Past Roasters Spotlights
Thanks to Atlas Coffee Importers, we launched our first ever monthly coffee subscription from May 2021 - May 2022. Each Glitter Cat Roaster received one full-bag (that could be 150 pounds!) of donated coffee of their choice!
Roasters receive a few different samples, sample roasted, and select their coffee, and then got to work on designing swag labels, and all of the other magical components in your coffee boxes! Have fun going down memory lane of these incredible coffee roasters!
Carlos Sims Jr. - March 2022
My name is Carlos Sims, Jr. and I am joyfully married to the love of my life Kaitlyn. We have 3 beautiful children Zion (6), Ezra (4), and Elim (6). I am a pastor, artist, and coffee roaster in the greatest city in America, Des Moines, Iowa.
Kris Carlson - February 2022
Welcome to Griefscapes, an offering of decaf coffee and deep vulnerability in hopes that you find comfort in community. Here we explore grief and its various landscapes: Death, Loss, Failure, the Living Dead, Mental Health, and more. While each topic can extend to cover multiple terrains, my close friend Holly Bastin and I will touch on a few of these ideas, along with sharing some intimate experiences.
December 2021 - Morgan Russell
2022 marks ten years from my first coffee job, and three since I started roasting. It also marks the beginning of a new phase of my life – outside of specialty coffee.
This New Year, I celebrate a decade of coffee. A decade of queer artists finding each other, and grinders breaking, and kids growing up, and fridges breaking, and dialing in perfect shots, and pitcher rinsers breaking. A decade of making people’s days better, and a decade of sore feet.
In this box is a noise maker (ha ha) to help you say good riddance to the bad, and a disco ball to add some extra sparkle and shine to the great. Welcome to the party!
November 2021 - Marissa Childers
For this month's Glitter Cat roaster box release, it falls under national adoption month. For me, this is a month that is bittersweet and highly vulnerable, but that is precisely the reason why I am gracious to share it with you. Coffee and adoption are both things that make up my identity in different ways. Adoption in that, as I get older, it is a part of my life I am able to hide more. It is something that has always made me feel "othered" as I was growing up, but it is also a blanket I can wrap myself in and call home. Coffee on the other hand. . . . .
October 2021 - Chuy Harris
I am Chuy. I roast coffee for a living in DC. Coffee is fine, I guess. I'd rather talk about anything in the world other than coffee. I'm an atheistic Satanist, member of the Satanic Temple, an initiated practitioner of Santeria, and a general all-around Left Hand Path occultist. All of that aside, I'm really just a person who loves women's sport and women's wrestling, the latter you can find me on the Grit and Glitter Podcast often talking about British and Irish women's wrestling.
September 2021 - Baylee Engberg
Baylee has selected a coffee from the Santa Elena Estate in the Tarrazú region of Costa Rica, from producer Luz Marina Trujillo. Baylee specifically requested a past crop coffee in order to highlight the issue of roasters disregarding older coffees that go unsold. Do great coffees lose all or even much of what makes them special after they reach a certain age green?
And what does it mean for crises of pricing and climate change to treat last year's harvest as viable and, heavens, even delicious? With this release, Baylee's out to let you all know that you're narrow views of what makes great coffee could use some broadening.
August 2021 - Stephen Zinnerman
AKA The Coffee Enthusiast on “A League of Their Own”
By now, y’all know that I’m a pretty big fan of the Negro Leagues of baseball. I thought to liken the two with one another for several reasons, but the primary reasons are because of the community that the Negro Leagues did create. Once you go down that rabbit hole you just don’t stop! It’s the exact same with coffee! Once you start, it just reels you in! My grandfather also had a great deal to do with me falling in love with the leagues. He played baseball as a young black kid in the 1930s and as he got older in the 1940s. I always heard that he was in a “league of his own” when it can to his athletic abilities playing the game. . . . .
July 2021 - Alex McClean-Egan
Why Robusta?!
There are over 100 different species of coffee. Arabica and Robusta are likely the two most familiar to you. We are seeing Arabica coffee producers struggling with many different aspects of climate change. Between the early blooming of the coffee flowers and intense rainfall throughout what has traditionally been harvest season, we are seeing the future of Arabica coffee changing.
June 2021 - Jess Harmon
All about Jess, the curator of #GENDERBLESSED
Pronouns: She/They
Years in the Coffee Industry: 11!
Years Roasting: 6 and counting
Current Position: Roastery Manager for Stovetop Coffee Roasters
Sun/Moon/Rising: Libra/Leo/Sagittarius
….. so much more via the link below
May 2021 - Christina Chin
Coffee originating in China is far from ubiquitous in the specialty industry.
It may be foreign and unknown yet this coffee from the Kaku Washing Station presents as familiar and comforting. It is picked by members of the Lahu Tribe from a coffee farm where the owners are passionate about building familial legacy. You may taste graham cracker, white grape, and milk chocolate – characteristics one can expect from a satisfying everyday coffee.
April 2021 - Tio Fallen
Drawing from the double-album of Atlanta’s own Outkast, “SpeakerBoxxx/The Love Below”, my “Kid from Decatur/The Beautiful People” project comes with an accompanying double-playlist via Spotify, curated by myself and Rahbi respectively, representing the personal soundtracks of both of our journeys.