I Dream of Beans
This article was written by a guest contributor, Joshua Sadinsky. Read about Josh here.
A seed contains all of the genetic information needed to generate future plants, packed tightly inside its shell, waiting to burst forth under the right conditions.
Some nights, I dream about roasting coffee beans. The exteriors of the coffee beans are smooth and milk-chocolate-brown. I watch as hot air pushes the coffee to the top of the roasting chamber where they cascade outwards and slide down the sides of the glass, completing their circular journey like a fountain circulates water. A cinnamon smell wafts out from the roaster. “These are going to taste fantastic!” I think to myself.
The first beverage I fell in love with was the Starbucks Frappuccino. There was a Starbucks in our Barnes & Noble, and I would often talk my mom into bookstore visits to pick up “required school reading.” But as a first or second grader, these visits were really just a disguised opportunity for me to sip some more of that sweet, icy, chocolatey, coffee slush.
I wouldn’t fall in love with another coffee beverage until high-school, where the cool thing to do was to go “study” at Mama Carmen’s Espresso Café. At the café, we never really got much work done, but it sure was a fine excuse to leave the house, sit, and just talk with friends over a cappuccino. The cappuccino, in my opinion, is the finest marriage between milk and coffee, ever. The union of frothed whole-milk fats and espresso oils together form the holy matrimony of sweet and bitter, and the texture of an expertly crafted espresso drink is comparable to sipping on velvety clouds on a warm summer day. Mama Carmen’s espresso was the starkest contrast to my travel mug of watered down Folgers that I would bring with me each morning to school.
One day in high-school, my life changed forever when a family friend asked if I wanted to come over and check out how he home-roasted his own green coffee beans. Outside on his front lawn, I watched as he clumsily shook a hot-air-popcorn-popper full of green coffee beans. The beans rattled and crackled in the popcorn popper, and when they had finished roasting, he dumped them out onto a baking pan that he’d laid out on the ground. The coffee was dark, shiny, and steaming from the air popper. That night, he brought those home-roasted coffee beans over to our house for our weekly potluck dinner. The coffee was brewed in our Mr. Coffee pot and served alongside a rich homemade chocolate cake. That was the first time I had ever drunk black coffee that didn’t make me want to spit it up. Instead of the tar-like repugnance of unsweetened, un-creamered store bought coffee, I tasted a full-bodied, piping-hot, dare I say, sweet cup of black coffee. It was my first exposure to the inherent sweetness present in all freshly roasted coffees.
I had to try home roasting for myself, and after a reluctant mother finally agreed to let me use her credit card to buy a $20 popcorn popper and some green coffee beans from sweetmarias.com, I was ready to roast my own coffee.
The first batch, of course, was a total flop. I hardly put enough beans in, so they blew out of the popcorn popper and onto the pavement in my front yard. The second batch was no better–burnt to a crisp, totally undrinkable. After some trial and error, I finally roasted some coffee that was palatable, and to my and mother’s surprise, we had tasty, fresh, home-roasted coffee.
From that moment on, I was hooked, and began reading every Wikipedia article I could find about coffee. We bought a counter-top espresso machine, and I tried my hand for the first time in steaming milk. I was so obsessed that I even wrote a short story about coffee that got published in our high-school literary magazine (I guess not much has changed…ha!).
By the time I was in college, I was determined to become the best student barista at our campus café named the “Temple of Zeus.” A co-worker taught me everything I needed to know about milk texturing, and to this day, he’s the only person I trust to make the best tasting mocha on this planet. God bless that man. Me and my summer roommate would also chat fondly about coffee. Together, we founded the Cornell Coffee Club, a student-led organization devoted to all things coffee. Jesse at Copper Horse generously gave our club roasting/tasting demos at his roastery, and truthfully I think he’s the most beloved coffee roaster in all of Ithaca. Full of enthusiasm for his craft, I learned from Jesse how important it is to put love into your coffee production process. College was a time when I absorbed every resource I could find about coffee.
Fast forward a year or so, and I’m sitting in front of my new and improved roasting set-up, the Aillio Bullet, staring happily at the infrared bean temperature reading and roasting a fair-trade, organic coffee from Peru. I’m thinking about how fortunate I am to be roasting coffee for my family and friends. I feel like it’s an honest and fun way for me to spread love during this time of physical distancing. It feels good to have a business that makes a positive impact. And as I stare at these twinkling beans, I can’t help but remember the phrase “never settle for good enough,” the slogan of my hometown’s roastery Onyx Coffee Labs. With each roast, I document all the details to determine how I can improve each future batch. This never-ending commitment to quality and striving to craft a fine product is my way of saying “I love you” to my customers.
When I look into a pot of simmer black beans, I think about the love our ancestors felt towards beans for nurturing us so humbly throughout history. It’s a reciprocal relationship with the plants that we depend on for sustenance. A seed, when nurtured, sends forth shoots and grows into another plant. A budding seed is like my relationship with coffee: I want to nurture this relationship so that it will grow into something beautiful and delicious.
Josh founded Twinkle Beans Coffee Roastery during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way of safely giving back to the community. 10% of profits are donated to address pressing national and international issues. Check it out!