Coffee Beans

Every morning, Fred Kenner sips his coffee with friends at Old City Coffee Co. on Church Street. Kenner doesn't brew coffee at home, so he didn't notice the recent 25 percent increase in the price of bagged coffee beans there. But, come June, he'll probably notice the extra 15 cents he'll be paying for a large cup. That's because co-owner Jack Treatman can't swallow the rising cost of coffee much longer. "Nothing hurts us more than having to raise the prices, but it's important to be in business next week," Treatman said.

My wife has an idea for a coffee place: a hole-in-the-wall in one of the hipper quadrants of Brooklyn - East Williamsburg, say, or Red Hook - with a 1950s percolator on an electric range, brewing Yuban out of a can. Totally retro, serving a cup of Joe that boasts bold intimations of tin and notes of cigarette ash. The line, she predicts, will be out the door. That's her response - joking, contrarian - to the super-serious artistry happening right now with the so-called Third Wave of coffee roasters and cafes in Philadelphia and across our caffeinated landscape.

The photographs on the wall at Coffee Works Roastery & Cafe sharply contrast with the shop's homey and cozy decor. The framed snapshots depict heavy machinery, rows of green plants, and coffee mills. But it is these pictures that give customers their first hint that despite its mismatched furniture, specialty blends, and shelves full of dog-eared bestsellers and games, this isn't just a new place to sit and sip. It is also a roastery. The coffee house, which opened in June in the Ritz Center on Haddonfield-Berlin Road, is one of just a few area businesses where coffee beans are roasted on the premises.

Dear Polly: Where is the best place to store coffee? Room temperature, refrigerator or freezer? - Alan Dear Alan: Freezer is best, although I store small quantities (a pound or less) in the refrigerator if they will be used up fairly quickly. Roasted coffee beans go stale at room temperature very quickly. For the freshest coffee, you should buy whole roasted coffee beans from a store that turns over a great deal of coffee quickly and, preferably, roasts its own beans as needed.

Perhaps you've noticed by now that all one-pound cans of coffee don't weigh one pound anymore. Coffee companies say it's no trick. But coffee buyers may wonder if they're getting less for their money these days. Others say consumers aren't necessarily getting more. A little more than a year ago, many of the industry's major brands began replacing their 16-ounce cans and bags of coffee with cans or bags carrying only 13 ounces. Some brands also have added 11 1/2-ounce cans to supermarket shelves.

Not so long ago, Philadelphians who loved cappuccino or espresso could find a cup only at the end of a meal in an Italian restaurant. Now it's possible to grab a cafe latte on the run, to take a double espresso back to the office, to make cappuccino at home, to linger over a flavored coffee and listen to music. Coffeehouses, cafes and takeout coffee places with broader horizons than "Regular or decaf?" have sprung up throughout the city, cheerfully filling our craving for more sophisticated forms of java.

Fante's is a familiar name to those interested in cooking and food, but many will think of it as a South Philadelphia institution, which it still is. However, there is a branch at the Springfield Mall in Delaware County that captures much of the flavor of the original store in Phildelphia's Ninth Street Market. "Everything for the kitchen" is the motto on the sign outside the mall store. Once inside, you tend to believe it because the small shop has so much merchandise that there is hardly room for people.

There are two basic types of coffee beans - arabica and robusto. Virtually all quality beans are of the arabica type, which grows higher in the mountains and has less caffeine. (Caffeine is the plant's natural defense against insects, and since few insects survive high altitudes, plants grown at higher points have less need for defense.) While good beans - a result of growing conditions - are essential to a good cup of coffee, the methods of processing, roasting, brewing and proper handling throughout the coffee-making process all affect the quality of what you end up drinking.

With wicker baskets strapped around their shoulders, students from Friends School Haverford picked red and green coffee berries off 6-foot-tall trees in Costa Rica. The coffee beans inside the berries are the livelihood of the local farmers and their families who have leased the 24 parcels of land on the 120-acre Finca La Bella ("Beautiful Farm"), a farming community established by Quakers in the northern town of Monteverde. The 15 students, who were sixth graders on February's trip, were able to see how coffee farmers in this Central American country live and work.

My wife has an idea for a coffee place: a hole-in-the-wall in one of the hipper quadrants of Brooklyn - East Williamsburg, say, or Red Hook - with a 1950s percolator on an electric range, brewing Yuban out of a can. Totally retro, serving a cup of Joe that boasts bold intimations of tin and notes of cigarette ash. The line, she predicts, will be out the door. That's her response - joking, contrarian - to the super-serious artistry happening right now with the so-called Third Wave of coffee roasters and cafes in Philadelphia and across our caffeinated landscape.

With wicker baskets strapped around their shoulders, students from Friends School Haverford picked red and green coffee berries off 6-foot-tall trees in Costa Rica. The coffee beans inside the berries are the livelihood of the local farmers and their families who have leased the 24 parcels of land on the 120-acre Finca La Bella ("Beautiful Farm"), a farming community established by Quakers in the northern town of Monteverde. The 15 students, who were sixth graders on February's trip, were able to see how coffee farmers in this Central American country live and work.

At last, science may have solved one of the most vexing problems of the modern age: how to make a cup of decaf coffee that tastes good. By altering the genes of the coffee plant, Japanese scientists have found they can reduce the caffeine content by 70 percent, they reported today in the journal Nature. The scientists say it will take a few more years before they have a product ready to market. Currently, coffee beans go through a punishing ordeal to remove their caffeine.

As the weather cools, a rich cup of coffee can be just the thing to warm a chilly autumn day. Krispy Kreme, introducing a new line of coffee to go along with its signature doughnuts (and opening its first Philadelphia store later this fall on Cottman Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard in the Northeast), offers a few tips for making a perfect pot. The first mistake most people make is that they store coffee in the refrigerator or freezer, says D.J. McKie, senior vice president and general manager of Krispy Kreme Coffee and Beverages.

The photographs on the wall at Coffee Works Roastery & Cafe sharply contrast with the shop's homey and cozy decor. The framed snapshots depict heavy machinery, rows of green plants, and coffee mills. But it is these pictures that give customers their first hint that despite its mismatched furniture, specialty blends, and shelves full of dog-eared bestsellers and games, this isn't just a new place to sit and sip. It is also a roastery. The coffee house, which opened in June in the Ritz Center on Haddonfield-Berlin Road, is one of just a few area businesses where coffee beans are roasted on the premises.

The Cubby Hole, a coffeehouse on East Main Street, is true to its name. The dining area is no more than 200 square feet. It is big enough for two round tables, one by the bay window and the other about four feet away near the kitchen entrance, as well as for four bar stools along a counter that lines the wall opposite the door. "We tried to put in five bar stools," said Barbara Callaway, who owns and operates the Cubby Hole with her fiance, Jeff Baker. "But that was too much of a squeeze.

Every morning, Fred Kenner sips his coffee with friends at Old City Coffee Co. on Church Street. Kenner doesn't brew coffee at home, so he didn't notice the recent 25 percent increase in the price of bagged coffee beans there. But, come June, he'll probably notice the extra 15 cents he'll be paying for a large cup. That's because co-owner Jack Treatman can't swallow the rising cost of coffee much longer. "Nothing hurts us more than having to raise the prices, but it's important to be in business next week," Treatman said.

While blueberry sundae and cherry vanilla coffee may cause some connoisseurs to gag, there's always Colombian Supremo, Sumatra and Yirgacheffe for aficionados with more traditional taste buds. Such concoctions can be found at the Talk n' Coffee micro-roastery in Deptford, one of South Jersey's contributions to gourmet coffee, which not only roasts the green beans but creates new flavors such as creamsicle, pumpkin pie and pecan fudge cluster. That's right. Specialty coffee in South Jersey.

It's hard not to notice the neon sign beaming from the window of one of Fayette Street's newest businesses. The sign's colored lights form the shape of a stick figure holding a steaming cup of coffee. And it's easy to wonder what this place named Javaman - a coffeehouse and retailer of coffee beans - is doing among the more traditional clothing stores and restaurants along the borough's central commercial strip. It's the kind of cafe viewed as catering to sophisticates and professionals - a place, perhaps, suited to Manayunk or Chestnut Hill.