Fellow Coffee Drinkers, I thought you might be interested in hearing about how the Channel Islands Roasting Company™ came into being.

Through a combination of grace, good fortune, and choice, a collection of old friends (along with some new ones) and I found ourselves living on the picturesque central coast of California. With some of us being surfers and all of us being ocean-lovers, we spend many a morning at the beach. During much of the year here, the “marine layer” (otherwise known as “coastal fog”) chills the air and gives the water a gunmetal-gray appearance. It’s at times like these that a good cup of coffee truly seems like the “nectar of the gods.”

So, we set out to make that good cup of coffee. What we craved was the clean taste of a medium-roasted, classic “American-style” cup of Joe, not the over-roasted, often bitter or burnt flavor of many coffees available today.

We started out by buying the best Arabica beans available from Colombia, Brazil and other countries in the prime Central and South American coffee-growing regions. After experimenting with several different roasting levels, we found the ideal one that delivered that great coffee taste without imparting the smoky or charred flavors one can get from over-roasting.

Even though we had found the coffee we were looking for, we still needed a name for our little company. After getting the group together for a brainstorming session, the “techie” in the meeting drew his inspiration from an obvious source: The view from the conference room window. There, some 22 miles offshore, lay the Channel Islands. The small island chain not only gives the area an almost tropical feel, much like the views from the Hawaiian Islands or from many spots in the Caribbean, but it had now given us our name.

So, that's our story. We hope you find our coffee as enjoyable to drink as we do.

And, if you're ever in the area on one of those foggy mornings at the beach, drop on by and I'll buy you a cup of coffee.

Mike Murphy,

“Head Honcho”