The Chicago-based roaster shares why shifting away from Western-centric conversations will better the industry.
BY JAXSON SCHOR
FOR BARISTA MAGAZINE
Photos courtesy of Mikey Rinaldo unless otherwise noted
What to know:
- Mikey Rinaldo is the founder of New Math Coffee, a Chicago-based roastery that specializes in coffee from Asian origins, including Indonesia, where Mikey is from
- Mikey highlights robusta coffee and its role in Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam; they emphasize its place in a coffee world not centered around Western ideals
- Mikey shares, “It’s great to see people of color, especially from producing countries, in more positions of power”
As the founder of New Math Coffee in Chicago, Mikey Rinaldo has spent the last decade making a name for themself by challenging the norms of the specialty-coffee industry. Their company specializes in highlighting unique Asian coffees, and generally bucking the norm. Mikey’s passion for roasting and embracing cultural diversity is not only inspiring, but it points toward a future that is both inclusive and creative for the coffee world.
An unlikely start
Mikey’s coffee journey began unexpectedly during their time as a graduate student studying literature in the early 2010s. They used to spend their time outside of home or class writing at their local café, even though they didn’t drink coffee back then. One day, while they were hanging out at the café, one of the baristas taught them about pourovers, and that was the beginning of their love for coffee.
After that, Mikey’s passion for coffee started to grow. They placed fifth at the 2014 U.S. Brewers Cup regionals as a home barista, using a tea strainer, a cocktail shaker, and home-roasted coffee. For nationals, Mikey even used a Whole Foods paper towel as a filter, about which they say today, “I’ll be honest—that was fun, but I’d be lying if I said I knew what I was doing.”
From there, Mikey’s friend who supplied their competition roast encouraged them to pick it up for themself. They got a home roaster in 2015 and buckled down for the next two years to learn and practice as much roasting as they could.
Mikey considers it a privilege to be able to enter the world of roasting at home—and mostly self-taught. They developed an intimate understanding of the process by figuring everything out independently, which allowed them to connect with other baristas and compare their experiences. Small-batch and low-stakes roasting provided Mikey with an opportunity to experiment far more than they could have done elsewhere.
“The nice thing about being a home roaster is that you can roast whatever you want,” Mikey says. “If I’m roasting 100 grams at a time, I’m not afraid of burning (it) or trying the weirdest profile.”
After developing their skill-set at home, Mikey became a Q Grader before starting their first professional roasting job in 2017 at Due South Coffee Roasters in South Carolina. Two years later, moving to Chicago led them to roasting positions at Passion House Coffee Roasters and Metric Coffee.
Celebrating Asian origins
In the now infamously auspicious spring of 2020, Mikey finally opened a coffee company of their own: New Math Coffee, which would roast and spotlight specialty coffee specifically from Asian origins and producers.
“I’m from Indonesia, so I always would get excited when I got any kind of specialty-grade Indonesian beans,” Mikey says. “When I was a home roaster, obviously, I loved my Kenyan and Colombian (coffees), but if I get something clean from Timor … it’s not going to be competition coffee. But I realized that’s where my interest was.”
So New Math Coffee was born. Mikey pursued their mission of highlighting specialty Asian coffees, which included adding beans from robusta producers last year, the first of which was sourced from Vietnamese producer Toi Nguyen in Bao Lac.
A spotlight on robusta
Including robusta coffees in their lineup seemed like a natural choice to Mikey, who felt that if they were going to focus on Asia, it made sense to think about regions where arabica simply isn’t the star of the show. Mikey has also written extensively in favor of shifting away from its widespread marginalization.
“I spent some time in Vietnam, in Dak Lak and Saigon, and I realized that it’s a really cool specialty scene where it’s absolutely a robusta-drinking country,” they say. “That’s their culture, and they embrace that. I really like that. The specialty roasters I met have their really nice arabica beans, but they also fully embrace robusta.”
The notion that arabica is the gold standard often feels accepted as a hard fact, especially in Western-centric conversations. Mikey says that their choice to feature robusta coffees was met with the most resistance they experienced while developing New Math Coffee, but they weren’t particularly affected by it.
“I kind of expected that, and I can’t satisfy the, you know, ‘coffee bores’ that talk about the latest gear and only want the finest roasted coffees,” they say. “That’s not my target crowd.”
Mikey’s passion for robusta coffee reflects their dissatisfaction with the current state of the coffee industry. Although they appreciate and respect the highest-quality specialty coffees and their origins, they believe that the industry has become stagnant and unexciting. For them, the solution to this problem starts with embracing the intricacies, strengths, and untapped potential of robusta coffees.
“It becomes almost a sameness across different shops, and not just in the U.S.,” Mikey says. “That’s why Vietnam was exciting to me. (Producers) were doing something different while still thinking of it in terms of specialty and quality improvement.”
Breaking barriers & opening doors
Mikey has noticed a significant shift in coffee culture beyond just discussing quality. They vividly remember the secretive system that was prevalent in their early career development, which enforced widespread gatekeeping. In fact, they even recall a roaster who made someone interested in learning from them sign a non-disclosure agreement first.
There has been a notable increase in openness and kindness within the industry due to changes such as increased access to community through social media and conventions, the publication of books, and standardization of language, Mikey notes. This shift in energy has paved the way for a discussion on scoring that may seem radical compared to the industry norms still being reinforced.
“Part of that openness is that it’s not just the white dudes now,” they say. “There’s the conversation about producer autonomy, and again, talking about scoring—who gets to score? Who gets to determine the consequence of that scoring?”
They continue, “It’s great to see people of color, especially from producing countries, in more positions of power … and seeing more non-cis people of color doing coffee has been great, but obviously my hope is to see more.”
Mikey is noticing a trend in the Specialty Coffee Association to adopt a more extensive scoring system. However, they’re concerned about the direction this trend is taking in an industry that they see as already falling short of truly caring about the different origins, producers, and affective relationships with coffee that go beyond a mere numerical score on a piece of paper.
“If we’re talking about more inclusivity, we have to talk about scoring … and a loosening of that dependence,” Mikey says. “That’s what I really hope to see change.”
This article originally appeared in the June + July 2024 issue of Barista Magazine. Read more of the issue online here for free.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jaxson Schor (he/him) is a barista, freelance journalist, and editorial intern at Green America. Based in Baltimore, he is passionate about covering and highlighting queer stories. When he’s not running
around behind bar, Jaxson can be found actually running outside or spending way too much time making coffee at home. More work can be found at jaxsonschor.com.
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