How My Coffee Road Started

Hello coffee lovers,

before we dive into tips and tricks to roast your own coffee at home, I might as well talk a bit about how I've gotten to this point and when I started on my coffee drinking journey.

In the late 1990's, while in High School, my friends and I would often go to the nearest Tim Horton's for lunch about once a week. Back then however, coffee didn't appeal to me yet, but they had the "I ate the bowl" meal combos. For those of you who don't know what that was; it was a decent-sized round bread that they would cut the top to form a bowl, to then pour your choice of either chili or cream of chicken... delicious, I wish they brought that back! This was my go to meal with the slight downside of post-lunch drowsiness during my afternoon classes. You can see where this is going I think. It wasn't too long before the obvious drink of choice became coffee for practical reasons. There was yet another downside at the time... I didn't like the taste of coffee! I would order their French vanilla since it was sweet enough to hide the taste of coffee and kept me awake throughout the afternoons. I was hooked from that point on!

After High School I joined the military, and getting a cup of French vanilla coffee everyday became a little hard during training as you could imagine; the dinning halls didn't have the fancy creams. I had to switch to regular cream for a mix of two creams and two sugars. At Tim Horton's my orders became their famous "Double Double". For years, this was my coffee of choice until I started travelling more often and finding it difficult to replicate the "Double Double" experience. Cream then became milk, and gradually that taste grew on me. It came to a point where I would only add one to two sugars to my coffee. The defining moment that changed all that was in Jamaica about a decade ago. I sat at a hotel patio for breakfast and ordered a soon-to-be my first ever black coffee. The waiter brought me a cup, took my breakfast order and left. I now had a cup of black coffee in front of me, and a questionable open container of sugar on the table. While my brain was figuring what to do with the sugar, the amazing smell from the coffee cup entered my nose, so I decided to have a taste of the black coffee. Best decision I ever made! Turns out it was a locally grown and roasted coffee and the freshness made all the difference; at that time, it was the best cup of coffee I had ever had.

Since then, I've pretty much always drank my coffee black in search of that delicious taste I had that morning. Going to local roasters and coffee houses in my travels was the next best things. About five years ago, I came across a life-changing video, it explained that coffee looses it's freshness quickly, and most of what you can buy at the store will not have the same flavours as what has just been roasted within a week or ten days. That prompted my to try roasting myself.

Fast forward to now, when I have the time, I roast my own beans at home which have yielded some of the best coffees, I have enjoyed and shared with family and friends, over the last five years. I invite you to join me on this road to coffee discovery so we can share our experiences and learn together.

Cheers,

Pascal from 27-43 Coffee Road