Happy Holidays to everybody. Thanks for helping to nurture this diminutive little shrub this year. We hope that everybody is enjoying some amazing coffees and sharing/selling them with/to your loved ones and friends. As noted on the front page, Shrub is closed for the holidays this week and all orders made through the holiday and the weekend with ship on Monday the 28th.
Chris Schooley was here for a long weekend and we did massive amounts of cupping and such. We looked at all the lots for calibration purposes and to flesh out a few comments on the reviews. We ran a lot of coffees through the Giotto espresso machine to look at them as SO espresso. We have also added El Salvador Los Luchadores Pacamara today. It's an amazing cup, the best I can remember from this coffee; complex, syrupy body, sweet.
I spent the last part of the week catching up after a week off the beaten path in Peru (which should yield a nice micro for shrub). We have 2 new lots lined up, but not quite ready for full release. I'll be working on that next week. Chris Schooley is here for the weekend for extensive cupping, and we'll be running a lot of coffees through the espresso machine to test SO possibilities as well. -Tom
The way we see it, shipping cost is our common problem. It's a drag for you, a drag for us. Wouldn't it be great is you could download the beans from your computer? Free shipping always sounds great, but then you have to wonder if the product prices are adjusted to cover that cost. For us it is a dilemma, especially since coffee is so darn heavy. (Low grade coffee is sometimes actually partially roasted in the origin country so it is less heavy and costs less to ship. Isn't that a great idea?
I just added a further discount to our shipping rates to bring it more in line with what our discount actually is. I know it ought not to be that complicated, but if you have ever pondered a shipping contract with UPS, the tiers and bands and incentives and fuel surcharges etc. , blah blah blah.... it is enough to make your eyes glaze over. So I will keep adjusting the discount to bring it in line with what we actually see on the bill.
