Writer Yvette Cardozo visited Mammoth Mountain Ski Area and found a special coffee shop. The owner provided some unique insights into the art of coffee-making and provides 10 expert tips for a better cup of coffee, just in time for National Coffee Day.

People go to Mammoth Lakes, home of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, to play. They ski in winter. They hike, bike, boat, fish and whatnot in summer.

And, yes, they eat.

This is not about the play. It’s about the chewing, the slurping, the swallowing, the blissful enjoying.

Matt Hammer, owner of Black Velvet Coffee in Mammoth Lakes, CA, where he custom roasts gourmet coffee. Here visitors get to sip immersion and pour over coffee to see the difference.

Black Velvet Coffee has killer coffee. Not only does it taste great but the design on my cappuccino stayed intact all the way to the bottom of the cup.

Owner Matt Hammer handles his beans, his roasting and his brewing with the kind of intense care a parent lavishes on that first baby. The beans he buys are hand picked and sorted. Brewing is done for each cup. Nothing sits around his shop except, interestingly, the roasted beans themselves. As far as Hammer is concerned, dealing with coffee is “a lot more complicated than wine. With wine, you crush, the juice ferments and that’s it.” Hammer offers these tips:

1. For coffee, it has to be the right beans, picked at the right time, sorted the right way.
2. Then you have to roast and there are many variables ranging from how much air, to how fast the drum spins. Hammer calls it an art, like being a painter but with flavors.
3. “Good coffee has to de-gas four or five days after roasting,” he said. “Over these days, the flavor will develop.”
4. But from here, there’s the brewing and, Hammer said, how the barista handles the process determines 85 percent of the taste. “A barista can make it good or destroy it. Too much coffee, the wrong pressure, the wrong temperature.”
5. The freezer is the worst place to store coffee. Room temperature is best.
6. Grinding is one of the most important things. Every ground has to be the same size.
7. The difference in price between, say Guatamalan coffee and Hawaiian coffee, Hammer says, isn’t a matter of quality but of labor costs – $2 a day in Guatamala, $13 an hour in Hawaii.
8. Each roast has its own brewing profile – how much water, how much coffee, how hot the water should be, how finely the coffee should be ground.
9. Cold brew coffee can be made with a constant flow or soaking. Constant flow coffee is more acidic, more complex in flavor, soaked cold brew has a creamier, rounder taste.
10. Coffee is the second highest traded product in the world. Yes, oil is first.

Learn more about Black Velvet Coffee, here.

At Black Velvet Coffee, they custom roast gourmet coffee. Here visitors get to sip immersion and pour over coffee to see the difference.

Hungry for more? Find out what else there is to do in Mammoth (besides drink great coffee), in Yvette’s recent article.

The cappuccino design lasts all the way down to the last sip in the cup at Black Velvet Coffee.