Clip Show!
A look back at coffee conversations from season one of the Coffee People Podcast.
Full video posted below, or watch and/or listen to Coffee People on:
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You might see "Clip Show!" and think, "Oh, they're taking the week off over at Coffee People." And, in theory, that could be true if we had been thinking ahead when we started this podcast. If we had been curating clips, setting them aside, labeling them properly, and perhaps keeping a spreadsheet of links or time-stamping key moments of episodes, this would have been an easy breezy week.*
We...I mean, I...was not thinking that way. At the beginning, this was a short-term project! Thankfully, I had full-length show-mp3's on a hard drive. I started listening at season one, episode one. Once I got past the cringe-inducing experience of listening to myself from six years ago,** finding moments of clarity and levity from the guests was a breeze.
Longtime listeners may remember that we were really in the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic when this show launched. It had been long enough that we were all crawling up the walls, but not so long that a vaccine was in place, nor were consistent safety protocols established. Business mandates were changing throughout the first seasons. Hospitality businesses were on the knife's edge of trying to survive, and somehow the arena in which society decided to air all of their raw emotions.
That's the context of the audio in this first clip show we've put out in a long time. This episode features clips from three episodes during season one featuring:
- Steve Rayle, Zumbar Coffee & Tea, Founder & Head Roaster.
- Siri Simran Khalsa, Lofty Coffee, Director of Coffee (Now the founder of Color Magic Coffee).
- Elliot Reinecke, Steady State Roasting, Founder & Head Roaster (now also co-founder of California Roasting Collective).
*This newsletter is coming out a day late, in part because I was listening to 10 hours of audio instead of my normal one! Also, because in the span of 24 hours we had a break-in, a toilet nearly fell through the floor, bought a car, and in the process of biking home from the car dealership (after dropping off the trade-in), I found myself distracted by A-frame signs that all said some version of "COFFEE."
Shout out to Exquisite Creatures, Coava Coffee, Upper Left Roasters, and Sometimes Coffee in Portland, OR. Today was one of the better biking coffee tours I've had in a minute. Thanks for the service and kindness and dang good espressos.
**When I listen back, I hear an interviewer who is nervous, talks to fast, gets a little too enthusiastic, and is waiting for a guest to call him out as an imposter in coffee. I also hear myself improving from the first episode to the last. It's never fun to examine your past work, but it has offered me a few revelations.
- I'm making some of the same mistakes now that I was then. I need to tighten that up during the interview process.
- I'm still as excited and interested in having conversations as I clearly was then.
- I have improved. I'm a better interviewer now than I was then. Not that I don't put in the work now, but I think conversations have more avenues to flow now because I am quicker to identify turning points in conversation, have learned to shut up more (most of the time), and have a deeper well of coffee knowledge to aid me in providing context.
Given unlimited time and resources, I'd go back and interview every guest available in-person, over a cup of coffee, and share the conversations next to each other as a social experiment. If you're out there and would like to be a patron of that sort of programming...give me a shout.
THE ORIGINAL CHATS: FULL INTERVIEWS
Listen to the original interviews on Youtube. Don't forget to subscribe.
Steve Rayle, Zumbar Coffee and Tea
Siri Simran-Khalsa, Lofty Coffee (now Color Magic Coffee)
Elliot Reinecke, Steady State Roasting
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