Our year ended with a bang at our holiday party this year, celebrating all the hard work from the Mad Priest team in year SEVEN of business. 2023 was a rollercoaster, as all the years before. Not much changes on that front when it comes to small business life! As they say, the only thing constant in life is change.    (Just missing Tarig in this photo)   Here’s our top 5 highlights from the year…  Expanded production – including a new roaster!  We amped up our production big time this year. Joining our autobagger and sealer, our new roaster, The Ark, came in last ..read more

Recently Lainey (our roaster) and Michael (our owner/CEO who wears all the hats) got to go to the Coffee Roasters Guild 2023 retreat! This week on the blog, Lainey shares about some fun stuff she learned. If you're really into coffee, or just like learning about what goes on behind the scenes, take a few minutes and read about her experience and reinvigorated sense of purpose! The Roaster's Guild Retreat is an annual industry event -- this year in Blaine, WA at the Semiahmoo Resort. I'd guess there were 150 attendees and they were from all over the place. We were split into teams ..read more

Guatemala is the largest country in Central America and a gorgeous place with a long and turbulent history. Here's some reasons why it's so special.... WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT GUATEMALA? > It has been inhabited for 20,000 years! Long before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Guatemala, the land was ruled by various Mayan kingdoms. > It is home to the deepest lake in Central America, Lake Atitlan. This volcano-ringed lake is a jewel in the crown of Guatemala’s tourism industry, but it is also interesting below the surface at 340 meters deep. > Guatemala is fa ..read more

Sooooo. Decaf often gets a bad wrap, like it's not real coffee. But when you drink ACTUALLY good decaf, it's definitely the real thing.   Our decaf is for those true coffee lovers willing to drink black gold without the caffeination. All natural EA processed. Organic.    A common belief is that coffee becomes decaffeinated by roasting it for a long time, but that is far from the truth. In fact, it takes the same amount of time to roast our decaf Colombian coffee as it does our regular Colombian offering. There are four common methods for removing caffeine from coffee bean ..read more

Known as the "land of lakes and volcanoes", Nicaragua is also home to the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest rainforest of the Americas. Volcanic features, freshwater and marine habitats, tropical rainforests, cloud forests, mangroves...Nicaragua has it all!    WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT NICARAGUA? > Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Americas, next to only Haiti.  > The largest lake in Central America is in Nicaragua! Called Mar Dulce or the&n ..read more

Chattanooga, TN / Yemen, Middle East: Mad Priest Coffee Roasters, a small specialty coffee roasting company just made history on August 8, 2023 with the highest bid ever in a global Cup of Excellence coffee auction — at $444/pound for a lot of Yemeni coffee no less. Why is this a big deal?  First, it’s a story of David and Goliath — small business versus big business. Look at what a small business can actually do to help raise the level of excellence and opportunity in an industry like the global coffee industry! The risk associated with this for their small company is huge ..read more

A new coffee species called Yemenia has just been discovered in the beautiful, war-torn country of Yemen that has the potential to revolutionize the global coffee industry. And we just purchased a lot in the Qima & Cup of Excellence auction so YOU CAN EXPERIENCE IT! Thanks for being part of this journey with us..to celebrate culture & coffee in Chattanooga and beyond!   "Yemenia is a new mother population within the species of Coffea arabica that is found exclusively in Yemen, and represents an ocean of unexplored genetics and futu ..read more

?  As you may already know, coffee beans are the seeds of a fruit. The coffee plant produces fruit known as coffee cherries, and the coffee beans are the seeds inside. If you were to cut into a coffee cherry, what would you find? Starting on the outside, a coffee fruit includes the outer skin (known as the exocarp or pericarp), the pulp (or mucilage), the pectin layer, the parchment (also called the hull or endocarp), the silverskin and finally the coffee bean (endosperm). Photo from Sweet Maria's   “The “coffee bean” we roast is a food supply for the nascent embryo of the coffee p ..read more

? In case you haven't heard why we do what we do. Here's what's on the back of our coffee bags!    "To curious people who are sick of  the bland, corporate, “heretical”  coffee experience, Mad Priest Coffee is  the unconventional, creative,  “sacred” coffee choice. While we may be irreverent,  we always take our coffee  and our mission seriously.  Because we are mad about injustice,  especially societal inequality… and bad coffee."    That's Mad Priest in a nutshell! So, here's the unconventional creative side... We recently made some ..read more

COFFEE GROWING REGIONS PART THREE. ?? This week, we're going to be learning about the 3rd and final coffee growing region... Asia-Pacific, specifically Sumatra (Indonesia).  Indonesia has 17,000 islands, more than 300 volcanoes and lots of different communities that speak more than 350 different languages with Ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples as well as Muslim mosques throughout the country. Its islands abound with bamboo groves, rice paddies, spices filling the air, homes on stilts, dense jungles, and tigers.  Sumatra is one of the three main islands of Indonesia, the 6th lar ..read more