CARRBORO - Each burlap bag of green coffee beans in the Carrboro Coffee Co. Roastery has a different country printed on its jute fibers -- Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Columbia, Kenya -- and a bright red and yellow parrot on the sack from Papua New Guinea.

Scott Conary, owner of the coffee company and co-owner of the Open Eye Cafe in Carrboro and Caffe Driade in Chapel Hill, grabs a handful of beans and lets them slide from his palm back into the sack. To him, those faraway lands aren't abstract places; he personally visits each farmer he buys from.

"It takes time to build a relationship with the farmers," he said. "It's not a quick business deal. You talk to the family, you look over the fields, you have dinner with the family, you visit the village, and then you talk about the coffee."

Conary, who owns the only roastery in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, focuses on those personal interactions because he's passionate about the purity and quality of the coffee beans he imports.

"I work very hard to honor the chain of seed to cup processes," said Conary. "Hundreds of hands touch your coffee before you take the first sip, and that's an important connection to understand."

Coffee is harvested within the equatorial band around the world. Coffee "cherries" are hand-picked, and then the fruit is opened and the beans are removed and dried by hand. At that point the bean is green, and ready for a roastery like Conary's to buy and begin the roasting process.

The process of going from plant to steaming cup can take months.

"Some farmers will have one bag of coffee that is their entire year's work," Conary said.

Conary works to educate the farmers on the quality of bean he looks for. Many farmers who grow the best beans have never tasted a great cup of coffee; they typically sell their finest beans, and the coffee left within the village is inferior.

"I work with the farmer on what I'm looking for in a bean," Conary said. "Many of these farmers drink the worst possible coffee and have no idea what a good bean tastes like."

Making coffee, Conary says, is a science as well as an art, which suits him just fine; he's a biochemist and researcher who works for the pharmaceutical company Bio Tech. That job helps him as a roaster, he said; understanding how the roasting process changes the chemical makeup of the beans helps him achieve the quality he's after.

Conary, originally from a tiny lobster village on Deer Isle on the coast of Maine, spent years as a competitive triathlete and runner, and when he came to Chapel Hill in 1995 he worked at Fleet Feet Sports in Carrboro.

"I had two true passions, running and coffee," he said, "I toyed with the running idea, but coffee was the more compelling of the two."

He opened the Open Eye Cafe with Elizabeth Justus in 1999.

"I was taking chances 10 years ago," Conary said. "But it worked. My focus was to make sure the locals would get something out of the Open Eye, and not just cater to the transient population."

The shop has become a quintessential Carrboro business. Rebecca Moore and Kara LaFleur met while they were working at the Open Eye. They recently opened their own business, the Roulette Vintage shop, around the corner on Main Street.

"I think we definitely learned about Carrboro from Open Eye," LaFleur said. "It was directly responsible for the best part of our store: mine and Rebecca's friendship."

Conary later opened Cafe Driade on East Franklin Street, and he grew increasingly interested in the process that led to the beans he was grinding into coffee.

"I've got one of those personalities that wants to learn everything about what I'm doing," he said. "Perhaps that's the scientist in me."

In 2003, Conary began roasting his own coffee in-house, starting with small batches and eventually reaching the point where he roasts for both cafes, to sell in bulk and to 25 local restaurants and establishments.

Conary also judges barista competitions. In 2003, he judged the first Southeast Regional competition, which took place at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill. He's a board member of the Speciality Coffee Association of America, and in January he earned certification to judge nationally, as one of the only seven judges from the U.S. to have the authority to judge the World Barista Championship this month in Atlanta.

The coffee business, he said, keeps him excited and engaged.

"I do this because I love it," he said. "I've yet to get paid from our cafe's profits, and when I speak to individuals who are interested in starting a coffee shop, I say, 'Don't do it -- unless of course, you can't not do it.'"