Fourth Wave

I have been reading up on the light roast v. dark roast debate, and it has me rather intrigued. In case you haven't noticed, there is a light roast craze going on in the coffee world. Coffee geeks are calling this the "third wave" of roasting in the U.S., with the first wave being the distinguished Alfred Peet, and the second being Starbucks.

In wave one, Alfred Peet introduced us to specialty coffee. (This will require further definition in a future post, but for now think, stronger, darker, bolder than anything commercially available in the 1960's.) He roasted on an antique, 5-kilo machine at his shop in Berkeley, California. Here is a photo of the actual, original roaster, which lived in our house in California until we sold it for a larger, more practical, less sexy roaster.

In wave two, Mr. Peet taught the Starbucks guys how to roast, and they applied their marketing genius to take the latte international. As much as we all hate to give credit to the evil empire, they taught the masses to appreciate more flavorful, fuller-bodied coffee.

Now, here we are in the third wave, and I keep reading inaccurate and disparaging comments about any coffee that has gone beyond the 'second crack'--terminology that refers to darker roasts (and another future-post subject). Based on all I have heard about Mr. Peet over the years, I'm imagining him at least fidgeting in his grave. 

Jim's take on this debate is multi-faceted. First, it's largely a matter of personal preference. Jim recalls Alfred liked the smokiness imparted by the super-hot perforated drum on the old Royal pictured. Jim prefers a cleaner and lighter roast than that. Personally, I can't stomach a coffee so light it tastes like tree bark. Next, there is a certain art to developing each bean to its fullest potential in terms of flavor, body, acidity, and the proper balance. That's the 'art' in artisan coffee. Finally, it's about bean selection. Every bean has an ideal roast profile, be it light, French, or anything in between. Some people think the flavor nuances of the region or farm are basically cooked out of a darker roast. However, it is possible for a highly skilled roast master to maintain these subtleties while still developing body--but this often requires venturing beyond the second crack.

For Jim, this is where things get exciting. If you have met him, you will understand completely. He talks about bringing the coffee right to the edge of a cliff, and knowing the exact nanosecond to stop the roast to keep it from going over the edge. That was in the old days, barely pre-second-wave. Knowing where the edge of the cliff is allows him to step back appropriately and find the coffee's sweet spot. Jim's style is passionate, bold, and adventurous. I believe these qualities are evident in his coffee, the same way he believes that if he is having a hard day or strife at home, it comes through in the roast. We do what we can to prevent that, and roast happy coffee.

So, what will be the fourth wave?

ParamourCoffee.com

Our Website went live this week! We are excited, elated, relieved, and a little anxious.

ParamourCoffee.com

Jim turned the office into a shipping room. He dug his old tile tools out of the shed and installed a beautiful black granite tile counter. Now we can process orders in style! Here it is not quite finished. Holy boxes, Batman!  Let's see...we have coffee beans stashed underneath, G's pink beanbag, a Post-it just waiting to multiply, my keys to the right, because everything I do is on the fly. Gotta run! Buy coffee!

The Muffin Man

Jim has accused me of trying to turn his coffee shop into a bakery. When we opened, the plan was to have someone else come up with a few recipes and spend five or six hours each week preparing freezer-friendly items that Jim could thaw and pop into the oven. Then I could satisfy my baking urges at whim, with fun, seasonal treats.

That's pretty much how I roll with baking. I'm at the market, and if they have the most amazing grapes ever, I will figure out how to bake something yummy with grapes. So, to answer Jim: No, I do not want to turn your coffee shop into a bakery. That would require adopting a production line mentality, and that just isn't fun.

We started with the bacon-maple scones and salted bread sticks. A friend developed the recipes for us and made them for the first couple months. When she graciously bowed out, I had to take over, of course. If I had to do the baking, I was going to make what I wanted to make--and that was muffins.

There are two things I love about muffins. 1) You can get really creative and throw in almost any ingredients. 2) they are hard to screw up. I experimented with lots of different recipes, and soon concocted my own secret muffin base recipe. This now serves as the base for many of the exclusive muffins we sell, including peach cobbler muffins, ginger-pear muffins, and the best blueberry muffins in the world. Really. I bet I could eat four of those suckers on my way to work.

The thing is, the muffins sort of took off, and the scones are kind of famous now. I found myself at the shop every weekend and some weeknights, cranking out muffin batter, prepping up to 20 dozen muffins in a day. G was plopped in front of the computer to play games, unless we could find a friend to take her for a play date. I was not living the dream, and I was a bad mom to boot.

Enter "D". Never mind that he currently is our only employee; this kid is guaranteed to get Employee of the Year. With just a little training, he has taken over nearly all of the baking. He deciphers my chicken-scratch recipes. Jim springs ingredients on him, Iron Chef style. (Your secret ingredient today is....mangoes!) D powers through the baking with a positive attitude and a smile on his face, always asking, "how can I help next?" Mom and Dad of D, if you are reading this, congratulations--you've raised a winner, and we are grateful. You should be very proud.

So...I was at the market Friday, and the first peaches of the season had arrived. I got that excited, oh-the-things-I-can-bake feeling. If you've followed our Facebook page, you understand. At the end of last summer, in a desperate attempt to preserve a little bit of peachy goodness for a blustery winter day, I had a marathon peach-peeling session late into the night. I froze enough sweet, juicy peaches for about five dozen muffins. I waited, waited, and just when everyone was hating on winter and customers started dreaming out loud about peach cobbler muffins, I knew it was time. Then the freezer died, taking the peaches as collateral. It was a sad, sad day.

Meanwhile, back at the market...I bought those peaches on Friday. I bought enough for about five dozen muffins. Then I plopped my kid in front of the computer so I could blissfully peel, dice, mix, and create something delicious that happens to be the perfect accompaniment to a cup of frehly roasted gourmet coffee.

Web Launch

We are preparing to launch our Website and it is completely nerve-wracking.

It's 3:00 a.m. and I have been tossing and turning for a good hour, maybe two. I am in a sudden state of panic about our site design, which has been in development for months. Is it dynamic enough? Does it tell a compelling enough story for people to buy from us? Because if it is not, or does not, it will be very expensive and difficult to change.

Our developers have been great. They specialize in creating Websites that optimize themselves for the viewer's device. That makes our site just as easy to read and navigate on your cell phone as it is on your iPad or your laptop or your computer at work. (Now, everyone take a moment to admit we all have shopped online at work.) My goal for our site, from day one, has been to make it quick and easy to buy our fresh, roasted-to-perfection, artisan coffee. My worry is that we have sacrificed salesmanship for a too-clean design.

It looks cool and is largely free of distractions, but what is that one magic element that will make people believe they must, at this very moment, with the boss lurking perilously close-by, purchase a pound (or more) of coffee they have never tasted? Because I guarantee you will love this coffee. This is gourmet coffee at its finest. Pure latte love, java joy, espresso exhilaration. You must try this coffee because you will fall in love and you don't want to miss out on that fluttery feeling in your soul, do you? Can we just say that?

True story: A customer recently walked in and handed over a bag of coffee purchased from a competitor, asking Jim to throw it in the trash. This was $20-a-pound espresso from a company that has won major specialty coffee roasting awards. The customer had made one pot and found it simply undrinkable. She walked out of our store with four pounds of Paramour espresso, thrilled that she would never run out or be disappointed again. Yes. It is that good.

So, barring any glitches, paramourcoffee.com should launch in the next couple weeks. It will be a visually pleasing, easy-to-shop Website that a lot of people have poured their hearts into creating. I love the overall look and theme, which speak to our passion, vision, quirkiness, and the mood we want the Paramour brand to evoke. Be happy. Love your coffee. I think I feel better now. But it will take quite a bit of coffee to make it through the day.

The Beginning

Where to begin? If I were to ask my husband, Jim, he would say, “At the beginning.”  “Very funny,” I would reply.  “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.” Then he would say, with a glimmer in his eye, and the hint of a George Clooney head bobble, “I don’t need to. Why would you start anywhere else?”

Our very first photo together as a couple

Such is our life.

Our biggest struggle regularly revolves around which one of us is making sense—me in my uber-logical, analytical way, or he in his What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get way. Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to—that’s us. Yin and yang. Peanut butter and jelly.  He likes the meaty part of the bacon, and I like the fat. We like to think we complement each other more than we torment one another.

Which is why going into business together is fairly annoying, but also an amazing partnership. We have completely different skill sets. We take entirely different approaches to solving problems. We might as well speak different languages. But when we get over the language barrier and work toward a common goal, there is no stopping us.

Whether to start a coffee business was never a question. Practically from the day we met I knew it was a lifelong goal of his. He had done it before, too, but without financial resources or an incredibly supportive woman behind him.  The question became, “When do we start this business?”—as if we were planning our family, worried about whether we could afford this baby, educate it properly, raise it to be a productive member of society, or simply sleep at night.

When the time came, we both knew it as sure as our real child was down the hall, not sleeping. Jim flew into action. He found a storefront to rent. Bam! He started remodeling. Hallelujah, he started moving all the equipment from the last venture out of our house! At the same time, I started thinking. What do we call this strange, new baby? We tossed around hundreds of ideas. Nothing seemed appropriate. Nothing seemed to speak to the pure passion that was going into its creation. One idea was dropped due to its unpleasant definition in the Urban Dictionary.

Then, late one night as I was lying in the guest bed to escape the snoring, I asked myself, “Why are we doing this at all?”  That was when the answer came to me.  “Because Jim loves coffee.” One thesaurus look-up later, we had it: Paramour.

Here’s the catch. Most dictionary definitions of ‘paramour’ imply some sort of adulterous affair.  Jim definitely loved coffee long before I entered the scene. That would make ME the paramour.
Huh. I think I’m OK with that.

The end.

Just kidding. Hang on, because this is only the very beginning.