By Wiggles:

Anthony Kurutz was kind enough to let Sarah Leslie and I from TampTamp spend some time with him today, checking out a day in the life of a coffee roaster. Anthony is the proprietor and roaster at Plowshares Coffee, where he roasts delicious clean and sweet coffees in Hillburn, New York.

Anthony was dropping some coffee off at a hot dog restaraunt in park slope called Bark (did I mention that he sells his awesome coffee to a hot dog restaurant? I told you this dude was cool), and picked us up from TampTamp world headquarters. Part one of the field trip was a visit to the super-rad Continental coffee warehouse in New Jersey, where we picked up a couple of bags of green coffee. This coffee warehouse was big – really big. There were huge rooms and palates of coffee. And a semi truck from Green Mountain Coffee.

After driving through scenic New Jersey, we got to the actually scenic Ramapo Valley where the Plowshares roastery is, and where Anthony works his magic. Do you know how I much i love coffee roasteries? Because I love coffee roasteries. Anthony roasts on a beutiful, red Probat roaster, with a matching red sample roaster, and you can tell that he takes pride in his roastery because it was clean and organized. The heart of the visit was a really cool cupping the three of us did. Anthony had a fresh crop El Salvador he had recently roasted, and pulled 5 samples at 30 second intervals, to determine the best roast profile for the coffee.

The first two samples had incredible aromatics, with a peppery dry fragrance, but once cupped they were underdeveloped and sour. the second two samples were closer to the roast profile Anthony was looking for (and Sarah and I agreed), they were both clean, bright, and fruity, with a touch of Kiwi. The last sample was still great coffee, but some of the brightness and sweetness were mellowing into chocolate, A sign that it would make a nice sweet component in an espresso blend.

As baristas and coffee people, we love to wax poetic about sourcing, roasting, and brewing beautiful coffees, and about seed to cup stories. One thing we sometimes forget to talk about is how much love, dedication, and hard work goes into each step of the process, and Plowshares is a great example. Coffee is carefully sourced, sample roasted, and cupped, than contracted, purchased, picked up, than roasted, cupped, and roasted and cupped again to determine the ideal profile. I love drinking great coffee, but meeting people with passionate ideas, who are powering the specialty coffee industry, and getting to work with them is what makes me love this business day in and day out.

Big ups to Anthony for letting us hang out at his roastery and cup coffee, to Sarah Leslie for keeping me in line, and to No 7 subs for the delicious lunch.