BIRMINGHAM
It gives a hint of nut in its rich aroma. A sip proves the theory.
The color is dark but not so much so that it is too strong for a sensitive palate. Is this wine? No, coffee.
The taste of java is getting pretty complex these days - and even more popular.
A Birmingham company, Red Mountain Coffee Roasters, is helping fuel coffee fans' tastes in town and around the Southeast. The company, which roasts 54 different coffee varieties using beans from around the world, ships to grocery stores and coffee houses, plus individuals as far away as Japan.
It's quite a wave for such mom and pop companies. Coffee cafes raked in $3.95 billion as an industry in 2000, according to the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
The owners of Red Mountain Coffee Roasters, Randy Adamy and his wife Mary, have learned Southerners are pretty consistent in what they want, and it's far different from what Seattle coffee junkies enjoy.
"Coffee tastes change just like tastes in wine," Adamy said.
Birmingham sippers like light- to medium-roasted coffees, Adamy said, more than those smoky, somewhat bitter dark roasted coffees made famous on the coasts.
"It's a little bit more of a Southern thing," he said.
Lighter roasted coffees tend to be a bit sweeter. The coffee company cooks light to medium roasts half to two-thirds of the time. "They like that milder taste in the coffee," Adamy said.
What's the roasting company's most popular flavor? It's Southern pecan cream.
Business at Red Mountain Coffee Roasters is up 300 percent since 2000. It roasts about 10 times as many pounds of beans as it did when Dr. Henry Bright started the company in 1993 with a roasting machine that sat in the front window of a shop in Homewood. The Adamys bought out the company in 1999.
At the holidays, the company roasts beans six or seven days a week, especially thousands of pounds of its Christmas blend.
Usually, though, the company roasts about three days weekly. It starts with green beans that come from places like East Africa, Indonesia and Central America.
From there, Adamy and some of his 22 employees will fire up a large revolving steel drum roasting oven on large gas burners. It takes 15 to 17 minutes to roast one 25-pound batch of coffee at a high temperature.
Adamy calls this part art, part science: Roast the beans a few seconds more or less, and the flavor dramatically changes.
The crew follows specific recipes, some of which they wrote themselves, based on time, temperature, weight and air flow.
Adamy is buying an additional roasting machine because they roast so much, he said, and he doesn't expect business to slow any time soon: It looks like a permanent lifestyle switch to the coffee house habit, he said.
"It's not like mood rings and pet rocks," Adamy said. "It is something people have to have."
