There are some things, like the smell of roasting coffee, that you think you can never get enough of. The first time the experience is heady. The second time it is familiar. But by the third time you are beginning to question your staying power.
That is how I felt recently when as part of a seemingly unending tour of local coffee roasters, I visited Coffee Cafe at 6303 York Road, north of Northern Parkway.
Previously I had smelled the work of the big roasters: Baltimore Coffee & Tea Co., Eagle Coffee Co. and Pfefferkorn's Coffee. I had sniffed the beans at the small roasters: Key Coffee Roasters and Cuppers. And now I had taken my nose to a boutique roaster, Coffee Cafe, a coffeehouse where the green beans were roasted a pound at a time.
I went with my 9-year-old after he had played in a Saturday-morning basketball game. I was dragging, but when I got there I perked up. Not only did the coffeehouse smell better than a gym full of basketball players, it had more-comfortable chairs -- and homemade muffins.
The coffee roaster was small, silver and watched over by an attendant, a young woman who simultaneously was conducting a telephone conversation and watching the roast. From time to time, she stuck a metal scoop into the mouth of the rotating coffee roaster and checked the color of the beans. Proprietor Peter Nobel said that he and his wife, Leslie Brooks, have trained staff members how to roast beans.
The roaster, a gas-fired unit with two chambers, holds only a little over 1 pound of beans in each chamber.
"It is a very labor-intensive way to roast," said Nobel and launched into an explanation of the unique features of his roaster. While other roasters try to keep green beans away from direct contact with hot surfaces, he said he welcomes the fire. He wants the flame to touch the beans, he said, because flame-touched beans have a unique flavor. He acknowledged you have to keep a close eye on the beans. Since the business opened in 1992, Nobel said, the store has developed a following of customers who are willing to pay from $10 to $40 a pound for beans, roasted to order. The beans stay in the roaster from 14 to 25 minutes, depending on which of the four cooking styles or "roasts" -- full city, dark city, Viennese and French -- is requested.
Sitting at the counter of Coffee Cafe, I was flanked by sacks of green beans on one side and coffee equipment on the other. I could see the life cycle of the coffee. Green beans were put in a roaster, emerged as brown beans, were pulverized, were bathed in hot water, then were served, sometimes crowned with cream and celebrated. I felt like I had just seen a modern version of an old TV show, "Coffee Bean: This is Your Life."
I felt myself losing the urge to sniff out more coffee roasters. When it came time to check out Riverside Roastery at 8059 Main St. in Ellicott City, I used my ears, not my nose. I got on the phone to Jill Lentz, who along with her husband Michael, run the Ellicott City coffeehouse.
Ms. Lentz said Riverside Roastery uses a German roaster, a Probat L-5, to turn out batches of beans ranging from 5 pounds to 11 pounds each. The roasters also keep a log of their work, Ms. Lentz said. If a customer comes in wanting the "latest roast," he can check the log which tells him which beans were roasted when.
Finally, I called Tom Thompson, owner of the Coffee Mill stores at 38th and Chestnut in Hampden and the Belvedere Square shopping center. He has been in the coffee business for 20 years.
Thompson said that despite the increasing popularity of coffee made from dark-roasted beans, he was standing up for light-roasted beans. One of the truths of the coffee business, he said, is that you can cover up the flavor weakness of beans by giving them a dark roast. A light roast, on the other hand, allows the subtle flavors of the beans to come through, he said.
I recalled that several years ago Thompson had told me about a fellow working somewhere near Laurel who was roasting coffee beans over wood. I wanted to know if this guy was still around, and was I going to have visit him.
Thompson said no. The guy had gone out of business. But Thompson did tell me of another fellow he knew who roasted beans over wood in Brazil.
That is how I stopped my coffee roaster visitation habit. I promised myself that I would visit no more roasters, until I had gone to Brazil and sniffed these wood-roasted beans.