Rule #1 in buying coffee is purchase only as much coffee as you are going to drink in a week.  Like fine chocolate, specialty coffee begins a slow stale after seven days.  Try to purchase your beans from sustainable micro roasters like us, Yo el Rey Roasting, in your area or order ours on-line at yoelrey.com and we’ll ship it out to you.

Storage becomes moot this way and you can leave your weeks supply on the kitchen counter or in the cupboard in the bag.  If you do wish to store the beans, do so whole bean, in Tupperware, in the freezer.

Never buy “flavored” coffee.  Ever.  It is after market chemical spray.  Each coffee varietal has its own set of intrinsic flavor characteristics, just like wine grapes.

We roast and drink and sell Fair Trade, Organic coffees exclusively.

Our roast profile is medium.  Which means to a milk chocolate color where the beans are not burnt black and oily.  Organic means the coffee trees and thus the beans (or seeds) were grown without pesticides.  So there is only the intrinsic natural flavor of the bean and origin terroir or soil.

Fair Trade basically means fairly traded, anti-slave shop commodities.  The farmers are guaranteed a minimum price per pound for their beans.  However this also means the farmers are treated better; are going to be happier; are going to take better care of their crop; which means a better coffee tree and an even better cup of coffee.

Try to reeducate your palate by moving away from dark roasted or burnt coffee and move to medium roasted beans.  Coffee is actually very similar to wine.  As a Cabernet wine from Cab. grapes grown in France taste different from Cabernet wine grown from Cab. grapes in California’s Napa Valley, coffee beans have similar unique flavor characteristics based on geographic origin and terroir.

Dark roasting burns those amazing flavors and aroma notes of blueberry and almond or chocolate, etc. out.  Medium, low temperature roasting locks in those essential flavors.  And the end result is a delicious sensual packed cup of coffee or espresso.

[From now on, now that you know, coffee should be considered as thoughtfully as wine.   AND…you wouldn’t put cream and sugar in your glass of wine, WOULD YOU?
You would sell yourself short.  Same goes for coffee. ]  So please at least try your next medium roasted coffee without cream and sugar.  I bet you like it.

For home brewing equipment I will suggest throwing out all your fancy or not so fancy plastic, fully automated equipment and starting over.
No, don’t.  Save it and compare with a taste test later.  I suggest going back to the basics which will save you a lot of unnecessary money spent on equipment and will make a better cup of coffee.

Use a manual lever mill grinder to begin with, or a home bur grinder (not a blade).  The blades do not grind evenly, they hack the grounds around into lopsided chunks.  You want even size grounds for even extraction.

I use a manual mill grinder from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.  I found it on eBay for about $40..  It takes about sixty-three revolutions of the arm.  Easy and nearly silent compared to the high pitch scream from some of the electric grinders that are so hard to bear first thing in the morning.

Use a porcelain Melitta Cone.  (Not plastic.  Plastic leaches toxins, especially when heated).  You can find them for under $20.

Use biodegradable brown, or unbleached, coffee filters.  Boxes of 100 are around $4.00.

Use the tea kettle you already have or a pot and heat up some water just prior to boiling.  (If it’s the kettle, just at the fist rumblings of the whistle).  The water temperature should be around 195 degrees or pre-boil.  Otherwise you will scorch the grounds.

Preheat the porcelain cone and your coffee cup in the oven on very low temperature as you are heating up the water on the stove.  (I use two coffee cups.  One I will drip the coffee into, the other as a measuring utensil).

Measure out your beans while your water is heating and the cone and cups are warming.  The standard ratio for coffee to water is 2 to 6.  Two ounces of coffee to six of water.  (But it is your cup of coffee so manipulate it how you like).

Grind the beans only when the water is nearly ready.  (Never purchase or pre grind coffee beans.  Ever.  They begin an accelerated stale the second they are ground).

When the water is ready pull everything out of the oven.  Put the cone on your coffee cup and drop in the filter.  Run some of the hot water through the filter over the sink to alleviate any paper flavor taint to the filter.  Pour the fresh grounds into the filter.  Then your measured hot water.  Use a small whisk or a spoon and gently stir the wet grounds to reduce clumps for full flavor extraction.

Drink.

*Don’t forget about the taste test…
Old shelf-life and roast-profile-in-question, mass produced coffee and plastic, and or automated brew equipment  VS.
Fresh micro-roasted coffee and manual brew equipment

Try to make it so they both are ready at the same time.  Then taste for yourself.



Fair Trade is much more than a fair price!  Fair Trade principles include:

* Fair price: Democratically organized farmer groups receive a guaranteed minimum floor price and an additional premium for certified organic products. Farmer organizations are also eligible for pre-harvest credit.

* Fair labor conditions: Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited.

* Direct trade: With Fair Trade, importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

* Democratic and transparent organizations: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to invest Fair Trade revenues.

* Community development: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, quality improvement trainings, and organic certification.

* Environmental sustainability: Harmful agrochemicals and GMOs are strictly prohibited in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers’ health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations.

TransFair USA, a non-profit organization, is the only independent, third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the U.S. and one of 20 members of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). TransFair’s rigorous audit system, which tracks products from farm to finished product, verifies industry compliance with Fair Trade criteria. TransFair allows U.S. companies to display the Fair Trade Certified label on products that meet strict Fair Trade standards

Fair Trade Certification is currently available in the U.S. for coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, sugar, rice, and vanilla.

-Meta-analysis of daily consumption found coffee may reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease by 31%.
-Additional meta-analysis found drinking several cups of coffee a day is associated with a 30% reduction in colorectal cancer.
-Other studies show there is reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease with coffee consumption.
-Reduced risk of liver cancer.
-Gallstone disease.
-Cirrhosis of the liver.
-Coffee consumption may reduce risk of Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 by up to half.
-Coffee contains the anticancer compound methylpyridinium formed through the roast process.
-Caffeine is an analgesic enhancement which may increase the effectiveness of pain-killers, especially migraine and headache medications.
-Coffee enhances cognitive performance.
-Coffee contains antioxidants, has been shown to contain four times as many antioxidants as tea.
-Coffee is correlated to a reduced risk of oral, esophageal, and pharyngeal cancer.
-Coffee may reduce the incidence of heart disease.
-Is a powerful stimulant for peristalsis.
-There is a decreased risk of Gout in men over 40, which is inversely proportional with the amount of coffee consumed.

Nice work, Daithi!

I.  Origin:

-Coffee; from the Arabic, Qahwah.
-First discovered in Ethiopia.
-First cultivated in the 15 century.
-Yemen produced the world’s first cup of coffee.
-Two basic Groups: Arabicas and Robustas -Arabicas being the higher grade bean.
-Optimal altitude for growth is 3600’ to 8000’ in tropical, volcanic climate.  Typically below the Tropic Of Cancer.  Which is also an amazing book.
-Coffee Arabica: a shrub tree with glossy evergreen leaves, and fragrant, white, self-pollinating flowers.  14’ to 20’ fully grown.  Pruned as a rule to apx. 12 or shorter for harvesting needs.’
-Coffee is farmed and still 90% hand picked across the globe today.
-The berries, similar to cherries in look, are ripe when red.  Each berry produces two beans [seeds].  After picked they are sluiced, pulped, skinned, washed, fermented, dried, hulled, and peeled leaving hard greenish beans that are sorted and graded by size and quality.  Generally the higher the grade, the better the bean, the better the cup of coffee.  After this process they are stuffed into 130lb. burlap bags and shipped around the world.
-The four major growing regions are Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Indonesia.

-According to legend and myth, coffee was discovered when Yemen goat herders traveling to Ethiopia, noticed their flocks running around and flying in the sky all night after feeding upon the leaves and berries of the strange new plant.

-Come find out more at my fair trade coffee shop, Yo el Rey, in Calistoga, CA.  I hand roast every other day.

Yo el Rey Roasting is a seasonal, sustainable, independent, artisan, socially, humanistically, and environmentally conscious, micro-roastery and retail coffee shop.

Our beans are roasted to a medium-ish roast profile to lock in the essential oils and unique, intrinsic flavor complexities of geographic origin. Meaning, we roast into the caramelization (Browning) stages and stop prior to the carbonization (Burning) stages. By roasting this way, the coffee beans are especially flavorful minus the added charred or metallic burn taste in the cup left by the high-temperature, dark roasting process.

There is local underground art for sale on the walls with lines of poetry scratched in between. A large comfortable sofa, an eclectic small library, free WIFI and cool beat jazz and reggae in the speakers.

We are open seven days 6:30am – 8pm.

I have started this blog to let everyone know there is finally a Fair Trade, Organic, Micro Roastery in the Napa Valley.  Yo el Rey Roasting opened it’s doors September 13, 2008.  I have been a roaster for 6 years.  Yo el Rey means: “I the King,” in Spanish.  It is an allusion to Picasso.

I was awarded a 92 point score on my Ethiopian Yrgacheffe Roast Profile by coffeereview.com, late 2009.  Because of that score I/Yo el Rey Roasting was featured in the 2010 March/April issue of Roast Magazine.  Yo el Rey Roasting can also be found in an article on America’s favorite micro roasteries in Imbibe Magazine.  Yo el Rey Roasting was voted Best Cafe/Coffeehouse 2010 by reader poll in The North Bay Bohemian News Paper.

We are dedicated to roasting and serving the true origin of coffee flavor.

“Any work aspiring to be art however humble should carry its justification in every line.”  -Joseph Conrad