Hand pours and fine art at Green Roast Coffee
An exquisite cup of coffee can be a work of art in itself, or can surely complement one: It enhances our reading pleasure or revives us during intermission at the theater. In his collection of short stories, All Fires the Fire, Julio Cortázar wrote that “the aroma of coffee suddenly enfolded me, its violence already almost forgotten in galleries where the coffee was weak and reheated. I drank two cups, without sugar, tasting and smelling it at the same time, scalding myself and happy.”
In other words, coffee is a passion, which you can’t say about broccoli or potatoes, and so it was no small delight to find Kenny Ohara and Green Roast Coffee, which has been open since earlier this year in Redondo Beach. Following in the footsteps of other independent coffee shops like Java Man in Hermosa Beach, Green Roast Coffee also features a regular rotation of local artists. Tomorrow evening, in fact, there’s a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. for Jantzen Lennon Peake. With a name like that, I would think a career in the arts was essentially preordained.
Let there be… free trade
Ohara, who recently displayed paintings by Lorna Brown and will soon show works by Torrey Smith, has a notice about artist submissions on the Green Roast Coffee website. He’s sympathetic towards struggling artists.
“I was an art major at Cal State Long Beach, and I know how hard it is to get a solo exhibition. I did a couple of group shows at school and other group shows outside of school, but to get your own solo show is extremely hard and I want to give people a chance to do that even if it’s just in a coffee shop. There are a lot of artists who deserve exposure that can’t get that exposure because they’re not already exposed.”
Jantzen Peake majored in illustration at Cal State Long Beach and while there had a regular comic strip in the school newspaper called “Crabby Times.” Peake has since had his work shown at The Hive Gallery in Los Angeles.
Ohara himself is a fine artist, and a couple of his large format photographs were on view in the coffee shop on the day we spoke.
“I did a lot of digital work towards the end of my college career,” he says, “just because I thought I was going to be a graphic designer before the coffee shop opened. I decided to move in that direction just so I’d have a sustainable career, something that would pay the bills. But I’m a fine artist at heart.”
Green Roast Coffee is family-owned, with Ohara working mornings and late afternoon, with his mother (who founded the shop) filling in for a few hours midday. His sister’s boyfriend occasionally helps out, and a long-time family friend who is also a pastry chef keeps them supplied with fresh, tasty edibles. “We try to keep all the pastries preservative-free,” Ohara notes, adding that many of the choices are both nutritious and organic.
He also lives in the same city where he works, but grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes and attended various schools there, including Peninsula High. In short, he’s lived in the area for some 30 years, and as various ideas for an eco-friendly coffee shop began to percolate they were furthered along by Ohara’s experiences among the waves of our coastal beaches.
“I started surfing a couple of years back and I realized how polluted the water was.” He came down with sore throats or ended up with earaches, and he began to realize that the pollution wasn’t just in the sea but in the air.
“We can’t cure the entire world,” Ohara says of the pollution, of the lack of recycling and so forth, “but we can try to do our part. As little as that part may be, it does help. Each individual’s carbon footprint can never be down to zero, but you can do a lot to lessen that. We try to make people more aware of being environmentally conscious.”
This is the consciousness or mindset that informs Green Roast Coffee.
“All of our [coffee] beans are fair trade organic,” Ohara says. “The fair trade helps to give the plantation workers a fair wage. Since it’s organic it’s also chemical-free,” which means that the runoff is unlikely to pollute the water supply. According to Ohara there is also less deforestation in the way the coffee crop is grown, and less displacement of wildlife. “A lot of the plantations are in Third World countries and it’s really hard for them to get by,” but the fair trade agreement helps address the imbalance.
While the result is a better-tasting cup of coffee, the cost to the consumer will be slightly higher. As Ohara explains it, “You’re helping people in other countries; you’re also helping the wildlife, you’re helping the rainforest. It’s a whole cycle that most people aren’t even aware of.”
Green Roast coffee practices what it preaches.
“All of our products are eco-friendly,” Ohara says. “Our papers are all recyclable; all of our plastics are made of corn instead of petroleum. We support the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, and the Kokua Hawaii Foundation.” A portion of the tips goes to these organizations. “We try to donate as much as we can without starving ourselves.”
And the difference is?
“The first thing to know about coffee is that the flavor and aroma come from the oil that the beans release after they have been roasted,” Ohara says. “It usually takes around two or three days after the beans have been roasted to release enough oil for a proper cup of coffee.”
He buys raw, or green, coffee beans and if needed blends and roasts them himself. “We roast in small quantities, between two to four pounds at a time, because we’re a single coffee shop [and] we want to make sure to maximize the freshness. That is a reason why I do not have more than eight types of beans or blends – 100 percent Kona, Kona blend, mocha java, dark roast, house blend, decaf, espresso, and espresso decaf. Maybe as this little shop grows I will, but I would rather not carry 20 or 30 different beans that sit on the shelf for a long period of time. Keeping it simple keeps it fresh.
“We also do what’s called a hand pour,” Ohara continues. “We don’t use a machine brewer, and because we’ve chosen beans that have a specific aroma and flavor to them [this] actually comes out more in a hand pour.”
Why? “Once the water reaches a certain temperature in a machine brewer it immediately transfers to the coffee filter and floods the coffee beans with water. This over-saturates the coffee, and the oil-to-water ratio becomes unequal. There is a lot of flavor lost when this happens.
“With a hand pour, the amount of water saturating the coffee can be controlled to maximize flavor by pouring small amounts of water at a time. I have chosen certain types of beans to really make the hand pour shine. For example, our house coffee is an Ethiopian blend with floral and fruity notes that get lost in a machine brewer. With a hand pour, those flavors and aroma really hit the senses.”
All this, if only we can wait an extra minute or so for our hand-brewed coffee.
When asked about the competition, Ohara doesn’t seem worried.
“I think we offer an alternative as opposed to competition. It just depends on people’s tastes.” Green Roast Coffee has its regulars, he points out, who like the more quiet feel and what the shop is trying to do environmentally, and they want to support that. As for the Coffee Beans and the Starbucks and so on, Ohara essentially shrugs it off, and says those big companies aren’t going anywhere.
“Without the major corporations, coffee culture wouldn’t be what it is today, so we probably wouldn’t be open in the first place.”
But fortunately they are, with an artist reception tomorrow (Friday) for Jantzen Lennon Peake from 5 to 8 p.m.
Green Roast Coffee is located at 1300 S. Pacific Coast Hwy, Ste. 108, on the corner of Ave. E, in Redondo Beach. Hours, Monday to Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Sunday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call (310) 543-5599 or go to GreenRoastCoffee.com. ER
