Interview: Panther Coffee co-founder Joel Pollock

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Coffee Miami

Panther Coffee founders Joel and Leticia Pollock joined daughter Luciana in front of their Wynwood Arts District coffeehouse.

INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

This might seem obvious, but why was it important for you to roast your own coffee?
It’s just what I do. I’ve been a roaster for 20 years, so I couldn’t really be in this industry as a coffee shop owner and not roast coffee. It’s something I’m passion about, and something I enjoy doing. I like to work with the producers, I like to develop the coffee in the machine the way I like it to be done, so you’re not at the mercy of somebody else’s opinion of how it should be roasted.


Coffee Miami
How did you decide what brew methods to use here?

We just kind of deliberated that. A lot of it was Leticia’s decision. We didn’t want to machine drip coffee. We wanted to do a lot of hand drip, so we did a lot of experimentation at our house, Hario, Clevers, siphon brewers and vac pots. We just chose what we liked. That’s the cool thing. Even as co-owners, we’ve had other people we’ve worked for, so this is the first time we’ve got to do whatever we wanted.

So you don’t have any batch brewing here?

No just cone drips.

What was your first coffee related job? You said it was in Missoula.

Yeah, I worked as a barista, and actually a roaster, at a little place called Hunter Bay Coffee.

Do you have a first coffee memory, good or bad?

I do. On a professional level, I went to a job interview at this place, and I was handed a cup of Kenya AA, and I never had coffee from Africa, and I thought it was a test. I thought they were testing me to see if I could identify anything wrong with it, because it was such an odd flavor. It became my favorite coffee that they had there. It was a really jarring experience for me.

At what point did you know that you’d work with coffee for a career?

Probably about half-way into it, maybe about 10 years ago, when I really started working more on the producer side, going to coffee farms, working as a judge and a cupper in coffee producing countries, and tying together the source of coffee, because I’d spent so much time on the consumer side, as a barista and inside coffee shops. I started working as a roaster more and more. As I tied that all together, I found that community of coffee people.

Would you say that you’ve had any coffee mentors over the years?

I’ve had quite a few coffee mentors. It’s a very interesting industry…I got to be a judge in this event called the Cup of Excellence, which is an international tasting event, and some of the people you cup with, it’s amazing. It’s people from all over the world, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, so you get so many perspectives. I don’t know if one name jumps out, but we really kind of interacted very heavily in coming up with a collective vision.

What’s a typical coffee consumption day like for you? Walk me through it, from the moment you wake up.

We have something at home from the AeroPress. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the AeroPress. We use that at home. It’s simple. It’s easy. We don’t even take the grinder home. We grind a quarter-pound of coffee and take it home, have it on the AeroPress. I stop into the place at the base of our building, because they use our coffee. I like to see how the brewing’s going. So I’ll have a cup of drip coffee from Angelina’s, maybe Finca Nombre de Dios from El Salvador. I get to work and I’ll have an espresso.

What would it take for the Miami coffee scene to become great?

I don’t think it’s going to take much. I think that the people are passionate about coffee everywhere I’ve ever been. We’ve had such a good response to our coffee, that we’re just going to kind of do our thing. We’re not going to push at all, and just kind of see what happens.

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

My wife.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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