What makes for a good cup of coffee? Not in general, but to you?
Taste and flavor can be such subjective concepts. A roaster has to decide which green beans can produce the type of quality flavor that can bring customers back through the cafe door time after time. It takes time and practice and skill to develop such skills.
Jeff Taylor and Maritza Suarez-Taylor met in Manta, Ecuador at a coffee tasting competition. They bonded over a peaberry Pacamara coffee. It would be easy to say the rest is history, but Maritza lived in Bogota, Colombia, and Jeff in Topeka, Kansas. Two locales not known for being in the same hemisphere. So they worked for it, visiting and coffee tasting together for several years before getting married.
They are a good team. He takes on the sales and the growth plan for the businesses—PT’s Coffee and Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, and she is the Director of Quality Control. They both agree she is the better taster despite both having some pretty impressive bonafides.
That’s what stuck with me the most from my conversation with Jeff and Maritza. When judging the quality of a coffee there is no set sheet of rules. Each coffee varietal and coffee style needs to be judged independently on the characteristics that come forth from the flavors of bean which can be impacted by region, terroir, processing, weather, and on and on.
The same could be said of the coffee drinker. Our expectations will be impacted by our own experience, taste buds, regional preferences, and on and on. So I ask you again, what makes a cup of coffee good to you?
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters was started by Chuck Patton in 2002. A decade later Bird Rock Coffee Roasters were named Micro-Roasters of the Year. The BRCR name was synonymous with quality, direct trade, and community. Those traits are the foundation Jeff and Maritza have continued to build Bird Rock upon since acquiring the business five years ago.
On this week’s Roast! West Coast coffee podcast Jeff and Maritza invite us into their world to talk about quality as their guiding principle, and how sometimes being in the right place at the right time can change your life.
FROM THE SHOW
PT’s Coffee is Jeff and Maritza’s original company based in Kansas. Jeff started PT’s as a local cafe in 1993, moved into roasting, and were on the forefront of the Direct Trade movement. They were named Roaster of the Year in 2009, and even with the acquisition of Bird Rock Coffee, they’ve continued producing high-quality coffee in the Mid-West.
Follow @PTScoffee on Instagram. That’s where this photo came from! “GrainPro provides safe, cost-effective air tight (hermetic) storage for dry grains, green coffee beans, seeds, spices, etc. Our products are not just for high-end coffee and chocolate producers. We also work in developing countries to help to increase post-harvest yields, fight hunger and poverty for small holder farmers, and reduce carbon emissions.”
The Grainpro website even has all kinds of tips for green and roasted coffee bean storage here.If you see a peaberry coffee on the menu at your local roastery it will very likely be the most expensive one on the board. The word peaberry in the coffee’s description refers to the coffee bean itself, not the origin or variety.
The normal coffee cherry has two coffee seeds or beans inside the cherry flesh, but a peaberry only has one, or at least, only one develops. This leads to a smaller, denser bean that is prized for its light, sweet taste. Read a full description from Kauai Coffee of how a peaberry coffee bean develops here.Cup of Excellence: This prestigious blind tasting competition establishes levels of quality for lots of coffee and provides a training and education program for farmers.
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NEW COFFEE ALERT: Steady State Roasting has a new coffee from Brazil, Três Barras, for you to try in the shop. Tasting notes: candied fruit, grape, melon, and nougat.
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First Light Whiskey CoFounder David Elizondo picks up trash with the San Diego River Park Foundation. Photo courtesy of @FirstLightWhiskey
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