A brief personal note: After a few restless months, my roasting project, Aviary, is live. I funded Aviary using a crowdfunding mechanism and without any outside investment (save an equipment loan through the Small Business Administration) with the intention of keeping the company unencumbered from financial influence or expectations of a return on investment. I […]
I hope that by providing a nuanced look at each of the four roasters on my bench—an Ikawa Pro, Kaffelogic Nano 7, Arc S, and Roest L100 Plus—you’ll have sufficient context and insight about each of these roasters and how I approach them to guide your own selection toward a machine that best suits your needs.
My head hurts, my legs ache, I’m thirsty. For everything else it is, Ethiopia isn’t an easy place to travel—not how we do it, anyway. We drive into Jimma, five of us packed into a Land Cruiser, a vehicle that is as much a symbol of success as a way of saying, “I need no […]
I don’t drink soda. Guy Fieri It was my fourth and final cupping of the day, and staring down at the mess of spent grounds and spilled coffee wrecking the table like seaweed at low tide or forgotten treasures unearthed in the snowmelt of spring, I dipped my spoon and set to work. I had […]
“Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared, don’t you think? People are horrified that they have to pay for music. Music! But $20 for two coffees, oh, absolutely.” Noel Gallagher (singer, guitarist and frontman of Oasis) I didn’t plan to end up in coffee. It’s one of those ice breakers that you […]
Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed. Mwai Kibaki, third president of Kenya In the weeks since I published my post on the coffee industry in Kenya, I’ve had conversations with countless coffee producers, agents, and exporters in Kenya as well as roasters and […]
The sun never sets on the British empire. attributed to John Wilson, 1829 During one of his “yes or no” Instagram Q&As, Scott Rao lamented the declining quality of Kenyan coffees over the last three years—a sentiment I’ve heard echoed by buyers across Europe, the US, and Australia. He kicked a different question over to […]
Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting. Michael Pollan I got a message from Kaapo Paavolainen of One Day Coffee on Telegram, I think, after he saw me snark on Jonathan Gagné’s Ad Astra channel about cinnamon and coffee. I personally don’t want cinnamon anywhere near a fermentation tank—but I also don’t believe it’s the role […]
Corn can’t expect justice from a court composed of chickens. African proverb A comment on my recent post about technological fixes reminded me of something: In the fall of 2019, back before covid-19 or Trump’s first impeachment, Creative Mornings Cleveland invited me to speak on the topic of “Justice.” As a child, my family nickname […]
Alternate title: Slippery Slopes (When Wet) Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty. Zoolander Remarkably, it’s been a year since I published a post on my experiments with rehydrating coffee (and its brief follow-up). In that time, I’ve been surprised to see that of every strange thing I’ve written, […]