It’s your classic coffee shop success story: Local barista meets customer. Customer becomes a regular. Barista and regular bond over a love for records and beer, becoming good friends. Friends experiment with roasting coffee in their garage. That coffee gives way to Huckleberry Roasters – Denver based coffee roaster and café producing some of Seattle Coffee Gear’s favorite coffee. Huckleberry Roasters Pecos Street location. Image Credit: Ross Evertson We caught up with co-founder Koan Goedman to hear a little bit about his personal journey in coffee, how Huckleberry Roasters came to be and where they’re going next, and his favorite home brew method.
It seems like every coffee enthusiast has a journey where really good coffee finally clicks for them. When was that aha moment for you?
Can I claim two "aha" moments or is that a huge cop-out? The first, which happened as a consumer, I remember quite vividly. It was a natural Ethiopia Harrar from Intelligentsia brewed on a Fetco in 2002. To be totally honest, I didn't seek it out and I didn't really know what to do with the coffee when I tasted it -- it was so radically different from what I thought coffee was. It was delicious and I wanted more! Fast forward most of a decade, the second a-ha moment came very early on in Huckleberry's existence. We'd just roasted a coffee from Guatemala, called Finca La Bolsa. Joe Marrocco from Cafe Imports suggested it and who was I to argue? It was one of the first coffees that we roasted and was legit tasty! We roasted it well, we sort of knew why & how we roasted it well. It was a milestone for a tiny coffee roasting company and it propelled us forward!
It’s one thing to go from simply enjoying coffee to stepping into the specialty coffee industry. What made you decide to take this venture on? What was the goal?
I wish this story was a bit more romantic, but here's the truth: it could have been anything! Mark Mann and I shared in an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to own a business together...and coffee is what we did, what we knew and what we were interested in. Had we been heavier/savvier drinkers, maybe it would've been a neighborhood bar (I own one of those now, so what does that say about me?). Had we been makers and better with our hands, maybe it would've been a leather goods company? We knew coffee, we had an amazingly supportive community through coffee and our decision was basically made for us. The path forward seemed clear(ish). Like most businesses, our mission statement is a living thing. It changes from time to time. Our focus gets shaped and shifted as our experience teaches us what works. However, from day one, we've always wanted Huckleberry Roasters to mean something, stand for something and leave a mark. This certainly manifests itself in our coffee philosophy, where we try to be approachable and welcoming in the coffee we source, roast, brew and serve. That foundational goal also pushes us to be generous in our fundraising and support of organizations doing important work, while also pushing ourselves forward towards a healthy, thriving and fun company culture for our family of employees.
What is your favorite coffee that you currently are roasting?
Like picking a favorite child. This is cruel! I've been on a pretty big South & Central American coffee kick lately. We just roasted the last of some of our Colombian coffees, but we have a stunner from Costa Rica, called Santa Maria, that's just the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas. It's so good! Comforting in all the right ways with deep sweetness and fantastic body, but also with some grape and candied orange fruitiness that keeps your attention. It also happens to be one of the kinds of coffees that Huckleberry prides itself in! We're really proud of the cooperative (CoopeDota) it comes from and being able to help Costa Rica continue to be a global leader in sustainable coffee growing. It's maybe not the wild & crazy flavor profile you may get from a Kenya, but it's super drinkable and enjoyable. It's the kind of coffee that I think specialty coffee needs to truly embrace if we're going to keep growing.
Community is clearly at the core of Huckleberry. How did that become so central to the ethos of what you guys are doing?
I think I hinted at this a little bit in an earlier response, but...we would be nothing without the love and support of our friends & families. They said our coffee tastes good when it didn't, and encouraged us to push onward. They said our coffee tasted bad when we thought we were masters, and still encouraged us to push forward. We embraced all that love and wanted to be sure that we passed it forward ourselves - be it in the communities of our cafes, be it in being helpful to other coffee companies, so on and so on. Sadly, I think the word community has become somewhat meaningless over the last few years. It's such a trendy word to throw around that it's stopped being meaningful in a lot of ways. We do our best to push back against that tide as much as we can!