FACES
& PLACES
LOCAL COLOR
JULY 2007
 The Coffee Scoop
" The
scoop on coffee - Pipersville couple aim to please
with organic
roasting
business"
by Regina Young
(first printed in the Bucks County Herald)
For many, there's no way of getting through a morning
unless it includes a cup of joe.
Coffee is what gets the tired masses up and out of
bed and into the office during the week. It's a quick
fix when eyelids begin to weigh like anvils in the
late afternoon and is a choice beverage to accompany
reading the paper on a Sunday morning.
Like many, Warren and Karen May are addicted to the
beverage, but not because of the jolt of caffeine that
comes with every sip. It's the flavor, the body of
the drink that as his Pipersville couple hooked.
So when the pair, retired
from "corporate America," couldn't
seem to find a fresh cup of coffee anywhere, they quit
their searching and started The Coffee Scoop, a certified
organic business that supplies fresh-roasted coffee
beans.
"I want to enjoy what I'm drinking. Coffee should
taste like it smells," Karen said.
With that in mind, the couple's goal has been to provide
customers with great-tasting coffee. But to capture
coffee's perfection is like an exact science - a process
first begins thousands of miles away in foreign farmlands.
The Coffee Scoop supplies beans from 25 different
origins including Kenya, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ethiopia,
Java and India. Out of the different origins, 20 are
organic. Organic farming methods, such as planting
trees that provide shade, as well as a habitat for
birds who eat bugs, optimizes the slow growth and maximizes
the nutrients the beans get.
"If I'm starting out with good beans, I'm going
to get good coffee," Warren said.
One of only two certified organic roasters in Pennsylvania,
The Coffee Scoop, is also a fair trade company.
"I want farmers to succeed. My ability to get
good coffee is with them," said Warren, whose
two grandfathers were farmers in Texas and New Mexico.
"We're so tiny we needed a niche," Karen
said. "We're passionate about all of it - coffee,
organic farming and sustainable agriculture."
After the beans are harvested,
they are shipped to the United States through Café Imports
in about six weeks, compared to other beans that
sit in warehouses
for extended periods of time.
"If the coffee is set in the warehouse it's losing
the oil," Warren explained. "The oil is where
the flavor is."
But the job of bringing out that flavor rests on the
shoulders of Warren, who treats roasting the beans
as delicately as if he were mixing potent chemicals
in a lab.
On his small roasting
machine which he calls his "secret
weapon" along with his wife, Warren creates a
roasting "profile" for each bag, testing
samples and tinkering with the temperatures until he
finds the correct heat at which to roast each bag.
He then roasts the beans on his larger Ambex roasters,
which are equipped with digital thermometers.
A few degree differences may not seem like a lot,
but it is the temperature that determines whether or
not coffee drinkers have to dump extra cream and sugar
into their mug to mask the taste.
A good cup of coffee, said Warren, who attended coffee
roasting school in Idaho, shouldn't taste bitter or
burnt. If the coffee is roasted at too-high a temperature
or for too long, the beans become carbonized instead
of caramelized. Instead of a sweet taste in their mouths,
drinkers are left with a bitter or burnt taste.
Because coffee often
tastes bitter Warren believes that only about "Five
percent of the population understands what a good
cup of coffee is."
With The Coffee Scoop, he hopes to change that misconception.
The Coffee Scoop products are available at The Great
Harvest Bread Company in Newtown, None Such Farms,
Inc. in Buckingham, The Market at Delaware Valley College
in Doylestown and Plumsteadville Natural Foods in Plumsteadville.
Twelve ounce bags cost $12.95.
To contact The Coffee Scoop or to place an order,
visit www.freshcoffeescoop.
com.
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