Posted on 05/05/2002 11:56:16 PM PDT by WaterDragon
If you care about coffee, you should meet David Griswold, a young man whose Portland-based businesses are dedicated to bringing you the best of this beverage, while directly contributing to the welfare of the folks who pick the beans. Griswolds success with his coffee import business, Sustainable Harvest, has subsidized his Roast Your Own Coffee internet marketing enterprise. The latter, at http://www.roastyourown.com, encourages customers to buy some of the world's best beans and roast them at home for the ultimate experience.
You just haven't experienced the best that coffee can be, unless you roast, grind and brew your own, Griswold declares. No argument with that premise is offered here, after tasting the richness of a roast accomplished with a small countertop machine Griswold markets on the internet. Coffee connoiseurs long ago learned that buying roasted beans and grinding them at home as needed produces a superior cup of Joe (OMED: "Joe" is a WWII moniker for coffee. "Moniker" is an early 20th Century term for "name".)
Griswold explains that while green coffee beans retain their taste potential for many months before roasting, once roasted, beans should be ground and brewed within three days for optimal flavor.
Residual economic benefits
Griswold's Sustainable Harvest buys beans directly from small family farms with a real concern for quality, and thus, he avers, sells quality at a consumer-friendly price while providing a maximum return for the farmer. That is not the case with the majority of trading on the world coffee market, where volume growers sell to the middleman.
And coffee is a very, very big business. It is the most important legally traded commodity in the world, next to oil. Over 70 countries (all located in a band around the world between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) cultivate commercial coffee crops, and an estimated 20 million souls derive a living from this enterprise. Well over six million metric tons of coffee beans arrive annually on the world market. A majority of producing nations are members of the International Coffee Organization, a London-based cartel that controls pricing. This is not the source cultivated by Griswold, who seeks caring farmers growing a product that qualifies for both organic and fair trade certification (21 countries currently produce fair traded green coffee). The latter production returns up to $1.41/lb to grower cooperatives, whereas only a 38 cent/lb remuneration is realized by farmers from ICO middlemen.
Brazil dominates
No other country threatens Brazil's domination of coffee production at over 28 million bags (100-130 lbs/bag) per year. Vietnam, a late comer, is runnerup at 12.6 million. (snip)
We should note that there are two basic species of the coffee plant: Robustico and Arabica. The latter, which is dominant in Latin America, the Carribean and to lesser extent in Asia, is the highest quality resource, while the video-advertised canned brands inhabiting our supermarkets rely upon African growing of the former. The nuances of climate and soil in any particular coffee-growing site create a vast variety of taste characteristics, equivalent to the terroir factor the French ascribe to wine grape growing sites. (OMED: that is "terroir", not "terror." It is not a reference to emotional distress. It is a French term which describes geo-climatological combinations that cause a region, or even a single hillside, to produce an agricultural product with very specific qualities....(snip) [please click on the link for complete article]
It's expensive though. I'm saving up for a roaster.
Until I gather the money for the roaster I want, I just go to that store. From what I hear, roasted beans stay fresh for 3-5 days (unroasted beans stay fresh for years), so if I buy from that store, I get a couple days of perfect coffee. It is the best.
I've heard that you can use air-pop popcorn poppers too. We've never tried it, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.