December 2024 Subscription - This will probably taste delicious
Sitting in computer science class back in the early 2000s, we learnt 'dinosaur' programming languages, like the now depreciated, Adobe Flash. One assignment had us constructing a probability game. Other than the focus on probability, we would have complete creative control on the look and feel of the thing as well as choice of the underlying game. I, being a proper elder millennial, opted for a Homestar Runner themed dice type of game, with characters like 'The Cheat', a knee height rotund creature, complete with yellow & black spotted fur (resembling a cheetah if your 4 year old niece drew it) starring as the dice. I had The Cheat taking centre stage on the screen, tumbling around at random, landing on its head for 10 points, its side for 2 points and so on. These rolls of "The Cheat" had programmed frequencies of where it would land, based on a sample size of a few thousand rolls: 22% of the time on its back, 34% on its side and so on. Of all the kinds of probability games that exist, this type of game is pure luck acting as the outsized lever in how a roll will turn out.
In the book "Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts”, Poker champion Annie Duke pulls from examples in business, sports, life events (and obviously poker) to define and share tools that all of us can use to welcome uncertainty and ultimately make better decisions. We don't live in a world where "I'm not sure how this will turn out" or "I don't have the answer" is looked on favourably. We reward the appearance of certainty. Many of us are tempted to think of events and decisions we have to contend with as akin to chess, a mathematical game with predefined 'best choices' for the next move relative to the previous one. Annie offers that though it's tempting to think of our lives and decisions like a chess game, it's really more like poker. There is a heavy dose of luck, and the art of strategy comes in to fill in the gaps - Shifting the compulsion for a need for certainty to a game plan of assessing what's known and what's unknown.
Far before Nate flips on the burner and drum on our Diedrich IR12 roaster, and starts the preheat process for a given production day, we're in the business of collecting as much data as we can get our hands on to build our educated guess for how to roast each coffee. We have a handheld moisture meter where we'll check each bag of green coffee that comes in, we take a pre roast density measurement in a cylinder - Both of these data points are run through a house built algorithm to more precisely 'guess' what the target roast weight loss should be (green to roasted there's a 10-12% weight loss). From there, we'll sample roast a range of the same coffee, with the idea of understanding what roast style and what development time will take us to that target weight loss. Then we'll taste the coffees in a 'cupping' format, looking for simply the one that tastes best.
We're not at the production roaster yet! Next, we'll sample roast a few 100g batches of the winning sample roast, enough to continue to taste through the time where the coffee is opening up (resting coffee is very much real, see 'Fresh is best?' the oldest journal post on our site) and we'll use our ColorTrack machine to take readings of the colour on both the outside and the inside (ground).
All of this stuff makes it a lot easier to hit the bullseye when Nate goes to roast a production sized test batch. But, in spite of all this preparation work, things still might not go according to plan. In fact, they often don't - This is the reality of roasting (no matter who may tell you otherwise). The skill is in the prep work, but also in the adapting when you're 'behind the wheel' to keep things on track.
Our job is to continually iterate, make countless choices during roasting, to get to the highest probability of a delicious result.
Wearing process like a warm quilt in the dark of winter
Relying on, and executing our systems, despite the time and thoroughness it takes, is the reason why we've managed to release 43 unique coffees this year. I mean, holy crap we're just two people! I had to do a double take when I pulled the numbers. That's the process I skimmed over above, 3-4 times each month in 2024.
We cupped and designed 43 coffee releases, each one with 3 weeks of coddling, long before you ever taste a drop.
We're closing out on another year in the coffeeverse with you - Through this time we've explored savoury rootbeer-like Parainema from Hildaly Leiva and her partner Grevil Sabillon, bubblegum and tropical Pink Bourbon from Ildefonso Cordoba and many outstanding delights from Ethiopia, many of whom placed (or won in Basha Bekele's case) in the Cup of Excellence - a competition with probability games written all over it (the poker kind, not the chess kind).
Winter solstice is a time of year we look forward to deeply (and not only because I get to make Nate watch Rent the musical for the umpteenth time) . It's a moment to close another loop, another cycle, and look back on the processes we followed and review the processes the farmers we bought coffees from adopted. It's giving thanks and feedback with producers and looking forward to another year of sharing spectacular coffees with you.
For those of you who are new (hi!), this is why we chose Luna as our name - The farmers almanac follows moon phases and suggests activities, like pruning and planting, all according to the moon. A farmer's compass for the probability game of farming. The curveballs that will inevitably happen to all of us who work in coffee, like a slightly colder roasting room making the starting temp for the batches a couple degrees off, or a rain that comes weeks late, or a shipping container that had a booking rollover, resulting in a month delay, are events that can make us go nuts if we had nothing to fall back on. Luna is a living practice of taking in all the things that we know about a given coffee in a point in time, working with it, and weaving it into it's most delicious form.
Iteration and the permission to try new things are things we wear like the warmest quilt- following a process is our security blanket. We can't unlock something new if we don't have the courage to try. We can't repeat a coffee profile, even if we have a lot from the same producer in the next harvest year, but we can measure everything possible to give it another whirl and make the odds work in our favour.
In your box this month
This month we're closing out the year with the last from the Ethiopia harvest of 2023/2024, and speaking of (a different kind of) process, we've got a washed process back in action this month with Mullugeta Muntasha, previously a truck driver who decided to return to his hometown of Bursa to grow and produce coffee. Today, he's absolutely crushing it, with a scaled up operation, focusing on consistent quality through meticulous fermentation. Also making an appearance is 2024 COE winner Basha Bekele and his take on a natural process. Some of you might have picked up the limited tiny white honey lot Basha did with a hand pulper - Doing a comparative tasting of both his lots would make for a stellar holiday activity. In fact, Mullugeta and Basha's lots made side by side would be a wonderful way to spend a sunday morning over the holidays.
Two coffees shining bright for this winter solstice.
Happy Holidays, Laura (& Nate!)
Luna is powered by Laura & Nate, two industry nerds from Vancouver, Canada. What you just read comes as a printed colour zine each month, alongside two coffees specifically sourced for subscribers. Join us next time!
