This week Chrissy, our Roastess with the Mostess, roasted her 4,000th batch of Hammer Coffee on Chico, our lovely San Franciscan roaster. Those in the know know that the real talent at Hammer Coffee isn’t the guy who writes this newsletter every week (huge shock, I know). It’s Chrissy’s dedication to craft coffee roasting and attention to detail that we have to thank for all this delicious coffee. Huge congratulations on this milestone Chrissy!
4,000 batches of coffee = 20,000lbs, that’s 10 tons of caffeinated bliss! My back aches just thinking about it.
Chrissy has come a very long way from her humble beginnings roasting on a Whirly Pop popcorn maker, retrofitted with a cordless drill to crank the handle.
One of my favourite memories of Chrissy’s road to roasting excellence, happened while she was roasting on the Behmor coffee roaster. Chrissy had many of these small hobby roasters. She wore them out regularly. Hammer Coffee was actually started on a Behmor roaster, we still have some of our original customers, but that’s another story...
One chilly January evening, Chrissy exclaimed “I love these Behmor coffee roasters! I can sit inside in the warm enjoying my beer, while the coffee roasts outside in the cold”. Just then, as if on command, the Behmor burst into flames, we burst into laughter and rushed to extinguish the flames. It turns out that beer and coffee roasting don’t mix. A valuable lesson that we still follow to this day.
