YA GOTTA KEEP ‘EM CAFFEINATED

As the world –metaphorically speaking– continues to take foggy mountain roads at faster and faster speeds and spend more time on two wheels than four, I find myself (here in my fetal position in the back seat) looking for new ways to stay grounded, centered, and present; to try and curb my tendency to stew and spiral. I wish it was easier. I come from a long line of worriers. Anxiety and rumination often feel like my factory default settings and, after a recent longer, bleaker period than usual of letting existential dread and despair wash over me, I’ve decided that a reset is long overdue. 

As a result, I’ve recently doubled down on developing some new habits. Good ones, that is; I’ve already got enough of the other kind, thank you very much. For some examples: I’m exercising every day. I’m writing this blog you’re reading right now; I promised myself I’d write and post an entry a week and, six weeks in, that’s exactly what I’ve done. And, most recently, I’ve started a series in my Instagram stories: “T.I.D.”, or “Today I’m Digging”. I pick a little thing that I’m doing, or something that catches my ear or my eye, and I celebrate it. It’s similar to one of those “Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7, exhale for 8” breathing exercises. It forces me to slow down, to notice the beauty that’s still around us in abundance, despite what the news tries to tell us. I’m trying to do it on a daily basis. I’m not quite there yet, but it’s on its way to becoming a habit, and by telling myself to keep an eye out for today’s T.I.D., I feel like I’m slowly rewiring my brain, recalibrating the way I approach my life- my own little version of a gratitude journal. If nothing else, it helps make my corner of Instagram a happier place, and that’s good enough for me. 

All these little self-imposed steps and tasks are doing a pretty good job of giving my day a sense of positive structure. I realize it’s at odds with my chaotic-by-nature chosen vocation as a “creative type”, but I’m a sucker for structure. Always have been. I thrive on procedure and routine (if there’s any truth to the whole “past lives” thing, I’m pretty sure that I was a soldier in many of my previous trips around the block). At the same time, I’m trying to say “yes” to things as much as possible, to invite a little serendipity in, while hoping it plays nice with my love of order and duty and service. It’s a razor’s edge. You remember Aesop’s fable about the grasshopper and the ants? There are plenty of both of those critters in my bloodline, and the struggle of that dichotomy, as they say, is real.

Ojai Coffee Roasters, my portal to 1995.

There’s a little place downtown- Ojai Coffee Roasters. When my wife and I moved to Ojai three and a half years ago, I started going there most mornings to write (speaking of habits, that’s one I’m trying hard to pick up again.). Ojai Coffee was like a portal to 1995, when I would hang out at Front Street Coffee House in Dayton, Ohio every night, writing the first batch of Shrug songs and jacking myself up beyond all reason on caffeine. Ojai Coffee brought me full circle back to that world. I started churning out lyrics and became friends with the owner, Stacey, as well as the rest of the staff. 

This is not a tangent. Stick with me. 

Last September I got back to Ojai after spending a month and a half in Ohio. My dad’s health was failing, and I had gone back home to spend time with him and help my mom and sister with all the things that come with the end of a loved one’s life (duty and procedure, amiright?). On my first visit back to the shop, Stacey sat down at my table and we talked about dying parents, grief, family obligation, and such. She was, as always, very kind. The conversation changed to what I’d missed since leaving town and she mentioned that the employee whose job it was to roast the coffee in house was moving out of the area. It had been on Stacey’s radar, but the departure had been bumped up suddenly, and Stacey was trying to figure things out. 

Under her breath she quipped, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in learning how to roast coffee…?”  

We chuckled. Then I stopped chuckling and started thinking. I thought about how many of my favorite jobs, music projects, side quests, and adventures I had fallen back-asswards into, out of the blue. I thought about the funk I was in with my dad’s situation and the general shambolic state of the world, and how maybe getting out of my own head a little and trying something new would do me some good and help distract me. I thought about how I needed to start saying “yes” again. After hearing that it required only a few hours of my time a week, I signed on as a Roaster To Be.

I’m 55 years old, people. The overwhelming majority of my day to day life consists of activities I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands, of times. The chance to start as an absolute beginner at something –from square one– at my age and learn an entirely new skill is rare. It’s intimidating and scary. But it’s also pretty exhilarating. I had never seen a coffee roasting machine before. I had never seen a raw coffee bean before. So you can imagine the barrage of new information lobbed at me at my first training session. I took copious notes, made little drawings, determined not to screw up. Stacey’s daughter, Olivia, was also learning the ropes with me. We arranged that I would roast on Mondays and Olivia would take Thursdays and, after a couple sessions, keeping an eye on each other, making some mistakes, and recovering from them, we flew solo. 

“Isn’t she looooovely…”

The airplane analogy is not a perfect one, but it does fit. My procedure fetish has a warm, cozy home in coffee roasting. The roaster itself is a big, beautiful, vaguely Jules Verne-ish contraption, all brass levers and gauges, chutes and hoppers, and getting a consistent roast requires attention and repetition. Each roast ideally takes between 19 and 22 minutes. The digital temperature display needs to show a rate of increase of roughly 5 seconds per degree. Too fast, and the beans don’t roast in the middle. Too slow, and you’re just baking them instead of roasting. Light roast Ethiopian and Decaf Peruvian come out at 425. Medium roasts, anywhere from 435 to 445. Darker roasts stay in until 460. There are checklists and steps that need to be done and entered in a log along the way, all to the steady heartbeat of 5 seconds per degree:

Gas lever up full airflow lever up full to cooling bin setting power switch on motor switch on burner switch on watch through viewport and wait for burners to light once lit evenly adjust gas lever for 5 seconds per degree rise rate first roast goes in at 400 stopwatch on log start time keep temperature rise rate at 5 seconds per degree at 300 airflow lever all the way down to roasting bin setting for a minute or so until most of the chaff is gone from the bin viewing port airflow back up to cooling bin keeping checking the temperature rise rate move airflow lever to half between 366 and 375 when the beans start turning cinnamon brown in viewport watch that temperature rise rate as temperature nears 388 open bean inspector shaft and listen for first crack when beans start cracking like popcorn move airflow lever full down and log time and temperature at 400 log afterburner reading turn on cooling bin motor and load next roast into hopper listen for second crack around 438 log time and temperature airflow full up gas lever off note temperature empty beans from roaster into cooling bin close rooster bin wipe down chute and inside of roaster bin hatch open hopper empty new roast into roaster reset stopwatch log time and final temperature watch for temperature display to bottom out relight burners adjust gas to halfway when temperature starts rising repeat steps with new roast empty beans from cooling bin at 300 wipe down cooling bin chute when finished roasting clean chaff out of air supply cavities clean fan blades every other roast chaff collection tube every 4 or 5 roasts oil motor every month rear bearings every 40 hours front bearings every 6 months restock beans up front make any notes for Olivia’s Thursday roast repeat next Monday wham bam thank you maam

As this little dance becomes a routine and I’ve internalized the steps, the initial anxiety has given way to a kind of serenity that comes with making a practice out of something. Watching the beans being sifted in the cooling bin is a hypnotic, Zen-like experience. My previous life as a radio host (another shining example of saying “yes” to serendipity) has gifted me a very accurate internal clock and I find myself meditating on “one…two…three…four…five…” whether I’m watching the temperature display or not. Honestly, the most stressful part of the whole process is determining what batches of beans need restocked when I start my shift. 

OH- and the smell. The smell. Delightful. I come home every Monday smelling like coffee, and my wife who, in an earlier life, chased the coffee dragon until she had to quit and switch over to tea, keeps walking past and sniffing me for a little micro dose hit of her past. 

Stacey’s a kind soul and a good boss, and Ojai Coffee is a happy ship. I’m proud to be a part of it. What started as an out-of-left-field “yes” has become a centerpiece of my week. Structure and serendipity, living in symbiosis. And any shakes I get from too much free coffee are alleviated by the knowledge I’m being of service to something and learning a craft. I’m no expert, not by a long shot, but I’m working on that. In the meantime, raise a cup of joe and join me in a toast:

To healthy new tricks for old dogs. Woof. 

Ojai Coffee Roasters ships its coffee anywhere. If you’d like to sample my handiwork, here’s their website.