09/09/2020
Coffee roasting is a delicate science, I learned. There are many factors to be considered to successfully turn a fruit like coffee into the beverage that we have become accustomed and as a culture addictied to. The vast majority of the population considers coffee to be a fuel for their everyday endeavors, like fast food, a quick order to be paid for and consumed. As consumers, we think rarely of the journey a product has made when it falls into our ownership. So, I asked questions about this when I was invited to view a live coffee roasting at . What is a hot, humid and hard-working morning for a coffee farmer family in Guatemala, is a comfortable purchase for us at our local coffe shop. But for me, it was an expansive understanding of how much effort has gone into today’s roast. The heavy duty and delicate complexity of the machine is carefully monitored and operated, making the bean the alchemist’s choice of substance transformation. To successfully bring out the bean’s most potent flavor and essence, temperature and timing is crucial to that of just seconds. The beans have traveled long distances and the coffee shop has abandoned commercial fairytale understandings that fair trade actually is a fair trade. Instead, they have invested their time and money in getting to know the farmers first hand, getting to know their families, their ways of life and their hard work in an industry that exploits poor countries for their merchandise. Carrier Roasting is then, in a sense, political activists: by setting their own standards of how to properly price a product and provide much needed support for people living in more gruesome circumstances than the comfortable lives of the western world. With every roast there is not only an artistic and alchemical result of matter and energy, but there is also a humanitarian relationship that provides care for one another. It is also my sworn testimony and observed understanding that just with everything else that has this much consciousness devoted to an outcome serves to explain why in some products there is a divine and novel blend of flavor and precious result. A full circle. An espresso with soul.