The roaster gets a new toy!

I ended my last blog hoping you were anticipating this next one and so it is now time to share more of the story of how we began...

We bought a small 5 pound roaster (meaning it can roast 5 pounds of coffee at a time) we didn't want to get to carried away for our first real purchase. It was still so new...the thought that we were roasting coffee and people actually liked it. We couldn't live without it and now customers couldn't either. Our neighbors wondered about the smells coming from our house (we do have 4 kids......3 at the time) and one neighbor just about called the fire department when he saw all the smoke coming from our roof. The smoke was coming from the "dark roast." I always knew when Rodney was doing a dark roast.....the smells are good and bad. It may smell like something is burning but a "good burnt" right? The medium roast coffees did smell much better. Most people think roasting must smell "great" but they are thinking of the "grinding" of the coffee which is so aromatic!

Alright, Rodney is now roasting a lot more with his new "toy" and adding new origins of beans and creating his own blends. The story behind KELLY'S BREAKFAST BLEND....Rodney's brother and sister in law came to stay a few days with us all the way from Alabama. Rodney was excited about his new found "love" and wanted to share with them. Now, my name is Mindy and yes I am the wife of the roaster.....Rodney asked his sister in law what she liked in a coffee. She gave him some ideas of flavor, etc. He created a blend, roasted it and handed it off to his brother to take home and try it out. She loved it! Her name is Kelly. When Rodney allowed friends to try this new blend they would ask what it was called....he would say...."Kelly's Blend" only because he didn't know what else to say. It became one of his most popular blends that the name couldn't be changed. TODAY that is our most popular blend with our medium roasts. I don't expect Rodney to ever name a coffee after me, besides "Mindy's Breakfast Blend" wouldn't have been as exciting....(I am smiling)

All the beans we were selling at the time were to support the Living Freedom Recovery Center. We wanted to help people with addictions and selling coffee beans was a great way to support it. We soon became past (a whole other blog) musicians that turned into coffee roasters. We were enjoying it but we could see there was more we were supposed to do with it.

We started growing and a bigger "toy" was in our fututre.....