My Coffee Journey

Often I get asked “how did you get started in coffee?”  The answer lies beyond the buckets of Folgers that were brewed like a religious call to worship each morning as I grew up.  I guess the real start would have to lay next to the Mississippi river in the small university town of Winona, MN.  The best part of my college education, though I have only the highest respect and admiration for the art department (I don’t care what you say, Steve),  belongs to the boutique coffee roaster  Acoustic Cafe.  Many a late night I served over sized mugs of single origin coffee, long before it was the trendy marketing idea of third wave coffee houses.  The job did little for my already devastated varsity sleep patterns, but my barista skills, roasting knowledge and rudimentary cupping got their fledgling beginnings.  Really it was just a bunch of newly baptized coffee geeks experimenting, one batch and one poorly pulled shot at a time.  But it was a start.

12 years later I find myself a bit more involved in the whole bean process, cupping and grading enough coffee to understand the difference between a wet processed and a dry processed Ethiopian and drinking enough espresso that someone can make my day by making it properly.

The reality is that I am not the answer to all things coffee.  If a table was set for a dinner inviting the most knowledgeable coffee geeks in the world, I’d be the guy in a hair net washing dishes or pealing the potatoes.  But I’d be loving it.  Forever labeling me the optimist, Camera Girl chirps, “Why do you always think ANYTHING is possible?”  And that is why Burundi is such a tasty location for me.  It’s my way of sinking my teeth into the juicy ripe fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Coffee.  I’ve tasted the fruit and I can’t stop now.

Along the way I hope that this is not all for me.  It’s my ever optimistic attempt to combine my love of coffee with my love of relationships and the value of the individual.  Can I be Coffee Guy and impact a nation?  Will my wife thrive and succeed as a photographer and mom in Burundi?  Will Boy Adventurer and Mr. Biter excel, or will they become two strange Third Culture Kids?  That’s what this Long Miles Coffee Project is about to find out.

Coffee Guy