After descending into Stumptown Coffee’s Seattle roastery, where bags of beans from different countries wait for their turn in the WWII-era roasting machine, we gather for the daily cupping: a sampling, by smell and taste, of coffee from five different farms. Today’s cupping features beans from farms in Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia.
The production roaster, Jesse Hughey, describes the roasting process in great detail, cheeks pink from the heat generated by the machine. Beans spin and tumble inside the roaster as they’re heated, turning from pale green to dark brown, before Jesse opens the hatch and they spill out onto a wide grate. A rotating metal arm sifts them around and around as they cool.
Confession time: I’m a born-and-raised Seattleite who doesn’t drink coffee. But my sister is a barista, and over time she’s become fascinated by how we in the United States get this much-loved beverage. She works for a local coffeehouse that just started using Stumptown Coffee, and as a result, the shop has raised its prices.
“Sometimes customers ask me why our beans have gotten more expensive,” she told me. “But I tell them that we want to be part of Stumptown’s mission to give fair prices to farmers and they’re like oh, OK.”