Introducing our USA brand ambassador: Willem Boot

We want to introduce our new ambassador: Willem Boot. He will write a column for our blog every few months. The owner of Boot Coffee, Willem Boot is busy with a lot of projects. Willem is the proud owner of Finca La Mula, his Geisha coffee farm near the Boquete Valley of Panama.

Just North of the beautiful city of San Francisco, CA is Boot Coffee Campus. Which is the certified coffee training facility that I established in 2016 with my associate Marcus Young. This is where we conduct our coffee roasting and tasting courses. I moved to the United States almost twenty years ago. My dad taught me the craft of coffee roasting in the 1970s. In those years, specialty roasting companies were considered a rarity in the coffee industry. When I first arrived in California specialty coffee had already become a booming industry. Originally, aspiring coffee roasters had limited choices when purchasing coffee roasting machines.

Willem Boot: “I immediately sensed the impressive, responsive roasting style of this Giesen roaster. Wow!”

Willem Boot his first batch

With the proliferation of specialty coffee, also the options for coffee roasting machines increased significantly. When I roasted my first batches on a brand new 6 kg Giesen roasting machine, I immediately sensed the impressive, responsive roasting style of this Giesen machine. Wow! The combination of the intense, controllable airflow and the powerful ribbon burner provided a level of control which I had only sensed with older, vintage German roasting systems. On top of that, the solid cast iron face plate and the cast iron drum components provided a gentle and consistent rate of heat transfer. I became impressed with the Giesen roasting experience from day one.

Specialty Coffee Association

At one occasion, I organized a comparative roasting experiment, using various popular machine brands and roasting the same coffee type to the same degree. The blind coffee tasting session confirmed that Giesen machines have the ability to produce superior flavor profiles, specifically because of the impressive development of coffee aromas.  For this purpose we teach our comprehensive coffee roasting curriculum accredited by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). That way, students can obtain various levels of SCA certification.

Consulting

Besides our coffee campus, we also operate a thriving consulting practice. For the purpose of assisting established and new coffee companies with the expansion and startup of their roasting business. Over the years, we have been creating hundreds of innovative roasting profiles. We achieved this by using our Giesen roasters in combination with the Cropster roast profiling interface. Besides my work in the United States, I am also quite involved in international coffee development programs. For example, we operate three small Geisha coffee estates in countries like Ethiopia, Colombia and Panama. Specifically for these exotic coffee types it is essential to utilize sophisticated roasting tools and that’s where the Giesen technology provides excellent solutions! As Giesen Ambassador, we have an open door policy for anyone who desires to test a Giesen roasting machine with their own coffee beans.

Come visit and roast with us!

Best regards,

Willem Boot