DAVIDSON -- For the past four years, Davidson student Michael Griffin has pursued an insatiable curiosity about coffee with the passion of a connoisseur and discipline of a scientist.

Some of his friends claim he's gone too far.

His student apartment is equipped with "a few grand" worth of the very finest grinders, stainless steel milk pitchers and espresso machines in the world. He wants more, too.

"My mom won't let me, but I want to sell my car to buy an espresso roaster," Griffin said. "They start around $5,000 I think it's perfectly reasonable, though. I'd save a lot on car insurance."

He also stores about 30pounds of green, unroasted coffee beans, bagged by the pound and labeled to the very plantation from which they originated in a dozen or so countries around the world.

He brews some of those beans in his apartment as espresso or cappuccino for personal consumption. But he also subjects them to experimentation in Martin Chemical Laboratory as he seeks to discover the molecular components of the ultimate bean.

"Research is imperative to the quest for better coffee," he said.

This undergraduate chemistry major from Los Angeles is quickly becoming one of the foremost coffee experts in America. He has read scores of scientific papers about coffee, and spent the last two years conducting his own experiments in the lab.

He has studied "latte art" from some of America's foremost experts, or "baristas," learning from them how to pour heart and rosetta shapes into the steamy foam of a cappuccino. He also worked for eight months as a barista in a Charlotte Starbucks, learning firsthand how coffeehouses both educate consumers and compromise quality for commerce.

Griffin refines his palate by studying a coffee "flavor wheel" poster that hangs on his wall, and by sniffing a set of 24 vials of coffee aromas he bought. The most valuable lessons come from taste-testing brews from different origins four at a time.

"The key for me was brewing four at a time and comparing them," he said. "When you do that, you can begin to discern their different aspects."

He has held several tastings for campus friends, and many have gained a new appreciation for the common beverage. But Griffin is wary of serving his friends.

"If you convert them, you have to make them coffee all the time," he said with a laugh.

Mochas started it all

"I would have started earlier if I had known what I was getting into," he joked.

He became a serious aficionado of fine coffee in about 1995, then launched his career as a coffee scientist two years later when the coffee world was rocked by an amazing crop of Kenyan beans.

The coffee harvested from the Kagumo plantation in 1997 carried an extraordinary amount of "brightness," making it a very hot and expensive commodity. Experts speculated the brightness was a reflection of the phosphoric acid content of the beans.

Griffin realized the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the science of the subject, and decided to initiate his own experiments on the Kagumo bean's phosphate levels. He proposed the study to his academic adviser, David Blauch, associate professor of chemistry, and conducted it in Blauch's class, and as part of an honors thesis research class.

"It ended up being quite a detailed study of how phosphate levels vary with roasting levels," Blauch said. "Michael did a really nice piece of work."

Exhaustive researcher

He plans to continue at the graduate level, with the eventual goal of learning to identify the origin of any coffee based solely on its chemical components.

"That's never been done," he said, "but it would allow you to figure out if you're buying what you paid for."

Griffin learned HTML and established an Internet domain for an informal organization he calls The Coffee Research Institute (www.coffeeresearch.org). Its Web pages educate the visitor and impress with their precision.

He approaches coffee with a rare combination of enthusiasm and discipline. Griffin understands there's a proper way to do everything, and applies that equally to his work in the lab and in preparing a cup to enjoy. It is just as important to him to keep his apartment coffee equipment sparkling clean as it is to maintain his lab apparatus.

Measurement and technique are equally important in preparing a cup of espresso as they are in preparing coffee grounds to analyze with a gas chromatograph.

As he roasts, grinds, doses and tamps a shot of espresso, he describes in fascinating detail the proper method for each step, and why it is important to the taste of the resulting coffee.

Griffin feels fortunate to live in a time of coffee renaissance, and is eager to find purpose and meaning in a career in coffee science. But as much as he loves the lab, he knows he can't complete his education there.

Long road ahead

So he wrote a proposal accepted by the college for presentation to the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. If funded, it will take him next year to plantations in Brazil, Costa Rica and Guatemala to learn about coffee from those who plant and cultivate it.

The proposal also involves travel to Italy and Vienna to study espresso-making in lands where "coffee permeates the culture and espresso is a national pride."

Griffin recognizes the world of coffee is almost boundless, and is passionately eager to explore it all. His proposal to the Watson Foundation concluded: "My journey is only beginning."