Julie H.
Yelp
You know where your coffee comes from, right?
I'm not talking about the supermarket, the office coffee pot, or even the freeze dried tin you have stashed in the back of your freezer.
Short of hopping a plane to another continent a visit to your local roaster is the next best thing to answering the question of where your coffee comes from. Baristas are fine, but even the best barista can't turn bad coffee beans into good. After the coffee farmer, the roaster is arguably the most important player in the cup of coffee I find myself sipping morning, noon, and night.
With that in mind I found myself in Durham at 10am on Friday, joining one of Counter Culture Coffee's regular coffee cuppings. Any place you can find a Counter Culture training center, you'll find coffee enthusiasts sniffing, slurping, and discussing a selection of coffees on Friday morning. After comparing notes with CCC staff and local Durhamites we were lucky to be taken on a tour of the roastery itself.
Housed in a non-descript warehouse in the Research Triangle area of Durham, Counter Culture Coffee receives, roasts, packages, and ships tons of my favorite coffees every year. Three main roasters - of sizes that would strike fear into Hansel and Gretel - occupy the back wall, emanating sauna-like amounts of heat. Trash barrels of coffees - labelled and color-coded to indicate which coffee is which - are unloaded and funnelled into the roaster, heated to a specific "profile" unique to each coffee and how it's supposed to taste, poured out onto cooling tables and then sucked back up and dumped back into another trash barrel, ready for packaging. The amount of detail that goes into roasting each batch of coffee is staggering, and spending just a short amount of time in the presence of the roasters and staff of Counter Culture is learning that there's a LOT of knowledge to be had on the topic of coffee. And I've only just scratched the surface!
After visiting CCC and seeing first-hand the process of turning a whitish-green bean into a chocolate colored bean with a fragrant coffee scent I have a new appreciation for the bag of beans gracing my countertop and the source of my daily cappuccinos. Even if you are more of a passive coffee-drinker a visit to Counter Culture is worth your while. Stop by on a Friday morning for a cupping and stay for the tour. You'll never look at a bag of beans the same again.