My other favorite beverage...

Just finished loading two fermenters with some homebrew.

The carboy on the left has an American wheat beer, which I have to admit I got a little lazy with. Didn't do too much hoping or adding specialty grains or extracts... just a straight wheat extract with liberty hops. Hopefully, it isn't too boring.

The white bucket on the right has a new version of my Orange Juice Beer. It should be a nice light amber ale with a strong orange flavor. I've done a couple different varieties of this beer for the summer in the past it always works out well.

If you are picking up coffee towards the end of May, ask me about it and we'll split a bottle!

Speaking of coffee- I have a couple new coffees on their way! A new variety of Sumatra Gayo Mountain and a Tanzanian Peaberry. They should be in stock by the end of the week and, of course, more details will follow shortly... But I can tell you that the samples I had were outstanding!

Fundraising fun...

Last night was the fundraiser for the Precision Concrete Mountain Bike team. Rouge Roastery donated some swag and sold some coffee. Bryan and Brian took good care of RR, and I got several comments from folks who have ordered and enjoyed the coffee. All I can say is, keep ordering!

The Allies (an accoustic band centered I believe in Westland) rocked, while Julie & I enjoyed a few glasses of Sacred Cow IPA and Oberon.

It was a great evening and hopefully the fundraising was successful!!

Good luck at Bloomer today, team! Go kick some kiester!

Earth Day ponderings

To honor Earth Day, I plan to bike to work, use CFL bulbs, recycle my paper and plastic waste, and clean up a local park. Pretty much everything I do on a regular basis already. So, why blog about that?

Well, I've been looking for more environmentally friendly ways to roast coffee as well. Roasting coffee throws off a lot of smoke and uses a lot of natural gas. I have been debating about a switch to propane from NG because of its higher thermal capacity, thereby perhaps using less gas overall. But switching to propane doesn't help solve the fact that when you roast beans, they are throwing off carbon. There are a few solutions to this problem, though they seem to go from the slightly unreasonable to the ridiculous...

1. an afterburner installed on the roaster essentially incinerates the smokes - a weird concept, but the data I've seen shows it works. The downside to this is additional gas and energy consumed to basically burn up smoke (which does produce smoke, but far, far less)
   
2. a solar powered roaster - which requires a move to a sunnier and warmer climate (or stop roasting for 6 months out of the year). Neither of these seem likely any time soon.
3. Build my own roaster that captures heat from the afterburner to roast the coffee faster and with less gas. Hopefully, that new, freshly incinerated flavor won't draw too much attention away from the beans.
   

On the home front, my wife and I have been talking about new and better ways to serve the environment as well. My latest crazy scheme (which frankly won't ever get off the ground) is to buy a diesel car and start making my own biodiesel for it. It's not much of stretch, since I already brew beer, but I could tell from the eye-roll that I got when I revealed that plan, that it was DOA. I suppose that I probably should start more simply with something that doesn't require buying a new car first....

Oh well.

What are you doing for Earth Day?

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Big Dave

More coffee marketing babble...

I find the challenge facing Starbucks to be fascinating. Declining sales, slowing growth of stores, and slumping stock prices.

Starbucks has approached these challenges with basically an eye towards marketing:
1) New products - a new line of espresso and single cup machines are on the way; a new energy drink is on the way; new health drinks are being tested; a new coffee blend that will be standard in all stores
2) Customer experience - retraining of their baristas; grinding beans in the store so stores smell like coffee; reducing store introductions to avoid being "McDonalds" of the coffee world (too late)
3) Rebuild customer loyalty - a new frequent user card is being introduced

Essentially, Starbucks is fighting to again become the "local" coffee shop. The real interesting thing is that they have a huge leg up on the competition with built in loyal following that I firmly believe Starbucks could only turn off by hitting them with sticks as they enter... maybe not even then. Of course the local coffee shop has huge advantages as well: they are underdog (never under estimate the power of being the underdog, just ask John McCain), they are often higher quality, and they are usually run by friendly, nice, folks who are engaged in the community. They may not be able to compete with Starbucks on marketing power, but they sure as hell can compete on the customer experience.