Coffey's Coffee

Here is a video which I just came across. It is a bit techno-pop and chaotic for my tastes but it is interesting.

Maybe I’ll come across something that is more Sinatra blues kind of style but until then I’ll post what I find.

Coffeeology

Someone just forwarded the link to this video to me and after I watched it I just had to post it here.

If you look up Asher Yaron you will see that he is an accomplished lecturer, entrepreneur and spiritualist. He is one of those well spoken enthusiastic gregarious individuals who discovers truisms and feels it is his duty to expose these truisms to the world.

Ya gotta love his enthusiasm for coffee. The truism here is the best coffee is fresh roasted and it will give you a warm fuzzy feeling if you roast your own. Now for those of you who can’t cook popcorn without burning it, you can get your fresh roasted coffee from me.

Now I think I want to go to Bali to take his course and buy his coffee roaster. He is a good salesman.

There's a pot of coffee at the end of the rainbow.

Two Lonely Little Coffee Flowers

I don’t have a lot of coffee news except for this picture. These are two sad little flowers that have bloomed on my coffee plant. I think I took this picture one day too late because they look a little wilted. Yep, that’s it, two little flowers, but they are the first flowers that have ever grown on my plant. I am on my way towards the first coffee plantation in Canada.

Cathy the Coffee Plant Watching A Snow Storm

And this is my lonely little coffee plant looking out at yet another snow storm. I hate to admit it but I don’t know if my plant is of robusta heritage or Arabica. I don’t really care who its parents were because I am its daddy now.

Yes, I name all of my plants. Don’t you? I have Rosie the rosemary plant, Peter the parsley, Vern the fern, Bayboy the Bay Laurel, Lilly the lily (aka Zombie plant because we were give it at a funeral), Francis and John-Paul the prayer plants. I don’t want to tell you what I named my African violets because they are not socially acceptable.

So now we can count the days until it’s warm enough to party on the deck and I can Cathy the coffee plant outside for the summer. She loves the hot humid summer weather. So do I.

This is my goal, ripe coffee cherries.

This doesn't look like spring!

It is March now and everyone is optimistic that we will have an early spring. I don’t remember if March came in like a lamb or lion but I don’t really care, lamb or lion I just want to get my feet warm. I used to really enjoy winter being an avid cross country skier, snowshoer and winter camper. I even slept in snow caves in Algonquin Park. Now I watch golf on the television and with my feet stretched out in front of me hoping the sun from Hawaii or Florida will warm them up.

I don’t have a lot of news about Coffey’s Coffee except that we are still a sponsor for the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage and their terrific program of acoustic music. I hope you have been following my reviews on www.cornwallfreenews.com .

What is interesting these days is the number of positive articles about the benefits of coffee, both health wise and on the world economy. Today I read a terrific article by Adam Pesce of Reunion Island Coffee entitled “How Coffee Can Change the World – Part 1. It appears on The Huffinton Post web site so I am just going to put the link here so you can directly to it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/adam-pesce/how-coffee-can-change-the_b_2725155.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-impact

Another great article on coffee and health can be found on the following web site. The thing I like the most about this particular srticle is that it treats coffee as a whole food and not just a nutrient empty source of caffeine.

http://lifehacker.com/5986506/the-science-behind-coffee-and-why-its-actually-good-for-your-health

OK, enough of the education stuff, let’s all just sit down and enjoy a fresh roasted cup of coffee now and relax. I’m going to put on a warmer pair of socks.

Another year has snuck up on me again. I am ambivalent to the change in calendar years. On one hand I don’t particularly like to see the passage of time because it just means that I am getting older but on the other hand I have to admit that I am glad to see 2012 over and am looking forward to the New Year.

A great way to start off is to have my coffee placed in another store. Bee Real is a local enterprise which opened up just before Christmas in the Ingleside mall. The owner, Helen, is a bee’s wax candle maker and her store’s focus is on locally produced quality products. My coffee fits right in with Helen’s candles and Angela Youngs’ “Ground Soap”. After all it is top shelf stuff.

I have some coffee changes to report for 2013 as well. I am no longer going to carry the Papua New Guinea coffee.  However I am now stocking a new coffee from Peru, Selva Antiguo “Old Trees”. It is a delicious clean Peruvian coffee with a medium body, a hint of acid, a very smooth finish and a slight note of Molasses. Now I have to come up with a label design that says Peru.

I don’t have any coffee related events scheduled for the near future but I’m sure something will present itself in the next month or so. In the meantime I will continue to fill my customer’s orders and keep my distributor’s shelves stocked.

So Happy New Year everyone! Let’s hope the world will be a better place in the coming year and remember, life is too short to drink bad coffee.

My Alter Ego - Benny the Bean

October 3^rd was my last post? Wow, where has the time gone. I guess I should update everyone on what has happened since then. First, the Long Sault Farmer’s Market ended for the summer but came back again on Dec 8^th for a Christmas market. I also attended the Rothwell-Osnabruck Craft Show on November 23-24. Both events were very well attended and I sold lots of coffee.

Only one of the rooms at the R-O Craft Show 2012

As you can see the craft show is very popular in my little area of Ontario and it seems to be growing every year. Vendors were lined up in the hallways this year and they were all lined up to grab a cup of my famous brew.

Christmas Coffee Elf

Here we are at the Long Sault Farmer’s Christmas Market with my dancing and singing reindeer hat. There wasn’t enough room for Benny the Bean.

Anyway, Christmas is almost upon us and coffee seems to be a popular gift for many. This year, just for Christmas, I have created Coffey’s Coffee gift certificates so people can give the gift of coffee but still have it roasted fresh when that lucky recipient wants it.

OK, I’ll have to admit right out that there is a lot of motivated self interest in reviewing this book. It is my goal in life to introduce my little part of the world, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry counties in South Eastern Ontario, to the great flavour and healthy benefits of fresh roasted coffee. When I read about this book on a coffee professional discussion group on linkedin.com I just had to get it.

The target audience of this book is for the average coffee consumer. It is just full of interesting facts about the healthy benefits of drinking coffee and why it should be considered a “Superfood”. The author also writes about her personal experiences with coffee throughout her life and includes quite a number of recipes where coffee is used as an ingredient. There are a number of factoids about coffee listed throughout the book covering everything from the history of coffee to home remedies and household uses of coffee grounds.

I found the book to be an interesting and easy read but I have to take exception to a couple of things the author included in the book. The first one is the entire chapter on flavoured coffee……yuck. As a coffee professional and coffee purest I shiver at the thought of adding artificial flavours to my coffee beans. If you insist on adding flavour then the only way to do it should be in the form of alcohol, i.e. whiskey, brandy, Tia Maria, Bailey’s, …..well, you get the idea.

The second item is the whole concept of a COFFEE ENEMA. While there are some people out there that the very act of drinking coffee makes it an enema, this is not something that I want to even think about. Coffee should go in one way and out the other and it flows downhill, but that’s just my humble opinion.

There is a contest to win one of the 4 copies of the book that were generously donated by the publisher, Kensington Publishing, but you will have to go to my other business web site to see the details, www.cornwallfreenews.com.

I don’t have the book mentioned in the youtube video yet but you can be sure that I am going to get a few copies.

OK, two more days and summer is over. Three more Fridays and my Farmer’s Market is finished for the year. Thanksgiving will give way to Halloween and then the next thing you know it will Christmas and then New Years. Are you depressed yet? Let’s look at the bright side, the falling leaves, the first crisp frost, white glistening snow and you standing in  your house looking out of your window with a nice steamy hot cup of coffee in your hands.

You knew there had to be a commercial in there somewhere didn’t you. Anyway let me update you on my little roasting operation here in the metropolis of Ingleside, Ontario, Canada. I am using my new Solar roaster quite often now and depend on it for my larger orders. I did have to learn by trial and error the proper setting for each type of bean and I did lose a few batches while I was learning. I still use my old reliable 1 kg roaster for small orders and more expensive coffees like the Jamaica Blue Mountain because it just costs too much to burn a batch.

I have recently brought in a small bag of Hawaii Mocha to try. It is a peculiar bean. Very small in size, actually smaller than a peaberry. I find it is a typical mocha bean, light body and high acidity and the acidity comes across with an apple note. There are lots of other interesting characteristics but I’ll let you discover them yourself if you are interested.

I attended the Tasting In The Glen’s event in Maxville on the 8th of this month and it was a wild success. There were a bunch of wineries and breweries there and of course there was scotch tastings. The rest of the exhibition room was filled with specialty food vendors and of course Coffey’s Coffee was there to add caffeine to dull the alcohol. It was quite a party.

View from the coffee booth.

I think I will go to this event again next year. For the rest of this year the only event I have partially committed to attend is the R-O Craft show in November but you never know what I can be talked into.

This post is not so much about my roasting but more about my recent vacation to California. The initial reason for our trip there was to attend the wedding of a nephew and his fiancé but we weren’t about to travel 6 hours in a plane and not do some site seeing. The wedding was in the Napa Valley at a winery and you would think that when a person is in the heart of American winemaking you would do as many wine tastings as possible. However, the west coast of the United States is also known for the starting the fresh roasted coffee revolution that has taken over the continent.

Bad Ass Coffee Chain

Not that I didn’t taste some delicious wines but my consumption was limited to tasting. During my life I have had the occasion to consume mass quantities of alcohol in many different forms and I believe that I have eliminated all of my redundant brain cells. The remaining cells rebel at the slightest amount of alcohol and so I try to stimulate the remaining parts of my brain with caffeine. Above you can see the first coffee shop that I found outside of the hotel we were staying at. I really liked the name and they made me a good cup of Kona using an aeropress. However, they are a chain and they do not roast coffee on the premises. I did buy a t-shirt simply because I like the name.

Flying Goat Coffee

My next shop on my coffee tour of Napa Valley was the Flying Goat coffee shop. I liked the name but they didn’t have a roaster and the decor was very plain with very little coffee aroma in their store so I didn’t try their coffee.

Aroma Roasters

Across the square in Santa Rosa I spotted another store called Aroma Roasters who true to their name had a functioning roaster in the middle of their shop. The green beans that were on the floor were mostly from Central and South America and were organic and fair trade/responsible coffees.

Yo el Ray Roasters

The next day of our trip we found a couple of coffee shops in Callistoga. The first one was named Yo El Ray Roasting and was a real working roaster/coffee shop. They seemed to specialized in African coffee and I tried their Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. It was a city roast and very flavourful but I thought they could have made it a little stronger. As you can see from the picture it was a bare bones shop with the roaster front and centre.

My next visit was to the Calistoga Roastery which wasn’t a roaster, just a coffee shop, but they did have cool decor.

Counter at Calistoga Roaster Coffee Shop

I particularly like some of the signs posted on the side of the counter here but I didn’t try the coffee because of the false advertising.

Misc Coffee Shop

There were other coffee shops that I walked by but a quick look from the street convinced me not to enter.

Coffee Bazaar

We had just left a state park with giant redwood trees when we came across The Coffee Bazaar/The Russian River Coffee house in Guerneville. Once again there was no roaster on site but we were feeling very mellow and still in awe of the giant ancient trees and needed a coffee to bring us back to the here and now to drive the rest of our route. The coffee was quite good and there were some very interesting artwork on the walls.

Coffee Bazaar Artwork

So to summarize, there were lots of coffee shops who call themselves roasters but only a couple that really were. In retrospect I think I should have gone to more wine bars.

No Hot Coffee Today - Broken Generator

Where does the time go? I just looked at my blog and realized that I haven’t posted anything since June 3^rd. It has been a busy Summer for me. As you can see in the picture above that I am still manning a booth at the Long Sault Farmer’s Market. Basically this summer has been spent just trying to stay cool during this long hot drought that has been afflicting south eastern Ontario. Last weekend I went to my godson’s wedding in Cambridge, one of the few weekends that I have taken off this year.

I have added a couple of new coffees since my last post, Ethiopian Wild Forest – a fair trade, organic and eco friendly coffee, and Hawaii Mocha, a very tiny bean with a high acidity, light body and a caramel finish. To my surprise I am still carrying Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. I have been able to find a few coffee connoisseurs who are willing to pay for quality. I guess I should rethink my attitude about light roasted coffees. The Jamaica Blue is awesome when roasted to a city roast just short of the second crack. I am never too old to learn….so far.

I finally have my new Solar Roaster operating and I have to admit it has been a challenge. The roaster is very energy efficient but that means it is so well insulated that I can’t hear the cracks to control the roast. I have had to go by trial and error to find the right time and temperature for each type of bean which means I’ve lost a few roasts. Fortunately the roasts are very reproducible and once I have a roast profile down pat I just have to set the time and temperature parameters and let it go.

And speaking of roasting, it’s time to start. I’ll try to be a little more consistent in my posting but I can’t promise anything.

Coffee Cherries Ripening