Coffee Talk With RJ Episode #1

Jo, a local coffee roaster, discusses the different types of coffee beans and the issues in the coffee industry. She explains that there are only two types of coffee beans, Arabica and Robusta, with Robusta having twice the amount of caffeine. Some companies add Robusta to Arabica coffee to dilute it and increase profit margins. Jo also discusses the different grades of coffee, with specialty grade being the best and below grade having many defects. She emphasizes the importance of transparency and ensuring the coffee tastes good. Jo started roasting coffee herself and believes in making a difference through her business. She supports various causes and helps communities in need. Roasting coffee is a complex process that requires knowledge and understanding. Jo warns against simply throwing beans in a roaster without considering the impact on the growers and the quality of the coffee. Hi, this is Ray Owen. On today's podcast episode, we have a special guest named Jo. She is a local coffee roaster that owns Mojo Roast. How are you doing today, Jo? I'm mighty fine. I've been in this business for quite some time and I think that there's more interest in health and consumers information on how things are good for them and where things come from and so that's why I asked you to do this podcast with me today. So, we just want to dive right into it. There are different types of coffee beans, are there not? Yes, there is and there's a lot of mystery and hoodwinking going on in the coffee communities. Number one, people like to tell they have 100% Arabica coffee beans. Well, there's only two types, Arabica and Robusta. You can't drink a full cup of Robusta and if anybody even says they have Robusta in their coffee, for people like me thinking why would they put that in there? So, why can't people drink a full cup of Robusta coffee? Because it's got twice the amount of caffeine than Arabica coffee. It has about 1.2 milligrams of caffeine per bean versus the Robusta at 2.4, something in that range of caffeine. But in today's day and age, you got people that love caffeine so when they hear 2.4 in comparison to 1.8, they're thinking, well great, I get more caffeine in my coffee. Yeah, it's lesser quality, it's grown lower, anything grown below 2,500 feet is generally Robusta coffee and that can really affect your heart tremendously. Say like an average cup of coffee is about 90 milligrams of caffeine, double that with a Robusta and it has a really bad petroleum taste. So, if you ever drink coffee that tastes like a rubber tire, you know it's laced with Robusta. And so the reason why some companies will put Robusta coffee in their Arabica coffee is to dilute it, to make their profit margins more. Why do they add Robusta coffee to Arabica coffee? Well, yeah, to get their profit margins up because it's lesser quality and lower price. And anytime you can dilute something with lesser quality, lower price, you have a more marketable product to the consumer. Good or bad or indifferent, it's more marketable to the consumer because it's a lesser price and that's what we're looking for. So, is there also different kinds of coffee grades, is what they'll be called, where some of them cost more than others or is it one-size-fits-all? Yeah, no, it's not a one-size-fits-all. There's a lot of duping that goes on in this industry. So, you have specialty grade, which is the only coffee that Mojo Roast ever purchases. And then you have premium grade, commercial grade, and below grade. And they're all saleable and they're all marketable. Even the below grade, they'll say 100% Arabica, but it's the worst grade you could possibly get in a cup of coffee. So, what makes that so bad? The defects that are actually in the beans themselves, whether there's moldy beans, there's beans that have fungal growth in them, byproducts of the fungus ocrotoxin, there are pest damage in the beans, just all around terrible. And there's no way to, because when you roast coffee, you obviously have to get that up to a high temperature. That mold or that fungus, that can't get cooked out of the beans at that temperature? Well, it seems like the ocrotoxin is a sticker in that coffee bean. I know it's a, that byproduct of the fungus is a known carcinogen and it shouldn't even be allowed in the coffee that we drink or that we import into the United States, for that matter. And now with that ocrotoxin, what is that? It's a byproduct of a fungus. Okay. So, in other words, specialty grade is the best that you can get. If you can't get specialty grade, then premium is just as good or is premium, the word premium sounds pretty good. Yeah, yeah, it sounds really good, but anytime you go below specialty grade, that you're accepting more defects in that coffee. So specialty grade, there's not one defect allowed in that coffee, but in premium, there are defects allowed. In commercial grade, there are defects allowed. And below grade, definitely defects in that coffee. And there's actually specialty equipment called triage equipment big companies use to sort out the defects and the bad, the sticks and stones and whatever else might be in there from that jungle environment. So I'd like to ask you a couple more questions about Mojo and Uros and what makes them stand out from their competition. What would the competition do, such as any big competitor, by big, I mean, a large corporation that uses those triage equipment? What type of process do you go through to get your beans to the consumer? Well, I have trusted brokers and traders I've been working with for 20 years. And we they know we only want specialty grade, I don't need special equipment, we cup the coffees that come in and make sure that they're going to pass our palate before we send them off to the consumer. It's as simple as that bring in the best grade possible, make sure it tastes good, and then sell it to the consumer and be transparent. Have you always had that view on business? I've always had that view because I'm a consumer. My family is a consumer, my children, I care about what they consume. So obviously, when I found out about the issues that the coffee world has, it's a Pandora's box of issues, not just grade grade type, or specific type of coffee. I wanted to make sure that I gave the consumer the best because I don't want to drink any of that. So I wouldn't push it off to somebody else. Is that what made you got into roasting coffee? Or get into roasting coffee? Well, I got curious, real curious and started in my cast iron frying pan. And then one day I moved up to a little two ounce roaster, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. It was a little air roaster that I got. And I could roast two ounces of coffee at a time. And I was doing a very good job at it. And one day I was drinking a cup of that coffee. And I just had an epiphany that if my company was as successful as I thought it was going to be, there'd be so many people that would benefit from what I'm doing. And have there been a lot of people that have benefited? What type of programs or what type of giving back systems have you put in place? Because you seem to be wanting to have your coffee as more than just a product. You wanted to have a purpose. That's right. Make a footprint, make a difference. That's our motto. And we've helped women and children in countries like Guatemala with education, Peru with domestic abuse. And then we bring that home to our own neighborhood and help with our military families. We help with feeding the hungry, we help with domestic abuse shelters, the homeless, wherever we're asked to step up, we will step up and help if we think it's a worthy cause for humanity. So you really do stand behind that whole purpose and meaning of the business. Back to the whole roasting the coffee thing, you had mentioned how you started off in a cast iron skillet. I take that roasting coffee is not an easy process. How does one number one out of the blue that has no experience get into roasting their own coffee? I think you have to have a little alchemy in your mind to want to do that and figure it out. A lot of science goes into it and understanding the processes. It's not for everybody. Like back in the day when I got into it, people were looking at major companies and they were saying to themselves, I want to roast coffee. I want to become a millionaire. I want to do this. And that's what they wanted. And they followed a path that other companies had paved the way for. And I started my own path. I just walked off on the fork in the road and thought I'm going to make a difference. Is there different ways of roasting coffee? Yes, there is. There's air roasting, and then there's drum roasting. And what's the difference between the two? Well, the air roasting just depends on the convection heat process to get those beans to where they're supposed to go. The drum is conductive heat. So you have the heat of the drum and the heat of the air behind that roast and eventually the beans will take over and become the energy to finish off that roast. And so is roasting as easy as just say throw the beans in a roaster and just let them go for a period of time until they look done? Nope, it's not. There's a huge, huge science curve to that process. I think a lot of people thought it was easy, they could just throw the beans in. And I've seen a lot of companies come and go through these years. And it's because they didn't have the knowledge or the desire. And the fact that they weren't making instant money, they thought the consumers would come running to them. That's not how it works. And so then what happens if you do just not take into account any of the science or any of the behind the scenes knowledge and information that you have to have? Say, for instance, what happens when you do just throw the coffee in the pot, in the air pot and expect it to cook? Well, you know, that's a that's a really, really broad statement to answer because you're going to ruin it. Number one, you will ruin that coffee. And if you really think critically about it, there were human lives that were impacted on getting that coffee to the roaster. And that matters to me because that's not an easy industry and the growers aren't making a whole lot of money. And I've heard people through the years say, well, you know, why are they why are they even growing coffee if they're just making pennies on the dollar? Well, I'll tell you, it's an agricultural product and you can either leave it hanging on the trees and get nothing for it or you can go out and you can get some sort of income for it. There's a lot of hard, heavy work that goes into growing that coffee, especially when you're dealing with specialty grade. Those coffees have a standard they have to uphold and the growers are impacted by what the roasters do to their coffee. So what's the between us first talking about the different types of beans, Arabica and Robusta, and then the roasting process, which one would you say is the most paramount to get correct? Is it the roasting process or is it sourcing the best beans? Well, I think sourcing the best beans, but within that Arabica family, there are a bunch of different types of Arabica coffees. And, you know, that's kind of why we cup our specialty grade coffees, because, you know, we can have like a Ketua, Keturai, different varieties within that Arabica. Some of them are flavorful to customers and some aren't. And once you source what you deem to be the best coffee that you want to put out to your consumer, then you better know how to roast it because you can wreck it mighty quick. And by wrecking it, do you mean by providing a burnt flavor or a moldy taste because how you were talking about earlier with coffee and some of it can have mold or... Yeah, I won't have none of my coffee happens like that. But you will end up with a coffee that could be really bitter. It's not always burnt, it could come out looking like satin and taste really nasty because you haven't let that bean develop long enough in the machine to bring out its true flavor profile. So to debunk some myths that people, or maybe they're not myths, but some people believe when you roast coffee, if you have a dark roast that has less caffeine than say a light roast does, is there any weight to that? Well, there is, but it's not really measurable as far as if you want that caffeine kick, it's not really going to, you know, be a real big difference in how that particular roast profile affects a person on a caffeine level. So would we be talking like a one milligram per cup difference between a dark roast and a light roast with the light having the one extra milligram of caffeine in it? Or is it not even that much? Yeah, it's not even that much. But some people just aren't convinced they want that lighter roast because they think they're getting a harder caffeine punch. And there's different tastes that come with the different roast profiles. They're like a between a light, medium, dark roast. What type of taste can people expect from each of them? On the lighter roast, you'll get a more vegetal, maybe grassy flavor in the cup with the underdeveloped kind of endosperm. With a medium roast, you might start picking up the fruitier notes that that coffee has. With the darker roast, you're going to pick up a lot of body. I remember one time I roasted a coffee in a cast iron frying pan for a customer and you get a really varied roast profile when you do coffee like that. When I went to present it to him, we were trying to figure out a good roast profile from what 100 years ago people were tasting in their cup. And that coffee tasted and smelled like butterscotch. He actually thought I put flavoring in it and I didn't. It was just a natural flavor of that coffee. So how come more people don't roast using cast irons? Because that's not something that you really hear about. Well, I don't think commercially that would just be so difficult to do. I have a carbon steel drum in my roaster. It would be a really, really difficult thing to roast for the masses. Is that the hardest way to roast coffee, too, would you think? Oh, I would say if you want to get something roasted really good, hit that cast iron frying pan and see what you come up with. It better not taste burnt. It better not be charred, better not look like charcoal. And then you're going to have some lighter roasts and medium roasts mixed in with that. It's a challenge, but it's fun. So with the cast iron, you end up with a roast that the profiles, as far as light, medium, dark, are all over the place. Yeah, pretty much. And then to talk about the earlier subject you brought up, too, about lesser grade coffee being grown at 2,500 feet or below. Is there a certain altitude in which coffee grows the best? Yeah, it should grow above 2,500 feet because you have less oxygen. It takes a lot, a lot more time for that coffee cherry to develop and take in what's in its environment. So you have a better cup of coffee if it's grown at higher elevations. Like some of mine are grown at 9,000 feet. And where in the world is that best to get your coffee from? I would say as long as you're, the only place you can get coffee is along the equator between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. And as long as you're buying coffee grown at higher elevations and you know their specialty grade, because there's bad grades growing up there, too. As long as you know it's specialty grade, you could get them from anywhere in the world. And it has to be grown below the equator. Well, you can't grow it in the United States, can you? Only Hawaii. But that's a coffee growing country. The only place it's interesting that's not in the bean belt is Australia. They got mountain grown coffee in Australia. Well, Australia is not very far from Papua New Guinea. So they don't have any natural pests yet in Australia. And that coffee is really good coffee. But it's just a matter of time if they're not careful that the pests will go over and bombard their crops, too. And what exactly is a coffee bean? Because you don't hear coffee trees. Yeah, a coffee bean is actually the seed of a cherry and the fruit they make wine with. You can do a lot with that fruit. Is it a specific type of cherry? It's not like a wild cherry or something like that. No, it's a coffee cherry. It just happens to have two seeds. Whereas when we think of cherries here in the United States, they have a pit, one pit. Well, coffee cherries have two seeds in them. For an anomaly that happens with a pea berry, that's where only one seed is grown in a cherry. And science thinks that it happens from Mother Nature or you might have an event in Mother Nature or an animal that damages the flower of the coffee, coffee cherry. So only one seed develops instead of two. And when you say pea berry, that must be the size of the bean itself. Is there different bean sizes? Yeah, there's screen sizes, but the pea berry is called a pea berry. It's rolled up. It looks like kind of like barley. It's one rolled up. You can identify them very easily. It's rolled up and has a really nice flavor profile to it. So is there different flavor profiles for different beans, such as a pea berry or say, for instance, one that people are most familiar with, like a Colombian or a Brazil? Yeah, they can have fruity notes. I tend not to really talk too much about that because people, for the most part, drink their coffee and go on with their day. But you can pick up different nutty notes in it, fruit notes. You can pick up some citrus notes, chocolate, milk chocolate, baker's chocolate, different cherry flavors, blueberry. Even the Ethiopian harar has a has a nice blueberry flavor to it. Depending on the roast profile, you can roast that off pretty quick. And where do they get those flavors from? The environment they're grown in. A lot of countries that grow specific coffees are known to have a specific flavor profile, like in Ethiopia with the harar and the blueberry notes that it has. It's pretty delightful. Is there a certain area that you like to source your beans from or do you source them from everywhere? I source them from all over the world because my joy is bringing the coffee experience to the consumer. And one time I was lucky enough to bring in two micro lots from Costa Rica. Each farmer grew one bag of coffee, 150 pound sack of coffee. And I got them here in West Hope, North Dakota. And we sold out of those two lots pretty quickly. But they were spectacular. They cupped over 90 on a score. They were phenomenal. So I try to find those unique treats for people that really enjoy their coffee. And when you say cupped over 90, there's a grading scale for coffee and 90 would be an A. Is that how that works? That's correct, yep. Anything up over 80 is pretty good. You get up in the 90s, that's exceptional. Do you know what type of factors goes into grading coffee? Yeah, I'm a certified coffee grader. Yep, you look for number one, you got to look for quality, you got to look for defects. And once you do that, you get your specialty grade coffee after it goes through that process of weeding out how much insect damage, like the broca, causes a lot of damage in the coffee environment. That's a beetle that devastates coffee trees and you got coffee rust. It knocked out a lot of coffee production several years ago. Once you have all of the bad factors ruled out, then and you're dealing in specialty grade, then you can cup coffees from all over the world that are only specialty grade and don't have any defects. And you look for certain profiles that you think the consumer would like. And with something that's specialty grade, that would run quite a bit more than say, below average or commercial grade coffee. So with the pricing differences to like somebody that goes and buys commercial grade coffee versus buying specialty grade coffee, why should they buy specialty grade coffee in comparison to that commercial? Well, it's kind of like food. You know, some people buy the Wagyu steaks because they deem that to be like the prime select cut of meat and they buy black Angus, which is another like a little below the Wagyu, I would say as far as quality. But they both eat the same. The coffee, if you want to get the top notch coffee, you're going to have to pay for it because we have to pay for it. And in turn, farmers and communities benefit from that as well. So you must work pretty closely with the farmers in which you source your coffee from. Yes, I do. Is there anything else you can tell me about Mojo Roast or anything that you guys have that's interesting and up and coming or anything else that you would like to add before we conclude this? We have some really exciting news that I'd like to save and share for the next podcast. OK. There's always something up and coming and great happening around here and we love to share it. OK, well, I think that we will conclude this podcast. Thanks, everybody that's listening. Thank you.