I started as a coffee roaster in 1982 for Coffee Bean International (CBI) in Portland. I’ve been in coffee ever since.

In the 1980s Gourmet Magazine was often used for coffee advertisements. In the 1980s Probat, a German roaster manufacturer had just designed a 90kilo recirculating roaster. A prototype, the beginning of the Excelsior designed to offer high volume airflow and utilized the efficiency of exhaust recirculation.

CBI and Probat ran this below advertisement in Gourmet Magazine for the September 1987 edition, to promote the roasting machine and CBIs commitment to experimentation. I’m the person at the roaster.

I appreciated the opportunity to have trialed and tested this amazing roasting machine. I learned so much. We were roasting 30 kilos in 5 minutes. We were roasting 90 kilos in 12 minutes. Two very different profiles. The 5 minute roast was strikingly sweeter than the 12 minute roast, both roasted to the same color. Back then, this sweeter profile was somewhat of a new experience.

Today my son Ben and I roast for our own wholesale company, Thornton Family Coffee Roasters. My daughter Rachel is my business partner and four of my other adult children work with us. We are having a blast growing our business.