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BRIGHT SPOTS

Whats Working Now? What Will Work Tomorrow?

a publication of the specialty coffee association of america

2011 issue no. 5

a publication of the specialty coffee association of america

2011 issue no. 5

4 positive Vibrations: bright spots in coffee


Peter Giuliano The news might seem all badenvironmental changes, economic instability, a volatile coffee marketbut its actually better than you might imagine. Peter Giuliano uncovers the bright spots that often get hidden in the muck.

featur es

6 creating coffee community:

three outlooks for the future

Shanna Germain Building a coffee community for your business is no easy featand theres no one way to do it. These three companies have each created a coffee community in a way thats solely their own and have found unusual and tangible rewards along the way.

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10 bolder business: the competitive


capital of Doing Good
Tracy Ging Its time to take doing good to the next level, to stretch our businesses and take more risks. A scary proposition, but one that is becoming necessary in a climate where boldness is becoming competitive capital. Nicholas Cho Every once in a while, something comes along that is touted as the thing that will save specialty. And then something appears and everyone worries that it will kill specialty. Nick Cho looks at three elements of specialty coffee where the positives and the negatives have been one and the same, and asks what we can learn from that comparison. Tracy Ging Stocks have fallen and analysts are warning that we havent seen the bottom yet. And the coffee market continues to experience higher highs. What happens if coffee prices continue to rise? How will it affect your business, your coffee and your customers?

r eg u l a rs
18 op-ed:
Home Coffee Roasting: A Bump on the Butt of Specialty Coffee
Thompson Owen

12 there and back again: a coffee Decade comes full-circle

20 trends & technology:


Lily Kubota

16 on edge: a realistic look at the numbers Game

The Value of a Good Story (Or: How to Turn Poop into Gold) Getting to Know Tim OConnor

22 90+ profiles:

in the next issue the event: scaa 24th annual exposition


Executive Director Ric Rhinehart ricr@scaa.org Executive Editor Tracy Ging tging@scaa.org Managing Editor Shanna Germain shanna.germain@gmail.com Art Director Tiffany Howard tiffany@tiffolio.com

Contributors: Nicholas Cho Tracy Ging Peter Giuliano Lily Kubota Thompson Owen
2010/2011 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The Chronicle is printed on 100% recycled paper containing 30% postconsumer waste.

President, Tim OConnor 1st Vice President, Max Quirin 2nd Vice President, Paul Thornton Secretary/Treasurer, Shawn Hamilton Directors: Marty Curtis, Nathalie Gabbay, Al Liu, Dr. Timothy Schilling, Andi Trindle, Willem Boot, Skip Finley, Heather Perry Immediate Past President: Peter Giuliano

SCAA 330 Golden Shore, Suite 50 Long Beach, CA 90802 TEL: (562) 624-4100 FAX: (562) 624-4101 www.scaa.org
The Specialty Coffee Chronicle is published six times a year by the Specialty Coffee Association of America as a forum for discussion and information on industry-related topics and issues. The Chronicle welcomes and will consider for publication articles, columns or firsthand accounts of life in the specialty coffee industry from SCAA members. Opinions expressed in articles and letters do not necessarily represent the position of the SCAA, its members or directors.

Copyright 2011 Specialty Coffee Chronicle. All Rights Reserved.

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On the Cover: An illustration by Damon Brown, The InkLab.

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Editorial

HOMe COFFee ROASTING

A Bump on the Butt of Specialty Coffee


Thompson Owen

guy goes into a coffee roasting shop and asks if he can buy some green coffee to roast at home. The owner says, Sure, and I will give you a 10 percent discount off our roasted coffee price. The guy says, Gee, since I will have 20 percent weight loss, that means I am basically paying 10 percent more to have you NOT roast my coffee for me. The guy then starts a web site for home coffee roasting, naming it for his wife, who was certainly sweet to sell $12,000 of Grandpas stock to get the ball rolling.
The story is not entirely true. I didnt have the wherewithal to think of that 20 percent weight loss right there on the spot. And if I did, I wouldnt have mentioned it. I would have just bought the coffee, and gone home pissed off and resentful. Thats just how I am. But Sweet Marias Coffee did start out as my own personal alternative to locally roasted coffee when my wife and I found ourselves, rather regrettably, living inColumbus, Ohio.The owner of the aforementioned roasting shop was a bit hostile to my questions. He made a point to serve me personally when I visited, which sounds like kind attention, but I actually thinkit was rather defensive; he didnt want other salespeople to say something they shouldnt. So my business was born out of this awkward relationship (or non-relationship) between a coffee roaster and a home roaster. This uncomfortable situation persists in the coffee trade, an ambiguous tie between professional and amateur. It must exist in other crafts and activities, between the professional and the DIYer:beer brewing, bass fishing, bowling you know, all the pinnacles of Western culture. Little general wisdom can be intuited from any of this, since each contact between the two counterparts must be driven by individual personalities more than something essential to the craft. A hobbyist roaster can either be a true fan of the coffee, or just a royal PIA (pain in the ass). I really cant say which of the two I was in my seminal encounter. Perhaps a bit of both.
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I would not discount amateurism in any way; its regrettable that the word has a negative whiff to it. Perhaps the amateur enjoys the purest pleasure in the activity, not guided by profit motive,unfettered by professional taboos (or tattoos, as the case may be), and not constrained by the need to serve any public. Guided only by genuine interest and their own sense of taste, amateurs can explore coffee roasting and preparation in any way that makes sense to them. And some unusual innovations have come from home roasting. An example? Hmm, give me a minute. Well, the first person Id heard of vacuum-packing green coffee was a home roaster. AAnd nowhere have I learned more about roast profiling than through the unorthodox methods home roasters use with Hottop, Behmor, Gene Caf, Quest, and Fresh Roast coffee roasting machines, not to mention the legendary modifications of the West Bend Poppery Mark I popcorn popper. (Yes, one of the best home roasters is still a popcorn popper). And the feedback from the home-roast community is invaluable. Trust me, they catch every mistake I make. Sure, home-roasting equipment in some cases can be dumbeddown roasters, machines that have lots of safety features and preprogrammed settings so folks dont set their houses on fire. And those can make it hard for home roasters to make fine distinctions in degree of roast or temperature profile. Buthonestly, based on the five used Probats and Diedrichs I have bought in various states of disrepair and abuse, I think some of theprofessionals out there are rather clueless about air flow or cooling or cleaning their stacks. (Of course, none of these types would be reading this, nor would they be members of the SCAA!). Some home-roasting people are more in tune with cup quality and coffee crop cycles than some professionals who focus on different pricing tiers and inventory stability. There are always the extremes in any crowd. I am sure some home roasters take a little knowledge and use it forundue recognition on an Internet venue or in a coffee shop. I hear tales of know-it-all home roasters giving rather audacious advice to the professional in her own shop. I imagine most retail roasters can recount stories of famously bad encounters of a customer telling them about the roast profile they use on their PID-controlled popcorn popper to draw out first and second crack.

And nowhere have I learned more about roast profiling than via some of the unorthodox methods people use in the HotTop, Behmor, Gene Cafe, Quest, Fresh Roast, or the most venerable and nearly legendary West Bend Poppery Mark I. (Yes, one of the best home roasters is still a popcorn popper).

But in a broader way, I think a roaster is a roaster is a roaster. And in this age when so many small roasting businesses cut their teeth with years of home roastingsupplying friends or the office or their church group before hanging out their shinglethe distinction between where one fires up their roaster seems less important than the outcomes. Historically, home roasting is as old as coffee itself.For as long as people have roasted coffee for others, they have roasted coffee for themselves, their friends and families. Sears & Roebuck sold green coffee in the early 1900s, along with small charcoalfired, hand-crank home roasters. Buying your coffee already roasted was a bit luxurious, like buying canned beans instead of growing and canning them yourself. It was also a way to have fresh coffee in rural areas, away from the conveniences of a city, where a local commercial roaster was one of the amenities urban life offered. These were crude little roasters, pure conduction heat transfer, solid sheet metal drums turned over open flames. It was more like a coffee barbecue than a proper roast, really. Yes, the home-roasting machine still suffers a lower quality of build and less control of the roast process in most cases. But you should taste the results people get with homegrown modifications, time and practice. Would anyone argue that roasting in a Probat makes coffee good, necessarily? Does professionally roasted mean a good cup?Even back in 97, I knew I could do better than the smoked Yirgacheffe the local coffee shop in Columbus was selling. So in retrospect, it WAS actually worth paying 10 percent more to have them NOT roast the coffee. And so goes the 14 years of my life since then.
Thompson Owen has been in the coffee business for two decades. He startedSweet Marias Coffee in 1997 and Coffee Shrub in 2009.

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