Three Moments, One Vision

Stereo Coffee Co. didn't start as a business plan. It's the result of three distinct moments that, together, formed a vision.

The First Moment

"Family and Music"

Father and son, in a basement, coffee roaster humming with beans crashing inside like waves, and music pumping. An exciting moment of learning a new craft alongside my son. I wasn’t the expert dad teaching him, we were equals learning together, surrounded by music we love. 

The Second Moment

"Craft, Humanity, and Mindfulness"

When the roast was complete, we let the beans rest for one day. A painfully long day, but that rest time is crucial for the beans to “off gas”. We finally set up a pour-over.  Heat the water, place a filter in the dripper, grind the beans, add the grounds to the filter.  Carefully pour the water, spiraling outward over the ground coffee.  The process was mindful. Human. A stark difference from thoughtlessly popping a pod into a machine that spits out coffee from beans that were roasted and ground a year ago. I take the first sip. Disgusting. Sour. Failure. Opportunity for growth. Thus began the obsession with learning the craft of roasting and creating quality coffee, but also a love of the mindfulness that drinking coffee from freshly roasted coffee beans provides in an ever-increasingly mindless world. A world in which our minds are continuously bombarded with low quality entertainment. A world that has disconnected from all kinds of mindful traditions including growing, roasting, grinding, and brewing coffee beans. A tradition which spans back over a thousand years.

The Third Moment

"Community and Connection"

After reading books and blogs, watching countless videos, and failing many times to construct a roasting profile that results in coffee that lives up to my standard, the recipe began to form. Slight adjustment, taste, slight adjustment, taste. Over and over. Then one day we start a roast. 350 grams of Washed Colombian beans from the town of Buesaco in Southern Colombia. We make our planned adjustment. We store the roasted beans and wait two days.  We finally grind the beans and brew what is sincerely the best cup of coffee I have ever had. And while that was an immensely exciting and proud moment, that was not the third moment that lead to the creation of Stereo Coffee Co. After all...was it really that good? Or did the fact that we roasted them skew my judgment?

The moment came when I brewed a cup for a friend of mine who attended culinary school, is an expert on all things flavor, and whose opinion I respect. He too said it was the best cup of coffee he’d ever had. There it was. Sharing and connecting. Community. In that moment I felt connected to the hands that picked the cherries on a farm in Colombia, that processed the seeds that we call beans, and felt honored to roast and share and enjoy them with someone. I wanted more of that feeling, and thus began my desire to connect and share freshly roasted coffee beans with my neighbors and the people in my community. A desire for my neighbors to toss their Keurigs out the window and enjoy fresh coffee roasted right in their neighborhood. How it used to be before Amazon shipped you anything you want, built who knows when, by who knows who or what, and shipped from who knows where.

These moments: spending time with my son, sharing music I love, slowing down and being mindful in a fast world, connecting and sharing with my community. These moments are what built Stereo Coffee Co. 

-Trent