ALEX COLOMBINO
MAX GUALTIERI (MUSIC BFA 11)
J O U L E S & WAT T S COFFEE Just over a year ago, Max Gualtieri, an accomplished guitarist and audio engineer, was teaching music lessons and touring with several bands. Now he’s the co-owner of Joules and Watts, a coffee roastery he runs with his partner Christina DeMeglio. Gualtieri calls himself a natural maker: besides making music and records, he has tried his hand at beer and wine. “But there’s so much more depth in coffee,” he says. “It started out as a quest for a really good pour over, but I really got into it.” Then an opportunity: friends offered up their empty storefront near Beverly Grove for Gualtieri and DeMeglio to host a coffee pop-up shop for three days in June 2018. “I had zero barista experience then,” says Gualtieri. “It was nerve wracking; I didn’t sleep the night before.” However, the pop-up was such a success that Gualtieri and DeMeglio decided to pursue Joules and Watts with gusto. To learn the ropes, Gualtieri snagged a job as a barista at Cognoscenti Coffee in Culver
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City and dove headlong into learning all he could about coffee. About two times a week, Gualtieri conducts a “cupping,” a methodical, blind taste test of sample roasts of different kinds of beans. For a roastery, buying raw product (green, unroasted beans) from a distributor is a significant investment, so Gualtieri wants to make a sound choice. The other reason for these twice-weekly taste tests is practice: Gualtieri plans to take the Q Exam this fall, which is a rigorous in-person test that evaluates a subject’s sensory and olfactory skills, and their ability to identify various aromatic compounds and acid profiles found in coffee. The Q Grader certification will certainly give him “sharper elbows” in the industry, but these cuppings are also improving his relationship to his craft. “Tuning my palate is exactly the same as ear training,” he says. “Being able to taste the difference between ‘fruity,’ ‘chocolate-y,’ and ‘spicy’ flavor profiles is exactly like being able to hear various frequencies when mixing a record.” For the time being, Gualtieri roasts Joules and Watts’ single-origin coffee at Cognoscenti and distributes the coffee from home. While their coffee is primarily sold at select locations on LA’s Westside, a lot of the roastery’s business comes from its bustling mail-order subscription service—Joules and Watts ships their coffee both in and out of state. Gualtieri and DeMeglio’s eventual goal is to have a dedicated space for Joules and Watts: a café and roastery where the pair can work directly with coffee producers. “A coffee shop is a natural way of bringing people together,” says Gualtieri, “and it’s a natural progression from the kinds of things I’m doing in music. Being a jobs provider and fostering a space that is safe and welcomes everyone is my biggest dream.” Gualtieri, who just sold his 1,000th bag of coffee, is just getting started. “Getting into your craft and blazing your own trail is something that was instilled in me at CalArts. To run a business like this you need to be relentlessly curious and open-minded. I rely on those skills every day.” ~ JOULESANDWAT TSCOFFEE .COM