Under the Coffee Tree

Although my spirits are always lifted when I am in high mountain areas, my favourite place is somewhere that is geographically more mundane but emotionally and spiritually more connected to “who I am”. I run a coffee roasting business that is pretty much a “one man show”, and I derive enormous satisfaction in the simple physical tasks related to roasting coffee. Although the surroundings at the premises where I roast coffee are mundane - a small, untidy and cramped warehouse unit on an industrial estate - I define the “place” as the relationship between myself and the coffee I am roasting. What I see, smell and hear in this place determines how others will taste what I am producing.

I see my roasting coffee through a small porthole shaped viewing chamber on the front facia of my coffee roasting drum. The sights are those of a batch of raw green coffee beans gradually turning through straw yellow and cinnamon brown to a rich glossy chestnut perfection. All the time they are moving rapidly through my vision in the porthole, each individual bean escaping quickly back into the crowd. My sense of smell can judge the progress of the roast. As the cold beans are plunged into the hot air of the drum, it seems for a few minutes as if wet sacks are being blow dried, but soon this is replaced by the unmistakable homely and earthy odours of baking bread. As I use the sample probe to inspect the roasting beans I am comforted when the bready aromas start to be accompanied by a sharpness of caramel, roasting nuts and vanilla. The beans expand twofold in my roasting oven and my ears are trained to listen for the change in sound that accompanies this small miracle. Initially my drum roaster sounds like a large set of maraccas or of dried peas being rhymically shaken in a paint tin. But after a few minutes the sound begins to become more muffled and I wait for the intermittent dull clicking as each bean begins to expand.

The process ends with a magnificent climax. I try to judge from the aromas and colour of the beans when I want to “stop” the roast and release the beans out of the drum into the cooling tray. As I turn on the rotating sieve which cools the beans, the subtle sounds of the beans in the drum are drowned out by the grinding of the motors and the tell tale squeaks of the wearing bearings on my poor old oven. I open the hatch and a waterfall of smoking brown beans surges out onto the cooling grid. The beans now begin cracking madly as they start to cool, the vanes of the cooling grid rolling them over as if they are raking fine gravel. If I have judged the moment right my nose is assaulted by the richest, sweetest aroma of coffee, nuts and chocolate veiled in the pungency of the smoke. But this moment is all too brief as I complete the act of creation by turning on the fans to suck cold air through the cooling beans. The cold air sucks the smoke and aromas with it, off up the chimney for others to briefly share. Now I take a bean or two in my fingers and crunch them in my mouth. My teeth know from the degree of resistance of the shell if I have achieved the perfection I seek, even before I taste the smoky bitterness of the coarse grounds that now coat my tongue. I hope not to taste the tell tale “bad barbecue” flavour of carbon which I know will overpower everything else in my customer's cup in a few days time, and if not for a few moments I bask in that elusive satisfaction of a mundane task well completed.

# posted by Charles Massey @ 7:50 pm