MCP#021 SARA GIBSON

NAME: Sara Gibson

YEARS ROASTING: 2 Years

COMPANY: Greater Goods Coffee Roasters, Austin TX

Sometimes, legends are legends for a reason.

A few years ago, you wouldn’t have found Sara Gibson behind a roaster. You would have found her, instead, on the roller rink, leading The Oakland Outlaws, a roller derby team, to victory. Now, she’s roasting for Greater Goods Coffee in Austin, Texas, and is our featured roaster for the month of November.

Sara has always been interested in coffee. “My dad would make me mugs when I was little - I'm sure they were mostly milk, but I loved the smell, the warmth, and the ritual of the percolator,” Sara shares. After that, she developed what she believed was a discerning palate for coffee. “In high school and college, I had opinions about what made coffee bad or good, but it was just a simple mental equation of weakness vs. strength and how long a coffee pot had been sitting on a burner.”

Sara pinpoints two moments in her life as transforming her relationship to coffee. “A college trip to Italy and easy access to Peet's in Berkeley got me into espresso,” she shares. “I only really started paying attention to specialty coffee in the last 6 years. All credit goes to Philz for getting me to notice pour-over coffee and flavor profiles.” Being in the Bay Area meant embedding coffee culture into her identity, and Sara sought out tons of amazing coffee all around the city.

Sara also wasn’t shy to ask questions and get to know baristas. “I learned that the people working in shops that make great coffee tend to be really happy to talk to you about coffee. It was such an interesting rabbit hole of information.” This habit – of going to great coffee shops and learning about coffee – eventually became a running joke with Sara. “Whenever I would complain about work to friends, I would joke that I was going to quit it all, move to the country, and become a coffee roaster. And then one day I was like, why not?”

So she did. Sara took an Intro to Roasting class with MCP founder, Cheyenne, and relocated to Texas to pursue her dream of roasting coffee – in fact, Cheyenne first met Sara during a roller derby game and that’s how our relationship with Sara started. “I found a coffee company that was doing amazing work, and kindly harassed them until they allowed me to apprentice with the head roaster. I showed up all the time, asked questions, attended cuppings, etc…”

Now, Sara is a full-fledged roaster with Greater Goods in Austin, and although her pathway to coffee wasn’t exactly linear, she sort of ended up where she belonged. “After college, I worked in the music industry, then I became a teacher, then I became a digital content and marketing director, and then a coffee roaster. So, though coffee roasting in some ways seems like a big side-step from everything else, it actually ties in really perfectly with my degree.” Sara studied International Relations with a focus on Latin America, and finds it useful in her work – and chose a coffee from Guatemala to share with you folks. 

Quitting your job and moving to a new state to pursue a dream can seem scary and extreme – wild, even. But for Sara, embracing reinvention is what forms her identity. “The best things that have happened to me have come from ‘fuck it’ moments where I just jumped into something headlong - a sounds good, fuck it, let's do it type-situation. That's what got me to Austin, and what got me into coffee.” Sara is ready to embrace the chaos, and finds that, even when things feel like they’re all over the place, the lines secretly connect. “I'm a gold-star tangent taker, aside maker, and side-story sharer. I start and stop relationships/hobbies/jobs, but find that they all loop around each other in some interesting ways.”

What should Sara’s coffee make you feel? Hopefully light and happy – which is something we all need.  “The last few years have been a socio-political dumpster fire, and I fucking hate it, but sometimes you just have to turn off NPR and rewatch the first 3 seasons of Arrested Development.”

Although Sara is obsessed with coffee (not unlike us here at MCP) she fuels herself through creative pursuits and knows when to draw the line between work and play. Just some of the ways you’ll find Sara using her free time: “Reading, drawing, baking pies. Planting succulents. Rearranging the pictures on my walls. Talking to cats that I meet on the sidewalk. Trying to find new and exciting uses for chaff.” She’s still working on the last one so if you have any ideas, let her know.

There are no clear cut lines or easy pathways that led Sara to roasting coffee, but there are these moments that at least helped carve a course. Italy, Peet’s, enthusiastic baristas – some of these ideas are glossed over, or even laughed at. But there’s a reason folks fondly remember their espressos in Italian cafes or why Peet’s remains one of the leading coffee chains. These folks are legends in our industry – no matter how easy it is to poke fun at a regular who claims the best espresso they had was in Italy or the coffee snob who says they know it all because they worked at a Starbucks once. Legends are legends for a reason. We’re positive Sara will be a legend. We’re lucky we get to be a part of her story.