The inventor or the Bullet R1 coffee roaster, Jonas Lillie visited Sweet Maria's for our Bullet meet up event. He was also in town to show Tom and Julio some details about the internals of these awesome machines. One day, we hit the record button during a conversation/repair session in hopes of it turning into an informative podcast episode and Youtube video.

Thompson and Alistair Sequeira talk about coffee and lotsa other stuff in this 2017 conversation in rural Mwakiro, Burundi.

The conversation starts off with Alistair explaining how he transitioned his career from mechanical engineering to the coffee industry.

Just so you know, there are more than a few F-bombs dropped during this conversation! 

Alistair lives with his family in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi and has helped us find good Burundi coffees for several years. He was director of a large coffee export office there before heading off to do his own thing in the coffee sector. 

Thompson and Alistair Sequeira talk about coffee and lotsa other stuff in this 2017 conversation in rural Mwakiro, Burundi. Alistair lives with his family in Bujumbura, the capital, and has helped us find good Burundi coffees for several years. He was director of a large coffee export office there before heading off to do his own thing in the coffee sector. 

The conversation starts off with Alistair talking about growing up in Kenya and the bias he found in UK boarding schools. Just so you know, there are more than a few F-bombs dropped during this conversation! 

Part 1 of 2

A while back we had Mary Maina Manyeki visit us in Oakland, and had a great conversation about her experiences as a Kenya coffee farmer. This transitioned into a more general conversation with Wycliffe, a trader and agronomist from Kenyacof, and Kat, a trader from Sucafina USA, about the coffee market in Kenya. I split that generally into Part 1 and Part 2 as the conversation was quite long! This is (again) just a lo-fi recording of a conversation about coffee, but there are many good details in here about how coffee is grown, traded and marketed from the tree to the retailer overseas. Please give it a listen, despite the lack of great production! -Tom

Part 2 of 2

A while back we had Mary Maina Manyeki visit us in Oakland, and had a great conversation about her experiences as a Kenya coffee farmer. This transitioned into a more general conversation with Wycliffe, a trader and agronomist from Kenyacof, and Kat, a trader from Sucafina USA, about the coffee market in Kenya. I split that generally into Part 1 and Part 2 as the conversation was quite long! This is (again) just a lo-fi recording of a conversation about coffee, but there are many good details in here about how coffee is grown, traded and marketed from the tree to the retailer overseas. Please give it a listen, despite the lack of great production! -Tom