Fig Leaf Coffee doesn’t sell cookies, cakes or even serve coffee by the cup but here’s what they do exceptionally well: It's all about the beans

By Tom Nemeth, Owner; Fig Leaf Coffee Company

Fig Leaf Coffee Company is a family business. That alone doesn’t make us necessarily unique or even special, but what does make us different is that what we do isn’t initially obvious to customers. It has to be explained. Let’s get started by telling you what we’re not.

We’re not a coffee shop or café. We don’t carry bakery items, ice cream or sandwiches along with our coffee. We focus on one thing. Roasting specialty coffee.

Coffee is the seed of the coffee fruit. When this fruit is harvested by the farmer, it is called green coffee and must be processed by fully washing off the skin and pulp (washed method) or baking in the sun (natural/honey process) and dry milling it. The farmer can then sell it to the world through multiple outlets. We only purchase specialty grade green coffee, which scores at 80 points or above on a 100-point scale indicating the quality classification of the coffee.

Coffee roasting is the manufacturing process we use to turn that green seed into a usable product. The seed is tumbled over heat in the drum of a coffee roasting machine. This is a delicate process since a number of things can impact the finished product. If the heat is too high without enough air flow, the seed with burn on the outside but remain green on the inside, resulting in a sour or bitter coffee.

As a roaster, every “recipe” includes green coffee, heat, airflow, drum rotation and ambient temperature. I have dedicated years of my life to studying, understanding and perfecting this complicated process that is different for every bean. Hopefully this explains why we don’t serve coffee by the cup. We’re much too busy concentrating on roasting the perfect beans.

Fig Leaf Coffee is located in West Geauga Plaza Shopping Center at 12628 Chillicothe Rd. in Chesterland. For more information call 216-645-6167. The web address is FigLeafCoffeeCompany.com.