into the preheated roaster.As they continue to heat up, they lose moisture and undergo a Maillard reaction during which starches convert to sugar (caramelization) and browning occurs. Typically between 9 1/2 and 10 1/2 minutes, there is an audible pop known as the “first crack,” an indicator that moisture is exploding from within the bean.The goal is to reach this point through a steady, even distribution of increasing heat over time.After the first crack, the heat is lowered and the roasting process
becomes gentle and delicate as the roaster endeavors to develop body and sweetness while preserving acidity (top notes). Secondary flavors now develop while the beans rapidly gain color and absorb heat. Careful attention must be paid as beans can transform from perfect to overdone in a matter of seconds. It is during this period, between first and second crack, that Waldman finishes roasting (discharges) his beans.
An audible second crack occurs as the bean’s cellulose structure begins to carbonize. As the roasting continues, the flavor of the roast overtakes the flavor of the bean. Aromatic oils rise to the surface along with remaining moisture, where they begin to degrade upon contact with air. Sugars begin to burn and cellulose turns to carbon, introducing a spectrum of flavors that range from carbon to rubber to smoke.
Time is also a factor in roasting. If the beans are exposed to heat over too long a period of time, even if they haven’t gotten black, they will be baked and bitter. If the beans are heated too quickly they’ll lose body and sweetness.
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