CoffeePreneurship by CoffeeMind

(also available on youtube with video)
In this first episode Morten Münchow fleshes out CoffeeMind's concept of CoffeePreneuship by explaining how he got into the coffee business as an entrepreneur.
Future episodes will be hands on and techical so this first episode sets the tone for working across purpose (why) and content (what) of a coffee startup and how the company identity and technicalities of the business are integrated.

Transcript

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Morten Münchow (00:00):
This is the first moments of CoffeeMind's first podcast, coffee signs for CoffeePreneur, as it's called. I've spent a week in the summer house here with corona and also part phase, what's it called, paralysis? Lots of weird things has happened, but I've had a lot of time and I've had a lot of time to work and think. One of the things that are really important these days in CoffeeMind is that we need to be better at communicating, we need to be better at reaching our audience through all sorts of channels. And the podcast format was suggested by my sister some months ago, and I had no idea that that would be something I wanted to do one day. But I understood more and more the value of this podcast format, being a listener myself to many podcasts for a few years now.

Morten Münchow (01:05):
So we've also seen that some of our students has requested this, particularly my good student and friend Paul from Paris. And this podcast format I've been thinking a lot about why and what we wanted to provide. I've written a lot about what I want to say. So in this podcast, I'll tell you about my thoughts about CoffeeMind's podcast and I also have a few origin stories. The first origin story is my personal why and my personal journey as an entrepreneur. Which I think is essential to be open about because entrepreneurs are a special breed. And why don't I just share my version of this? Then I also have another origin story of my specific and simplified scientific framework for coffee roasting. Because that's also a hallmark of CoffeeMind.

Morten Münchow (02:16):
So first I've heard that the podcast format is a nice way for you to hang out with people who already are in your community. So this is not an attempt to get more followers or a bigger community, this is an attempt to keep a better connections for those of you who's already been through our training. Of course, we want to keep on providing value and keep on supporting you getting a better life as a coffeepreneur. And this podcast format seems like a great way of doing that. So let's hang out.

Morten Münchow (03:01):
So why start a podcast? So we want to educate our community to a deeper level of why and how to become a better coffee roaster. So we want to educate coffee roasters to be better at deciding where to spend their time, effort, and focus so that they can better control what's going on in the organization and particularly in the roaster, and also increase your personal skills in sensory and evaluation. Because that's the other leg that you're standing on as a coffee roaster. It's very important to have some really simple, specific, useful, and actionable models for how to control the roaster and how to do product development and quality control. Because if it's just one big, endless, never ending task to even understand what coffee roasting is, then you don't have any time for all the other things you need to have time for as a coffeepreneur. So we try to make this a winnable game, and that's where the simplicity comes in.

Morten Münchow (04:13):
So we really hope, with this podcast series, to be able to provide you with models for how to get things done so that you have time to everything you need to have time for as a coffeepreneur. So we expect people who listen to this podcast to already be CoffeeMind followers who wants to get the longer story and also some behind the scenes, such as now, it doesn't get much more behind the scenes than being in this summer house with me during my corona quarantine. Also we expect that it's you who set out time for the longer story. You already have some knowledge of the basic concepts of coffee roasting and sensory evaluation. I've tried to understand, what is it that make me, as the founder of CoffeeMind connect particularly well with roast startups? Because that's a synergy. CoffeeMind is not a roastery startup. So what is it that makes us connect anyway? What is it that we have in common?

Morten Münchow (05:32):
I've written this phrase that I really think resonates between me and the audience. And we take responsibility for creating a technically founded social aesthetic experience. So coffeepreneurs, as I call us, is people who take responsibility for understanding the technical requirements to create a social aesthetic experience. And the reason why this resonates is that every time I speak with people, they have some social aesthetic experience that have just caught their soul in a way that they want to take responsibility to create their own version of this. I clearly remember my own first experience here, and that was in 2001, where I was hanging out with my good friend, Sebastian, at Emerisianahus, where I tasted my first specialty coffee that was just mindblowingly good.

Morten Münchow (06:44):
So that was the aesthetic experience but together with Sebastian at a point in my life where I just discovered meditation psychology and meditation philosophy. And I started studying that at the university in Copenhagen. So we were really discussing these favorite subjects in a friendly environment with people at the highest level. So for me, combining that subject and experience, where the coffee was supporting the whole aesthetics of that social environment was just for me my epiphany of having an experience that I really cherished that for some reason want to keep on carrying out in my life.

Morten Münchow (07:32):
But for me, the whole technical part of it is also important because I'm really technically inclined as are typical coffeepreneurs. It's people who really have technical talent and interest. So for me, that epiphany was that I was standing in my student mall brewing this mocha pot, this edged thing you put on your stove. And I noticed that while tasting drop for drop when this was brewing, each drop tasted very differently. And with my background in biology, very quickly it occurred to me that I was able to explain this. It's a very known thing called chromatography that is very used in biotechnology and used a lot in food science to separate, just like separating a complex material into individual molecules. And that's what's done during brewing. It was such an amazing experience for me to be able to very clearly explain something with my technical scientific background that was relevant for my new coffee interest. That led to me doing a project where I took on explaining this for baristas with no scientific background. And that was actually the starting of my careers.

Morten Münchow (09:14):
So coupling my scientific technical understanding of organic materials, coupling that with my ability to recreate a social aesthetic experience, that was my small seed here for getting into the coffee business. And then the whole taking responsibility part, that's a very important trait of coffee people. So running a business where you really have a compelling vision and really make an effort in a lot of different areas outside your comfort zone, your competencies, and even outside your talents and outside your educational background, where you really feel like a beginner and dare to be ridiculed in the sake of the bigger compelling vision that you have for yourself and others by creating this social aesthetic experience.

Morten Münchow (10:08):
So even though taking responsibility means that you just go in the direction where you don't have the competencies and the background yet, but because you really want to go there and you want to bring others in the same direction. You create a company and then you just trust that you'll find your way while doing it. It's not normal for people to do to be honest. So the whole taking responsibility is also a common trait for the coffeepreneurs that I love to work with. It's also something, a trait that I've noticed for myself. That's why CoffeeMind is still going even though it wasn't a lucrative and good idea from the beginning, and really it still isn't. But that's not the important point, it will be because I'll just keep on doing it.

Morten Münchow (11:09):
So that was a bit about the background of the podcast and a bit about how I see the audience for this podcast. This leads me to the... I want to go a bit deeper because I could just keep on talking. From now on, I could start talking about science and all the projects we've done and all the breakthroughs we've had and how much we normally are able to see through things from a scientific perspective, that people are not in the business. So more like telling what is perceived like the success story of CoffeeMind. But since this is a podcast format and since you want to get a bit deeper in why CoffeeMind is structured as it is.

Morten Münchow (12:07):
And as you might know from startup theory, I don't know if you've heard it before, but a company is typically structured organizational-wise and purpose-wise derived from the founder's psychology. So the founder's psychology becomes the company culture when it scales. And since this is a format where we are hanging out and you've got time for the longer story, why don't I just tell you my honest background for being a coffeepreneur myself. I call this story from academic to entrepreneur because that's not the same. So the question is, how did I become an entrepreneur and just not academic. I'm saying this because coffeepreneurs are a bit special. As I said, coffeepreneurs and entrepreneurs take responsibility outside what can be expected of an individual. But that's also a small element of crazy and that's good and bad. It's just a trait which is I think great because I prefer adventure to safety, and that's a trait for entrepreneurs.

Morten Münchow (13:30):
So often we'll engage in high risk projects that just involve a lot of work that we just keep on doing, and it takes a bit of crazy to do that. Because starting a business or doing something new is not a good idea in the sense that a good idea is something that's easy and something that is doable by anyone. It's only a good idea if you are willing to put in a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of work. I remember my mother, she's a musician, and it's not a good idea to be a musician, it can go wrong in many ways. She said, "You should only become a musician if you cannot not do it." And I think it's the same with entrepreneurship. It's not a good idea, it's not a good advice to become an entrepreneur, it's only a good idea if you cannot not do it.

Morten Münchow (14:36):
I've been working with CoffeeMind with our focus on science and we've been working with a lot of different clients and we've done quite a lot of industrial projects over the years. Most often, I don't enjoy them that much. And this is something that's becoming more and more clear for me that I don't and also why I don't. It's very important, and this is also an advice that I take back to my own clients, it's very important that when you build a business that you base the business model upon a customer segment inhabited by people you genuinely want to spend time with because otherwise it's not scalable.

Morten Münchow (15:24):
You need to directly like the people that you work with. You are typical spending more time with these guys and girls than you do your family and friends. So it's a really good idea to make sure that out of all the possible customer segments at the end of your products, that you choose and attract the ones that you genuinely enjoy spontaneously to spend time with. It's a huge difference on how your legs, are they jumping out of bed in the morning or do you need to drag your legs out of the bed in the morning? So that's a very important point. So for us, we found out that coffeepreneurs, small startups growing bigger, that's exactly the people that we love to spend time with. And that's also why, of course, the postcard is not how to systematize your industrial something or how to manage your industrial. This is about startups who might grow big. A startup is still a startup if it's 10, 15 people employed, it's still a small business. So that's our core audience. And that's why we want to make a podcast because we want to hang out personally.

Morten Münchow (16:49):
So my story of becoming from an academic to a coffeepreneur. So my backstory is that my father was a high school teacher and he had math and physics as his subjects, and I naturally found that interesting. And that was something that he spent time teaching me about and talking about, and particularly he loved the whole classical physics and relativity theory and quantum physics. That was something that I was also very interested in and something that we had together as a hobby. So I naturally also in high school chose math and physics as the things that I naturally found most interesting.

Morten Münchow (17:49):
Then when I went to university, I chose biology because biology was still a natural science, but it was on bigger and more complex systems. And when I went to high school, I wasn't that diligent. I was there, I passed, I got mediocre grades, and when I started at university, I really wanted to show myself that I was skilled. So it was a bit late that I started to concentrate on school. But at the university, I really went for it and found it fascinating. So I really wanted to be a skilled scientist and I really wanted to show myself that it was possible for me. So my intense efforts to all of a sudden be a straight A student left me completely empty inside, which was the opposite of what I expected. So it was a weird time because I was fascinated and I really went for it.

Morten Münchow (18:59):
And then one day I just got a complete anxiety attack. I just instantly from one day to another just felt that I was completely insane. Not because I did strange stuff, but everything fell apart. And I had no idea how I got there that fast and I have no idea how to get back. I simply didn't have the tools to handle the situation. It just felt too late and I didn't know where to go. For a full year, I was in this state where with the ultimate anxiety was that the only solution was to take my own life. That was my ultimate anxiety that I came to that conclusion. So it was a daily catastrophe just being in this world.

Morten Münchow (20:09):
One of the things that I really worried about was that I was a man of science and I knew a lot of biochemistry and I respected the whole scientific tradition. I shouldn't read a lot about psychiatry before I could see that there was an endogenous and an exogenous reason for depression and anxiety. And there wasn't really any traumatic things in my environment that would explain this, so it must be endogenic. And that means that only medicine can treat it. I was just terrified about the idea of either ending my own life or being what I considered, and I'm sure this is not true for people who use medication, but in my model of the world, if I had to numb myself with medication, that wasn't a life worth living. So I was completely lost in this situation in my early twenties.

Morten Münchow (21:14):
Then luckily I was in the Danish system, you get a salary for studying and I had a place to live. So I had some time to really try something else than medication. I had no idea what meditation was, but I had to try something. So I went to the library and found that the whole language of people writing about meditation made sense. I started to be believe that this was actually a possible way out. So I went to some meditation and yoga classes and got some experiences. But it was so bad that I had to have a severe intervention. So luckily I had the courage to go to a 14 day yoga retreat. The first time I got the experience of being the observer of my own mind and not being my own personality. I clearly remember that I was convinced that this is real, this is not just wishful thinking, and this is not just some fancy theory about positive thinking. Meditation techniques are real.

Morten Münchow (22:45):
Also, the yoga was able to spread all the anxiety around my body so that I could go from a complete anxiety attack to calm in two hours. It takes time, it's really uncomfortable, it's really looking at the pain straight on and not straying from looking it in the eyes. And if you just keep on looking at the monster, eventually it turns into your friend. This is not just something that happens in a few minutes, it takes hours and hours of effort of staying in the pain. So don't think that I'm telling you that this is an easy or quick fix, but it's a fix in the long run, for me at least.

Morten Münchow (23:33):
So what I realized is that my personality is just a series of habits and they can die without my body having to follow. And that was really a big epiphany for me during that yoga retreat, that it's okay to imagine that you have to die, but you don't have to take your body with you, you can just let your personality die. All the habits and things, habitual ways of thinking of yourself and dealing with situations, those can die, you can keep your body and you can build up something new. So suicide was no longer considered a solution because I detangled it in my new model of, my personality could die without my body. And that was really a very specific positive outcome of that yoga trip.

Morten Münchow (24:26):
And then I returned with some tools that I could really use. But it took months still even after that retreat, it was just tools for me to start to handle my life. And all of a sudden, now I could see how I could build my life, before I couldn't. So this was a huge thing that all of a sudden I could see into the future and look forward to it and trust that I could shape it according to what was most important for me. And if something really bad happened inside, I could just isolate myself for two hours, do yoga, and then eventually it was like taking a pill and I was fine after those two hours.

Morten Münchow (25:18):
So I changed, at the university, my major, to philosophy and pursued the subject of meditation, philosophy, and psychology, particularly from a Buddhist tradition. And then I stitched that into the Western philosophical and scientific tradition, where I was lucky enough to find something called Mind Life Institute, which was an institute between Western cognitive scientists and neuroscientist and it's Tibetan Buddhists who were meeting every two years at a conference discussing the nature of consciousness and medical implications of meditation and all that, which is now a big research field. I went deeply into understanding all that in my thesis.

Morten Münchow (26:13):
I found out that what I had experienced the whys and hows of how my anxiety and depression was alleviated and eventually solved by myself, that was something that was well documented from a medical perspective. And it was very important for me to get that world view. So the result was that I was able to live a normal life free of anxiety and fear of the future. But one of the most important things and the reason why I tell this story to you at all, is that I think this is where I developed my traits as an entrepreneur. Because entrepreneurs, when they see something is possible, something they really want, something they are passionate about, they are patient and they are diligent and they know that it takes a lot of time and it's a lot of small actions that eventually will add up to a big result if pursued daily.

Morten Münchow (27:31):
So for me, this is also what I've dreamed about, about CoffeeMind, how we are able to make a difference in the world with science and sensory methodology to support roasting practices. That was a dream many years ago that wasn't a good idea because it was a lot of work and it wasn't necessarily well rewarded. But the fact that you see some gold in the horizon and just decide that you'll go for it, even though you don't know how and don't have the background, talent, education, but you'll just do it anyway. What people like you do with your business, and that's what I did the first time when I wanted to get out of anxiety and depression and finding a life that was worth living, and that's what entrepreneurs often do, they don't like that job, it doesn't make them happy, the circumstances doesn't make them happy. So they take the responsibility of taking on risks and a lot of work in order to make the world a better place.

Morten Münchow (28:54):
That's basically what we are doing as CoffeePreneurs and this is why I think my personal story is something I want to share with you. Because I think there are some similarities that is the reason that we are brought together to work together on your businesses. I do feel qualified to help you because I've tried it in so many different ways. Not that I'm a master and not that I'm perfect at project management or anything, but we just have something in common that makes me enjoying and willing to help you with your stitching together your dream. And that was my personal entrepreneurial origin story. So that's the entrepreneurial level of what I'm doing that I'm haven't talked about or told anybody about before really, except my closest friends.

Morten Münchow (30:02):
So I also want to tell you a bit more like a technical origin story. That would have been the only story if I didn't want to also take it a level deeper. So my background as a coffee roaster and really the origin story of my recent Roast Profile Design Basics e-learning course that I'll publish here in December, which is a very short and very precise model of what I think coffee roasting is that I really hope will be a huge help for the community, for beginners and advanced people. So it's a really simple but precise and correct model of coffee roasting. I thought about, where does this come from? And this origin story then appeared for me.

Morten Münchow (30:59):
So I was a student of biology and philosophy with no background in coffee roasting nor sensory evaluation at all. If you are not in the coffee business at all right now, this version of me is you. So at that point, I had no idea about coffee roasting nor sensory evaluation when I studied at the university. But as I mentioned, I did a project in explaining the chemistry of espresso brewing for baristas, which is non-scientists. I used something called Macromedia Flash, it's now Adobe Animate, where I make some small cartoons explaining organic chemistry, water chemistry, and then how that interacted during espresso brewing. And this became... Luckily, it was a university project where I had to present it for an audience, for baristas. And luckily I found some good friends at that time around Cafe ROVA, who were competing at the World Barista Championships. They really liked the project and introduced me for the whole specialty coffee scene.

Morten Münchow (32:16):
So at that point, I really wanted to get out and get a normal job because I did my master's thesis about dialogue between Western cognitive science and Tibetan Buddhism, which was amazing, I loved it. But I also longed for just having a normal job. And given my permission to allow myself to pursue what I wanted, it had to be fun obviously. CoffeePreneurs are willing to fight for their right to have fun and meaning in their life. So I really wanted also to have fun with coffee after what I experienced. So it was amazing that I was offered a job at Contra Coffee, which was a newly founded coffee roastery at the time because then I could keep contact to coffee. What I was really curious about was I had this epiphany of how to explain something very fundamental from a scientific point of view to an audience who had a lot of practical experience with no scientific background. I had this epiphany of how I can use my insights in science to explain them something that's really useful and actionable for them to improve the quality in their daily lives.

Morten Münchow (33:42):
So that's why I really wanted to say yes to this coffee roasting job, even though I had no idea how to roast coffee, I had never done it before. So I was employed at Contra Coffee. A week after I handed in my thesis, I was roasting coffee. And Kurt, luckily just told me how to follow his recipes on the Probat L12. And I was in a new situation and I had to learn. There was a lot of frustrations in the beginning and one thing was that I couldn't find the information anywhere that I wanted. I wanted to understand the science of roasting, I wanted to understand also the practical aspects of it. And it felt like I couldn't find anything in science. And what I found in magazine and blog post was really anecdotal, and for sure not scientifically based. So I felt very alone and had to fumble around with stuff.

Morten Münchow (34:48):
And for those of you who have been trying to roast on an L 12, it's really, I hope I don't offend anybody, but it's the worst roast ever made in the history of coffee roasting. It's thermostat regulated so you cannot modulate the flame. It assumes that you want the flame to go high at a certain point and then just go down and you can't really adjust where. So what I did was I was trying to jiggle the on-off button to modulate the flame. So that was just a really frustrating way of working and I just felt that I wasn't in control. It was also way too slow. I remember we got first crack in 11 and a half minutes even at full flame. If I wanted to go faster, there was no way of doing it. But that's what we had, and I just followed the protocols.

Morten Münchow (35:48):
Then after a year, we got a new roaster, an old GN30, beautiful machine, but nobody knew how to operate it. So I had to... We had some products that I needed to create on this new machine. And I just had to come up with a way of replicating it. I thought, with my basic understanding of chemical transformation, that it must be if I match the color and I make sure the timing is the same, it must be the same. I did it and it worked and people were happy about my result. I can tell you, that was when I became a coffee roaster. Because I solved it with my skills and my background in science. It wasn't because I understood the chemistry, it wasn't that I had a very advanced understanding on anything, it was basic understanding of amount of energy, the relationship between accumulated energy, which is color, and that there's a timing aspect of that transformation or of that energy transfer. So it was more my intuition of the really basic stuff rather than anything advanced.

Morten Münchow (37:10):
So after two years as a production manager at Contra, I decided to pursue my dream of working with my passion and interest, and I became a freelancer. Also this risk behavior is very specific for us CoffeePreneurs. I was bored after two years. I loved the two years, but after two years, I think it's a bit, again, connected to the whole life has to be meaningful and exciting as a coffee CoffeePreneur. And then we are just willing to take risks and do stupid things to have fun, basically. So I jumped out as a freelancer and I got a part-time job at the medical department at the university, teaching research designers statistics for medical students in their later period of their education. So basically I taught them how to read scientific articles, see what design was behind, what statistical numbers, and how to interpret it and so on. And I did that for five years, loved it, but that only part-time. Then I also managed Contra's Barista Academy, but that was the only perspective I had.

Morten Münchow (38:28):
But after I told our green coffee supplier, Mark Kent at the Coffee Hunters, that I wanted to become a freelancer, the CEO, Steven Hurst reached out to me regarding challenges with a client who didn't roast their coffee good enough, according to him. So he asked me if I wanted to help him out. Sure enough, I wanted, I had a lot of time, I was a freelancer. So I jumped on a plane to South Korea. And when I came, we went for a dinner on the first evening. When we spoke, it was three lovely people. Obviously everybody in South Korea are amazing. I've been there a lot, so I know what I'm talking about. But the roast master, it appeared that he had five years of experience where I at that point had two years of experience. He said that he coved each and every batch that he roasted and the coving thing was something that we did frequently.

Morten Münchow (39:38):
So he had five years of solid experience, I had two, he's been coving much more than me, so I was just feeling completely the wrong guy at the wrong place. And now when I was there tomorrow morning they expected results. So I back to the hotel that evening, luckily that was day in the UK, and I told Steven, "Steven, these guys they've got much more experience than I have. Been roasting for five years, I've only two and all that." Steven just laughed and said, "Don't worry, you can help them." And sure enough, next day, I realized that I could very quickly see what they did wrong. And I could very quickly explain on some slides, with the Macromedia technology, the best practices that they should follow. Then I understood that my background in science with solid methodology and really understanding the simplicity of what's going on, that's way better than years of experience without critical thinking.

Morten Münchow (40:58):
So the very effective reductionist approach, as a scientist, you always try to reduce a complex system to the few parameters that controls most of the system's dynamics anyway. You're not interested in things if it's not a major factor in how the system works. So I just had a very simple model of understanding that there was the overall color and then there's the overall speed, that's the two things. Then there's a crucial point that divides the timing, which is the first crack, the time before and after. So if you just take that to heart, you can really solve a lot of problems if people don't have this simple understanding.

Morten Münchow (41:59):
So when I came back, I could start teaching. And London School of Coffee, they really wanted to teach coffee roasting, so I was there. First it was one day, two days, three days, and later I was invited to create SCA's three level system. So I've really been training a lot of people since 2007 where all this started. I've been training more than 1,500 students in small groups of six to eight over the years. But another important element of the framework that I've developed in the Roast Profile Design Basics Program is this three flame settings. It's a constrain for you to get to know your roaster. It's not that I recommend only three flame settings in general, but for the purpose of understanding your roaster, three flame settings is a nice constrained.

Morten Münchow (43:06):
And there's a bit of a background for that, and that's because at London School of Coffee, they had some Diedrich HR-1 and also Coffee Tech's FZ94, they had at London School of Coffee. I also had that at CoffeeMind Academy in Copenhagen. And these two roasters, the Diedrich HR-1 and Coffee Tech FZ94, they only have three flame setting. So I've been working with thousands of students or hundreds of students who only had these three flame settings and needed to solve a lot of roast profile challenges, for example the SCA exams. And they never really had a problem doing that. Because with three flame settings, that's typically enough to create almost any roast profile you can imagine. Because more complexity than that is not really needed, and it's typically sub-sensory threshold anyway. So I have a lot of experience working on systems where you're constrained to three flame settings, and that's absolutely no problem. So that's another important element of the simplicity of the approach that I have to coffee roasting.

Morten Münchow (44:26):
As I said, I have profiles with more than three flame settings, but it's surprisingly easy to create whatever with only those constraints. Since 2014, I've been doing scientific research with the sensory evaluation to support the simplicity of this framework. And really only except concept in the coffee roasting process, if it shows up as a relevant concept in the sensory data, otherwise it's just left out. Basically we've done four scientific articles based on eight research projects. The simplistic approach is color is affecting 80% of the possible modulation of any green coffee. Time from first crack, so development time is affecting approximately 15% of the possible modulation. And time to first crack only 5%. 5% is something that can be detected by really skilled covers, but it's a really small aspect of the flavor. So I'm not saying it's not there for expert covers, but it's nothing compared to the later aspects such as color and development time from a product development perspective and quality control perspective.

Morten Münchow (46:03):
So basically this very reductionist and simple framework makes it quick to make a huge impact for many clients. It's also easier for you as a CoffeePreneur to focus on only the things that matter and forget about the rest. Because you've got so much else your time and attention is needed for when your organization is also going to be a success across all what that takes. So I've been in this game for many years education-wise, research-wise. And that's why I'm so excited about my latest simple approach, which is as short e-learning system program that I've made that's called Roast Profile Design Basics that people can get for 30 euros. So that's really the essence of how I'm thinking that is incorporated in that short e-learning program that I created some weeks ago. This is where I announced what I call the poem of the coffee roaster, which is a small exercise really for you to specifically get to know your roaster.

Morten Münchow (47:30):
And the short version is that the constraints are that with three flame settings, neither less nor more, get first crack in nine minutes, three minute development time to 75, which is the midway point temperature-wise between first and second crack. If you saw that riddle on your particular machine, you have a picture of the speed of the machine in the beginning, middle, and end that shows the relationship between the flame size and bats size in the beginning, middle, and end and how to find the center of your tennis cord so that you can go fast and slow both when it comes to time to first crack and development time, and you can go light and dark. With this simple model, you can create whatever roast profiles. You can add a bit of complexity later if you want. But if you don't have a simple starting point, you don't have control, and you don't understand your roaster. So that's a new approach to coffee roasting that we are announcing soon.

Morten Münchow (48:43):
Basically, it makes coffee roasting a winnable game so you can focus on all the other things of your life as a CoffeePreneur. So this was the first podcast in our new podcast series. I wanted this podcast to be personal and relevant for the audience that we are seeking out. So if you found this boring and irrelevant, it just shows that you are not in our core audience. And if you can relate to what I said about this social aesthetic experience, taking responsibility, and taking a bit crazy risks, then you are in our core audience. And then we'll do what we can to fill this podcast with a lot of tips and tricks to get your life under control and get the results that is needed for you to have a great organization that you love to wake up to every day, filled with customers who just love to be with you and learn from you.

Morten Münchow (49:53):
So this first podcast, I've told that the first one is always the worst. So I might as well just do something crazy, which is what I think I've done. And I look forward to seeing you and hearing your comments and connect with you in podcast comments or emails or hopefully also in physical conferences. I'll be in Poland at World of Coffee and also in Dubai in January. So hopefully I'll meet some of you and we can take up this discussion when we talk next.