Bay Area Coffee Inc. Roastery and Coffee History Museum Tour

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TomC
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#1: Post by TomC »

I had the great opportunity to take a tour thru the history of coffee and coffee roasting here in the Bay Area, at an incredibly large industrial roastery aptly named Bay Area Coffee Inc. I was simply blown away at the massive collection of beautiful vestiges of days gone by, our coffee history, primarily in San Francisco. Here's a tour of a collection of some of the awesome stuff we were shown today, all courtesy of my friend Jen Apodaca (West Coast Production Manager of Blue Bottle Coffee-and general bad ass roastmaster) who organized the event and hosted by Tom Waterman, the founder of Bay Area Coffee Inc. Everything you see here is his life's work. Tom has a long history in coffee, dating back to his days as a senior manager with Hills Bros. He's steeped in coffee history.

Walking in to the lobby of the roastery, you're greeted immediately by this amazing display. Just a needle in the haystack of the tens of thousands of coffee memorabilia he has on display.



One of over a dozen roasters (not even including the 4 and 5 barrel sample roasters) on display. These two are the ubiquitous Royal 5 pound roaster, both fully function and restored.



Tom's collection of art prints, poster and advertisements from yesteryear inspire awe in coffee folks like myself. He's made a life of collecting these beautiful objects of art.



The walls are nearly covered, with hundreds upon hundreds of prints. The angles and the overhead lighting made it tricky with the reflections, but I hope some of these give you an idea of their beauty.









Tom shares my passion for collecting commercial grinders. I can't hold a candle to anything of his however. His fully restored specimens are truly impressive from antique manual wheel-type grinders and mid century electric bag grinders. Everywhere you turned, more grinders. I was in heaven.



A close up photo showing the mastery in the details of this beautiful paint job.







The best of all, this gorgeous table setup that has no less than 5 antique grinders built directly into the top of the table. The drawers are lined with steel and you'd just open the drawer and scoop out the amount your customers desired.



Turning now to the colossal roastery and cupping lab, we entered thru some nondescript doors to this massive scene.





This was extremely hard to photograph well, but this massive Brazilian roaster is the largest I've ever seen. I know Peet's roasts on 4 separate 1000 pound Probats. This roaster can do something on order of 1500 pounds per batch. You could pretty much stand up inside the drum.





Tom's a bit camera shy, but this is his son and his Plant Manager David in front of this massive Lilla roaster.



One of their "smaller" Probats.




They have 3 Burns R23's, each, 4 bag roasters. Tom asked that I not show these photos, so I'll omit them. But his description of their function were interesting too. They're just incredible in scale. He spoke of their incredible self cleaning design, the "lollipop" the gas burner inlet, that drives the flames into a massive tungsten steel plate that gets cherry red hot, to radiate the heat, can get up to 1100 degrees for self-cleaning functions. These guys roast coffee that is commonly found in shops like World Market, and many large coffee distribution/corporate accounts, where the market demands a French Roast dark style.

How's this for kick-ass? This is the VERY FIRST Diedrich Roaster ever built.



More angles, just because I thought it was so cool.







Turning towards his cupping lab, he's surrounded by 4 and 5 barrel sample roasters there as well, and a fluid bed roaster to boot.





Ro-Tap style shaker and sieve sets.



More of the expansive packaging area.



They roast darker than what is currently vogue, but they're not roasting nasty commodity grade cheap stuff. They've got mountains of coffee from big farms in Hawaii and many Centrals.



Going into their conference room was like walking into a history lesson in coffee. Beautiful shelves lined with antique tins of coffee from famous roasters of yesteryear along with tons of amazing memorabilia.



The various trinkets in this display case are impressive. Many were likely promotional freebies given out by large roasters, pens, cups, knickknacks of all sorts.



Dustin playing with one of the small countertop grinders, with MJB tins on the shelf above.



This display case shows the neat things like pre-made glass display tubes showing the coffee in various stages from green to roasted, along with short annotations that explain how the customer ends up with the final product.



One of his finest grinders, striking an impressive pose in the corner.



More framed ads and his small espresso bar in the opposite corner.



Tom's most prized part of his coffee collection; this beautiful hand painted glass plate of the famous Hills Bros "Arab man". The brushwork is stunning. This panel was rescued from deep within the basement of Hills Bros by Tom himself. It had laid undisturbed since 1915 in a wooden box and forgotten about.



Next to others for scale.



Detail.



Hey look! More beautiful artwork.



More grinders!



In my mind, other than the roasters, this is probably one of the coolest pieces of his collection; an original Hills Bros uniform. Apparently in Chicago, Hills Bros had delivery men dressed in these uniforms, who'd make their routes daily delivering coffee to consumers. One of their promotional runs was to hand deliver a small sample tin of coffee to EVERY resident in Chicago. Imagine that.





Another shot of the 5 headed coffee grinder table; because it's so cool.



Finally, Tom's other cherished treasure, this bronze Hills Bros' statue was part of the original 1915 Pan-Pacific World Fair in San Francisco. I wish I could have captured a better shot of this.



Hope you all enjoy these as much as I did!
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[creative nickname]
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#2: Post by [creative nickname] »

Unbelievably cool stuff, Tom. Thanks so much for sharing these pics!
LMWDP #435

earlgrey_44
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#3: Post by earlgrey_44 »

Wow - wonderful! Wish I could beam right over and see it.
Thanks for posting these pics.
Trust your taste. Don't trust your perception.

Bodka Coffee
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#4: Post by Bodka Coffee »

Just... Awesome!!!