Jeff Givens of Southern Skies Coffee Roasters - Building His Coffee Business, and Lots of Coffee Talk

Welcome everyone. This is Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. And on today's episode, we have Jeff Givens of Southern Skies Coffee Roasters. Southern Skies has a Java Passport program, which lets you have freshly roasted coffee shipped directly to your door every month. Welcome to the show. Jeff, how you doing?

I'm doing good. Thanks. And full disclosure. Believe you are a member of Java passport as well.

Yeah, I actually have a cup right now that I'm drinking.

And what do you think about Java passport? I mean, you've been what about what three years now? You've been subscribing?

Yeah, it's been way longer than that. I feel like it's been five. I mean, my kids are gonna be eight this summer. And I think like back then like seven years ago, I mean, Time really flies. So we've been doing the coffee for quite a while.

And we appreciate it.

It's you know, it's really nice having coffee delivered to your home. I mean, first of all, people aren't really wanting to go out for stuff much anymore but for me having quality coffee at home. I mean, it seems so expensive these I guess I know why people do it like going to Starbucks or coffee shop every morning. But when you look at the cost of that just spending the money on some high quality coffee at your house and making it is my preferred method. Well,

I mean, if you take the route if you take the extra care to do it at home, I mean, you can really make your your money go stretch further because you know, what's a cup of coffee at a cafe? I mean, 350 $4 sometimes if you get a, you know, a latte or something like that. And yeah, you can actually have fresh, fresh roasted fresh ground coffee at home for probably one third of the cost. And it's a little bit inconvenient, but I think it's worth it. At least I hope my customers think it's worth it.

I'm sure you've figured it out. But how many cups in general Do you get out of one bag?

How many cups Well, it's funny. You could probably put you could put the link After after we quit recording here but I made a video on YouTube it's up and it tells the ratios of brewing. And so it's it's hard to say how many cups i think it worked out to about 30 cups of coffee per pound but I may be wrong It's been a long time since I figured that out but the video I made and it tells you the ratios of coffee to water and all you really need is a kitchen scale because a lot of times the the the way the industry measures a cup of coffee versus a standard cup which is eight ounces. It's different. So on your you know your coffee makers, it'll say X number of cups but it's really not the standard measuring cup measurement.

Yeah, I love that. I think I've shared that a number of times your ratio for coffee, I know it gets into kind of coffee Geekdom to break out your kitchen scale and start weighing out your coffee but I find it does make a really good cup

well My 10 year old boy can do it. I think anybody can. And he makes a great cup of coffee by the way. We drink

his training. Well, how old was he when he started drinking coffee?

Well, he doesn't really drink much coffee. Uh, the first time we ever tried coffee, it was probably four years old. I mean, took a sip here and there and, and I really didn't recoil. So I figured that was a good a good start. But yeah, he'll he'll drink a little bit here and there, but really, really doesn't make much coffee.

How old were you when you started drinking coffee? Do you remember?

You know, it's funny. I grew up in the south. And I don't know how the culture is in other parts of the United States or even the world in regards to that. But a coffee was considered like an adult drink. So that was something that adults did. It was almost akin to smoking cigarettes. And I remember the first time I made a cup of coffee was some instant coffee. And I was like, 15 and my grandmother looked at me kind of funny and she was like you're drinking coffee? Very judgmentally but it's funny, I didn't really start drinking coffee daily. Probably until after I joined the army and moved to I was stationed in Panama. And of course a lot of coffee is grown in Panama and I, I tried to there and it was really a different experience than what I was used to in the RV mess halls and, and fast food restaurants and it was a good experience. And that's probably when I started drinking coffee. On a daily basis.

Yeah, much like, I've talked about beer my parents like to buy. I guess my parents like to buy cheap everything right. Like I say, I didn't like drinking beer because my dad drank Old Milwaukee the same thing with coffee. Like I just remember that kind of like burnt smell. They're buying whatever the the grocery store brand was. And they would drink it really weak. Not that they're, you know, my dad's benchmarks. Good coffeemaker is one that it came out like really quick like your and you know, like you'd put in the water. And then 30 seconds you had a pot of coffee, not that it sat on the grounds. So they liked a weak cup of cheap coffee. And I was never really impressed when I was younger until I started having better coffee.

Yeah, it's funny. You draw the parallel to beer. I never really liked beer growing up. I mean, it was something that, you know, there's a teenager, you know, you sneak a beer here and there, go to a party. And there's just something you kind of just drink for the effect. And even when I joined the army, a lot of people drink beer, and I really wasn't a big fan of it. And then the guys that had been in Germany, they'd tell me, Well, the reason you don't like beer is because you haven't had real beer. And once you go to Germany or Europe someplace that really does beer. Well, then you'll understand. And granted this is back in the late 80s. This is before lots of micro breweries were in the United States. And so Yeah, pretty much all the options were were just the the generic, you know, Budweiser, Miller. Coors that was, you know, basically what there was there and I didn't like any of it.

Do you remember who kind of kicked off the coffee boom, like in grocery stores? I mean, I don't even remember. Like, when did we go from just having Maxwell House on the shelves to having anything better? And what was the first like, I grew up in Massachusetts. So we had Dunkin Donuts was like, the benchmark for like, good coffee. That wasn't the Maxwell House coffees. Do you remember like, what year or do you know when that started?

I would say it was in the late 90s. I think it was, you know, when the internet was a lot of people started getting online and started sharing a lot of things. You would start reading about these espresso bars and things like that, I guess in Seattle is really where the espresso boom kicked off. And it kind of spread throughout My background with kind of discovering coffee was you know, I started in the army in Panama. And then I remember after leaving there and moving to this area, I had had a espresso and Nordstrom of all places down in Pentagon City Mall. And it was the first time I had a drink like that I was just blown away. And so I wanted to learn how to make that drink at home. And I bought a little cheap. They call them steam, steam toys, espresso toys. A little 20 or $30 espresso maker and started messing around with it. And in when I was in the army, I was also stationed in Korea and they have a you know, strong tea culture and a cafe culture. They also have a lots of coffee bars there and in the coffee wasn't really great. But a lot of people to go well young people will go there in lieu of By going out to drink, beer, alcohol, whatever. And there's a very big social aspect of it that I appreciated. And every kind of every step along the way, I was adding another piece to the puzzle. And so there was the kind of the quality aspect, or the differentiation I experienced in Panama, and then the social aspect of it. And then when I came here, I started trying to improve the quality and try to replicate some of the drinks that I had. And I found a local roaster which still exists to this day my yoga and actually took a job working in their silver spring coffee shop on the weekends, just because I really wanted to learn more about coffee and how it was done professionally. I guess the evolution continued until I was stationed in the Middle East there in 2000. For 2005 and had a lot of time on my hands. And all this time I had been trying to, you know, I realized I wanted to work in coffee somehow I didn't know exactly how I'm not, in spite of the fact I was in the military, I'm really not an early riser. And roasting seems to be a good thing to get into, because I control the quality and get into a different aspect of coffee as well as not having to get up really early. Because as you know, coffee shops that open at 11 o'clock probably aren't very profitable.

Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, we lived in Seattle and Emily worked for Seattle's best coffee. And we moved out there and we only had one car and if I wanted the car for the day, I had to drive her to work. And that meant getting up at four o'clock in the morning to drive to downtown Seattle and drop her off cuz she was a manager and I think having her there she opened up the shop at like 430 in the morning or something down in West center to get the coffee going. I mean It was nice because if I were off that day, I mean, she was done work at like noon I would show her pick her up and grab some food. 11 But yeah, that getting up at four in the morning was for the birds. No, it's not for me. You probably don't do very many private breakfasts. I imagine. I hate them. I don't want to do I mean, first of all, I don't love cooking breakfast food anyway, and I don't think there's money in it. But yeah, every once in a while I'll do a breakfast. I did do a 6am breakfast one time. And yeah, it was for someone who, you know, I don't know, whatever their schedule was. They weren't like afternoons. So they wanted to have a very nice brunch type thing. And I remember they wanted steak and eggs. And I was just like, wow, I'm making these people steak at six o'clock in the morning. It was so bizarre. And they were I don't know in like silver spring or rockville or somewhere down there. So yeah, every once in a while you do that kind of thing. But I'm more of the night person as well.

Yes, same here. So yeah, so I worked at my yoga for a while. And then I was stationed deployed to the Middle East for a year. And I guess I had a lot of time on my hands and I started thinking well, I want to get into the coffee business somehow. And, and so roasting seemed to be just kind of the ideal thing. So when I got back, I looked around and found a roaster and rebuilt it. And that's kind of how we started. We started going to the farmers markets. We, we used to do two farmers markets a week, one on Saturday, when on Sunday, and that's how that's how it really is used to use them as a marketing tool on top of obviously selling coffee. We used to sell coffee and cups or we'd give away samples and actually picked up a lot of Java passport members through that because markets are seasonal and of course, at the end of the day See, some people are asking, Well, how can we continue to get the coffee? And so I said, Well, I'll be happy to ship it to your house. So that's how we started. And I believe it was 13 years ago. And we started and we still have the same some of the same customers today that have stuck with us this entire time. I've watched your kids grow up. And it's, it's really funny, because every month some of those people I see once a month and it's just like Time flies by And now some of the kids who were really small are now drinking coffee as well.

Get them all the young. Yeah. But I think one of the one of the things I love is talking about how businesses grow and marketing and things like this, and, you know, I think with you definitely kind of this, I don't know if you'd call it guerilla marketing, but also this free sample kind of mentality. So, for our listeners, I didn't know you at all, and I think you started following me on Twitter. Yeah, we're gonna say like, 10 years ago, probably and we built this related IP. And, you know, I know you just like sent me a DM and said, Hey, I'm local to you I make coffee. Can I send you a bag of coffee? like totally out of the blue? I had no idea who you were. You just found me on the internet.

probably thought some creep.

Yeah. And then, and you know, but I'm always up for free sample. So anyone out there who wants to send me some things for potential sponsorship, I'm open. But you know, you sent me a bag of coffee. And it was great. And that's kind of how it started. And now, you know, we're not just like, business associates. We're friends. I mean, yeah, I've been to my house, your kids have come to my kid's birthday. It's really interesting. And I just, that's what I love about the internet is being able to connect with people. But that idea of getting in front of someone and just saying, hey, you look like a guy who likes good coffee. Can I send you some and now, you know, 10 years later, we're still on this plan of buying coffee from you. And I think that's why I think it speaks for itself, you know? Yeah, I mean, if you don't have a good product, and you know, as markets get saturated, you know, I don't know if someone else wanted to send me a bag of coffee tomorrow. I don't know that I would change. So you do get kind of set in your ways. I but I didn't have any coffee that I was buying on a regular basis back then.

I appreciate it.

I also remember you went on the fishing trip, right?

Yes, we did. That was a Steve vilner who used to be the director of Fisheries marketing for the Department of Maryland.

He worked for the DNR. Yeah, that's cool. But I also remember that like you brought a bag with samples of coffee, were you to that, you know, just that idea of like, you show up. You bring a bag of samples of coffee and then you're you're giving them to everyone. I just love the hustle there.

Yeah, well go do what you got to do. Right. But it was it's a lot of fun and I just enjoy sharing, sharing and letting people you know, experience something that they may have not experienced before because it's really fun to see people's kind of their eyes get wide open when they when they get some Coffee that's been roasted, you know, within within 72 hours or so, because it really makes a huge difference in quality. It's just the freshness of the coffee off of the roasting. Because, you know, people don't, I think a lot of people don't realize that coffee is pretty perishable. It's not like rice or flour or something like that, that when you may argue with me about the flower thing, but you know, people, a lot of people think because of how coffee is sold in the market shells, that you could just buy it and then just stick it on the shelf and wait for a family to come over to make a cup of coffee. And it's it's quite perishable. So, you know the freshness, the roasting really makes a huge difference in my opinion.

So that's the turnover time is like 72 hours like you send them out 72 hours after roasting, is that what I'm hearing generally,

generally, it's sooner than that. Generally, I'll roast on one day, and then pack and ship the following day. So you know it's 24 to maybe 48 hours. And I challenge you to go to the grocery store. And if if they put a roast on date on their coffee, take a look at it or look at the expiration date. And it may, who knows, it may say a year from now, and I guarantee you that coffee may have been fantastic when it was initially roasted. But after a year sitting on or six months or even three months sitting on the supermarket shelf, it's gonna be flat.

So do you roast just once a month and send it out? Or do you have your customers on different plans where you're roasting once a week? How's that work out for you?

Well, the Java passport system is a program. It's once a month. And I wrote up everybody's at the same time and then ship it out or some folks who are very local to me actually delivered to their house. I also have a detailing aspect of the business. So I have a web Web Store and everything People can order coffee there. And I'll roast to order for them as well. And then I do some wholesale roasting for restaurants and in some foreign markets and so of course but but for any order I get is always roasted to water.

So you only have one kind of coffee at a time Is that right? And it changes I know with the Java passport like I don't order anything. So it just comes from different estates and has different roast levels. That's how it works correct.

You're right and the the, the idea about Java, the passport Java passport is is you can experience coffees from all different regions, all different kind of coffees. And it is a roasters choice, because I really try to focus on freshness. Not only obviously right off the rose but also what's in season because of coffee goes into season. They're in in different parts of the world different times. So doesn't All come into season same time. So I'll I'll reach out to my importer. And then I'll take a look at what their what they have in stock right now. And they'll send me some samples and have the freshest stuff they've got what's in season? And whatever is the best, and I'll go ahead and order that. And then subsequently, you know, roasted up for you guys.

Was there a big learning curve to that? And have you ever had anything you weren't happy with? Like, did you ever roast a whole batch brew it up and say, this isn't really working for me?

Well, I try not to do that because it can be an expensive mistake. I do a sample roast. I have a sample roaster. So I can roast a half pound at a time. And what I'll do is I'll I'll experiment with different roast levels for that particular coffee to try to mitigate any bad experiences. Also, we'll get SAP pre samples from the roaster sorry, from the importer. And then I'll roast them up. So before I ever commit to a bag of coffee, I've already tried it, and make sure it's really good and make sure I could roast it up, you know, to where I'm pleased with it. I have had some coffees, which I haven't been happy with. And ultimately, I've dumped them. But yeah, it sucks to have to do that.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was talking about. I've had some friends on the show who are distillers and brewers and the same thing, you know, they make a whole batch. I can't imagine making a huge batch of beer commercially. And just saying this is garbage and having to dump it.

If you're concerned with quality. I mean, it's really a long term. I take a long view of things. And it's just certainly not worth it to send out something that's substandard because it's going to hurt you in the end and it's just not doesn't reflect well on you as a business if you are, you know, quality focus, which I am.

So what's the setup for roasting? Do you have to have a lot of equipment or is it literally one piece,

the roaster itself? Pretty, pretty big roaster I could roast about 20 pounds at a time. And visually if you can imagine like a clothes dryer, it has a drum in it. And it's in it you preheat it. It's a runs off of propane gas and electricity. But the heats provided by propane, but, but what so what happens is you preheat the roaster and then once it's up to temperature, you dump the roast to coffee in. And then it takes about 15 minutes for it to get to the roast level which you desire. And I come from an engineering background. So I take lots of data while I'm doing it. So every 30 seconds or so, you know, measuring the temperature across a temperature timescale. And then at the very end, it's very craft oriented because you have to really look at the coffee and smell coffees. It's much like you know when you have something on a salamander And I mean, you can't just stick it on settlement and forget about it, you have to look at it and literally seconds. You can have seconds, destroy something or not right? It's either burned or it's or it's, you know, perfect. For sure. So similar situation with the roasting and I have a Trier, which goes into the coffee as as it's roasting. I could look at it, I could smell it, I could see it. And that comes with a lot of experience of, of some bad batches, but you learn and it's a very sensory process. But back to the equipment, I've got a big roaster and then I also have some packaging machines and stuff, but it's a it's a significant investment. If you're going to if you're going to do it on a large scale like that.

And you're a fairly small operation. I mean, you don't have employees and everything and it's not your full time job. Any any plans on doing that. I mean, ultimately do you have a goal of being like that? Coffee King and growing the business or is it always something that's just going to be?

Well, right now I can say I have a another job that brings in most of the income. The beauty of doing it, the way I do do it is that I can really scale the business up to the point where I feel comfortable, where there's a nice balance of my time. And I don't have to, I don't have to grow too large where I can lose control of quality. And so right now I'm at that perfect balance. In fact, I've actually turned down business because it just seemed like it would be more than I could handle and still maintain quality. So right now, for the foreseeable future, I'm going to kind of keep it where I where I am right now. And we'll see as we as we move forward, maybe I'll move into a larger business, but right now I'm gonna keep it where he is. I've actually had, like angel investors reach out to me and I've turned him down. Because I don't want to be bought by someone,

we were just talking about this, my wife and I this morning about that. And I've seen a couple things go sideways, not in coffee, but other small businesses, like where chefs partner with a business partner and next thing, you know, you're out of the business that you created. And that's not something that I want to happen to my business. And

yeah, and if you stay small, and in control, you can control everything, the quality and the finances and all of that. But back to not having employees. My wife helps me a lot, believe me. She helps me a whole lot with it with the packaging and shipping and all that kind of stuff. So I don't want to downplay her role in this and the kids will be old enough soon that you can put them to work they do a little here and there. They like taking the packages in the post office, although right now, we we keep them out of there. I just put on a mask and get in there as quickly and out as quickly as possible.

So I know you're not looking To grow, but do you have any new initiatives or plans or anything you're working on?

You know, we've been taking a look with all the protests right now going on and the increased awareness of disparities. And we've been taking a look at what how we're doing business and seeing where we could improve. And truth be told, we haven't been doing enough. And so I have reached out to some black owned businesses. One is an importer who's based in Baltimore. And we're going to be establishing a relationship with them, actually, today, the shipment samples should come and I'll be cutting those. And my plan is, and I haven't announced any, this is this is I'm premiering this announcement here, but the plan is to form a long term relationship with them, as well as I'm going to have a feature coffee and we're going to donate 1% of the profits to coffee. To a charitable organization, we're still evaluating some organizations right now to make sure that, you know, they're, they have a proven track record of really making change and doing and doing things well with their money managing their money. And also, you know, have a proven track record of making a difference, because we want, we want to make as big of a difference as we can. So I haven't come up with a name for it yet. It's very nascent right now. But you'll be hearing from me in the near future about that program.

That's very exciting. It's phenomenal to see all these businesses, kind of just looking at what they can do. I mean, I think a lot of us have been complacent myself, as well. And just trying to think about the bigger picture. I mean, at least in food, I feel a lot of us have tried to support small businesses, local businesses, I do try and do that as much as I can. I know that I don't do that enough, but then also giving back to these organizations and Really trying to make a difference. So. So what are some ways that people can make a better cup of coffee at home? Do you have any low hanging fruit best practices? There's so many ways to make coffee now, you know, between your traditional Brewer the poor over the French press, what are your thoughts on just making coffee at home?

Well, the style of coffee is really whether it's a French press or pour over Brewer, or an espresso machine. Regardless the style that you enjoy, what really matters is obviously using very good coffee and making sure you're using enough coffee because that's the way you're alluding to the fact that your dad really liked weak coffee. In Brazil they call it Shafi, which means like a mix between coffee and tea because it's so light, but a mixture that you're using enough coffee to water ratio, and then make sure your equipment is clean and the water water quality is good and water temperature is good you really want to be able to extract the best out of the coffee and that's only you can only do that with hot enough water really hot water. That's right off the boil. And also a key missing missing element for a lot of people is a grinder grinder is actually as important as the brewer. Unfortunately grinders are good grinders are more much more expensive than a brewer. So on the hierarchy of things, people tend to think about the grinder as being second, but your majority of your money should probably go into the grinder versus the brewer. But yeah, a good a grinders investment, but you can get a good one and we've we've used our grinder for 15 years now and I use it every day and it works great. So

I was going to be fancy and a couple years ago bought a hand grinder it's you know, one of the you know, whatever bird grinders that what I don't know what they make the plates out of is it like stone or something? thing and you know, man, it takes like 20 minutes to cry and buy coffee for tomorrow. And every time I break that thing out Emily kind of eye rolls and it's just like, do you really want to spend 20 minutes hand grinding your coffee so we have to figure out a better way to do that.

Yeah, it can be a workout for sure

it is and we just got a new coffee maker that has a grinder in it but I've no idea the quality of that. We inherited the coffee pot from a friend who was done with it. So I don't know I've never tried it.

I would just go to if you want to get wire cutter has you know New York Times website where they review different appliances and things like that. I think they have a pretty good assortment of grinders. They recommend you can get you know three different levels. Whether or not you want to get the the Mercedes Benz or the Hyundai. Well, Hyundai is probably as good as Mercedes Benz nowadays, but showing my age, but you know, there's different levels and different obviously different price points for grinders, but yeah, I'm not up to date with that. So probably not the expert on grinders right now since since we bought our grinder so long ago and it works great. But I would check out the wire cutter and see and see what they recommend. As far as brewers bonavita is a company that has some really good brewers for the price. I mean, you can get a really nice Brewer drip Brewer for about 120 bucks. And we had one and I use it all the time. And it's great. It gets the It Gets the water hot enough and you brew into a thermal carafe, which is don't so don't ever get one of those with a with a heat the coffee because all it does is burn a coffee brew into vacuum craft and just put the lid on it. And that's the best way to do it.

Most of them have the warmer under them. So you're saying don't even use that drink, you brew your coffee and then pour it in something to keep it warm.

Well it actually mine actually brews directly into the thermal carafe. So once it goes in there in the craft is super efficient. So you could not that I'd want to but you could put a cap on, put the lid on it and it'll keep the coffee piping hot for like an hour and a half. And which, you know, coffees a pot of coffee is not gonna last very long around us. So, but yeah, the ones brew into there and don't ever reheat the coffee because what happens is, it can actually turn rancid. And as you can imagine, it's not a very tasty cup of coffee after that.

That's interesting. I'm sure I've had rancid coffee I don't know. Exactly, but yeah, I mean, I've had leftover reheated coffee, and then coffee that we've poured into a cup and stuck in the fridge uncovered and then the next day it's like kind of funky like I think we have this iced coffee and then you're just kind of like this isn't that good? I believe that's why people put a lot of sugar and almond milk into their coffee. To overcome those things. very controversial topic. You're not a fan. creamish like, do you personally you don't personally put creamer sugar in your coffee do

I typically do not. That's a, it's I'm not, it's not that I'm against that at all. In fact, you drink coffee the way you want to drink it, if it if it if it makes you happy, then drink it. Because ultimately isn't that what it's all about is, you know, pleasure and a little bit of caffeine, but you want to enjoy it. But I found that if you if you drink, my experience and some of the experiences of others that I witnessed, if you drink a better cup of coffee, you'll find that actually you don't need to add sugar to it. or, or, or milk or cream to it because it's just not necessary. So a lot of a lot of I think a lot of coffee sins are overcome by adding lots of additives to it.

Well, I think one of the most interesting things I've heard is I saw Ferran Adria talk it's probably been like 12 years ago. Go. And he talks about this. He said, you know, chefs, it's funny, they hate blind seasoning, like, you know, a plate of food comes out of restaurant people automatically put salt and pepper into. But he said 99% of the people blind season their coffee, right? Like, especially in a coffee shop, you go into any coffee shop, and you say, oh, I'll take you know, one cream two sugars. He said, You didn't even try it first, like this cup of coffee. That's this style from Starbucks is different from this coffee at Dunkin Donuts from this one. Every roast is a little different. And not that it's bad or wrong to put cream and sugar in it. But you should be taking that coffee and then trying it and then adjust it based on that. And that's, you know, not something that we even think about here in the United States. You just go into the coffee shop and say, you know I'll take that with one cream, two sugars, but you're basically blind seasoning it I mean, your barista isn't trying the coffee and adjusting based on that and maybe they should maybe there's some high end coffee shops that do that. I don't know.

Well, I think I think a large part of that is because coffee is such a ritualistic part of the day. And so people are kind of drinking it. It's in the morning. So a lot of people's brains are foggy, they don't want to think about a lot. So they're just mindlessly going through a routine that they've done, you know, every day of their adult life. And so that's what they do people and human beings, we love routine, we love consistency and all of that, but it's really with anything if you really want to have a better sensory experience, you know, you kind of want to adjust it to the way you like it. So yeah, I agree. If I ever find myself somewhere, if I'm on the road, and I have to go into a coffee shop, that's like I said, I don't have time to research and find out what's the best one I was going to Starbucks or whatever. I'll get the coffee and I'll try it and they usually get the drip. And sometimes I'll I'll try it and I'll Put a little bit of I've never put sugar coffee, but I'll put a little bit of milk or cream in the coffee.

Yeah, I sometimes like a little half and half in there. I don't do sugar. I used to do milk and sugar when I was younger and now like maybe just a little hit of half and half in there.

Yeah, I think, you know, as far as the sugar goes. I think that's as an Americans we like a lot. A lot of things have sugar in them a lot of hidden sugar as you as you well know, and things and we start weaning ourselves off of that, we find that you really, you find that you really don't need it as much.

That's how I like my iced coffee though. I don't think I've ever had black iced coffee like for whatever reason, that's not my thing. I'll take a nice mug of black coffee in the morning. But in the afternoon, if I'm gonna have iced coffee, I want it to have both milk or cream and sugar and not overly sweet, not that syrupy sweet, but just like something I don't know. That's just how I've always drank my coffee. And for me that's like almost like an indulgence as I love a good Afternoon cup of like, cold creamy, a little sweet iced coffee

with some ice. Yeah, no, it's great during the summer, when it's warm outside to have that, but I never had it without milk and sugar either until I tried, I believe that Ethiopian yirgacheffe a, I tried it without any type of anything in advance sugar didn't have milk in it. And it was fantastic. But that being said, Your CEF A is a very distinctive type of coffee. It's almost has a tea light characteristic to it. So it really worked well without having to add anything else into it.

Do you still go out and try a bunch of different coffees at the store? Do you go to the grocery store and pick up a bag that you've never heard of just to try it?

I'm the worst for that. No, I don't really not not looking at what else is out there and trying different things I used to in the past but I think That part of my education is kind of over with cuz because there Yeah, I used to do that but you can only drink so much bad coffee after a while it's like well, yeah, I know what I'm gonna get.

Do you like acidity in coffee because I really hate it. I've had some coffees. I don't know if that's a trend now, but it seems like you go and get these coffees and I especially notice it with like the Nitro cold brews from you know, like the really well known places. It almost tastes like like there's lemon juice in there and I find it really off putting.

So there has been a trend for a while to lightly roast coffees, and some of them I would some I would actually call under roasted some that I've tried and these are at coffee events. So it's not like you know, people didn't know what they're doing. And it's really not my favorite. I like acidity in coffee, but when it's under roasted. It's actually almost an astringent, sour flavor in that I do not like It all i don't i don't understand what would be desirable, but I do like acidity and coffee. But not to, again, not under roasted but like, for example, a lot of East African coffees do have a high amount of acidity in and they're wonderful coffees. So it's hard to say when you say acidity. To me, I'm not exactly sure what you're talking sour like

I saw, you know, I really wanted to get into these. You see all these like Nitro cold brew, like Stumptown, and whatever these really well known blue bottle that you just like pick up out of the fridge at the grocery store, and everyone I've gotten, like, it's disgusting and you're paying like $3 for them and you pop them open and it's to me I would just say sour. It's almost like having like a sour beer like it goes or something. And I just don't understand the draw of that at all.

I will go out and I will I'm gonna seek that out because I want to find out exactly what how, what my experience is compared to yours with those and see what you're talking about. But yeah, when Try that, because I'd like to understand, you know, the transit, what they're doing and and all that. So educate your palate Oh, it's a good thing.

Don't start making sour cold brew. But I do love your your cold brew concentrate rep recipe and that's on your website or somewhere isn't it was that a blog post

or something and I've sent it to you a couple times as well. And I think I brought some cold brew, concentrate over to you as

you did. And we, for years had the recipe on our fridge. So now as we get back into summertime and drinking more, I'm sure we'll be making batches of that because that's really an awesome way to make your iced coffee.

Yeah, we can I can dig that up and we could put in the show notes. But essentially what the cold brew concentrate is, is taking a coffee and grinding it up and then just steeping it and cold water in there in the refrigerator for about 12 hours. And then you filter off all the solids and then you have a resulting concentrate which you can then dilute, either with cold water or milk, and it makes a really refreshing drink in the summer.

I always thought that was so weird 20 plus years ago when we were living in Seattle, they used to do that at SBC where Emily worked and they called it the Tati method. And if they had, you know, it was almost like the 70 that everyone's into, you know, you got drugs and water and put out, and I thought it was so gross and weird then was like, well, for ice coffee, we just throw the coffee in this thing and let it sit them like, really, that's how you make iced coffee. That's kind of gross, but I guess they were really ahead of the time. You know, that was Seattle in the year 2001. And I just remember thinking, This isn't how you make iced coffee.

Well, the extraction is really different because you're using cold water. So you're not extracting the same compounds out of coffee that you would or the same way as you would if it were hot water. So a lot of the acidity that you would pull out of it. When it's hot, you don't get in a cold brew. So it's a very smooth, smooth brew. So if you're not a fan of people out there aren't a fan of acidity, try some cold brew, brewed with that method. And I think you'll, you'll see a difference.

Now I think I have to go make a batch of that this afternoon.

Yeah, we do, too.

So what has been one or a couple of your biggest challenges as an independent business owner are there? I'm sure you've had surprises or things you didn't think about, but kind of looking back on your decade in having a coffee business, what are some of the big things that you've had to deal with?

I would say the biggest challenge is marketing. Because I'm a terrible marketer. I have I've been on I've been on TV, we did a morning show and in DC, and I thought that was going to like be you know, that's where we're going to tip over and everything. And I started looking the metrics on my website. And it was like crickets. And I think I got a couple of orders off of that. So I think figuring out the marketing aspect of it, it's been the hard part of it. Luckily, right now, like I said before, I'm not really trying to grow the business right now. And we have a lot of established customers that are big fans, and we've, they've done us, right, we've done them, right. But I would say, yeah, marketing is probably the hardest part of it. I mean, that's

one of the things we're talking about a lot. I mean, as we're all solo business owners, or most of us who are, you know, part of the chefs at restaurants and guests on the podcast, we're all in the same boat. I mean, I'm sure I'm a chef, I'm trained as a chef. I'm not trained as a marketer, and I don't really want to spend the money or have the money on a marketing agency. So how much of your day is dedicated to posting on Instagram, answering comments, doing doing a Facebook ad all that stuff? It's a lot of time, but I do enjoy it. Because I get to meet people like you, you know, I wouldn't have met you had I not been on On Twitter trying to grow my audience and my network. So a lot of good comes out of it that way, but it is exhausting, especially once you do hit that level of, you know, I mean, I guess we're always kind of looking for more business. But once you're kind of not looking to grow it as much, how much do you continue to do?

Yeah, you have to wear a lot of hats. Obviously, as a, as a small business owner, you have to pretty much be pretty much in charge of everything. And then yeah, how much time do you do you dedicate to one aspect of the business versus the other. And you obviously you want to make your time be user time as most effectively as possible. And then there's the added challenge of you know, social media, things can get twisted so easily and get mis misrepresented and stuff. So yeah, it's tough. So that's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Do you have anything you want to leave our listeners with before we get out of here today?

Well, just check us out on The website and see what we're up to. We pretty much have always have Santa Barbara coffee. I've got some of that in stock all the time I try to stock up on that as my regular coffee. But I would say that the our focus is really on origins we want to we want our customers to experience what it tastes like the difference between a Costa Rica coffee and a Colombian coffee, Brazilian coffee. So we really want to focus on the coffee itself and not necessarily blends. But yeah, just check us out. You know, check out the brewing notes. Will you know the brewing techniques we'll put in the show notes and and keep and just find a local roaster no matter where you are in the world. I think the best improvement of your coffee is going to find a local local roaster, small roaster you know, give back to them and keep bringing coffee.

Yeah, and we do have very comprehensive show notes. So that Be in there, everyone will be able to find your website. I'm definitely gonna make sure I put in there your ratio for brewing a cup of coffee. So I think that's some of the best stuff we can be sharing.

All right, well, appreciate it. And thanks for reaching out and give me a chance to speak to your listeners.

Absolutely. So for all of our listeners, this has been the chef's without restaurants podcast. As always, you can find us on the web at Chester that restaurants calm and org and on all social media. Thanks and have a great week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai