Who are we? A tiny shop that started out in 1997 to supply the home roaster with their beans and tools via the internet ...and that's our focus today, tomorrow and eternally...

Our little shop was centered around the 12 kilo Diedrich roaster we have. After roasting on open-flame gas roasters, I loved the control I achieve on the Diedrich. It's a great machine, but now I roast on an L-12 Probat

You can't see the ducting that exits the roaster in the rear. We had to run it up 3 stories outside, which was NOT cheap. Ducting is critical to proper air flow during the roast, so you can't cut corners.

The roaster was mounted on an aluminum floor plate to achieve good leveling (it's a very old, uneven maple floor), fire safety, and because it looks nice.

As we ordered larger and larger quantities of green coffee, finding room to store it became more difficult. Luckily, they make nice chairs for our customers.

Hey look! My arabica coffee plants are doing pretty well. It's on the lone table, right there in the front window. The table is gone now, and 10 coffee bags take its place. Coffee wants filtered sunlight and temperatures above 62 or so. This and all my coffee plants are a lot bigger now. I collect and cultivate plants from particular farms, and of distinct coffee varietals. For more information on growing your own coffee...

Here's where I did testing and cupping. You can see my Ohaus gram scale I use to measure out my samples, and the detritus of a session trying to find a good organic Mexican equivalent of our Chiapas (no luck!). You can see the La Pavoni Europiccola I used to test espresso blends. Now I use a Solis SL-90. We don't offer espresso service to customers, unless you are lucky enough to drop by when I am pulling shots; I'll probably grab you and make you knock back a few. I don't have anything against espresso drinks ...we just like to focus on roasting. This table is an ever-changing mess of green and roasted samples, test blends, and probably your green coffee order too.

Here's our coffee sample "library." I log in most every green sample I receive for future reference. It's important to watch for changes in the milling or sorting of a coffee, especially one I know I'll be buying repeatedly. There are many specialty coffee people with much more experience than I, but I hope people find me to be earnest and dedicated to quality, both in the cup and out of it.

A Coffee Poser

Thompson at the old roaster... the 12k Diedrich,which somehow looks surprisingly small in this image. You should have seen us move it in the store ...it's over 1000 lbs. It also looks like I'm holding an ice cream cone or something, but that's the gate control on the roaster. Now you know who you're chatting about Yemeni micro-regional coffees and cupping Guatemalans with ...We also run a 1 Lb. Coffee Kinetics air roaster for large samples and any stray 1 lb'ers we want to roast for fun... I have a few old home roasters too.

Triumph refers to motorcycles, not the Canadian '80s band! Do I have a Triumph -no. I can only afford their shop apron. However I love little bikes, vintage Japanese, and a couple exotics (Moto Morini, Ducati). Of 7 bikes, 1 currently runs ... but that's another price you pay for working too much.