What's in a name?

It's been an eventful week. I spent about 4 days in Clearwater, Florida with the manufacturer of the Coffee roaster we are buying. I learned a ton - not only about how to use and maintain the machine, but about the business of buying, roasting, packaging, marketing, and selling coffee. It was a bit overwhelming.

Before my brother and I left for Florida, we made an offer on some commercial space that we are pretty excited about. It looks like it is going to happen. We have a few details to finalize and some discussions with the city about permitting before we sign the lease. We are hopeful though.

While we were gone we received all our paperwork from the state. We are official now. Our company's name is... are you ready?

Mark's Brothers BIG WORLD Coffee Roasters.

This company is a partnership between my brother Brian and myself. Our oldest brother Mark is not really part of the business. He doesn't even care that much about coffee. But, seeing as though Brian and I are both "Mark's brothers" we thought we would include him in our title.

The "Big World" part comes from our desire to expand people's view of the world. We want to do that in a few different ways. First, we want to expand people's world by introducing consumers to the individuals that grow their coffee. Coffee is grown by real people who harvest and process their crop by hand in some of the most beautiful yet poverty stricken places on the planet. Our view of the world needs to expand to include people like these - places like these. So often, our own personal world tends to get so small and closed in around us - my friends, my job, my house, my family, my stuff. But it is a big world filled with exotic places and wonderful people made in the image of God.

We also want to expand people's world by introducing coffee flavors that most people have never tasted. And, when I say "flavor" I am not talking about "hazelnut" or "vanilla" - I am talking about flavors of origin. Each country, each region, each species of coffee plant has it's own flavor profile that is apparent when the coffee is roasted properly. I have been roasting and drinking exotic specialty coffee for several years now. I continue to come across flavors I have never tasted before. If you had to, could you tell the difference between a coffee grown in Tanzania vs. one grown in Burundi? What about Papua New Guinea vs. East Timor? There are wonderful coffees being grown in places I have trouble finding on a globe. And each one is distinct. I think it is exciting.

To us - it's an adventure. It's an opportunity to be introduced to people we have never met before who live in places we know very little about - who are producing wonderfully distinct coffee.

We hope others are up for an adventure as well.

Met some cool people today

I took a road trip today down to Austin to meet with the owners of Third Coast Coffee Roasting Company. They graciously agreed to welcome me in, let me see their operation and answer my questions about starting a roastery. That kind of openness is extraordinarily rare in this business. No one wants to talk. Third Coast talked to me, however - and for that I am very grateful. I learned a lot today and met some really cool people. It was well worth the 7 hours I spent in the car.

Check out this awsomeness

This is the roaster we're getting. Ours will be red instead of yellow - which is even better.

Ok - here's the deal

For the last two months I have been living with my brother and his family - which has been great - in a sort of hectic, vacationing kind of way. We are still waiting for our house to sell in Kansas. It's under contract, but the buyers need their house to sell first - you know how it goes.

In the mean time I have been hanging out at my brother's and I have been scrambling to figure out what the next chapter of my life will look like.


Here's what I know so far. I am going to be following two paths at once.


Path number 1.

Chase Oaks Church (http://www.chaseoaks.org/) . I have had the opportunity over this past year to get to know a few of the pastors at the church where my brother attends. They have been gracious and generous in offering counsel and help as I have dealt with some pretty tough issues.
Now that I am in town they have given me the opportunity to help out with their arts/production team. I have oversight over the production of the weekend services. It's a pretty big church - 5 weekend services divided between two venues. And, those two venues have a very different feel and different target audiences. My role is to use my arts background and my pastoral experience to help shape those weekend gatherings.
The learning curve - at least technically - is fairly steep here at the beginning. There are a couple of software programs that I need to ramp up on pretty quickly. It's been great to hang out with some wonderfully creative and gracious people. It's just a part-time gig though and doesn't really pay the bills. So...

Path number 2

Coffee, coffee, and more coffee. My brother and I have decided to take the plunge and open a coffee roastery focusing on organic fair trade coffee. I have been home roasting for about 4 years, and during that time I have become more aware of the inequities of the global coffee exchange. Our desire is to not only sell wonderful coffee, but to run a roastery as an extension of my ministry and my heart to meet people at their point of need.


Here are some facts about coffee that you might like to know.


Coffee is the second-highest traded commodity in the world and fifty percent of it is grown on small family farms. In America alone 2.3 billion pounds of coffee is consumed each year and for every daily coffee drinker there is a worker that depends on the crop for his or her livelihood. But the majority of small family farmers are living in poverty. They don’t have the money or the means necessary to transport their crop from their mountain-growing communities to their local market. They must rely on local middlemen to buy their crop from them. Forced to sell at rock-bottom prices with no other means of income and no other option to exhaust, the small coffee farmer gets stuck in a cycle of dependency that becomes impossible to break.



That's where "Fair Trade" organizations come in. These organizations gather farmers into producing coops (giving the farmer much more selling power). Distribution channels can then be provided to these coops so that they can sell directly to importers and bypass the typical auction system and all of its middlemen. Organizations like TransFair set a minimum "fair" price for coffee increasing the likelihood that growers could make a living off their crop. And, cutting out middlemen means that even though the growers are receiving more per pound - the consumer is not paying much more for a Fair Trade product.

It's a great idea - and it's working.

Part of the Fair Trade premiums that coops receive are retained by the coops and used for community development projects in the communities where the farmers live. I've been so encouraged to read report after report of schools and health clinics and wells and bridges being built - all through Fair Trade premiums. I love that.

My hope is that others will love it too.

Needless to say, the last month has been full of research - researching commercial roasters and packaging equipment, semi-industrial lease space, sources for green organic fair trade coffee, sales and distribution channels, etc. Lots of information gathering.

We have a name (but it's not legal yet - hopefully this week - I'll let you know). Our roaster will be arriving at the end of the month. I'll be attending a four day class next week in Florida to learn how to use and maintain our new roaster. Our hope is to be up and running by early February. We have a daunting amount of work to do before then.

The focus of our new business will be:
1. Wholesale roasting for restaurants, cafes and churches who want a fresh roasted, values driven product to provide for their customers.
2. Private label wholesale roasting - for shops and cafes who wish to resell our coffee under their label.
3. Retail sales through our web site. (coming soon)
4. Fundraising - for schools and church youth groups who desire to sell something a little more values driven than cookie dough and popcorn.

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'll keep you informed.

Espresso saga

A couple of weeks ago our espresso machine died. I don't know what's wrong with it. And I am not the most mechanical of men - not really one to take a something apart and fix it. So, I am not quite sure how to find out the problem. I cleaned it real good. Descaled it and all. But, alas... nothing. I talked to the tech people over the phone and they told me it was out of warranty. Of course. They were not much help. They told me it could be this one thing... but, then again it might not. And, the part that might fix the machine is on back order for a few weeks. Lovely.

I know that the responsible thing for me to do is to wait patiently for the part to come in and see if it does the job. That would the reasonable thing to do. What I have actually been doing is waiting rather impatiently and searching the Internet to find a good deal on a better espresso machine... an upgrade. Nothing so far. The machine I had was already pretty nice. An upgrade would cost lots of $. I can't really justify it. We only do a couple of espressos per day.

So, I am trying something new - a stove top espresso maker. I picked one up at a discount store last night. It was super cheap - not much of a loss if it turns out to be a dud. I have always been a bit leery about stove top espresso makers. I am a bit fuzzy on the physics of the whole thing. (But, in all honesty, it doesn't take much to make me fuzzy about the physics of anything.)

And, I read somewhere that stove top espresso machines are what real Italians use in thier homes. I have always wanted to be like a real Italian.

We tried it out this afternoon. Not bad. Not bad. It would probably be more accurate to call it really, really strong coffee instead of espresso since there is no crema on the top (that dense foam on the top of properly extracted espresso). But the flavor was good. I think it should make good "iced Americanos" (which is our favorite summertime drink).

So, I think we may have found a substitute until our machine gets fixed.

It's a good day.

The Coffee Expert

Up until recently I was the resident coffee expert in the family. That is, until my wife became a bonifide "barista".

Kelly took a job at our favorite hang out in town, called "Lincoln Perk". It's a pretty cool place - good coffee, espresso drinks, panini sandwiches - they even sell "gelato" (a special kind of ice cream). Kelly will be working very part-time, but she hopes it will allow her to get some much needed adult interaction every week, help her meet people outside of our church and bring in a little extra money for fun stuff as a family. She is enjoying her new job. I am very happy for her.

Only one problem - I am not sure how I feel about her being the new coffee expert around here. She was telling me the other day about the technique difference between steaming milk for a latte and frothing milk for a cappuccino. News to me. It made me feel kind of strange.

I feel like I need to hand over my frothing pitcher and espresso cups to the new sheriff in town.

That's ok - I guess. I still have my grill. I am still the king around here when it comes to grilling burgers and steaks.

That is - until Kelly decides to learn how to do that too.

International Coffee Broker

There is an orphanage in Honduras that several of the folks from our church help out with. We sent a team down last week with a whole 18-wheeler size trailer full of supplies (including an x-ray machine for a local hospital there, several thousand bottles of antibiotics and 100 wheelchairs - among other things). Very cool.

My one request of the team - find me some good coffee to bring back. But, I don't want roasted coffee that will go stale in a couple of weeks - I want green coffee, still in the burlap sack (I roast my own coffee). And, it needs to be good quality, high grown Arabica beans. No problem, right?

They quickly informed me that I would need to tell them where to go and who to talk to get those beans. This proved to be much more difficult than I thought it would be.

I should have realized that stateside coffee wholesalers would not be too eager to tell people like me where to get good quality coffee. (Current "fair trade" price is about $1.39/lb - which means market driven, non fair-trade coffee has to be around $1/lb or less. And, considering the fact that coffee roasting is not a terribly difficult or expensive art - it is amazing that the same $1/lb coffee is being sold for $12 -$16/lb or $1.50-$4/cup in coffee shops. No wonder Starbucks is making a killing.) That being said, I was very much on my own.

I found a promising Honduran Fair Trade Coffee Cooperative web site. Too bad it was all in Spanish (and Google translator wouldn't work). My four years of Spanish in middle school and high school did me no good - what a waste. For a few brief moments I tried to muster my courage to make the international call to the phone number on the web site. But, I just knew someone would answer and say, "hola, como estas?" - and I would be completely lost. I wrote down the phone number and the address and gave it to our team. "Call them" I said. It was the best I could do.

One of the team members called me yesterday to tell me they couldn't get a hold of anyone at that number. On to plan "B". They said they talked to someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who... could connect them to a grower up in the mountains. Who knows what they will get. Who knows if they will be able to get the beans past customs. They might have to "smuggle" it. They'll probably get arrested. I'll probably get arrested. You'll probably see me on the news.

All I wanted was coffee.

Thoughts about coffee grounds - part 3

Ok - this will be my last post concerning the coffee grounds illustration. I most likely have already stretched this analogy to the breaking point. I will try to be brief.

It is clear from Scripture that Christ's followers are to impact the world around them. We are salt and light. In my own "you are the coffee of the earth" kind of way, I am drawing a similar analogy with coffee. Coffee has limited usefulness if it can't properly influence the hot water it comes into contact with. But, coffee has to be broken and burned before it can be used. It seems to me that as followers of Jesus Christ, we must resist the temptation to hide all of our failings and pretend to be someone we are not. We live in the midst of a broken and burned world filled with broken and burned people and our message is that of redemption. The pain and the junk that we all go through, the mistakes that we have made, the people that we have hurt – they are, in the hands of our loving Heavenly Father, our greatest messages of salvation. That God could love me, be patient with me, bestow His grace on me, bless me – even me! That is the greatest message my life can ever preach.

God has not spared any of us from pain, loss, or the consequences of our own stupid decisions. He has let us make a mess out of things. Hasn't He? A very well known passage (Romans 8:28) says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Perhaps, along with other things, God is using our heartache to season us for greater influence.

As a pastor I have the privilege of hearing a lot of people's stories. There is a shocking consistency in the stories I hear about the journey to become more like Christ. The things which mold us, build us and change our lives the most are not the times of ease, pleasure, or blessing but rather the times of sin, suffering, and struggle. The greatest aspect of our personal story is not our perfection, but our pain. The fact that God can redeem the pain, use the mistakes, and bring beauty out of ashes – that's the glory of the gospel - that’s the message people need to hear. God has given each of us a powerful story to tell, but we must have the courage, the honesty and the vulnerability to tell it.

May I suggest the Monkey Blend?

I just came in from roasting what promisses to be a fine batch of coffee beans - Sweet Marias' Espresso Monkey Blend - one of my favorites. But, now I smell like smoke because I roast in the garage without any ventilation. When it is chilly outside I roast with the garage door closed so the cold air won't affect the roast times. But, when someone opens the door, smoke billows out. I am sure I get strange looks. What's that's pastor doing in his garage anyway?

Why do I roast my own coffee? Because fresh roasted coffee is really, really good. And, I can feed my caffeine habit for about $5 per pound - about half the price of Starbucks. If anyone is interested in learning more about roasting their own coffee - Sweet Marias is the place to start. I have a link on this blog. Sweet Maria's will teach you everything you needed to know, and more. But, if you try to roast your own, don't even think about doing it inside your home - you will set off every fire alarm and your house will not smell like fresh roasted coffee, it will smell like burnt popcorn - for days. Trust me on this.

Thoughts about coffee grounds - part 2

Ok - back to the coffee grounds. It's quite obviouse that the coffee grounds illustration is very similar to the illustration Jesus used when He called His followers “salt of the earth”. He went on to say that if the salt becomes tasteless, it has lost its usefulness. The point is clear. Salt is useful because of its beneficial influence on other things. And for 2,000 years the church has tried to determine what it means to be salt to its generation.

But what does it mean to become tasteless? I think we often end up communicating that only people who fit into an external mode of religious perfection are truly salty. It’s only the ones that have this Christian life all figured out, who don’t struggle much with sin and doubt and pain – those are the only ones who can truly represent Christ. That way of thinking causes a whole lot of us to just fake it – to look the part - to fit in to this Christian sub-culture that many of us are a part of. But, certainly that is not what Jesus meant by being “salty” is it? If so, the Pharisees of his day would have been the model for Jesus to point to. They were the religious elite and the model of religious perfection. They did everything right.

The New Testament church is filled with all kinds of people – selfish, bitter, angry, lustful, proud, hurt and wounded people. But, these are also people who have recognized their need for a savior and have placed their trust in Jesus Christ (or are on a journey toward doing so). They are people who have been burned and broken – who are being made whole but are not whole yet. The story of redemption is a painful one in all of our lives. It seems to me that coffee is not good in spite of the heat from the roaster or the pressure from the grinding wheel. It only has influence because of those things. Likewise, our brokenness (not just our brokeness before Christ, but our continued brokeness now) is a vital part of our redemption story. It has to be.

Thoughts about coffee grounds - part 1

I love coffee. I really, really do. Like a lot of people, my love for good coffee started when Starbucks showed up in my neighborhood. I was quickly hooked. My coffee interest has now, however, turned into more than a simple craving. On my kitchen counter is a drip coffee maker, a French press coffee maker, an espresso machine and a coffee grinder. In my garage I do my own coffee roasting with 6 (very beat up) hot-air popcorn poppers. I’ve pretty much gone over the edge.

As I roast coffee from all over the world, I’ve learned a lot about coffee beans and how good coffee is made. On its journey from the coffee plantation to my coffee cup, there are many variables that effect the flavor: the country of origin, the soil properties of the coffee plantation, the type of bean, the method and time of harvest, the method of drying, the time and temperature and “roast curve” to a particular method of roasting, the “rest time” after roasting (but before grinding), the coarseness of the grind, the method of brewing, the proportions of coffee to water and the amount of time the coffee is in contact with the water. Just to name a few.

Seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? Especially for a product that ends up being thrown in the trash – as my coffee grounds are.

The interesting thing about coffee is that its only value is in its ability to influence the water that is around it. And, when done right, that hot water is turned into rich, flavorful, aromatic, caffeinated wonderfulness. All the effort was worth it. But, if for some reason the coffee is not able to properly transform the water (perhaps because it is left in the bag and never used, or because it was not properly roasted or ground – whatever) then what good is it? Rarely does someone eat a coffee bean straight. If it doesn’t bring about the desired change in water, then coffee has very little use at all.