BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – For decades, the Pacific Northwest has been at the forefront of coffee consumption in the United States. Someone that has been part of Whatcom County’s coffee scene is Alexarc Mastema, former co-owner of The Black Drop Coffeehouse and current roaster for Maniac Roasting.
Mastema moved to the Pacific Northwest with a group of friends in the early 1990s from Denver after some time there post-high school. He had been an apprentice and then fully-fledged coffee roaster in Colorado prior to the move.
“We got to Seattle, and we realized big cities are all kind of the same. We didn’t know that [it’s] the same big city with a different background. The mountains are over here, over there,” Mastema said, gesturing right then left.
They left Seattle and moved north in their two cars and a trailer, stopping in each town along the way for a night to see if they could imagine putting down roots here.
“We’re kind of starting to get nervous because we’re running out of towns. As we head north, we’re looking at our [map], right? And we’re like, ‘Bellingham,’ and [coming through] the Chuckanuts, and there’s trees and hills and stuff, and it’s got a university. And we’re like, this is going to be the town,” he said.
Within a week of shacking up at the Coachman Inn, Mastema and his roommates had jobs and places to live in Bellingham. Mastema noted that the idea of finding work and housing at that rate in the city now sounds like a “fever dream” to him.
Nearly a decade later, Mastema and his partner started The Black Drop Coffeehouse in Bellingham. Maniac Roasting products were what filled cups at the Black Drop.
The cafe was sold to the employees of the coffeehouse in the late 2000s. Those employees kept the coffeehouse open until a sudden closure in 2022.
Maniac continues its work roasting in Bellingham, currently working out of a space on Franklin Street near Options High School. Mastema is the primary worker at Maniac, producing roughly 500 pounds per week of whole roasted coffee beans.
He hopes to one day hook up a larger roaster that he purchased, but the work to install a vent into the warehouse roof requires permitting. Mastema said the job is too small for most contractors to deal with.
Mastema’s roastery is where he spends much of his days, where he said that staring at the white walls would make him go crazy. To combat that, he has decorated the walls with prints of comedic images, art from local artists, recreations of a couple famous works and various other items of 2-dimensional creative work. Mastema has so many works that an oil painting of a person with short hair and exposed bones for arms leans against a wire shelf, waiting to be hung up.
He also delivers most Mondays by hand to Bellingham addresses, going to between 60 and 80 doorsteps and roughly 15 businesses each week. Businesses that brew Mastema’s blend include Shirlee Bird Cafe and Big Love Juice Bar in Fairhaven and Old Town Cafe in downtown. He donates coffee to Subdued Stringband Jamboree every year to be brewed for volunteers and performers in the canteen.
Mastema also works as a supplier for home roasters in the local area, sending “green beans” to about 12 home roasters.
Mastema said he prefers to create lighter roasts of coffee, though dark roasts could be considered his bread and butter. His dark roasts sell twice as much as his light roasts, and Mastema attributes the sale of dark roasts to his ability to produce light roasts.
“I feel that light roasts tend to have more nuanced flavor. Dark roasts can have their own profile and definitely have their own tasting notes, but generally speaking, I feel like dark roast is kind of like Cajun blackening a steak. It doesn’t really matter what cut of steak you have, it’s more about the Cajun blackening,” he said. “But light roasts will bring out more acidity, more sweetness, more liveliness. It’ll have a more tea-like body, it’s just more delicate. And so, there’s [where] a lot of the smaller notes stand out better.”
Mastema sources his beans from an importer in Seattle that he’s used for years. He noted that every crop of beans will be different from the previous years and the work he has to do to make a cohesive blend varies.
Outside of his work roasting beans and delivering them around town, Mastema lives with his partner Teri Bryant in Sunnyland with their four cats. He likes to go to nearby Kulshan Taproom with friends, and he reads a lot of books. Mastema is also one of three moderators in the Bellingham subreddit, something he said takes a lot of his time outside of work.
We are Whatcom is a weekly column featuring Whatcom County residents making a positive impact on the community. To submit a Whatcom County resident to be featured, click here.
