D  e  s  e  r  t   E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e        January 2008

Las Cruces Coffee Roaster Bernie Digman

Not the least bit fazed, Digman reaches up to nab a burlap bag of beans to start the roasting process. "A few minutes," he answers with the air of Cup of Joe Cool.

He weighs out the appropriate amount of beans on a nearby scale, noting that everything is weighed when it comes to coffee, tamps them down slightly, and pours the beans into the hopper of the Diedrich gas-fired coffee roaster. "It's kind of like a cement mixer. It has paddles in the drum and works with convection, conduction and radiant heat."

The hopper spins the beans — no more than 25 pounds at a time in a normal situation, but only 18 pounds per batch in Las Cruces because of the altitude. Digman announces that the roasting temperature will be between 418 and 460 degrees Fahrenheit, and that the roast will take between 9.5 and 13 minutes.

The employee comes back to the roasting area to announce, with a sigh of relief, that she has located some beans, and that all is well. The same waiting customer sneaks in the back of the roasting room to gently taunt Digman about the perceived lack of product. They joke back and forth briefly before Digman continues with his description of the roasting process.

He notes that it is sort of seat-of-your-pants kind of process, but the roasting will be a blend of clues, such as knowing in your head what you want it to look like, color and aroma. To that end, there are charts on the walls of the roasting room with any number of different kinds of beans depicted and listed, along with some of their "bouquets," such as "pepper," "maple syrup," "fresh butter," "cucumber," "pipe tobacco" and "potato."

"Some roasters are all automated, and some are good and all are very sophisticated," Digman says. He hasn't gone that route yet, and seems to prefer this type of "hands-on" operation for his store. Digman has taught two former employees the ropes on how to roast coffee properly, and is currently teaching one of his store managers the method. It is an art he is not willing to train everyone to do — only those who demonstrate "the feel," so to speak, to do it properly.

"We don't keep any beans for more than 10 days," Digman adds, "so everything is dated when it comes in. It works well, and what little we have left over goes to places like El Caldito Soup Kitchen." (See the December 2007 Desert Exposure.)

If you want to get Bernie Digman to raise his eyebrows in terror, just mention the term "pre-grinding." He delivers a short lecture on that scorned process, which includes the loss of aromatics and how the resulting product will have "bitter tones." Coffee needs to be treated like wine, he reminds, and coffee has the same "language" as wine.

"This is a new crop. It probably takes three weeks to get here from where it was grown," he adds, pointing to the beans.

When it comes to his beans, Digman is not sold on the idea of organic coffee or the new rage for some stores and specialty grocers, "fair trade" coffee. As for the former, he asks how a roaster like him can truly know if the coffee is truly organic? What is the true traceability? How does one account for, among other things, the possibility that it was contaminated in shipping? How does one know that someone wasn't slipped a few bucks to have their crop "certified" organic in some distant Third World country?

He's even more dubious about "fair trade" coffee. Digman concedes that the principle behind "fair trade" is a good one: a fair price for everyone involved in the process of getting a product to a consumer. With coffee, fair trade often goes hand in hand with coffee plants that are shade grown, an idea with several benefits, mostly surrounding ecological preservation. But Digman is not convinced that the "fair trade" principle is being utilized appropriately by everyone involved, arguing it involves too much paperwork for all.

Digman watches the spinning beans go around and around in the hopper. He says, "Who wants a great dining experience followed by an $8 dessert with a three-cent cup of coffee?"

Back out in the coffeeshop, Milagro's somewhat pricier than three-cents coffee is being enjoyed by an early morning book group, students frantically working on assignments that are probably due in 10 minutes, any number of folks engaged in casual or animated conversations, a couple of artistic-minded sketchers, and even NMSU President Michael Martin, who's come in to grab a cup and a brief chat with some friends before heading off for another day of bureaucracy bashing.

Milagro always features a small exhibit of work by a local artist. Empty burlap coffee bean bags also dot the walls as decoration. The space is narrow and shaped almost like a giant ladle. Two comfy old couches are placed near the front windows, and customers need to navigate bags of coffee beans and other supplies as they head farther back into the Internet-friendly caf.

The employees are led by Beck Rosnick, the only Australian coffeeshop manager in Las Cruces, who seems to be in four places at once — waiting on customers, making drinks, taking notes, and helping to keep her co-workers upbeat and laughing. Rosnick has been working for Digman for several years, and she currently is training to be a roaster herself, a rare thing in Las Cruces.

The Arabs, one can only conclude, got it right centuries ago about the importance of coffee and the places it is served — how it can be a drink for mulling over, waking up or companionship. As an Arabic poem put it, "O coffee, thou dost dispel all cares, thou art the object of desire to the scholar."

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