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Like most people, Kendall Jones, of Washington, has to have a cup before he begins work which is a little ironic considering Jones is a coffee roaster. He has to drink coffee before he can roast coffee. 

For most people, brewing their morning pot of coffee is a quick process of filling a coffee maker with water, placing grounds into a filter then pressing a start button. The whole process takes less than a minute. Jones, on the other hand, spends hours developing specialty coffee blends with notes of dark chocolate, maple syrup, caramelized sugar, fruits and more before he can add the grounds to a coffee maker for his morning Americano. 

A majority of the time he drinks his own blends to test for consistency and continuity. 

Jones became interested in roasting coffee three years ago with a $70 gas roaster. He soon realized the roaster he purchased from eBay was not going to cut it if he wanted to pursue coffee full-time. Through books, YouTube videos and practice, Jones taught himself about roasting his own batch. 

He also spent time in Holly Springs and northern Virginia to meet with coffee importers and traveled to Nicaragua to meet with coffee farmers. 

Last October, he officially opened Wind and Sail Roasters. A building at his home previously dedicated to making parts for Airstream travel trailers was repurposed to become a coffee roasting facility. 

“I sold that business last year and was looking for something else I could do and decided to run with roasting full-time,” Jones said. 

Jones uses the Artisan software system to develop blends for Wind and Sail. With the program, he can design roast profiles of a blend, save the design and reproduce blends multiple times. 

Right now, he is selling five specialty coffee blends ranging from light roast to dark roast in addition to an espresso blend. He said most people in eastern North Carolina prefer the dark roast, Morning Watch, which was tasting notes of dark chocolate, roasted walnuts and caramelized sugar. 

“Depending on where your coffee comes from and how it’s processed and how you roast it, you can get all kinds of flavors,” Jones said. “I’m testing a coffee from Columbia right now that has guava and banana notes naturally.” 

To taste the notes of a coffee blend, roasters will use a process called cupping. A roaster will take coffee grounds and pour hot water over them and let the grounds steep before drinking it with a spoon. Coffee beans are roasted on a light setting so that the flavors are more pronounced. 

The key to becoming a successful coffee roaster is developing strong senses of taste and smell. “When I first started drinking coffee, I didn’t taste any of those things,” Jones said, referring to flavor profiles of ground coffee. “But over time, you start picking those notes up and some are a lot easier.” 

 The flavors of ground coffee can vary depending on where the beans were harvested. The climate, soil and what’s growing around the beans can impact their flavor. This is one reason why Jones was selective about which importers he worked with. He also wanted to choose importers that selected farms where farmers were paid fair wages. 

He works with two importers – one in Holly Springs and the other in northern Virginia. He can tell them the kinds of flavors he is looking for and try coffees from around the world. 

What separates Jones’ coffee from what can be purchased in the grocery store is the quality. Jones’ coffee is considered speciality, because it is typically consumed within six weeks of being roasted and it is handpicked. Specialty coffee roasts have a short shelf life because they are fresh, he said. 

Conversely, commodity coffee is mass produced (think Maxwell House Coffee, Folgers, NesCafe and Starbucks) and doesn’t hit the shelves until at least six months after it has been harvested by machines. 

“If you’re drinking speciality coffee, you need to have that within six weeks of being roasted. A lot of coffee in the grocery store has been packaged for six months to a year and it’s usually preground as well which further deteriorates the flavor,” Jones said. 

“I like both,” Jones said when speaking about specialty and commodity coffee. “I grew up drinking Folgers and Maxwell House. That’s what I knew as bean coffee. My eyes were open to this whole other world of specialty coffee.” 

Jones said North Carolina is “lucky” to have many great coffee roasters across the state. He mentioned Black and White out of Raleigh, Mountain Air in Asheville and Blue Room Roasters on Cape Hatteras. 

Jones said because Wind and Sail is a new company, it will be releasing a lot of new flavors in the near future like a guava banana. Wind and Sail can be found at the Harbor District Market (140 W. Main St., Washington) or online at https://windandsailroasters.com/.