I’ve had a lot of comments on the trailer’s paint job. Tim worked his butt off painting this thing in 90 degree heat. Here’s a few pics of him at work.

At the top of the page you’ll see a link for Video’s and Movies. Check it out from time to time . I just posted a video I did called “better people”.

All coffee will now be packaged in 12 ounce bags. I probably should have done this from the beginning, particularly in retail stores where everyone packages the coffee in 12 ounce bags. Most customers didn’t realize they where getting more coffee and reacted only to the higher price point. Also for those of you that don’t know, for every pound of coffee roasted there is an approximate 4 ounce weight loss. That means for a 132 pound bag of coffee there is 33 pounds lost. I hope everyone is cool with this change.

In a what the heck let’s give it a shot attempt to make the cut in a recent espresso analysis at Coffee Review, we submitted a bag of “who’s yer daddy“. Score 91 points.

When I started Redeye Roasters just over 3 years ago Sumatra Iskandar was one of the first coffees that I purchased. Since that time , in my opinion the coffee started taking a nose dive and went from great to only average. This recent lot of Iskandar is however everything it used to be when it was great. It’s like seeing an old friend. Sumatra’s rich volcanic soil contributes to it’s earthiness which in many bad cases can taste very funky, like dirt. Not so with Iskandar, it is more refined and extremely well prepared.

Sumatra is the 3rd largest producer of coffee in the world. Iskandar comes from the area surrounding Lintongnihuta with most of the coffee coming from the markets at Doloksanggul and Lintongnihuta. The coffee is picked and depulped on the farm, most farmers do it all by hand using manual depulpers. Coffee is depulped the the same day it is picked and the farmers will let the coffee ferment for 24 hours prior to washing. Washing is done by hand and farmers agitate the coffee in basins until it is clean. After washing, the parchment coffee will be set out on tarps or patios to dry for about 30 minutes to an hour. After drying, the coffee is bagged and sells it to a local coffee collector. The local collector brings their purchased coffee to the local markets where it is sold to producers who are responsible for further drying and hulling the coffee. Iskandar is brought to a testing lab in Medan. Here the coffee is tested for initial quality and then cupped where it will need to meet stringent requirements for approval. The results are a thick and bold body with a distinct hint of butterscotch. An exceptionally clean cup with a woody spice finish.

After numerous attempts to come up with a design for the mobile café that ultimately would be implemented as a “vehicle wrap, I decided to pursue a different direction. The white box needed to look cool, hip, magical, and by all means a head-turner. Enter Tim Clorius, a graffiti artist living in Portland Maine whose paintings are on display throughout the community in Portland. He was born and raised in Germany. Tim’s medium is aerosol spray cans. He works with the vision in his head, no sketches or drawings. This was a tough issue for me to swallow. But we talked about his concept and guaranteed I’d be happy with the results. Besides I saw his portfolio and that is why I wanted him in the first place. Hell he’s European so it has to be good.
As I watched Tim work with objects, shapes, and textures meticulously assembling them in multitudes of viewpoints. It became clear that Tim’s concept was influential of the cubist movement that began in the 20th century pioneered by Pablo Picasso. Shapes and objects intersecting at random angles that removed any coherent sense of depth, was one of cubism’s distinct characteristics. The big white box was a canvas and each of the four sides had its own concept that intersected with the right angle of the other side. There are no signs of the real world here — just an artist expressing his freedom of abstract forms — an art and coffee manifesto under one roof. Stop by the Hingham Farmers Market on Saturdays from 10-2 and say hello.