(12/29/09)
Happily, there were quite a lot of Shrub orders before the holiday and all throughout. Thanks! On the flip side, we are working on limited hours and with a bit less staff. The main man who has been fulfilling your orders, Josh, is out, and with the rest of the crew so busy with Sweet Maria’s shipping, I (Tom) stepped in to do all the packaging. And it was a lot of packaging at that! (My sample roaster is being retooled anyway, so there was a cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... ...more room hiatus). Anyway, my priority was to get your orders out to you, but we are still trying to work on our vac pack system, and to avoid using Priority Mail boxes … which was just an interim thing anyway. I am afraid that some of the vac packs shipped disappointingly soft, with some movement of the coffee. We are going to fix this to shoot for all vac pack bricks arriving at your door hard and tight. But rest assured that we are nitrogen-flushing all of the packages, so even if there is some bean movement, we have minimized oxygen in the packaging. If you plan on cellaring green coffeeGreen coffee refers to the processed seed of the coffee tree fruit. Coffee is a flowering shrub that produces fruit. The seeds of the fruit are processed, roasted,... ...more (or if you are one of those insane “I freeze green coffee” people, I would choose the tight bricks for long term storageGreen coffee can be stored much longer than roasted coffee: Roasted coffee starts to lose its aromatics in 10 days after roasting. Green coffee can be stored months... ...more and the softer ones for earlier use, just to be on the safe side. Also, if you get a few loose beans inside the box, this does not necessarily mean there is a hole in your vac bag. When I packed I notice that I sometimes get a few beans on the box accidentally. Just an FYI on that. Anyway, we are not entirely content with our methods and will continue to improve them. Already we switched to our metalized nylon foil bags, rather then the clear nylon bags we used initially. We also intend to continue to re-use the Dormans outer boxes when we can, because we think re-use is the best way to recycle. We hope you agree… -Tom
