Kevin Ashtari learned a couple things in the U.S. Navy: how to replace the explosives under the ejection seat of an EA-6B Prowler and how to roast a perfect batch of coffee beans on a gas-powered barbecue grill.
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He mail-ordered some green coffee beans and in the backyard of his house on the base tricked out a triple-burner grill with a high-speed rotisserie motor and a one-gallon stainless-steel drum. “It was probably six to eight months of just screwing everything up,” he says. “A lot of coffee burnt and ruined.” But eventually he got the hang of producing consistently even roasts, devoid of the lighter-colored “gingers,” rogue beans that refuse to roast and will ruin a cup of java. He upgraded to a ten-gallon drum and began selling beans to friends, neighbors, and superiors. “The chiefs were tripping on it,” he says. “The officers were big coffee fiends. Navy coffee’s pretty crappy, usually.”
In 2003 he was transferred to a base in Rota, on the southwestern coast of Spain. Beans were a little slower coming in the mail, and the hotter temperatures had him turning down the flame on the grill. Something else happened too—he and his wife, Corrine, fell in love with a pace that was easygoing, even on base. Blame the siesta: “It was a different navy at that station, just because it was in Spain,” he says. “It was a totally different mentality. There would be a lot of days where stuff could just wait. We’d do our little daily inspection and we’d be out of there by noon. Other bases you’d be working all the time. The fact that the whole town shut down at two o’clock sort of rubbed off on the base.”
It would come that summer, when they moved to Chicago and he took a tour of Intelligentsia’s Roasting Works on Fulton Street. Instead of being cowed by the scale of the operation, he was energized.
The Perfect Cup at Asado Coffee Company from mike sula on Vimeo.
asadocoffee.com
