K.I.S.S. Is Just Good Policy

It has been one year of the new website, and we have learned a lot over the last year with this new adventure. This was the first time my wife and I have designed a website and our first attempt at a retail type business. We had asked numerous friends, customers, and professionals alike on how we can make this more accessible for people to learn about what they are missing, just like we did when we started on this journey. What I have learned in my professional life is that simple is always better. Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.) keeps coming to mind. I am sure you have heard this phrase at some point in your life, I know I heard it numerous times all throughout my education and work life. In my day job, I help businesses find efficiencies in their operations, and yes, K.I.S.S. applies to all of them. It doesn't matter what the industry or the process is. Complicated will never be better than simple and repeatable.

What does this have to do with coffee? Great question. One of the most important things for us, when we started this adventure, was to let as many people know what they have been missing concerning fresh, small-batch roasted coffee. We had no idea how much of a difference it was between what we thought was fresh coffee and really fresh coffee. It turns out roasting it in small batches is the difference. Now the question has become, what is the simplest way to tell as many people as possible about small-batch roasted coffee and get them just to TRY some? It turns out, splitting our coffee up by geographical region and using all of the beautiful pictures has only confused people more. We have missed the mark and are getting back to keeping it simple. If you have some ideas on how we can make this process better, please let us know! Fill out our review form HERE, and we will get on it!

What message are we trying to get across? The simplest way to put it is this. Large coffee businesses roast a lot of coffee at a time and stores it in large buckets until it's all bagged and shipped to sit on a shelf for you to eventually buy it. Why is that a problem? An award-winning barista told me recently that the life of fresh coffee lives by a general rule of 15's. Green coffee beans will be good for 15 months before beginning to lose all of the flavor notes it started with. Roasted coffee will be good for 15 days before it has off-gassed all of those flavor notes. Ground coffee is off-gassing even faster and is only fresh for 15 minutes after grinding! This really blew mind but really cleared up why we have been missing out on truly fresh coffee.

How are we different? Small-batch roasting is just what you think it sounds like. We roast in small batches and store the roasted coffee in small buckets so that the roasted coffee does not off-gas completely before it sells out. Once it gets low enough, we roast another small batch so that the roasted coffee never sits longer than 14 days (remember the life of 15). What does "off-gas" mean? The science behind roasting coffee is a whole new part of this journey and warrants its own post.

Happy brewing!