Mugshots > Radical Beer Activists > Bill Harris

Bill Harris, A Man of Beans & Beer Previous Mugshots featured English royalty and the world’s best known cartoon character. But most beer activists aren’t famous, they’re ordinary beer drinkers who do extraordinary things. Bill Harris is a man of beverages. Coffee is the main one, but beer comes right after that. If you catch him on the right night, you might think beer comes first though. On a typical evening, you’re likely to find Bill drinking beer and fermenting the revolution – the coffee revolution, that is.

In fact, coffee is like beer in a very important way: fermentation. Coffee ‘cherries’ are fermented to remove their skins. But Bill’s coffee fermentations are much more than a technical process. He’s working to ferment a revolution throughout the coffee industry. Harris is dedicated to marketing certified organic and fair trade coffee. He’s also a homebrewer, so I guess that makes him triple fermented!

Bill’s road to the revolution started on a trip to Guatemala to build houses with Habitat for Humanity. "Someone on our team dumped a load of dirt on the farmer’s coffee bush, the farmer got mad and made us quit working on the house. I wondered how much coffee he gets from that little tree? Wondered how much he gets paid for it?”

These musings lead Bill to establish a successful coffee importing and roasting business called Café Campesino. As the roastery grew, the importing business split off and formed Cooperative Coffees, which now imports gourmet coffee from around the world for nearly twenty coffee roasters all across the U.S. Bill is not just triple fermented, he’s also triple certified. ‘Triple certified’ means the coffees he imports are 1) Organically grown without chemical inputs 2) Fair Trade so the farmers are equal trading partners, and 3) Shade-grown under the natural forest canopy.

Bill and his brother Lee, who helps run Café Campesino and is also a homebrewer, are slowly integrating their work with their hobby. "We just cleaned up the back of the micro-roasting warehouse in order to make room for interesting personal projects like Lee's weekend wood-turning and both of our interests in homebrew."

I asked Bill a few questions about the marriage of these two pursuits, and here’s what he had to say.

FR: Have you ever made a homebrew with organic, fair trade, shadegrown coffee?
Bill Harris: I am ashamed to say I haven't but I will!! Our friends and fellow members of Cooperative Coffees at Peace Coffee and Dean's Beans have perfected the organic, fair trade coffee beer brew and I do hope that they will share their recipes.

FR: How is roasting the perfect bean like brewing the perfect beer?
Bill: To do them well, each requires great interest in the art complimented by a thorough understanding of the associated science. In both cases, farmers and the good earth provide us with exquisite ingredients which we really can’t improve. Our first challenge is to not screw up this potential by not paying attention to the details.

FR: Favorite type of beer?
Bill:Never met a beer I didn’t like (with the exception of the shake-shake mentioned below) but week in, week out you’ll find me drinking a pale ale at the local watering hole.

FR: What is your most unusual or memorable beer experience?
Bill: Most unusual beer I have had was a local concoction known as “shake-shake” in Botswana. The shake-shake truck cruised by our office every afternoon in the small town of Kasane selling this quickly fermented beverage in milk cartons. I have many fond memories of my time in Botswana.. shake-shake isn’t one of them.

I have always believed that beer will solve all problems. So I naturally turned to our favorite beverage in order to cure an intense altitude-induced headache while overnighting at 13,000 ft enroute to Nepal’s Annapurna Sanctuary. Can’t sleep… head is pounding…knock down a big glass of the local brew, right? Big mistake!

FR: It seems like a lot of fair traders are also dedicated beer drinkers. Why do you think that is?
Bill Harris: Fair traders tend to be a thoughtful, engaged lot and, next to coffee, no beverage stirs the mind and soul as well as a great home brew. (I realize that many of your readers might beg to differ, or re-order, this statement!)

FR: Do you see any similarities between the craft brewing movement and the fair trade/organic coffee movement?
Bill: Of course! Both movements are benefiting from several trends – 1) folks are thinking more about their consumption habitats – where does my stuff come from, who made it, what was the environmental impact and so on; 2) consumers are more interested in the “experience” surrounding a product – for fair trade this involves the story of the coffee farmer, and for home brewers this means messing up the kitchen! 3) the demand for quality products leads folks to both movements.

FR: Words of wisdom to beer drinkers out there?
Bill: The history of beer in the US certainly holds lessons for all of us – especially for micro-coffee roasters. At the turn of the century, there were thousands of local breweries producing unique, high quality regional beers. Prohibition forced most out of business and large corporations took over the industry – driven by profits, low cost ingredients and uniform, unexceptional recipes. Micro-brewers (and in their wake micro-roasters) have proved EF Schumacher to be correct - “Small is Beautiful”. There are great parallels between the specialty brewing and roasting phenomenon. So, if you can, make or grow your own. Otherwise, buy local, express your values in your purchases and try to support the little guy!

Try adding some of Bill’s coffee to one of your homebrews or even to a bottled or draft beer. Micro breweries across the country are trying out coffee beer. There is even a category for Coffee Flavored Beer at the World Beer Cup. Top awards in 2004 went to: Thunderhead Brewing’s Black Sheep Espresso Stout; Steamworks Brewing Co’s Grand Espresso Stout; and Bordon Biersch’s Big River Espresso Stout. The Boston Beer Company, brewers of the well-known Sam Adams beers, also make a Chocolate Bock.