Written by Jackson Parr, Pulse of the Peninsula-September 9, 2016

At the Ephraim Coffee Lab, Randy Isely pushed a wooden board containing a cup of espresso, a piece of dark chocolate, and a small cup of soda across the counter. You can drink a little espresso to feel the original flavor. Then take a sip of soda, eat a piece of chocolate, and drink the rest of the espresso. He explained that the butter and fat in chocolate will spread on your mouth and smooth out the espresso taste during the second tasting.

Isely's journey to open the Ephraim Coffee Lab can be traced back to his earliest memories of a small airport outside of Janesville, Wisconsin.

"My father is a pilot," Easley said. "He makes a living from coffee. I remember drinking black coffee in a Styrofoam cup as a child, and then drank a few sips from him. There must be a sense of nostalgia in this respect."

Isely has come a long way from cheap coffee in styrofoam cups. His Ephraim store looks more like a laboratory than a cafe. Beakers, scales and drip filters are carefully placed on the counter.

"This is a never-ending pursuit," Isely said. "The ambient temperature will change, the roasting process will also change, and as the coffee is placed, it loses a bit of moisture. It's a bit frustrating, but it's also interesting because the target is always moving. And it's subjective. , So I think you might not like things that taste great, so it’s endless fascinating ways.”

Isely roasts all of his coffee in his shop and also produces coffee for Wickman House, which is owned by Mike Holmes, a former roommate of Isely who lived in New York City. The years when he lived in Milwaukee and worked as a corporate pilot in Chicago and New York City were places to observe the development of the independent coffee movement.

"I lived in Milwaukee for nine years, and when I first moved there, I lived upstairs at Fuel Cafe. It was one of the first independent coffee shops in Milwaukee," Easley said. "I moved to New York in 2005 and there is no cafe culture there. There is an independent coffee roaster in Brooklyn, and besides...people bought coffee for $1 on the way to the subway."

When a friend in New York City opened a coffee roaster, Isely first tasted the dynamic brewing process.

"It's fascinating. Drinking a cup of coffee, changing the water temperature by 5 degrees or slightly changing the grinding degree, it creates a completely different coffee. When I am playing with different brewing methods, I have an extraordinary cup. It just makes I was taken aback. This is when I fell into the rabbit hole, trying to pursue that again. Always kind of pursue that experience again."

When traveling in Madison, Isely was looking for a good cup of coffee. He found himself in a warehouse, batching coffee for people who wanted to roast at home.

"I went in and started talking, and an hour later I drank six pounds of green coffee. I returned to New York and started roasting it on the cast iron skillet on the grill," Easley said.

He put all the beans on the grill and started roasting. He removes them from the frying pan every 15 seconds to provide six different levels of roast for his six pounds of coffee. Due to the slight difference in baking time, Isely found that the taste of each cup was very different.

"I find the interesting thing about coffee is to start weighing everything, start measuring water temperature, grind degree and time, etc., and process it with a scientific mind to be able to track it, so when you really have great results, you are sure Know what you did, so you can repeat it," Easley said.

This method of baking and brewing is Isely's strength, but he admits that he lacks experience in customer service.

"My vision is to roast coffee in my own small space. I have never worked in the service industry. I have never been a barista, so it's all very different," Isely said. "If I just roast here, people will obviously come in and want to buy coffee, so I will have to provide some level of coffee. This will shift the plan from just wholesale and roasting to actually have a little retail business. "

The retail storefront includes drip coffee, espresso, and nitrogen-infused cold brew coffee, like a cup of caffeinated Guinness beer to start a hot day.

"I focus on seasonal coffee, small batch coffee, higher quality coffee, and keep it super fresh. I don't sell anything that has been roasted for more than two weeks," Isely said when explaining his coffee philosophy. “People don’t really realize that coffee is a food. Just like any food, it will go bad. We are used to buying coffee or canned coffee or coffee in a five-pound bag at the grocery store, and then He put it in the pantry for three months without paying attention to what he actually tasted."

Isely is always looking for the perfect cup of coffee in his aroma laboratory on Church Street.

The Ephraim Coffee Laboratory at 3055 Ephraim Church Street is open daily from 8 am to 2 pm. Visit iselycoffee.com for more information.

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