Tired? There’s a new specialty coffee roaster in Old Town.
After launching at area farmers markets last year, Hypergoat Coffee Roasters formally opened at 215 N. Payne Street in August. The new business is the culmination of a decade-long hobby for married owners Rodrigo Ramos and Deborah Joos Tafner de Moraes.
Ramos and Moraes are Brazilian natives and grew up with coffee. While Ramos roasts batches two days a week in his Alexandria back yard, he works by day as computer scientist. Not so for Moraes, who left work as a business administrator to focus on Hypergoat full-time.
“There’s unlimited freedom here,” Moraes said. “It’s been a dream coming true — building something on our own we can really shape in the way that we want.”
The name “Hypergoat” comes from the Ethiopian legend of Kaldi, a goat herder who discovered coffee when he noticed his flock wouldn’t sleep after eating coffee beans.
Ramos says that drinking good coffee is like listening to good music.
“It’s almost like when you listen to good music, when the music pleases you, and don’t have to think too much about it,” Ramos said. “But when roasting, you have to choose the right ratio, like one part coffee to 16 parts water, and then I have to read to reach an extraction of 18% to 19% of total dissolved solids in the water, and if it was roasted too long, too dark, it’s going to be bitter. If it’s roasted too lightly, it’s going to have vegetable, grassy notes.”
The shop features coffee from around the world. Today’s menu featured roasts from Columbia, Ethiopia and Costa Rica. The Ethiopian roast from Kayon Mountain Farm in the Ethiopia’s Guji zone has mild acidity, and notes of blueberry cocoa and grape.
“When you work with specialty coffee, you want to highlight the best origin flavors for that particular coffee through careful roasting,” Ramos said. “Adding temperature probes in roasting coffee is something new that gets us consistently excellent quality. It’s a science, it’s an art, and year, I think I got it right at some point.”
Hypergoat Coffee Roasters is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Friday, and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. The shop is closed Sunday.
