Guest: Chuck Patton
Company: Chuck’s Roast & Patton Coffee Consultancy
Role: Founder and Head Roaster
Online: https://www.chuckroastscoffee.com/ • @chuckroastscoffee
What they drink: Brewed coffee
Listen on: Spotify
Imagine for a moment you’ve stopped at a roadside coffee roaster. Perhaps you’ve been road-tripping along Route 66 headed for the coast. Since we’re dreaming, imagine you were driving a vintage convertible with the top down on a lovely morning in the Southwest. You’ve entered the Adobe-style building and sidled to the counter to order a single-origin pourover.* How often does the first sip snap you out of the fog into intentional coffee sipping? How often does the first sip inspire an audible expulsion of air? Ohhhhh, that’s nice.
It’s a scene—the coffee part, at least—that Chuck Patton thinks should happen more often. Nearly a decade after selling the iconic Bird Rock Coffee Roasters he founded in 2002, he has stepped out of coffee retirement to start roasting high-quality coffees as part of Chuck’s Roast. The offering sheet is short. The roasts coming off the Giesen roaster he bought online during the pandemic are only the ones that have given him that Ohhh moment. They are the coffees he likes.
In only a few months in operation, it has been working. The coffees are being scored highly by qualified tasters and receiving rave reviews, but he didn’t return just to roast coffee. By nature and by trade, Chuck is a teacher. He wants to share what he’s learned as a business operator, roaster, cafe manager, and so on with a new generation of coffee people.
Patton Coffee Consulting offers private roasting training, tasting, business and roasted coffee evaluations, and even introductory level roasting classes. This side of the business will continue to expand as the word gets out that Chuck Patton is back!
*It could happen! Specialty coffee roasters are everywhere. If you have the chance, bounce around Albuquerque on a coffee tour some morning. You won’t be disappointed.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When Chuck says he thinks every coffee on his offer sheet should be excellent he isn’t playing around. Two coffees in his first four months have scored 94+ on Coffee Review, including the Kenya Kil we chatted about during the podcast.
Find brewing guides to Chuck’s Roast coffees here: Brewing guides.
It isn’t just the coffee. Chuck is continuing his efforts as an educator by offering classes and consulting services for burgeoning and established coffee businesses.
In a coincidence, our upcoming podcast guests Zach and Whitney of Coffeewomple (MLPS) popped by to say hi to Chuck last fall. Photo credit @chuckroastscoffee Chuck is a legend in the industry. Nick Brown said so in the Daily Coffee News! He isn’t resting on those laurels, but he is leaning on the experiences and community that got him this far.
ADVICE FOR BURGEONING ROASTERS
There was a lot of good advice for roasters in this episode. One that stood out to us was the suggestion to pull back from overwhelming the offer sheet with options that don’t best reflect the skill of your roasting. Chuck recommends you follow the ol’ adage Less is more.
I think it's a mistake for a lot of younger coffee retailers—unless you have a retail location—to offer a wide range of coffees, number one. So, if I look at someone’s…if you’re imagining who the hop people are in the country that are considered the best coffee people, a lot of them have 10 or 15 options on there...I think, if you eliminate eight of those, you’re probably going to be left with a couple of really exceptional coffees, and that’s really what I’m going for.
Chuck Patton, Chuck’s Roast
He also feels very strongly that a new roaster should learn to roast without roasting software. He doesn’t deny the place of software in roasting. This isn’t a get-off-my-lawn shaking fist moment for Chuck. Rather, he encourages new roasters to learn to work with the coffee beans—to smell, handle, and experiment—so that when things go off the path, it is easier to identify why. Sometimes, falling off the path leads to the best thing!
YOUTUBE
Our adventures in video podcasting continue. You’ll note a drastic video quality change from the early part of the interview to the later part of the interview. If your Macbook is over a year or two old, you may not have an HD camera built-in! We bought a new plug-in cam, which we’ll use temporarily until we pick up our new laptop next week. The software demands, the file sizes, and the expanded workflow have turned our current machine into a slow, slobbering mess, begging for the days when the most challenging task was editing audio.
Season 1 of our podcast was recorded on a cell phone held up to the computer while I chatted with guests on Google Meet. We improved! Each season brings new advancements in our skills and tech. What hasn’t changed is the insights, motivation, and knowledge gleaned from our guests. They’ve been crushing it since day one.
Thanks for being patient with our video broadcasting efforts. We’re working on it! Please follow us on YouTube if that is where you listen to podcasts. We appreciate you.
CHARITABLE EFFORTS
The non-profit Chuck shared:
Grounds For Health: Their mission is to reduce cervical cancer among women in developing countries, which are often coffee producing countries.
Grounds for Health believes that every woman deserves the right to health in order to achieve her full potential. You can help save lives by providing much needed cervical cancer screening services to women living in areas most at risk. Women don’t need to die from a preventable disease.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
RYAN WOLDT ON KEYS TO THE SHOP
BRANDS WE USE & HAVE PARTNERED WITH*
Please use these links. You’ll be getting a great gear AND supporting Roast! West Coast. The links below enable us to generate some affiliate revenue. As always, we don’t partner with brands we don’t use, coffee we don’t drink, or strongly recommend.
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