Kevin

I wasn’t always this way, you know.

I used to think that coffee was a simple thing. Every brand had a House, a Breakfast, a French, a Colombia and maybe even a Dark Sumatra in their line-up, so there was no real difference in my mind. Everything changed for me when I started working at Coffee Bean International, though. I started making myself espresso shots on the in-house machine, and they came out with massive crema – golden tiger stripes that took forever to settle.

I e-mailed Paul Thornton, CBI’s Roastmaster, and asked about the espresso. I told him that the shots were coming out looking like draught Guinness. His response was that there were Oregon hops in the blend. He later gave me the real scoop – that the blend had been designed for big crema. The word “designed” made me reconsider what coffee could really be about.

In April of 2009 I got the chance to find out firsthand. I moved into the green coffee department at CBI and started cupping and sample roasting when I wasn’t doing my real job, which was tracking and coordinating the undelivered green coffee shipments. Soon I was tasting grapefruit and peach and even bananas in coffee. I was able to experience the differences in aroma, sweetness, acidity, body, and finish that separate good coffees from truly exceptional coffees, and now I am hooked.

I am very fortunate to be able to search for, experiment with, roast, and prepare some of the best coffees that the world has to offer, and I get to work with a stellar group of fellow coffee enthusiasts.

Public Domain serves the kind of coffee that baristas want to drink because the baristas at Public Domain get to pick which coffee they serve and how it is roasted. Pretty cool stuff.

The 2009-2010 crop year Las Delicias Pacamara Reserve grown by the Menendez family in El Salvador, roasted to about 30 seconds before the second crack and served as a macchiato, has been the best cup of coffee that I have drunk.

Outside of work I try very hard to be the wonderful man that my incredible wife deserves, and I sometimes serve as a gymnasium for our children.