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H
ere’s a list of people you don’t want
sitting in the cubicle next to you at
work: Brad, Jeremy, Mike, Sharon
andWill.They’re all coffee traders at Zephyr
Green Coffee in Downtown New Orleans,
which means they drink coffee for a living.
And when they do, they do so pretty loudly
and obnoxiously.
One of the words that comes up when
they explain how to properly sip a cup of
coffee is “aspirate.” They actually sip coffee
from a spoon, not a cup, using very quick,
explosive inhalations.This allows the coffee
to essentially vaporize and spread all across
their palates, so they can taste every bit
of it. When a professional coffee sipper
sips, it sounds as if a hydraulic connection
has come unattached — loud, abrupt and
whooshing.
You may not want to mimic their sipping
technique if you hope to maintain harmony
at your office or home. But it turns out you
can learn a lot about coffee if you drop by
their office on Julia Street on any given
morning around 10. That’s when they
have their daily cupping sessions, when
they sample a half-dozen or so coffees
that they’ve ordered for delivery (called a
pre-shipment sample), or they might be
checking out new suppliers for possible
future orders.
Zephyr is part of the Louis Dreyfus
Company, which was founded in 1851 and
is now a $50 billion global corporation
based in Amsterdam, providing all sorts
of food to all sorts of customers. Zephyr is
something of a boutique operation within
the organization — it works mostly with
specialty coffee, which is different than the
commercial-grade coffee widely used by less
expensive brands.The organization buys and
ships green coffee in burlap sacks, which is
then roasted by its customers. Peet’s Coffee
& Tea is one of Zephyr’s largest customers,
but the company also works with New
Orleans roasters, including Hey! Cafe on
Magazine Street, Mojo Coffee Roasters
and other small roasters that supply local
restaurants like Brennan’s. Zephyr’s office is
fairly small and nondescript — it’s marked
by an easily overlooked plaque outside the
front door, like a British spy agency. Coffee
isn’t actually stored or transshipped from
here — it doesn’t particularly smell like a
coffee shop.The company has a warehouse a
few miles away for local orders, but its chief
warehouses are in Seattle and New Jersey.
From here, the company can ship sacks of
coffee to customers pretty much anywhere
in the country within a few days.
But this office is where most of the
coffee gets vetted before it moves to the
warehouses. Julia Street is thus a sort of
coffee portal, where small sample bags are
checked for faults and to ensure that price
matches quality.
On the morning that I visited, six different
beans were arrayed in shallow, triangle-
shaped dishes atop a stainless-steel lab
table. I was walked through the process
by Drew Cambre, Zephyr’s quality control
manager. He first ground the samples from
each tray one by one. (They were roasted the
day before, giving them 24 hours to “outgas
and settle down,” he said.)
He then arrayed the ground coffee in a
handful of Sazerac-style glasses on the
table. Then traders came in one by one,
bent down and sniffed each glass (“Do not
exhale or you’re in for a surprise,” Cambre
warned me when I moved to try the same).
When they were done taking notes, each
glass got “dosed” with water heated to 200
degrees, and within a couple of minutes a
sort of coffee-grind crust formed on top
of each. Cambre called for the traders to
return, and with a soup spoon they broke
the crusts, then stirred from the bottom
while simultaneously bending down to
inhale. More notes were scribbled on the
forms: “tobacco,” “cocoa,” “toasty.”They also
scouted for defects, like a moldy smell or
“bagging” — when the coffee takes on the
smell of the burlap bags it’s stored in.Those
with minor faults may get diverted into
cheaper roasts or flavored coffees.
A few minutes later, after the
samples cooled to about
160 degrees, the loud as-
pirating started. One by
one,they took up a spoon-
ful and sipped sharply
and audibly. More note-
taking ensued. They also
examined the trays of
beans for consistent size
and irregularities. That
day’s beans were from
Honduras, Guatemala,
Indonesia and Nicara-
gua. Some discussion
followed the tasting:
Cambre said he tends to prefer the Asian
beans, like Indonesian, because they have a
richer taste, even when roasted lightly. And
a lighter roast means more caffeine. Cam-
bre likes caffeine.
When Cambre looked over the final tallies,
he saw that most scored in the 70s or 80s —
a typical day. Anything scoring in the 90s
would be “ridiculously expensive,” he said.
“It would have to be specifically ordered,
and not something that’s going to sit in the
warehouse.”
Traders wandered out of the cupping room
and went back to sit in front of computer
screens, where they do their buying and
selling. Cambre recapped by saying that
the Honduran coffee was good, but they
were already “overbought” on Honduran, so
they’d likely pass on it.They were all pretty
impressed with the new Guatemalan coffee
sample, though — especially at the price
the seller was asking.They’d probably order
a shipment of that one.
Cambre then set about cleaning up the
cupping station, and began to start thinking
about tomorrow’s tasting. Somewhere, on
a farm on the flanks of a Central American
volcano, a farmer will soon get good news.
Making Coffee
How to make the best possible cup of
coffee? Following the exacting protocol of
Zephyr’s cupping sessions may not fit into
your morning routine, but Drew Cambre,
Zephyr’s quality control manager, has a few
suggestions:
•
Use whole beans. “As soon as you grind
coffee, it starts to oxidize,” he said. “It starts
losing its flavor and its aroma.”
•
Spend the $40 or so on a rudimentary burr
grinder rather than the less expensive
blade grinder. Blades chip beans
into varied sizes, leading to
a less consistent product.
•
Use a basic pour-over
system. You don’t need a
fancy coffee machine; just
get a cone-style system and
pour the water gradually.
•
Use the right temperature
water. About 200 degrees
is ideal for extracting
the best flavor. Cambre
suggests bringing water to
a boil, then letting it sit for a
few minutes before pouring.
COFFEE MAKERS