Final Day for the September Easter Egg Drawing.

Only 4 people have found the easter egg on the landing page of anchorbayroasts.com.  You could get your name added to the drawing by visiting and finding it too.  When you do, you have a chance at winning FREE coffee too!


Good Luck.

Happy Belated National Coffee Day!

I had never heard of such a thing but then a friend of mine told me about it, then I saw that another friend and his wife got "their free cup" at a popular doughnut shop.  I guess I should have jumped on the bandwagon huh? Well, it's not yet too late.


For everyone who submits an original poem about their love of coffee at the Anchor Bay Roasts website between now 11:59pm tomorrow night - I will put into a drawing for a 2.5oz package of my new Sumatra -  Iskandar Premium.  This Sumatran will not only make your vocal chords reflexively say "YUM" but I am betting that the lucky winner will become a coffee snob for life because all other coffee will pale in comparison. So let me hear the depth of your coffee love.  (Sorry, no international shipments or Alaska & Hawaii.)

Sumatra - Iskandar Premium

When the farmers (all women) pick the Iskandar berries they immediately remove the beans from the pulp and hand wash them in order to remove any excess pulp.  Then it is sent to the processor where it is sun dried and cured being raked and turned many times.  After the beans have dried they are hand inspected for quality and then only the best beans are allowed entrance into the Premium bag.  


It would take an economist to figure out how many man hours goes into each bean and then how many beans goes into each cup!


First off I noticed that the aroma shouts the character of this cup.  It rolls along with a rich earthy scent that begs you to come back for more.  My wife wondered if I was drinking her cup as I brought it to her but I merely had my nose buried in and smelling the wonderful promise.


I sat with my cup and blew and smelled for a while.  Then when I took a sip it was a perfect temperature.  I was delighted with a deep-earthy flavor that was pregnant with botanicals - but not flowery.  The body was creamy and rich setting heavy on the tongue and not at all watered down.  It was one of those coffee that illicited an audible "YUM" from me.


When I start my monthly coffee klatch roasting club (something that is begging to be begun) I think I will certainly be presenting this Sumatran.

New Service for Birthdays...

A friend asked me to make 5lbs. of coffee for her husband's birthday gift.  I declined.  Do I need the business - yes.  So why did I give up the opportunity?  Because 5lbs. will sit in someone's cupboard, fridge or freezer for quite a while.  Since coffee goes stale in just 2 weeks I don't want people making my coffee and thinking to themselves that it tastes just like the rest of the stale coffee that they drink.  So, I created The Coffee Gift and made it one of the services that I provide at Anchor Bay Roasts.  Check it out and get your co-worker, friend, or loved one one of the best gifts that you could ever get them.

A New Experience

Please do not worry, I am now and will always be a coffee drinker, but I need to discover a fun experience for my non-coffee drinking clients.  Today, I made a pot of tea with something called a "flowering" tea.  This is a hand-stitched bunch of teas that are sewn into a ball and when boiling water is added it slowly absorbed the water and blooms into a beautiful flower. After 4-5 minutes the tea is ready to be drank.

This was a fun experience for the whole family because the kids liked watching it bloom as well as tasting the result.  The tea seems to me to be what tea should be but the experience made it something that I would have loved to have done on a first-date. ;-)

On another note.  There is still time to visit www.anchorbayroasts.com (the landing page) and find the easter egg to be put in the drawing for the free coffee.  Good luck!

Which is True?

When I was a kid I always used to see my grandma with her coffee cup.  As I grew I learned that she did indeed drink coffee in the mornings but in the evenings it was actually Pabst Blue Ribbon in her cup.


I once went to a hoity-toity wine tasting in Lansing, MI and as I was standing behind a lady to get some wine I watched her get a glass of Merlot and ask the server for "a couple of packets of sugar" to put in her glass.  I was not actually appalled but I did find it amusing that she had not even tasted the wine and she was asking for an additive.  You know, good wine does not need sugar and if wine does it is not actually good wine.


The same is to be said about coffee - it actually has a good-tasting God-designed flavor that can be experienced in each cup.  If it does not then you either have bad coffee or you do not really like coffee to begin with.


What's in your cup?


anchorbayroasts.com

Do You Have a Poem in Your Soul?

Besides being a great warrior, King David was a man of great passion.  His Psalms are the music of the souls of men - and have been for thousands of years.  Like King David, many of us have deep emotions that spill from us like rains from the Michigan sky in the forms of the words that we write.  Do you have a passion for coffee?  Would you share it with the class?  We would be much obliged.

http://www.anchorbayroasts.com/poetry.html

You Charge How Much?!?!?

Well crap!  I had to increase the cost of the coffee that I produce or I was not going to be producing it for very long.  It is still less expensive by a 1/3 than most of the brick-and-mortar producers but it is not as silly inexpensive as I had first quoted.

Please click here to read about it.

My House Does Not Smell Like Fish...

The other night our family had baked tilapia and the house smelled of fish for a while.  This morning it smells like dark roasted coffee. ;-)  (See the last post to learn why).


Also, this morning I received my 2nd email alerting me that the easter-egg on the Anchor Bay Roasts homepage has been found.  That means there are now 2 people in the drawing to win FREE coffee.  Visit the website to find the easter-egg and you could be the third.

3.5 Pounds of Coffee...

Today I worked on roasting a couple of orders for Fresh Roasted Single Origin coffee.  In all I had to roast 3.5 lbs. of ground coffee which means that I had to begin with 4.3 lbs. of green coffee beans. (Yes, coffee does lose 20% of its weight when it cooks.)  I really need to work on some things if I am going to proceed.


First, I need to work on becoming efficient in the process.  It took me 4.5 hours to roast, grind, & bag the order.  I seriously underestimated the labor when I determined the price.  I think I priced the labor at $4.00 per pound - go me, I was paid a whopping $14.00 for today's performance. ;-)


Second, I need to work on getting better ventilation in my kitchen.  At one point the house was so thick from smoke that you would have thought it was a VFW hall at Happy Hour.  Having all the windows open in the winter is not going to cut it so I need to figure something out.


Third, I need to learn to train my children and then trust them to help.  They want to be a part of this but I keep seeing images of coffee grounds getting spilled on the ground and the shrinkage of my product increasing.  Yes, I know that I am a control-freak and I need to get over it.  I think I need some therapy.


On another note.  Someone found the easter-egg on www.anchorbayroasts.com today.  This is the first and only person this month who has found it so unless someone else does the drawing for the FREE coffee will be easy.  If you want to look its somewhere on the very first page.