In Portland, Ore., a D.I.Y. Coffee Culture Leah Nash for The New York Times At the Red E Cafe in Portland, one of a growing number of small shops in a city that roasts its own coffee. THE woman at the front of the line at Coava Coffee Roasters, a coffee bar and small-batch roaster that shares a warehouse in Portland, Ore., with a woodworking shop called Bamboo Revolution, posed the kind of question that every barista longs to be asked. "What are the taste notes on the Guatemala?" she asked, referring to one of the two espressos on the menu that day. It started a brief but knowledgeable conversation on coffee, one that would have stuck out as self-important in a more jaded city. But in Portland, a city with fewer than 600,000 residents and more than 30 coffee roasters - a number of which started up in the last few years - the exchange was routine. Most cafes buy their beans already roasted. But here in the spiritual home of the D.I.Y. generation, you can walk into a number of tiny, high-quality operations where the owner is probably the roaster, and could even be the person preparing your drink - in this town, smaller is better. Seattle coffee might have more muscle, and San Francisco coffee might have more mystique, but Portland's coffee scene is arguably the country's most intimate. It's also one of the most relaxed. Coava (1300 Southeast Grand Avenue; 503-894-8134; coavacoffee.com) offers only "single origin" coffees from a specific region or farm - no blends - which places it at the industry's extreme flank, where only purists dare to order. Not that you can tell when you step into the shop. The enormous sun-filled room, where factory-grade tools serve as counters, feels like a neighborhood hangout, a place where you take the children or the parents. Even though Coava is small, it has a national following. So does Heart Coffee Roasters (2211 East Burnside; (503) 206-6602; heartroasters.com), where the beans have the clean, light roasts now being explored by a handful of experimental roasters. When the raw ingredients are this good, the reasoning goes, the roaster's job is to get out of the way. It's advanced coffee, with a juicelike flavor that's not for everybody. But there's a sophisticated clientele in Portland, and Heart recently opened a second location inside West End Bikes (1111 Southwest Stark Street), a bicycle shop around the corner from the Ace Hotel. Coava and Heart are giants when measured against Sterling Coffee Roasters (2120 Northwest Glisan Street; sterlingcoffeeroasters.com), a coffee stand with an endearing formality under the eave of a Trader Joe's in a residential area. It plans to move its location, as yet undetermined, in the next few months. Sterling supplies the beans to Coffeehouse Northwest, its more casual sister shop, and it's a founding member of Coffee Roasters United, a group that pools the resources of like-minded shops that roast their own beans. One is Red E Cafe (1006 North Killingsworth Street; theredecafe.com), a North Portland institution where the owner, Keith Miller, presides with a guru-like benevolence. Portland's coffee scene doesn't always function on such a small scale. Take Stumptown Coffee Roasters, the city's most famous export. Go to the original shop (4525 Southeast Division Street; 503-230-7702) and it's hard to believe that this is the company that expanded to Seattle, planted a flag in New York, and has now set its sights on Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles; go to one of the free cuppings, or tastings (daily, noon and 2 p.m.) at the Annex (3352 Southeast Belmont Street; 503-467-4123), or get a cappuccino at the elegant wood-paneled coffee bar in the Ace Hotel, and you'll see why it has.