FAQ

Longish story, I'll try and make it shortish.

As a kid my brain ran a million miles a minute - I was once awarded the "Chill Pill" award when I was 8 yrs old for my local swim team awards. Because my mind was moving a million miles a minute my parents thought classical music would help lull me to sleep - it didn't really, but those were the first action steps that showed up in my life as methods of calming my mind and therefore my body.

It wasn't until college where my mental health and the unhealthiness of it started resurfacing in a very powerful way - it came to the point during my sophomore year where I decided that going to the university counseling center to seek counseling and help and hopefully some relief. The counselor there suggested I had OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which he described as a portion of the bran that was missing some of its filtering abilities. He gave me a book which changed my life called The Miracle of Mindfulness written by a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk named Thich Nhaht Hahn.

The approaches, the methods, the meditations, and the systems of mindfulness activities espoused by the monk community opened my mind and cleared the way for a life-long practice of walking and sitting meditation. As I explored other aspects of the Buddhist system of beliefs, philosophies, and practices I stumbled on a book of talks given by the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who popularized and made prominent the zen system of Buddhism in America. One of his talks was centered around sitting and the role of sitting in zen and nirvana and one line caught my brain and it wouldn't let go: "Just to sit, that is enough."

That line hit hard for me because everything I learned from a child was that all good things come from hard work and the grind - which some do, but some of the most important things like peace, joy, satisfaction, and touching the inner nature of our being can easily come just by sitting.

The name "Sit Coffee Roasters" was born as I strive to connect with a community of seekers seeking enlightenment, peace, joy, and mindfulness.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America, SCA, gives a really good rundown of what specialty coffee is and why we pay the amount of money we do for the amazing coffees we get to consume. I'll reference their descriptions below and add the link you can go on their site SCA specialty coffee

The Coffee Farmer

Great coffee starts with the producer whose family likely has spent generations perfecting their approach to farming the highest quality coffee possible. Grown in select altitudes and climates and nursed for years before the first harvest, the producer who creates specialty coffee devotes his or her life to refining and perfecting the highest quality coffee on the planet. For them, it is quality not quantity that is the most important consideration. Only coffees free of defects and picked at their peak of ripeness will continue on to the next hands that will shape them. For the farmer, being able to connect with quality-minded buyers ensures a higher profit option which supports individuals, families and communities around the world.

The Green Coffee Buyer

Green coffee is next transferred to the green coffee buyer who may have an SCA Coffee Skills Program certification in the Green Coffee module. They have a palate as distinguished as a sommelier and can keenly identify coffee quality via cupping, or systematic tasting of brewed coffees. Through cupping, the coffee taster can assess a coffee's score and determine whether it is specialty grade quality, make decisions on which coffees they will include in their offerings, and often develop tasting notes and descriptions for the coffee on its final packaging. The green coffee buyer has a large role in communicating the information about a coffee to the roaster and café staff.

The Roaster

High quality coffees are next transferred to the coffee roaster who may be certified by the SCA as having completed numerous hours of coursework and hands-on training to skillfully roast the specialty bean. Coffee roasting is an art that requires a high degree of knowledge and experience to produce specialty level roast profiles. Coffee must be closely monitored during the roasting process and scientific principles of heat transfer, thermodynamics and coffee chemistry must be applied to ensure the highest standard of quality and flavor come through in the final roasted bean.

The Barista

Once the specialty coffee beans reach the retail environment, they have already passed 3 levels of inspection to ensure an extremely high level of quality control, however the process in not yet complete. The barista, who may be certified by the SCA as having completed numerous hours of coursework and hands-on training, is the final coffee professional to guarantee the lifecycle of the specialty bean is completed. Specialty level Baristas are not only highly skilled in brewing equipment operations; they routinely are deeply informed as to the origin of the coffee bean and how it's flavor profiles will be revealed in brewing. If the specialty bean is not brewed properly it is possible that its true flavor potential could be lost; the Barista ensures each bean reaches its full brewed promise.

The Consumer

Not expecting to see yourself in this list? In fact, it is the consumer who completes the lifecycle of the specialty coffee bean by actively seeking out and choosing specialty coffee options. When you take the time to find a local coffee bar or roastery that is dedicated to quality, or take an extra moment to learn from your barista about the people whose hands and passion produced the cup you're enjoying so that you can make more informed choices, you demonstrate not only a commitment to a higher standard of quality of taste and flavor but also a commitment to a higher standard of living for every person who contributed along the way.

A cottage license is a license issued by the state in which an individual resides and operates which allows them to manufacture food items from the utility of their own kitchen.

This allows small business like myself the opportunity to start a small business without the enormous costs of buying commercial equipment and paying for a commercial space right off the bat.

Our goal is to leave the cottage behind and have the capital and ability to pay for a commercial roaster and space and appreciate and offer true gratitude to every customer for every bag purchased so we can continue offering amazing coffee to an amazing community.

Our coffee prices consist of 3 main categories:

1. Green bean cost
2. Transit costs
3. Production costs

Green bean cost: Coffee is grown on a farm in one of the many diverse countries in the world which can grow coffee where it is cultivated, cared for, and ultimately harvested by the people running the farm. Once the cherries are harvested they need to be processed, which is done by one of a plethora of methods, and eventually shipped to an importer at one of the many coffee consuming countries. The importers charge a fee for a pound of coffee for their services and hopefully, and in the world of specialty coffee, they are charging enough per pound so the farmers and the individuals growing and harvesting the coffee can enjoy a livable and gracious wage for their efforts.

Coffee prices change every year because is a natural/organic product moved by the forces of nature.

You can see the cost of the green beans we buy under each product offering in an effort to be transparent with customers like you as well as the industry at large in order to hold each other accountable in an effort to support fairness and equity in all parts of the coffee supply chain.

Transit Costs: A theme that will pop up with us is size. At our size we are buying smaller bags of coffee which the importers offer to micro roasters like ourselves - typically, a 60 kg bag of greens will be shipped on a pallet and charged a fee per mile; we aren't at that scale yet so our transit costs are wrapped up in the purchase of our smaller lots of greens.

Production Costs: This is included on each product offering shop as well and it includes things like:

• Depreciation costs of the equipment (pretty negligible but still present at our scale).
• Labels and bags (significant for us right now because you don't really get great breaks on bags and labels until you are purchasing in the tens of thousands.
• Labor for a full time roaster, packager, deliverer, etc (we need to pay ourselves 👋 and we need to decide what our principles and practices as a business will be moving forward - these labor costs are calculated at $20 / hour + $12/hour in benefits which include 3 weeks PTO, health insurance, and other standard employee benefits)

Lastly is the dollar amount added which supports and rewards us for our efforts and becomes a key piece for our growth and reach.

First off, what is the question we are really trying to answer? I will posit that the meat of the question boils down to "When does coffee taste the best?" Before we answer that we need a quick common understanding of what happens to a coffee bean after it is dropped out of the roaster, which is two things primarily:

1. Carbon dioxide is being released from the bean
2. Oxygen is entering the bean and reacting with the solubles in the bean which create it's flavor profile.

So is there a scientific fresh threshold? Mmm, maybe, but who cares, and this is why...

How coffee tastes is immensely personal and subjective.

My personal opinion during my discoveries is that most of my coffees taste "best" to me after 3-4 weeks of de gassing. Best to me personally means that the really harsh brightness, which my brain perceives as the carbon dioxide still in the bean, has mostly left the bean and we are left with a sweet spot of the beans soluble flavor profiles coming out at their strongest - in my opinion this phase can last quite a long time in a well-sealed and properly ventilated coffee bag; for me, I've had amazing coffee from 4-8 weeks after roast and really great coffee from 8-12 weeks, and even pretty damn OK coffee from 12-16 weeks.

This is why I suggest you do your own discovery - note how a coffee tastes when you first get it...and if you have a couple of bags of coffee on-hand then spread them out so you can taste how the flavor profile changes with time. Enjoy the discovery journey :)