Coffee competitions are a big part of specialty coffee. It gives those working in coffee an opportunity to showcase their passion for the craft. In this episode, we sit down with Keziah who competed this year as a US barista competitor. She talks about why she competed, her advice to others considering it, and some of her biggest takeaways from being a competitor.

Kyle Rowsell started as a YouTuber and content creator which has led him to launching his coffee roasting company called September Coffee. Kyle Rowsell opens up about starting a kickstarter, running the coffee business with his wife Natasha, and some of the challenges they have faced over the last few months. This conversation is vulnerable, encouraging, and gives you an inside look at the details that are often not seen from the outside.

Tanner Colson started by creating coffee content on TikTok a few years back without much expectation of going viral. Little did he know that this was just the beginning to viral TikToks, a following of over 1 million, and doing what he loves for work. We discuss what it's like to go viral and how to use your following to add value and positivity to the world.

Sourcing and roasting coffee are two very important aspects of a roasting company. Once you've sourced a really delicious coffee, how do you transfer that into a production roast? In this episode, we share our process from cupping sample roasts to carrying it over into a production roast we're satisfied with.

Our coffee podcast just hit 100 episodes. What initially felt like a side project of our roasting company now has become one of our favorite parts of our whole operation. On episode 100, we reflect back on our favorite moments on the podcast, how impactful this community of listeners has become, and dreaming big about the future of the podcast.

What sets a coffee roasting company apart from others? As home baristas, we've noticed that everyone claims to roast the best specialty coffee. Given how subjective coffee flavor is, is that enough to be different and stand out? In this podcast episode, we break down a few ways we think coffee roasters can stand out and provide more value to coffee drinkers and home baristas.

This week, we blindly cupped over 60 coffees and 14 coffee roasters all at once. There were many delicious coffees on the table which was very fun to taste and experience the many flavor profiles they had to offer. Apart from enjoying all these coffees, this was a big learning experience. Every roaster and every coffee had a piece of data and information that we could learn from. In this coffee podcast episode, we go over the main takeaways from this cupping and how you can start learning from similar experiences.

This is another Q&A podcast episode with really incredible questions ranging from taking risks as a coffee roasting business, the influence of AI on the coffee industry, and how coffee has impacted our family dynamics. The coffee questions as well as the more personal questions really made us think deeply about these topics and challenged us. We had so many really great questions and we're looking forward to answering the others we didn't get to in the coming podcasts.

One of the challenges of having a coffee roasting business is green coffee buying. How you buy green coffee will define the quality level of your finished product. In today's podcast, we dive into how we balance green coffee inventory with coffee harvest seasons from origin to origin. Although there's a lot of nuance to this conversation, we did our best to cover the topic and share how we've maneuvered green coffee inventory over the last few years.

We just came back from our first coffee origin trip as a coffee roasting company. We spent the week traveling, visiting farms, connecting with our producing partners, and learning more about what it takes to turn coffee cherries into coffee beans. This was an extraordinary experience and it has so much to do with the core of what Mirror stands for. Although it's hard to put words to the whole experience, we hope this coffee podcast episode gives you a glimpse of origin!