We just got back from a long weekend at the Big Central barista competition here in Minneapolis.

We were a sponsor this year and set up a gas and an electric roaster indoors for display and fired up one outdoors for roasting demonstrations.

My three boys were in attendance as well as our very own BoldJava, who plied the crowd with freshly roasted coffee samples most of the afternoon Saturday. A huge shout out to his wife, the lovely and gracious Dee, who allowed him to bail us out.

This is my son Nick bagging samples:



We set up a roaster outside in the courtyard:






Where Johan and Lisa ran the machine for onlookers:



Johan is an fledgling artisan roaster. He roasts at the shop every week and hopes to have his own roastery next year. Lisa is his main squeeze. He sort of gave her the loyalty test Sunday when they spent most of the day in the cold roasting back to back samples for the crowd. He'd like to compete next year and Dave (BoldJava) has promised to help him pick a coffee.

Little Michael just discovered our cooling trays were filled with chocolates:






From left to right, the brothers Green: Alex, Michael, and Nick. Alex is our jack of all trades, machinist, welder, mover, and handy guy extraordinaire. Nick is our webmaster and provides comic relief. Michael is the reason I'm still getting up in the morning.

Steve,
Nice post, thanks for sharing a more personal side of your business and family.

Moshe

Great stuff!

Thanks, guys.

At the end of the day, it has to be about more than just machinery and beans, right? We met some really excellent people.

Roasting outside in the cold and wind, I was lucky to have turned green beans brown. We passed out about 100 lbs of so-so coffee and came home empty.

Fortunately, I traded coffee samples with the roastmaster of Luna Cafe and definitely got the better deal.

I'm drinking his Colombia La Llano right now (https://lunacafe.com/#colombian-la-llano--microlot-) and I'm pretty sure this was the best coffee of the weekend. If you're around De Pere, WI look him up. I'll have to mail him a bag of something this week to assuage my guilt and prove we're not complete duffers.

He roasts on a Probat, but we're not holding that against him.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, we have the "Red Rocket" set up again. BoldJava Dave manned the controls masterfully and produced several truly superb small batch sample roasts yesterday.

Action shots:




Maybe we'll have something actually worth brewing again soon...

Nice!
Congratulations Steve!
Glad to see your a sponsor at HB.

Looks like fun!

Is that a temp gauge I see embedded in the cyclone?

Great post!

Good job Steve. Hope you sell a bunch of those roasters.

slickrock wrote:Is that a temp gauge I see embedded in the cyclone?

Looks like a smoker don't it? I wonder if you could hang some ribs in there while roasting coffee. Kind of a 2fer.