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“How do you brew your coffee?”  This is a question we hear at the coffee shop, daily.  What is the right answer?  Is there a right answer?  Here is how I respond to this question.  “How do you like your coffee?  Do you like it to be full bodied and stronger tasting?  Or do you like cleaner, brighter notes?”  The answer here varies greatly.  For me, there are so many variables.  For instance, in the summer, I enjoy a bright, clean, refreshing flavor.  While sitting by the fire during a snowstorm, I want something fuller bodied and some deeper flavor...

Each quarter, Tend Coffee features an animal related non-profit organization to receive a donation from the sales of their Grass Puppy Coffee Blend. This quarter, beginning in February and ending in April, we are excited to be showcasing Long Island Bulldog Rescue, LIBR.   Their mission is to help English Bulldogs through education, prevention, intervention and adoption. They fulfill their mission by helping, healing, and homing abandoned, neglected, abused, or released English Bulldogs.  We are excited to be able to showcase this rescue and the work they do to help these wonderful dogs.  Many of you know this organization is where...

What do you do with all that Burlap?   Short answer; it never goes to waste. 99.9% of all the coffee we import arrives in large burlap or jute bags. Since the Fresh Roasted Ideas blog is all about exploring the uses of coffee bi-products. I thought it would be neat to share some of the things we do with all that material.   Makers love them, so we reserve some of the choice patterns for purchase at the store.   We have donated big stacks to a local Girl Scout troop for making projects.   Ground Cover – as...

This is our new series where we share how we give new life to commonly discarded items that pass through our coffee roastery. If you like the upcycled and repurposed life then you will love these little Fresh Roasted Ideas. The "Borrowed Tools" Pallet Bookcase I walk by it every roast day, standing there dutifully doing its work. The Borrowed Tool Bookcase is just that; a bookcase made with minimum tools and a discarded pallet. In our case a coffee hauling pallet. The pallet was heat treated, clean and remember, I'm not a structural engineer, but a coffee roaster. The...

Announcing Fresh Roasted Ideas   A blog and newsletter re-focus on the “whole-bean”. In addition to our regular updates, we invite you to join the conversation about what happens after the brew and before. Our industry has an abundance of bi-products that seldom get put to good use, and we are changing that on a small scale and hope to inspire others as well.   Topics like coffee pallet work benches or our “Infinity Chicken Coup”, named such because once completed it’s instantly producing more than it costs (that’s the idea anyway) and our adventures building, crafting and growing all...