Bjørg and Trish: recommended podcast
For her recent Coffee Awesome podcast, Bjørg Brend Laird talked with Trish Rothgeb who started out as a barista way back in 1986 when in California it was possible to make enough money as a barista to pay for full art tuition at the university.
Self taught
Since her boss was more interested in playing golf than in roasting, in 1990 Trish taught herself how to roast. Dark roasts, fighting fires, no training, no bean probe, only the "analog dial temp for the smoke and a stopwatch" sufficed.
Four years later she moved on to roast for other small and medium sized companies.
Oslo
Roasting became a career around 2000 in Oslo, Norway where she found a job roasting on a small 12kg Probat, fitted with a Watlow box to read bean and smoke temp.
Still very dark, thick Brazil / Indian roasts, chewy and robust in taste. What was a called a medium roast then would today be seen like French roast.
The 'dark middle ages' of coffee are not really far behind us, it seems.
Insects
Trish explains how she struggled to get good beans from her German supplier and how one bag was so infested with insects that clouds of the creatures would come flying out at her as soon as she opened the bag. When she called the supplier they told her not to worry: "What is your problem, they die in the roaster!" And when she had cupped and selected an order of Mandheling and received Lintong instead, the supplier told her "they are the same thing!"
Third wave
So much has changed recently and many of the so called Third Wave companies are doing well financially. It can be tempting to get lazy. "Our customers tell us they love the coffee so we're fine".
Quality control
Still, there is a lot to be learned in quality control. The big multinational companies do it because minute differences can make a difference of millions in revenue, but small and medium sized companies must also keep working on the quality in the cup:
Logging
Trish has only recently started to use what she calls an "online log" for roasting in her company after using a paper and pencil log for 25 years.
Very little was written down:
Charge temp, no turn-around, temp at 5min, 8 min, temp/time of crack, bean temp/time of drop, strength after roast and bean color outside / inside
Curves
Today, with the "online log" showing curves, it also shows how roast curves change when the roastery has been cold overnight of when a different origin of beans is used, different moisture content.
Learning by doing
Some of Trish' apprentices are frustrated that she explains so little, letting them roast for months while they are slowly discovering what roasting is about the same way she had to figure it out so many years ago. Some turn to the bookshelves with books about roasting. And most discover along the way that they learned much more than they were aware of.
Recommended listening!
Self taught
Since her boss was more interested in playing golf than in roasting, in 1990 Trish taught herself how to roast. Dark roasts, fighting fires, no training, no bean probe, only the "analog dial temp for the smoke and a stopwatch" sufficed.
Four years later she moved on to roast for other small and medium sized companies.
Oslo
Roasting became a career around 2000 in Oslo, Norway where she found a job roasting on a small 12kg Probat, fitted with a Watlow box to read bean and smoke temp.
Still very dark, thick Brazil / Indian roasts, chewy and robust in taste. What was a called a medium roast then would today be seen like French roast.
The 'dark middle ages' of coffee are not really far behind us, it seems.
Insects
Trish explains how she struggled to get good beans from her German supplier and how one bag was so infested with insects that clouds of the creatures would come flying out at her as soon as she opened the bag. When she called the supplier they told her not to worry: "What is your problem, they die in the roaster!" And when she had cupped and selected an order of Mandheling and received Lintong instead, the supplier told her "they are the same thing!"
Third wave
So much has changed recently and many of the so called Third Wave companies are doing well financially. It can be tempting to get lazy. "Our customers tell us they love the coffee so we're fine".
Quality control
Still, there is a lot to be learned in quality control. The big multinational companies do it because minute differences can make a difference of millions in revenue, but small and medium sized companies must also keep working on the quality in the cup:
Do not blindly trust green bean importers.
Measure your greens / moisture.
Roasting is more than buying great green coffee and throwing it in the roaster.
How do you want the cup to taste?
Do not just follow a curve but modify it to your point of view.
Logging
Trish has only recently started to use what she calls an "online log" for roasting in her company after using a paper and pencil log for 25 years.
Very little was written down:
Charge temp, no turn-around, temp at 5min, 8 min, temp/time of crack, bean temp/time of drop, strength after roast and bean color outside / inside
Curves
Today, with the "online log" showing curves, it also shows how roast curves change when the roastery has been cold overnight of when a different origin of beans is used, different moisture content.
Learning by doing
Some of Trish' apprentices are frustrated that she explains so little, letting them roast for months while they are slowly discovering what roasting is about the same way she had to figure it out so many years ago. Some turn to the bookshelves with books about roasting. And most discover along the way that they learned much more than they were aware of.
Recommended listening!
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