Brave Little Roaster » Roastery

I’m Thinking About…

Jonathan Alan Withers — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:12:11 +0000

I’m going to steal this idea and make it my own.

Starting…soon, I’ll be sitting down with our baristas, reg-ops, packagers, roasters, wholesalers, owners etc and asking them what they’re thinking about in coffee (or whatever else they want to share). I’ll do this as often as I can with their cooperation.

It should also sync up nicely with a pact Ian and I are beginning, to meet up once a week and work on our damn blogs together. That’s if he finishes his laundry soon and gets over to the cafe.

In the News (Singularly Focused Edition)

Jonathan Alan Withers — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:40:23 +0000

Bravely moving to Santa Cruz!!

Five Years

Jonathan Alan Withers — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:10:43 +0000

This month marks my anniversary with coffee. In the past five years I have worked at three cafes, one roastery, and two barely-related jobs in the restaurant industry. Between sourcing, roasting, brewing, serving, drinking, writing, reading, thinking, and dreaming I don’t believe that coffee has left my mind once the entire time.

To say that I could not be luckier or happier to be doing what I do is a serious understatement. The common dream of doing for a living what one loves is so often unfulfilled that it is something of a cliche. I cannot image a better profession or a better life. I am enormously appreciative of the wonderful people, coffee, and times that have filled the last five years. Here’s hoping (and working towards) many, many more!

Good Morning All

Jonathan Alan Withers — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:24:11 +0000

This may sound like mere Disney-esque springtime exuberance, but I’m having a beautiful day. Perhaps it’s the hour-long nap yesterday, or the overall sound night of sleep, or just the general contrast to a rocky and questionable weekend.

At any rate, I got out of bed this morning with a burst of energy uncharacteristic of me pre-4 am. Liz had ordered a couple things from Intelli which arrived Friday. Their Aqua Preta remained unopened, so I rushed to cup it while setting up a siphon. It is a beautiful coffee that embodies everything I feel a Brasillian should be. And my siphon, made 75% by unconscious reflex, was very drinkable!

Joseph had left some very interesting roast profile exercises for me to produce, using some coffee very much at the end of its life: both in terms of a decline in taste as well as the conclusion of our contracted order. It was a fun challenge to replicate the curves he asked for, and something I hope to do more of. The production roasts came together nicely as well. Feels like the rare day that I can finesse my way through the day’s batches without some minor complaint: spilling a handfull of beans or adjusting the flame a second too late. I was very much with it today and it’s a great feeling.

As I’m off in five minutes to my bar shift, my only hope is that this harmony of good mood and great luck will just keep seeing me through some perfectly flowing espresso and gorgeous milk!

He Wishes His Decaf Were Dead

Jonathan Alan Withers — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:42:17 +0000

Intelligentsia’s new shop in Venice Beach is going to introduce some radical new concepts. Tucked way at the end of Food GPS’s latest report, Kyle casually alludes to the chance they may not be carrying decaffeinated coffee there. I’ve sort of fantasized about a bar that doesn’t offer decafs (at the very least, not prepared as espresso); and ever since Alex Switzer mentioned something about it to me back in 2007, I’ve suspected that Intelligentsia might be the first ones to try it.

James H. sums up the industry’s stance on the subject well at the beginning of an appropriately named post. It has been a necessity in catering to the requirements of a certain demographic, but an unfortunate one: decaf does not taste good. Even when one considers the exceptions (as interesting, sweet, well-balanced samples are occasionally reported), 99% of decaf is a pain to try and prepare to a standard.

The traditional nugget of wisdom has been that these pains must be suffered and overcome to the best of our ability because all decaf drinkers are consuming coffee for the taste, and not as a caffeine vehicle.

(To digress a bit, I’m not so sure this is true. At least in my little milieu , a lot of decaf seems to go towards one of two groups. One, older folks who have developed a coffee habit, but not being allowed the caffein in their diets, persist with decaf out of habit, not so much an appreciation of taste. Two, people who want the best of both worlds, where a request is usually included along with the phrases “sugar-free” and/or “non-fat”)

I now wonder how best to handle decaf. Will more and more third-wave shops move in this direction of eliminating it altogether? As much as I dislike working with decaf, I can’t escape the thought that it’s “giving up.” When one considers all of the research and implementation that would be required at each stage of growth, processing, storage, roasting, more storage and brewing it is practically reinventing what has been achieved in the last 50 years of specialty coffee.

So are we inclined to get rid of decaf because it really is intrinsically inferior, or are we just slightly afraid of what it will take to perfect?

Intelligntsia seems to be enjoying some deserved success in LA. Financially, it seems hard to believe they would suffer any by not serving decaf coffee. Theirs would certainly be an interesting experiment. The real test of this approach, however, will be the shop that caters to people who were introduced to specialty coffee through Starbucks and are just starting to branch out from dissatisfaction. An entire group used to complicated ordering as a replacement for individuality and receiving things their way, closed to the opportunity of new and better tastes. The ones who’ll walk out at the word “no.” But this is something of a different post..