TCE Coffee

10/01/2024

In 2021, we took some time away from coffee to gain skills in another industry that we think could really add to what we see for TCE Coffee in the future. Then in December 2023, we returned to the roasting game for a very short moment only to need to take sort of a sabbatical some really huge personal losses, including the passing of my mother. But we've had a really simple mission in the specialty coffee movement, and that is to remain "Enthusiastic" in our approach towards roasting & serving those who support us.

So, this time around, we're hoping that your cups at home and in the few cafe's that have served our coffees welcome us back again soon!

02/03/2022

Very little talking & story telling from here on out... We got into this because of how beautiful and how colorful coffee could be. That’s our goal. To give you beautiful & colorful coffees as much as we can. Tiny batches, limited releases, café features and collaboration. Das it.. ✊🏿☕️

Shout out to the Philadelphia & South Jersey Circle ⭕️ y’all know what it is.

01/26/2022

A long time supporter of TCE sent this today in a private message. Which is ironic, because this guy, the owner of who’s name you see, is also a supporter of TCE. Support is wearing a t-shirt. Even while you’re promoting your newest release. Support is a text message, a DM or an email. This helps remind us as to why we really do this. It’s about the coffee for sure, but it’s definitely about the bond. The stories behind the coffee are awesome, but our stories that we create with one another are just as awesome 👏🏾. Geeking out is all fun too! But to be able to think back to the start of it all, to remember names of the support is huge! We think of the Chris Davis’, Tyrus Kemp, Evan Kamrath, Daryl Reeves, the Lamar Fowler’s and Elgin Mines or people like Amanda Matheny or Colin Kane. We love to see Kevin Mings or DJ Farrington’s names come through! Y’all may not know them! But we know who Karen Pollitt is! Shout out to Willingboro, NJ!

01/25/2022

See y’all there! ✌🏿☕️

01/23/2022

I’ve poured several of these tonight and poured them out. Really just trying to remember how I fell in love with coffee, as in the industry.

Sometimes you gotta step back from even the things you may have been called to do, to get back to center. I got into the coffee industry by what I’d consider “default”. I was an admissions counselor at a small NC college, making about $42k/ year, one child and a wife at the time, in 2014. So, I took a second or weekend job as a barista at the busiest, most transient on the nc coast, along with a few other side jobs like tutoring at Sylvan Learning Centers and Sturgeon City Environmental Education Center, teaching science sessions sometime. I never knew that I’d love the industry of coffee like I did.

Moved on to NC State University, working in University Housing. But the desire to serve at another capacity would still be in me. A capacity seemingly much lesser than the cozy office with a newly decorated door by the students of Wood Hall, at an institution that was almost a city within the city of Raleigh. I found a weekend gig serving coffee & hot sandwiches at a local farmers market for a coffeehouse owned by an English Professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University and his wife, a retired Human Resources professional. Scott & Julie of Taste Full Beans Coffee(that’s how they spell it) . Yep, we lived 3 hours from Raleigh in Hickory, NC by this time. So my daily commute to work was just that. 3 hours. Both ways. Fun times!

I met so many great people at that farmers market. Black folk, white folk, people that I thought were from outer space 🪐 lol! Poor people who were hungry, and extremely well to do people who could give a s**t. I only made $50 a weekend. But it I loved that I had the chance to see people like the metal smith dude, who was also a fellow beekeeper. Gonna try posting the entire thing, which may be two or three altogether. Sort of a “public journaling”. (Shout out to my home girl Emily Smith for suggesting journaling)... run up on some nostalgia in the past few weeks. Like our little wooden sign from when we started doing pop ups, a while before even buying our first roaster. ✌🏿☕️

01/17/2022

Everything is a blob... “roasters block”, creativity isn’t really flowing, and the industry/world of specialty coffee altogether looks really odd to me right now. And that’s good. It’s given me time to talk to my wife & co-owner. It’s given me time to actually just enjoy being a customer/visitor in cafés.

It’s also given me time to really dive into and really feel how NKG-PACE could possibly change someone’s career forever. That’s exciting to me right now. Getting back to work with CCRE is exciting right now. Watching real people who we have real connections with open a café after roasting in a loft style coworking space for years, is exciting to me.

New announcements about this cool ass mf cup or that coffee, literally from an ages old origin isn’t exciting right now. Talking to Nelson from about whats REAL at origin and in import happenings would be hype right now. Walking into the office late last year to him and the crew changed my mind about how I think and what I think about coffee. It messed me up, in a good way. The first release from TCE in 2022 will likely be a collaborative effort. It’ll determine a lot for our future in coffee. We’re almost 5 years old. Time to go to another place in coffee.

01/08/2022

Before coming back to North Carolina and dropping the first batch of 2022, weve been spending some time in the northeast. It’s where we started everything TCE. We needed to reconnect, decompress, cry about some recent losses, (not just in coffee)rejoice about some gains. Get humble again.

Spending time helping out at one shop, drinking other folks coffee, listening to folks who walk in to grab coffee. Riding up and down the same roads we hustled up and down from post office to office just trying to get coffee out to people who n 2017-2018. Trying to get that fire 🔥 back. We still haven’t roasted one ounce of coffee in the new year, not yet. Gotta get the mind right.

BTW: Getting stuck in freezing cold for TEN hours on I-95, making what should’ve been an 8 hour trip, close to 19 hours will get your mind going to 🥶😌

01/07/2022

You always gotta journey back to the root to bring things back to center. This is the root. It lead to every single place. Every pop up, every post office trip, every train ride to wherever. is the root. Every time we went somewhere to learn about roasting, to learn about service flow, to be loved on and surrounded by real people, who really wanted to see us make it. Ferry Avenue was the starting point. Every 3rd shift, every snow day spent learn instead of chilling out..... every disappointment, disagreement, or setback. We earned everything from here and still in our hearts we earn it from right here. It’s all about the root from here on. ☕️

12/30/2021

12/30/2021

2020-2021 ... filled with tons of ups or “wins”. From bringing to y’all who support, and we even had a DREAM COLLAB that we’re still amazed by with that brought y’all . We’re so thankful to for the grant and for so much that we couldn’t really begin to name it all! We’ve started fundraising efforts for a café that people gave to generously and still keeping it going because we honestly haven’t made a dent in what it will take to move operations to a café/roastery. There is so much that has happened! Podcasts with and we stated our own thing with 🎙☕️ ... and that worked for a little while. We’ve literally gained family members from this industry. A sister in , owner of .blackcoffee and a brother & sister in and owners of and . We call their son Thurgood our godson! We take that seriously.

We put out some merch that folks who we never thought would even think twice about rocking it, rocked it and actually keep rockin it with pride! All they way up to Canada 🇨🇦. Thank you for just being REAL and regular people and . thank you man for the countless care packages and cards. You didn’t have to send them, but you did and we enjoyed them so much! Melissa over at for answering the damn phone and talking for a few hours, when you probably don’t talk like that on the phone normally 😂. We could sit here and rattle off names and names of folks who have just been there and prayed us through some stuff on the way to their kids activities (thank you Brian ).

The Cupping Circle fell through and we haven’t been able get coffee out on time consistently for our supporters! We’re going to work harder to solve that. We have not been betting on ourselves enough either. We’ve poured and given and gone far for a nice bit of causes, forgetting that TCE needs help too! We really couldn’t afford to in most instances. In 2022 we’re going all in for TCE.

12/30/2021

In the cup is a real contender.

Ethiopia- Yirgacheffe, Gedeo
Producer- Abiyot Ageze
Grade-1
Elevation- 1950 to 2300 masl
Process- Anaerobic Natural
Variety- 74112 (likely a Metu-Bishari selection. CBD resistant, high yields, taken from its mother trees and cultivated further in 1974 & released in 1979. These selections of coffees come from the forests all around the Bishari village in the Metu woreda of the Illuababora Zone. They originate from 79 mother trees in that zone.

Thinking of pulling it in! It’s bright, but juicy. Nuances of very sweet, slightly overripe Cantaloupe. Which we like. Very wild & sweet aromatics. Makes Steve think and see the colors orange, pink and a really soft/pastel green. It was pretty quick off the roast, so this may change in a few days 🤷🏾‍♂️🤷🏾‍♀️

12/29/2021

We love ❤️ this!! They said “Light af baby!” Be yourself! Everyone everywhere always wants to change and reform you. Not over here! Order 👏🏾Just👏🏾like👏🏾this! ☕️🤣