Coffee Tao

I turned 30 yesterday, and fortunately I didn’t seem to suffer the usual freaking out that often comes with that event. I spent the evening at one of my favorite places here in Seattle with some friends, and had a good time.

This weekend I’ll be flying home to Tennessee to visit family. I’ll also be stopping by the place I used to roast coffee for, Greyfriar’s Coffee and Tea in Chattanooga. It’ll be nice to see some former colleagues and to get my hands back on that old 12k Samiac and roast a few batches of Nicaraguan. I’ll continue to blog on the road, using the neato iPhone my lovely wife bought me for my birthday, and will probably take status of the coffee situation in my hometown. There are many things I can say about Chattanooga both good and bad, but one thing I always liked about the town was that it was kind of a hotbed for a while of independent coffee roasters. When I left TN in 2006, there were five or six shops within walking distance of mine that all roasted their own, and no chain store to speak of except a single Starbucks attached to a hotel.

I’ve heard that several of the shops have closed since I left (not mine of course), and several Starbucks have opened or will open downtown. It should be interesting to take the temperature of the coffee industry there and see how things have changed, especially after having been in Seattle for a while now.