It's Official!

That's what he told me after he drank the last pot of liquid heaven that I roasted for him. "You have officially now become my coffee provider."

Our pastor at church is a budding coffee snob. Many months ago I gave him a gift of roasted coffee and now that's all he wants. Also, I have been asked to roast the coffee for the church so the VOX can have the freshest and best coffee for their guests. So, I've been learning about the legal side of roasting coffee as a business - you know, getting the food inspector involved and everything. But as intimidating as it was to get the Michigan Department of Agriculture involved, the most daunting task has been figuring out how to price the stuff. Without going into all the details I have landed on a position. What I provide is unique in that the coffee that I sell is #1 - Fresh and #2 - Small-batch/hand-roasted.

When I say that what I sell is fresh, what this means is that every batch that I sell just came from the roaster. Coffee stales two-weeks after roasting so this means that the coffee that you buy from the store is most likely already stale. People never really notice this because they have never had fresh before. And when I say that I hand-roast a small-batch I mean that when the large stale-coffee providers roast coffee they will dump a 50# bag of green beans into a computer-controlled-commercial roaster where I only roast 2/3 of a cup of green beans at a time. Roasting good coffee is more of an art rather than a science and coffee is finished cooking when the beans declare it - not when the timer dings. Each cup of blessed nectar is (and should be) it's own spiritual experience.

So now, it is official. Under the rules of the great State of Michigan's Cottage Food Law I have begun selling my fresh roasted coffee to my friends and family for $.875 per ounce which equates to just $14.00 a pound. I compared this to the coffee that is for sale in the local grocery store and I saw a 12oz. bag of char-bucks for almost $10.00 which equates to about $.833 per ounce. Is there cheaper coffee to buy than mine - yep. Is there better coffee than mine? Maybe, but my pastor and the people of VOX Church will be hard pressed to locate it.