There's an upcoming course offered by the Food Craft Institute that involves quite an array of many top name Bay Area coffee roasters and cafes this spring. Classes are stretched over a few months with multiple meeting places for training on all aspects of roasting and also on the cafe management, retail end, as well as buying, grading green coffee. Seems like an interesting concept and the price isn't that bad for what you get out of it.

http://www.foodcraftinstitute.org/cours ... and-retail

Tempting, especially since it's broken up into weekends and evenings so you wouldn't have to quit your day job to attend.

Are you going to go for it, Tom?

My schedule is too erratic, I'd probably miss 1/3 of the classes. But it's an impressive setup their offering for the price.

I agree, I'm just not ready to step up with my little Behmor roaster and all the focus on running your own business. For someone with a larger roaster and more interest in starting their own business, this looks pretty good.

I noticed Jay Goodman from the Rare Barrel listed as an instructor, though not for this class. I really want to check out their sour beers (all their beers are sours!), they just opened their tasting room this weekend, and whatever class he instructs sounds interesting too.

Yeah and Highwire's main roaster Eric has 25 years of experience, just him. It's an impressive rundown. It would be an extreme enthusiast sort of thing for me. Kinda like the amateur photographers who'll pay a tour guide/group several thousands of dollars to travel to Peru and photograph rare butterflies in the mountains. The value is subjective. I'd never really plan on roasting to sell, but I bet $2000 is a drop in the barrel for someone who's serious about roasting on a gas drum roaster with the intentions of making a living out of it. Probably save some money in the long run.

I really like that they made sure to diversify the pool of trainers. You're not going to just get roasting tips from one guy roasting with one basic approach.

So I applied and got accepted. They had a pile of applicants, but space for only 10, since they want as much one-on-one training. According to the program director, they've offered this course once before, and it was by far their most popular.

Funny, I thought about posting it here for others, but I never originally intended to apply. I start a week from today. First class is with James Freeman, down the line we get to go to Peet's massive lab for all sorts of cool stuff. I'll ask early on if the program allows me to take a few random snapshots of what I'm doing, to share here. If so, it might be a fun thread to follow along with.