Othello coffee roaster wants conversations
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Dark Mexican coffee beans tumble out to cool.
OTHELLO — In the concession booth of the Adams County Fairgrounds, Timm Taff stands over a large machine.
It’s polished chrome and candy apple green, and looks like something out of the late 19th century. He fiddles with one of the knobs.
It’s not yet hot enough, this machine, for what he needs to do.
“I was looking for the best cup of coffee, so a friend said, ‘I roast my own.’ And I said, ‘You can do that?’” Timm explains.
“I started roasting coffee on a popcorn popper, burnt that out, and here I am,” he said, dumping green beans into a small commercial coffee roaster Taff bought at second hand.
Taff, an environmental health manager with the Adams County Health Department, and his wife Lori, along with their teenage daughters Taylor, 17, and Joey, 15, started Conversatio Coffee about four months ago to share their love of coffee and maybe even make a little money.
“Conversatio is Latin and it means ‘life together,’” said Lori Taff, who works in the finance department of the Othello School District. “Every bag has a question to prompt conversation.”
“Coffee is a consumable,” Timm added. “What will last longer is relationships. If we can get people talking, that will last longer than coffee.”
After reading all he could, moonlighting as a coffee roaster in Moses Lake, and working with the Washington Small Business Development Center, the Taffs decided to simply get started, renting the concession stand in the Adams County Fairgrounds to roast in.
“This place is only used one week a year,” he said. “We just jumped.”
The Taffs have been selling their coffee — a medium roast from Colombia, a dark roast from Mexico, and an espresso roast that is a blend of the two coffees — at farmers markets across the region. While they aren’t sure how they will market their coffee when the summer ends — Taylor is busy putting Conversatio’s web site together — they are currently sourcing Ugandan and Ethiopian coffees and figuring out which blends and roasts of those work best.
Taff has spent a lot of time experimenting with the beans he roasts, perfecting his own “roasting profile” for each of the beans he sells. It’s meticulous work that requires a lot of trial and error.
“The market likes the dark roasts,” Taff said.
“Everything is fair trade and there is no child labor involved,” said 17-year-old Taylor as she put stickers on bags of coffee. “Well, until you get to Othello.”
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