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The Laker Newspaper 

The Black Bear Micro Roastery

by Dan Derby

You expect a smell when you visit Jim Clark's barn. It's not there. Only a pallet of burlap bags outside the weathered door hints about the business inside. Inside the smell is a pale shadow of your expectations. Green coffee, it turns out, doesn't have much smell. On Sundays, roasting day, it's different. Pick up a freshly vacuum sealed package, squeeze it gently and the one way airlock will deliver that smell that "promises more than it delivers". But that smell and the coffee taste it promises, are both wonderful and fleeting. Enjoy it quick before it's gone.

Coffee, particularly roasted coffee, is a living thing, chock full of complex organic molecules in shifting proportions. Unsealed, it goes flat in a few days. Sealed in vacuum bags and kept away from water and oxygen, roasted frozen beans can last a few months. Green beans last for long periods but generally the special qualities of roasted coffee are ephemeral. Jim & Annie Clark, both tall and intense, have been working for nearly a decade to plan and build a business around coffee's elusive attributes. While their plans have fallen by the wayside, they've succeeded in the business.

Coffee is the most traded commodity in the world, after oil. It was discovered in Ethiopia somewhere before the sixth century AD. Local legends tell of a young mountain herder finding his goats dancing around a small bush. He tried chewing the leaves and deep red berries and immediately felt a surge of manic energy. From there it became an integral part of in Abyssinian culture. By the tenth century, these mostly Christian Ethiopians had passed the wonder plant on to the Moslem Arabs. In spite of being closely guarded, the Dutch got hold of a live tree. It was their trading companies that set up the first plantations, growing coffee from Ceylon to Java. They introduced coffee to the tea drinking Europe.

At Black Bear you get to where the action is by going up a set of tight stairs to the office & production room. In the middle of the rough hewed, high ceiling attic sits a ancient looking yet modern roaster. Incongruously bright ducting moves its heat to the outside. Look closer and you see several computers. One is connected to and directly manages heating and cooling cycles for the roaster. Black Bear roasts and packages twenty two different coffees and blends. Since heat is both the friend and enemy of coffee and Jim Clark has spent a good bit of a decade precisely defining the perfect roasting cycle. This is the key to wonderful coffee, he believes. Jim is very proud of the algorithms he and his consultants developed. They precisely ramp the roaster's hot air cycles up and down, turning odorless green beans into wonderful smelling, brewable beans. Each type requires it's own heating and cooling cycle, unique to the needs of the particular bean.

Early on, the Italians were Europe's coffee enthusiasts, inventing new methods of brewing (espresso) and serving (caffe’ latte & cappuccino). As coffee houses spread to Venice, London and Paris in the 1500's, they became places of political, social and business life. Surprisingly, the English, a nation of tea drinkers, made coffee shops serious institutions. Edward Lloyds' establishment catered to seafarers and merchants, eventually becoming the famous insurance company, Lloyd's of London. The English Stock Exchange and the Tatler newspaper were born in the same sort of coffee shops. English enthusiasm diminished after the East Indian Company monopoly began importing and pushing India's vast tea production. That and probably the miserable quality of English brewed coffee helped return the English to tea. In the late 1700's, American coffee drinking grew. Perhaps because of patriotism (some problem in Boston harbor), but also encouraged by the birth of the nearby coffee growing giant, Brazil. The story about how Brazil came into possession of forbidden Dutch beans, something to do with a dashing Brazilian and the wife of French Guiana's governor, is probably not appropriate for our family newspaper. In any case, coffee became America's brew.

Annie & Jim Clark introduced themselves to good coffee innocently enough. They began offering gourmet samples as a perk for shoppers in their downtown Wolfeboro store. This was during the mid '90s and Jim, a perfectionist by nature, got caught up in the making of high quality coffee. The deeper he got, the more excited he became about it's business potential. No one seemed to know much about the process of making great beans. Jim found out how. With this, the Clark's decided to "do it right", hiring high powered consultants from both the marketing and coffee worlds. Having previously started three businesses, you would have thought they would have avoided the stress and uncertainty of once again becoming entrepreneurs. Not so. The coffee business, it seems, was as addictive as the product itself.

The Clark's original plan was to launch a well funded enterprise aimed at one of the coffee market's sweet spots, direct marketing of gourmet products. They acquired production equipment, including a heavily modified roaster capable of high quality in volume. Along the way, Jim invented many of his own roasting technique, the "Linked Temperature Roasting" proudly described on Black Bear's web page (www.backbearcoffee.com). Jim believes it is Black Bear's key to a unique, repeatable quality coffee. He knows of no one with a similar process. While they made major investments in consultants, equipment and production facilities, the Clarks were unable to find early financing for their business. With equipment bought and consultant costs sunk, they were financially stretched. To get cash flow, Jim and his brother-in-law went on the road themselves. Store by store, they sold the concept of high end coffee throughout the north east. Sometimes profitability was the selling point. Sometimes product quality was the key. Mostly it was the tenacity of the Clarks. It wasn't in their plan but it worked.

Recently Jim was in Manchester to be deposed by an attorney of the three billion dollar Starbucks Coffee company. Starbucks, describes itself in its suit as "the largest and best-known purveyor of specialty coffees in North America" and is suing the two person Black Bear Coffee Roasting Company over the name it uses for one of its blends. Most of the legal materials, including the original complaint, can be found on the Black Bear web site. According to Jim, the blend is named after a popular Boston phrase for dark roasted coffee, "Charbucks". Starbucks states that their "reputation for premium quality is being diluted, the value of its trademark is being diminished, and consumers are being misled and confused." in their 3,523 retail stores and 10.9 million customers per week by Black Bear's use of the name. The action is still in the deposition phase and will take some time to play out. Another unplanned event to for the Clark's business.

Coffee has been the root of major international disagreements. Mark Pendergrast's definitive book on coffee's economic and social history, "Uncommon Grounds", clearly points out its wide impact. The 1975 Brazilian frost, for example, started an economic war between the producing and consuming nations. Before it was over, the US Congress was directly involved, the price of imported green coffee beans tripled and U.S. roasters began adding cereal to the coffee to "improve" its taste. American roasters also dropped the weight of a "full" can from 16 oz to 13 oz. Their claim was they had found ways to increase the yield of each can. Predictably, world growers responded robustly to increased prices by increased production. Eventually prices came down, again. Pendergrast quotes a wry Merrill Lynch commentator who observed, "coffee may be black and liquid, but it is not oil."

One afternoon last week, sixty burlap bags arrived at the Clark's barn. Each will weigh about one hundred and fifty pounds. Jim will off load each by hand. It will give him a one year supply for one of his twenty two coffee types. It will be safely stored in the bottom floor of the barn, behind foot thick insulated doors and walls, continuously temperature controlled. Recently, well funded coffee roasters have been pushing into the New England market that Black Bear depends on. The Clarks will respond by increased marketing through the internet, directly to consumers. Another change for a company who's success has been more adaptation than planning. But marketing plans and lawsuits aside, Jim's intensity continues undiminished. He looks at the production process he designed and observes, "You know, I just want to make the best coffee we can make." In the final analysis, that goal and pure tenacity drives The Black Bear Micro Roastery.

Note: Black Bear's eight national coffees, five flavored coffees, eight blended coffees and one decaf coffee are available throughout New England and around Lake Winnipesaukee. You can find them today at Jackson Star Market in Meredith, EM Heath Supermarket in Center Harbor, Hunter's IGA Food Store & DeVyler's Community Market in Wolfeboro and The Tuftonboro Country Store.