My Coffee Experience

By Tim Fields

A few weeks ago I paid a visit to my mom. As any good son does, I came by to see what’s new and to see how she and dad have been doing. It was me and my two boys; our trip, designed to be just an afternoon trip, turned into an overnight trip. We ended up staying late, and mom asked if we’d like to just stay the night. So we did.

The next morning I was woken by the unbelievable scent of bacon being cooked and walked down stairs to find mom over the stove, cooking up some pancakes and bacon. I asked “is there anything I can help you with”? And mom’s response was for me to brew coffee. So I opened the cabinet and found some Maxwell House…

Me being a coffee snob, had a look of discontent. Mom asked, “What.?” I said “Is this all you have”? Her response was one that changed my coffee drinking ways forever…

She said to me that if I don’t like what she had, I should make my own. I said “you know what mom? You’re right.” So that day I settled for crap coffee instead of my Starbucks yuppie blend I usually drink. But right after breakfast I ordered a 10lb bag of un-roasted “green” Costa Rican Tarrazu along with a stainless steel roaster. I figured mom was right. I make my own beer, I’ve made cheese, I can make wine, so…..Why not add coffee to my list?

Until my package arrived (about 4 days later) I started researching coffee roasting. I’ve never done this before nor have I ever seen in done. Two major things I learned, (1) don’t roast it inside unless you want to smoke everyone out and (2) don’t over-roast or you’re gonna get charcoal. Four days later and these guidelines in place, I fired up my propane Cajun bayou burner and started to roast my very first batch of coffee. For those of you that have never done this, coffee starts off smelling like you’re cooking fresh grass clippings…

It was an interesting smell to say the least, but after about 7 minutes or so, that changed and the beans went from green to yellow and I started to smell the smells of success. Yellow became tan and tan became light brown up until “second crack” and they became dark brown and oily. I was finished and now all I needed to do was to cool them and to remove the “chaff”. Chaff is basically what the purple skin on a peanut is to coffee, but with coffee it’s small, flaky and dark brown/black.

Success!

But I wasn’t done there…The beans had to go through a 24 hour period of de-gassing. This is a point where co2 is expelled and you want them open in something like a cookie sheet. The next day I put them in an airtight container but saved enough for a 5 cup brew. I anxiously awaited my first brew to finish…

A watched pot never boils, right? We’ll it seemed like a watched coffee machine doesn’t make coffee. After it was done, I took my very first sip of my home roasted coffee…

Let me tell you, Starbucks will now only get my money in an emergency – as in if I’m running late or I’ve run out of my own coffee. It is unbelievable: the notes of caramel, spice and toffee are in every cup, and I can say I have never tasted anything like it! Maybe it’s the freshness? I mean when we get coffee at the supermarket, it was roasted literally weeks ago, maybe months. Maybe it was because I roasted it. Or maybe it’s both. It doesn’t matter…

I know that most of you aren’t going to run out like me and start roasting tomorrow, but if you do, do it now while it’s cheap. The reason I say this is because coffee has been very inexpensive over the past 8 months. Not from the coffee shop or the supermarket you get it from, but from coffee brokers and plantations. There has been a serious glut over this time and has depressed prices considerably but this is correcting as we speak. Coffee as a commodity is priced currently at $2.02/lb. The reason is, there’s a drought in Brazil and speculation is that it will crush production. But droughts are generally temporary.

Anyhow, if you’re looking at coffee merely as an investment, a wise choice right now would be to consider getting into CAFE. CAFE is iPath’s coffee ETN and it tracks Barclay’s Pure Coffee Index. Currently, it’s around $26 per share and will most likely do well for you.

Because it’s an ETN, be careful if you choose this route because they are subject to very sharp increases and declines.