The next day I was out at the shop, roasting that weeks orders, and a thought occurred to me as I stepped up to the weigh and fill machine. Snoop and I both enjoy a nice fat bag, and that’s becoming more of a rarity these days.  Yes, I know…he deals in ounces and I deal in pounds (at least I assume he deals in ounces) but whether it’s beans or buds, it’s a nice surprise to find a little ‘extra’ in your bag.

That’s one of the things we pride ourselves on around here.  A full 16oz in our retail packaging, when most everyone else in the industry has moved to 12oz or less.  At ~2oz per home brew carafe, that’s an extra 2-3 days of coffee bliss when you’re a Hobbs Snob.   Fo Shizzle

The first is pretty popular – Dark Roast – this flavor profile allows the green coffee buyer to not be quite so concerned with quality, as the predominate flavor is going to be that smokey bite you get from taking beans deep into 2nd crack.  Oily and ashy, my opinion on this type of roasting is it is just one step away from charcoal, and I don’t go there.

Another tactic is blending – taking a multitude of origins and mixing them into a melange of mediocrity. Everywhere I turn in the industry I am told that I should be blending more.  It allows for more consistent of a product, which I understand…there is a sense of comfort in getting that same cup, day after day, but that’s where my agreement ends.  Similar to dark roasting, often times it allows the green buyer to choose beans of lessor quality and a cheaper price since a lot of blends are designed to not have one component ‘stand out’ from the others.  The end result of a blend should be greater than the sum of it’s parts in my opinion.  I buy premium coffee and take a lot of care in roasting it…blending it into obscurity just doesn’t jive with me.

Have you been looking for flavored coffee on our site?  Statistics show that 20% of Americans prefer their morning cup with a little extra ‘something’ to make it palatable.  We made the decision early on to not carry flavored coffee for a couple of reasons.  First off, we’re a pretty small local coffee operation.  Flavoring is so pervasive, it would have required I have another area, separate from the roast plant, to flavor and store those beans.  Even in sealed bins, Snickerdoodle would seep into my single origin offerings – and that just won’t do!  While having the “Specialty Coffee” designation doesn’t automatically mean the coffee is going to be outstanding, more often times than not, it really is.  I only buy Specialty Grade coffee, so it would be foolish to cover up their subtleties with some man-made flavor.  That brings me to the other point…Local, Premium, Smooth, NATURAL, Fresh…you see those words on every page of our site, and we mean it!  Flavoring coffee is adulterating that natural product we love with chemicals – particularly propylene glycol which is the carrying agent used to coat roasted coffee beans to get that Hazelnut kick into every nook and cranny of the bean.  If that’s your thing, we recommend using a flavored syrup in the brewed coffee.  That way you get to control the strength and your brewer and grinder won’t retain flavors that don’t belong in the cup.

Cream, Sugar, Sweetener, Flavoring – all things I loved before I started down this path of premium coffee.  I’ve given them all up for my new love – awesome single origin coffee, roasted fresh, and ground right before brewing…black, thanks.

-Stubbie

FTO is a very important coffee term that means Fair Trade and Organic.  It is a complicated certification that can be obtained to legally state and promote offering Fair Trade Organic coffee.  Some of the premium coffee E.F. Hobbs purchases is certified at the farm/importer level, which will be identified on the label.  We choose our coffees based on flavor, so you won’t see a full line of FTO here.  Some of them simply don’t hold up in the cup.

Most of the other oddly combined letters you’ll see on the label are generally grade indicators or lot designators.  Our Single Origin labels state the exact farm-given name of the coffee we’re ordering.  For example: Kenya AA FAQ, Papua New Guinea Boroida A/X, Sumatra Mandheling Gr. 1 “Old School” are some of the origin names that incorporate some odd letter combinations.

Some others you might commonly run across:

SWP = Swiss Water Process: a specific type of processing

SHB = Strictly Hard Bean: specialty bean indication, synonymous with SHG = Strictly High Grown

PNG = Papua New Guinea: just an abbreviation of the name

If you ever have any questions about what a certain set of letters might mean, don’t hesitate to ask – send us an email at Sales@EFHobbs.com.

After his extensive research, it was time for the fun part – experimentation!  Off we went to a local natural foods store to buy his very first bag of green coffee beans.  He knew the one he wanted to try – this is a man who does much leg work, and then makes a quick, confident, and purposed purchase.  We came home right away, fired up the gas grill out back, and with an old pan in hand, roasted his very first green coffee beans.  The beans popped and smoked (and smelled fantastic) and Brian brought them to “first crack” – it sounded like popcorn .  Chaff flew out of the pan and blew around the back yard like tiny pieces of light brown tissue paper.  COOL!!!!  Brian was hooked.

Next would be the search for a vintage hot air popcorn popper so many of us have used at home.  Luckily, they’re not too hard to find in a thrift store.  This allowed Brian to move the “roasting operation” inside and roast around 2 oz at a time.  The consistency that is so important to achieve for a quality roast was a concern though.  He is a snob after all.

A quick follow up step was a completely rigged and modified counter top convection oven mounted on yet another popcorn popper – a stir crazy style this time that could produce up to a whole pound!  Those ovens are a bit harder to come by in the thrift stores.  But you know – this was obviously meant to be because we walked into one of our first stops and almost as soon as we got in the door he saw it on the shelf (under a halo of light, I’m sure), grabbed my arm with a gasp and said “THEY HAVE ONE. New in the box!”  He scooted back there as quickly as he could just to make sure no one else snagged this needle in a haystack.

After bringing that home and taking some time to make the necessary modifications (a project all it’s own), he was able to roast a consistent batch of coffee, 1 lb at a time.  Now friends were paying attention and getting excited – it was great coffee!  Once people started tasting his roasted coffee, they wanted it on a regular basis.  So he would sit in our garage in a chair in an empty bay with the garage door open and patiently roast batch after batch after batch.

The more people heard about Brian’s crazy hobby, the more in-demand it became.  The time came to step it up again.  All the while Brian is, of course, still completely immersed in the online coffee community and respected by many.  He got wind of a shop going out of business here in Kansas City so we went to take a look at what treasures he might find, with the primary intention of finding some cool espresso cups.  The theme seems to be “meant to be” because while there – another halo of light and another gasp and arm grab…. they had a 5 lb roaster!

Seems this so-called “hobby” of his was expanding…. because even though he went for some measly cups, he brought home a 100 lb electric roaster capable of 5 lb batches.  He would have no problem keeping his growing customer base happy with this one.  So that bad boy wound up in our basement – and so did the roaster!  ha~!  Hundreds of pounds of coffee passed through that machine over the years he had it…. but while watching beans bronze, Brian began to ponder the possibilities of turning this into a full-fledged business.  If all these people like his coffee so much, wouldn’t others?

He flew off to the west coast, returning 3 days later with E.F. Hobbs’ first production roaster – a drum roaster with much greater capabilities in regard to capacity (40 lbs) as well as technology.  So he rented a space in Western Shawnee, and well….. the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Here we are getting real – in our wonderful local grocery store, Hy-Vee, selling online and to our biggest fan base yet, and working to expand every day!  2 oz to 1 lb to 5 lbs to 40 lbs.  My how things evolve, eh?

CoffeeCakeKC!

Big things have been happening here at the E.F. Hobbs World Headquarters!  We were recently introduced to Renee Kloeblen (@Ms Nene) and her fabulous mouth-watering cupcakes by Jason Ary (@Zero7KC) through Cari Tornatta (@socreepy).

And POOF!  CoffeeCakeKC was born and decidedly committed to being Kansas City’s first and only FRESH, LOCAL, AND GOURMET MOBILE CAFE bringing to the masses the most decadent cupcakes possible and finest premium local coffee by way of a full espresso / coffee bar as well as smoothies.

From the very first meeting we all had together, it was kismet.  Like-minded mentality of what a business should be, how it should and can work, and our philosophies in general offered us a quick bond.  Ms Nene has had a dream of being the first mobile cupcake truck in Kansas.  She was well on her way – establishing herself wholly through Twitter.  Her followers were more than just fans – they are also big time SUPPORTERS.  In order to make this mobile truck come to fruition, capital was a requirement.  She has funded her dream through Kickstarter where her followers provided their financial support.  Enter Brian Jurgens.  What would be the perfect compliment to cupcakes?  Seems coffee is a logical and yummy fit .  Our future with Ms Nene holds countless possibilities and we so look forward to discovering them…. starting in December!!

We owe it all to our friend Jason for his insight and networking with Cari.  They had the vision of what we could be together and we will always be indebted to them for that.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Coffee is a commodity and therefore, ever changing.  In our attempt to help you discern truly great coffee from what’s definitely not the best coffee in the world, just a couple of definitions offered from a premium coffee roaster.

“Single Origin” coffee simply means the whole bag came from one crop on one farm.  The labels on our local coffee indicate exactly which farm our coffee is from.  It is bought in lots and that’s how we can offer coffee from the same farm for an extended amount of time, as well as why others don’t last very long.  If a particular farm had a high yield, there is much to sell before it runs out so our supplier has plenty on hand for when we reserve and reorder.  If it did not have a very high yield it will be around for a shorter time.

A Blend is the combination of two or more Single Origin coffees.  Hobbs Espresso Blend is a combination of Brazil and Ethiopia single origins and the Morning Stretch Blend is a combination of Costa Rica and Panama.  So many coffee companies blend beyond all recognition, however Stubbie takes each single origin coffee fresh from the roaster and blends it to order every week.

And don’t forget – while it is the ultimate goal of the farmer, and therefore, roaster to produce the same coffee you’re used to tasting, each crop will, inherently, vary from season to season.  So you may be buying the exact same Single Origin from us over and over again, but once-in-a-while you may taste a difference.  Great coffee is natural and nothing in nature is the exact same every time.