THE CONVERSATION

Ray: I’m Ray.

Kandace: I’m Kandace.

Ray: Today we’re talking about Compelling and Rich out of LA. They actually reached out to us. Kian Abidini, who runs the place, reached out to us and…

Kandace: Sent us this awesome coffee.

Ray: Yeah. He wanted us to give it a shot so we are giving it a shot. I had not heard of them before, but I spoke with them briefly about what’s different about being in LA and in particular we talked a little about green coffee freshness actually.

Kandace: What’s fresh about green coffee?

Ray: Well what we were actually talking about is that it can be easy to let green coffee sit for a long time because it doesn’t go bad nearly as fast as coffee does once it’s roasted.

Kian: We definitely try to do stuff that is a little bit fresher. We try and store stuff so it maintains that nice level of acidity and vibrancy, but, is still fair flavored, I guess.

I feel like a lot of roasters try and put out like, not necessarily past crop Ethiopias all year-round, but stuff that’s maybe two or three months away from being past-crop and just the sweetness is there but it’s not super interesting. We try and have stuff that is just the peak representation of what the coffee can do.

Kandace: Speaking of green coffee…

Ray: Yeah?

Kandace: Did you know that for a while they were making a coffee that was hot-boxed with marijuana? I would have no idea.

Ray: No I didn’t know that. I didn’t even bring that up in our chat.

Kandace: How could you not have asked about the hot-boxed green coffee?

Ray: I don’t know. Are you saying that drinking this coffee gets you high?

Kandace: I think it’s just a suggestion the aromatics might ah…

Ray: Another interesting thing on the topic of freshness is that he is very specific when you look at an individual coffee page about when it’s gonna be roasted and therefore when you’re gonna have it delivered. I thought it was also interesting to have coffee out of LA. I think this is the first time we’ve gotten coffee out of LA. There’s a lot of things that LA is ahead of us at but probably coffee roasting is probably one of the few that Portland actually has the edge, so…you know.

Kandace: Maybe. I don’t know. These guys.

Ray: It’s true. This is true.

Kandace: And the bag. This is ombre. Yes?

Ray: Pardon?

Kandace: Yeah.

Ray: What is?

Kandace: The bag! The design! Hombre. Ombre.

Ray: What on earth are you talking about?

Kandace: Like when colors go from one to another in this fashion…

Ray: Uh huh.

Kandace: It’s called ombre.

Ray: I thought it was called a gradient.

Kandace: Oh my god!

Ray: Spell that.

Kandace: Don’t you remember when we were in San Francisco and I wanted to get the ombre tights? It would’ve been like this. Ombre is like a thing right now. You gotta know that word.

Gritchelle: I think it was more last year…

Kandace: Oh! Also I love the description: “nougat chocolate comforting”. That’s nice. Do you know what nougat is?

Ray: Well I thought it was just the stuff in the middle of the candy bar. Right?

Kandace: Yeah. It’s like, the best stuff. It’s basically saying this coffee…

Ray: Just the nougat. Only the nougat.

Kandace: So I think of LA, I think about…blue skies and sunsets and I really like the color of this packaging. I love the ombre.

Ray: Yeah. You felt like the design actually reflected LA.

Kandace: Yeah.

Ray: Yeah. Which is good.

Kandace: Yeah! Palm trees!

Ray: Yeah. Palm trees.

Kandace: So I think of LA I think of blue skies, and, sunsets and palm trees.

Ray: Can I tell you? I think of David Lee Roth. I don’t know why.

Kandace: Really?

Ray: Yeah.

Kandace: Well, we can’t all be as cool as The Beach Boys right?

Ray: David Lee Roth? Yeah.

Kandace: So, this is a relatively new coffee brand.

Ray: Uh huh.

Kandace: Three or four years old?

Ray: Yeah.

Kandace: And, they’re already doing some pretty cool things. So they tested out the funky, funny, wacky coffee. They’ve done some pop-ups with Life and Time. I think we’r probably going to see them.

Ray: They’ve won six coffee review awards already.

Kandace: Yeah. It seems like it’s kind of a new coffee brand, but they have a lot of energy and enthusiasm and excitement.

Ray: So, Compelling and Rich? Thumbity thumb.

Watch the Show

https://vimeo.com/151327179