Coffee Roasters Know Their Beans

COFFEE ROASTERS KNOW THEIR BEANS
BY LAURA REILEY
Times Food Critic
The coffee explosion has allowed
most of us to graduate from freezedried grounds and coffee crystals.
These days, beans from far-flung
places are often locally roasted in
heavy steel drums that rotate on their
sides. Over the course of a dozen minutes at 450 degrees, the beans change
from pale green to deep green to
golden, tawny brown, cinnamon and
finally a deep, burnished brown.
Today about two dozen retail roasters perfume neighborhoods around
Tampa Bay, including No Name Java
in St. Petersburg, Java Nirvana in
Gulfport and a number of Cuban
roasters in and around Ybor City.
Here are some notable players.
New Harmony
Terry Davis knew in 1994 that he
wanted to go into the roasting equipment business, but he started New
Harmony in Clearwater to learn
the retail roasting business from
the inside out. The primary focus of
Davis' Ambex Roasters is building
retail roasting machines, nearly 1,200
roasters and counting. But daughter Kaitlin Davis is the roaster and
head barista at.New Harmony, which
shares the building at 1947 Drew St.,
focusing on single origin coffees and
blends. The two bestsellers are the
New Harmony house blend and their
Go Espresso. "We have a lot of Southern Europeans in this area, so this is
a more traditional Italian espresso.
It's a little lighter and a little brighter
than many, and it holds up well in a
single espresso;' says Terry Davis.
Coffee philosophy: "The coffee
industry has done a poor job in making its language consumer-friendly;'
says Davis. "None of the certifications
are a mark of quality. Our focus has
always been quality, so some of our
coffees are certified, some aren't. At
the end of the day, the biggest bump
BRIAN BLANCO I Special to the Times
Guna Carr of St. Petersburg enjoys her morning cup as she waits for a
friend at Kahwa Coffee Roasting's St. Petersburg shop, 475 Second St. N.
you get is freshness. And good coffees
are naturally sweet if they're roasted
properly."
Kahwa Coffee Roasting
The retail coffee shop at 475 Second St. N in St. Petersburg opened
in March 2008, but Kahwa has been
roasting in the Tampa Bay area for
more than three years. The owners
are a quartet of friends (and two couples), Sarah and Raphael Perrier and
Jean and Catherine Thibault, the two
men having gone to college together
in Lyon, France, and the four of them
having met up in Philadelphia.
Kahwa has built its business on
selling coffee to local restaurants and
hotels, among them familiar names
like Ceviche, the Don CeSar, Red
Mesa Cantina, Parkshore Grill, Restaurant BT, Bin 27 Bistro, L'Olivier
Bistro and Toasted Pheasant Bistro.
"Coffee is your last impression of a
restaurant meal, so you want to finish
an eveniIig well;' says Sarah Perrier.
They get most of their coffee beans
through Royal Coffee in New York,
a wholesale supplier and importer
of organic, fair-trade, bird-friendly,
and shade-grown specialty coffees
(see story, Page 6E, for what all that
means), creating different blends
that are all named after winds. The
espresso blend is Mistral, a dark roast
called Sirocco, a new IndonesianEthiopian blend is called Meltem, the
lighter one is Boreas and they have a
decaf called Zonda.
Coffee philosophy:
Kahwa
focuses on blends, not single-origin coffees, with the aim of achieving complex ranges of flavor. Their
espresso blend, says Sarah Perrier, is
their pride andjoy.
Mazzaro Italian Market
made by local Ambex Roasters.
Though Mazzaro sources its beans
from the world's major coffee-grow.ing regions, it has been dealing with
the same broker since the beginning.
"We have a lot of trust in his sources,
and a lot of our stuff is fair trade and
organic. But wfive always really been
just shooting for buying the best we
could;' Cuccaro says.
.
Coffee philosophy:
Mazzaro
roasts almost every day in small, 50to 60-pound batches. The two most
popular blends are the Italian roast
and the espresso roast, which is a
blend of five beans. ''We like to think
of our espresso as having enough
punch but not that burnt or overly
oily taste;' Cuccaro says.
Cafe Kili
Rose Waruinge and Patrick Gachau
are from a rural part of central Kenya
Relocated to Thmpa in 1997,they wanted to introduce the area to the kind of
coffee Waruinge's family farms back
in Kenya In 2007 they opened Cafe
Kili at 5731 E Fowler Ave. in Thmpa.
Because importers have to buy from
cooperatives in that country, it's impossible for Waruinge to know whether
she's brewing her own family's coffee,
but she still hilS strong affection for
the floral aroma and cinnamon flavor
of her home country's beans.
Coffee philosophy: Kili, named
for Kilimanjaro, specializes in singleorigin coffees from Brazil, Colombia,
Ethiopia and Kenya. There are also
several rich blends, but the showstopper is the Kenyan AA coffee.Waruinge
says that in her home country, these
beans are roasted and brewed as street
coffee,boiled rather than brewed, then
passed through a strainer.
Mazzaro started roasting about 16
years ago in a warehouse a couple of
blocks from its current retail location at 2909 22nd Ave. N in St. Petersburg. Owner Sam Cuccaro's son, Kurt,
owned a number of bagel stores that
needed coffee, so they cranked up
a 1938 Jabez Burns roaster. A ''temperamental thing" by most people's Laura Reiley can be reached it lreiley@
count, that gorgeous ancient roaster sptimes.com or (727) 892-2293. Follow her
will soon be put out to pasture (it will on 1'witter (@lreiley). Her blog, the Mouth
get its own in-store altar, assures Kurt of Tampa Bay, is atwww.blogs.tampabay.
Cuccaro) in favor of a new system .com/dining.