Like his father, Montana-born John Goerke was an auto mechanic, one who drank coffee from a young age. After a few years in the business, he noticed something about people at the shop: They were never happy. “Something they had paid a lot of money for wasn’t working and they didn’t like it,” he says. Unhappy with the unhappiness, he started looking for a new career.

Coffee was it, and in 1986 he and a partner established the Caribbean Coffee Company in Santa Barbara, California, and became coffee distributors. “Everybody who works with coffee is happy,” he says. He learned everything he could, mainly from a Cuban friend who was a coffee roaster in San Jose and provided John with the “Aha!” moment that planted the seed for HAIR RAISER.

John loved dark-roast coffee – he had family in Seattle and was an early Starbucks junkie. One day his friend took him to a place in Santa Cruz called the Bagelry, which had its own dark roast called “Steve’s Smooth.”

“It was the first time I had a dark roast that was smooth and not bitter or burned,” he recalls. “I knew right then that I wanted to learn how to make something just as smooth.” 

He and his partner then opened the Santa Barbara Roasting Company and began experimenting, and over time John became a coffee roaster, not just someone who was roasting coffee. “Anyone can roast coffee,” he says. “But to be a coffee roaster means working like a chef so that you can imagine the flavors and other characteristics of a roast or a blend before you make it.”

John sold his part of Santa Barbara Roasting in 1993 and began working independently to create HAIR RAISER – or actually, a generic roast that one of his employees named after trying it. “. “Hair Raiser,” he told John. “That’s what you have to call this because that’s what it does; it makes your hair stand up and take notice.”

HAIR RAISER was born. That year it was named Best New Product by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

For a time, HAIR RAISER kept a low profile on the edges of the specialty coffee market. HAIR RAISER was a dark-roast find, a closely guarded secret of the coffee cognoscenti, discovered on journeys beyond the chain-store joints serving stale, over-roasted coffee that basted the palate with bitterness. Leaving the homogeneity behind, those determined iconoclasts of good taste hit the road in search of the one, the true, the good. Their search ended with HAIR RAISER.

Enter Kevin Bourke, an old friend of John’s and a Certified Financial Planner formerly with Smith Barney. When he moved from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara in 2004 and hung out his own shingle as Bourke Wealth Management (www.bourkewealthmanagement.com), he rented space in the Caribbean Coffee Company building that was HAIR RAISER roasting headquarters.

A passionate coffee lover himself, Kevin noticed that people would come into John’s store, take one look at the vibrant HAIR RAISER logo (designed by John’s artist wife, Laurel) and say, “I want some of that.” Then he learned that even John’s competitors thought his coffee was awesome. Kevin gave it to coffee lovers and wine experts, and they all loved it. The light went on.

“My business is great, I love it! But after 20 years, it can get boring,” Kevin says with a wry smile, “but everyone in coffee is having a good time. They do it because they love it. It seemed something worth putting time and money into.” So he and John joined forces to crack the whip, bang the gong and bring the coffee-drinking world to its senses.

Now, no longer a secret of the dialed-in inner circle, the magically potent, mystically soothing elixir is busting down the door. “Dark-roast coffee is the true path for real coffee lovers,” says John, “and HAIR RAISER is the real deal.” The world is taking notice.

HAIR RAISING TALES

Like these folks, you probably have your own hair-raising HAIR RAISER story. If so, we want to know. When did you discover HAIR RAISER? Where were you? What did you think? What happened the first time you ran out? Tell your tale so it raises our hair, and we’ll run it on this site and send you a 12-ounce bag of beans, on us. Send your story to info@hairraiser.com.

So, go on. Drink it. Experience it. Live it. Then share it. We’re waiting!

Get HAIR RAISER…and stimulate your attitude!

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