The Lamppost Family: Roastmaster & Co-Owner

So what is a Roastmaster anyway? A Roastmaster is the coffee industry term usually reserved for the head roaster at the company. There are a range of responsibilities depending on the size of a company, but it is generally our job to choose or help choose the green coffees, develop the profiles for those coffees and the company’s blends, choose and maintain the roasting equipment, and actually roast the coffee.

Unless my son-in-law Chris is off work, I generally do all the roasting with the help of our daughter Kari, our niece Jessica, and Coffee Maven Valorie. They help me dump the roasted coffee, label and provide tubs for it, weigh post batch and sometimes pre-batch coffees. If the extended family is over, Aravis likes to be with Papa!

Favorite facet or aspect of coffee/coffee industry you have enjoyed learning about. It’s hard to pick a part of the coffee industry I enjoy the most, or learning the most about, but I am a pioneer at heart, and I like discovering new things. So I think the favorite thing I like to do and look forward to is sampling, choosing, and drinking new coffees. Of course this drives the Maven nuts at times, as she is more of a settler at heart and once we find a coffee she likes, she could drink just that one (or one of just a few). Plus my eagerness for new stuff causes us to swell our inventory as well!

Favorite brewing method: I think it is mind blowing and just cool how different the same coffee can taste by brewing it different methods! If I had to choose just one, it would be a Chemex pour over. It does a great job of bringing out the nuances of flavor in the African coffees I like so much.

Favorite coffee: My favorite coffee we have in stock right now is a Kenyan. Kenyan coffees are complex, sweet, and smooth. That being said, I really enjoy a wide variety of coffees. A perfect day would have a simple, sweet coffee first thing in the morning, our Colombia fits that bill. My second cup of the morning would a little more complex, slap my tongue around a little bit, the Brazil Senhora currently fits that bill. After lunch I have one more cup and like the wildest coffee we have. That is currently the Kenyan, although we have a dry process Ethiopian Yirgecheffe on the way.

Favorite things to do not coffee related: The top thing is by far my favorite thing to do and that is fish! Dad tells me I caught my first fish when I was 2, and I have been nearly obsessed ever since. The photo below is from the Situk River in Alaska earlier this year. I’ve been moving more towards fly fishing lately, but really will fish with anything, anytime, anywhere. I also enjoy hanging out with my family, creating things, cooking, working on cars (weird, huh!), and active sports.

Dream List: Well I’m married to my dream girl, have the best family in the world, and have great faith, so I’m living the dream. I would REALLY like to fly fish the Skeena River system in BC for huge steelhead, however. We have that penciled in for next fall, so Lord willing that will happen. It is around the time we want to open the actual Lamppost Coffee Roasters shop, so there may a big conflict, stay tuned!

Something not generally known about you: Wow, that’s a hard one… Some odd things that have nothing to do with being a Roastmaster! I’m an ordained minister, I have a Master’s degree in Computer Science, I’ve caught a 20 lb steelhead, I don’t like celery, I’ve worked for The Boeing Company for 30 years!

Blessings!

#LamppostLife #Family