Eugene weekly., September 01, 2011, Page 36, Image 36

LAST STAND COFFEE CO. OWNER
JOSHUA HENRICKSON DECANTS
A BATCH OF FRESHLY ROASTED
BLUE MOUNTAIN BEANS
PH OTO B Y T R A SK B E D O R T H A
THUNDER IN A CUP
Last Stand Coffee Co. brings more beans to the Whit
I
n late June of 1876, an armed force concocted of
Lakota, Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne warriors
waged a bloody battle against the Seventh Regiment
of the U.S. Cavalry, which was led by Col. George
Armstrong Custer. The ignoble outcome of that campaign
struck a ferocious blow to the imperial arrogance of U.S.
Indian Policy, and it waxed a gloss of exotic fatalism on the
tarnished iconography of the Son of Morning Star (the
Indian name for old George). None of Custer’s men
survived to tell the tale.
Custer’s Last Stand was a bitch. And history has seen
oodles of infamous last stands. Napoleon. Masada. Charlie
Sheen. Rarely do these moments signal anything but
botched pride, violent futility and bad karma for the
powers that be (we don’t call it “Goliath’s Last Stand,”
right?). Every once in a while, though, someone makes a
last stand worth celebrating: Peacefully defiant and
righteously fed up, such insurgencies aim to build rather
than destroy, educate rather than decimate, and they herald
a revolution of inclusion, a riot of good vibes.
Coffee, anyone?
Having seen enough of overlong pulls, mealy cream
and acid backwash, Eugene java maven Joshua Henrikson
put his foot down last year and said: “No more.” More
precisely, no more burnt coffee beans fobbed off as
gourmet. No more stagnant shots. No more McLattes. No
more swill and waste.
“I just kind of felt like it was the end of the line for a lot of
reasons,” says Henrikson as he sits sipping a latte and soaking
up sunshine at his new Whiteaker café, The Last Stand Coffee
Co. The Colorado native is certainly in his element. Having
served in the military and then the service industry, where
he’s done everything from washing dishes to waiting tables,
Hendrikson finally decided to make a go of it on his own.
“Society itself is so whacked out in general, and I’d
reached the end of myself working for people,” says
Henrikson, who over the past 8 years has devoted himself
4 CHOW! Fall 2011
BY RICK LEVIN
to becoming an expert on all facets of coffee, from crop to
cup. Opening July of 2010, at 298 Blair Blvd., just a few
blocks down from Tiny Tavern, Last Stand is where
Hendrikson has laid his claim to his own private bistro,
staking his knowledge and skill on Eugene’s willingness to
chase down a top-notch buzz.
“It’s kind of the last stand for artisan beans,” he says,
pointing out that Last Stand specializes in single-origin
(non-blend) beans from places as far ranging as Ethiopia,
Nicaragua and the divine Blue Mountains of Jamaica. “The
beans are where it all starts. We kind of feel like artisan
coffee is being flushed down. We want to make sure that
traditional methods stay.”
To this end, Henrikson — at 33, a chronic do-it-
yourselfer — drew up designs for a custom roaster heated
by propane and driven solely by person power, whether that
be pedaling or hand-cranking. The idea was to build a rig for
maximum control, even while minimizing its ecological
impact. And the contraption is gorgeous, like some copper-
plated dream machine from a Terry Gilliam movie, wheels
spinning and smoke belching from the steel stack.
Quality inheres in this machine itself. Seated at the
controls like a pilot or a seamstress, feet pumping, watching,
listening, Henrikson is intimately connected to each 5-pound
LAST STAND COFFEE FLIGHT
Learn firsthand about the intricacies
of handcrafted beans while sampling
from a variety of locally made coffees.
7 pm Saturday, Sept. 10, at The Last
Stand Coffee Co., 298 Blair Bvld. For more
info, visit facebook.com/pages/The-Last-
Stand-Coffee-Co or call 541-206-5499.
batch of hand-selected beans he roasts. Call it the Zen and
the art of coffee making. It takes around 45 minutes of
relaxed concentration and metronymic motion to roast a
single batch. Pedal too fast and the beans cook unevenly;
too slow, they burn; stop pedaling altogether and you’ve got
a handful of ash.
Already, in just a year’s time, Henrikson has seen his
beans hit several local retail shelves, including those at
Capella Market, Market of Choice, Sundance Natural Foods
and the Kiva. Outlets in Portland and other nearby cities
also have shown an interest in carrying Last Stand beans.
To know beans is to love beans. Henrikson admits he
actually feels sorry when he sees beans that are poorly
roasted, a bit of latter-day animism that recalls the tribal
hunter blessing the slain deer before it’s butchered. And
such DIY technique flies in the face of mechanical
methods of mass roasting.
“When you take it from something that’s commercially
intense and bring it to an art form, and then you incorporate
hands-on techniques, you really do become more at one
with the bean,” he says. “But it’s hard to get people to
appreciate what goes into the cup.”
At Last Stand, what goes into the cup dictates how it
goes into the cup. It’s only logical — because, really, why
go to all that time and trouble roasting a bean that is, as
Henrikson puts it, “somewhere near perfection,” if you’re
only going to wind up sloshing swill into a mug?
With steampunk power driving the production end,
Henrikson taps tried-and-true ways when the time arrives
to pour a primo jolt of java. Last Stand employs nine
different traditional methods to make sure the hand-crafted
beans are squeezed just-so into the cup — everything from
ristretto espresso shots, French press and cold-water
extract to classic Turkish coffee and siphoning, a kind of
Rube Goldberg process that works on similar principle as
the gravity bong, drawing hot water upward into a
chambered shot of pure, smooth goodness.
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