L2Goodness
Coffee roasting culture takes hold in region
The caramel scent wafts out of Matter of Taste Coffee Bar on Phillip Street in Waterloo.
Inside, Phong Tran is roasting coffee beans and within nine to 16 minutes, the hard green pellet is transformed into a subtle brown or deep brown bean after roasting in temperatures of up 425 F (218 Celsius).
“It’s like cooking. You can smell it and see that it’s cooking,” said Tran, as he peeks into the small window on the roaster, watching the colour turn.
Three days a week, he roasts for about five to six hours. Each batch is about nine kilos of beans.
The coffee bean crackles as it roasts and it steams as it’s forced out into a bin to rest.
“It’s a traumatic experience for the bean,” Ron Donaldson, who roasts coffee beans in his garage and started his own home-based coffee roasting business in Kitchener about two years ago.
But the end result, depending on how long you roast it, is a light brown to dark brown bean that, when ground, will offer an aromatic cup of coffee.
This is the world of specialty coffee.
There are coffee aficionados who prefer the “pourover” (just as it sounds, hot water poured over filtered coffee).
The Chemex uses an infusion method with a thicker paper filter that traps the oil from the coffee.
A French press has no filter, retaining more of the oils in the coffee grounds and providing a robust flavour.
There are many variations from an espresso (a process of brewing that uses high pressure to extract the coffee): an Americano, latte or a flat white.
Coffee is a truly artisanal experience.
In Waterloo Region, businesses such as Matter of Taste and Monigram Coffee Roasters, are offering high-quality coffee beans in which great care has been taken in growing and harvesting — sometimes getting to know the farmer — as well as the processing.
Other local roasters include Settlement Coffee Roasters, Smile Tiger Coffee Roasters and Eco Coffee.
There’s a reason a coffee can cost $4 to $5.
To those in the know, it’s referred to as the “third wave of coffee,” or “microroasting,” a movement in which coffee is all about the bean.
Phong and Dawn Tran opened their downtown Kitchener business in 2004 and the Factory Square in the former BlackBerry building on Phillip Street opened two years ago.
The Vietnamese-born couple knew they wanted to specialize in specialty coffee and moved to Kitchener to try it out.
“We didn’t just want to serve coffee,” said Dawn Tran.
“We knew it was an uphill battle,” she said. Fifteen years ago, they were the only coffee house offering latte art on their coffees and setting up barista jams in downtown Kitchener.
The coffee sold at large grocery stores is what is known as commodity coffee. It’s often lower grade because the beans are harvested by machines and not sorted for quality.
In contrast, specialty coffee often means the green coffee bean is handpicked on farms and processed there.
“Every bean is like a wine grape,” said Donaldson, with the beans taking on the characteristics of the land where it is grown and harvested in.
Roasting enhances the bean’s profile from light to dark, changing its aroma and flavour.
Like wine, coffee can have an array of flavours with everything from fruit and floral notes to chocolate, earthy and herbal tastes.
Although dark roast can be popular at some coffee shops, roasting the bean to reach charcoal flavours can lead to bitter coffee.
“It’s like cooking a steak, the longer you roast it, you start to char it,” Donaldson said.
Donaldson has been to coffee conferences in the United States and visited Guatemala and Panama, meeting coffee farmers.
He also gets coffee beans from an importer who sources the coffee from countries including Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia and Ethiopia, where Arabic coffee originates.
For Donaldson, his first good cup of coffee was at 14 when he was on an exchange, living with a family on a dairy farm in Sweden. They roasted their own beans.
The environmental engineer began dabbling in roasting with a hot air popcorn machine and then invested in a $12,000 roasting machine two years ago.
Now, he roasts about 150 pounds a week under his business Contrabean.
He sells coffee and also supplies coffee to Berlin Bicycle Café in Kitchener.
Coffee roasting is still a part-time venture, but it’s a hobby he hopes to turn into a full-time gig.
That’s exactly what Graham and Monica Braun did with Graham’s “hobby that had gone too far.”
Graham started roasting in the basement and, after much research, the couple gave up their corporate jobs and jumped into coffee roasting.
They opened their first Monigram location on Ainslie Street in downtown Galt in 2013.
Last October, they opened the second coffee house in the core’s old post office.
A few weeks ago, the Brauns opened Monigram Coffee Midtown in Kitchener near the Google building.
They are also partnering with Ignite Group with Red Circle Coffee. A café is located in Catalyst137 in Kitchener.
The couple credits their success to their involvement in the local community.
That includes offering their coffee space for ballet lessons upstairs, and for for game nights, knitters, storytelling and even a burlesque night.
For Graham, specialty coffee is a refined taste.
Similar to a good wine, most drinkers won’t give up on flavour once they’ve tasted it.
They may not chose it every time, but “people’s tastes seldom go retrograde,” he said.
The Brauns source their coffee from importers who have direct trade relationships with farmers.
“People see you craft the coffee, elevating it to the peak of quality, and it’s not just a commodity anymore,” he said.
So what kind of coffee do these local roasters drink?
Top choice for Graham Braun is a pourover. “It’s the most true expression of the coffee.”
Monica Braun likes a “Monamericano” which has a splash of milk.
Mid-afternoon her go-to is a flat white, which she explains is similar to a cappuccino with a mark of milk, not foamy milk.
Ron Donaldson takes a doubleshot espresso with milk in the morning and two coffees in the afternoon at work. Decaffeinated coffee in the evening.
Dawn Phong prefers a lighter roasted coffee and drinks espresso or cappuccino.
Phong Tran prefers a medium to darker roast and drinks five to eight cups in a day. Always black.
“It’s hard to define good coffee. It depends on personal preference,” he said. “It’s a matter of taste.”