Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
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around the world seek the coffees they'll use for their next competi- tion. Perhaps you've seen some of the striking photos of Joseph trek- king through the farm with barista visitors, conducting processing experiments, and exploring what is now a legendary Gesha estate. What has become one of Ninety Plus' most talked-about divisions, the Maker Series, was inspired by these thoughtful, persistent baris- tas, and the relationship Joseph and the Ninety Plus team forged with them quickly. "The baristas are responsible for carrying the fl avor and the message of a coffee to the end user," he explains. "I was so inspired by the performance of baristas at competition who had practiced for months with our coffees… The Maker Series program really bottles and refi nes that Ninety Plus perfection, enthusiasm, and story for the end user." It's been quite successful in practice, too. Using coffees sourced and developed by Ninety Plus, and even contributing the R&D; for those coffees as a "Maker," baristas from around the world have succeeded in a big way on the competition circuit, including four baristas who placed fi rst with Ninety Plus coffees in global competitions (Stefanos Domatiotis of Greece won the World Brewers Cup in 2014; Odd-Steinar Tollefsen of Norway won the World Brewers Cup in 2015; George Koustoumpardis of Greece won the World Coffee In Good Spirits Championship in 2015; and Ryan Tan of Singapore won the World Siphonist Championship in 2015, all using Ninety Plus coffees from the Maker Series). Joseph is hesitant to categorize exactly what Ninety Plus is as a company—it truly breaks the mold for any one classifi cation. "We're actually not a coffee importer at all. We work exclusively at origin to make consis- tent Taste Profi les for green coffee," he says. "We started early on learning only at the micro level, but our learning has been applied now to volume production and, through our sister brand, Levelup Coffee, we are offering Taste Profi les in volume. This is the business we always planned for." It's radical, is what it is. Ninety Plus does something that's never before been done in specialty coffee, and it exists still as the only one of its kind. This is why we wanted to profi le Joseph here in "Master Q+A," so we could understand his vision ourselves, and the thought and work that has gone into the realization of Ninety Plus and the Maker Series program. We wanted to know Joseph the futurist himself, from all the way back to his beginning. Sarah Allen: Let's start with your back- ground, Joseph. Joseph Brodsky: Madison, Wis., is my hometown. My dad and mom were aware and responsible ex-hippies… We lived in an experimental Native American community for much of my sixth year. This connection with nature has a huge impact on my interests and approach to life, and later, business. I was a quiet, introverted, but very interested kid who spent a lot of time with my mom and was a little boy by her side, consoling her through tough fi nancial times. I was fortunate to discover I had gifts in math and language, and was moved ahead one grade early in these subjects. But I was always counting the second of every class all the way through university. I really dislike being confi ned to a desk, a classroom, or in many cases, a schedule. I was fortunate to be skilled as a football [soccer] player and devel- oped a good international social network from it at a young age. I was an all-state high school player and made a select club team that took me to play in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark when I was 15. At 16, my brother and I were invited to play club football in Kinna, Sweden. We 85 www.baristamagazine.com