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Homeroasting and Coffee Geekness

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I’m a coffee geek. By which I mean that I have a geeky attitude to coffee. I’m passionate about the crafts and arts of coffee making, I seek coffee-related knowledge wherever I can find it, I can talk about coffee until people’s eyes glaze over (which happens more quickly than I’d guess possible), and I even dream about coffee gadgets. I’m not a typical gadget freak, as far as geek culture goes, but coffee is one area where I may invest in some gadgetry.

Perhaps my most visible acts of coffee geekery came in the form of updates I posted through diverse platforms about my home coffee brewing experiences. Did it from February to July. These posts contained cryptic details about diverse measurements, including water temperature and index of refraction. It probably contributed to people’s awareness of my coffee geek identity, which itself has been the source of fun things like a friend bringing me back coffee from Ethiopia.

But I digress, a bit. This is both about coffee geekness in general and about homeroasting in particular.

See, I bought myself this Hearthware i-Roast 2 dedicated homeroasting device. And I’m dreaming about coffee again.

Been homeroasting since December 2002, at the time I moved to Moncton, New Brunswick and was lucky enough to get in touch with Terry Montague of Down Esst Coffee.

Though I had been wishing to homeroast for a while before that and had become an intense coffee-lover fifteen years prior to contacting him, Terry is the one who enabled me to start roasting green coffee beans at home. He procured me a popcorn popper, sourced me some quality green beans, gave me some advice. And off I was.

Homeroasting is remarkably easy. And it makes a huge difference in one’s appreciation of coffee. People in the coffee industry, especially baristas and professional roasters, tend to talk about the “channel” going from the farmer to the “consumer.” In some ways, homeroasting gets the coffee-lover a few steps closer to the farmer, both by eliminating a few intermediaries in the channel and by making coffee into much less of a commodity. Once you’ve spent some time smelling the fumes emanated by different coffee varietals and looking carefully at individual beans, you can’t help but get a deeper appreciation for the farmer’s and even the picker’s work. When you roast 150g or less at a time, every coffee bean seems much more valuable. Further, as you experiment with different beans and roast profiles, you get to experience coffee in all of its splendour.

A popcorn popper may sound like a crude way to roast coffee. And it might be. Naysayers may be right in their appraisal of poppers as a coffee roasting method. You’re restricted in different ways and it seems impossible to produce exquisite coffee. But having roasted with a popper for seven years, I can say that my poppers gave me some of my most memorable coffee experiences. Including some of the most pleasant ones, like this organic Sumatra from Theta Ridge Coffee that I roasted in my campus appartment at IUSB and brewed using my beloved Brikka.

Over the years, I’ve roasted a large variety of coffee beans. I typically buy a pound each of three or four varietals and experiment with them for a while.

Mostly because I’ve been moving around quite a bit, I’ve been buying green coffee beans from a rather large variety of places. I try to buy them locally, as much as possible (those beans have travelled far enough and I’ve had enough problems with courier companies). But I did participate in a few mail orders or got beans shipped to me for some reason or another. Sourcing green coffee beans has almost been part of my routine in those different places where I’ve been living since 2002: Moncton, Montreal, Fredericton, South Bend, Northampton, Brockton, Cambridge, and Austin. Off the top of my head, I’ve sourced beans from:

  1. Down East
  2. Toi, moi & café
  3. Brûlerie Saint-Denis
  4. Brûlerie des quatre vents
  5. Terra
  6. Theta Ridge
  7. Dean’s Beans
  8. Green Beanery
  9. Cuvée
  10. Fair Bean
  11. Sweet Maria’s
  12. Evergreen Coffee
  13. Mon café vert
  14. Café-Vrac
  15. Roastmasters
  16. Santropol

And probably a few other places, including this one place in Ethiopia where my friend Erin bought some.

So, over the years, I got beans from a rather large array of places and from a wide range of regional varietals.

I rapidly started blending freshly-roasted beans. Typically, I would start a blend by roasting three batches in a row. I would taste some as “single origin” (coffee made from a single bean varietal, usually from the same farm or estate), shortly after roasting. But, typically, I would mix my batches of freshly roasted coffee to produce a main blend. I would then add fresh batches after a few days to fine-tune the blend to satisfy my needs and enhance my “palate” (my ability to pick up different flavours and aromas).

Once the quantity of green beans in a particular bag would fall below an amount I can reasonably roast as a full batch (minimum around 100g), I would put those green beans in a pre-roast blend, typically in a specially-marked ziplock bag. Roasting this blend would usually be a way for me to add some complexity to my roasted blends.

And complexity I got. Lots of diverse flavours and aromas. Different things to “write home about.”

But I was obviously limited in what I could do with my poppers. The only real controls that I had in homeroasting, apart from blending, consisted in the bean quantity and roasting time. Ambient temperature was clearly a factor, but not one over which I was able to exercise much control. Especially since I frequently ended up roasting outside, so as to not incommodate people with fumes, noise, and chaff. The few homeroast batches which didn’t work probably failed because of low ambient temperature.

One reason I stuck with poppers for so long was that I had heard that dedicated roasters weren’t that durable. I’ve probably used three or four different hot air popcorn poppers, over the years. Eventually, they just stop working, when you use them for coffee beans. As I’d buy them at garage sales and Salvation Army stores for 3-4$, replacing them didn’t feel like such a financially difficult thing to do, though finding them could occasionally be a challenge. Money was also an issue. Though homeroasting was important for me, I wasn’t ready to pay around 200$ for an entry-level dedicated roaster. I was thinking about saving money for a Behmor 1600, which offers several advantages over other roasters. But I finally gave in and bought my i-Roast as a kind of holiday gift to myself.

One broad reason is that my financial situation has improved since I started a kind of partial professional reorientation (PPR). I have a blogpost in mind about this PPR, and I’ll probably write it soon. But this post isn’t about my PPR.

Although, the series of events which led to my purchase does relate to my PPR, somehow.

See, the beans I (indirectly) got from Roastmasters came from a friend who bought a Behmor to roast cocoa beans. The green coffee beans came with the roaster but my friend didn’t want to roast coffee in his brand new Behmor, to avoid the risk of coffee oils and flavours getting into his chocolate. My friend asked me to roast some of these beans for his housemates (he’s not that intensely into coffee, himself). When I went to drop some homeroasted coffee by the Station C co-working space where he spends some of his time, my friend was discussing a project with Duncan Moore, whom I had met a few times but with whom I had had few interactions. The three of us had what we considered a very fruitful yet very short conversation. Later on, I got to do a small but fun project with Duncan. And I decided to invest that money into coffee.

A homeroaster seemed like the most appropriate investment. The Behmor was still out of reach but the i-Roast seemed like a reasonable purchase. Especially if I could buy it used.

But I was also thinking about buying it new, as long as I could get it quickly. It took me several years to make a decision about this purchase but, once I made it, I wanted something as close to “instant gratification” as possible. In some ways, the i-Roast was my equivalent to Little Mrs Sommers‘s “pair of silk stockings.”

At the time, Mon café vert seemed like the only place where I could buy a new i-Roast. I tried several times to reach them to no avail. As I was in the Mile-End as I decided to make that purchase, I went to Caffè in Gamba, both to use the WiFi signal and to check if, by any chance, they might not have started selling roasters. They didn’t, of course, homeroasters isn’t mainstream enough. But, as I was there, I saw the Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill Skerton, a “hand-cranked” coffee grinder about which I had read some rather positive reviews.

For the past few years, I had been using a Bodum Antigua conical burr electric coffee grinder. This grinder was doing the job, but maybe because of “wear and tear,” it started taking a lot longer to grind a small amount of coffee. The grind took so long, at some points, that the grounds were warm to the touch and it seemed like the grinder’s motor was itself heating.

So I started dreaming about the Baratza Vario, a kind of prosumer electric grinder which seemed like the ideal machine for someone who uses diverse coffee making methods. The Vario is rather expensive and seemed like overkill, for my current coffee setup. But I was lusting over it and, yes, dreaming about it.

One day, maybe, I’ll be able to afford a Vario.

In the meantime, and more reasonably, I had been thinking about “Turkish-style mills.” A friend lent me a box-type manual mill at some point and I did find it produced a nice grind, but it wasn’t that convenient for me, partly because the coffee drops into a small drawer which rapidly gets full. A handmill seemed somehow more convenient and there are some generic models which are sold in different parts of the World, especially in the Arab World. So I got the impression that I might be able to find handmills locally and started looking for them all over the place, enquiring at diverse stores and asking friends who have used those mills in the past. Of course, they can be purchased online. But they end up being relatively expensive and my manual experience wasn’t so positive as to convince me to spend so much money on one.

The Skerton was another story. It was much more convenient than a box-type manual mill. And, at Gamba, it was inexpensive enough for me to purchase it on the spot. I don’t tend to do this very often so I did feel strange about such an impulse purchase. But I certainly don’t regret it.

Especially since it complements my other purchases.

So, going to the i-Roast.

Over the years, I had been looking for the i-Roast and Behmor at most of the obvious sites where one might buy used devices like these. eBay, Craig’s List, Kijiji… As a matter of fact, I had seen an i-Roast on one of these, but I was still hesitating. Not exactly sure why, but it probably had to do with the fact that these homeroasters aren’t necessarily that durable and I couldn’t see how old this particular i-Roast was.

I eventually called to find out, after taking my decision to get an i-Roast. Turns out that it’s still under warranty, is in great condition, and was being sold by a very interesting (and clearly trustworthy) alto singer who happens to sing with a friend of mine who is also a local beer homebrewer. The same day I bought the roaster, I went to the cocoa-roasting friend’s place and saw a Behmor for the first time. And I tasted some really nice homemade chocolate. And met other interesting people including a couple that I saw, again, while taking the bus after purchasing the roaster.

The series of coincidences in that whole situation impressed me in a sense of awe. Not out of some strange superstition or other folk belief. But different things are all neatly packaged in a way that most of my life isn’t. Nothing weird about this. The packaging is easy to explain and mostly comes from my own perception. The effect is still there that it all fits.

And the i-Roast 2 itself fits, too.

It’s clearly not the ultimate coffee geek’s ideal roaster. But I get the impression it could become so. In fact, one reason I hesitated to buy the i-Roast 2 is that I was wondering if Hearthware might be coming out with the i-Roast 3, in the not-so-distant future.

I’m guessing that Hearthware might be getting ready to release a new roaster. I’m using unreliable information, but it’s still an educated guess. So, apparently…

I could just imagine what the i-Roast 3 might be. As I’m likely to get, I have a number of crazy ideas.

One “killer feature” actually relates both to the differences between the i-Roast and i-Roast 2 as well as to the geek factor behind homeroasting: roast profiles as computer files. Yes, I know, it sounds crazy. And, somehow, it’s quite unlikely that Hearthware would add such a feature on an entry-level machine. But I seriously think it’d make the roaster much closer to a roasting geek’s ultimate machine.

For one thing, programming a roast profile on the i-Roast is notoriously awkward. Sure, you get used to it. But it’s clearly suboptimal. And one major improvement of the i-Roast 2 over the original i-Roast is that the original version didn’t maintain profiles if you unplugged it. The next step, in my mind, would be to have some way to transfer a profile from a computer to the roaster, say via a slot for SD cards or even a USB port.

What this would open isn’t only the convenience of saving profiles, but actually a way to share them with fellow homeroasters. Since a lot in geek culture has to do with sharing information, a neat effect could come out of shareable roast profiles. In fact, when I looked for example roast profiles, I found forum threads, guides, and incredibly elaborate experiments. Eventually, it might be possible to exchange roasting profiles relating to coffee beans from the same shipment and compare roasting. Given the well-known effects of getting a group of people using online tools to share information, this could greatly improve the state of homeroasting and even make it break out of the very small niche in which it currently sits.

Of course, there are many problems with that approach, including things as trivial as voltage differences as well as bigger issues such as noise levels:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88nEXYCbfs]

But I’m still dreaming about such things.

In fact, I go a few steps further. A roaster which could somehow connect to a computer might also be used to track data about temperature and voltage. In my own experiments with the i-Roast 2, I’ve been logging temperatures at 15 second intervals along with information about roast profile, quantity of beans, etc. It may sound extreme but it already helped me achieve a result I wanted to achieve. And it’d be precisely the kind of information I would like to share with other homeroasters, eventually building a community of practice.

Nothing but geekness, of course. Shall the geek inherit the Earth?

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La Renaissance du café à Montréal

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J’ai récemment publié un très long billet sur la scène du café à Montréal. Sans doûte à cause de sa longueur, ce billet ne semble pas avoir les effets escomptés. J’ai donc décidé de republier ce billet, section par section. Ce billet est la dernière section de ce long billet. Il consiste en une espèce de résumé de la situation actuelle de la scène montréalaise du café, avec un regard porté vers son avenir. Vous pouvez consulter l’introduction qui contient des liens aux autres sections et ainsi avoir un contexte plus large.

À mon humble avis, l’arrivée de la Troisième vague à Montréal nous permet maintenant d’explorer le café dans toute sa splendeur. En quelque sorte, c’était la pièce qui manquait au casse-tête.

Dans mon précédent billet, j’ai omis de comparer le café à l’italienne au café à la québécoise (outre l’importance de l’allongé). C’est en partie parce que les différences sont un peu difficile à expliquer. Mais disons qu’il y a une certaine diversité de saveurs, à travers la dimension «à la québécoise» de la scène montréalaise du café. Malgré certains points communs, les divers cafés de Montréalais n’ont jamais été d’une très grande homogénéité, au niveau du goût. Les ressemblances venaient surtout de l’utilisation des quelques maisons de torréfaction locales plutôt que d’une unité conceptuelle sur la façon de faire le café. D’ailleurs, j’ai souvent perçu qu’il y avait eu une baisse de diversité dans les goûts proposés par différents cafés montréalais au cours des quinze dernières années, et je considère ce processus de quasi-standardisation (qui n’a jamais été menée à terme) comme un aspect néfaste de cette période dans l’histoire du café à Montréal. Les nouveaux développements de la scène montréalaise du café me donne espoir que la diversité de cette scène grandit de nouveau après cette période de «consolidation».

D’ailleurs, c’est non sans fierté que je pense au fait que les grandes chaînes «étrangères» de cafés ont eu de la difficulté à s’implanter à Montréal. Si Montréal n’a eu sa première succursale Starbucks qu’après plusieurs autres villes nord-américaines et si Second Cup a rapidement dû fermer une de ses succursales montréalaises, c’est entre autres parce que la scène montréalaise du café était très vivante, bien avant l’arrivée des chaînes. D’ailleurs, plusieurs chaînes se sont développé localement avant de se disperser à l’extérieur de Montréal. Le résultat est qu’il y a probablement, à l’heure actuelle, autant sinon plus de succursales de chaînes de cafés à Montréal que dans n’importe autre grande ville, mais qu’une proportion significative de ces cafés est originaire de Montréal. Si l’existence de chaînes locales de cafés n’a aucune corrélation avec la qualité moyenne du café qu’on dans une région donnée (j’ai même tendance à croire qu’il y a une corrélation inverse entre le nombre de chaînes et la qualité moyenne du café), la «conception montréalaise» du café me semble révêlée par les difficultés rencontrées par les chaînes extrogènes.

En fait, une caractéristique de la scène du café à Montréal est que la diversité est liée à la diversité de la population. Non seulement la diversité linguistique, culturelle, ethnique et sociale. Mais la diversité en terme de goûts et de perspectives. La diversité humaine à Montréal évoque l’image de la «salade mixte»: un mélange harmonieux mais avec des éléments qui demeurent distincts. D’aucuns diront que c’est le propre de toute grande ville, d’être intégrée de la sorte. D’autres diront que Montréal est moins bien intégrée que telle ou telle autre grande ville. Mais le portrait que j’essaie de brosser n’est ni plus beau, ni plus original que celui d’une autre ville. Il est simplement typique.

Outre les cafés «à la québécoise», «à l’italienne» et «troisième vague» que j’ai décrits, Montréal dispose de plusieurs cafés qui sont liés à diverses communautés. Oui, je pense à des cafés liés à des communautés culturelles, comme un café guatémaltèque ou un café libanais. Mais aussi à des cafés liés à des groupes sociaux particuliers ou à des communautés religieuses. Au point de vue du goût, le café servi à ces divers endroits n’est peut-être pas si distinctif. Mais l’expérience du café prend un sens spécifique à chacun de ces endroits.

Et si j’ai parlé presqu’exclusivement de commerces liés au café, je pense beaucoup à la dimension disons «domestique» du café.

Selon moi, la population de la région montréalaise a le potentiel d’un réel engouement pour le café de qualité. Même s’ils n’ont pas toujours une connaissance très approfondie du café et même s’il consomme du café de moins bonne qualité, plusieurs Montréalais semblent très intéressés par le café. Certains d’entre eux croient connaître le café au point de ne pas vouloir en découvrir d’autres aspects. Mais les discussions sur le goût du café sont monnaie courante parmi des gens de divers milieux, ne serait-ce que dans le choix de certains cafés.

Évidemment, ces discussions ont lieu ailleurs et le café m’a souvent aidé à m’intégrer à des réseaux sociaux de villes où j’ai habité. Mais ce que je crois être assez particulier à Montréal, c’est qu’il ne semble pas y avoir une «idéologie dominante» du café. Certains amateurs de café (et certains professionnels du café) sont très dogmatiques, voire doctrinaires. Mais je ne perçois aucune  idée sur le café qui serait réellement acquise par tous. Il y a des Tim Hortons et des Starbucks à Montréal mais, contrairement à d’autres coins du continent, il ne semble pas y avoir un café qui fait consensus.

Par contre, il y a une sorte de petite oligarchie. Quelques maisons de torréfaction et de distribution du café semblent avoir une bonne part du marché. Je pense surtout à Union, Brossard et Van Houtte (qui a aussi une chaîne de café et qui était pris à une certaine époque comme exemple de succès financier). À ce que je sache, ces trois entreprises sont locales. À l’échelle globale, l’oligarchie du monde du café est constituée par Nestlé, Sara Lee, Kraft et Proctor & Gamble. J’imagine facilement que ces multinationales ont autant de succès à Montréal qu’ailleurs dans le monde mais je trouve intéressant de penser au poids relatif de quelques chaînes locales.

Parlant de chaînes locales, je crois que certaines entreprises locales peuvent avoir un rôle déterminant dans la «Renaissance du café à Montréal». Je pense surtout à Café Terra de Carlo Granito, à Café Mystique et Toi, Moi & Café de Sevan Istanboulian, à Café Rico de Sévanne Kordahi et à la coop La Maison verte à Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Ces choix peuvent sembler par trop personnels, voire arbitraires. Mais chaque élément me semble représentatif de la scène montréalaise du café. Carlo Granito, par exemple, a participé récemment à l’émission Samedi et rien d’autre de Radio-Canada, en compagnie de Philippe Mollé (audio de 14:30 à 32:30). Sevan Istanboulian est juge certifié du World Barista Championship et distribue ses cafés à des endroits stratégiques. Sévanne Kordahi a su concentrer ses activités dans des domaines spécifiques et ses cafés sont fort appréciés par des groupes d’étudiants (entre autres grâce à un rabais étudiant). Puis j’ai appris dernièrement que La Maison verte servait du Café Femenino qui met de l’avant une des plus importantes dimensions éthiques du monde du café.

Pour revenir au «commun des mortels», l’amateur de café. Au-delà de la spécificité locale, je crois qu’une scène du café se bâtit par une dynamique entre individus, une série de «petites choses qui finissent par faire une différence». Et c’est cette dynamique qui me rend confiant.

La communauté des enthousiastes du café à Montréal est somme toute assez petite mais bien vivante. Et je me place dans les rangs de cette communauté.

Certains d’entre nous avons participé à divers événements ensemble, comme des dégustations et des séances de préparation de café. Les discussions à propos du café se multiplient, entre nous. D’ailleurs, nous nous croisons assez régulièrement, dans l’un ou l’autre des hauts lieux du café à Montréal. D’ailleurs, d’autres dimensions du monde culinaire sont représentés parmi nous, depuis la bière artisanale au végétalianisme en passant par le chocolat et le thé. Ces liens peuvent sembler évident mais c’est surtout parce que chacun d’entre nous fait partie de différents réseaux que la communauté me semble riche. En discutant ensemble, nous en venons à parler de plusieurs autres arts culinaires au-delà du café, ce qui renforce les liens entre le café et le reste du monde culinaire. En parlant de café avec nos autres amis, nous créons un effet de vague, puisque nous participons à des milieux distincts. C’est d’ailleurs une représentation assez efficace de ce que je continue d’appeler «l’effet du papillon social»: le battement de ses ailes se répercute dans divers environnements. Si la friction n’est pas trop grande, l’onde de choc provenant de notre communauté risque de se faire sentir dans l’ensemble de la scène du café à Montréal.

Pour boucler la boucle (avant d’aller me coucher), je dois souligner le fait que, depuis peu, le lieu de rencontre privilégié de notre petit groupe d’enthousiastes est le Café Myriade.

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Café à la montréalaise

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Montréal est en passe de (re)devenir une destination pour le café. Mieux encore, la «Renaissance du café à Montréal» risque d’avoir des conséquences bénéfiques pour l’ensemble du milieu culinaire de la métropole québécoise.

Cette thèse peut sembler personnelle et je n’entends pas la proposer de façon dogmatique. Mais en me mêlant au milieu du café à Montréal, j’ai accumulé un certain nombre d’impressions qu’il me ferait plaisir de partager. Il y a même de la «pensée magique» dans tout ça en ce sens qu’il me semble plus facile de rebâtir la scène montréalaise du café si nous avons une idée assez juste de ce qui constitue la spécificité montréalaise.

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