Buck Couchman has a love of good coffee in his genes. His grandfather was a gold miner in the wilds of Idaho (or a sourdough as such men were called) who roasted coffee in a frying pan over an open fire. He recalled the ‘cowboy coffee’ was hot enough to scald the hair off a black bear and strong enough to dissolve the business end of a spoon.
“Grandpa would keep the brew going for several days, all the while leaving the kettle in the coals so visitors could squat by the fire and enjoy a hot cut of ‘joe,’” he said.
Couchman was attracted to a career in coffee because of his passions for living off the grid on the West Coast, sustainability, growing his food and meeting new people. Coffee was a great way to combine all these things. He is convinced that roasting organic fair trade coffee in the unpolluted Tasman Sea breezes makes Kawatiri Coffee tastier.
In the last 17 years, the sustainable coffee brand has made a good number of achievements:
“We’ve been everywhere man.”
- It features in multiple editions of Loney Planet.
- Won ‘Top Coffee South Island’ in the Peninsula General as per Trip Advisor.
- It is incredibly well travelled. It has been on the top of Mt Everest, the Antarctic, The North Pole, Stonehenge, and many places in between.
- The packaging will be completely home-compostable, from the largest 3kg bags down to the 200g grocery store bags (this is still in the final works).
As the head coffee roaster, Couchman’s favourite origin is the Ethiopian from the District of Harar - a heavy, rich roast of sun-dried beans with an unusually smooth finish. But a visit to Papua New Guinea to explore its beautiful coffee and meet the people is one he dreams of. Seeing the Birds of Paradise would be a bonus, of course.
He considered a good roast's defining features to be the finish's flavour and depth. It’s all about the flavour; a lot of coffee can seem weak, thin and bitter, where the flavour is not as full as it should be. Kawatiri Coffee is the polar opposite of this.
The innovations at Kawatiri Coffee can be credited to Couchman’s step dad who has an engineering background and a flair for artistic building. They are all his engineering feats, from the roaster to the de-stoner and the pneumatic ram bagging machine.
“I’m proud to say..I haven’t had to do much but roast and drink coffee.”
Regarding the New Zealand coffee scene, Couchman considered it to be leaps and bounds from where it was ten years ago. All the improvements are exciting, and Kiwi ingenuity only helps move the coffee culture forward.
Future plans for Kawatiri Coffee keep changing. You can never be sure what will happen with the way the world is. But Couchman plans to keep roasting and growing sustainable business where he can. Sustainability for the environment and lifestyle.
“Trying is the operative, all while not taking life too seriously.”
When not roasting excellent coffee beans, Couchman spends his time on random projects. Half-finished boat project, half finished workshop, half-finished sauna, half-finished sleepout, a half-finished trail to the river and a variety in between. He is to start building a house for himself and his wife, which won’t be a half-finished one!
For the budding coffee roaster, the only thing that went through his mind was to avoid stress at all costs - it's bad for you. Loans and leases are traps. Focus on the roasting and make sure you like it. Keep fixed costs as low as possible so that when you move into the market, you won’t get buried if it takes a turn. Suppose it is a slow day, he suggested going surfing or working on another project.
“Life is too short to drink under roasted coffee. Bring mine to the second crack."
