INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Does it make your job easier or harder to have so many other specialty coffeehouses and roasters in Portland?

Both. Without the specialty scene in Portland, customer education would not be where it is today, to accept the level of separation and product I’m trying to pass along the counter. It would get lost in the mix if we didn’t have that type of education, and conversely, we’re not over-saturated by any means. We have a lot of room for market growth in Portland, but you are under a microscope because you have a lot of competitors who do a really good job with coffee, in my personal opinion, you can’t make a mistake and book a coffee that is accidentally scoring 79 points and sell it. Everyone’s gonna know, so you have to make certain you’re on your A-game all the time, every day.

Describe a typical coffee consumption day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep.

I’ve had to bring it down. I went through a couple years where it was far too much. Now I limit myself to one espresso – I start with – and one full cup of coffee. And then I’ll work until 1 o’clock and I’ll have one more cup of coffee. Two cups of coffee, one espresso. It used to be way out of control.

What’s your preferred brewing method at home?

This will probably surprise you. I work about 70 hours a week, sometimes 80, and I work at our bar, so I get spoiled. I have all our great coffees, access to our machine and other equipment. So at home, which is a small percentage of my time, my wife has a Kitchenaid brewer. Nothing special. Not a Clever. Not anything. Just a standard flat-bottom basket. She’ll brew some coffee in there sometimes. I certainly have pourover in the house too, if I get to it, but we have a great café by our house too, Arbor Lodge. We live four blocks away. I’ll just go there.

What type of music do you like to listen to while you’re on bar?

Always Led Zeppelin. That’s the joke around town. Have you seen one of our shirts?

No.

[He reveals Coava zeppelin shirt.]

This is the first one that we did, the Zeppelin blimp, the Hindenburg. I’ve been a barista in Portland for so many years that the cult community of baristas, the joke is, “If Higgins is on bar, Zeppelin’s playing.”

I was in Coava earlier, I guess you weren’t on bar though.

Yeah.

If you could pull a guest shift at any other coffee bar for one day, what would it be and why?

Barista PDX, Billy Wilson’s shop. He’s a great friend of mine. Insanely talented barista, their staff’s great. They’re the rotating taproom of a coffee shop. I’m a roastery. I serve our coffee all day long. They have different roasters all the time. I’d love to pull a shift there.

What do you think makes the Portland coffee community unique?

There are countless, myriad reasons why. One, our service industry, that’s what pushes the whole scene in Portland. We’ve got a very tight community of service-oriented folk. That’s where I come from. “Hey, this person’s the chef at that restaurant.” I recognize that person, I’m a barista, you drink coffee for free. Now I go there, I get a free bottle of wine for dinner. That community eventually grows and solidifies, and then you see people starting their own food carts. Then you see a barista starting his own café. You see a barista starting his own roastery. And we all support one another. And that level of community, I don’t really see in other cities, not to say it’s not possible. There are other crystallized reasons why. Our city blocks are very small. We’re very green oriented in this city, all about sustainability. Doing it myself. “Hey, I’m going to raise chickens and use their eggs.” It’s kind of the whole ambiance of Portland. We can talk even further about economics and how this city changed during the Recession and a lot of overeducated, unemployed individuals that fuel into that service industry, and ultimately took their brain power and their degrees and brought it back to our city.

If you could only drink one more shot of espresso, who would pull it for you?

Devin Chapman.

Good choice. Pretty timely.

[Chapman was competing in the United States Barista Championship Finals during our conversation. He placed fourth in the nation.]