Home Brew: RoosRoast Now in the Michael’s Genuine Hopper

John Roos pours out some freshly roasted beans outside his shop at 1155 Rosewood Street in Ann Arbor, MI. (photo credit: moofbong)

Michael’s friend John Roos – chef, artist, and coffee roaster – is now the coffee supplier for the restaurant! What makes John tick?  We’ll give you a hint: It’s not just caffeine.  How about reading Malcolm Gladwell, delivering coffee via trailer-hitched bicycles, and “Lobster Butter Love” for starters?  Here, he’ll explain.

Q.  How do you take your coffee?

A.  I take my coffee black. Milk is nasty in coffee but If my customer wants cream I’m OK with that. I like all kinds of preparation. But my favorite is a long pull espresso from my La Marzocco GB-5.

Q:  If you could be a particular roast, what would it be?

A:  I would be a roast that matched the coffee in the roaster. Every coffee has a different roast that works well the same way spices work in. I know a Peru that is very sweet as a light roast and if you go too dark it gets bitter. I also know a Sumatra, and a Guatemalan who are incredible as a fully realized roast and so on…

Q:  How did you get started in the coffee business?

A:  I have been drinking coffee since I was 8 years old. I started in the world of restaurants at 15 and never looked back. In 1990 I was contacted by Michael Schwartz to work with him at a restaurant he was opening in Vail Colorado called Lostello. We worked on another restaurant together and I had the chance to work at Nemo back in the day. I traveled, cooked, did art and wrote for many years all fueled by coffee always in search of a great cup. In 2002 on a bicycle ride with my friend Chris Donnelly I was talking about starting a coffee roasting company, and he said you should call it RoosRoast and that was the start!

Q:  Art or coffee?

A:  As an chef, artist, and writer I drank coffee all day long. I lived in Portland Oregon for 10 years, and there is where I learned to roast coffee.

Mmmm... Can't you just smell those fresh beans? (photo credit: moofbong)

Q:  Why Ann Arbor?

A:  I moved back to my home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2000, and I saw a need for specialty coffee roast fresh and local. Slowly grew the business while working as a Subaru sales consultant giving clients who bought a car a free bag of freshly roasted RoosRoast Free Speech Coffee.

Bubba Cush gets comfy on the MGFD patio.

Q:  Who’s your most unique client?

A:  There are so many, who is the most unique? It’s always changing. I can tell you that coffee geeks, coffee people all have strange and wonderful fetishes about “their” coffee, and they will tell you about it. Being in the coffee business is being in the people business. Once you start supplying people coffee you’re in for the long run. It’s a people business, from the people who grow it to the people who drink it. If you think about it, coffee see’s a lot of people on the way to the cup.

Q:  What distinguishes your coffee from the competition, both the Starbucks of the world and smaller more niche purveyors?

A:  The writer Malcolm Gladwell talks about people who spend 10,000 hours doing something in his book “Outliers.” Spending this much time gives you an advantage and a reliable talent. I’ve done my 10,000 hours cooking in restaurants all over the world and drinking coffee the whole time. I am able to taste something and recreate that taste. I know what I’m looking for in the taste of coffee. My restaurant background prepared me for this business because as a chef in a kitchen you have to be able to do so many things and that’s what makes it fun and interesting for me. Compared to Starbucks we roast on such a small specialty level.

Q: What blends are you planning on featuring at MGFD?

A: We are going with “Lobster Butter Love!” I know the name sounds nuts but this coffee is so sweet and and smooth. I use an amazing Sumatra, but just like a steak is good right off the grill if you cook it with good salt and pepper it’s over the top. “Lobster Butter Love” has a small amount of Central American and Indian coffee’s in it that make it over the top. For your decaf roasting an organic water processed coffee I call “Bubba Cush.” This coffee makes excellent espresso. When I cater movie sets this is is the preferred coffee of movie directors.

Roos prints bag labels with his own wood cuts.

Q:  Where do you source the coffee you roast and why?

A:  A roaster needs to have a great relationships with the people you buy coffee from the main component being trust. We work with 2 main specialty green coffee importers who work with small farms in all coffee growing regions.

Q: Describe the roasting process briefly for those of us unfamiliar with how it’s done.

A: This is the short version. We roast on a Diedrich IR-12 which roasts batches of 30 lbs. The roaster has a solid steel drum which is heated by inferred gas burners for even heating. Green coffee is added through the top of the roaster once the roaster gets to 420 degrees. The process takes about 15 minutes. Air and gas are controlled through out the roast depending on the green coffee and roast profile. As the coffee roasts it releases moisture, proteins, carbohydrates and sugars. The beans expand and crack. There are several stages of cracking third crack being like the third rail…Burned! The by product of the roasting process is smoke and chaff. Some people love the smell of roasting coffee some people don’t. Coffee roasting is like cooking you have to pay attention to details and learn it over time. I give coffee classes in Ann Arbor.

Q:  How have you developed your coffee roasting techniques?

A:  Through roasting and tasting, and experimenting all the time. Note taking is very important. As a roaster you are drinking coffee all the time. I love drinking coffee.

Q: What do you consider to be your largest achievement in your niche market for coffee?

A: I really don’t think there is one large achievement but many small ones on a daily basis. If I could say there is one I would say that I have succeeded in opening a sustainable business offering a product which I love working in and around every single day for the rest of my life.
When I travel or go on vacation there is always coffee involved. Coffee is a human drink, and we could all use a little humanity right about now!

Car salesman turned coffee roaster: Roos is the man behind the brew. (photo by Mark Bialek)

Q:  Are you planning on expanding your production of roasted coffee?

A:  We’re going back to the basics and looking at expanding our sourcing directly from small farmers and getting into some really incredible high end coffee’s We just built a new website which will allow us to better market our recent arrivals. We are expanding our methods of delivery to bicycles with trailers and a Toyota Prius.

Q:  How do you develop new blends?

A:  Years and years of tasting note-taking, talking to coffee people, and then more years and years of tasting, roasting note taking and talking to people in-the-know.

You can purchase RoosRoast coffees like the A-A Cowboy Blend, Mother Pheasant Plucker, or even Lobster Butter Love for your own home brew on the company website or by calling 734.709.9565.