Some Rent is Better than No Rent

 

The Mills Block building on Lodi's Main Street was built in 1895 and has a storied past.  This photo is from today, and you can see that it's currently for rent again.  The vacant left side  is where I operated my coffeeshop.  The roaster was in the back.  A Mexican restaurant is currently on the right side.  When I was there, it was a Chinese restaurant and later a bar. 

The building has historically had trouble keeping tenants. That worked in my favor to negotiate and write a one-sided long term lease with escalating but still cheap rent, including all utilities.  I made the argument that some rent was better than none.  Once I was established, I could afford to pay a little more.   

The coffeeshop stuck around for about 12 years--seven years after I sold it.  When the lease expired, new owners wrote a new lease with much higher rent payments.  Subsequent tenants have struggled.  Some rent is better than no rent, especially in a small town where vacant buildings languish.   

I went out for breakfast with a friend who told me that the building is for sale again.  One of the potential new owners has restoration plans. I hope it works out. I have fond memories of the space.

I was always an early riser, but it was here that I arrived at at 5:15 a.m. every morning for five years.  I officially turned on the open sign at 6 a.m.  On warm summer days, I would leave the front and back doors open and turn the commercial kitchen fans on high to bring in the cool fresh air.

Often guys would start trickling in around 5:45 a.m. to sit at what they called "the smart table."    The smart table was actually a cluster of tables near the cash register and consisted of mostly middle-aged to older  guys and a few women.   They would buy bottomless cups for $2 and solve problems, globally and locally, for the rest of us. 

Cafe La Quinta Mary: San Sabastian del Oeste

I've visited coffee plantations on previous travels to Costa Rica and Jamaica but never previously in Mexico.  Mexican coffee, particularly from the Chiapas region, has always held a special place in my heart.  When coffee was just a hobby for me, I had an internet friend from Alaska who would go to Chiapas each year and bring back coffee beans from area farmers, which he would then roast in his Alaskan pizza oven setup.  He mailed me five pounds of these raw beans. It was some of the best coffee that I've ever tried.

When I roasted professionally, I kept Mexican coffee beans in stock for two reasons.  One, I loved the flavor profile.  Two, it was the least expensive high-quality arabica coffee that I could find--often less than $2/lb for green in 152 lb bags.   I sold two different roasts:  a lightly roasted-bean that was marketed as Mexican Altura and an dark-oily bean that was marketed as French Roast (known internally as BBB for badly burn beans).  

The coffee plantation that we visited in the San Sabastian area was quite basic.  Here, an employee is grinding the coffee beans with a belt-driven grinder.

The owner is selling roasted coffee to us gringo tourists. His family has been growing coffee here for five generations.

As soon as the line died down, I asked him if he could sell me a kilo of green (raw) coffee beans.  He nodded and then disappeared for a long time in the back.  The price was half the price of roasted--a reasonable deal.  

When I went to roast the coffee back home, the preparation was not as clean as what I'm used to.  There were small amounts of debris mixed in with the green beans.  However, the lightly roasted coffee was delicious. 

Truckin'

 Today, it didn't rain all day.  It rained and then it sleeted for awhile and then it rained.  

Julia and I played pickleball this morning at the Poynette Village Hall.  At 4 o'clock I had a short window of opportunity when it was not raining.  Callie was not amused about having to wait so long for her walk.  How do I know?  She told me in her own way.  She does this "yip, yip, yip" thing when she is impatient.  It started raining about a half mile from the end of the five mile walk, but I didn't get soaked.

 

This photo of me was taken in 2004 as a candid shot by the local newspaper photographer.  I usually ordered eight bags of coffee beans at a time.  Bags weighed in the 130-152 lb range.  The truck driver would double park in front of the shop and hand me the bags which I would run through the coffeeshop to the roasting room in the back.  The first time I tried to carry them over my shoulder.  I got smart and bought that little cart. 

The Badlands: It’s all good

I made it to the Badlands yesterday at about 1 p.m. (Mountain Time Zone).  This isn’t my first trip; I’ve been here several times as a kid and as an adult.  There’s something about this place that takes all of life’s tensions and washes them away.  Blows it away is more apt.  The wind is nearly constant here.  Some people complain about the wind, but I’ve always found the wind soothing.  One of my Iowa relatives used to say that the wind blows the stink off you.

I’m camped just a few miles from Wall Drugs.  This place has nothing in common with Wall Drugs.  Coffee might be five cents at Wall Drugs, but it doesn’t taste anything like the coffee that I roasted myself, ground on a manual knee grinder manufactured over 50 years ago, made in a cone filter without any electricity. and sipped outside while overlooking the wide expanses of the West.

I’m perched on a cliff in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.  The temperature gets up into the 80’s during the day but falls into the 50’s at night.  I hear coyotes at sunset and steers at sunrise.  I’m just going to let all of this soak in for a few days, but all is well.

Coffee Grinders and Travel

There are a number of fundamental truths about coffee.  One is “garbage in, garbage out.”  If  you start with crappy beans, it won’t matter how freshly roasted the beans are, nor will it matter what type of grinder is used.   Similarly, if you start with stale beans, grinding the beans doesn’t create fresh ground coffee.


How do you know that your coffee beans are fresh?  My rules of thumb, based upon twenty years of home roasting and five years of commercial roasting:  Raw coffee beans:  one to two years.  Beans with higher acidity (think brightness) tend to fade after a year  A low acid, big-bodied bean, like a traditional Sumatra, is good for a couple of years.

Roasted coffee beans:  one to two weeks.  Coffee is food, and taste will evolve over 14 days, but within acceptable limits.  Coffee beans are best used within a week after roasting.

Ground coffee:  Here, the rules vary, depending upon how fine the grind is (a fine grind is exposed to greater air surface area (oxidation).  In my coffee shop, I found that espresso needs to be “just ground.”  A few hours changes the extraction time.  A day can ruin espresso.  Coarser grinds are more forgiving.  Drip is generally acceptable for a weekend, and french press grind can go for 3-4 days.

Last week, we were headed out for five days to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  What would I do for grinding coffee?    Fortunately, I have the right tool for the job–a Zassenhaus Knee Grinder.

The knob to the left adjusts the grind from fine to coarse. The roasted beans are loaded into the compartment on the right.

The grinder is designed to be operated between the knees, while turning the handle in a circular motion.  When the beans have been processed, the grounds are collected in the drawer below.

In my opinion, Zassenhaus makes  the finest hand grinders in the world.  This one is vintage and acquired via Ebay years ago. The craftsmanship is incredible. No electricity required.

Home Roasted Coffee

 

I had the privilege to own and operate one of the first coffee roasters manufactured by Diedrich Roasters, now located in Sandpoint, Idaho.  I was not the first owner of this machine.  By the time I acquired it, the old roaster had been through several fires and needed all of the tender loving care that I could give it.  I typically roasted 15 lb loads in 15 to 18 minute roasting cycles, depending upon what flavor profile I was trying to achieve with a particular bean.

Before I started roasting commercially, I tried several methods of home roasting, including stovetop poppers, hot air poppers, and a homemade bbq drum roaster for use with a propane grill. After I sold the coffeeshop/roastery, I knew that I wanted to continue roasting at home for personal use, but wanted something more dependable and versatile than previous homeroast equipment.

I was searching for new techniques on the internet when I came across the Corretto, which is a method employing a bread machine and a heat gun. I have a friend in NYC who loved roasting with a heat gun, a chopstick and a dog’s steel waterbowl. Training the heat gun on the bowl of coffee beans, he used his other hand with the chopstick to stir the beans for an even roast.  Burnt beans is a bad thing.  However, the chopstick stirring never appealed to me.  I wanted to automate that process.

Enter the Corretto.

Green coffee beans are placed in the bread machine’s loaf pan.  I typically roast with about 3 1/2 cups of raw beans.  After locking the loaf pan back into the bread machine and selecting the dough setting, starting the bread machine stirs the beans. Now I can use the heat gun (set to its highest temperature and fan setting).

The first thing you will notice in the photo above is all the chaff that is released in the roasting process.  This is not an activity that you want to try on your kitchen island (or anywhere indoors).  I’m roasting in an old pole shed with the overhead door open for ventilation.  Yes, ventilation.  That’s the second reason not to roast indoors.  There is a lot of smoke in the last couple of minutes of the roasting cycle.

During the 12-15 minute roasting time, the beans turn from green to yellow to tan to brown to dark brown.  If roasting continues, the beans will turn oily and black. I generally stop a few snaps into what’s called second crack. At first crack, the beans make a sound similar to popcorn.  At second crack, the beans make a sound similar to Rice Crispies with milk just added.

Today, I am going a little darker than normal. After the beans have finished roasting, it’s very important to cool the beans rapidly.  I use an old cardboard box with a hole in the top and on the side, a metal strainer and a shop vac.

The shop vac is in sucking mode.  Leaf blowing mode would make a big mess.  In cold winter temps, the beans cool in about 90 seconds.  During the summer, cooling can take 2-3 minutes. I’ve used that same cardboard box for several years.

The general  rule of thumb that I use for freshness in coffee is that green beans will keep fresh for a year or two, a week or two for roasted beans, and a day or two for ground beans.  Today’s coffee was sourced by Royal Coffee  and sold to me by Burman Traders.

With the coffee roastery, I could have a pallet of beans delivered to me by truck for about $75 from Cafe Imports in the Twin Cities.  Beans were between $2-4 per pound and shipped in bags up to 152 lbs.  Now I pay between $5-8 per pound for 5 lb bags that Burman lets me pick up for free at a Madison, WI pickup spot.

Please comment if you have any questions or would like to discuss this topic further.