Roast #4: Beans, Location, Pricing, +more

Status update for June, 2022 -- I (still) be running up that hill.

If you are interested in more day-to-day updates, please consider giving @thoughtfulcoffeenyc a follow. Thanks!

TLDR:

1. Swapping out the Ethiopian Uraga Haro Wato for an Ethiopian Guji Natural with 20-Days of Anaerobic Fermentation

2. I’m starting to look for a store to act as a dropoff location. If you know of any good stores, please let me know!

3. More product updates (labels).

4. Pricing should be around $15-$20, and payment through Venmo will be required up front.

Hello friends,

I'm back with more updates.

Swapping Beans:

To start, I've decided to make a change in the beans offered. Instead of including the Ethiopian Uraga Haro Wato, I'm changing it to an Ethiopian Guji Ethiopian Guji Natural with 20-Days of Anaerobic Fermentation. The reason for this change is that I realized I didn't have enough of the Ethiopian Uraga Haro Wato to roast. But this is a good thing, as the Ethiopian Guji is a much more unique coffee with its extended fermentation.

Ethiopian Guji 20-Day Anaerobic Fermented Natural

When it comes to fermented coffee, coffee that's fermented up to 100+ hours is considered long, then when it's 200+ hours, it's super-long. So keep that in perspective when judging this 20-Day coffee.

But extended fermentation isn't always a good thing, as it's commonly hard to get right and replicate. If you ferment for too long, the coffee tastes like overripe vinegar flavors. The process to get this right is tedious and precise, as you must keep a constant eye on the state of the coffee during its fermentation period.

More details about the Guji:

Ethiopia Guji Uraga

Origin: Ethiopia
Region: Guji
Varietal: Heirloom
Elevation: 2200 masl
Process: Ethiopian Guji Natural with 20-Days of Anaerobic Fermentation
Notes: Raspberry, Milk Chocolate, Almond, Jasmine

The other two are still the Ethiopia Sidama Keramo and Ecuador San Jose De Minas, and more information on both can be found in my prior post.

Packaging

My girlfriend (Jasmin) was kind enough to help provide designs for the informational cards that’ll go along with the coffee box. See below for some of her amazing work:

Expect to have a different card providing details on each of these three coffees. Here’s more of her work for those interested.

Location:

I'm just starting on the hunt for a dropoff location for the beans. I foresee this not being easy as I don't have any close connections who are baristas or work in a coffee shop. But if you know of a cafe or a shop that might be interested in helping host as a dropoff point, please let me know! I'd appreciate an introduction!

The blurb that I've been sending as an introduction is:

Hello!

My name is Brian, and I'm looking for a place to act as a dropoff location for coffees I offer through a coffee club I'm starting.

I'm a home roaster and share interesting beans with my community (North Brooklyn). Most people probably aren't comfortable going to someone's place to pick up coffee beans, and this makes sense and is why I'm looking for a store that can help provide a comfortable space for them to pick up the beans.

I want to ask if you could hold 10-15 coffee boxes and give them to my coffee club members when they come by to pick them up? I'll have them pay ahead of time, so your employees won't have to distribute cash/payment.

I'd be happy to provide you/your employees with a box or two to thank you for helping.

The benefit of us collaborating would be that your store would get some additional exposure and foot traffic.

Anyways, let me know what you think. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

And here is a quick deck I put together that you can use to share with the coffee store.

Pricing:

The costs for this are detailed below. I've mostly rounded up to account for the additional shipping cost from placing many individual orders.

The total for this first offering will likely be $15-$20 (assuming costs for printing isn’t too high).

You’ll note that the sheet is color-coded. The green boxes are the costs that I’m certain of, while the yellow ones are the ones that are still in flux.

Payment:

For this first release, I'll require payment upfront. I ask for collection up front as I don't want to burden the store/dropoff location with having to deal with money. I will collect through Venmo as I think it'll be familiar enough that most people have it.

What'll happen is that I'll ask you to bring an ID when you go pick up the coffees, and the store will have a list of who has purchased a release, and they'll do a check and hand you the coffee box.

But for the future, I think that maybe I'll set up a small Shopify shop that you can pay through. The downside of this is that I think we'll likely have to deal with tax.

---

And that wraps up this update. I’m sorry for the delays in getting this up and running. I got sick a few weeks back, and I lost an additional week searching for a replacement coffee.

But hopefully, I can get some coffee out to you all soon! Once I have a location set and the boxes ready, I’ll send a final update email detailing when I’ll start taking payment. :)

Lastly, thank you all for your continued support.

It was amazing to see the interest come in from the google form. I only expected to get maybe 15 responses max, but I received a whopping 50+ responses from people all over Brooklyn.