CONFESSIONS OF A ROASTER HOARDER, OR HOW I BECAME THE PERSON THAT NEARLY KEPT ME FROM BECOMING A ROASTER!
When I first dreamed up Ritual, it was a small chain of local cafés, I wasn’t originally planning to be a coffee roasting company. When I moved to San Francisco, the style of coffee that I had gotten used to living in Seattle (years 2000–2003) simply didn’t exist in the Bay Area. So I decided to roast my own coffee. (And then we accidentally pioneered a new style of roasting, but that’s another story.)
So I figured out that all of my favorite coffee was all roasted on vintage Probats. I tried to figure out how to buy a vintage Probat. I called around and no one had one for sale. So I opened Ritual in May of 2005 using Stumptown Coffee. (We were the first wholesale account outside of the Portland area, but that’s also another story). We were able to get their coffee wholesale only on the promise that it was a temporary arrangement, that we’d start roasting our own coffee within six months.
Once we opened, and we had a line around the block and we were “the highest volume third wave cafe in the country” (according to Doug Zell, then the owner of Intelligentsia), and Ritual was on people’s radars as the cafe that finally brought third wave coffee to San Francisco. Then I called all those same people back, and magically I was able to buy a vintage Probat. (Thank you Tom at Sweet Maria’s!)
The feeling I got at the time was that people who had vintage Probats were like people who have old cars sitting in their garage. Even if they don’t take them out and drive them, they aren’t going to sell them unless there is someone worthy to become the next owner. And by opening Ritual, and putting San Francisco on the third wave coffee map, I was finally worthy of owning a vintage Probat myself.
It was such an exciting day when we borrowed the open-backed box truck that transports palm trees for Flora Grubb, and drove over to Oakland and picked up the sweet little L12 Probat from Tom at Sweet Maria’s.
And this is all to say that I have not one but two sweet vintage roasters who are looking for new homes. I’m sorry I’ve let them sit in storage for so long. It wasn’t a matter of gatekeeping. I’ve just been busy working on other things: canned coffee and Ritual at SFO.
So please spread the word – if you know someone who is looking to get into roasting, this little L12 was the perfect shop roaster for us, and was quite a workhorse. We produced amazing coffee on this machine. Mike Lanz from La Marzocco was floored that we were getting the quality we were from a mere L12, he assumed it was a UG22.
This UG22 has an amazing provenance, starting out in Australia with the esteemed Seven Seeds and coming to the US to help Tartine’s roasting expansion. Both are crated and in the Bay Area, and I’ll even come and deliver it myself if we keep it local 🙂
I’m excited to continue to foster the next generation of coffee roasting companies!
