This month, we’ve been featuring the intrepid beans of our neighbor to the North, 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters.

First, we liked the beans. Next, we LOVED the fact that they started out as a cafe, then five cafes; started roasting; sold the cafes and emerged an intrepid roaster (who now boasts one mighty shop we’d love to visit one day—and will). We can do this and we will. You’ll see.

The Wormhole bean purchasers have sampled a range of geographically-based options: Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala have all come into their pervue and emerged unscathed, if quaffed. Now, more on it.

Transitional Bean Wrangling

Michael Piccolo is on point when it comes to 49th Parallel’s roasting operations, but brothers Vincent and Sam also play major parts in the operation (Sam is widely regarded as a top Canadian barista–maybe THE best). Per the things we LOVE about them, this coffee-coursing-through-their-veins family proved they knew what they were doing by founding those aforementioned cafes, Caffe Artigiano, and perfecting their coffee shop craft. But, as most of us grok, knowledge comes at a price.

“As a cafe, we got tired of not being happy with the coffee we were getting, so Boss Man decided to set up a roaster in August, 2005,” says 49th Parallel’s Barrett Jones. “It was convenient because we had five very busy cafes, so didn’t have to worry about [selling beans]; we could maintain [just with] the existing cafes and then they got sold a few months later.

“Over time, many of the core group of people who were managing the cafes and such all made their way back,” says Jones, noting how the change in mission has affected those involved. “As a roaster with a number of cafes serving your coffee, there is more responsibility and you can also have a much larger impact. Everything we do is a little more planned out than it would be with one cafe, where you can experiment.”

Growth Is Good

Life is flux, and so is the business of coffee roasting, or so we hear. 49th Parallel began major operations with two roasters, a 60-kilo and a 5-kilo. This worked until their taste-riven beans became highly commoditized (i.e. treasured by increasing numbers of consumers) and so 16 months ago they moved “across the road,” says Jones, and added yet another voluminous and highly-charged-with-pure-coffee-energy 60-kilo roaster to their lovely affair.

As far as the evolution of their roasting of the beans: “We’ve really changed quite a bit over the years,” says Jones. “Our coffees are definitely lighter now, but better developed. We aren’t going light for light’s sake. They’re tasting good and developed and that took a lot of time to figure out how to make that happen, make what we wanted to taste happen.

“We still get the occasional person who wants something dark, as well as something good, so we do get those and we deal with that.” We’ll mostly gladly peddle the “light for light’s sake” beans here at Wormhole Coffee–we don’t hew to the Dark Side…today.

Welcome to Chicago

Though Mr. Jones has yet to visit Chicago (tsk…tsk!), we’re as excited to bring 49th Parallel beans to Chicago as they are to be here. “Chicago’s a new market for us and we’re excited anytime we get into a new city, a whole bunch of people who never had us before,” he says, noting they’re also beginning to supply multiple shops in NYC and have boots on the ground there right now.

“We’d heard about Wormhole Coffee and wanted to be involved from the start and we’re excited, it’s an awesome project,” says Jones, without any coercion at all, we swear.

In addition to their current shop, the Brothers Piccolo and their team will be opening a second cafe in Spring 2012, “a dream location,” says Jones. As our quote horse, Jones, says: “[Coffee is] a good excuse to visit another city, meet good people and make some coffee.” Again, we agree, and are proud to feature coffees made by 49th Parallel.