Posts from — February 2008

In the wake of the announced Starbucks closures today for barista retraining (”re”-training?), local Seattle independent roasters Caffe Vita are taking advantage of the theoretical masses of caffeine-less coffee drinkers by offering free coffee and espresso at all of their locations during the three hours that every Starbucks will be closed–5:30-8:30pm PST.

It’s a sly move to expose their product to a potentially new audience, and I wish them luck.  If you’re in the neighborhood–they have locations on Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Fremont, Seward Park, and down in Olympia–be sure to check it out for some free brew.

Our roasting machine arrived crated on a pallet today–I’m very excited. I took the crating apart, moved it off the pallet, cleaned the machine, and put it back together. We still need to hook it up to the afterburner and the gas line, but this was probably the most fun part.

Here’s the crated machine, just off the truck (you can see our afterburner in the background):

Here I’ve started breaking down the crate, and you can see the machine’s nameplate. Normally the nameplate on San Franciscans is brass, but for some reason a previous owner decided to paint the plate and all the fittings a uniform black. I don’t mind, though I’d prefer the original brass:

See more pictures, including the fully assembled machine, after the cut.

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We went to pick up the afterburner the other day and brought it over Snoqualmie Pass in a friend’s truck. We also palletized the roasting machine itself, and it might get here as soon as this afternoon. I hope so; we’ve got a ton of work ahead of us but I’m looking forward to all of it.

While the machine was being crated , we learned some interesting lore about it: it turns out that this San Franciscan was Cafe Vita’s first roasting machine, as well as being the same machine that launched Caffe Fiore and Pioneer Coffee Company. (Pioneer is who we, in turn, purchased it from.)

So this 12k San Franciscan has launched three successful Seattle coffee roasteries…let’s hope it can launch a fourth, eh?