St. Patrick's Day Irish Coffee

Anthony: Welcome to the Art of the Drink video podcast. My name is Anthony Caparelli and we are talking this week with David Chapman, welcome David. David: Welcome, thank you Anthony. Anthony: David is the owner of Bean Traders Coffer here in Durham, North Carolina and I wanted to bring him in so that we could learn a little bit about the history of coffee. David: That sounds great. Anthony: So let us start with tell me a little bit about Bean Traders how you got into the coffee business, a little bit about the stores. David: I worked in coffee since I was about 17 and so for me, it is something I have always loved and it was just a natural progression to ownership. Anthony: So how many locations do you have now? David: We have three stores and two in Durham, one in Chapel Hill. Anthony: Thanks for talking to us today. So let us call it coffee 101, take me through coffee, I am not a coffee drinker historically. I am probably the only person I know who does not drink a lot of coffee and I actually came to Bean Traders one day to learn about coffee and Yerisa was wonderful, picked me out a roast and the whole bit and I had my very first cup here so let us go over some of that for some folks. I know a lot of people drink coffee on a daily basis may not know a lot about that. David: To start really elementally, coffee is the seed of a plant and historically, it was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder that watched his flock eat the berries. The first coffee shop opened in 1650 in England and it fast became the world’s most pouplar drink. Anthony: So let us say like me, you do not know that much about coffee and you want to move off of instant or maybe the coffee pot in the office, move up something a little bit better than that, tell me a little bit about how you would go about that? David: Really what sets us apart at Bean Traders is that we fresh roast all of our coffee here so what we are a part of is the third wave of coffee and this is a movement in America that kind of started in the 90s where rather than just that diner cup of coffee that people are used to having, it is really about selecting really high quality beans from all over the world and each bean, each country that produces coffee, the beans have unique flavor characteristics to that bean so it is reminiscent of wine. There is a lot of parallels there and I would recommend probably like a medium roasted Columbian coffee or a Guatemalan coffee to someone who is just stepping into specialty coffee because it is nice and mild. Anthony: SO you mentioned that there were some similarities to wine. Does coffee actually pick up characteristics of the soil that it is grown in and the climate? David: Definitely, soil conditions and anything that would maybe pollinate, there is an Ethiopian coffee from a region of Ethiopia called Harar and the coffee actually tastes of blueberry naturally because of the crops that are grown. Anthony: Tell me a little bit about the roasting because I always hear French roast and dark roast and light roast, why do you roast the bean? David: Coffee beans are almost like popcorn kernels in that there is a layer of skin that pops off when you cook it. Another facet of the third wave of coffee is fresh roasting coffee. Roasting mini batches, 10 to 25 pounds at a time versus a larger like a coffee that you would buy in your grocery store that may be 300 pounds and roasted three months ago. Anthony: All right so we are here with Madonna. Madonna: Hello. Anthony: Hi, you are a manager here at Bean Traders right? Madonna: Yes, I am thank you. Anthony: Great so what are you going to take us through? Madonna: This is called a press pot or a French press as it is most commonly known. One of the most recommended ways of brewing coffee to enjoy every flavor from the bean that you grind. Anthony: Great. Madonna: Basically what you want to do is grind your coffee bean as close to brewing time as possible. A course grind so that when you are filtering the coffee through the press pot, you are actually absorbing the most flavor from the wa