I spent a few days this weekend hanging out with Mark Michaelson, head roaster for Onyx Coffee in Fayetteville. He was in town for four days to train at Boot Coffee in Mill Valley for the upcoming World Coffee Roasting Championship and as well, to be a judge for the coffee portion of the Good Food Awards. Thursday and Friday were dedicated to practicing on the Giesen roaster, which is this years sponsor of the World Championship, and Saturday was the blind judging for the Good Food Awards.

It was a lot of fun getting to talk to him about coffee and roasting in general. We spent all of Sunday tromping thru the Mission District of San Francisco and the Financial District, hitting up about 8 different cafes, bakeries and such.





Onyx continues to grow and is currently finishing a massive 3 story roastery/lab. Mark currently is roasting on Diedrich IR 12's and a 40. They've got something even bigger, but I cannot recall what it was. He brought a large selection of his current roasts to Boot's place and they all smelled almost intoxicating, and I left with a nice sample of their current Salvadoran, which struck me as the best I got to nose.

It was interesting getting to see the Geisen in action again. I've watched others roast on it in the past and folks generally continue to praise it's ability to alter the pressure within the drum and create consistent roasts, in consecutive batches. The IR series from Diedrich behave completely differently with their heating and airflow, and Mark praises the gentle, almost slow caramelization of sugars that he's able to achieve and stresses the proper focus on developing that stage sufficiently to build sweetness and balance in the cup. What he's doing has led to incredible coffees, that have structure, balance, incredible sweetness and flavor intensity. I noted the Salvadoran really packed in the sweetness without sacrificing any brightness. Looking at the beans, they appear just slightly more developed compared to many of the lighter, (often sour-bright) cupping roasts popular over here on the west coast.



It was pretty cool to hear the challenges ahead for competitors in the World Championship. There's no guarantee that the coffee they'll be given to roast for the compulsory round is even a fresh crop. You could be handed a bag of 3 year old past crop low grown coffee, if that's what the judges decide to test you on; so you have to really be on your game and well versed in handling all types of coffees, densities, moisture levels, etc and describe them well. including in this is the cupping score added to your presentation score where roasters must describe their game plan for this specific coffee and why. As well, their green sorting skills are tested. Their descriptions of coffee flavors must match what's found on the cupping score or points are also lost.



When it comes to his own roast samples, I was struck by how this sample packet of coffee was still able to brew up without any notable bitterness in the finish. His roasting chops have been proven over and over again the last several years with many of his roasts featuring in other brewing competitions, notably Charles Babinski in his US Barista Championship run last year.

Marcus Young, who heads up Boots training lab was on hand, finishing up some barista classes and was a blast to talk to about his journey in speciality coffee. He's an alum of Sustainable Harvest coffee importers and has spent a great deal of time at origin working to bring great coffee to us consumers and building relationships with coffee farmers and producers, helping them improve their entire coffee production and processing chain.



This was Mark's first visit to San Francisco, so a proper cafe crawl was in order. He wanted to see the big names (Ritual, Four Barrel, Linea Caffe, etc) as well some of the smaller places noted to be quite good. The state of affairs in the Mission District continues to depress, with the notable exception being the espresso and carefully cultivated naturals found at Linea Caffe. Andrew Barnett continues to find the finest, cleanest naturals, often Ethiopians, to make a subtle contribution to his espresso blend, or in the case of his batch brew, a beautiful S.O. Ethiopian natural. We bounced from Linea, to Stanza (major slip in quality and coffee selection, with untrained baristas and darker roasted 2nd wave style roasts that really were bitter and devoid of sweetness), to Ritual where we watched a barista abuse the brew lever of their Synesso, banging it so hard it looked like it would break on a daily basis with such abuse (literally echoing inside the shop each time he slammed the brew lever off). The shots were the typical bright, sour and unpleasant, so we quickly moved on down the road to Four Barrel. In the past I've found Four Barrel equally uninspiring despite the awesome decor. But we had a nice delicate Kenyan on the single serve pour over and shot bar. The barista there was a refreshing, extremely pleasant and friendly guy who really clearly enjoyed his job, although he made it clear his expertise was almost solely in the world of fine tea.

I told Mark that I was happy to show him as many of the famous cafes in the area and didn't want to taint his experience based on my previous experiences. I mentioned how my last visit to Ritual yielded one of the best extractions of a light roast I'd had to date, with a very ripe, juicy and sweet, clean shot, but many times find it to be too sour and harsh. But since the vast majority of customers at these places are getting milk drinks, I think a lot of the faults in the extractions and roasts are hidden. Four Barrel seems to show some improvement over my previous visits. The vibe is always nice, but I've often left there tossing out full to-go cups in the trash on my way out the door. Other than the fact that the two Kenyan's we tried were a bit underwhelming and diluted, one of them was nicely floral, subtle and sweet.

After showing him some of the very famous bakeries in the area (Tartine Bakery, Crafstman & Wolves, and the best damn chocolatier in town, Dandelion Chocolate) we headed north to the Financial District for one last stop at Mazarine, which is a new wholesale client of Onyx. Their service and coffees were really on point, well extracted and the food looked like something out of an Instagram feed ( sous vide/poached eggs over avocado toast is a very popular trend as of late). One of the baristas on the Kees Spirit recognized Mark right away, and was really nice to both of us, and very engaging about their coffees on offer as well as checking in with us several times. I hadn't been to Mazarine before, so it was on my list as well. They've got a nice space and great products. Our day ended before we could journey over to St. Frank's, but that'll have to wait for another day.

I envied the judges of the Good Food Awards. We met up at Linea Caffe in the morning as our first stop with a cafe owner friend of Andrew's who was in town from Florida to judge the coffee and chocolate competitions. Hearing that at the end of the final day, everyone basically gorges on a vast array of all the left over samples ( honey, cheeses, olive oils, chocolate, charcuterie etc) sounds like a good way to pack on a few pounds. In the coffee portion of the competition, they needed to get thru something like 140 samples, all handled with expert effort from a large group of volunteers, this time hosted at Counter Culture's gorgeous lab in the East Bay. Mark commented of the impressive challenge of handling such a feat, they have to judge all roast levels and coffees from varying origins, so you might have to judge a dark roasted Sumatra right next to a light roasted washed central.The team of volunteers that manage to pull the whole event off are a large group of dedicated baristas, roasters and other coffee experts here in the Bay Area.

WOW ... what a great weekend Tom! Thanks for sharing with the writeup.

Very nice weekend indeed! Thanks for posting Tom. Love to meet these guys some day . . .

Great post, Tom. A literal travelogue of specialty coffee tasting in SF. Well done!

Interesting read Tom! Thanks for taking the time & energy to post. Big agree on Dandelion too.

Thank you for the write up of your day, awesome as always.

The Coffee Podcast had a good interview with Mark Michaelson as well if anyone would like to hear a little more about him. He really seems to know his stuff, and as always allows you to hone your own craft a little as well even if it isn't completely applicable to the different home roasters each of us have.

PS: Glad to know that the cafes in the Bay Area have not all of sudden started producing wonderful espresso everyday of the week since I left!

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this up, Tom! Sounds like everyone had a very enjoyable time. I'm a little envious!