Half Mile Coffee Podcast

Why Specialty Coffee Beats Big Brands On Health, Quality, And Transparency

• Half Mile Coffee

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We unpack why specialty coffee is cleaner and safer, how quality controls work from farm to roaster, and why mycotoxin “tested” labels can mislead. We also share ways to improve Keurig brewing, highlight our El Socorro reserve, and explain what small roasters do that big brands can’t.

• rigorous grading, defect rejection, and moisture control across the supply chain
• washed vs natural processing with controlled drying and raised beds
• protective packaging using GrainPro or vacuum seals to prevent contamination
• roasting safeguards and why OTA testing claims fall short
• home storage tips and better water choices for cleaner flavor
• Keurig shortcomings and practical upgrades with reusable or compostable pods
• El Socorro Makatura flavor notes and small-batch 80 g tins
• small coffee advantages in freshness, microlots, traceability, and farmer pay

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SPEAKER_01:

Alright, welcome to uh December edition of Half Mile Coffee. I'm Jason.

SPEAKER_02:

Nicole.

SPEAKER_01:

And we are the owners of Half Mile Coffee. I'm a SCA professional roaster. Nicole is a professional. A sensory professional? Sensory pro and we like to say. And Q grader.

SPEAKER_02:

Q grader.

SPEAKER_01:

Q grader trainer.

SPEAKER_02:

Q trainer. SCA trainer.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And as of probably December 31st, she'll be the only Q-grader in Idaho.

SPEAKER_02:

Evolved.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm evolved. She's the she's evolved.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know. I don't know if the other.

SPEAKER_01:

Who's evolved? Who's evolved?

SPEAKER_02:

Who's evolved?

SPEAKER_01:

Who's evolved? Alright, so today I think we have uh some cool things to talk about. So uh we want to talk about specialty coffee and how it's a clean coffee. Yeah, you know, a lot of people market purity in their coffee and that they've tested it for mycotoxins. And we are going to shatter some myths on that, um, and perhaps show that some of that's marketing, but a lot of it's true. Uh, and then we'll we want to talk about some reserves. One we're particularly excited about the El Socoro, um Keurig coffee. And what is small, what small coffee does that big coffee can't? Who's big coffee? Who are we talking about when we're talking about big coffee?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we're talking about Folgers, Hills Brothers, Starbucks, all the OG coffee companies, um, Pete's.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh is that fair, like putting Starbucks and and Folgers in the same group?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, they're not the same type of coffee, but I think they're global coffee leaders for sure. They buy coffee. We're talking about global branding. They're huge companies. Nestle is another one.

SPEAKER_01:

So when we talk about that, we're not talking about necessarily whether they're commodity or specialty. We're talking about how big their brand is.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell We're talking yeah, we're talking about big corporate entities in coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

So we'll talk a little bit about that of what uh what the small guys have to offer that the big guys don't. All right. So uh let's go right into it. So let's talk about uh specialty coffee and why it's a healthier coffee and a cleaner coffee. Um I did a blog this week on that. Um, that you probably if you um subscribe to our coffee or if you get our email, you probably saw me link to it. But this was um kind of in response to uh things that people in general are talking about with all foods, right? We're talking about you know what's in our food, we want to eat healthier food. I mean, if you're gonna I think this is uh when I was talking to somebody, we did an event this weekend, was talking to someone, and they didn't necessarily understand that specialty coffee is a cleaner coffee, it's not just that the quality of it makes it taste better, um, it's that it's cleaner, and so I I went through four different um advantages that specialty coffee has over uh coffee or commodity coffee. And the first thing is really the rigorous quality standards. So um if there's a strict grading system in specialty coffee, and will you talk as a Q grader, talk a little bit about the green coffee grading and particularly you know, mold and fungus, which lead to mycotoxins and and why specialty doesn't have those things?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a lot, that's a lot of things. So let's talk about all the things let's talk about grading coffee. So when when a coffee buyer goes to the farm or is involved, sometimes they're involved in the farm or it's a co-op. The coffee is inspected at every point of the process. The trees are inspected, the the coffee cherries are inspected, the harvest is inspected. Um it there's time times that that are um required. Timing is required, how much time between the time it's picked to the time it is processed, how long it sits in and ferments in different stages of fermentation, uh how long does it take from the point where it gets depulped to the time that it goes on a drying bed or a drying rack? How long does it stay on the drying rack? Are are there raised beds or is it on a patio? Are people stepping on the coffee or not while it's being processed? All these things are are known, they're traceable. These processes are evaluated, and the coffee is evaluated at each stage of the process. In specialty coffee, there are certain restrictions and certain parameters that have to be met. Like coffee cherries have to be ripe when they're picked. They have to be processed a certain way. They they can't have any mold in any part of the process. And if it does, these coffees get rejected. The lots are small and the harvest is um meticulously observed and processed.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, but when you're just looking at green coffee, I guess what I'm talking about, because I mean that's number two. I always want to talk about the optimal process methods. But just when you're looking at green coffee, primary, secondary defects, right? How like what can you have and what can't you have?

SPEAKER_02:

So you can't have any mold. You can't have any fungus, and these are visible. This is visible mold and visible fungus, and you can see it, it's there. Um the insect damage is the one that I see a lot, and it's ironic that the most insect damaged coffees that I see coming through the specialty grading system are or organic coffees. And so when I look at organic organic coffees, I'm extra um I'm extra particular and I reject severely insect damaged coffees. And for two reasons. One of them is because I I consistently find that insect damaged coffees taste rubbery, they taste astringent, they taste like asphalt, and I reject them on flavor even when they're already rejected by insect damage. And so those insects, who knows what's happening inside the coffee, but you know, it it gives the green coffee not only damage physically, but also it turns them black on the edges.

SPEAKER_01:

And so well, I think the other important thing about insect damage is when I talked to I was talking to a farmer that owns uh um geisha village, right? So uh Willem, he was actually talking about um fungi, fungi grows in the holes where insects burrow.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. That makes total sense.

SPEAKER_01:

So I think that it's it's not even about the off-flavors, it's that those those other defects like fungi and mold live inside these hollow parts where um insects get in.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, right. And and so, but I think it all works together. It's holistic. So if you have a coffee that has severe insect damage, where pars parts, large parts of the beans are missing and it's black and it tastes bad, I will reject it. And so if there's visible or invisible toxins, that will never get through our screening, even if it makes it through every other part of the process. When it gets to our roastery, we have our own process that even further eliminates anything that would be toxic or moldy.

SPEAKER_01:

So well, and that's yeah, moisture control. So there's all these QC processes that we have in place and that specialty coffee people have in place to prevent these things. And one is moisture content. So if we get a coffee that's not between that's outside of 10 to 12 percent moisture, we know that's a problem. If it's under 10% moisture, we know it's probably an older coffee. It's you know, it's past a couple seasons, so that's not necessarily an unhealthy coffee, but it's not one that we're gonna roast because it's not gonna be fresh. But outside of 12%, that's where you start developing mold and problems. Same thing with the grain pro bags. Um, the specialty coffee comes in grain pro bags for a reason because if they're just in the jute bags, which is, you know, if you've ever seen a coffee bag, it's jute, it's that, you know, burlap. Um that uh unhealthy things can get transferred to that. Um moisture can get in there. Um we were just talking the other day, me and Nicole, about um a cup of excellence. What what country was it? Guatemala. They lost all their coffee to uh petroleum contamination in a in a container.

SPEAKER_02:

So it actually came from the bag. It was the for some reason they had made the jute bag with a petroleum product that that impacted the flavor of the coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Really bizarre.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And some so for specialty, because there's quality checks not only in the green coffee but in the cup, that would never make it to you, where a commodity coffee company would just maybe roast that really dark so you never tasted it, but now you have this petroleum in your coffee because coffee is pretty unregulated that in from from food standards. Um, but all these toxins can get in through commodity coffee. So people that tell me, well,$20 is too much for coffee, I'm gonna go to Costco or wherever and get my$10 pound of coffee. That's great, but just know that the quality standards aren't there. It's not even that, you know, we're talking about a prissy, fancy coffee that has jasmine and and berries, which of course we like. Right? No one's more prissy about coffee than me. But um we we love that, but it's also there's a health standard, a health aspect to it that you may not be aware of that we want to make you aware of because the quality checks just aren't there. They can buy a container and sit on it for you know for Lord knows how long, and anything any possible things can happen to it, and then just roast it super dark. So rigorous control standards or quality standards are a hallmark of specialty coffee, and you can't have them. I would also say, and we I think we talked about this last time, we were talking about grocery store coffee. When you're looking at buying coffee and you can't find an origin on the bag or what kind of coffee that is, a friend of mine just recently showed me um a La Vaza coffee uh that was called crema. Nowhere on that bag did it say whether it was Arabica, Robusta, it didn't say uh where it was from, any of that. I think that's a big red flag for people that are monitoring their health. But also, if you're buying something from a specialty coffee company, you ought to do some research to see if they have a Q grader because a lot of them buy from importers that they say they're specialty. And and Nicole will tell you that she rejects a lot of specialty importer coffees because they just have they have defects, they have primary defects, they're not allowed to have. So if you care about what you're ingesting and you care about your coffee, uh do the extra work, and that website should have the qualifications of their of who's grading their coffee and who's bringing it in. If they don't, again, another red flag. Going to the second thing I talked about was optimal processing methods, and you kind of talked about, you hit on it, washed the wet process, um, but also controlled drying.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

So you can have a um a washed coffee, which is called a wet process coffee, and and where that contributes to the uh a healthier coffee is the pulp is removed.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. It's removed immediately. Like it so the faster you get those sugars off the coffee, the less opportunity there is for fungus and mold. However, it's a trade-off because all the most beautiful, like fruity, uh powerfully flavored coffees tend to be not always, tend to be naturals. Right. So it's that they're fermented inside the coffee cherry for a limited amount of time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but how do they control that? So that's so I I'm glad you brought that up because that's the other thing about the controlled part of this is controlled drying. Yes. Whether it's washed coffee or um a coffee being naturally dried in a cherry, most uh most of the time, and I say most of the time, it's not always the case, but I would say your better coffees and your better controlled processes are raised beds. And that means you have think of two by fours and with a screen elevated a few feet off the ground, and coffee cherries are just distributed in a single layer, and there's plenty of air that's working around the cherry so that there's constantly air moving around that coffee cherry.

SPEAKER_02:

And they get turned by people, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And then the other thing they do is they'll cover them.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So if coffee's dried on a big patio, one of the the challenges or problems they could run into is rain. Yes, and so when rain happens, uh then you know obviously those patios gather water, uh, there's more moisture that's put into it, and it makes the moisture or the drying process less exact than raised beds. But again, these are all and these are all investments that the farmer has to make that we benefit from. Yep. And of course, when you think about the cost of specialty coffee, what you're paying for is labor. There's a lot of labor that goes into that. If you think about um how many hands touch a single coffee bean, it's pretty staggering when you look at the supply chain in specialty coffee. And so, and we already talked about the third thing I put in there was protective storage and transport. Um, they're not just jute bags. I get the willies every time I look at coffee that's just in a jute bag.

SPEAKER_02:

I I uh hesitate to ever buy it in that way. I I look at the coffees that are available and it says jute only, and I and I skip those if I I've never purchased a jute only lot of coffee. Yeah, I just don't trust it. Yeah, and it could be a great coffee, but but you know, every coffee has a place. Yes. That's our our standards are so high, I just can't imagine risking uh that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yes. So by and large, everything we have comes in a uh hermetically sealed Grain Pro bag.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, either Grain Pro or we've even had some vacuum sealed bags from Instinto.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

So, and those are great.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, some of our reserves will come in uh a 30 kilo brick. Yeah, brick that looks like your food saver, you know, bag that sucked all the air out of it, which is which again, there's nothing that's gonna happen to that coffee. So if I'm that farmer and I'm put that much dedication into that coffee, I know by doing that that it's gonna get to its location and and be in the exact same state as when I sent it out. So um, and then the roasting safeguard. If there's even anything in there, uh roasting is is going to mitigate most of it.

SPEAKER_02:

So um yeah, it kills almost every single mycotoxin except for OTA. OTA is the only one that would possibly survive.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and so let's talk about that because there's companies out there that claim we've tested our coffee. We've even played around with the idea of testing our coffee for OTAs. The problem with OTAs are what, Nicole?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh the problem with OTAs is you can't see them. You can't uh you can't know that they're it's not a visible defect.

SPEAKER_01:

Could could OTAs develop after it leaves our roastery?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, yes. OTAs can definitely occur at any point of the process.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so even if I brought in a bag of coffee and I tested a 300 gram sample, that is no guarantee that there's not OTAs somewhere else in that bag of coffee. Right. Or in that crop of coffee. Or that you get it roasted and then whatever you do with it, um, that it's gonna stay OTA free.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. You leave it out on your back patio in Georgia in the summer for a month. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So so if you're buying coffee specifically because it's quote unquote tested for mycotoxins, it's there's a dubious claim. It is a dubious claim. It's it's as dubious as me claiming that your coffee is free of toxins. Where where I am sure it's about 99.9% probability because of the quality process and specialty that it's free of all that. But for me to claim that it is because I tested a small part of that crop is no indication.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And and to to give you a perspective, if uh if someone buys a container of coffee, that's 33,000 pounds of coffee to 45,000 pounds of coffee. So that's that's a huge amount to be sure of.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a lot of coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, so I I'll I guess we'll wrap this one up. Go aha, you can go to our blog and read more about this if you want. And but I really just wanted to hit that specialty coffee, it's not just that it tastes great, it's the best tasting example of coffee, um, and terroir, right? The character of it, uh, depending on where in the world it's grown. But it also, because of the specialty coffee standards as set by Specialty Coffee Association, um, it is by Far the clean one of the cleanest food products you're gonna eat and or consume. Um, but and then again, you also got to continue to do your homework. And if you're gonna buy a coffee and pay a premium for it, the company should be reputable.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Yep. And then when you get it home, make sure you're storing it properly. So the bags that we sell our coffee in have ziplock closures, so you can reclose the bag and it has a one-way valve on the bag so that we know that uh carbon dioxide can can leave the coffee bag, and so your bag's not gonna puff up, but oxygen can't get in. So your coffee is safe in the bag from our roastery, or you can buy something like an airscape, which you can put uh your coffee in, and it has actually a double layer. And one layer has that one-way valve, and one layer has just a cap on top, and you can put your coffee in that and it stays fresh.

SPEAKER_01:

Those are just super cool. I love the airscapes. They're they're really cool. They have a big bucket version too of the lid that pushes all the air out of that one-way valve. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I love the airscape.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it's just a great product. Great product.

SPEAKER_02:

And from our friends in Montana.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're Montana-based. Planetary designs. Yes, right. Um, hey, so let's talk about, let's switch gears and talk about El Socoro and special reserves in general.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, El Socoro.

SPEAKER_01:

El Socoro. Again, my New England Spanish gets me again. It's a wicked good coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a wicked good coffee. I'm wicked. I appreciate your in your new English.

SPEAKER_01:

New English. Yeah, well, my son was saying I'm New English, and I said that sounds way fancier than saying I'm from New England. I'm New English.

SPEAKER_02:

You're New English.

SPEAKER_01:

New English. Which which makes sense because a lot of the words we use like grip shin. Like my tires ain't got no gription, is New English. That's because nobody's using that old as old English.

SPEAKER_02:

And then what did we hear? Hammer down.

SPEAKER_01:

Hammer down.

SPEAKER_02:

Hammer down.

SPEAKER_01:

Hammer down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. That's like lock-in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, let's lock it. Let's lock it in. All right. So lock in. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, El Sokoro. Uh this is from an award-winning farm. I am so jazzed about this coffee. Uh, the the this farm has won first place in the cup of excellence for its geisha coffee, which I we don't have the geisha, but we have their Makatura, which is a very rare varietal. I've never seen a Makatura before.

SPEAKER_01:

Can you explain Cup of Excellence for people that don't know what that is?

SPEAKER_02:

So Cup of Excellence is a competition where um farmers compete to dis to celebrate their coffee. So they'll bring a coffee that they've worked on really hard on to um develop, and they're developing uh really special flavor profiles in these coffees, and they're developing varietals. So maybe a a varietal that they've even invented. So crop cross between um like this this Makatura is a cross between a Margot Gype and a um Kotura. So so maybe they've developed this hybrid uh themselves. And so they bring it to competition, and when they win, the coffee gets auctioned off. And usually it gets auctioned off for astronomical amounts of money. So um we are working with this coffee that comes from a farm where the the farmer has this incredible expertise on growing coffee, and he's you know made this available to us, and so I'm super excited to bring it, and it's just beautiful. It is a just beautiful, delicate, um tea-like, sweet coffee that is just so rare. So I'm just what what are the flavor notes on it? I I can't remember exactly, but I know it's very pear-like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Orange and co it has a very orange and um citric acidity.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but more like green.

SPEAKER_01:

A lot of deep like a cocoa. Really?

SPEAKER_02:

It's not cocoa, it's so sweet. This one is so sweet.

SPEAKER_01:

So I I I think I wrote um You wrote cocoa, that's why it's on the package.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. If it's cocoa, it's like milk cocoa.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like a milk chocolate.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's very floral. Um I think I wrote on when I was doing the QC on this that the angels were singing as I sipped this coffee. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh I like all the lights came on. Were we drinking this on the last podcast? We were drinking a Margot Gype, but what was it?

SPEAKER_02:

Really? Yeah, because remember the beans were so big you couldn't No, that was a uh it wasn't Margot Gype, it was something else.

SPEAKER_01:

I thought it was a Marcara.

SPEAKER_02:

Pacamara.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, it was a pacamara. Okay, yeah. Yeah, you're right. We were but we yeah, I feel like we talked about this maybe.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the pacamara came from a really interesting farm in Nicaragua.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Which is uh we were talking about there's a varietal, so there's a varietal that gained notoriety from you know competition, and uh that's a really nice another really nice one is the Pacamara. But yeah, this El Socorro?

SPEAKER_02:

Socorro, the help.

SPEAKER_01:

S El Socoro is is a really good coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a really good socoro, socoro.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and we changed so if you haven't been to our site lately, we've uh we've started packaging in 80 gram um um tins. Tins.

SPEAKER_02:

They're so nice.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and so this way this is basically essentially four coffees for you. So yeah, four brews. This is four brews, four pourovers of 20 grams each.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's enough to share with someone.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it's if you think about it, it's five dollars a coffee or a little less, actually, and which is about the same as you'd pay for a really crappy coffee at Starbucks.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, not crappy, just like a lot of milk and not a lot, a lot of coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you're so nice. You're very diplomatic.

SPEAKER_02:

Creative flavoring.

SPEAKER_01:

Very diplomatic, okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Creative secondary flavoring.

SPEAKER_01:

Creative secondary flavoring, yes. All right, so all right, on to the next subject, rolling right along because we're locked in. Yeah, hammered down. All right, so the next thing we want to talk about is the new Curig Coffee Collective and the problem with K cups and how to solve some of them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So give us the bad news first. What are the problems?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, the problems with K cups are that even though they're ultra convenient, they're really, really bad for the environment. They're incredibly trashy. You know, you end up with with a plastic cup for every cup of coffee that you make. And so that just that just really adds up. It adds up to the extent that the person who created the K cup left the company and you know, w was very remorseful that he had created that thing.

SPEAKER_01:

So what about quality? Do you want to talk about the quality of the actual coffee inside the K cup?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So one of the problems we talk kind of talked about that a little bit earlier about coffee releases carbon dioxide when it's in a con, well, it just releases carbon dioxide, and that gas takes up space. And so, in order for a K cup not to explode, you need to off-gas the coffee, which means you have to let it air out before you can package it into the K cup. So um before a K cup is even packaged, it gets, it gets, it sits around for enough time that when they grind it and pack it, it's not going to burst the container. So you already have kind of old coffee in there, and then K cups stay in there for a long time. They they have at least a year shelf life, which I'm sure they're nitrogen-packed, which is good, but then there's only seven grams of coffee inside of a K cup. So that is very little coffee per the amount of water that you're putting through that thing, too. So anyway, so old coffee, it's not great coffee, it's ground coffee, and it sits there for a long time. So you're just drinking a very poor quality product. Hardly anybody in specialty creates K cups. And if they do, they're doing it in a different way.

SPEAKER_01:

So Yeah, well, it's kind of a marketing play. And and because your quality of the cup's not good either, because you can't get a good TDS from that cup. Because they can't package enough for the amount of water. So and by TDS I mean total dissolved solids.

SPEAKER_02:

You're just not getting enough coffee in your coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's very underextracted. Right. Right. So even if you could battle through all of the other issues, at the end of the day, you're gonna get an old stale unextract underextracted cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's it's it's and trash. You get a lot of trash.

SPEAKER_01:

Get a lot of trash. Okay, so how do we solve this problem? So say I have a K, I have a Keurig, and I really like it because it's convenient.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I I agree with the convenience factor 100%.

SPEAKER_01:

But I don't want bad coffee, I don't want the trash, I don't want to, you know, produce a lot of trash, I don't want bad coffee, stale coffee, I don't want underextracted co extracted coffee. Help me, Nicole. What can I do?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. Uh there's a lot you can do. There is a lot you can do. So the the probably the best case scenario is that you go buy yourself a uh reusable pod. And there it's essentially a plastic and mesh uh pod that you can refill and put your own coffee into it and just pack that thing. Pack as much coffee as you can get in there. You'll probably get double, maybe 14 grams to 20 grams of coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh you could play with a grind too. Yeah, a finer grind maybe will get you a better extraction. Like you could play with it.

SPEAKER_02:

If you have a grinder, I would say, you know, if people with carriages probably don't have grinders. And that's okay. Just buy ground coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And if you want to play with it, get a grinder. If you want to play with it, you can buy one for 150 bucks. The Baratta. Barata Encore is a very great entry level.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep, we recommend that all day long. Um, so so do that, and then you want to choose the smallest cup setting, and you want to choose the bold button. So click the bold button, uh, smallest cup setting, and brew your coffee. You're gonna get a much better cup. Also, your water matters. Your water always matters. So, no matter what brew method you're using, you want to use um a filtered water. So, either out of your burrito filter or buying spring water or um go to your grandma's house and get well water, something that tastes really good and that is clean. So, clean the cleanest water you can do is the best. Never, never though, use fully distilled water because that will not taste good, first of all, and also it will damage your equipment. Um, and then yeah, what else? If you have to buy pods, find the compostable ones. They do make them and they can't they have like cool baskets. They have much more coffee in them if you can buy them from someone like I don't know, does Cat and Cloud have pods?

SPEAKER_00:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

Um anyway, buy from a specialty coffee company that makes pods, because some of them do. And they usually have they're usually in a pouch and not in just a cup. They're nitrogen packed and they have more coffee per, they have more coffee per pod, and it's just better quality coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, I've even seen like um Gisha in a pod. I that's so there's some interesting marketing stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so you can do that, but but I wonder, because I mean, yeah, I just wonder how that works.

SPEAKER_01:

Knowing what we know about pods, right? That it has to be free of CO2, which means it's dead. It's you can only hold a limited amount of coffee, and then it's all coming through plastic.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And so so let's talk about Keurig's coffee collective.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

So this is such a marketing ploy. Keurig has never had their own, they they've had the brewer, but they've never had their own coffee brand, I don't think. And so they're trying to really market the heck out of this coffee collective. And I just don't think that it's anything other than um marketing. It's just marketing a coffee, a Keurig coffee pod. So I don't think it's anything different. I think it's just they're having fun marketing.

SPEAKER_01:

So well, I I think what I would caution people, what we're seeing a lot of is that specialty coffee is on the rise for all the reasons we talked about. It tastes better. Um, farming practices are getting better, we're getting a better green product here. There's a lot of craft brewers, our craft roasters out there roasting it, um, and and it's cleaner. And so specialty coffee market is on the rise, the market share within the total amount of people that drink coffee, it's increasing. So, what are people trying to do? They're trying to get in there and get some of that market share. So you're being lied to in a lot of different ways. Again, you go to the grocery store, I see it all the time, and you see how do they market to you? They market to you with packaging that looks like a specialty roaster.

SPEAKER_02:

Better goods, yeah, specialty coffee, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And they market to you with flavor notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Premium coffee, I think they call it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, which right, which is again, pre premium is not a grade.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a great package, right? It's a really great package, but if you look at it carefully, you can see it is not anything different than just a repackaged version of their great value coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So they're everybody's trying to trick you. So you got to do your homework. I think this is just another example that Keurig is trying to stay relevant. As people move away from this convenience and towards other things. So a lot of people now they're moving to Brevels, they're moving to espresso machines.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a little bit of a step pro. Is that the good one?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, if you can afford it, right? If you can afford a thousand dollars for a coffee machine, then you can make a high quality coffee about the same amount of time it takes you to make a curie. Once you get good at it. Once you get your grind established, it'll grind it for you. You know, tamping it's not a problem, you put it in there.

SPEAKER_02:

So um, invite Jason over because he will he'll dial you in your machine.

SPEAKER_01:

I will dial you in. So um, so I think it's it's a marketing ploy and a push. And so you have to be very careful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and you know, Keurig's Keurig's not you know the devil, but you know, be smart about what you're putting. Be smart about what you're doing. You can you can make it better for sure. If it if only just use the smallest cup size and good water and um the bold button. I those are the three like using just regular pods, like you're in the hotel and you have tap water and a I love the bold button.

SPEAKER_00:

Use the bold button. It's bold. What does the bold button do?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh it I think it might slow it down. Slow it down. Yeah, I think it slows it down a bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Slows down the flow of water, maybe. Okay. All right, all right. Make it bold.

SPEAKER_02:

Either that or it makes it a little hotter.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. But I get a sen I get a sense that we're not talking to the people that are gonna use a curi. Maybe you are and you're looking to transition, which you should be, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, or you have an Airbnb and you want to provide better coffee.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what? That's a great point. I never even thought about that. That's a great point.

SPEAKER_02:

So Yeah. Yeah, you just happen to want to buy a half mile coffee and you you're like, okay, well, if I do a reusable pod and I buy it ground, then my Airbnb clients can make awesome coffee from my friends.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, I stand corrected. That's a great point. That's a great use case.

SPEAKER_02:

Um you're a college student, or you have a college student.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, it's just convenient, but I mean, I just I've drinking so much bad Keurig, I can't do it anymore. So in the military, so they would they would give the military basis Keurig coffee cups or coffee pods by the palate. And you start looking at the dates, and they're they're like three years old. It's best if used by you know at the start of the war a decade ago. So yeah, so it's just it was really bad. And uh, so I just can't do it anymore. But we did do it for a period of time. We did have a uh a reusable basket.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and that actually worked okay.

SPEAKER_01:

It was actually not bad. Yeah, it actually wasn't bad. I think that's a step in the right direction if you have to do that. So, and hopefully this spring we're coming out with a solution for the single coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. So yeah, you definitely so stay tuned for that.

SPEAKER_01:

We're trying to figure this out for you guys. So um, all right, let's talk about small coffee versus big coffee. All right, what can small coffee offer that big coffee can't?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a that's so I think that that small coffee because of just the nature of local roasteries, small batches, micro lots, we offer a cleaner coffee, definitely a more curated uh uh menu of coffee, and better flavored coffee. Like our coffee that it tastes better. Uh it's often fresher and you know, you can have a relationship with the people that are roasting your coffee. And that's it's it's really cool. You can go down to Starbucks and talk to the Barista and have a relationship with the Barista, but it's not the same. You're not getting the same transparency. We offer so much transparency about where our coffee comes from, and you should be able to get that from your local roaster. Is you know, tell me about how you chose this coffee and why you chose this coffee and where it came from, and you know, tell me about the farm. We have good stories.

SPEAKER_01:

I think if you're a really big coffee company, there's luxuries you just don't have with regard to sourcing coffees.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's why and even QC, like their cupping tables have hundreds of coffees, and that's every day. That's every day.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I can't even imagine one of the things that go to work.

SPEAKER_02:

And then I'm like, oof, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. What is your friend that works for Starbucks? How many coffees would she cup in a day?

SPEAKER_02:

Over a hundred.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so that just seems like a lot. So anyway, I think there's there is some business challenges that they have because they're sourcing, they've gotten so big, and the choice they're gonna make choices that are beneficial to their business. Right. And I don't necessarily fault them for that. They have a particular brand and customer and and and goal in mind.

SPEAKER_02:

That's their market, and that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

For us, we have some luxuries they don't. Have in small coffee. Like you said, we can pivot really quickly. We can buy super small lots of coffee and and sell them. Uh we can we can get like the best Ethiopians because we don't have to buy thousands of pounds of it. Maybe we only have to buy a couple hundred pounds a month.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So or even smaller amounts and even more special coffees. I think that's the coolest thing is that we can we can store super special, super exclusive coffees because we don't have to have you know 32,000 pounds of it. Right. And 32,000 pounds of that coffee doesn't even exist. So so what Starbucks would never buy because that doesn't even make sense in their schema, we can buy.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Or your or small roasters near you can buy. And that's the beauty of it is you can like for instance, for twenty dollars to be able to be able to try a coffee, to be able to have four cups of coffee, right, and or share with your friends a cup of coffee that comes from a farm that won the cup of excellence multiple years is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And if we're a humongous coffee, we're not buying that. It's not worth our while. It's not worth our time.

SPEAKER_00:

No.

SPEAKER_01:

But for us, it's about the coffee and and keeping it small and keeping it uh amazing. Amazing, yeah. So what else? So traceability.

unknown:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you want to talk more about that? So we talk about like quality, traceability, and then human, human coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think small coffee is working with small farmers. And so we can buy we can buy coffee from someone whose farm is only an acre and a half or four acres, or they're part of a co-op and they only have a small amount, and they're just bringing it to the co-op. And so they're participating in coffee, but they're not they're not very big. And so, and we can we can know those stories, we can know about those people, we can we've we just it can be a part of that small network and give those farmers an opportunity to highlight all of their hard work and innovation that they've put into the cup that we serve, you know, the the beans that we source. So I think that's just really unique and special and it humanizes coffee in a way that you'll never know about the farm in Sumatra that has, you know, a hundred thousand acres that that a bigger coffee company is sourcing from, or Columbia and the machines that pick it. Yeah, I think there's some don't have names.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think the machines don't have names. They may. Or I mean our espresso machine has a name.

SPEAKER_02:

But our vacuum robot has a name.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. So I think one of the other issues is who's getting paid off of that coffee when it's big coffee versus direct trade or or smaller lots going through importers with specialty or roasters like us. Usually the farmer is getting uh a lot more money for their coffee than they would be if they were mass producing it.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Or they belong to a co-op, which which helps them collectively attain things like education for their kids or medical care. And so belonging to a co-op really elevates their quality of life.

SPEAKER_01:

So all right, we got it all out there.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's what you get. That's what you get in your stocking this December, is those four topics. So um anything else, Nicole, on your mind before we exit?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I'm just really excited about 2026 and what we're gonna do. And and yeah, I'm really excited about developing some new things, especially portable coffee.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Something that's a little bit more single serve, easier, but also doesn't have the problems that like a K cup would have.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, especially we're here in the Pacific Northwest, it's very outdoors lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, fishing, camping.

SPEAKER_01:

And so just because you're camping doesn't mean you have to have bad coffee. Cryptid hunting. Cryptid hunting. What's cryptid hunting?

SPEAKER_02:

Like you know, like Bigfoot.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh Bigfoot. Yeah, it's a different podcast. But podcast, uh Sasquatch hunting is a different podcast. Yeah, that's so hey, I'm just very thankful for you as we close the year out. Um, this would have been our first year. Thankful for all you guys that listen. We've gotten uh some encouraging notes from you guys, and yeah, and if you're buying our coffee and supporting us, we appreciate it. And so drop us a line if uh if you haven't, and uh if there's anything you want us to talk about, uh we're happy to talk about it and pass this along to a friend. Share this with a friend that loves coffee.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, before the street.