Chief Coffee Officer: Stratus Manager Matt Brush Masters the Roast
It’s not every day you hear about someone who roasts his own coffee beans, but that’s exactly what Stratus Manager Matt Brush does in his spare time.
Matt is getting ready to enter his 29th year as a P1 employee. A welder by trade, he was promoted to Quality Control Manager/Inspector in 2009 and now manages the Stratus Tech Department. His technical knowledge, thoroughness, and attention to detail have helped him excel throughout his career, and it’s no surprise that those same qualities carry over into his personal interests.
When it comes to coffee, Matt brings that same dedication and precision to the process, always striving to craft the perfectly roasted bean.
Matt’s coffee journey started around 2013 when he wandered into a newly opened coffee shop in Lawrence, KS.
That’s where he says he had “the greatest cup of coffee” he’d ever had (up to that point).
“I was always a cream and sugar kind of guy, but the coffee shop was doing pour overs, and encouraged people not to put anything in it, so I thought I would give it a shot,” Matt said.
That’s when he had an “aha” moment and realized he could drink black coffee without it tasting like something burnt.
Knowing that he wasn’t going to pay $5-$6 for a cup of coffee on a regular basis, he set out to create that same experience at home and purchased his own pour over equipment.
“I bought beans from other places and made coffee cup-by-cup with my new setup.”
But Matt wanted to take it to the next level.
“I still make coffee this way, but after a few years, I began to wonder why I wasn’t roasting the beans myself,” Matt said.
He looked into bean roasting and discovered that it wasn’t really that complicated.
He began learning the process with an air popper for popcorn. He ended up with five poppers and used that method for several years.
“The problem was, I could only roast a half-cup to a cup of beans at a time, so it was slow going, with a lot of trial and error,” Matt said.
In 2023, he decided it was time to step up his game again, so he purchased a Kaleido M1 drum roaster along with Artisan software to control the process.
Earlier this year, he went for the Kaleido M10, the model with the largest basket.
The software allows Matt to control all aspects of the roast such as the temperature and roast time with pinpoint accuracy. He now uses the smaller drum roaster for testing and the larger model for production. With the larger roaster, he can now roast 10 cups at a time.
Matt’s process:
- Take a hard, green, inedible bean, and dry it out, since the beans do have some moisture in them at this stage.
- Once dried, it goes through a Maillard reaction stage. Maillard is a critical phase in cooking where reducing sugars and amino acids interact under heat. This chemical reaction is responsible for the distinct browning, complex aromas, and savory flavors found in seared steaks, roasted coffee, and toasted bread.
- The flavor can then be controlled by the temperature and roasting time which Matt can adjust and experiment with.
With the larger roasters, he now buys the “green” beans in bulk – up to 150 lb. bags - from a variety of places, some online and some sourced locally from an importer in Kansas City.
He also buys beans from a variety of countries.
He said his favorite right now is from New Guinea, but he also carries varieties from Columbia, Ethiopia, Costa Rica and Ecuador.
Along the way, friends have encouraged him to start selling his coffee beans, so with the larger roasters, he is now able to make small batches to sell.
He calls his brand Centennial - after his Lawrence neighborhood - and sells several varieties in bags with his custom labels.
What started as a quest for a better cup of coffee has grown into a hobby and now a small business for Matt.
After 28 years of putting his skills to work at P1, Matt has found a way to put that same craftsmanship into his Centennial Coffee, proving that it’s possible to put passion and quality into everything you do.
Give Centennial Coffee a Try!
If Matt’s coffee-roasting hobby has you curious, you can taste the results for yourself! Centennial Coffee is available to any coffee lover for $12 per 12 oz. bag.
Email to Matt at:
You might just discover your new favorite morning brew!
Matt's Pour Over
“Pour over” is a manual brewing method where hot water is slowly poured over coffee grounds held in a filter, allowing gravity to drip the brewed coffee into a mug or carafe.
“My standard cup uses a 16:1 ratio of water to ground coffee – 24 grams of beans and 400 grams of water. I’ve found that 202º F average water temperature gets decent extraction. I use the pour-over method at home.
Most people don’t use enough coffee in their automatic drip machines, and that’s why they get bitterness – the water has rinsed away all the good stuff and started to leach out the bitter compounds. But to keep that 16:1 ratio in a drip machine requires around 1 1/4 cups of ground coffee for a full 12-cup pot! The most important tip is to use enough coffee.”
Matt stays busy with his coffee roasting enterprise, but also enjoys spending time with his two daughters, Vera age 12, and Silas age 19.
Silas has just begun working for P1 as a Stratus technician.
He has a dog named Nick, and he finds time to do a bit of vegetable gardening and pick around on the guitar.
