In case you missed it, here’s a rerun of our Saturday informal open house.
Sweet Maria’s had some “open house” hours last Saturday at the retail space / warehouse, and thank you to all who dropped in. We weren’t totally sure what to do or what people were looking for, so we just set some things up that we thought people might be interested in and opened the doors. We had the new Aiden out brewing coffee as well as some roast analysis tools and even a whole Clever Coffee Dripper immersion brewing experiment that we didn’t even end up using.
We hope this can be a monthly recurrence … even if it’s just giving local folks a chance to pick up their online order outside of our M – F hours. We also saw that there was a lot of interest in getting roast feedback which we’ll work to make a regular feature of future Second CrackAfter First Crack, a roast reaction around 440 to 450 degrees that is distinguished by a snapping sound. Second Crack is the second audible clue the roaster-operator receives... Saturdays in some form or another.
We know some of you wanted to drop by and couldn’t, so here’s a snapshot of what happened, in text and photos:
Walking through the warehouse was nice, and lead to a lot of good questions and discussions about how we source coffee, handle it, store it, manage lots etc.
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8 Responses
Was well worth the time to stop by and learn. Checking this newbie’s roasts and providing feedback was great. Seeing the roasts side by side helped me understand some of what my machine was telling me. And being able to pick up purchases on a weekend vs. shipping was convenient.
One idea for the next one is perhaps doing some roasts together to be able to discuss the process as a group to learn from Tom and each other. And then cupping what we roast to understand the differences.
Great idea for the next one.
Thank you for what you do . I hope to attend one of your future Saturday events. I couldn’t say enough good things about your enterprise. I wore my sweet marias t shirt yesterday in cascais portugal and ran into a local roaster selling his wares. Coffee crosses language is all I can say.
Hi Tom, Maria, and all the folks at SM:
I am a long time customer, circa 2007, when we lived in Mendocino. I started with the Westbend “The Poppery” and have long-since evolved to the Behmor (now on my second unit). I actually did an “order pickup” once in your Emeryville location. I’d say it was a polite but not particularly cordial interaction—more of a “here ya go, have a nice day” no time for questions or small talk situation. It’s been fun to watch SM’s evolve and glad to see more focus on the customer experience. The idea of a regularly scheduled “Second Crack” event is a good one, though my relocation to the Olympic Coast will likely prevent me from ever attending in person.
I’ve certainly noticed a more marketing-focused effort (email comms) over the past eighteen months or so. I particularly enjoyed the emails noting scheduled future arrivals, which appears to have been discontinued. That was very helpful as I tend to make 20lb orders and knowing what’s coming was very helpful. Keep up the good and best of luck.
Thanks for being with us so long. Yes I think things have evolved and I hope for the better. Now that we have an actual space to receive people at the front, I think there’s a better vibe. We have a mix of locals it seems, some who really want to just grab their order and go, others who have some questions and need info- hopefully we are doing much better with both.
We DO actually have that feature to alert people on incoming coffee and it’s our regular post here in the library section called Green Coffee Outlook. There’s a new one coming out this nest week. It has been a popular place for people to see what’s coming with the latest updates are, but maybe we need to get that into our email with the link so it’s clear where we are posting that information and helping people to find it better. Good suggestion!
Question, in the link above you mention 1st crack occurs around 440 to 450 degrees. Latter, when you discuss 2nd crack you state it occures at the same temperature range. Is this correct? It’s not what I’m seeing.
Thanks
Yes something is wrong there. First crack generally we are seeing between 400 to 405 with a bean probe. Second crack is more like 440 f, sometimes 435 f sometimes up to 445 f depending. Must have crossed wires there. Good catch.
Thanks for doing this and hope there will be more to follow. It was my first visit. I will plan to stay longer and chat next time with a sample of my roasts. Always open to learning how to improve on home roasting gear.