Green Plow Coffee Roasting: Pat Schmidt on the Podium

You approach the orchestra prepared to lead them in creating beautiful music. Just before you lift the baton, you remember that the oboe player has a chest cold and won't be able to play the long notes like he usually does. In this hall, you recall, the bright sounds are really projected well so you must hold down the brasses, especially the trumpets. And the tympanist has broken up with her boyfriend, and she's going to be back there whomping out the painful beats of her broken heart. Use the softening gesture toward her, but remember to smile too...

It's those variables and how you respond to them that puts your performance either in the "art" category or the "cookie cutter" list.

So it is with roasting coffee. All this time I had lumped the beans with a turkey: you put it in the oven at 325 degrees, did the math and checked on it after the elapsed time and if it looked done, took it out.

Then I watched Pat roast.

So starting with the coffee, where is it from, what experience have you had with it?
Answers to those questions will drive the two principal variables, roasting temperature and time. The gas-driven flame you can see, the clock you can watch, and the beans must be looked at regularly by sliding out a little handled tube, taking a quick, analytical glance, and thrusting them back into the heated fray.

Roast time is 14 minutes, give or take. Pat packs a clipboard and records the temperature every 30 seconds, glancing at the flame, pulling the tube out and observing carefully and quickly, making adjustments to flame and air, and then it's time to record the temp again. The analogy to conducting an orchestra is physically very apt, which leads to a challenge to Brian Johnson: Film this guy and set it to music!

When the beans are done, based on human judgments of their color and the presence of tiny dots of oil (the cheerful deliverers of that exquisite fresh-roasted flavor), they make a steamy entrance into the cooling tray where chaff is blown off from the popping phase (and yes, it sounds a little like popcorn).

The graph is saved. And while it is not as exquisite as Charles Minard's famous chart it will be valuable to Pat, contributing to the consistency of his roasts, in spite of the oboe player and the tympanist.

If you can buy a bag right then, your hands will be warmed all the way home from Green Plow Coffee Roasters on 6th street in Redmond, Oregon.

CinderBlue, Green Plow Coffee Shop, and, like, Beatnik Poetry

He'd sit on a stool and drone on about a subject which would be the subject of several sequential sentences. Monotone was the music, eyeballs occasionally would stray from the crumpled manuscript to fasten on some object in the far distance, ignoring both the "Like, I'm into it, man!" and the mindless, wordless gaze returning to his.

Discussions on the way out would always have the word "existential" in them, and often.

That was the coffeehouse long before Starbucks. Music was usually singles, strumming an acoustic guitar in great earnestness.

Now Redmond Oregon's own Green Plow Coffee Roasters straddles those extremes with a coffeehouse that takes from Starbucks the idea of very good coffee, stirs in sustainable and eco-friendly requirements for their suppliers, and leaves behind the stainless steel and the tacky "I'm into coffee" tschotschkes. Result? Coffee that tastes good to taste and feels good to drink.

But instead of the lost-soul poet loosing his angst like a cocker spaniel doing its early morning pandiculations, Pat and Mandy have music. Like, f'r instance, oh, maybe, like CinderBlue let's say. (Be it noted: the picture of Lee Barker and his long time guitar playin' compatriot Rex Gatton was taken by Timothy Park. The image of the CinderBlue front line (and back) is from Joe Fettig. Thank you both.)

Ok, ok, it's self-serving to say that. They hired us, we did the job: Full house both times, and we didn't do any morose doggerel and we didn't do any whiny folk songs which one is required to sing with one's eyes closed, especially during the chorus.

So having linked these things up--the history of the coffee house in 1.5 paragraphs, the guilty-as-charged confession of the musician in the pictures, how come then the word "like" appeared multiple times in a sentence and that annoying affectation is back, loud and strong? Is it the coffee house that's the carrier of the virus?

Knowing Pat and Mandy, I think not. They're just enjoying providing the place for coffee, community and conversation, and when that list is expanded to include music, it's, like, way cool. The coolest man. So far plowed out, man. I mean, you know, it's like whoa.