Specimen No. 001 · the man himself
The Legend
the official record
There is a man in the world who takes coffee too seriously and himself not seriously enough.
Ask around and you might hear he is a barista, a teacher, traveling salesman, or some guy who keeps dragging old espresso machines into places they probably do not belong.
Most of it is true.
His name is Starkey. Kamren Starkey.
The Coffee Wizard started as a joke among customers. Like most good jokes, nobody remembers exactly when it stopped being one.
Okay. Talking about yourself in the third person is weird. Anyway.
I learned coffee mostly on the road.
Festivals. Concerts. Weddings. Parking lots. Backstage. Corporate offices. Places with bad power, questionable water, impossible timelines, and long lines of people who did not particularly care what had gone wrong behind the bar.
That will teach you a few things.
Somewhere along the way, coffee stopped being just the thing in the cup. It became a way of thinking about hospitality, people, systems, craft, curiosity, and what happens when you take something seriously enough to get a little weird with it.
The events are someone else’s problem now.
Well, not someone else’s. I co-founded Street Coffee Collective. We do them over there.
The Wizard remains.
That sounded more dramatic than I meant it to. But you get it.
the record, such as it is
Recorded
- Roasts his own coffee. I do. For myself. I am not a professional roaster. Yet.
- Pulls shots on lever machines that fight back.
- Co-founded Street Coffee Collective in Milwaukee.
- Has made coffee in places that were definitely not designed for making coffee.
- Runs on notebooks, checklists, and an irresponsible number of open tabs.
- Believes hospitality is the real product. Coffee is the excuse.
Rumored
- Has fixed an espresso machine using something purchased at a gas station.
- Once drove several hundred miles for a cup of coffee and did not think this was unusual.
- Owns at least one machine that should probably have been allowed to die.
- Has said “I have an idea” immediately before creating several hours of unnecessary work.
- Can turn almost any conversation into a conversation about coffee.
- May not actually be a wizard.
the trail so far
Started making coffee.
Took it on the road.
Kept going.
Festivals. Weddings. Parking lots. Backstage. Good days. Bad power. Long lines. Broken machines. Thousands and thousands of cups.
Learned that making great coffee is one skill.
Making it happen anywhere is another.
Eventually, the road led to Milwaukee, where two coffee people with very different paths started Street Coffee Collective.
The Coffee Wizard does not book events anymore. That trail continues over there.
This place is for everything else.
The things I learned along the way. The things I am still figuring out. Coffee experiments. Writing. Teaching. Machines. Questions. Bad ideas that become good ones. Good ideas that become expensive ones.
I do not entirely know what The Coffee Wizard becomes from here.
I think that might be the point.
“Coffee is the doorway, not the room.”
everything past the cup is the point