In this episode, Jon Allen talks about the nuances of color sorting and roast recipes, what he's currently excited about in coffee and where he sees the industry going.
Sovda Jon Allen Interview Part 2
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Sovda Podcast. Today we’re keeping it simple. We’re doing a part 2 of our interview with Jon Allen from Onyx Coffee Labs. If you missed Part 1 definitely jump back into the stream and listen to part 1 before getting into part 2, but otherwise let’s jump right back into it!
You mentioned going back to kind of a slighter color differential there between some of the beans. I'm curious, have you gone in, and besides obviously just sorting out quakers have you messed around dialing in that recipe at all the sort out, rather than quakers, those lighter colored beans of the - getting into some of those differential color beans. And if so, how is that translated into the cup?
Jon Allen: [00:00:45] I'd be lying if I said I have done it myself, but I have cupped with Summer as she has dialed in basically all our profiles and we have played with both extreme parameters where we're losing a lot of coffee, but trying to see, like, what is the balance of like, okay, this is actually affecting the cup versus this just looks visually different.
And so, yeah, we've played a lotto with that dial and we still do based on when we're running new profiles and it's always really interesting to see how different coffees react based on sometimes you actually want that diversity right? And so you leave the channel wide open and. You want that kind of articulate blend-like flavor, even though it's within a single origin and then other coffees need to be so uniformed or maybe... they're such clean coffees that have sort of a one-note punch that the goal is to really just to get as much uniformity as possible, like for say like with our competition coffees and things like that, you know, we must have run it through the sorter I don't know how many times... a lot. And, you know, by the end of it, it's like, basically, like you're looking at one bean replicated 400 times, right? And that's a very cool [thing] for kind of the nerdy coffee side. It's a very cool idea. You know, our whole goal - and coffee is basically how many variables can we actually remove. And out of all the technique and all the cool things and all the gadgets we have, we still have the most unbelievable amount of variables within coffee. So getting one step closer is a really big deal for something that small. And those are where we really notice it. The most is on those really high-end special coffees. But yeah, all of it is dialed in and sort of, kind of played with throughout the process.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:02:30] It is kind of fun to be able to pull the gloves off with those competition coffees, throw all the rules out the window, and, you know, not really have to care about cost basis. Not really have to care about reliable outputs, being able to just kind of discard anything except for those perfect finite beans. It is... we started playing with that a little bit in the office here. And so I'm just kind of just barely at the, at the tip of the iceberg, as far as that goes in, it's already been just wild to be able to kind of identify, "okay, this isn't a Quaker, but I clearly had endosperm death and..." you know, or we're able to kick that out. And it's, it's more than just sugar content and mired reaction levels. It's one of those things where every time you peel off another layer in coffee, you get deeper and it becomes less mastered [rather] than more mastered. And you know, even if you're just looking at green coffee and roasted coffee, and you eliminate all the other facets and aspects of the industry it's enough to keep going. And then you start adding in excellent customer service, amazing packaging, amazing cafe space, customer experience, all the way down through the cup. Really just such a great industry to be in and to look over at Onyx and seeing every single one of those steps just nailed is, you know, it's inspiring to me. If you guys don't know on Onyx's website, there's a special projects page and you can see some of the cool side things, really, really enjoy browsing around on there.
One of our favorite questions on the podcast is what are you excited about in the industry right now and over the next five years?
Jon Allen: [00:04:02] Me personally, I have been excited about food. I mean I'm always excited about food, but really trying to play with food programs within the cafes has been something really fun that we've been looking into and moving into basically other agricultural products that we're seeing on the coffee farms that we're visiting, that we can start to bring in and incorporate into our food programs and changing the way those things look.
So we kind of talked off the pod a little bit about a bean-to-bar cacao project. We're doing some of the honey that we're buying from producers, vanilla beans we're buying from producers, sugar cane, all these kinds of different crops that we're seeing out there that are creating one, year cashflow, which if you had a producer on here, I'm sure would talk hours about how cash flow is more important than, than basically, well, anything else. You know, I know price per pound gets all the advertisement, but the cashflow is the real crux of the issue. And I think this kind of like biodiversity that's happening within a lot of new coffee farms we're seeing, this inter-cropping, is really exciting to a buyer like us. So we're wanting to get turned on, not because we're necessarily gonna be, you know, apiary experts or cacao grading, or anything like that, but just this holistic approach to agriculture and coffee farming and what that means, how terroir sort of plays together with all these different ingredients has been super interesting to us.
And then two, all the things we're sort of making, even if it's just making the chocolate sauce for our mochas from sugar cane and cacao that are grown at the same farm as the espresso that it's being served with. Like all these kinds of ideas have these interesting flavor components that we're noticing slight trends within and that are really fun.
So from a personal level, you know, that's kind of what's getting me going right now. You know, when people talk about what's next in coffee, it's... that's always really hard. I mean, I don't, I don't even know what wave we're supposed to be on anymore. I can't surf and maybe we're fifth wave or something. I don't know, but you know, home brewing and home espresso, I think is still going to be the future of coffee.
So from that standpoint, if you're talking like industry and business and things like that, I mean, I love the cafe. The cafe experience will never go away, but this work from home thing is real and also just amount of knowledge we're seeing, you know, it's funny in specialty coffee, our whole goal, at least for a decade I feel like, has been like educate the consumer, educate the consumer. Basically the SCA could have changed their name to like "Educate The Consumer," and that's all we ever hear. And now at this point, I want to kind of say like, Hey man, the consumer is asking questions that like, I can't answer. Like, I can't talk about like citric acid content of un-dense Pacamara beans that are harvested in March instead of April.
And those are like the questions we get on email from like a normal person. That's like, "oh yeah, I'm a lawyer." And then is asking like the most hardcore coffee questions, which don't get me wrong, is fantastic. And like, those are our bread and butter, right? Like that's what allows me to eat, but I'm not saying we don't educate the consumer anymore, but also I'd say like, maybe it's something to learn from the consumer and also like try to meet them where they're at.
And the amount of talent I'm seeing that people are creating with at home is amazing. You know, at this point, at Onyx, we're just trying to make like the best paint there is let a bunch of artists paint with it. And so, it's been a real pleasure this last year, just like following our customers on social media and like us then going back and being like, hey, this random guy in Georgia, that's like, has this recipe, like we need to adopt that in our cafe, you know, it's kind wild.
So the home brewing, the home coffee, and the home consumer is the future of coffee. I would not be shocked if some homebrewers start winning coffee champs and things like that. I don't think it's going to be industry folk much longer.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:08:01] Yeah, because there is, when you're doing it outside of the work environment, there's almost, there's less, less things to be concerned about and you can really just be so focused.
Jon Allen: [00:08:09] Yeah, yeah! I mean, they're not stressed, they're still super passionate, you know, I mean... as much as we love coffee, it's also 10 hours a day for me and I still love it, but sometimes it's hard to bring up that passion again. And it renews me when I see the excitement.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:08:24] Did you get into coffee at home or did you get into the coffee via industry?
Jon Allen: [00:08:29] Via industry. I don't even think I liked coffee the first two years I was a barista. I was like a straight up "syrup slinger," as they call it. And I was, I was crushing those sweet drinks. [I] always liked the hospitality aspect, the service, the people aspect. Coffee came later for me.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:08:46] The reason I bring it up is I know so many people who have started as tinkering in their, in their house, you know, doing the whole popcorn popper thing. And they're looking back on it, you know, it's just like, man, a lot of those were really stupid ideas, but they tried it and it just kind of bred this creativity that when you finally get into the industry, like you say, you know, it becomes your life and the 10 hours a day, you're not throwing the coffee grounds on top of the French press instead underneath it and doing like a hybrid, pour over with agitation and stuff like that, you know, that's just not how it's done, right? And so when you're, when you're a home barista, you're not thinking that way. It's like, well, let's try it and see what happens, you know? And that's just, that's how these, these crazy ideas are coming up with. But, you know, key point being you're starting out with the high-quality paint of Onyx coffee, you know, when you have a high opportunity coffee, you're able to more easily gauge how much you're helping or hurting that coffee and the brew process, and so, yeah, that'll be a fun one to see, I think you're right. I think we're going to see a non-affiliated either USBC or Brewers Cup. I'd like to see that happen. That would be fun to see how the industry reacted too, I think.
Jon Allen: [00:10:00] We'll just call it out now, we'll sponsor the first accountant that wants to go compete at USBC. We're all for it.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:10:09] Well, John, thank you so much for cutting out a decent amount of time from your busy schedule to chat about what you're seeing in the industry, what's going on at Onyx, the Sovda integration over there, and just a ton of fun, cool stuff. And thank you for your time.
Jon Allen: [00:10:24] Yeah. Thanks for having me, it's been an honor. Appreciate it. Hope to see you down here soon.
Nicholas Flatoff: [00:10:27] Likewise. Cheers man.