Filed under: coffee, espresso, roasting | Tags: Anfim, Diedrich, La Marzocco, roasting
Well, it’s been a long road to get here. Weeks of renovation and stripping down and cleaning the very dirty IR12 have paid off, the roaster is finally up and running and I’ve already run about 5 roasts through it.
The chimney install took a bit longer than expected due to Selkirk missing 3 parts in the order. My gas guy, Lee, a great oldtimer (who also had a remarkable resemblance to my dad), probably lost money or at least time on the install. He thought he could do it in a day but it took more than 3. Installing a roaster in an older building presents a bunch of challenges: requiring two separate kits to get through the ceiling and the sloped roof, which give more than adequate room from combustibles. Lee seemed to really enjoy the challenge of engineering the whole install and his thoroughness instilled me with confidence.
I was really excited to spark up the roaster for the first time and momentarily it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. There must have been some residual air left in the gas line and the pilot took ages to light. My first batch was a mélange of beans to clean the roaster out, being the first roast to go through it in probably a year. It went pretty well and I roughly hit the target times and temps I was looking for even though I wasn’t roasting a full batch.
As you can see from the pictures, I got a bit crafty with the install and stapled a few of my first burlap bags down to the roaster base and epoxied over top.
At the “front” of the shop you’ll notice our counter, which is actually an 8′ long antique woodworking bench. If you look closely you’ll also notice our other exciting purchase, a La Marzocco GS3 paired with an Anfim Super Camaino. I’m really loving the GS3, which spent the first couple weeks on my kitchen counter before going down to the shop. The ability to maintain stable temperature on back to back shots and dose pretty consistently from the Search modified Anfim has been great. I’m really looking forward to being able to communicate with wholesale customers about dose, temperature, volume and timing when it comes to espresso. Around the same time I spotted a good deal on a used GB5 on ebay but I was drawn to the portability of the GS3 for coffee events and getting a water line to the espresso machine location would have been a challenge. My only complaint is the steam wand performance. It is really hard to get good microfoam from the cool touch steam wand. Similar complaints have been discussed online and the common solution seems to be replacement of the wand with a new non cool touch version. 
In the coming weeks we’ll be working on our espresso blend and will be receiving some more coffees. A nice Ethiopian Sidamo, Tanzanian Peaberry, Columbian, Mexican and Guatemalan (some of which we cupped in an earlier post) will be joining the line up. We hope to open our doors to the public in a couple weeks and will initially open strictly on the weekend.
Filed under: barista, coffee, roasting, travel, Uncategorized | Tags: Diedrich, Mercanta
…Well, here we are, part three of my road trip with my Deidrich roaster. I won’t give away too much in this post because I’ve written an article about my trip home from Portland for Barista Magazine‘s Feb/March issue. However, I was limited to 1500 words and there’s room for some more detail in these posts.
My day started Monday at 7am picking up coffee from Mercanta’s North American warehouse. This was my first coffee purchase and very exciting. It also signified that my trip home was finally underway. I was picking up coffees that i had choosen after blindly cupping more than 30 samples: One bag of Kenya Thangathi, one Kenyan Makwa, Brazil Rodomunho, and some El Salvador Finca Suiza and Finca Alaska peaberry. Thankfully, Albina Press’ North Portland location opens early, and I said goodbye to Portland after a couple great shots of Hairbender.
I would be entrusting espressomap.com to help me find good spots for coffee on my journey. The drive out of Portland took me up the scenic Columbia River Valley. Little did I know that I would be following in the tracks of Lewis and Clark for a large portion of my trip. How fitting then that the two explorers were on the logo of the first cafe I would briefly visit: Dog River Coffee Co., in Hood River, Oregon.
I had emailed Jon Lewis, who I had read about in Barista Magazine and arranged to meet him quickly at Grinders in Spokane. Jon and his wife and kids were waiting for me in the parking lot as I pulled in. It was just warm enough to enjoy our coffee outside beside a little fishpond that Jon’s two girls were very interested in exploring. We talked about Jon’s experience running Bumper Crop Coffee out of Coeur d’Alene and what I was hoping to accomplish with my roastery. It was a pleasure and inspiration meeting with him.
During this leg of the trip I was hoping to have my roaster checked out at Diedrich manufacturing an hour away in Sandpoint, ID, who had built my roaster some 10 years before. Unfortunately, after playing phone tag back and forth during the weeks leading up to this trip, the timing didn’t workout for an inspection. It was really too bad, because just meeting everyone, especially their expert tech Naomi, would have been worthwhile.
Before I knew it, I was passing through the mountain passes of northern Idaho. Luckily, the weather was cooperative and the snow hadn’t hit yet. I had forgotten somehow that the sun was still going down early and each day I was moving further and further East into darkness. There is nothing worse than driving for 12 hours, and the last 4 hours or more being in the dark.
I finally pulled into Missoula. I didn’t know too much about it, only that it was a university town of sorts and that Jon Lewis was moving here to join Cup of Excellence. Had I known sooner that COE was based here, I might have tried to set up a meeting with Suzie Spindler the director of COE. Unfortunately, Missoula suffers from the same blight as many smaller cities…the sprawl of big box stores and malls on it’s outskirts. I seemed to pass through miles and miles of it before getting into my motel. As I was to discover, Missoula has a really great city centre. I managed to find my way into a pizza place in town. Eager for a beer, and surrounded by patrons with 6 packs on their tables, I ordered one. “I’m sorry sir, unfortunately we don’t have a “cabaret” yet. We are hoping to get one, you are welcome to bring your own”. A cabaret? Briefly I pictured a burlesque act…then I thought, maybe the “Old West” isn’t dead… next up, I leave Montana for Rapid City, SD right next door to Mt. Rushmore….
Filed under: barista, cupping, espresso, roasting, travel | Tags: Diedrich, Mercanta, Stumptown
Well, the above pictured map pretty much sums it up. In November of 2008 I flew down to Seattle WA to pick up my Diedrich IR12 roaster. It was a 2800 mile drive back, across some beautiful country and I had some exquisite coffees along the way.
Going to the west coast for the first time felt a bit like travelling to Mecca. I’ve read for years about Stumptown, Albina Press, and Vivace and even sampled some of their coffees but there is nothing like visiting them in person. After landing in Seattle I picked up my Penske cube van (I was told that Uhauls were a bad idea) and valiantly but nevously drove my big truck into Seattle to get my first west coast coffee. My first stop was Vivace at their newest location across from the REI store. I had sampled their Dolce and Vita espresso blends a few years back. I can’t remember which one I prefered at the time but one of the blends has a very distinctive “funk” clearly evident of Monsooned Malabar in the blend. I’ve played with MM in blends at home over the years
and can see how it can be interesting in a blend but its really not my favorite.
After visiting Vivace, I managed to visit both Stumptown locations, finishing at the roastery. Luckily I was early enough to participate in their daily public cuppings. I chatted with their roaster, Wolf, about my trip and we cupped numerous coffees including a beautiful Maragoype from El Injerto in Guatemala. I loved the idea of regular cuppings involving the public. I think it is a perfect way to introduce people to experience the complexity of coffee and connect them to the whole seed to cup chain.
The next morning I met up with Leah Warren of Mercanta Coffee at Victrola Coffee. Mercanta just recently set up North American warehousing for some of their coffees. I had the pleasure of sampling some of the coffees, including a beautiful Kenyan Thangathi, before I left on my trip and I was meeting with Leah in person before picking up coffees from their Portland warehouse.
I had the pleasure of spending the rest of the day training with Chris Davidson of Atlas Coffee Importers. I first met Chris at a roasting workshop in Minneapolis at SCAA conference. At Atlas’ training facility we cupped like crazy, and roasted a bunch of coffees for single origin espresso and also played with blending. One highlight, if you could call it that, was Chris exclaiming “Hey, here’s your defect” as we cupped a Sumatran. It’s so rare to find defects in specialty grade coffee and I gleefully came over to experience rotten fruit taste myself.
I woke up the next day filled with excitment. The big day was finally here. I was off to Bremerton to pick up my roaster from Phil and his wife Leah who run Ootopia coffee roasters. They had decided to buy a bigger roaster, an IR24, for their wholesale roastery. I spent a few hours with them, hearing about thier experiences in the coffee business. It was good to get Phils perspective, especially reminding me that passion and ideals are great but in the end, it is a business and the numbers have to work in order to be sucessful. Loading the roaster into my truck was interesting to say the least. Their neighbour had a forklift to help get it into my truck and it just cleared with 3″ to spare. They handed me the awesome old school manual for my roaster and off I was for Portland, but that is another story…
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