LONG ISLAND CITY - Rich Nieto is fuming. Literally. Perched over a miniature coffee roaster, he’s wafting away thin plumes of smoke. We are camped out in the basement of his Long Island City coffee shop, Sweetleaf, and he is showing me his mad scientist laboratory of sorts. Down here, amidst the mixing bowls and filing cabinets, Nieto is demonstrating how he roasts fresh coffee, a onetime hobby that eventually became his life.
Nieto, a 36-year-old Flushing native, opened Sweetleaf on a quiet block at the foot of the Pulaski Bridge last year with his brother in law, Al “Freddy” Arundel. Freddy’s a tea fanatic—thus the name “Sweetleaf”—but for many customers, the coffee’s where it’s at. Nieto has been obsessed with his cuppa joe for more than a decade, when he first started traveling through Central and South America for a previous job. “I started wondering why all the coffee I drank at home sucked so much,” he explains. “Eventually, I decided to take matters into my own hands.” He ordered high-quality roasted beans through the mail, but lamented the expense. Then he looked into home roasting. For about $500, he bought a compact, portable home roaster and began experimenting with different beans and roasts. His descent into coffee madness had only just begun.
Fast-forward 10 years to the basement lab we’re standing in today. Nieto is fussing over the roaster as if it’s a newborn. The Gene Café is about a foot long, with a clear cylindrical container and a tube sticking out one end, like an abbreviated leaf blower. Nieto measures out green coffee beans and puts them in the cylinder, or drum. He fiddles with some buttons and the drum begins to slowly rotate, the beans rolling against the glass. The tube on the end heats up, blowing hot air into the drum. Nieto steadily takes the temperature up to 460°F, explaining, “The beans start as endothermic, taking heat in. As they approach first crack, they become exothermic and start releasing heat.” First crack is when the beans start to release their moisture; as the water within the beans heats up, expands and begins to evaporate, the beans make a cracking noise, hence the term. All coffees go into first crack. Second crack determines the kind of roast you’ll end up with (i.e., French roast, Vienna roast, etc.).
“After first crack,” Nieto says, “you need to be careful. Second crack can happen very quickly, and you don’t want to burn your beans. Every batch is different, so you have to watch it.”
After the beans have cooled, we head upstairs, out of the basement lab and into the bright, cozy café. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the place is hopping. Regulars come in and high-five the barista, Lee, and there’s nary an open chair in the little seating area.
Nieto sips his preferred drink, a double espresso. “I’ve never done anything I love so much. I’m happy. I don’t care so much about the bottom line—I’m not here to make money, I’m here to make coffee. You can’t put a price on doing something you love.”
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