Mullica Hill coffee company named among top roasters in America

By Carly Romalino

January 08, 2010, 3:00AM

Ron and Sharon Vaccarello, the coffee joint’s owners, said that from the start they “set out to be the best roasters in the Philadelphia area.”

Although claiming the title might seem a bit overconfident, the Vaccarello’s triumphs were recently confirmed in an article by MSN.com that ranked Crescent Moon among the top coffee roasters in the country — and the best in the Philadelphia region.

“We started the business with the goal and aspiration to be one of the best,” Ron said. “We are humbled and honored, but it’s what we go for. It’s what we do.”

The Mullica Hill coffee house and roastery joined other java experts like Intelligentsia in Chicago and Los Angeles, Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Seattle, Portland and New York, and others that Ron said were the Vaccarellos models when the pair was starting out in the industry eight years ago.

“It’s nice to be in the company of a lot of people we have respect for, and some of them are our heroes,” said Ron. “A lot of these guys were our mentors when we first started ... we know every single one of them.”

But taking the crown isn’t easy.

For three years, Crescent Moon’s coffee roaster Chris McLaughlin has slaved over the roasting process under Ron’s guidelines.

Chris — part artist and part mad scientist in Crescent Moon’s Mickleton roastery — spends some eight hours every day, three days a week, crafting roasts that accentuate exotic flavors and keep customers coming back to the Mullica Hill retail location every day.

And Chris takes it seriously.

“It’s a matter of pairing and passion,” said Chris, of Mantua, who put his aspirations of teaching music aside when he fell in love with coffee.

“You have to understand the sugars and enzymes when you first drop in your roast,” he said. “The art doesn’t come in until the very end of the roast. In the last minute or two, that’s when you can make or break a roast.”

Chris, who said the praise won’t go to his head, was lost for words when the MSN article was unveiled.

“I was kind of speechless,” he said. “It just tells me that for the past three years, I’ve had to have been doing something right.”

And somewhere between a regular’s French press and a new customer’s cappuccino, the team of barristas at the Mullica Hill shop are polishing their skills for this year’s barrista competitions. The Crescent Moon team has been a competitor in the regional competition since 2006.

“It’s a cool industry, and we just got better and better,” he said. “We learn every day. Everything we do is striving for perfection.”

Tasters' Choice

By Kaelin O'Connell - koconnell@sjnewsco.com

At the Crescent Moon Roastery in East Greenwich, tasters do not sip coffee out of mugs; they Hoover it up from a metal spoon to the back of their palates with a loud, sharp inhale.



(Staff photo by TIM HAWK) A coffee cupping session with Crescent Moon Coffee and Tea in Mullica Hill, Moore Perks Cafe in Wenonah and Casa De Coffee in Pitman was held at the Crescent Moon Roastery in East Greenwich.

"You want it to hit the back of your throat," instructed Crescent Moon co-owner Ron Vaccarello, who held up his no-nonsense, non-heat-conducting spoon full of Amaro Gayo coffee. "Don't be embarrassed to make that noise."

Slurp.

"I taste Froot Loops," remarked his wife, Sharon.

Slurp.

"I think there is a spiciness to this one," said Thomas Pierson, manager of Casa De Coffee in Pitman.

Slurp.



(Staff photo by TIM HAWK) Chirs McLaughlin, roaster for Crescent Moon Coffee and Tea in Mullica Hill, pours freshly roasted Yemen Mocca Sanani at their roastery in East Greenwich.

"We should go three seconds longer when we roast next time," concluded Chris McLaughlin, the head roaster.

Each week, members of the local coffee scene gather around a steaming table here and sample the newest selections brewed by Vaccarello and McLaughlin in the micro-roasting plant.

"We grade the coffee based on smell and taste. We look for acidity or brightness, flavor, fragrance and aroma," Vaccarello said.

As one of only two organic roasteries in New Jersey, the plant supplies coffee to many outlets in Gloucester County and its surrounding areas, including Casa De Coffee, Moore Perks Cafe in Wenonah and various branches of Whole Foods in New Jersey and Philadelphia.

"We roast 50,000 pounds a year, and we're growing," Vaccarello said.

The facility's organic distinction from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture is maintained by keeping organic and non-organic coffee beans separate, and also flushing out impurities with a purge roast before organic beans go into the roaster.

"I don't really think you can taste a difference; it's just a cleaner product," Vaccarello said. Though the roastery is a warehouse-like space in an industrial park, Vaccarello and McLaughlin claimed their roasting was closer to art than manufacturing.

It all starts with tiny green seeds, coffee beans, harvested from cherries that grow on small trees in South America, Africa or the Islands. Hawaii is the only American grower.



(Staff photo by TIM HAWK) Ron Vaccarello, co-owner of Crescent Moon Coffee and Tea in Mullica Hill, strongly slurps coffee to aspirate it over the entire tongue during a coffee cupping session.

All seeds start out caffeinated. Those that make decaf coffee must get soaked either in methylene chloride or a mixture of charcoal and water (which is used here); the white powder caffeine byproduct can be sold to companies like Pepsi.

When it is time to roast, the beans get dumped into the $28,000 roaster, a machine about the size of an industrial refrigerator. Beans go into the top then fall into a large drum that heats up to more than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The beans spin with the help of 37 air jets for about 10 to 12 minutes until they reach "first crack," at which point they open up like popcorn kernels.

In about three more minutes, the beans, now a dark brown, have their "second crack." Soon they will be ready to drop into a cooling tray, but waiting one second too short or two seconds too long for release could result in a ruined batch.

"The last minute is chaos and our artistry," Vaccarello said. "The same beans can yield really different results."

Prices vary, too, and some reach surprisingly high. Jamaica Blue Mountain, one of the most esteemed coffees, retails for $75 a pound, and Panamanian coffee from Hacienda la Esmeralda goes for $275 a pound, Vaccarello said.

Cafe owners and managers did say they have seen a growing awareness of quality coffee among their patrons.

"In the beginning our customers wanted the basic breakfast blend," said Denise Moore, owner of Moore Perks. Now, however, they ask for coffee of specific blends or regions.

Sharon Vaccarello noted another indication that people were catching on: "I have noticed they are backing off the sugar," she said.

And that is the sign of a true coffee connoisseur, as Ron Vaccarello learned at one of his first cuppings in 2001. He asked to use cream and sugar during the tasting and realized he was the only one at the table who needed them.

"I was so embarrassed," he said. "I came home and told Sharon I would never use cream and sugar again."

Righteous Beans

Java lovers find community at Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea

By WILFORD S. SHAMLIN • Courier-Post Staff • April 22, 2008

Every Friday afternoon, a few employees, wholesale customers and managers gather at Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea in Mullica Hill for a simple ceremony called a "cupping."

They sip and slurp, carefully tasting for defects that can compromise quality. They sample five to six coffee beans, roasting them and grinding them before pouring into a small bowl with a specific coffee-to-water ratio.

Only the coffee beans that produce the strongest flavor are selected, said Sharon Vaccarello, 41, who owns the coffee business with her husband, Ron.

The cupping group keeps a tongue out for coffee that tastes fermented, bland or "old and tired," as they say in coffee-speak.

Lee Wojnar, 50, a former Swedesboro resident who now lives in Seattle, the nation's undisputed coffee capital, ranks Crescent Moon coffee among the best.

"The coffee is great," Wojnar said. "The blend's good. The balance is nice. It's not over-roasted. It's not bitter. I've had my taste of coffee houses. There's one on every corner where I live."

The Vaccarellos have gone to great lengths to assure customers get the best tasting coffee. And they also work hard to ensure that other coffee-shop owners who buy products from them wholesale get the best quality.

Denise Moore of Franklinville said she enjoys participating in the weekly cupping ceremony because she can learn more about coffee, knowledge that she can pass onto employees and customers who are showing more interest in knowing more than the basics about coffee. She and her husband, Rocky, own Moore Perks Cafe in Wenonah.

"By doing a cupping, we were able to learn about different coffees and we also learned to drink coffee black and really enjoy a cup of coffee," Moore said.

She and her husband have attended cupping ceremonies in Washington, D.C., and Seattle and the couple gives a higher rating to Mullica Hill's version.

"We definitely learned a lot more from Ron and Sharon because they were able to explain things more and teach us how to taste different coffees. Some of them taste earthy. Others taste chocolatey and others taste nutty," she said.

Coffee-shop owners who learn to distinguish the subtle nuances in taste are in a better position to educate their customers.

Moore Perks Cafe has expanded its initial offering of four coffees to more than 10 varieties.

"Our customers definitely go more for the variety now than their standard cup of coffee," a breakfast blend.

The Vaccarellos submitted to a state inspection and now their company is one of only two in New Jersey certified as organic coffee roasters by the state Department of Agriculture. The other is Kaffe Magnum Opus Inc., which has a roasting plant in Millville.

Most consumers can't sip coffee and know with certainty that it's organic, but the Vaccarellos sought state certification as a way of distinguishing their business from the competition.

A coffee shop doesn't need to be certified by the state in order to serve organic coffee. However, businesses that go that route can say they understand and comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, which sets standards for handling organic products.

"We're proud," said co-owner Ron Vaccarello, 50. "We're recognized throughout the nation as a quality roaster of coffee. We've come a long way in three years.

"We're not just a coffee shop. We're a coffee company that is a roaster and offers quality products," he said.

Consumers should note that state certification is "not certification of the final product," said Erich Bremer, supervisor of the state Department of Agriculture's Organic Certification Program.

There's nothing stopping coffee shop owners from obtaining and reading regulations on handling organic materials and proceeding on their own, but a business that has completed the certification process has opened its operation to state scrutiny and shown to inspectors approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they understand National Organic Program standards on handling and roasting of coffee beans.

"There is added benefit for the consumer to know (the certified business) has done homework and vetted out all concerns that we might have here," Bremer said.

Interest in organic products is growing nationwide as more people become increasingly concerned about what they're consuming.

A product labeled "organic" is said to have been protected from mixing, or comingling, with nonorganic products and is free of pesticides and other potential contaminants.

But customers come to Crescent Moon for other reasons besides the organic beans.

Anthony Ficara, 52, of the Clarksboro section of East Greenwich Township, said he comes to Crescent Moon once or twice a month because its relaxed atmosphere offers a fresh alternative to staying home and brewing his own coffee.

He said he enjoys the coffee because he can taste the strong coffee flavor. He said he has tried coffee from other shops and the taste often gets muted by the cream.

Crescent Moon offers as many as 28 flavors, with about 60 percent qualifying as organic. The company's goal is to offer all organic coffee. Reach Wilford S. Shamlin at (856) 486-2475 or wshamlin@courierpostonline.com.

TINA MARKOE KINSLOW Courier-Post
Anthony Ficare of Clarksboro (right) and former Swedesboro resident Lee Wojnar, now of Seattle, Wash., soak up the atmosphere at Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea in Mullica Hill.

Exotic Travels Add Flavor to Mullica Hill Coffee Shop

Mullica Hill resident Chris Murdaco, 20, thought he was going to be a medical doctor. Instead, he became a coffee expert.
Murdaco is the head coffee roaster for family-owned Crescent Moon Coffee Roasters Inc. in Mickleton, which runs a coffee shop called Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea in Mullica Hill. He says he enjoys the distinctive aroma that wafts through the small and well-kept warehouse where he does the roasting.

Murdaco, who started as a part-time employee at the coffee shop two years ago, isn't a coffee expert because he knows how to roast the beans. He's an expert because he studies how coffee is grown and processed.

A week ago, Murdaco returned from Guatemala, where he observed native coffee farmers' methods and how they live. He believes that understanding their culture can help him in his job.

The trip certainly has boosted his enthusiasm for the coffee industry.

"It has been the opportunity of my lifetime," the smiling Murdaco says as he checks how long his coffee beans have been in the roasting machine. "Now I have a good idea of the society as a whole, and that helps me to have a stronger passion for what I do.

"These experiences also changed me -- made me reconsider how I live my life. These people don't have the opportunities I have, the money I have; don't have the opportunity to choose what they want to be, like to be a doctor or a lawyer. Every single day, they work in the field to give us the best coffee."

Burlap sacks of coffee from Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Africa, among other places, sit on the shelves in the Crescent Moon warehouse.

Murdaco turns the exotic ingredients into Crescent Moon blends such as Morning blend, a medium-body smooth coffee, and the Raccoon Creek blend, a bolder and heavier flavor. The rapport he builds with farmers in nations like Guatemala helps ensure the product he receives is comparable to what is used by better-known companies.

At his young age, Murdaco has become the right-hand man to Ron Vaccarello, Crescent Moon's owner. Vaccarello says although Crescent Moon is a small company, it is still important to expose employees to the methods of processing coffee.

"If Chris leaves me in five years, the experience he will have is great, and it will open doors for him. I believe in investing in our human resources," Vaccarello said.

Vaccarello and his wife and business partner, Sharon, have traveled to the nations where they buy their coffee. Sharon went to Guatemala in 2004, and Ron traveled to Costa Rica in 2006.

Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea, housed in Store D at 141 Bridgeton Pike, opened three years ago as a family venture.

"We wanted to have a business near home so my wife could be with our kids," said Murdaco, whose background is in packaging, sales and marketing.

The Vaccarellos agreed there was a market for a coffee shop/cafe in Mullica Hill, so they joined the Specialty Coffee Association and educated themselves about the industry. Ron is a member of the Roasters Guild and he is an active artisan roaster. Sharon is a member of the Women in Coffee Alliance.

"We saw the need, and things fell into place because when we were looking for a good location, the town was opening this shopping center (Mullica Hill Plaza)," said Sharon, a stay-at-home mom for 12 years who has experience in retail sales and customer service.

The coffee shop, which the Vaccarellos call a coffee boutique, also serves salads, sandwiches and pastries.

Linda Smithers, past president of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, attributes Crescent Moon's success with "the time spent in preparation, and the understanding of the industry prior to opening the doors -- an important foundation for a successful business."

In Crescent Moon's three years in business, it has won prizes and competitions for its coffees.

"The beautiful thing about the coffee industry is that people are very open. They share their savvy and help others. We received a lot of help when we were going to start out, and we continue receiving support from the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Roasters Guild," said Ron.

"We don't think we are going to franchise our business because we are very concerned with the quality of the product," he said. "We want to grow slowly, smoothly so we can be around for generations."

According to Sharon, "We have a passion for this business. It's more than money to us."

Five days in Guatemala have instilled in Murdaco a deeper passion for the business as well.

"I'm becoming more knowledgeable, and my main focus is educating the consumers, having them taste new coffees and teach each other," he said.

February 25, 2007
RAQUEL RUIZ
Courier-Post
Courier-Post Staff HARRISON

Cool Beans, Indeed…From the pages of South Jersey Magazine…

Roasting and procuring coffee beans from all over the world for use in local coffee shops and cafés is more than just a job for one man. He’s on a caffeinated mission to make it his life.

“For the first fourteen minutes, it’s pure science,” says Chris Murdaco, looking down with specific intention at an apple-red stopwatch resting in his palm like a detonation device, occasionally entering figures into a laptop spreadsheet at his side. “But the last minute is all art.”

It’s an unusually mild Friday afternoon for early March, and four of us are gathered in a modest, nondescript warehouse building in Mickelton, wide-eyed and captivated by an imposing machine of metal façade and fire inside, about as tall as three washing machines and just as deep. We listen to the churning—a low, menacing moan of air and flame that could easily be mistaken for a household furnace if not for the incessant clicking and clacking coming from within. That’s the most important part. That drowning, rhythmic tickity-tickity-tickity-tick is the staccato lullaby of coffee beans roasting, incubating like so many miniature children awaiting their birth.

At an exhilarating 450 degrees, this machine has the capacity to swallow up to 26 pounds of raw, green coffee beans through its gaping mouth that protrudes from the top like a Y-shaped chimney. The process, on average, takes just over 14 minutes, although some roasts (for a different flavor profile) only stay in for a sprightly 12, or simmer for as long as 18. But that’s where the art comes in.

“If you have a really fast roast, you get a really bright cup with acidity from the beans, which is what makes it so bright,” explains Murdaco, who, at the thoroughly un-roasted age of 20, has ascended to the rank of head roaster for Crescent Moon Coffee Roasters, a Mullica Hill-based retail café-cum-wholesale operation (Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea) obsessed with all things java. “If you take a deep coffee, like a Sumatra, and roast it light, you will still have a decent mouth feel. But if you roast it too fast it’s really bright. Too long and it’s just cooking, so it gets a baked taste to it. It’s just like anything else you overcook.”

Murdaco, dressed comfortably in jeans and a form-fitting t-shirt, surrounded by posters of Hendrix and several South American and African flags on the walls, is well into this particular roast, constantly monitoring the temperature and occasionally taking a sample from a circular slot at the front of the machine. Each time he does this, he pulls out beans that look considerably darker than before. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” fills in the empty space.

Murdaco has already heard the “first crack” (when, at about 10 minutes into the process, the beans release their moisture and take a page from the pop-corn auditory handbook), and this is when it starts getting pretty nuanced. His attention is piqued and, as the time gets closer and closer to “drop” (when a lever is pulled and the newly-roasted beans spill onto a circular cooling tray like a tidal wave of mocha goodness), we mere spectators become less and less a part of his primary vision. We are peripheral. It’s all about the coffee now. “Even fifteen seconds can make a huge difference,” he says without any trace of facetiousness. He’s not even looking at me as he talks.

Wait for it…wait for it…

Swoosh! The lever is pulled, the beans done, spilling with chaotic grace from the belly of the roaster. And God they look gorgeous, all steam-rising and hot to the touch. If only they could fill a gigantic pool with these beans—like those plastic ball pits at Chuck E. Cheese—I would gladly surrender to the swallowing depths, forever. Seriously, as my fellow visitors—a small group comprising a husband and wife team interested in opening their own coffee shop and another gentleman who recently returned from Coffee Fest in Chicago—gaze at the cooling beans being shifted and turned round and round by a mechanical arm continually sweeping over the porous platform, the sight and smell (oh that glorious smell!) alone is enough to see why someone like Murdaco would, at such an un-ripe age, commit himself to the art of coffee roasting and brewing—and why he would travel as far as Guatemala to know the craft that much more completely.

He smiles as he dips his hand in and out of the pile that ebbs and flows.

It makes sense that Chris Murdaco would fit so well into the cradle of the Crescent Moon family. He’s young. So is the company. He’s sharp, intelligent, and as passionate about coffee as one can possibly be about a single beverage. And so is Crescent Moon. But it wasn’t always this way.

Before this warehouse (i.e., the wholesale operation) ever existed, Crescent Moon was an intimate retail shop in Mullica Hill that roasted its own coffee in the back room in a machine about half the size of the one the head roaster is using this afternoon. It was just over two years ago when the café first opened (the wholesale operation is just nine months old) and Murdaco walked in to apply for a barista position, which “looked like a cool job.” But he had no intention of making coffee his life, or even necessarily sticking around past high school graduation.

“But I really started to enjoy it. More than just being fun, I started wanting to know about the coffee. And eventually, through time, it started to develop into a passion,” he recalls. Taken under the wing of Ron and Sharon Vaccarello, the husband and wife founders of the company, Murdaco started doing more than simply serve customers from behind the counter. He started exploring the entire coffee world, learning about Crescent Moon’s latest imports and fascinations, mixing blends, and yes, even trying his hand at the roaster.

“Eventually I started roasting coffees and it got to the point where it was split about fifty-fifty [with Ron] and I started to take on even more as Ron got more involved in bigger operations and the business,” he says. At the start of last summer, when the Vaccarellos expanded to the warehouse—the home base for a burgeoning distribution venture that now deals with over ten South Jersey restaurants and cafes—Murdaco was forced to take the reigns of this beastly roaster full time. See, Ron broke his foot and could hardly walk, let alone hoist and dump nearly 30 pounds of raw coffee beans.

“I was quickly thrown into this thing. Ron would be sitting here while I did the roasting, making sure it was going right and we both learned together. And now I do all the roasting.” But Chris Murdaco isn’t the laurel-resting, plateau type—and coffee does not lend itself to coasting. In just a year’s time, this young man went from making the occasional cappuccino to essentially taking charge of one of the cornerstones of Crescent’s success. The roaster is the chef, the wizard stirring his cauldron, and Murdaco wanted to go even further. So, in February, he traveled over 2,000 miles to Guatemala, courtesy of Café Imports, Crescent Moon’s coffee importer, to educate himself on the breadth of this ubiquitous industry, starting at its roots.

“I wanted to go down there and get a first-hand understanding of the product and how it goes from the tree until it leaves the country of origin,” he says. “Even more than that, I wanted to see the people growing the product and milling it and then transporting it throughout the country. I wanted to see the labor involved in that and get an understanding of how it goes from the tree to the cherry, from the cherry to the seed, from the seed to the roasted bean, and from the roasted bean to the cup.”

For five days Murdaco, along with six other roasters from across the United States, traveled the countryside, walking the fields, meeting the farmers, and observing the daily experience of life amidst this crop, which (fun fact alert!) is the world’s second-largest traded commodity. I had never met Murdaco before this mild, Spring-tease afternoon, but to speak with him now, the journey still as fresh in his heart and mind as a recently brewed cup, one gets the sense he is that much wiser for the experience.

“I didn’t have any idea of the complexities involved in the processing. I didn’t realize a coffee bean will go through five different mills before it even leaves the country of origin, and that all of it has a purpose,” he says. “And I also took from it the understanding of the lives these people live, the hardships they face and the labor-intensive work they put in every day.”

Murdaco saw children, some no older than five or six, trudging through the fields beneath the sweltering sun, the baskets around their waists filling perpetually with raw coffee beans and cherries. He saw the sick and hungry unable to afford medicine and food. And formal education? Forget about it. “Most of these children don’t have a school to go to even if they wanted to,” he laments.

All of this observation—which he meticulously documented through journaling and photographing—only helped solidify convictions Murdaco already had about coffee farming and trade, namely that it needs to become more equitable for those at the bottom of this incredibly lofty ladder. After all, most coffee farmers only see a dizzyingly miniscule fraction of the profits reaped by exporters, importers and roasters. But Murdaco—and Crescent Moon on the whole—is committed to what is known as “fair trade” coffee, which aims to move marginalized farmers from a position of complete market vulnerability and abuse to a place of influence and self-sufficiency. This way, it is thought, farmers can play a more active role in their own sustainability—altruistic at its roots but mutually convenient as well when one considers this will also aid in the production of an even better product.

“[Fair trade] has brought about the social awareness key to making improvements in the industry and the quality of life and education and medicine and how these people live,” says Murdaco.

Now we’re “cupping.” No, it’s not nearly as salacious as it sounds. Cupping is an art—the perfect way to sample various particular brews. And it’s pretty simple: take a pudding dish, fill it halfway with coffee grinds, hold it up to your nose and take a deep, lingering inhale. Do it again. Now pour 200-degree water over the grinds and let it sit for just over four minutes. By now the grinds have formed what is known as a “crust” over the top of the water. Take your spoon and break the crust, cutting a lane down the center of the dish while inhaling the aroma of the now-visible water beneath. Scoop as many grinds as you can into an empty cup, dip your spoon into the freshly brewed liquid, and sip like you’ve never sipped before. Spread it out over your palate. Make it sound as if you’re doing lines with rock stars backstage.

“I know what you’re all going to say, but I taste all chocolate,” says Ron Vaccarello, sitting to my left. It’s almost too easy to draw metaphors between this bouncy, mustached man of zest and zeal and the beverage to which he has dedicated his life. So I won’t. But know this: Ron is fanatical about coffee. No, really. A java Nazi with a Santa Claus laugh and professorial beau monde that a simpler narrator might confuse with sardonic elitism if not for the gentle landing of his desire to educate and entertain. Like right now—he says he tastes chocolate in this coffee (and on the next cup it’s berries, and the one after that tobacco). But it’s not so everyone sitting at this table can admire the deific nuance of his refined palate. It’s so everyone at this table can know that yes, coffee can be this fun, this complex, this enlivening to the soul. “This is semi-sweet bakers chocolate all the way. This is beautiful.” Sssssssip!

For the next hour-and-a-half I cup with Murdaco, Ron, and the three visitors who were watching the roasting process earlier. We posture about the peppers and oranges in a Kenyan cup, the berries and nuts in a Nicaraguan brew. Everyone is in the zone. Also, across the table from me, sits Randy Van Osten, co-owner of the Treehouse Coffee Shop in Collingswood. The Treehouse just recently started serving Crescent Moon coffee at their shop and Van Osten, a fair-trade-organic zealot, is loving this. “I just love coffee and the process,” he says between sips. “And I want to experience as much as possible.”

So does Murdaco, again and again and again. While he’s not sure when he’ll get a chance to make it down to Guatemala again, he is planning on a trip to Mexico this summer, hoping to learn the language more completely so he can intimately communicate with those who bring him this product. As everyone is filing out of the warehouse, all buzzed on the caffeine and newfound knowledge, Murdaco stays back to check the figures of the recently completed roast. I ask him, even though he is back to attending college, if he plans on pursuing coffee for the remainder of his days here on Earth. And before I can even complete the question he looks up at me with eyes that suggest the discovery of a treasure and nods his head with enviable fervor. “Oh yeah,” he says.

From the Travelogues of Chris Murdaco:12-02-07

I looked up from the table and saw a truck pull up the long, dirt driveway and back underneath the covered patio above the mill. Two men stood behind the truck guiding the driver so that he park not too close and not too far away. Ricardo Safie, owner of Unitrade Coffee trading company, noticed what I and a few others were curiously exploring and explained to us that they were farmers arriving with their coffee cherries they had picked earlier in the day. In the back of the truck, forcing the bed down with the intensity of its weight, was about twenty five or so sacks of coffee cherries. After some talking and planning, the farmers appeared ready to unload the truck. One of the three stood in the bed of the truck on top of the coffee bags with a knife of some length in his hand. He began to pull up one bag at a time by the excess part formed above where they had been tied earlier and cut the bags open.

After the bag had been opened, it was a matter of moving it to the edge of the truck bed. Once this was achieved, the man on top of the truck, with the help of one of the workers on the ground, would lift the bag onto the back and shoulders of the man on the ground. Keep in mind, these men were as small as me and the bags weighed just over 150 pounds each. The man with the bag then carried it over to a giant tank where the bag came crashing off of its bearer’s shoulders and emptied below. This process carried on with the workers on the ground running from the truck, up the three steps, to the ledge of the tank where they dumped the bags; the man in the truck straining to lift the bags higher and higher as the truck emptied and to keep time with the workers beneath.

With the truck empty, it was time to begin the milling process. The tank holding the cherries began to fill with water. In doing so, the water pushed the cherries down a corridor leading beyond to the depulping machines. Once the cherry reached the depulpers it stood anxiously and nervously awaiting its fate. Quickly and efficiently, with the help of the constant flowing water, crushing machines, using perfect amounts of pressure, squeezed the beans from the cherry through a screen and delicately fed the beans, still covered in slimy mucilage, into another tank. The wasted cherries were moved through piping until they collected in a dump truck to later be turned into compost for the farmers to use on their coffee trees.

The tanks would continue to fill to the brim with unroasted coffee beans where they soaked and fermented for 24 to 36 hours. Appropriately, they were called fermentation tanks. During the process of fermentation, the mucilage covering the bean is removed. Once finished in the tanks, the water carried the beans down through more tunnels until they were fed out onto large, flat patios. From here, mill workers would spread the beans out evenly using a wooden rake that was more of a backwards shovel than anything. Once spread out on the patios, the beans sat for another few days drying only by the sun. The workers remained hard at work as they had to make sure to rake through the beans and reposition them every few hours so that they dried evenly. There they sat in their dry parchment until they were ready to be moved to large mechanical driers.

It was interesting to see how water is involved in every stage of coffee’s life. In the beginning, the denser cherries would sink in the water which also meant that they were ripe, and the unripe cherries floated on the surface to easily separate and be sold as a lower grade. After moving through the pulpers, unripe beans, just as before, floated to the top of the water and separated from the ripe beans that sink in the water. Finally, the beans sit in tanks of water for hours on end to remove the mucilage and make the bean what it is before I roast it. Once more, the high quality beans would float sink in the tanks, while the lower quality floated to the top.

Published (and copyrighted) in South Jersey Magazine, April 2007.