Roaster's lament...

This coming November 2023 I will have been roasting coffee for 2 decades. I started with a fluid bed (hot air) roaster - something akin to a popcorn popper - that barely roasted enough for 2 cups of coffee. I found it at Sweet Maria's which became my coffee mecca: roasters, brewers, whatever- they had all things 'coffee' and especially green beans. Lots of different greens to choose from. 

I met the founder and owner early on when we drove over one Saturday morning from San Francisco. I wanted to ask if I was grinding coffee appropriately for expresso. Thompson Owen was deadly serious about coffee and probably the most knowledgeable coffee guru I've ever had access to. The business is named for his wife Maria and had moved to Emeryville the previous year (2002) from Columbus, Ohio. It's a much larger warehouse these days, but this is kinda' as I remember it in Nov 2003...

For over 15 years I bought all my green beans from Sweet Marias. Thompson Owen traveled far and wide then came back with orders for greens from exotic places all over the world. Their business was housed in a smallish warehouse in Emeryville (they're now in W. Oakland) which gave them quick access to the Port of Oakland. They could drive down and pick up the most recent shipment when it cleared US Customs. Green coffee arrives in 80# to 300# bags and requires a forklift to load/unload the truck.

The popular trend among amateur coffee roasters in the early 2000's was to buy small quantities of greens, become familiar with how best to roast them, consume the 5-10# they received, then move on to something else. And the 'move on' part was a necessity because Sweet Maria's only bought smaller quantities. If you worked the system you would haunt their web site, read the descriptions of what had just arrived and buy a sample ASAP. Then you had to roast it immediately and if it was something you liked you had to order more of it immediately before their stock was depleted.

Then in about 2019 I got cross-wise with the staff at Sweet Maria's. They were being responsive to demands from California officials trying to push businesses to minimize the use of plastics. But since I live in Arizona I needed to have the beans delivered in a plastic bag to eliminate further drying of the beans. Thompson explained that processing of the beans among other things includes drying the beans so that the final moisture content is about 12%-13%. That's what the beans (they're actually seeds, not beans) need to have for moisture content when you roast them. Shipping the beans in something porous like a cloth sack does not provide a moisture barrier. The beans lose moisture and dry beyond that target moisture content especially here in Arizona where typical humidity is less than 20%. I whined but was told about plastic waste. Clearly the person who replied didn't get my issue. Or more likely was doing what they were told to do. 

So I started looking for another source of greens. That led me to Coffee Bean Corral in Jackson, MS. I tried a few things they had in stock and discovered I really liked the greens they had from Mexico. How could I have gone over 15 years and not learned that coffee grown, harvested and processed right next door in Mexico is some of the best in the world?!

Coffee Bean Corral in Jackson, Mississippi.

 

First I was hooked on greens from Oaxaca. Then I tried something from Chiapas (down next to the border with Guatemala) which was even better. And they would ship quantities of 25# or 50# in GrainPro bags which are a double-wall moisture barrier specifically for coffee greens.

I started buying the Chiapas greens exclusively in (I think) 2019 and have become something of a 'one trick pony'. That's the only thing I've been buying/roasting for about 4 years. And I have the roast dialed in to exactly my taste- essentially an automated roast with the Aillio Bullet R1 roaster I've been using since January 2019. Once I add the beans I just let the software running on my laptop execute the Recipe to manage power, fan and drum speed. All I have to do is keep track of the final temperature and drop the beans into the cooling tray.

And then Coffee Bean Corral ran out of my all-time favorite: Organic Mocabe Chiapas FTO. As Snoopy would say- Aaaaarrrrgggghh!!! I don't know why I thought the supply was going to go on forever after 16 yrs of having to constantly find something new at Sweet Maria's. Duh! But here I am looking for a new favorite.

In the interim I ordered another 50# bag of Organic Rancho San Francisco Chiapas. Almost as good, but if your aging body can only tolerate a single 12 oz cup of coffee every day, that cup had better be perfect. The Rancho SF flavors are nearly as good and I do my best to get the brewing as exact as I can manage.

An aside- the Sweet Maria's web site had been created long before I had driven over to the warehouse and met Thompson for the first time. Before I left he shared with me the story that the domain name, sweetmarias.com, had become available just before he wanted to register a web site name. After he got it registered and the site up and running he started getting e-Mails from people who had paid for membership at the previous sweetmarias.com web site. That earlier site had been a pornography site and the folks wanted their money back. 'Sorry dude- not us. That was the previous owner!'