OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
But simply getting your hands on a quality bean is not enough to ensure that you get a quality cup of coffee out of it. Trujillo understands that great effort went into procuring these quality beans, and the roasting must live up to the product they buy. “It’s the same thing when we roast our coffees to when we brew them. We want to do [the coffee bean] justice. I mean, it’s gone through a lot of trouble just to get in here.”
Championship cup
It seems that there are simply too many variables, too tweaks of the human hand, to think that our quality coffee will come in a capsule hereafter. And, though at the moment the capsule phenomenon is largely contained to Europe, San Francisco is soon going to be invaded by a huge, state of the art, modern Nespresso café. It’s only a matter of time before it catches on here. And something that Sewell says should be enough for anyone to take this capsule phenomenon seriously. He explains to me that, because of changes in our global climate, as early as 80 years from now, coffee as we know it could become extinct. Coffee is an age-old tradition in human agriculture. Should the last cups that humanity drinks be delivered by such cold, inanimate means? Or, do we want that bean, that roast, and, finally, that brew all to have a bit of amour behind it? Drink every cup as if it were the last. Ω
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ARTS&CULTURE
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IN ROTATION
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ART OF THE STATE
Grand Sierra Resort Summit Pavilion
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Trujillo describes a process by which they take extensive notes of what works and what doesn’t. “We keep track of time and temperature for each roast,” he says. “We make note of everything. We have to be able to attribute this new flavor to what happened in the roast. And, we can certainly recreate it.” But, the process of developing flavors in coffee begins in the growing process. The coffee bean is actually the seed of a fruit that resembles a cherry, and this fruit is finicky, the quality variety of the fruit only growing at certain elevations, and at certain degrees of latitude. Most roasters who aim to produce a quality product try to purchase beans grown at higher elevations. “Higher elevations create a denser bean,” says Sewell. “So, the chemical chains are more developed. That denser bean packs in more potential flavor.” “Coffee is very sensitive to temperature swings, and that’s why it’s grown at a certain temperature and a certain belt around the equator,” he adds, describing the just how susceptible to the elements the fruit is. “Because it wants a certain temperature and certain altitudes. If you get high up, could get too cold. Or, if you too low, it gets too hot during the day. Coffee is just so sensitive to the climate.” What these local roasters hope to achieve, is quality at all levels. They choose to buy their coffee beans from the best locations, grown on cooperative farms by farmers who equally care about the quality of the bean. For it the thing that sustains their community.
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
| MUSICBEAT
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
| THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
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JANUARY 31, 2013
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RN&R
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15
