There are two ways to roast coffee. You can either control it yourself or you can let a robot do it for you. Me? I'm all hands-on, manual, write-it-down-as-you-go. And I write it down in a roast journal. I also write down all the daily details of my origin trips and how I remember the sound of the wind and the pain in my quads on some mountaintop on the Continental Divide. I paste photos and words ripped out of a science magazine I bought in the Panama City airport. I stash the red-and-yellow petals from Indian Blanket wildflowers in the crease of the page where I journaled about bison and elk and the rolling green hills near Sunset Peak. The great thing about a journal is that it's all yours. You can write or paste or sketch anything you want. There is no wrong way to fill it up. And this one, it's special. It's hard-back covered with book cloth and debossed with the DoubleShot icon. Inside are 160 pages of 100gsm Munken Kristall paper, a Swedish paper produced at a mill in a small fishing village where environment and sustainability are paramount. The paper is gently lined and has the subtle texture of Egyptian cotton sheets. Dead center, the note sheets are interrupted by 16 pages of G . F Smith Colorplan paper, heavy enough to tear up and weave into a coaster for your coffee mug, inspirational enough to draw, as I once did, a personified blue armadillo. If that weren't enough, it's Swiss bound, which means the cover cleverly hinges open to lay flat, so as not to make you feel cramped in the margins. All this, packaged with a slip case and a belly band that has a place for you to mark the dates and details as you see fit. A smorgasbord of colors to choose from; one is probably right for your style.
