Coffee roasting an art for Canmore's coffee bean queen
by Shari Bishop Bowes
Roasting gourmet coffee beans is as much an art as crafting the finest of wines.
In Canmore, the freshest and most popular beans come from Blends Coffee Roasters - roasted by hand in small batches by Canmore's coffee bean queen, Donna Shalom.
Shalom is a bundle of energy as she prepares for a full day of roasting in her roomy industrial bay on the outskirts of Canmore. Before we sit down to chat about coffee, she bustles about the room, scooping beans into the roaster, tidying up and checking orders for the day's various roasts.
"The great taste of gourmet coffee is directly related to freshness - it's just that simple," Shalom says, before she launches into a mini-seminar in coffee bean roasting.
Blends' beans are roasted in a hand-made metal drum roaster, the piece of equipment from which Shalom's eyes rarely stray during my visit. Roasting in a drum roaster is more of an art than the other commercial coffee roasting option, the air roaster. The drum roaster, heated to 220 degrees Celsius, has a testing slot that allows for hands-on sampling of the coffee beans' 'doneness'. Shalom constantly checks the beans as they reach their window of perfection. "A few seconds can make a difference," she says.
Coffee roasting at Blends begins with the highest quality green Arabica coffee beans, and ends with various roasts from light through to the darkest espresso varieties.
The first clue that the beans are on their way to a city roast - the lightest roast you'll find among Blends' selections - is the crackling sound of individual beans popping open. Beans must pop once to become viable for brewing. The second stage of crackling is much fiercer and indicates a dark French or espresso roast.
The time involved in the roasting process can vary greatly, depending upon the size of the batch, the darkness of the roast being produced, and the temperature of the drum. Batch times range from seven to 27 minutes. A typical day of roasting for Shalom takes a full eight hours; in the busier tourist seasons she roasts three or more days to meet the wholesale orders that come in from a long list of Canmore and area coffeehouses and restaurants.
When there's a dark roast in the hopper, and a few minutes to chat, Shalom shares some facts about the fine roasted coffee beans Blends sends out to the local market, and which are also available for sale at several outlets (see the note at the foot of this story).
Coffee roasting for the finest gourmet cup of coffee begins with selecting the very best beans. Much of the commercial coffee available in supermarkets is made from Robusta beans, which are harvested from the lower elevations of mountainous lands much more frequently than their higher altitude, richer and more flavourful cousins, the Arabica beans. Blends uses only 100% Arabica beans, which are sourced through a huge coffee bean brokerage in Oakland, CA. The beans arrive in Canmore in large jute bags from such exotic places as Costa Rica, Guatemala, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, Sumatra, Java, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Hawaii, New Guinea and Nicaragua.
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Donna Shalom checks a dark roast as it completes the roasting cycle at Blends Coffee Roasters in Canmore. The darker beans produce a fragrant smoke in the roaster, and are very popular at the Canmore coffeehouses where they are available.
Each country produces a bean with a different flavour, and different beans work better for darker or lighter roasts. Shalom has worked with many varieties of beans to create a menu of 40 different blends (made from a variety of different beans) and 'straights' (made from a single type of bean).
Quite popular in these health-conscious days are the decaffeinated blends and straights, which are also made from pure Arabica beans using the chemical-free Swiss water process. It's helpful to know that Arabica beans already contain half as much caffeine as the Robusta varieties - the reason why Shalom believes people drink less of her gourmet coffee throughout the day. "You'll find that two cups of coffee will satisfy, whereas Robusta coffee breeds the need for more, due to the high caffeine content," Shalom says. Another surprising fact relates to the dark, shiny beans found in the darkest of roasts- including espresso roasts that are served straight up for purists or in gourmet coffee drinks such as cappuccinos or café lattés.
If you think a hit of espresso carries the greatest amount of caffeine, you're wrong. On the contrary, the darker the roast the lower the caffeine content. In the roasting process, the longer the beans stay in, the darker they become and the more natural coffee oil comes to the surface. Caffeine burns off during the roasting process, so, although the lighter roasts taste milder, they are slightly higher in caffeine than the darker versions of the same bean. Blends was originally affiliated with one of Canmore's first coffeehouses, now called the Coffeepot & Curry Stop on 10th Street in the downtown. Shalom has been in the business since 1991, and these days enjoys roasting fine gourmet coffee beans for a growing list of local restaurants and coffeehouses and for retail sale at the Coffeepot. Several other coffeehouses in Canmore also sell Blends' beans for take-away. Many Canmore restaurants and coffeehouses carry their own signature blend of coffee crafted especially for them by Blends.
Marketing has never been a big part of Blends' business, Shalom says, with most of her accounts coming along from word of mouth and strong community connections.
"Roast it fresh," she says, "and they will come."
Blends coffee is served at the Coffeepot & Curry Stop, which also provides the full range for retail purchase; The Coffee Mine, The Rocky Mountain Bagel Company, the Cyberweb Café, the Village Bistro, and more. Blends' coffees are also available pre-packaged by the half-pound in Marra's Grocery on Canmore's Main Street.
Need more coffee? Grab a cup and read our feature on Canmore's coffeehouses then turn to a piece on coffee humour and coffee facts - all in this month's edition of SolaraLife.
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