Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Nick And Ryan Drink Coffee: November 2025

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Nick And Ryan Drink Coffee: November 2025 · Coffee People Podcast

0:00
Sliding into your screen is not just any coffee can, it's a
0:03
Rostar coffee can. Don't need thousands
0:07
personalized, just one in Rostar's design lab.
0:11
No design experience needed. Choose a pattern, add your logo
0:14
and text, or create something memorable.
0:18
With AI being made in the Midwest, you can expect it on
0:22
your doorstep in no time. Now that was smooth.
0:33
Hey, good morning everyone. I'm Ryan Walt, the host of the
0:36
Coffee People and Coffee Smarter podcasts.
0:39
And there are bags under my eyes because I haven't had enough
0:42
coffee yet today, but I'm working on it and I'm working on
0:46
it with my friend Nick Schmidt from Rostar Coffee packaging.
0:49
Every now and again, every month, we try to get together
0:52
for a cup of coffee, either out in the world or just virtually
0:56
to to catch up on what's going on in our coffee lives.
0:59
And I hope you enjoy it. Here's another episode of Nick
1:04
and Ryan drink coffee. Cheers.
1:22
Can you hear me? Yeah.
1:24
Oh OK, how do I sound? You sound like a damn dream.
1:29
Like a like a young Casey Kasem. Do you know who Casey Kasem is?
1:36
Yeah, from the Radio US, I was hoping to bring out like a line,
1:40
but that's like, like top, you know, like top hits.
1:44
Top 40 you can listen to. You can listen to his top weekly
1:51
Top 40 shows like syndicated. Like people enjoyed him so much
1:56
they replay the Top 40 shows from 1965 or whatever.
2:02
Does is he still? Does he still do that?
2:05
I do not think he is alive. I didn't do a lot of Casey case
2:10
of research before the show. Honestly don't even know how I
2:15
remembered that. But I do remember that as a kid,
2:19
we would listen to, I think on Sundays, Casey Kasem do the Top
2:23
40, because we would try to record are the songs that we
2:27
liked, you know, on a blank cassette tape, which is just a
2:33
thing that you don't get with digital, like the the effort
2:38
that it took to get your favorite song so that you could
2:42
listen to it over and over again.
2:45
You'd have the cassette, the blank tape in there and you'd
2:49
have to hit the button to record the song.
2:52
And then you'd also have to hope that the, the, the radio DJ
2:57
didn't like interrupt it near the end to like go to the next
3:00
song. Or if you only caught like part
3:03
of the song, 'cause they didn't, you know, play them like as on a
3:06
loop the way they do as much now.
3:08
You might record half the song and then have to the next time
3:12
around, like try to line it up and hit the button at the right
3:15
time and hope there wasn't a lag, you know, in the recording.
3:19
And so if you if you like the song, you really had, you know,
3:26
like if you wanted to get Mama got Run Over by a Reindeer or
3:30
something on cassette tape, Grandmama, Yeah.
3:34
You know, you really had to work for it.
3:35
You'd you'd really like that song.
3:38
Which is why when I make mixtapes now, like on Spotify
3:42
for like coffee drinking mixtapes that I put out every
3:45
month, I put those out every month.
3:47
If anyone sees this, I kind of feel like a fraud because all I
3:53
have to do is like put a bunch of songs into a thing and then
3:56
start listening through and organizing.
3:58
And I don't have to do like the work of waiting, you know, the
4:01
anticipation of that song coming back around.
4:03
I can just have it whenever I want.
4:08
I looked it up, Casey Kasem is definitely not alive anymore.
4:12
He died in 2014. Yeah, and I think he was pretty
4:17
old, 82. Yeah, he was.
4:22
I mean, I remember now that I say that, though.
4:26
You know, when you're a kid and you think people are old and
4:28
then later in life you find out they were like 28 or 35 or
4:32
something, Maybe you don't have that yet.
4:34
But there's definitely like celebrities that I thought were
4:38
like my grandparents age or something.
4:42
Because it is when you're little, you can't really tell
4:44
the difference between 25 and 70.
4:48
You know, when you're young, like any anyone over like anyone
4:51
out of college is like 100. There's no in between.
4:55
When, when you're early in your teen years and now, I don't even
5:00
think about like if somebody's 60 or they're 40 or 20.
5:05
Like it's all the same to me. Like it's just human beings
5:08
again until they're close to the end.
5:13
You mentioned like mixtapes, the closest that I got was burning
5:17
CDs, which I did a little bit of.
5:20
Did you ever burn ACD for a special someone elementary
5:26
school? Yeah, Yep.
5:28
How's the best? I don't think I remember her
5:30
name but Yep, I had a couple a couple special songs.
5:34
Brown Eyed Girl was one of them, even though I don't think she
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had brown eyes. Did you?
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I'm assuming you had a help with this if it was elementary school
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like from a parent perhaps? My older sister Abby, she she
5:47
was a wizard with I don't, I don't remember the there was
5:50
some webs Limewire. She was like a Limewire pro.
5:53
I think it ruined like two of our home computers.
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I think we would download. I mean, I think, I, I think the
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statute of limitations has passed here, but I'm sure the
6:08
house that I lived in in college was downloading music or
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something from Limewire or Napster or one of those sites 24
6:18
hours a day for like 3 years. So however much which, you know,
6:24
content in stream is fast then. So that was probably like 12
6:26
songs. I don't really know for sure
6:28
exactly, but it was like the IT was just so overwhelming and and
6:33
you could even listen to it all or it was just that you could
6:35
you could have it at a time when you didn't have a lot of money
6:41
for sure. Good morning.
6:45
How are you? What are you drinking?
6:48
Is it snowing? It's not snowing right now, but
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it was snowing pretty much all weekend long up at the ski hill.
6:56
They were it got cold enough they were blowing snow all
6:58
weekend. So it's there isn't I can see
7:02
some snow like on the grass. Not a lot.
7:05
All the roofs have it on. Isn't that kind of a lost cause
7:08
though? Like this early?
7:09
Like if they're blowing snow now, like it's probably going to
7:12
warm up again and melt. I mean, I think part of it is
7:16
just getting the equipment going and also they can get it open as
7:23
soon as possible as far as I'm concerned.
7:25
So. But yeah, I good morning.
7:27
I'm drinking AI don't even know where it's from.
7:33
It's a Columbia coffee that is pretty good.
7:38
It's a medium roast. This is it.
7:42
Oh, Vice City is the roaster. It's pretty cool bag.
7:46
Nice, I know them. Yeah, I think they're in
7:49
Florida. This was given to me at Coffee
7:52
Fest Orlando recently. So what do you call that?
7:55
Like I have AI grabbed A2. Actually I have a sister's
8:00
coffee, you know, just a medium roast, pretty basic daily
8:04
driver. This is like a flat bottom bag.
8:11
What do you call like that where it's kind of like it's, I mean
8:14
it is flat, but it's not kind of I mean it's AI don't.
8:18
Know yeah, this is a it's a stand up pouch.
8:21
So it's got like the bottom instead of being like one
8:24
separate bottom panel, it's more like when it's made it's like
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it's basically like a big rectangle and then it's kind of
8:31
folded together and the bottom is creased to to make that for
8:34
us. Like the flat bottom bag that
8:35
you have is it's actually made-up of four or five separate
8:39
panels and they're all married together in the machine, which
8:42
is a really complicated production process.
8:45
That's why the the minimums and prices are higher on those
8:48
'cause they are a much harder bag to produce.
8:52
So Sisters Coffee, which is maybe like an hour and a half
8:55
for me, they're one of the indie roasters that sell in the
9:01
grocery stores around here. And there's there's not a lot.
9:05
I mean, there's a few that are pretty straightforward, like all
9:11
they do is like grocery wholesale and they're not maybe
9:14
your first choice. You know, they're one step above
9:18
like a Kirkland or a Folgers or something, maybe not even a step
9:22
above a Kirkland. I think they end up sometimes
9:25
getting some pretty OK coffee for people, but I don't know too
9:29
much about their their off of coffee program.
9:33
But what I noticed about sisters and what I like actually, and
9:36
the reason I pick it over maybe a different brand, you know,
9:39
that is similar is the package is like a mat of the mountain
9:44
over there in sisters. They have skiing there as well.
9:48
Sisters bowl. Actually, there was a big fire
9:51
there a few years ago, so a bunch of trees burned, but each
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one of the packages has kind of the same mountain print on it,
10:01
except the kind of the gradient of sky is different.
10:06
And so it's kind of various points to the day.
10:10
And something I didn't know about myself, but I'm learning,
10:13
you know, up here in the Pacific Northwest is that I like seeing
10:17
mountains like when I drive. We drove this weekend up towards
10:23
Portland and we're just exploring all these, like little
10:25
towns and kind of the outer ring, but along the five, like
10:28
at various points, you can look over and see Mount Jefferson or
10:31
Mount Hood. And every time it was just kind
10:35
of like this thrill, you know? And I don't know, I'm trying to
10:38
remember what it was like when we first moved by the ocean.
10:41
But there's to just see this thing that is rising in the
10:47
distance and it's almost, you know, 75 to 90 miles away
10:50
depending on where I was. And it still is the most
10:53
commanding thing. I'm on the skyline and so when I
10:57
sit and have my coffee, I don't always do this, but with these
11:01
bags of sisters, I've probably had three or 4 now since I've
11:03
been here. I like actually bring it out and
11:06
have it like sitting just kind of 'cause this little mountain
11:10
scene here in the morning, which I don't, you know, get from the
11:12
yard, but it's, it's still. There there was a there was a
11:15
roaster that I saw recently. I'm sorry, I don't know the name
11:19
of who it was, but they had kind of a similar like mountain
11:23
scape, you know, just kind of like an image, but it had kind
11:28
of that like how the background sky you mentioned the colors
11:31
change. There was like a there's a whole
11:34
kind of color theory thing on what expectations to have for
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whether they're subconscious or not, like like what you expect
11:40
flavors to be like based on how the bag looks.
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That's interesting 'cause I know like color translates to emotion
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pretty distinctly, but to think that it translates to taste, I
11:51
didn't realize. Yeah, or, or at least the
11:53
perception of taste, which still matters.
11:56
It'll affect how you, how you take it in.
11:58
But they, they kind of change out like the sky and sort of the
12:01
the background like colors that are sort of a gradient based on
12:05
the different coffee. Like if they're doing like a
12:07
kind of like a medium roast or something that maybe has more
12:10
like caramel Y cocoy notes, it'll be more of kind of like a
12:14
like a, a brownish background versus like a crazy Co ferment
12:19
or something that has more more like bright, like floral or
12:22
fruity notes. It'll have more of like a kind
12:25
of purple pink color, which somewhat sets the expectation.
12:30
I mean, if you're looking at a shelf and you saw a brown versus
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a pink bag. Yeah, you'd.
12:34
You might come to the conclusion that this one might be more, you
12:37
know, robust. Chocolatey.
12:39
Versus yeah. Yeah, we did.
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Playing into that. Some color theory stuff when I
12:45
was in design school and it was one of my favorite parts of like
12:49
the psychology of design and in a statement of kind of where the
12:56
design industry has gone with automation.
13:00
Just yesterday I was buying this coffee and a bag of grapes, red
13:05
grapes from the market here. And the, the guy behind the
13:11
register couldn't find like the right code or the right, you
13:15
know, thing on the great bag to like scan it.
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And he's just getting kind of frustrated.
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And he goes, oh, there it is in red on a purple bag.
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And This is why I'm in, I'm working at the grocery store and
13:28
not as a graphic designer, which is what I went to school for.
13:33
I feel you, buddy. Like I I've been there, but I
13:36
don't, you know, I don't want to like, get into a commiseration,
13:39
but. But yeah, you, you like the idea
13:41
that design is both form and function.
13:46
Like they have to work together. My coffee this morning is good.
13:54
It could be better if I had spent more effort, I think.
14:00
Did you brew it with? What did you brew it with?
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A machine, I mean, it's a, it's a brewing machine where you
14:10
press the button, but you still measure the ratios and
14:13
everything. And it technically has a bloom
14:16
feature. I really love the machine.
14:18
It's a simply good Brewer. But if you're kind of lazy and
14:25
you're not really like measuring well or grinding well, I'm still
14:30
trying to figure out my grinder since we've been back when I
14:34
pulled it out-of-the-box that had been stored in all summer,
14:38
well, longer than that, but and it started to put it back
14:41
together. There was rust in it.
14:42
And so I had to like create this whole gross baking soda pot goo
14:49
thing and clean it all off. And like, I didn't want to, you
14:53
know, scrub it with a brush because I didn't want to scratch
14:54
the burrs or anything. But it took me a while and but I
14:59
and I when I put it all back together, which isn't terribly
15:02
difficult, but everything just seems off like a bit.
15:05
So I'm kind of going back through and like every day
15:08
adjusting my grind settings a little bit, but that doesn't
15:12
always make for the best coffee. Like I haven't dialed it in at
15:15
all. It's just kind of trying to
15:16
figure out what, what did I adjust your tweak funny here
15:19
that is throwing this off on me. So it's first world problems,
15:26
man. Although there's not, you know,
15:30
Prismatic is close enough for me to ride my bike too, although I
15:35
wouldn't say it's terribly safe to do so.
15:37
But I mean, I could. I'm pretty comfortable.
15:39
Did you get on the highway with your bike?
15:42
No, but there's like only two. There's like a major
15:45
thoroughfare that you get on for a bit with, you know, very
15:48
minimal bike friendliness to it. And it's not far, but like, but
15:56
that's kind of the only coffee shop and I didn't, I knew I was
16:01
spoiled. You know, you, you saw where we
16:04
lived in San Diego, like you could walk to I think 7
16:08
different roasters in my neighborhood alone and you want
16:11
to get on your bike. The Sky's the limit, right?
16:14
But here, this is definitely something I wasn't thinking
16:19
about. There are two or three other
16:21
good coffee shops, you know, close enough that I would
16:24
normally just jump on my bike and go, except for the fact that
16:28
it's like extremely hilly. Like if you don't want to get on
16:33
like a major highway or a county highway type of thing, you're
16:37
going up and you are going down. And by the time you get there,
16:40
you will be like burned out. And then you have to come back.
16:45
And it makes it that much harder to like, oh, I'm gonna go out
16:49
and engage with humanity for an hour because, you know, like,
16:56
and I know what it's going to cost me to do so.
17:00
And then if you do it, yeah. And then your coffee is not
17:03
great to that day. It's like, oh, worse.
17:07
It kind of sounds like being a cross country runner going to
17:10
Wasa East High School. You know, the the geography of
17:14
Wasa E is kind of on top of a hill.
17:17
Yeah. And anytime we would go for a
17:20
run, the way out was great. We would go downhill the whole
17:22
way and then we would turn around and we were uphill all
17:26
the way back. Did you guys win though?
17:30
Was it worth it? We.
17:31
Were faster on the hills. Yeah, there you go.
17:35
Yeah, I did a ride yesterday from, you know, where I live to.
17:39
I actually it was like kind of like, what's my route to get to
17:42
this coffee place I want to go to this week so that I wouldn't
17:47
be like thinking about it early in the morning.
17:48
I could just get up and go and yesterday was a beautiful fall
17:53
day. But by the time I rode there and
17:57
back, which wasn't super far, let's call it like 8 or 9 miles,
18:04
I was so exhausted. I laid down in the grass like in
18:07
the leaves and just like laid there for like 10 minutes when I
18:11
got back, because I'm definitely out of biking shape and very
18:15
much out of hill biking shape. And I haven't, I didn't take my
18:20
E bike. I took my regular bike.
18:23
And I thought there's no way without the E bike that I would
18:25
want to do this because in part I, I'm an ancillary part of the
18:31
coffee industry now to some extent with this show.
18:37
I don't want to show up and be just drenched, drenched in sweat
18:42
and then have somebody like there that I know be like, oh,
18:44
you're the guy from the show. You know, which occasionally
18:48
happens now, very occasionally, but it does.
18:52
And then just have me just be like, yeah, OK, just give me a
18:56
coffee, please shut up. I just, I can't breathe.
19:01
Which is. What happened?
19:01
Do you wanna record an episode? Let's let's.
19:04
Let's talk here. Follow, follow my show.
19:07
You know, like, I swear it's like not recorded under the
19:10
bridge. Although that would make for a
19:12
pretty cool show. Probably just coffees under
19:15
bridges all over the country. I bet you that would go viral
19:17
and 'cause I don't understand what goes viral or not.
19:23
I don't either. We doing social media, we rely
19:28
on the algorithm that anything that I guess is good will see,
19:32
people will see it. Anything that is not good simply
19:35
people just won't see it. So put it out either way.
19:38
That's kind of. You guys have been doing a lot
19:40
of really fun stuff. How do you, if somebody comes to
19:46
you and says, hey, Nick, we have this idea, we want you to do
19:48
this video. Or are you the 1 going to them
19:50
and saying, I have an idea like because some of your stuff is
19:54
looks like it's kind of designed to be fun and entertaining.
19:58
And I would argue maybe like, hey, we want this to kind of go
20:02
bigger or jump on a trend that's happening.
20:05
Yeah, we definitely, you know, scroll, you know, look for
20:09
trends. Most of the most of the things
20:13
that I'm doing with customers I'm seeking out for the most
20:16
part would love to get to a point where people in the
20:19
industry want to want to do something with us.
20:21
So if anybody sees this and wants to do a little Instagram
20:25
video with us, feel free to just ask.
20:28
But so far, not a whole lot of that it it kind of comes and
20:34
goes. Usually it's kind of just
20:36
inspired based on who the person is.
20:38
You know, if they have like a really cool package and a cool
20:42
story behind it, like why did I just jump on them telling the
20:45
story of that? Have you seen anything?
20:48
I think I sent you a picture of that box at Prismatic like a
20:52
couple weeks ago. It was like a special box.
20:54
They did. I found out later that that box,
20:57
which I'll put some pictures up on the screen here if anyone's
21:00
watching the show and not listening, it was I found out
21:04
that the box was the size of two decks of playing cards or one
21:08
normal tarot card size. They actually, it was designed
21:13
to be like you were opening up like a deck of tarot cards and
21:18
then there was this like kind of sealed coffee package inside.
21:21
And I thought that was kind of cool.
21:23
And then they also had, they definitely put thought into or
21:28
intention into like what they're presenting when you come into
21:31
their store beyond their regular bags, they also have for, for
21:36
the season. They had a, a coffee they were
21:38
calling graveyard, which came in a tube And it was, it was one of
21:43
your tubes, I'm, I'm certain. And the idea behind it was it
21:48
was kind of like a blend of all these coffees that they had
21:51
bought over the years and then over the years, over the, this
21:53
year. And there was a little bit left
21:57
and they were like, how can we make this into a coffee that we
22:00
think will be good, you know, to sell, but also like we're
22:04
representing that this is like the graveyard of our coffee.
22:08
And so that was their Halloween release.
22:10
It was pretty cool. I'm gonna see if I can get a
22:11
picture of that, too. I was trying to get a, a, a tube
22:14
of it. But then like when I was there,
22:16
they were closing up and I just ran out of time.
22:18
But I. Think a good name for that would
22:20
have been the Frankenstein Blend.
22:23
I wonder if they seem like they're kind of on top of that.
22:26
I wonder if they didn't because they were trying to stay away.
22:30
There's like 3 Frankenstein movies out right now, I feel.
22:35
Which is it? It's one of those stories that
22:39
keeps coming around. And I watched an old movie last
22:44
night, like really old movie called Sneakers with Robert
22:48
Redford and Sidney Poitier. And all these great actors were
22:53
in it kind of in their their early stages.
22:56
Dan Aykroyd was in it. And it's like a hacking movie,
22:59
but like it started in the 60s and was set in the 80s.
23:03
And so it was like the kind of hacking that like most toddlers
23:08
do now, like, you know, if the computing power was not quite,
23:12
quite there, but it was actually more of like a heist movie.
23:15
And I, as I was watching it, I was like, oh, this is almost
23:19
identical to like the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible story
23:23
even like some of the bits of like coming in from the ceiling
23:26
and like, you know, not making noise or changing the
23:30
temperature were in there. And, you know, you start going
23:34
backwards and you realize that all of our entertainment to some
23:38
extent is a reproduction or recreation of something that
23:42
maybe happened already. And that doesn't mean that
23:46
somebody stole it. It just means that these ideas
23:49
that people have seen throughout their life start culminating.
23:51
And then they go, oh, you know, it would be cool.
23:54
And then they either do the same thing or they do the similar
23:57
thing in a new way that is still interesting.
24:01
And I think coffee is kind of like that too, because, and I'm
24:07
coming back around, you know, there's there's a lot of green
24:13
coffee buyers, especially a lot of boutique buyers.
24:17
Quick shout out Joe Bettinger, my friend Joe just signed up
24:21
with Vorness coffee traders. He was with K porn for a long
24:24
time. I know they had a great
24:26
relationship, but he really likes to focus on indie, on
24:30
indie coffee and and I think he found a really good home there
24:32
at Vorness. So good for him.
24:35
But a lot of coffee roasters, especially small ones or ones
24:42
that are just getting into it, they're buying from the same
24:43
places. So they might be buying from the
24:46
same lot as somebody else. So at any given time, there's,
24:50
you know, so many coffee roasters around the country who
24:53
are making roasting the same green, right?
24:57
And if you could somehow, if there was a way to like, go into
25:00
a database and like, go, OK, here's a dozen different coffee
25:04
people all doing the same Columbia green coffee.
25:08
How can I get a bag of each of those and just see how the same
25:13
concept, same starting point needs to hear?
25:16
And that's kind of like some of the competitions that I've, you
25:18
know, I've gotten to judge. But Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, some
25:20
of the roasting competitions where, yeah, like they're
25:23
starting with the same exact green coffee.
25:25
Yeah. And obviously from you being on
25:27
the judging panel, you, you know that some of them are mind
25:31
blowing and some of them are like really terrible.
25:33
But it's like, yeah, the same coffee that you start.
25:36
With the term you're looking for is dog poo poo.
25:39
And I hate to say that, but like, I'm not saying anyone's
25:43
names obviously, but like sometimes you, you, you'll taste
25:47
a coffee and you think and roast A competition is different
25:50
because there's the stress of time and limited quantity and
25:53
all these other things. But there are definitely cases
25:56
where you go, I wonder if the person who sent this sent it
26:02
thinking this is the best version of this coffee or they
26:05
went this did not work out the way I hoped.
26:09
That's it. Already paid for it.
26:11
I already paid for it. I'm sending it in.
26:15
Yeah, we, I just got done. Well, a few weeks ago I was in
26:18
Houston doing the attending the Golden Bean, which was my first
26:22
time there. And it was kind of interesting
26:24
the like the event itself was a lot of tables and everybody was
26:28
cupping coffees. So all the all of these I think
26:31
300 plus roasters were like submitted coffees ahead of time
26:36
across a few different categories and the whole room
26:42
was basically like a collective judging kind of format.
26:45
So. Were they talking about what
26:47
they were saying? Feeling.
26:50
There were, there was some collaboration, yeah, like you
26:52
know, kind of we were broken into tables of about 6 people at
26:55
each table. So yeah, we were.
26:58
And especially if there was like a really good one or, you know,
27:00
we weren't sure about because we were scoring them kind of on
27:04
similar to the SCA cupping format, kind of assigning them a
27:08
score. You know, if there was a really
27:11
great one, we would call over like one of the head judges to
27:13
to have a taste. But it was it was really
27:16
interesting that some of them just it's not cheap to compete.
27:22
Some of them truly were not good.
27:25
Yeah, it's. Competition is such a weird
27:29
thing. I, I want to clarify something
27:31
you would call over like a head judge.
27:33
Was the whole room tasting every coffee or were you given, here's
27:38
a segment of coffees that they're then narrowing down into
27:40
like the best of each section. Each table gets the section that
27:45
would then go to like the the the head judges to like narrow
27:49
down further. Yeah, so I, I, you know, I
27:53
wasn't the engine room they call it, where they're preparing the
27:56
coffee samples. I don't know how many of each
27:59
coffee went out, but there were, you know, like a handful of each
28:03
of each coffee to it's different tables.
28:06
So it's not like we were all tasting the same coffee at the
28:09
same time. And like the whole room was
28:11
talking about this one coffee. You know, there were, there were
28:14
a lot of coffees to get through. There were hundreds of them so.
28:17
That was something I didn't realize about like about
28:22
judging. I learned that actually it will
28:25
do a the World Series of beer in, in Denver, Great American
28:28
beer beer fest. My, my cousin Don is, is a judge
28:33
or was a judge for a couple of decades.
28:37
And I, he told me they get 10s of thousands of submissions.
28:42
So it's not like reasonable that like one person's gonna drink
28:45
all of those and like compare them to each other.
28:48
So that's kind of how they did it.
28:50
On the other side of that, he got to bring home what they
28:52
didn't end up sampling. You know, like somebody would
28:55
always send like 5 cans or five crawlers or bottles, you know,
28:59
maybe only needed one for the taste test.
29:01
And so then he had this whole basement filled with like
29:05
decade, decade's worth of beer, fest beer, some really cool
29:10
seller stuff, but also like a Pilsner from 1987 that maybe
29:14
wasn't going to be, you know, super enjoyable anymore.
29:18
It was cool though, kind of calibrating in the room, like we
29:21
were all kind of calibrating to not the top level because I
29:25
mean, not everybody, I'm not AQ grader, you know, like we aren't
29:28
all at the same level of tasting.
29:29
But what we were all calibrating as a room to was like pretty
29:33
much the average coffee drinker. So that was like something that,
29:39
you know, we could all kind of agree on like from this
29:41
perspective. So I had to shift through my
29:44
opinions on like what I personally would want to drink
29:47
to look at them more objectively.
29:49
And the room was on the same page.
29:52
Like if if two of us had totally different like like the same
29:56
coffee, our scores pretty much lined up right on which
30:00
obviously should be the goal. Yeah, well, and also like that
30:04
kind of system helps weed out like outliers.
30:07
You know, if, if 20 people try a thing and 18 of them go, OK,
30:12
it's a 82 point coffee or whatever the scoring system is
30:15
now and two people are like, no, it's 100, OK, something is a
30:21
little off. So you kind of blend it
30:23
together. When I do the Hisaya
30:25
competitions, we're not supposed to talk about, you know, what
30:31
our opinions are while we're doing it.
30:34
I am a very expressive coffee drinker, coffee judge I have
30:40
found. I didn't realize at first I was
30:42
doing it and tell the other people in the room, you know,
30:45
it's a smaller judging crew. You know when they grew judging
30:48
like 140 coffees the first time. So 7570 a day give or take and
30:56
or 35 / 3 days depending. That's not the right math but
31:01
you get the picture. They were like, hey, man, you
31:06
got to like, stop what you're doing with your face because I
31:10
know what you're going to write about this coffee based on the
31:13
way your face looks after you take a sip of it or a slurp of
31:16
it, you know? And I was like, I don't, I don't
31:19
know how to do that. Like I'm not, I'm not objective
31:22
enough. Are you good at poker?
31:24
No, I don't think poker, like, I mean, I'm good at it because I
31:27
don't follow any of the rules. And so if it were like a couple
31:32
of hands, I can usually do OK, you know, or like in the old
31:37
days, if there was Texas Holdem was big when I was in my 20s.
31:40
And so that was like a big bachelor party thing.
31:43
And I do OK because I don't really follow any of the rules
31:45
and I get bored really fast. I mean, like, I can't sit at a
31:49
table and play for a long time. It's just that doesn't interest
31:52
me in that way. I.
31:54
Just wonder if there's any crossover between like your
31:56
poker face and your cupping face.
31:58
No, but I think there's sometimes people don't know if
32:01
I'm being sarcastic or snarky or I'm making a joke or I'm just
32:09
being an asshole. And so I can kind of get away
32:13
with that a little bit. But with coffee it's a lot
32:15
harder. Like I you can see on my face
32:17
usually when I drink a cup of coffee, like I've learned
32:20
actually not to do that for shows because I always have a
32:25
cup of coffee when I'm meeting with a guest and coffee people.
32:31
And I can't, you can't have a show where like 10 times with
32:34
the show, somebody's like, you just can't like it.
32:40
It's just too distracting. And but like in the cupping
32:43
room, in the judging room, judging table, that feels like
32:47
that's where I should be able to like really let it out or like
32:50
if it's really good, I will say some of the noises I might make
32:53
when a coffee is really good are probably inappropriate.
32:56
Like I just probably shouldn't do that.
32:58
I gotta cut that back. But, but if you make a really
33:01
good cup of coffee, I want you to know that I, I, I vocally
33:04
appreciate it. Awesome.
33:07
The other unexpected thing with the golden bean were some of the
33:12
categories. Obviously there were like
33:14
standard brewing categories like espresso and filter coffee.
33:19
There was also a milk based category kind of on like how an
33:23
espresso like it was the same ratio, probably 1 to one or
33:28
yeah, I assume it's 1 to 1 espresso and steamed milk.
33:31
Just to kind of see like how the, you know, like an espresso
33:35
that you're going to drink on its own is probably a little
33:37
different than if you're going to get one in a milk based
33:39
beverage. So kind of like how the espresso
33:42
pairs with like the sweetness of the milk and how how balanced it
33:45
is like if it cuts through the milk.
33:48
And the first, the first couple that I tried, I was like, wow,
33:52
these are some really sweet espressos.
33:55
You know, obviously knowing that like milk has inherent
33:57
sweetness, but I was like, wow, these espressos are really like
34:01
much sweeter than I would think. And then like 10 minutes and
34:05
then they brought around a little cup of steamed milk and
34:08
they were using like an ultra pasteurized milk.
34:11
And I was like, oh, shoot, no, it's, it's the milk that's
34:13
really sweet because I didn't, I hadn't tried the milk on its
34:16
own. That's a really interesting
34:19
category, though. I don't think I've seen a lot of
34:22
that. That's cool.
34:24
They do that. I mean, now that you've you've
34:28
done that kind of, I mean, Golden Bean is a pretty big
34:30
deal. Like now that you're in the room
34:32
there, do you have business cards?
34:34
Golden Bean Judge Nick Schmidt? Is that something you're
34:37
thinking about doing? Or like, what if you bought a
34:40
bag of coffee and you spray painted all the beans gold and
34:43
you just like left them for people?
34:46
No name, no anything, but you became known as the person who
34:48
did that. It was really kind of difficult
34:52
the first couple days getting home after that, after my whole
34:56
brain, every time I tasted a coffee, you know, I'm like, no,
34:59
I just kind of assigning a score like I was sort of dialed in on
35:02
on what like what the scores are of of coffees.
35:06
And then I got home and I'm like like a a great score for that
35:10
was like 30 was it was a very good score.
35:15
And then like a not so good coffee was maybe like 20 ish,
35:18
like 22. And like I got home and I like
35:21
made this coffee like the same way that I usually do beans that
35:24
I was excited about before I went to go to the meeting.
35:26
And then I tried it and like, shoot, this is like a 24.
35:29
You're going to have to compartmentalize it a little
35:32
bit. And then you smash your sauce on
35:34
the ground like just like this is trash.
35:36
Yes, I had to get back into the fact that I'm not brewing
35:41
exceptional competition coffees all the time.
35:47
We were talking about some of the packaging earlier, which I
35:50
think it's kind of funny that we both brought our bag of coffee
35:52
to the show, which I don't think we've ever done before for
35:56
whatever reason. But you guys, are rosters doing
36:01
a design awards again this year? Is that for a bigger convention
36:05
or is that just a thing you're doing?
36:08
It's just something that we're doing.
36:10
Yeah, it's just something that we're doing internally.
36:14
Just we did a a version of a design competition last year
36:19
where we just kind of selected some designs that like spoke to
36:22
our sales team and people internally at Rostar and then
36:25
congratulated those customers on having a good design.
36:29
This year we're opening it up for customers or consumers or
36:33
anybody to submit if they had a package that they enjoyed.
36:39
So it'll be a little bit more of open to submitting design.
36:43
So if you have. Is that going to be on like
36:45
social media or online like a link or something that I can
36:48
share? Yeah, Yeah.
36:49
I will get you a link to share it.
36:51
I don't know what that looks like quite yet.
36:53
We just launched it last week, so it'll be open for submissions
36:56
for the next to be determined. I don't know off the top of my
37:01
head for the next period of time that will be established.
37:07
Yeah. So people can submit any, any
37:09
packaging designs that spoke to them.
37:12
And then we'll we'll kind of internally go through and
37:15
there'll be an internal voting. So Rostar will select which the
37:19
the winners and nominees of each category.
37:22
Interesting. Yeah, Well, that's cool.
37:25
I know you guys have always sponsored a lot of design awards
37:28
at different conventions and things, which is kind of a cool
37:30
way to support different industry, different businesses
37:36
in the industry in a different way and just bring attention to
37:39
it. You know, we were talking about
37:40
the, you were talking about the color scheme before, But you
37:44
know what, I, I would like to think that I'm the type of
37:48
person who wouldn't let, oh, this, this is a craft bag paper
37:53
package and it just has the product in it that, you know, I
37:58
think there was a time where you'd be like, oh, they must be
38:00
really serious. They really, they're not wasting
38:02
time on the package. But that's kind of gone away
38:05
now. And now people want to know
38:07
more. They want to know the story.
38:09
They need to know the information.
38:10
They want to know someone thought about the coffee, cared
38:14
about it enough that they're presenting it in a way that
38:17
feels like they care about the presentation as well.
38:21
And I don't know that that's always a good thing, but it
38:24
definitely has changed how I buy coffee, especially at the store.
38:29
I'm more willing to trust a brand that like I see putting
38:34
the effort into their packaging because I feel like maybe
38:38
they're also putting the effort into the other parts of it,
38:41
especially it's like a new to me coffee.
38:45
I think there's a weird mental calculus as consumers that we
38:48
also do like, as I'm saying this a lot, I'm realizing I'm also
38:52
calculating in my head somewhere, some sort of weird
38:55
Ryan brain algorithm, what the size of this coffee company is,
38:59
You know, are they super small and tiny and maybe don't have a
39:02
budget for this type of packaging?
39:04
Like is the craft bag with the sticker like a big deal for
39:07
them? And if so, then great.
39:09
Maybe the coffee is also great, but you can kind of see where
39:13
there's a where people are either like super excited to
39:19
share with you or maybe they're just like, Yep, somebody in
39:22
marketing said to do this or this is what we've done and it's
39:26
fine and we don't care about that part.
39:29
I think there are, yeah, there are levels to it, but not it's
39:35
never black and white like Brandywine Coffee is a a roaster
39:40
who does some super great coffees.
39:44
They use a blank bag with a label, but it's not just a blink
39:47
bag with a label like you can, I don't know what it is, but like
39:51
you can tell that there's intention behind it, even though
39:53
it's it's a simple bag design like they do, they do a wax
39:57
stamp on their bag just like many very small things that
40:01
elevate it. And you can still get that same
40:03
sense of somebody thought about this like as much as they
40:06
thought about the coffee. So it's, it's small details.
40:13
Yeah, I I agree that. When you can tell effort went
40:16
into the packaging, it indicates other things too.
40:19
You know, they, they're, they're taking the time to think about
40:22
this. They're also probably taking the
40:23
time to think about their roasting and maybe kind of the,
40:27
the sustainability behind it. Other pieces like other things
40:30
with are they treating their employees well?
40:33
Just a kind of small things that people focus on indicate that
40:37
they're thinking about it, other things too.
40:41
Is that a new mug to you? This is seen that.
40:46
It's it's relatively new. I got it this year.
40:50
I bought this at Co ro a Co roasting facility in.
40:56
Bay Area. Yeah, yeah, San Francisco, it's
41:00
really cool. It's like AI think it's it's
41:03
slip porcelain, I believe is like what it's made of.
41:07
It's my most expensive coffee mug even though it's like.
41:11
They must be serious because I know you don't need coffee mugs.
41:16
So if you buy it, I know that it's you must like really like
41:19
it because I could I would never have to buy a coffee mug for the
41:25
rest of my life. So if I do, it means that I
41:29
really want it. I have a lot of coffee mugs and
41:33
I think probably 90% of them are 6 oz or less.
41:39
I'm I'm very much part of the tiny cup gang like.
41:42
Oh yeah. Like if I can hide my coffee mug
41:44
behind my hand then it's it's I might buy it.
41:47
Like I just the smaller the better.
41:51
The place that we're renting, I have coffee mugs in storage.
41:55
I've got my little salmon mug 'cause I just bought that one.
41:58
But almost all of them are just kind of these like vintage
42:01
little flower mugs here at the house.
42:05
And every day I think, oh, I should, I should open the box
42:08
that has my coffee mugs and get out like one of the mugs that I
42:12
like. But that means undoing the
42:15
packaging tape, unwrapping it, trying to figure out which mug
42:19
I'm going to take out, repackaging it with a gap in it,
42:23
and then having to remember where it is when we move out of
42:26
this short term rental. And so I just stick with the
42:29
little flower mug, but it is way too big.
42:33
I mean, I almost my entire morning batch of coffee fits
42:37
into one mug which. I don't I, I mean I drink, I
42:42
like to have a small cup and then I'll just refill it like 3
42:46
or 4 times. I have.
42:49
I feel like I'm doing a lot of product placement today.
42:52
This is the new lid on the Simply Good Coffee Brewer that
42:55
they sent because the original lid wasn't great.
43:01
And they realized that in part because a lot of people like
43:06
myself said, hey, this lid is terrible and I don't trust it.
43:10
And I think it's going to fall off when I pour.
43:13
And to their credit, they didn't like, they just kind of sent out
43:17
an e-mail said, hey, like, we're hearing that this lid isn't
43:19
great. We're not super pumped about the
43:21
design of it. It didn't come back the way we
43:23
thought when we, you know, sent it out to the factory.
43:28
So we're making a new lid. That's a better one.
43:31
And just like, keep an eye on the mail.
43:33
And then sure enough, they like sent out this new lid to every
43:37
single customer who bought their Brewer, which I just thought was
43:41
like, you know what probably cost him a good chunk of money?
43:45
They had to redesign a product. They had to go down their list
43:50
of buyers. They had to ship it out.
43:52
And obviously shipping has gotten really expensive, but
43:55
it's a million times better. And like as a customer, I'm
43:59
like, oh, shit. Like they actually care about
44:02
like this. They could have easily said.
44:04
And what I think a lot of companies might do is here's a
44:08
new model. It's better.
44:10
You can buy it for X number of dollars, you know, or whatever.
44:15
But they just said no, like we didn't, we didn't deliver the
44:18
way we planned. So here we go.
44:19
I thought that was cool. I don't mean to sound like that.
44:26
I'm watching the leaves fall. I spent hours picking up leaves
44:33
yesterday morning and it just didn't take.
44:36
When I looked out this morning I was like, oh God, you gotta
44:39
start all over. Breaking leaves is one of those
44:43
things that I don't have to do because we rent and we that's
44:48
done for us. So I tend to romanticize it.
44:54
We, we did the, the marketing team here did like a leaf like
44:58
raking leaves just like as a volunteering thing.
45:00
So we, we raked up somebody's yard in town And beforehand I
45:04
was so excited. I was like, you guys, I love
45:06
raking leaves. I never get to do this.
45:07
And then like 1/2 hour and I was like, I don't think I actually
45:10
like raking leaves. I just like the idea of it.
45:13
Yeah, You want to put on a fleece vest and throw some
45:16
leaves up there and have a golden retriever run by?
45:21
I don't mind. I like part of our, our rent
45:24
agreement is actually I do the yard work, you know, that's part
45:27
of the deal. We have a pretty good rental
45:29
situation and I'm happy to do it.
45:30
I don't mind like mowing lawns or gardening like gets me
45:34
outside. I like all that stuff.
45:36
But there is a tree like I have never seen.
45:41
And I think yesterday we packed up, let's call it 15 jumbo bags
45:51
of leaves and then ran out of bags.
45:54
And so I just used tarps and I just loaded the tarps and
45:57
dragged them off to the side and stacked them like another 8 by
46:00
10 foot spot in the driveway from where they were gonna get
46:05
picked up. And that was just like one day,
46:11
like the tree is still covered in leaves that are coming down.
46:15
And so I was just like, how is this even humanly possible?
46:19
And I feel so bad. Like, even though it is, you
46:23
know, part of our rent and stuff, it's not like I, I can
46:26
magically make all the leaves just fall in my own yard.
46:30
Like, this place is on a corner. And so all of the houses around,
46:35
you know, where the wind blows in the general direction of
46:37
South. None of them have the same
46:42
beautiful tree, but they all have yards filled with leaves
46:46
And I feel so bad about it. So I'm always trying to like get
46:49
on top of it faster and faster. And I, I like started to
46:53
apologize to people, you know, like when I'd see them on the
46:56
sidewalk or something or walking their dog.
46:58
And everyone's been just so incredibly lovely about it.
47:01
Like, what are you going to do? It's a tree.
47:03
I'm like, I get it, but like, it's not your tree.
47:05
And like you were literally doing landscaping or work in
47:08
your yard because of it. But they've all been around here
47:12
a lot longer than I have, so I guess they're used to it.
47:15
Anything you're excited about? We're at like the end of the
47:18
year. It's I mean, it's November, but
47:20
it feels like it's, I mean, if the ads on television are to
47:26
believed, it's Christmas season already.
47:27
So it feels like things are winding down.
47:31
Like there's no major conventions the rest of the year
47:33
for coffee. There's no, I mean, I feel like,
47:37
you know, you got to make the effort right now between now and
47:39
the end of the year. So just isn't stuff going on.
47:41
And then even into January, really it's not until like
47:44
February, March, the stuff starts picking up.
47:48
Yeah, it's, I mean, there's it's kind of nice too, you know, the,
47:51
the fact that, yeah, travel and major coffee events are pretty
47:55
much done for the year. We just wrapped up Coffee Fest
47:58
Orlando, which was the last like the last coffee show on what we
48:03
call like our like travelling circus of coffee events.
48:06
You know, it's, you've been to a few of those.
48:08
It's all the same exhibitors and everything.
48:10
So we kind of, we said like our more final goodbyes.
48:12
Usually it's just about a month or two between time seeing each
48:16
other and we were kind of, you know, joking that it was like
48:19
the end of the season. So yeah, it's it's kind of a
48:23
lull, which is kind of nice to do more like planning.
48:26
We're definitely looking forward to next year more all of the
48:30
Coffee Fest shows. Yeah, kind of start up in like
48:33
February, March, the world of coffee slash SCA.
48:38
I'm still going to call it SCA for a while is in April I think.
48:44
So usually a lot more planning goes into that.
48:48
So we've already, I know you and I have already been talking
48:51
about about that lots of things going on there always.
48:55
Yeah. I've already got at least two
48:57
permanent or two serious commitments, 2 events.
49:00
We're doing a live show down there this year, so we'll be
49:03
more on that coming up. And then Jose is also doing an
49:07
end of competition event that Saturday.
49:11
So I am assuming I might get invited back to judge again, but
49:18
I don't know. We'll see if I've over, I've
49:20
overstayed my my welcome or done too much table talk.
49:24
We'll find. Out.
49:24
You gotta work on your cupping face.
49:26
Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do for the rest of the day.
49:29
Cupping face happy, delicious. Oh, you're saying I need to be
49:37
out. I'm I'm saying I need to be more
49:39
expressive. You're saying I need to be less.
49:40
Oh stone cold. I still won't be able to do it.
49:45
I'd be like try to keep my face like, you know, like I had.
49:49
But maybe if I get Botox or something beforehand I'll be
49:52
able to keep a straight face but my eyes will still.
49:56
No other choice. Yeah, I can't do it.
49:59
I'm the the eye rolling generation.
50:01
That's part of it. I think that's probably how
50:03
we're identified. Nick, thanks for the coffee,
50:06
man. I'm, I got a Yeah, I don't want
50:11
to edit more than 50 minutes of this.
50:12
You got to be out of your mind. Still want to talk though, if
50:17
that's our lead. Yeah.
50:26
Hey everyone, thanks for listening and having a cup of
50:28
coffee with Nick and I. You can find
50:30
rostaronline@rostar.com. They're a coffee packaging
50:34
company that pick a lot of the packages we talked about on the
50:36
show and are just supportive of the packaging and coffee
50:40
industries, generally speaking. As well as supporting this show,
50:44
they're the presenting sponsor of Coffee People.
50:47
You can find our show Naked Ryan Drink Coffee as well as Coffee
50:50
People and our Coffee Smarter segments on YouTube, Apple,
50:54
Spotify, wherever you're listening to podcasts or
50:57
watching them. Now, I'm not a watcher, I'm a
51:01
I'm a listener. That sounded weird when I said
51:03
it, but you can find ourshowonlineaswell@coffeepeoplepodcast.com.
51:08
We do regular articles every week.
51:11
There's a newsletter that goes out, but there's also just a lot
51:14
of content there on where we've been and, and what we're we're
51:17
doing in the world of coffee. We'll also post about upcoming
51:21
events like our Coffee Smarter Live show at next year's World
51:24
of Coffee event in San Diego, and we hope you check it out and
51:28
follow our newsletter. We'd really appreciate it.
51:31
Again, that's coffee peoplepodcast.com, and wherever
51:34
you are, I hope you've got a good cup of coffee.
51:38
Please tick your baristas if you're out in the world.
51:41
Cheers everyone. I think they have about 10 runs.
52:10
I know they they claim like a lot more than that but about 10
52:15
total. The cat can join, it's always
52:18
fun. Hey buddy, either way we've gone
52:22
way longer than normal. I'm just enjoying my cup of
52:25
coffee.