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THE FIRESTARTERS

By Christopher Schooley

Who are The Firestarters? They are the people who relish the intimate relationship with the flame afforded by coffee roasting. Many of them are recognizable by the singed hairs on their arms and the mischievous grins on their faces.

     We decided to talk with some of these roasters to find out what keeps them lit and see if maybe they’d tell us a story or two around the old chaff fire.

TODD WEILER is the coffee roaster for Flying Goat Coffee in Healdsburg, Calif.

Christopher Schooley: El Tiburon, what was your first serious job?

Todd Weiler: I got a job working for a family friend, he used to trick out these old run-down Volkswagen Bugs. He had a barn full of spare parts and a paint shop in his garage. I would mostly run for spare parts and tools and things, but it taught me a lot about identifying the potential in something. With a little vision and hard work, you can turn an overlooked piece of garbage into a thing of beauty.

CS: I ask that question because I think that it really says something about roasters and their personalities. Not necessarily because of the particular job, but in the visceral way in which they describe their early work experience.

TW: Well, definitely the whole working with your hands idea and the mechanics and what have you. Taking raw materials and creating something beautiful is extremely gratifying.

CS: I think it’s very much about applying yourself in this kind of sensory capacity. What is your earliest coffee memory?

TW: It was well known in my household growing up that my mother would not tolerate any fighting between my brother and myself until she had a chance to drink her first cup in the morning. It was that or being scolded for using up the entire carton of half and half on my morning cereal.

CS: That’s kind of gross. How did you become a coffee roaster?

TW: I moved to Chicago and didn’t have a job, so a friend got me in at a roasting facility working production. One thing led to another and I moved up to the roasters assistant position. Watching and learning from those guys, I developed a real appreciation for the craft that is coffee roasting. An artisan approach to coffee roasting has really fueled me over the years.

CS: What is your favorite part of roasting?

TW: My favorite part of roasting by far is digging deep into an arrival coffee, roasting and cupping over and over to find that sweet spot. Finding the perfect time and temperature to make that coffee sing is always fulfilling.

CS: What do you find the most challenging?

TW: I think the most challenging thing for me is being able to identify with our customers and what they like. The west coast style is still very much alive out here so while I might be really into a screamer of a coffee, I have to be aware that not everyone else is. We’re trying to change that though.

CS: Tell me what your typical roasting day is like.

TW: I fire up the Kestral at eight o’clock or so. I usually roast until one or two on the production roaster.

CS: How much are you roasting in a day?

TW: I do 600 to 700 pounds. I do somewhere between 10 to 15 roasts a day, ranging from a 40- to 70-pound charge, then move on to the sample roaster until three thirty or four and then cup for the rest of the day.

CS: What coffee origins have you visited, or which ones would you most like to visit.

TW: I have thoroughly enjoyed trips to Mexico and Nicaragua. In Mexico, I traveled with Caleb Mayhall to the Cepco Co-op in Oaxaca in order to assemble a special “mark” out of a number of different lots while sweating like mad in 110 degree weather.

CS: How many coffees did you cup in a day while you were there?

TW: I would say we cupped six or seven flights of 10 coffees each a day, and then narrowed it down to about five lots of coffee.

CS: I love that scenario. It’s like cupping boot camp. There is no better way of gaining an intimate knowledge of a coffee.

TW: What stuck out most in looking at all of these similar coffees that were mostly the same varietals—mostly caturra I believe—is that what made the most difference was what altitude the coffee had been grown at. The highest grown lot just kept popping out on the table as the best cup, only we didn’t know it was the highest grown coffee until well after the fact.

CS: What do you feel is the biggest issue facing the coffee industry today?

TW: I don’t know if it’s the biggest issue facing the coffee industry today, but I think it’s very important that we begin to be aware of the amount of waste that is produced in our roasteries and coffee shops and try hard to go as green as we possibly can as soon as we can. It was definitely the driving force behind us looking into the Kestral technology when we upgraded to a larger capacity roaster. For some companies, that is not an option based on their size, but the technology is there so hopefully it will be an option in the future. Unlike hybrid cars, it’s pretty sweet-looking as well.

CS: What was it like adjusting to the new roaster?

TW: At first it was really stressful. Installs always take some time and then trying to replicate the roast profiles we used on the former machine was a real challenge. It’s not technically a fluid-bed roaster but it feels like it draws more from those concepts than from drum roasting. I had never roasted on a fluid-bed roaster before so it was a totally different experience.

CS: Were you able to draw anything from your drum-roasting experience when you approached this new technology?

TW: At first I took all of my moves from my drum-roasting experience. Then I went into panic mode because it wasn’t working at all how I imagined it should. Now I’ve found my peace. Kind of by going full circle back to some of the basic ideas in drum roasting where you give the beans a lot of energy at the beginning and then as the beans assume that energy you draw off as much of the energy as possible.

CS: So, the biggest difference is in how that energy is delivered?

TW: The biggest difference is the efficiency of the energy through the heat circulation system. It allows you to be a lot gentler with the roast.

CS: I really appreciate a gentle heat transfer. I’m sure the beans do as well.

TW: You’re a real gentle kind of guy.

CS: Alright Mr. T, what is your best fire story?

TW: OK, here it goes. Back when I was in Chicago we had a stack fire in our 90K about 15 feet above the roaster and about five feet below the cement cutout that separated the afterburner room upstairs and the warehouse below. We all kind of stood there watching as a two-foot piece of the stack turned from its normal painted grey to red to almost white. Our head roaster, who had a bit of stack fire experience, grabbed the hose mounted next to the roaster and started spraying up at the pipe. Steam and hot water exploded into the air.
      We all fanned out when we saw that the fire in the pipe was moving up into the afterburner room. Me and another roaster scrambled up the stairs and were dumping buckets of water down onto the pipe, mostly getting water on the roaster spraying up at the pipe, who was mostly getting water on us. The Chicago fire department showed up and kind of stood there watching us scramble around like crazed maniacs and then one points this temperature meter that kind of looks like a speed gun at the pipe and says “yup, there’s a fire in there,” which was pretty funny. When it was all said and done, we had a stack so clean it looked new, on the inside at least, and a complete mess everywhere else that took us the rest of the day to clean up.

CHRISTOPHER SCHOOLEY is the roaster and green coffee buyer at Metropolis Coffee Company in Chicago. He drinks his coffee black. Chris and fire go way back. Tell him your fire stories at ceschooley@yahoo.com.