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Welcome. (日本語) Thank you for visiting Portland Roasting Company. For 12 years, we have been busily roasting premium coffee for the Specialty Coffee Market. Handpicked by growers we work closely with, our coffees are the best the world has to offer. The coffee we bring back to you has been grown with care for the land with a firm gaze fixed on quality.

 

New Video: An Introduction to Acacia Hills Coffee Estate

October 10, 2008 - Mark Stell recently returned from another trip to Tanzania with excellent video footage in hand. Watch to learn more about Acacia Hills, a Farm Friendly coffee estate in Northern Tanzania: the nearby animals at the Ngorongoro Crater, neighboring villages, and the process of growing coffee - from flowering tree to ripe bean to processing the coffee.

October 9, 2008 -- The weather is turning cooler and the leaves are changing colors - fall is here! With the arrival of a new season comes the release of our Holiday Coffee - this year we've chose Organic Sumatra, our newest Farm Friendly Direct coffee. Read more about our newest project here and purchase the coffee here. The holidays will arrive before you know it-- give the gift of giving by buying a bag of Organic Sumatra for your loved ones.

 

Q Grader Certification

August 11, 2008 - Congratulations to our purchasing manager, Stephanie Backus, for passing the rigorous Q Grader Exam. The Q Grader Program is the industry's only professional accreditation for coffee cuppers. There are currently 358 Licensed Q Graders worldwide, representing the deepest talent at work in the coffee industry. Participants are expected to arrive with full coffee knowledge to take an intense 3 day exam. The exam tests on 20 different coffee related subjects, such as green grading, roast identification, coffee cupping, sensory skills and sensory triangulation.

We're all very proud of Stephanie and her accomplishment. Also a belated congrats to Andres Castro, our head of quality control and weekly blogger from Colombia, for passing the Q grader test earlier this summer.

Daily Blogging from Sumatra!

July 30, 2008- Our managing partner, Mark Stell, is in Indonesia searching for our next Farm Friendly Direct farm. He's writing daily from source about his experiences and the process of finding a new farm to begin a long-term relationship. Stay on the pulse by heading over to the Sumatra page that contains his blog. To read other blogs, point your browser to the "coffee blogs" section, which is a full index of all blogs on this site.

June 5, 2008 -- We've added a few more videos to our website in the past few days. Head over to the main company culture page to see our appearance on Katu's AM Northwest TV show on Monday. We've also added a new educational video to the mix -- see below or head over to the training videos section to see the full index.

June 3, 2008- When you head over to the purchase section of our site, you will probably notice things are looking a bit different. That's because we've introduced a new, far more sophisticated shopping system with account creation capabilities! Now you can make a username and password and save your shipping and billing information, as well as create reorder lists and view your order history, among other fabulous features.

Right now these features are only available for our retail customers, but in the next month we will be working hard to make all these features available to our wholesale customers. If you are interested in being one of the first wholesale customers to order online, please email us and we will set you up with an account.

We appreciate your patience while we work out the kinks of our new system. If you have any problems ordering please give us a call and we'll take care of you right way. We'll be adding products frequently in the next month so please check back to see what else we have to offer often!

April 29, 2008 - We are very pleased to be featured in not one but two articles in Fresh Cup magazine this month! Click over to our 'In the News' section to read the articles. The first article is on roasting technology, featuring photos from our facility and a candid shot of our roaster Ryan in action. The other article is on the SCAA sustainability committee, of which managing partner Mark Stell is a board member. This article features images from our various Farm Friendly Direct projects and a nice photo of Mark and the manager of our Farm Friendly Direct farm in Tanzania, Leon Christianakis (above).

Also this week we are in the Trees for the Future Newsletter. The article is on our carbon offset / reforestation project in El Salvador that they are assisting us with. Read the article here.