Transcription of Caffeinated #184
Speaker 1: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle. Recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or www.lovemaineradio.com for details. Now here are a few highlights from this week’s program.
Murray: Culturally, we love caffeine. There’s a long history and there’s a long history of safe usage of moderate caffeine consumption and the coffee culture that we’ve developed in the US is pretty phenomenal. People really do love caffeine and people particularly love coffee I think.
Brittany: I think it’s nice that people are appreciating quality. A lot of people are attracted to the great beers and the great wines and the great restaurants. I feel like coffee is that last thing that everybody is now starting to pay attention to which is really great.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Tom Shepherd of Shepherd Financial, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms and Bangor Savings Bank.
Dr. L Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number one eighty-four, Caffeinated airing for the first time on Sunday March 22, 2015. Mainers love their coffee and why not? We have a diversity of roasters creating distinctive blends within our state and many unique coffee houses within which we might enjoy our cup of Joe. Today, we speak with Maine author Murray Carpenter about his book Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us and Bard Coffee manager and long-time barista Brittany Feltovic. You’ll hear some interesting insights about our favorite bean. Thank you for joining us.
People who know me well know that I am largely a tea drinker although I do have a weakness for espresso in some cases. Today, we’re going to speak with somebody about why that might be. In fact, I actually know it’s the caffeine in it and so does Murray Carpenter. He is a journalist and author. His book Caffeinated was published by Hudson Press in 2014. He has a Master’s in Environmental Studies and two grown children. He lives with his wife in Belfast. You know all about this caffeine thing don’t you?
Murray: I know a far amount about caffeine now, yeah.
Dr. L Belisle: Yeah, this was a great book. I really enjoyed reading it. It’s Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us and you really went through some things that I didn’t, had put no thought to whatsoever.
Murray: Well good. Yeah, it’s I think a lot of people find that their daily habit is a little more interesting when they get to know it a little more intimately I would say.
Dr. L Belisle: Tell me why it was that this became something that you had an interest in?
Murray: Well this project really has its genesis thirty years ago when I was an undergraduate studying psychology at the University of Colorado. I was at that point what the researchers, the caffeine researchers would call caffeine naïve which is coffee wasn’t a part of my life and between the house I lived in with my friends off campus and the library there was a great coffee shop. This was in the early years of the gourmet coffee boom. It was a coffee shop bookstore and we used to hang out there and drink coffee on our way to school. I noticed because I was caffeine naïve maybe I noticed more than most people how a couple of cups of coffee would really help me to focus for studying and it would help me to take on a big writing project.
I didn’t take it for granted and ended up senior year writing a paper for a senior psychology seminar about caffeine and cognition. I’ve had this interest in the back of my mind for quite a while.
Dr. L Belisle: This adventure brought you really all over the world. You spent time down in Central America looking at where coffee came from. You attempted to go to a caffeine factory in China. I think you made it as far as the gates if I’m remembering correctly.
Murray: Yes, that’s right. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. L Belisle: You’ve spoken with experts here in the United States as well. Did you think that you were going to be on such a journey when you started this?
Murray: No, that’s a great question. I had no idea. When I started the book it was around the time that energy drinks were becoming controversial and my interest in caffeine was rekindled. I knew there was a story here. I had no idea where it would lead. Yes, it took me to places that I really didn’t anticipate and that’s part of the reason it ended up, it took me more than three years from when I started researching the book until I finished it.
Dr. L Belisle: I’m interested in caffeine because as a physician I know that there is an impact on health. I don’t know what the long-term impact is of caffeine on health. I’m not sure that any of us really quite know that yet, but short term I have seen patients who have come in with panic attacks, anxiety. I’ve had triathletes who rely heavily on caffeine to enhance their performance. I’ve seen people who have tachycardia, elevated heart rate and this is something that you talk about in the book.
Murray: Yeah, so I’m really glad you mentioned anxiety and panic first because most of us and I think its popularity indicates this, most of us handle moderate caffeine consumption quite well, but there are some people for whom it can really be a problem. People who suffer from anxiety and particularly those with panic disorder. People who experience panic attacks really can have problems with caffeine and this is one its better known problems, but it’s an area that scientists are continuing to research to understand exactly how it is that caffeine affects people who are anxious.
That’s certainly one of the bigger health problems. It’s worth noting people who are anxious often tend to avoid caffeine, but not everyone. I’ve had some interesting correspondence from people who didn’t really associate the anxiety they were experiencing with their caffeine consumption. Something you didn’t mention is sleep and that’s another big issue. A lot of people as you know you see a lot of patients so many don’t sleep well and so many of us use caffeine. Caffeine really can disrupt sleep.
This is not to say that everybody who uses caffeine would sleep better if they didn’t take caffeine, but I really do think it’s important for someone who suffers from sleeplessness or insomnia to at least try to experiment with their caffeine consumption to see if it helps. It won’t help everyone but some people it might.
Dr. L Belisle: You talked about being sensitive to caffeine, so some people are more sensitive, some people are less sensitive. In the book, you mention that people who smoke and women who are on birth control bills, both of these things influence how we metabolize caffeine.
Murray: Yeah, you’re right. Again, it’s interesting because it’s a drug and we often don’t think of it as a drug, but because it’s a drug it will affect you differently depending on what else is going on in your body. One of the strange things is that smokers tend to metabolize caffeine twice as quickly as the rest of us which is to say a cup of coffee will have half of the effect on a smoker. A woman on birth control pills will metabolize it again this is approximate but approximately twice as slowly. A lot of this has to do with the rate at which the liver produces the enzymes that break down caffeine into its byproduct.
It’s really worth noting this because let’s say you have someone who’s a big man and he’s a smoker and he’s sitting down with a smaller woman and she’s on birth control pills. He may need five or six cups of coffee to have the same effect that she has. Now laid on top of this is another very interesting aspect which is we all metabolize caffeine differently just due to individual variability. A lot of this tends to be genetics so if you tend to consume a lot of caffeine, then probably your brother or sister or parents might. If you don’t, it might be again a genetic trait. This is all to say that a cup of coffee is not going to have the same effect on any of us. The levels of variability can be pretty profound.
Dr. L Belisle: For a long time, we’ve been trying to understand if there is a long term impact of caffeine upon the body. One area that still remains unclear, but we think we’re getting more evidence in is in pregnancy, women who consume caffeine in larger quantities I believe they are more likely to have a small for gestational age or a small birth weight baby.
Murray: Yeah, and this is an area again even after many years of research people are still learning more about this. Often doctors will suggest that women who are pregnant limit their caffeine consumption to two hundred milligrams a day or less. This could be as little as twelve to fifteen ounces of coffee. There is some new research from Scandinavia that suggests that even at two hundred milligrams a day you may have a slightly smaller child. It’s not that the child will necessarily be less healthy but it is suggesting that even at that level, even at two hundred milligrams a day the caffeine could be having an effect.
It’s one of the areas of caffeine in health that has gotten a fair amount of attention, but I think deserves more and again more research, but yeah I think this is the reason that doctors suggest that pregnant women limit their caffeine consumption.
Dr. L Belisle: Yet, there is a side of caffeine that I guess some people would consider positive. We know that it actually increases alertness. It enables us to concentrate better. It helps athletes. I think that from what I’m remembering is it’s a three milligram or four milligram per dose that is useful.
Murray: You’re absolutely right and again this is one of the things that surprised me in researching the book. Again going back to college, I used to race bicycles in college and so even when I was first learning about caffeine and coffee I knew that if you took a strong cup of coffee before a race you’d get a little bit of a boost. In the recent years, exercise physiologists have figured out much more precisely what the best dose is and how it can benefit you and you’re right so three to six milligrams per kilo of body weight which would be for a hundred and eighty pound guy like me maybe two hundred and fifty milligrams.
A really good strong twelve or sixteen ounce cup of coffee will not just improve your performance but it will improve it significantly which is to say on a race of approximately an hour’s duration I would reduce my time probably between one and three percent. This would often be the winning margin in most of these races. Yeah it’s pretty dramatic and it’s perfectly legal. This is the other really interesting aspect of this is because it really is I think there’s no question it’s a performance-enhancing drug and it’s a legal performance-enhancing drug. The reason is this the exact dosage that would benefit you or I most before a race is the same amount that a coffee drinker would be consuming every single day.
It’s pretty remarkable and I think it’s one of those aspects of caffeine that’s under appreciated. That’s why there’s so many gels and foods that are specially formulated for athletes now, for triathletes, marathoners.
Dr. L Belisle: Yeah you’ve brought a bunch of things with you today. You have shot blocks and you have shot gels and you have I don’t know if that’s a 5-Hour Energy. I mean there’s so many things now that caffeine is in, and K-Cups. You have a K-Cup in here.
Murray: Yes.
Dr. L Belisle: Caffeine and that’s not even, we haven’t even, that’s just scratching the surface. Most sodas have caffeine in them.
Murray: Yes, I’ve got a Coca-Cola bottle here too. Yes, you’re right. It’s everywhere. I think of it often as if you go into a convenience store here in Portland, anywhere back in the cooler you have a few doors full of sodas, virtually all of the sodas are caffeinated, all of the top five, eight of the ten top selling soft drinks in the US, right next door you have energy drinks of course they’re caffeinated. You have a whole aisle or a counter now of coffee in the back there. Get up towards the front and the counter is cluttered up with energy shots. There’s probably an aisle with over-the-counter stuff like Vivarin and NoDoz.
It’s really no exaggeration to say if you’re in a little convenience store anywhere in the US something caffeinated is within arm’s reach at every moment. This is part of what I came to think about that I think we don’t recognize its ubiquity. It’s importance in our lifestyle. We don’t associate the fact that we drink soda with caffeine. We don’t think about 5-Hour Energy as just pure caffeine which really is most of what’s giving you the effect. Yeah there’s an incredible diversity and abundance of new caffeinated products on the market these days.
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Dr. L Belisle: I was very concerned to read about the way that we come to produce caffeine because we know that caffeine is in coffee beans. We know it’s in cacao beans so in chocolate. I think there are a few other natural products that grow with caffeine in them but much of the caffeine that is in sodas if not all of the caffeine that’s in sodas or these gels or the 5-Hour Energy is actually produced synthetically and with I guess proprietary secrets involved so we don’t even really know the chemicals that are going into this stuff and from what I read in your book the synthetic caffeine glows. It glows blue. That can’t be good.
Murray: Yeah, so I think they’ve been able to produce it so that it doesn’t glow as much anymore, but I don’t even know and yes it is a somewhat secretive process and let me back up on this difference. Caffeine there are two ways to extract it to produce caffeine, the caffeine powder itself. One way is to extract it from a coffee bean. I’ve toured a decaffeination facility in Texas that decaffeinates sixteen million pounds of coffee annually and they produce about a million pounds of caffeine.
As I started doing my research, I realized we’re using more than fifteen million pounds of powdered caffeine in this country annually. Most of it blended into soft drinks and I didn’t know where it came from. As I investigated, I learned that most of it is synthesized as you say so it’s made from its chemical precursor. One way to think of this is instead of carving it away from the coffee bean, you’re actually cobbling it together in a pharmaceutical plant from urea and other chemical precursors.
Dr. L Belisle: Which as you point out, that’s cat pee.
Murray: Well it smells like it yeah.
Dr. L Belisle: It’s smells like cat pee.
Murray: Yeah, right it’s a similar, when people think of urea they think of urine because it’s a form of nitrogen, yeah, right. Yeah so you can produce it from urea and these other chemical precursors. The actual product, the caffeine you’re making in a synthetic caffeine plant or you’re extracting from a natural product should be the same. I think the concern is a lot of these plants like the one I tried to visit in China are not only under regulated, they’re pretty opaque. They don’t want visitors.
I approached caffeination facilities in Germany, India, China, and they all denied my request to visit just to see the process as I had at the plant in Texas. Yeah, most of the caffeine, most of the caffeine we’re importing for soft drinks et cetera in this country is synthetic as opposed to natural because it’s the cheaper way to do it.
Dr. L Belisle: That’s I guess the thing that I am bothered by is that we already know that there are health effects good and bad of caffeine, but what about the chemicals? What about the things that we don’t even really think about we might be consuming on a regular basis because as you point out in your book the use of soda has actually surpassed the use of coffee as a delivery vehicle. Now younger people are on college campuses drinking 5-Hour Energy and Monster and caffeinated drinks and it’s not something we should be ignoring.
Murray: It’s not and so a couple of big issues there. First of all, I guess I’m not as concerned about chemical contamination of the caffeine powder itself just because we’re taking it in such small quantities so like a sixty-fourth of a teaspoon would be the amount in a Coca-Cola. It would take a lot of contamination to give you a significant harm. I do think there’s significant health issues that are worth discussing about these products made with caffeine powder.
One of them is as you mentioned with all of these energy drinks and this is something that FDA is looking at now are the other non-caffeine constituents either by themselves or in concert with caffeine causing some harm. This is taurine. There are a number of additives to these energy drinks. They probably don’t have much of a stimulant effect, but may have a health consequence. It’s not clear. FDA is looking into that. That’s one issue.
I think the bigger issue in terms of health is really the issue of sugars of the simple sugars that are in these soft drinks. We know the association between sugary soft drinks and sugar sweetened drinks and obesity. Obesity is a huge issue. The link with caffeine here is that it’s the caffeine in the soft drinks that often tends to really reinforce that behavior of consuming of soft drinks which is to say if you reach one day for a sugary soft drink without caffeine and the next day for the one with caffeine, you’re more inclined to go back to the caffeinated one. This is something that Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper have known for a century.
Dr. L Belisle: It’s also as you have written about possibly causing insulin resistance so if you have somebody who’s reaching for that caffeinated sugary beverage and they keep reaching for that caffeinated sugary beverage over time their receptors are not going to be doing what they’re supposed to be and they’re possibly going to become diabetic.
Murray: Yeah, this is something that anyone who is either diabetic or pre-diabetic should certainly be interested in and be discussing with their doctor, but yeah that is one of the concerns.
Dr. L Belisle: On the other side of it, there is a history of caffeinated products. I mean we’ve had chocolate and coffee in their pure forms for years and years and years and it’s something that there is an important cultural aspect to this.
Murray: There’s a really important cultural aspect and this was another shock to me in reporting the book is how far back this goes so I visited an area in Mexico. This is on the border of what’s now Chiapas, southern Mexico and Guatemala, a low coastal plain called the Soconusco Region and it’s humid and swampy and hot, perfect place to grow cacao and three thousand five hundred years ago people were already consuming these frothy chocolate drinks there and we often don’t think of chocolate as being very caffeinated because we consume it in such dilute forms, but I think that the way that they were consuming it, you’re really just mashing up cacao beans and drinking this frothy chocolate drink. They were getting a fair amount of caffeine.
I think that the caffeine was a big part of the allure all the way back then and around the same time in China, in Asia people were learning if they had a tea leaf soaked in hot water they would get the same benefit. Coffee came on the scene much later I mean probably just fifteen hundred years ago but yeah culturally we love caffeine. There’s a long history and there’s a long history of safe usage of moderate caffeine consumption and the coffee culture that we’ve developed in the US is pretty phenomenal. People really do love caffeine and people particularly love coffee I think.
Dr. L Belisle: There’s also an environmental impact to coffee, to growing for example growing coffee beans and what some people are doing with the rain forest to grow more coffee beans, but people are responding to that as well, the [shade 00:24:05] grown fair trade. This is something we’re paying attention to more.
Murray: It is and that’s something that I didn’t focus on much in the book, but my reporting lead me to early on is that yes there can be significant environmental impacts to for example coffee consumption and what I hadn’t realized is how many different certifying schemes there are. There’s organic. There’s fair trade. There’s bird friendly, rain forest. All these different groups are certifying coffees now. I do think there’s some value in that and I think consumers also have to be maybe a little more savvy than in the old days and finding out how is their coffee certified and what exactly does that mean, but yeah I think people are interested in knowing what the environmental impact of their daily habit is.
Dr. L Belisle: Let’s talk about K-Cups you brought in the K-Cups. It was interesting for me to read about the history of Green Mountain Coffee. I went to medical school in Vermont and this came to be in Vermont, the Green Mountain Coffee guy who actually first got his money through rolling papers.
Murray: Yes, that was interesting. I didn’t know that so Bob Stiller who was the entrepreneur who’s behind Green Mountain Coffee roasters first made his fortune three million dollars by developing this company E-Z Wider to produce a wider rolling paper in the 1970s. When he and his partner sold the company, then Bob Stiller was in Vermont and he had one of those experiences. He tasted a cup of coffee that just knocked his socks off, freshly roasted, freshly ground, delicious, bought the company and that became Green Mountain Coffee roasters.
Dr. L Belisle: He continued to innovate
Murray: He continued to innovate. He was really shrewd in this respect. He saw the single serving pod revolution coming more clearly and earlier than others in the US. He first partnered a Massachusetts start up called Keurig. Then bought it. The Keurig machine and the K-Cup started off competing in really the coffee pot wars against Nestle, against Sara Lee, against Kraft, against all these huge multinational companies. At that time, Green Mountain really was as you know like a crunchy regional coffee company. They went up against these multinational coffee giants and won. I mean they won going [away 00:26:40]. Just last month GE announced, get this a refrigerator that has a Keurig machine in the door. Yeah, Keurig is really, they’ve really taken off.
Dr. L Belisle: You look at these little cups and I’m all about enjoying caffeine, but I shudder to think how much plastic we’re throwing away on a daily basis by using the single serving method.
Murray: Yeah, so it’s pretty remarkable. One of the elements in my book that got a lot of attention is that I calculated that the 2011 production of K-Cups if you line them up end to end they would encircle the globe six times at the equator. It’s a lot of K-cups. Updating that figure for the 2013, they would encircle the globe ten point five times at the equator, so there’s a lot of plastic here. One of the challenges with K-Cups is that for recyclers is it’s plastic and it’s foil and it’s organic matter all in one unit, so it’s really hard to recycle.
To the people who like K-Cups and the people who advocate for them and there is some legitimacy to this, they will say that you can extract more coffee, more efficiently from less coffee bean in this so the eleven grams in the little K-Cup would make a stronger cup of coffee than say if I was using my Melitta filter at home. Also that there’s less waste because you’re not making a coffee pot and then throwing out the rest at the end of the day. There are some interesting issues, but if you just look at the issue of the waste at the end of the day in your house a lot of people don’t like that a bit.
Green Mountain again last month or maybe in December said that by 2020 still a long way out they hope to have a fully recyclable K-Cup. I did see when I toured the plant in 2010 I saw a paper K-Cup that they were using. It was a prototype they were using for tea, but yeah these little pods are interesting. There’s one other aspect to these pods that’s fascinating which is the cost. If you look at the per pound cost for a coffee, the roasted and ground coffee that goes into a K-Cup would cost about twelve to fifteen dollars say at Hannaford. Once it’s the K-Cup the per pound value is closer to thirty-five to fifty-five dollars per pound. That’s the way you make a billion dollars with coffee.
Dr. L Belisle: One way that we’ve kept up the American interest in coffee and caffeinated beverages is in the military. I know that actually in the military we used to supply soldiers with cigarettes during the World War, second World War and we also have been plying them with caffeine.
Murray: Yes, I’m glad you brought that up. One of the researchers who was a primary source for my book Harris Lieberman studies this very thing, caffeine in the military and he does it from a military research lab in [Native 00:29:50] Massachusetts. One of the tests that he did was he followed Army Seals during hell week, sorry Navy Seals during hell week which is the week when they’re taking their final test to see if they can really have what it takes to be a Seal. They’re up most of the night. They’re in and out of the water. They’re practically hypothermic. They’re doing extreme things, carrying boats over their head, doing rescues, practicing marksmanship, all sorts of crazy stuff.
In the middle of this week when they were the most sleep deprived and really exhausted, he, Harris Lieberman ran them through a battery of tests to see how they would perform with and without caffeine. In virtually every scenario the caffeine enhanced their performance on a battery of tests. The only thing it didn’t help was marksmanship and it didn’t harm marksmanship. That’s a long winded way of saying the situations that soldiers might be in in the field where they’re sleep deprived, but they need to remain alert and vigilant is exactly the kind of situation in which caffeine can help.
The military has developed a whole battery of products, caffeinated energy bars, caffeinated gum, you name it and they have rations that include these various products.
Dr. L Belisle: In the end, I didn’t come away with the feeling that you were saying caffeine was good or bad. I think I just have this sense that you really wanted people to be more aware, more aware of the range. There’s this range over here where it can be possibly beneficial. There’s this range over here where it can actually be harmful. This is what it might be doing to the environment. It might be causing some physical dependence, but really you didn’t leave people with an answer on this. You left people with here’s some information, make up your own mind. Was that your intention?
Murray: That’s exactly it. My sense is that we consistently underestimate the role that caffeine plays in our culture. We underestimate the roles it plays in our daily routines. We underestimate the actual affects that it has in our body. We underestimate the role it plays in commerce. I think caffeinated products are worth more than a hundred and thirty billion dollars annually in the US alone. Yes, I think we can continually underestimate caffeine. It’s a much more interesting drug than we give it credit for. It deserves greater respect and more understanding.
Dr. L Belisle: Well I wish that you could have come through and said, Lisa I want you to think about caffeine this way. However, this was very mind opening and I think that people who want to take the time to read your book which is called Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us, I think it’s thought provoking and I really appreciate your not only writing about it and researching it but also coming in and talking to us today.
Murray: Well thank you very much for you interest. This has been fun.
Dr. L Belisle: One last question, so we’ve been speaking with Murray Carpenter who is the journalist and author based in Belfast. Murray how can we learn more about the work that you do and your book Caffeinated?
Murray: You can go to any of the local independent bookstores. They all have the book there. You can visit my website which is murraycarpenter.com.
Dr. L Belisle: All right. Thanks so much Murray.
Murray: Thank you.
Dr. L Belisle: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up. I know that during the course of my days I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe, but when I do I feel energized because in those moments I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow, sometimes those are the aha moments.
If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can in fact come true. I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.
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Dr. L Belisle: Having worked in the Old Port with Maine Magazine, Old Port Magazine and Love Maine Radio, I have spent some time across the way at Bard Coffee. This individual who is here to talk to us today has also spent quite a lot of time at Bard Coffee. This is Brittany Feltovic. She is the manager of Bard Coffee. She has eight years of experience working with coffee and has been at Bard for six. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us today.
Brittany: Thank you Lisa.
Dr. L Belisle: Bard is a really wonderful place to be. It’s not just the coffee. The coffee is obviously great, but the location is it’s really perfect. It’s very central in the Old Port. There’s a lot of brain stuff going on there. A lot of meet ups, a lot of stuff going on. What’s that like to work in that kind of atmosphere?
Brittany: It’s really exciting honestly. I think that we’re lucky with our central location where we don’t get just one type of person that comes in. We have our young teenagers that come in. Then the hipsters. Then we have the guys in their suits and all of the artists from Maine or the restaurant people, so it’s nice to just have this different diverse group of people that are constantly coming in and being able to talk to them and see really what’s going on all over town all the time.
Dr. L Belisle: It’s almost always busy.
Brittany: Pretty much, yeah. It seems like that.
Dr. L Belisle: When you walk by there are people sitting in the window. There are people meeting. There are people in the back. Just it seems like it attracts people from all over.
Brittany: Definitely it does.
Dr. L Belisle: Why would one choose to go into the coffee field?
Brittany: I honestly just fell into it. I graduated high school and was my father told me basically, “Okay, you’re on your own after this.” He’s like, “Where do you want to go? I’ll give you a one way ticket.” I chose Maine because my family is here. He was just like, “If you want to go to college, you’re also on your own for that.” It made me think a little bit more about like, “Well is there anything that I actually want to do right now,” and there wasn’t. I came to Maine and applied to a bunch of jobs at the mall and Starbucks was the first one to call me back and had probably one of the most amazing interviews I’ve ever had where the manager there was just exuding all of this passion for coffee.
I was like, “Whoa I’ve never even thought about all the different things that go into it, from the farm level to the roasting level and the brewing level.” It just made me excited to learn about that since I wasn’t going to school and that’s where the hunger started and it never really stopped.
Dr. L Belisle: Where are you originally from?
Brittany: Hawaii.
Dr. L Belisle: That’s a big leap.
Brittany: Yeah, yep, yeah. My dad was in the military and we got really lucky, so I was there for all of elementary school and all of high school. You can’t really live there [that well 00:37:57] afterwards. It’s just so expensive and there’s not a lot of jobs. I was like, “I guess I’ll come to Maine.”
Dr. L Belisle: You have family here.
Brittany: Yes, yes, his sister is here and her three daughters. I’m really close with them.
Dr. L Belisle: As you’ve gotten to, well first of all did you end up working at Starbucks?
Brittany: Yeah, yep. I worked there for about nine months and then that manager left to work at a local company that has since closed down and I basically followed her. After that closed down, a friend of mine was doing the art for Bard and he was just like, “Go, apply here. It’s a really great place, really great people.” I did. That’s where I’ve been ever since.
Dr. L Belisle: It seems to me that it requires a very unique skill set, not only do you have to know coffee, but you have to know people. You have to know business. You have to do managing. It requires some important skills.
Brittany: Yeah, I think that’s part of the reason that I really like it is that there’s always a challenge every day, juggling all of those things and I like multitasking and doing a lot of things at once, so it’s perfect for somebody like me.
Dr. L Belisle: What has it been like to be living in Maine, having been in Hawaii and now Maine?
Brittany: Yeah, at first it was a big shock, honestly. I had always come here during the summers so that was my only knowledge of what Maine could be like and I was younger. As an adult, I didn’t like it at first. I found it really hard to make friends. Everybody was already in their own thing, but once I moved into Portland that’s when I saw the light. I love the fact that it has the small town vibe plus the city is still going on. I can walk around the streets and I can’t go anywhere without knowing somebody, but at the same time it has really great food. Yeah I just love it.
Dr. L Belisle: You talked about the art at Bard and that’s something I’ve noticed before is that it’s a very consistent thing. There’s always somebody being featured on the walls. I really like that. Why has that been important to your store?
Brittany: I think it’s just a really nice way to connect with that community and there’s also just a lot of talented people in this city and it’s a fun way to change up the ambiance a little bit here and there. Sometimes we’ll have really large pieces, sometimes we’ll have more condense like the clocks that we have right now are pretty cool. It’s just a fun way to be able to showcase what this city has to offer.
Dr. L Belisle: Do you have the opportunity to create a relationship with the artists themselves?
Brittany: Yeah, yeah. We have many artists that are repeats that come again and again, the same time every year. It’s really nice to be able to have that.
Dr. L Belisle: My daughter who’s in college now, she worked for a sadly no longer in existence coffee shop in our town and she really enjoyed the social aspect, but she also really enjoyed crafting the coffee. I’m afraid it’s made her rather spoiled now because her college has only a major chain on campus and I won’t name them, but she doesn’t like them nearly as well. She really has developed a palate it seems from that experience. Tell me about that for you.
Brittany: I definitely had more of an experience enjoying crafting coffee at Bard than any other place that I have ever worked at, especially when you’re working for a company that has a connection with the roasting and the farming level. The barista is the last person at the end of that chain and they’re the person that can mess up all of that hard work. When you working for a company that is so involved with all of that it makes you more proud to want to serve the best cup of coffee that you can serve because you don’t want to let everybody else down in that chain.
Dr. L Belisle: Where does your coffee come from?
Brittany: We get it from all over, Central America, South America, Africa. We get a lot from Indonesian countries as well. We just find the best of the best is our big goal, just to find interesting coffees.
Dr. L Belisle: Who’s responsible for choosing where the coffee is coming from?
Brittany: Bob Garver who is our owner does all of the source trips, so he pretty much has the best job on Earth and gets to go to any coffee farm that he wants to go to. He’s really great about establishing relationships that we can keep getting coffee from these people every year too which is really, really exciting to be a part of that. A lot of companies say that they do that, but don’t necessarily actually do that. I think a lot of times he won’t go to a new farm, instead he’ll just when he goes to Honduras he has two farms that he visits every single year.
The change that’s happened since us getting their coffee has been really remarkable too. There’s one farm who didn’t even have electricity when they first started. Now there’s lines going up the mountains. It’s just neat to be able to see all of that happen.
Dr. L Belisle: Once you’ve created this relationship with the farmer and you’re bringing in the coffee beans, what’s the next step?
Brittany: The next step is to do roasting of it and just sampling it at different levels and see where it likes to be and Bill who’s our head roaster is really great at fine tuning and finding that sweet spot of what it’s going to taste the best at.
Dr. L Belisle: Does he have a roasting facility here in Portland?
Brittany: Our roasting facility is in Topsham and it’s pretty awesome.
Dr. L Belisle: You’ve spent time there?
Brittany: Oh, yeah, yeah. I got up at least once every week. There’s a training café there so I get to bring all of my baristas there. It has the same exact machines, same exact pour over set up. I get to throw them in and just have them sit there for six hours and just make coffee over and over and over again.
Dr. L Belisle: You must be pretty caffeinated by the time you leave there.
Brittany: Yeah, yeah. I’ve gotten in good practice though.
Dr. L Belisle: This is something that I’m also interested in. I know I read the autobiography of the founder of Starbucks and it was really important to him that when they went through this big reorganization everybody made a consistent espresso and the espresso was that was the thing. You start with that and you do it really well. It sounds like you have a similar process that you work with, with people at our store.
Brittany: Oh, yeah, yeah definitely. We don’t start with espresso necessarily for our training just for the way that our café works out. We have I don’t know if you’ve seen but we have the pour over bar that we do so most people we start on register and then we get them to go on to pour overs and make sure that they can craft the perfect pour over and then espresso is the last thing because it’s honestly one of the hardest I think because it’s this constant moving target that’s affected by the air temperature and the humidity levels and even the level of the amount of coffee that’s in there. There’s so many different factors so they really need to be able to understand how to change that and how to make it taste good.
Dr. L Belisle: I wasn’t even really familiar that pour over was a thing until I don’t know maybe three or four years ago. It seems like it’s become more popular in this neck of the woods.
Brittany: Yeah.
Dr. L Belisle: Why is that? What is the difference between a pour over coffee and a brewed coffee?
Brittany: Fundamentally, it’s not really that big of a difference. The big thing is just that you are doing it manually so it takes a skilled barista to be able to do the work of a machine. With just a regular brewed cup of coffee, you know that it’s going to be good every time because that machine is set with all the correct parameters and it’s doing the same thing over and over and over again, so I think it just shows the expertise of the barista if they can make something just as good as a machine.
For us we like to have it just to have the different options. We have two coffees that are ready to go every single day. Then, we have an additional five on the pour over board that you can get at any time, so if you don’t like what the coffee of the day is the you have these other options or if there’s a specific special coffee that’s on the board that you want, currently we have one that’s a dollar extra a cup and you can only get that on pour over. I think it’s just nice to have the different options available to you.
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Dr. L Belisle: It’s funny that I’m sitting here having this conversation with you because I’m really a tea person.
Brittany: Yeah it’s okay.
Dr. L Belisle: Actually I enjoy espresso, but it’s more for the caffeine of it which I won’t admit to, well I just admitted it to everybody.
Brittany: Everyone knows now.
Dr. L Belisle: Everybody knows now, but if I were a coffee drinker, what is the difference between a light roast, a medium roast, a dark roast? I mean what are some of the things that people who actually drink coffee and really enjoy it what are some of the things the people are looking for?
Brittany: Basically, the darker that you roast a coffee the more that you’re masking the flavor honestly in my opinion. The darker that you a roast a bean the more that you’re just getting the smoky charcoal essence out of it which some people really enjoy. That’s what they’re looking for in a cup of coffee. They want that smokiness there and that depth. When you do a lighter or a medium roast coffee, a lot more of those sweet fruity characteristics can come out in a cup of coffee that most people don’t think of when they’re thinking of a cup of coffee. There are times when I’ve had coffee that taste like a cup of tea. It’s so delicate.
Those are my favorite cups honestly. It’s almost like a cup of wine where you’re finding all of these amazing nuances that it’s just a factor of what they’re doing at the farm level, so roasting just helps to bring those out.
Dr. L Belisle: Well I’m glad you said that because I have always felt like the reason that for me coffee I couldn’t get into it it was just almost like hitting me over the head. It was so strong. For me for my palate it often tasted so bitter, but it’s good to hear that really that it’s not, there’s a range.
Brittany: Yeah, there totally is. It also takes a lot of practice. Honestly, when I first started drinking coffee I was that girl that put toasted marshmallow syrup in everything and a bunch of cream. When I started working at Bard, they were like, “Okay [pull 00:50:13] me a shot of espresso.” I was like, “Okay here you go.” They were like, “No you need to taste it.” I was like, “Oh, I don’t drink espresso. I mean I don’t really drink coffee.” They’re like, “Well you’re going to if you want to work here.”
After forcing myself to drink it, I make all of my employees drink their coffee black, the same thing. After a while, you tend to not notice the bitterness as much and then focus more on those pleasant flavors and then all of the sudden it comes together. I think I had my aha moment maybe after a year and a half. It took a while.
Dr. L Belisle: Well that is fascinating. It’s very interesting for me as a doctor because caffeine has some points been vilified, so it’s a bad thing. Nobody should ever drink coffee because coffee is really bad for you. Then most recently we’ve heard that coffee use has been linked to a decrease in multiple sclerosis. We don’t really know whether it’s …
Brittany: Good or bad.
Dr. L Belisle: … good or bad, but clearly people like it. I’m often with people who like coffee so now to know that it only takes a year and a half maybe I will eventually enjoy it myself.
Brittany: Just do one cup a week.
Dr. L Belisle: It’s also interesting because it seems as though this idea of crafting and crafting on a smaller scale is becoming more and more important, the pour over, people get to choose what it is that they are drinking, what it is that their own tastes are more associated with. This is something that I think we used to all be [Sanka 00:51:49] drinkers back I don’t know forty years or ago or whatever, but now everybody gets to be different.
Brittany: Yeah. I think it’s nice. I think it’s nice that people are appreciating quality in a way that a lot of people are attracted to the great beers and the great wines and the great restaurants. I fell like coffee is that last thing that everybody is now starting to pay attention to which is really great.
Dr. L Belisle: There are even pairings that go on with coffee from my understanding and it’s interesting because it’s not just coffee goes well with chocolate for example, coffee goes well with lots of different things.
Brittany: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Dr. L Belisle: Have you explored any of those?
Brittany: Not personally. I’m not very good at the whole creativity of pairing things together but the competitions that I just came back from, they’re barista competitions and part of it is they all have to make a signature beverage and that signature beverage is supposed to highlight the flavors that they’re finding in the coffee, not necessarily mimic them so I’ve had a lot of interesting drinks that you wouldn’t think that those things would go together to elevate this coffee, but they totally do. I think I had one this weekend that had pine tree syrup and clove in it. It somehow elevated the citrus level of this coffee, so it was really interesting the different combinations that you can do. It’s almost like making a cocktail.
Dr. L Belisle: I really love that. I love knowing that something brings out something else in coffee for example. I think you’re right that it does seem like the final frontier, but it is again so different than, it almost seems as though we got to be a bit of a homogenized society. Everybody is going to eat this stuff that tastes like this, everybody is going to eat the stuff that looks like this, but now we’ve had to almost retrain our palates and get back to a place where we can taste the subtle things, the pine essence or whatever it is that the beans are bringing out.
You’ve worked at Bard now for six years. You’ve been in coffee for eight years. What does the future look like for you?
Brittany: I think that I would just really like to soak up as much knowledge as I possibly can. I’m in a very good environment for that, surrounded by many talented people that have been in the industry for a very long time. I’m also supported by somebody who my boss, Bob, who is willing to send me to anything that I want to go to. There are barista camps and these competitions and everything I get to go do I feel like I’m learning more and more each time. I would really like to learn more about the roasting process. I know a fair amount about being a barista and I think it would be really nice to go to the roasting side and eventually go to a coffee farm and see what that’s like.
It’s so easy to look at all of these pictures and try to figure out how everything is actually done, but I feel like it’s one of those things that until you’re there experiencing the process you don’t really get it.
Dr. L Belisle: It’s pretty great that this all stemmed from your father saying, “Okay, here’s your ticket where do you want to go?” You taking a chance and getting this job originally at Starbucks and now at Bard and just the fact that you’ve stayed with it and you’ve kept layering your experiences and going deeper and deeper into the process. I mean you’ve received this great education having started from not even really knowing which direction you wanted to be educated in at all.
Brittany: There were times definitely where I wasn’t sure if it was going to take me where I needed to go, but just sticking through has really paid off for me. It’s been a very rewarding experience. It’s starting to get to the point with my family where they understand that I am doing really well and this is something that’s really good for me and I’m making as much money as them and don’t have student loans, also a bonus, but yeah it’s been a really great experience.
Dr. L Belisle: Brittany how do people find out about Bard?
Brittany: Most people find out about it by walking down the street, seeing a Starbucks and then seeing this weird little local coffee shop across the street and taking a chance on it, but a lot of people have been, our social media has been growing a lot, so I think that that’s one aspect. I figured out Instagram finally this year. I feel like everybody’s been doing it for years, but it’s been really, really fun. Mostly everybody that finds out about it they’re just walking in. We still have people, we’ve been opened for six years we still have people to this day that are like, “How long have you been here? I’ve never been here before.”
Dr. L Belisle: For people who are out of town and are maybe planning on an Old Port trip, do you have a website?
Brittany: Yep, it’s www.bardcoffee.com. It has a little bit about the shop and then obviously the coffees that we’re currently offering. We have a blog on there as well. You can definitely check out.
Dr. L Belisle: Well I appreciate your coming in and talking with me today. My job is also very fun because I get to learn things and today I have learned a lot about coffee. As a non-coffee drinker that’s particularly intriguing to me.
Brittany: Hopefully, it’s inspired you a little.
Dr. L Belisle: It has. It has inspired. I know that there are foods I now eat that I didn’t eat when I was younger and it just happened with time, so maybe coffee will become one of those things. We’ll see. We’ve been speaking with Brittany Feltovic who is the manager of Bard Coffee which happens to be right across Tommys Park from where we’re sitting now. People who are listening go in and visit Brittany at Bard and Brittany thanks so much for coming in.
Brittany: Thank you.
Dr. L Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio show number one eighty-four, Caffeinated. Our guests have included Murray Carpenter and Brittany Feltovic. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page, follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them hear. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Caffeinated show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
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Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Susan Grisanti, Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Content producer is Kelly Clinton. Our online producer is Ezra Wolfinger. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or go to www.lovemaineradio.com for details.