Costco Connection - August 2012

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(Left) Solar Roast Coffee’s Pueblo, Colorado, location; (below, L to R) Mike and David Hartkop with their Helios 5.

with shouting neighbors on one side and cof-
fee supporters on the other side, and us in the
middle trying to convince everyone that our
machine wasn’t a ‘death ray.’ In the end, we
have made peace with our neighbors.”
When that obstacle was overcome, the
Hartkops opened a retail coffee shop inside a
historic redbrick building in the financial dis-
trict. Inviting and cozy, the bustling café fea-
tures comfortable chairs, a large, pleasant
patio and a steady stream of customers in and
out of the shop.

The company uses a mix of organic, fair trade and Rainforest Alliance coffee beans.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29

“Our roasters retain more of the steam and smoke produced in the roasting process because of the way the internal airflow works,” David explains. “I designed them that way originally to prevent roaster fires [a problem with most commercial drum roasters], but it had the added benefit that it ‘aroma roasts’ the coffee for the full duration of the roast cycle.”

Continued innovation

The next Helios incarnation allowed the brothers to roast up to 30 pounds at a time, and to expand into a wholesale coffee business that sells to groceries, coffee shops and restaurants, and even internationally. This year they launched the Helios 5, moving the system indoors and incorporating the solar aspects into a commercial building. When not roasting coffee, the Helios 5 focuses its light onto a secondary receiver to generate electricity and hot water for use in the coffee shop below.

LAUREN CARR

As the only direct-use solar-thermal coffee company in the world, Solar Roast Coffee has been profiled in Popular Science, Food Network Magazine and other publications. The brothers plan to use the Helios 5 as a teaching tool to demonstrate a new way to power small industry.

“We’re in the process of modifying the Helios 2 design to be shipped to a Haitian coffee farm as a kit,” says David. “It will let a coffee farm sell roasted coffee for roughly three times the price of the green coffee they normally produce.