5. Those looking to brew the best cup of joe can take advantage of a free, personalized tasting at Peregrine Coffee. At the husband-and-wife-owned warehouse and roasting facility, the team steers visitors to try new flavors from around the world based on guests’ tastes. Once favorite roasts are discovered, guests can take part in what may be the world’s only coffee bean bespoke service. The owners will order quantities of the green beans, store them and then roast and ship them whenever the customer’s current batch is exhausted. 5017 Friendship Street, (215) 240-4474, peregrinecoffee.com

Obama Java

From T-shirts to rap songs to sold-out Washington hotels, there’s enough commercial activity surrounding Barack Obama’s inaugural to resuscitate the economy (if it lasted more than a week).

The Peregrine Coffee Co., based in Tacony, has its own entry – a $17 Presidential Pack featuring two bags of custom-roasted coffee beans, one from an estate in Kenya, the birthplace of Obama’s father, the other from a farm in Hawaii, where Obama was born and spent most of his childhood.

The company’s owner and chief roaster is Kevin Lawrence, 40, a former marketing specialist with American Express and the Franklin Institute, who was drawn into the business after his coffee-maker died six years ago.

“First I was trying to find the best coffee pot, then I hooked up with a Web site for coffee geeks, next I found a subset of folks converting popcorn poppers into coffee roasters in their backyards,” Lawrence said. “The Internet is a dangerous thing.”

He opened Peregrine last June in a converted garage on Friendship Street, with a view of I-95. Lawrence imports raw beans from single-origin coffee farms around the world, roasts them to order for specific customers and delivers by priority mail in small batches, about half a pound, enough to sustain an average household for a week or 10 days. Any longer, he says, the coffee beans can’t be considered fresh.

“If you toast and brew it properly, it’s a totally different beverage,” said Lawrence, who compares his job to that of a wine steward, helping “clients” identify their tastes and match them to specific beans and roasts.

His analysis of the Presidential Package? The Hawaiian beans have a “chocolatey, nutty taste,” Lawrence said, while the Kenyan beans hint of grapefruit and black currants, sort of “fruity.” He denies that Republican spinmeisters have any influence on his descriptions. “Peregrine tries not to take a political stance,” he said.

Staff writers Bob Warner and Michael Hinkelman contributed to this report.

Have a news tip? Gossip? Suggestion? Contact Bob Warner at warnerb@phillynews.com, call 215-854-5885, or fax 215-854-5910.

The intense aroma is clearly fruit with sweet florals that run rich and deep, like a stroll through an orchard in bloom. The initial taste of passion fruit and other tropical fruits is what is immediately prominent, with a load of tart acidity. What follows is a wildly complex combination of peach-apricot nectar, honeysuckle and jasmine, with a sweet, grapy-violet note (like what one thinks of when one visualizes Choward’s Violet Candy). Then, there is the forever long, strong finish where the Seville oranges emerge.  This is a rare, unusual and impressive coffee that has a lot in common with a silver-tip Jasmine tea and one will be rewarded by treating it like that in the cup: no milk, maybe a little sugar.

Recommended Brewing Instructions
14g of coffee to 8oz of water
Medium-to-slightly-coarse grid
Single cup drip
200-205 degree water

This unique espresso blend combines top quality beans from the 2008 crop to create a balanced cocoa-musty-nuttiness with a distinct bittersweet-grilled pineapple tone. The fragrance is chocolaty and powerful. The clean, strong flavors linger on the palate and compliment milk-based drinks.