QUEST FOR THE BEST BREW
County roaster part of coffee trail
The temperature dips slightly from 220 C after Craig Marentette pours a couple pounds of coffee beans from El Salvador into his roaster.
The chemical engineer turned coffee roaster tracks the temperature carefully so he doesn’t burn the beans with their notes of honey, dry walnut and grapefruit. “Pretty soon we’re going to hear the first crack,” he said.
Sure enough, the pressure inside the beans tumbling in his five-kilogram roaster is building and they crack with a popping sound. He releases them to cool off before they reach their second crack, which would signal a dark roast and an end to the flavour profiles he’s trying to accentuate.
“I just want to bring good coffee to as many people as I can,” the owner of Red Lantern Coffee Co. said Monday.
The 29-year-old quit his job as an environmental consulting engineer a year ago to start his smallbatch, artisanal coffee-roasting business. The rise of small independent coffee roasters became a trend years earlier in Toronto and Marentette is one of a few local coffee roasters trying to do for coffee what craft breweries have done for beer.
“We’re trying to educate people on what coffee can be,” he said. “Once you taste, not even my coffee, but specialty coffee, it’s hard to go back to just a regular cup of coffee.”
The Red Lantern Coffee Co. is one of 10 spots on the Windsor-Essex Coffee Trail.
Essex County already has its own wine route and its Barrels, Bottles and Brews Trail of craft breweries and whisky distilleries. The trail for coffee lovers started last summer.
“We had sort of the alcohol side of it covered,” said Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island CEO Gordon Orr.
The whole idea of marketing Windsor-Essex is capturing things that are unique and authentic and Orr said he hopes to add to the trail of cafes, restaurants and roasters. The first wave of coffee, as Marentette describes it, was when people could make coffee like Maxwell House easily at home. The second wave was Starbucks and the cafe culture. “We’re in the third wave where coffee drinkers still want the atmosphere, but quality is more important, he said.
A dark roast involves burning the coffee beans and removes flavour, so Marentette focuses on medium roasts where he can draw out the underlying characteristics, such as the vanilla, dark chocolate and apple notes in his Columbian Las Rosas. Small batch roasters tend to have one source for each kind of coffee and he buys his Colombian coffee from a supplier that works with 300 women operating a cooperative farm.
A cup of coffee will taste best within the first six to 14 days after it was roasted, he said. Coffee in the grocery store could be two to six months old before it’s purchased.
You don’t have to be a coffee snob to enjoy his coffee. “It’s fun to try different ones. Every coffee is different and you can basically travel the world through coffee.” Marentette wants to open his own cafe and for now sells his coffee for $15 per 340 gram bag at Lee and Maria’s in Kingsville where he also sells his brewed coffee Tuesdays to Fridays. Bags are available online at Red Lantern Coffee Co. and at the Butcher of Kingsville, Cycle Culture and Pursuit Massage Therapy in Tecumseh, the Harrow Country Depot, Green Bean Coffee Company, Cheese and Crumb Bakeshop and Border City Urban Farms.
The businesses pay to be a part of the coffee trail that is promoted by Tourism Windsor Pelee Island. The trail includes 30ml Coffee Co. which started in Craft Heads Brewing Company and is also in Sweet Revenge Bake Shop, Brewin’ Bros Beverage Co., Cafe March 21, Taloola Cafe, Ciao Caffe, Cindy’s Too at Cindy’s Garden in Kingsville, Merlis’ Eatery and Beverage House in Kingsville, Dalhousie Bistro in Amherstburg, and Lakeside Bakery Deli Cafe in Leamington.