Welcome to The Sprudge Twenty Interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2024 Sprudge Twenty honorees, please visit sprudge.com/twenty.
When I started roasting coffee in the early 2000s, there were very few places to turn for information and insights. I am an educated white man in America and coffee roasting as a career was still hard for me to break into. To learn the craft of roasting, most people had to get a job with a company that was willing to take a risk on them and train them from the ground up. This kind of training was almost like becoming an understudy or a journeyman. Roasting was still treated as though it was some kind of magic trick. You had to convince a magician to share their secrets with you before you could learn to do it yourself.
It is easy how this can quickly become a boy’s club. After more digging into the history of coffee roasting, I learned that this was by design. On October 18, 1864, Jabez Burns, the nephew of a very famous evangelical circuit riding preacher by the same name, was granted the patent for the rotating drum roaster. Jabez wanted to spread the gospel of roasting, while also making money from his design. His design informed all drum roaster styles going forward and was eventually purchased by Probat. He was the go-to person for all things roasting during his time, selling equipment, educating, giving speeches, and growing a new industry. However, coffee was not the only gospel he spread. Everywhere he went he would share that coffee roasting was not a job for women, a roasting plant should be free of women, and that women should be excluded from the trade.
This set things in motion for how our industry would develop. If only men know how to roast and they are actively only teaching other men, well… It is kind of hard for a woman to break in.
Trish Rothgeb is a trailblazer. She is not only a trailblazer because she is a woman who broke into a man’s industry during a time when that was almost impossible. It is also not only because she has worked hard to lower that barrier of entry to other people who self-identify as women and all sorts of other cross-sectional and marginalized identities. It is also because of her focus on quality, education, and professionalizing our industry her entire career. We are all better at coffee because of Trish’s influence, whether we know it or not. Her influence has broadened our doors to people with new perspectives and ideas. She has inspired a generation of coffee educators. She has challenged the status quo in ways that has brought lasting impact.
Trish is an educator. To spend time with her is to learn, be challenged in your thinking, and to see more clearly that we are all working on something that deeply matters. As an educator myself, I have been incredibly grateful for her influence. It is hard to hold a high bar for quality while lowering barriers of entry. She manages to strike this balance with ease and dignity. Her legacy deserves to be in the spotlight and her model deserves to be a lasting example to us all. Thank you, Trish.
Nominated by Joe Marrocco
How many years total have you worked in the coffee industry?
I’ve been in coffee since 1985—so next year it will be 40 years!
What is your current role in coffee?
I own Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters in SF, which is currently a single cafe with wholesale and web subscription following. I also work for The Coffee Quality Institute as the Quality Evaluation Specialist. In that role, I focus on the Q Grader program, its content, and the educators who teach it worldwide. In 2023, I started a small company with Dan Streetman of Bird and Bear Coffee here in SF called Good Form Coffee. Good Form is an education firm that aspires to train coffee pros as well as non-pro coffee lovers.
What was your first coffee job?
I was a barista at a local cafe right out of high school and throughout my college years. I began roasting coffee at a tiny in-shop roastery in 1990.
Did you experience a life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?
Early in my roasting career, my boss acquired one of the first green lots marketed as “relationship coffee” from La Manita in Costa Rica. This was early 90s and nobody was used to any farm making a point of their quality or setting their own prices. We knew of Jamaican Blue Mountain and some coffees from Hawaii as expensive and exclusive back then. We seldom could taste a huge difference in the cup from other good quality coffees, to be honest. But when I was given the La Manita, I noticed the beautiful green and I was struck by it’s amazing fragrance before roasting. I roasted it carefully to a medium (at a time when my boss only wanted me to roast very dark and deep) and tasted the most gorgeous cup I’d ever had. I went around the cafe pouring our little tastes for all the regulars like the true nerd I was.
What facet of the coffee industry has changed the most during your career?
I can’t pinpoint one thing only that has changed over the years. Changes are represented in a number of ways all the way through the value stream. Roasting lighter was revolutionary around the turn of the millennium when I was living and working in Oslo, and then coffee quality and service at the bar was elevated quickly after the advent of green coffee and barista competitions (also pioneered by Norwegians). The industry really couldn’t stop the momentum if it wanted to. Now you can go to any city in the world and find a world-class coffee bar. That was certainly not the case back in the 90s.
Is there a person or persons who served as your mentor early in your coffee career? How did they impact you?
I didn’t really have any particular mentors, per se. I had people who gave me jobs and opportunities that were not usually available to young women, and for that I thank Fred Naggar, owner of the company I first roasted at, and the membership of the 2003 SCAA Roasters Guild, who elected me to their council. You might say the entire industry mentored me.
What still surprises you today about coffee, or gives you joy?
I am not surprised so much anymore, but I continue to find joy in the innovations we see at all points of the value stream. I love tasting new things everyday in coffee. Literally every day I taste something new and interesting in coffee.
What’s something about the coffee industry you’d most like to see change?
I’d love to see a stronger commitment to sustainability from the boutique specialty crowd. We need to do a better job connecting coffee quality to its growing lands. The stories of environmentalism and producer livelihoods still takes a distant back seat to the stories of esoteric cup profiles. Storytelling has to get better about the entire value stream.
What is your most cherished coffee memory?
There was a certain few years at the Wrecking Ball Roastery where I had an extremely focused and talented group of roasters and production staff who absolutely loved their work. From selection of lots, to roast profiling and production cupping, to curiosity around the maintenance of machinery, to the resulting customer experience—they were digging it all. It felt as if the planets had all lined up and I had the full engagement and support of the team to make the best coffee possible.
Do you make coffee at home? If so, tell us how you brew!
I make pour-overs in various ways at home. I’ve accumulated a million different manual brewers over the years. I also have a home espresso machine—mostly for Wrecking Ball quality control—but also for selfish reasons. Fun fact, to this day I have never made myself an AeroPress.
What is your favorite song/music to brew coffee to?
Currently, Kate Bush or Muna
What is your idea of coffee happiness?
Sitting incognito at the bar in my cafe and eavesdropping on the guests’ comments about their visit.
If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?
I would love to have a coffee with Colleen Crosby, founder of The Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. She passed away too soon and just as specialty was coming into its own. She was a pioneer for women in this business and an advocate for producers. Her ideas were well before their time. I didn’t know her very well back in the day, but she was always a beacon of positivity and light. I would love to meet up with her now, in 2024, and cup a whole table of fine Robustas and carbonic macerations or any number of one-of-a-kind coffees representing different processes. I’d want to ask her what she thinks of how we’ve evolved since we lost her.
What’s one piece of advice you would give someone getting their start in the coffee industry today?
You might not get a position at your favorite coffee company or in that exact job that you covet. Don’t give up on coffee. Continue to buy your favorite brands for home and then go to the larger coffee companies and learn how they run. They are more apt to teach you something about the entire industry instead of what you’ll find in the high-end specialty bubble. Learn about how they buy coffee and maintain their supply. Learn about the commodity trade, learn about supply streams, learn about large scale production..learn about big business. Get your 401K started and acquire business acumen as well as learn about coffee. There is more to learn about coffee if you go outside your comfort zone.
Thank you.
The Sprudge Twenty Interview series is presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2024 Sprudge Twenty honorees and interviews, please visit sprudge.com/twenty.
