Julian Mamaj, SOVDA

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What he drinks: "It's a cup that I simply enjoy." He specified batch brew in America or Japan, and often cappuccino elsewhere. Working in coffee...it is easy to get overly analytical. Beyond the coffee, the motives of the roasters matter to Julian, too.

Thanks to Julian Mamaj for making Coffee People his first podcast appearance. After so many interviews, I sometimes forget that it isn't normal to record conversations to be shared with the world every week.

I've gotten used to the sound of my voice, but the cynic in me is still surprised at how wide open and willing the coffee industry community is about sharing their knowledge, thoughts, motivations, and inspirations with anyone looking to keep moving forward in their own coffee journey.

It's so...lovely.

Julian is the VP of Sales and Marketing for Sovda, a company that sells sorting, lifting, and packaging machines to coffee roasters. They design their products with the admirable goal of speeding up the repetitive, more "mundane" portions of a roaster's work flow, allowing them to focus on roasting.

Enjoy this week's conversation, and if you want to learn more from Julian, check out the SOVDA Insider. The company blog touches on topics from work flow, equipment breakdowns, blending coffee beans, to what they refer to as Lean Roasting.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PODCAST

• SOVDA is based in Bentonville, AR, but Julian is based in Munich. The founder is from Arkansas, but the company was originally founded in Yunnan, China. There, SOVDA Co-Founder Samuel Gurel was working in coffee education when he met co-founder Maxime Boegler. While visiting coffee farms they were shocked by all the hand sorting of beans occurring at the farm level.
  
  They developed a cherry sorter to help solve a problem at the farm level, but it turned out that they had a product without a market that could afford the upgraded tech. The money just wasn't there. They pivoted and reconfigured their product to aid roasters in their packaging and sorting efforts.
• The SOVDA Pearl Mini is a coffee bean sorting machine. It sorts out quakers (unripe or undeveloped coffee seeds) by color. Those beans remain paler even after the browning phase of roasting because they don't have necessary compounds for the reaction to occur.
  
  Why do we care about color sorting? In short, because color changes may reflect differences in bean development and sorting allows the controlling of a variable when presenting excellent coffees to the world. But be warned, over-sorting can be a pitfall.

• Julian's first poignant coffee memory was a relatable one. He tried a cup of Ethiopia Natural that was so "jammy and delicious" that it changed his perspective on coffee.
• His job at Sweet Spot Kaffee was a great opportunity to not just drink excellent coffee as a barista, but also to be in a place where the focus was on tasting and exchanging ideas about the coffees.
• SOVDA recently won a Best New Product at the World of Coffee San Diego 2026 for the PF Mini, a coffee bag filling machine. Winning the award reinforced that they were making roasters' lives easier
• Repetitive motion injuries in coffee are real. It was one of the first conversations I had with my coffee mentor Chris O'Brien when he was teaching me proper technique for tamping to avoid stressing my elbow and shoulder.
• When designing a first edition of a product, you won't know all the little tweaks that will eventually occur to improve the product. First generations prove a desire in the marketplace. 2nd-gen products are able to take into account real-world experiences and feedback from users.
• The speed and accuracy of the machines is what separates them from competitors and humans.
• The coffees we like are somewhat predicated on preferences developed through learned experience. 
• Space is only helpful in one instance, and that is storage.

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