Facebook photo by Craft & Mason
With names like this, how could you not open an artisanal food business in 2013?
Longtime friends Eric Craft and Jeremy Mason together form Craft & Mason Roasting Co., a brand new micro roastery in Lansing, Mich. The duo plans to roast beans that reflect passion from the source, while helping lead their retail and wholesale customers through “the journey of discovery in coffee.”
“We will choose coffees that are traceable back to the farmer, excellently processed and that feature the flavor profile of the region and country they are from” Mason recently told Daily Coffee News.
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Longtime home roasters, both partners will be involved in all aspects of the business, roasting on an Ambex unit inside a 500-square-foot warehouse space in the Lansing area. Their approach to roasting? “Our preference generally would be to find the spot in the roast that creates the most complex cup,” Mason says. “Complex to us means a good representation of what flavors exist in the bean, including maximizing inherent sweetness and shooting for a good balance of flavors. Our general parameters would be roasting long enough to develop the complex flavors and sweetness but not too long to avoid roasting so far that the roast character begins to overtake the good complexity that has been built.”
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Mason and Church give credit to retailers in the Lansing area — which includes the state capitol city and adjoining college town East Lansing (Michigan State University — for creating environments that draw customers in with Midwest hospitality and a comfortable space to enjoy a drink. That said, Mason says there is some room for more consumer education and attention to drink detail.
“The coffee scene in Lansing is probably more focused on shops that serve good tasting drinks in a comfortable setting, and this of course represents the majority of the coffee market as a whole,” Mason says. “There are a few places that have focused more singularly on the coffee they serve, including some stellar local restaurants, and I think this stems from an understanding that fresh roasted single origin coffees can be as unique and enjoyable as food made with ingredients from great local farms.”
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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