Check the drive.

Why roast coffee?

"Because I like to drink coffee."  No!  

"Because I like coffee."  No.

"Because I like (not even single origin with creamy honey dripping from the portafilter?)

No, fool, you roasted it full city! Then why? "to be COMFORTABLE!"

Comfort being the ball, meaning that from the enterprise expect no more than a PIECE OF COMFORT.  Ending up with a batch of strange looking beans that don't cup worth a damn and don't say, "this is a failure because it isn't a clean bean and it tastes bad.  I try instead to say, "This bean of coffee not behaving like any I ever seen before. Let's see if I like it to drink when it stops swirling around."

Then how, after coffee goes in the mouth.

Then how does one know if he likes it or not?

Can't.

Can only say "I like it maybe not so good as roasting coffee from single origin small family farms, but I like it a heap more than roasting grasshoppers."

Then, weighing as much information available, decide, all things considered, and in that I imported 20,000lbs. of this bean.  I'll drink it.

Then go at it, learning every way possible.  Like a blind samuri battling the rain with a paper sword.  Like a Jack climbing down the beanstalk.  Like Fela Anikulapo Kuti.   Like Bucky Fuller.  Like Garrison Keiller.  With a chainsaw.  With a journal.  With a measuring stick, creating soft angles in a hard world. 

Where does that bring us?

I remember NOT DOING is all one accomplishes and is practically the same as DOING only in reverse.  NOT DOING i.e. not thinking about the lost love, not worrying about the Lakers small forward, not looking at the slaughter going on in every heart, not thinking about the unicorn...all the same, putting us on the other side of the river from ourselves.  Many times trying NOT to listen to a sound, or NOT to look at a sight, is the only way to perceive.   As in watching a dim star, sometimes staring right at a thing obscures it until it's gone and can only be seen by looking away.

There is a painting on my wall.

A human skeleton laced with tones of grey over red that I am NOT looking at, and the more I don't look at it the more my interest runs that direction, until by stopping for one minute............done......did so.  Eyes closed for 60 seconds, found myself accomplishing feats of NOT thinking about the painting a time or two and then swing back until it glowed very white at edge of my dark room and finally BAM opened my eyes AND.....AND....AND.....and....and...disappointment!

I was expecting my NOT looking to bring about a optic miracle so when I looked I was by then not only truly not seeing the picture I was not even seeing the optic miracle.

A FULLER HARVEST WITH LESS EXPECTATION!

To dance, fall down first.

The wiseman is the fool when he is the fool and through the fool finds his cool again.

All these bench marks that rattle and ring in my memory, but do not, CAN NOT link up to the goal, the cool place.

Yet they all must be learned.  And forgotten.  Or the act will prove to be nothing.

Keeper of the flame, do as you must.  Roast thy coffee and return by dusk.

We little working bee's of 1000 Faces love it when our neighbor and provocateur Terry Rowlett comes into our little factory to say hello.  We hung up this painting of his today at the roasting facility.   To learn more about Terry's work check out: http://terryrowlett.com/  If you are interested in this piece, please visit our roasting facility at 585 Barber Street for a closer looksy.

We are very excited to announce that in the coming weeks we will be exclusively roasting coffee from Finca La Paz in the Dominican Republic.   We are expecting the coffee to be arriving at our roasting facility in the coming weeks.   If you are interested in pre-ordering a bag of this coffee please send an email to roasterben@gmail.com and we will be sure to notify you when this exceptional coffee is available so that you can be the first to order this coffee.  We have been thrilled to have the producer of this coffee working directly with our roasters to develop profiles with the early pre-shipment samples these past couple of days.   Byron(in photo) has been a great addition to our community of coffee people, we are very pleased with the early fruits that this three year relationship has begun to harvest on the tree of 1000 Faces.

www.barberstreetparkproject.net

Sometimes it's chrome with big fixtures.  Sometimes it's a grassy field one hundred yards from victory. Other times it's your fingers laced through your hair on a therapists floor.  Other times it's a sea with no boundaries. Whatever it is... FIND IT. 

Find the hard spot, the place with no give.  Find the difficult gift, the place that forces you to suffer to find pleasure.   Go there again and again.  Turn off the television, close the gmail account, abandon your religion, and go there.   Choose that which you worship.    

We found ours.

Ours is the cupping table.  Ours is big and black.   Ours stands right in the middle of everything.   Ours is where we kneel to the Gods of coffee and inhale the all of life.  With one blessed and chilling gust of force over and over again, we slowly track our greatness through the fading footprints of life.  

You wanna be great in the coffee game, this is the jump-rope you get.  I have found no more important a matrix in the game. This is where your sweat falls against the canvass.   This is the place.  This is the situation. This is where all the concentrated forces of human and environment begin get down.  A cocktail party of the nose.   A empty gym of the mind.   A lover's tangled bed-sheets of notation.

To interact.  To cause.  To influence.  This is where the change and development happens in the craft of roasting.    Without a serious cupping routine a roaster loses it's soul.   The metaphorical priest who has lost his way in a desert.   Without a cupping program all becomes darkness.   Might as well roast em all to the big paul buynan man degree of: "I like my coffee dark and strong.  BOLD...RICH..."   Appease the masses.   Yikes!   No..

The cold hard steel.   The soft white porcelin cups.   Those regular buddy like timers.  Note-pads.  Smells.  Spits. Over and over and over again, running through the morning.   Foggy sneakers.   Cup...Cup...Cup....Cup.... 

Through repetition emerges expression.   

http://www.cicr.uga.edu/
http://climateaction.net/home

Join us December 4th, 2009 at 585 Barber Street at 6pm!

We will hopefully be able to do the first screening of our documentary film roughly entitled: Plowing the Sea. Highlighting our innovative coffee sourcing work in the rainforest of Ecuador.  

A Worldwide Effort is Underway to Create Continuous Rainforest Corridor in South America

QUITO, Ecuador- It's time to give old meaning to the term "hot spot." For 20 years, before the sustainability movement became trendy among the general public, the Maquipucuna Foundation continues to conduct conservation and sustainable development efforts.

Founded in 1988, the Maquipucuna Foundation began as a non-profit initiative dedicated to the conservation of Ecuador’s biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources. In addition, the Foundation seeks to support the economies of local communities with resource management programs, inter-institutional cooperation, and environmental education. Over two decades later, the Foundation has expanded its programs and facilities beyond ongoing conservation and research efforts to create a desirable rainforest haven for eco-tourists the world over.

Surrounding the gorgeous Maquipucuna Reserve, located in the heart of Ecuador’s cloud forest, communities have changed. The Yunguilla community turned their unsustainable practice of charcoal making into one of the most successful community run ecological corporations in Ecuador. The Santa Lucia cooperative turned their unsustainable timber exploitation into the most beautiful community run ecotourism operation. People from Santa Marianitas are cultivating orchids and bromeliads in-vitro.

Residents along the Choco Andean corridor communities are also benefiting. In the lowlands of the Corridor the Afro Ecuadorean Comuna Rio Santiago Cayapas, after centuries of struggle, thanks to Maquipucuna’s support, now own their 44,000 ha of ancestral territories. Many communities now are motivated to grow and sell quality shade-grown coffee and cocoa. Before Maquipucuna intervened, the quality was low and sales were down – both are being successfully turned around. Women have been trained in selling crafts to tourists. Hundreds have been skilled in areas including managing and using native bamboo. The Maquipucuna Foundation employs twenty full-time employees, with hundreds more reaping the benefits of a more self-sustaining community.

Currently Maquipucuna is spearheading efforts to create a unique denomination of origin brand, Chocó-Andes for the products and services of conservation of the Chocó Andean Region, just like Florida oranges are distinguished in the United States or Champagne is distinguished in Europe. In a similar way that there exists a Grand Cognac region that extends beyond the original Cognac region, the umbrella brand includes the coffee growing regions in the Andes, where Maquipucuna worked back in the 80’s, where growers besides quality, are committed to the environment. Maquipucuna acknowledges that birds and wildlife of the Chocó Andean region, specially the birds, migrate outside of the corridor, and as such, wants to extend the economic incentives for environmentally friendly production.

And it is a certainty that residents in the Chocó Andean Corridor of Ecuador are fortunate that the Maquipucuna Foundation came to the area. Trees abound, residents have learned trades and a community has drastically improved their infrastructure. Risk paid off, as a little piece of the world is indeed being saved. Slow Climate Change is a reality.

SlowCoffee® The Tasteful and Transparent Choco Andes® coffee – masterfully roasted by Ben Myers of 1000 faces coffee will be featured as the first of the Slow-Brands that will be launched to the USA market in 2009, as one which complies with all the slow-production criteria.

The Slow Production method is built on these values: Transparency, Simplicity, Consciousness.

“work smarter, not faster or harder, and become more aware of the process than the product”
Geir Berthelsen, The New York Times.

Slow travel is the concept of slowing down, stopping, and enjoying life with a wider perspective. Slow travel is a state of mind. In this we stress the act of slowing down, not nessesarily physically, but mentally being able to take in, and genuinely feel the intoxicating beauty of the World, of Ecuador, of Maquipucuna...

One of Maquipucuna’s important milestone has been the creation of the 1000 faces roaster, founded as an arm of the their work in the USA, especially to partner with producers from the Choco Andes Alliance in two of the best coffee producing areas of Ecuador: Pichincha and Loja provinces. Recently, they have developed an strategic partnership with the World Institute of Slowness based out of Norway, to release a product line entitled "Slow Coffee". All their Choco Andes coffee products will have a bar code which can be accessed on the www.slowcoffee.com website displaying info of every step involved in the journey from seed to cup to showcase slow production.

For more information about Maquipucuna visit www.maqui.org

A Pulped Natural coffee has been processed using special artisan methods, whereby the farmer/producer will break from the traditional processing methodology to make a more daring approach to the finishing the coffee. In this process, the coffee is laid out to dry with the moist sweet mucilage from the cherry still attached to the seed. The result is a coffee that typically cups with characteristics of both a dry and a wet processed coffee.  Pulped Natural coffees often read as sweeter on the palette then most wet-processed coffees, yet somehow majestically retain the body of a dry-processed coffee.

This month we are presenting three different coffee's thru Two Story Coffee-House that are considered to be Pulped Natural coffee's.   Each one is fantastic and deserves to be tried out.

1. Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza from Mococoa, Brazil (we like that this mean's 'Environmental Fortress')

2. Selva Negra Estate from Matagalpa, Nicargua

3. Finca Los Manantiales Miel from Naranjo, Costa Rica