Tell us about how you got started in the coffee world.

My grandmother and mother always loved coffee and I was immersed in the Starbucks culture at a very early age. At 16, I was investing a lot of my spare time in a local downtown ministry that happened to start a small, free coffee bar. They needed someone to be the barista and I jumped in headfirst. We became a community over coffee and it was upon this realization that I committed to the coffee career forever. Over the years I worked in many local shops and developed a lot of my barista skills from La Bella Donna in Anniston, Alabama. I transitioned to Starbucks and had a long and fast-paced three years with them. I have to credit a lot of business skills that I have to my time spent at Starbucks.  After moving around for a while and helping other corporate shops getting started, I ended up at the SCAA event the year the WBC came to Atlanta. Everything happened for me that weekend! I decided to open a roasting company. I met roaster distributors, attended roaster-training classes, networked with importers and gathered everything I needed to get started. US Roaster Corporation hand-made me a 3-kilo natural gas roaster. With these tools, I opened a roasting company and fell totally down the rabbit hole. After three years of roasting, I have shops all over Alabama that carry my coffee. My journey now is sourcing green beans, developing roast profiles on graphs and of course, developing the best business practices.

Tell us what is your biggest challenge your business faces.

The biggest challenge my roasting company has faced has been my battle with balancing the delivery of gourmet coffee to the general public with a self motivated continued hunger for roasting education. More than difficult, the process of education can be exhausting. It’s never ending. To be a great roaster, you must also become a great teacher to your customers.

How does connecting the farmer with your customers change the way you work?

My customers have been so excited about my business relationship with THRIVE Farmers. My roasting these coffees has changed by me taking more care to develop profiles in which they demonstrate their best qualities. I feel like I’m not only representing my roasting skills, but also an entire farm and harvest season’s work. Having the farmer so close in the chain of purchase makes my public relations, roasting education and customer outreach so much easier to conduct business.

What is your favorite origin of coffee?

My favorite origin of coffee changes with the season of life I’m in. Currently I am in love with the Honduras Lempira. It’s full and smooth and easy to brew in whatever you have. I love its versatility. I’m generally a big fan of West Asia. Yemen is always a huge hit with me in a Clever brewer.

What is your favorite brewing method?

My favorite brewing method also changes a great deal throughout the year. If I were on a desert island and could only have one method device of brewed coffee, it would, hands down, be a Leva espresso machine. No words can describe how much I love this machine.

Share the love…what is one of your favorite coffee packaging besides your brand?

Raven’s Brew Coffee – they have the coolest bag designs. I’ve always been jealous of their graphic designer. I really like Jittery Joe’s in Athens too. They have the cans of coffee that are old school and awesome.

Thanks to Sarah for sharing her love of coffee through this blog and through all of her coffee endeavors. Do you have any questions for Sarah?

Photo by Gary Walts / The Post-Standard

Tell us about how you got started in the coffee world.
I returned home from a 2004 trip to Guatemala having seen the transformative effect that coffee can have on an entire culture firsthand. This trip inspired me to bring that home to Syracuse where I purchased a homemade 8lb. batch roaster and started roasting in my parents’ basement, selling the beans to family and friends. Today I am  roasting at a space known as La Roasteria for my Café Kubal shops.

How does connecting the farmer with your customers impact your business?
When our customers know more about our coffee and the farmers that grew it, we have a common bond. It makes my work more personal and appreciated. When I serve it to a customer that knows more about the farmer, it feels better because the customers respects the coffee as much as I do.

What is your favorite origin of coffee?
They are all my children.

What is your favorite brewing method?
It’s different for each coffee. I like the Honduras in a 12oz Chemex.

Share the love…give a shout out to someone in the coffee world who is doing it right.
I had a great espresso at Third Rail Coffee near NYU. They were using Stumptown’s beans.

Recently, through a joint effort, THRIVE Farmers and Café Kubal  hosted a live Skype call connecting Café Kubal’s customers with Marco Tulio, a THRIVE Farmer from Honduras.

Customers had the opportunity to ask questions such as “What is the one big issue that coffee growers like yourself are facing in the world of hyper globalization and multi-channel operations?” and “How does the cultivation of coffee plants impact the environment?”  On-going conversations, like on this Skype call, where the coffee farmer, barista and the end coffee consumer come together will lead to achieving the best quality in the cup.

Thank you Matt for sharing today, do you have a question for Matt at Cafe Kubal? Ask away.

February 20th & 21st  - 2-Day Workshop (8 hrs each day)

THRIVE FARMERS Coffee is dedicated to educating coffee enthusiasts like you on all aspects of coffee – from sustainable farming practices at origin to brewing best practices in order to achieve the best quality cup of coffee. Because education and quality go hand-in-hand, our classes are key to growing your coffee knowledge and developing your craft.

Become expertly educated in the science behind brewing in combination with the art of utilizing master brewing techniques:

• Personal instruction from industry expert, Rob Tuttle, 2009-2012 WBC Certified Judge, Certified SCAA Lead Instructor & USBC Head Judge
• Hands-on class participation
• Written and practical testing for tangible results
• Opportunity to explore current SCAA advancements

Baristas will have a clear understanding of all things coffee – from seed to cup. This class is designed to build upon the basic barista knowledge and provide master concepts to ensure brewing techniques meet and surpass industry standards.

SPACE IS LIMITED – Register and reserve your spot by contacting us at connect@thrivefarmers.com today!

If you’ve been in the coffee industry for any length of time two things are probably true: 1) you’ve been to a few cuppings and 2) you remember how raving mad everyone around you seemed the first time you went to a cupping.   You remember the slurping and spitting, the stern silence and seriousness, and the nonsensical descriptions of a coffee that tastes like the juice of orange peels covered in chocolate and baked in an oven.

OK, I’ll admit it, that last description is my own.  Yes, you got it—that actually came out of my mouth at a cupping once.  Crazy, right?

The truth is, for all my experience in the industry, I don’t consider myself to be great at cupping, and I’ve been thinking a lot recently about why.  How is it that, after being a barista off-and-on for over five years and after attending countless cuppings, I’m still trying to hone my abilities to describe coffee?

Crazy as it may sound, the problem is that I’ve never actually covered an orange peal in chocolate, baked it in the oven, ran it through a juicer and tasted the result.  In other words, I have spent way too much time playing with different brewing techniques and not nearly enough time experimenting with things that aren’t coffee.  As a result, upon tasting a coffee my mind pulls bits and pieces of my experiences together and forms them into something completely ridiculous.

The truth of the matter is that I’m not alone in this.  No matter how experienced you are, no matter how knowledgeable and no matter how refined your palate is, we can all improve.  We can all get better.  And I want to offer a challenge to every coffee lover out there:

Next time you planned to have a cupping or tasting, do something a little unexpected: put the coffee aside.  Grab various fruits, veggies, nuts, wines, breads and candies and go crazy.  Use a mortar and pestle.  Use a juicer.  Use an oven or stove or burner and release your inner mad scientist.

My point of is this: the process of tasting coffee is the process of mentally connecting what we sense in our mouths to our previous experiences.  You’ll never pick out guava notes in a coffee if you’ve never tasted guava.

So, you want to get better at tasting coffee?  Go spend some serious time and effort tasting things you’ve never tasted before, especially things that aren’t coffee.

Adam

Adam is a Farm-to-Market Specialist for THRIVE Farmers Coffee.

We have received many questions lately for how to brew the perfect cup of coffee.  For this blog, let’s start with one of the most important rules to achieve the perfect cup – weighing your coffee.

In many coffee making instructions you will find directions that call for (x) scoops per (x) ounces of water. So what exactly is “a scoop”? If the brewing devise happens to come with a scoop, great. What if the devise does not come with one? What happens if you loose the “scoop”? Nooo! Then you have to use your best guess.

Factoring in roast profile, size of the bean, ground or whole bean are also important factors that can mess up your scooping method.  Roast profile can make a big difference in your coffee. For those of you who like a really dark roasted bean, the weight of those beans is going to be lighter than the exact same coffee that is roasted to a lighter profile. Freshness can also be another factor most people don’t consider when brewing coffee.

So, have I given you enough reasons to consider weighing your coffee rather than scooping it?

Now water…so here is an experiment you can do at home. Grab a few different liquid measuring devises.  Fill one up to 16 ounces (2 cups) and pour that “16 ounces” into another measuring devise. Did it measure the same? More than likely, it was close but different. Factor in that you are waking up in the morning, you need your coffee fix and you are trying, with blurry eyes, to see the line on that measuring cup to get your exact measurement.

Let’s make this simple! How about using a digital scale that has simple, easy to read, NUMBERS? Yes, much easier to control and more importantly, it is easier to repeat. Once you have figured out the perfect coffee to water ratio for your brewing method and taste, you can now repeat that process and make great coffee time after time.

It is time to put down the scoops and pick up a scale!

Rob

Rob Tuttle is Vice President of Operational Excellence with THRIVE Farmers Coffee.