The 2024 Sacramento Coffee Lover’s Guide

Specialty coffee roasting is a gloriously artisanal craft, including at the Mill (pictured), which roasts single-origin beans using a custom-built machine.

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE SPECIALTY COFFEE 

People can feel defensive about coffee. They like what they like—their Keurigs and Mr. Coffees, their Starbucks and Dutch Bros.—and they generally don’t want unsolicited tips for improving it. I get it. I once had the same aversion to folks who wanted to convert me to expensive “specialty” coffee from local roasters, with its often-limited seasonal availability and weird names like Ethiopia Yirgacheffe or Guatemala Hunapu or whatever.

Then I tried specialty coffee. Years later, I haven’t looked back. Whether you’re up for a one-time splurge in a cup or a full pivot to home-brewing nirvana, here are five reasons to consider the switch.

BREW IT YOURSELF

Mr. Coffee may mean well, but he’s ultimately a cheap, imprecise appliance that drips water unevenly over your coffee grounds (which wastes coffee) and can burn everything with his heating plate on the glass carafe. Brewing your own coffee tastes better. It’s also more efficient and even fun. After years of tinkering and experimentation, I’ve settled on a morning French press, which immerses the grounds in hot water for a full, even flavor. I also like the meditative process of a pour-over and ease of a Clever Dripper (basically a hybrid between a French press and pour-over). No hard feelings, Mr. Coffee.

DRINK IT BLACK

Do you know why so many folks put milk, sugar and other additives in their coffee? Because most coffee tastes bad. Mass-produced coffees sold at supermarkets—especially pre-ground coffees and Keurig pods—can be stale, burned or even rancid. “Dark roast” beans are the worst offenders. That sticky gloss you often see on the beans? That is a bean’s oils sweated out, sitting and rotting on the surface. Specialty coffee roasters do it right, though. They carefully calibrate specifications (see below) to coax out a bean’s unique flavor. The resulting cup of straight black coffee yields flavors you’ll neither need nor even want to warp with additives. Speaking of flavor…

TASTER’S CHOICES

Hazelnut or French vanilla coffee doesn’t occur in nature. So why do specialty roasters nevertheless tag their coffees with flavor descriptors like, yes, “hazelnut” or “vanilla”? Or “grape,” or “blackberry,” or even non-flavor adjectives like “silky” or “juicy”? Similar to wine, these words allude to the senses and factors that influence how a coffee tastes—aroma, flavor, body, and finish. A coffee from Honduras, for instance, may have a citrus-y aroma and flavor, chocolatey body, and bright finish; an Ethiopian coffee will have a more berry-forward flavor and aroma, juicy body, and a complex finish. You can’t miss the differences when you sip these coffees side by side. The Specialty Coffee Association, a consumer-friendly trade organization, even publishes a “taster’s flavor wheel” to show coffee’s wide range.

ORIGINS MATTER—NEAR AND FAR

As implied above, different parts of the world produce coffee with different characteristics. I favor coffees from Africa, but an Ethiopia coffee tastes almost dessert-like compared with the acidic sweetness of a coffee from Kenya. (You can split the difference with harder-to-find seasonal coffees from Rwanda, which offer notes of caramel and spice.) After buying and importing raw—i.e. “green”—coffee beans straight from the farms in these regions and others, local roasters fine-tune the right balance of roasting temperatures and time to capitalize on a bean’s inherent qualities. These “single-origin” coffees are fantastic, but many excellent coffee blends combine countries and even continents. (For example, Pachamama’s fantastic Sactown blend—no relation to this magazine, alas—marries two Ethiopian coffees with varieties from Guatemala and Mexico.)

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

I gladly spend $5 or even $6 (including tip) on a basic cup of coffee at a local specialty cafe, or roughly $20 on a bag of beans. I have few other indulgences, and unbelievable labor went into that coffee. It likely started with a “direct-trade” arrangement between coffee farmers and roasters, the latter of whom travel all the way “to origin” (i.e. farms) to sample and purchase seasonal coffee “lots.” Farmers must grow, harvest, process and ship the beans in those lots. Upon arriving in Sacramento, the beans are roasted, packaged and distributed—and, if you drink the coffee at a cafe, brewed by highly trained baristas. I’m surprised it doesn’t cost more. Mass-market coffee—with its stale beans, harsh flavors and vaguely dehumanizing fast-food vibe—feels like the real swindle. Indeed, when I do the math (and, of course, brew the coffee myself), my $20, 12-ounce bag of beans yields 14 cups of first-class coffee at less than $1.50 apiece. Specialty coffee is the best bargain in town! Who knew?

—Stu VanAirsdale

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