About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
We catch up with Twin Cities coffee legend Jeremy Raths and talk about: Moving The Roastery from a coffee shop in the middle of St. Paul to delivering coffee from an abandon convent. The history of the speciality coffee market – nationally and locally. How the coffee market is changing to benefit the small, local, …
Continue reading “First Crack 99. Jeremy Raths and the Search for Extraordinary Coffee”
Jeremy Raths, from The Roastery, teaches us how to cup – the traditional process for tasting and choosing coffee. He walks through: The cupping process How he teaches others how to cup The need to be emotionally self-aware when cupping How to get the cupping experience at home The responsibility and integrity of a good …
Continue reading “First Crack 100. How to Cup Coffee with Jeremy Raths”
“It really does taste different: musty, heavy, rich, strangely complex. Hints of chocolate, old wood, hazelnut. Fresh out of the roaster, it smelled a bit like a newborn baby’s urine.” – Sam Buchanan On the first nice Saturday of the year, Sam Buchanan and I met at Coffee and Tea Ltd for a $10 cup …
Continue reading “First Crack 98. I Drink Coffee From a Cat’s Butt”
When I’m on the road, Starbucks is where I get my internet access. My taste for their coffee has gone from dislike to barely tolerable. These days, I spend $1.57 there on a small decaf that I sip for my 2 hours of laptop battery life. “Put another way, there are two markets for coffee …
Continue reading “Starbucks Tomorrow: McDonalds or Neighborhood Roaster?”
“BREAD MACHINES AND HEAT GUNS WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO ROAST COFFEE” There are three problems I’ve run into since roasting with the Poppery Small batch sizes (a maximum of 1/2 cup at a time) Inconsistent roast times (the Poppery continually gets hotter – shorting roasts, burning beans) The ambient temperature needs to be warm. So, …
I’m finally making my home office more comfortable, so I can spend more focused and productive time without getting distracted by the rest of the house. One of the things that crossed my mind was installing a small batch coffee roaster. Then friend of the show Pete T. points me to the NYTimes article on …
My switch to the Krups Moka Brew Some thoughts on venues as the new recording label – if they don’t the audience will. Introducing the First Crack Podcast Forum We’re selling our house and I can’t get Jonathan Coulton’s Shop Vac out of my head I play a song from The Revamps‘ new album First …
Continue reading “First Crack 72. Cleaning House and Moving Forward”
Timoth Tulloch, CEO and Roastmaster at Minnesota-based European Roasterie (EuroRoast.com), and I talk coffee technology, from brewing to packaging, and why he’s aggressively moving into the single-serve coffee pod program (declaring the Black & Decker Home Cafe the best pod brewer). We wrap up with the culture of specialty coffee and how independent coffee shops …
Continue reading “First Crack 63. Coffee Technology with Timothy Tulloch of EuroRoast.com”
“File this under unconfirmed but curious factoids. I heard, in a Toronto coffee shop, that mild coffee actually has more caffeine than the strong stuff” – Dave Winer “A dark roast increases body and decreases both acidity and caffeine. A light roast has less body, but higher acidity and caffeine.”
Sam Buchanan follows up our home roasting with a cupping and tasting of the Indian Monsooned Malabar. He walks you through the cupping ritual and provides his impression of this unique coffee. Listen to Sam’s Cupping of the Malabar [11 min]