Over the past few years, interest in home coffee roasting has grown exponentially and Sweet Maria’s, based in Oakland, CA, has played a central role in the movement.

Their website offers advice on how to choose a home roaster, detailed roasting instructions, photos of beans at each roasting stage and forums for discussing all things coffee. They also sell supplies and equipment, and green coffee to get eager home roasters started.

This holiday season, Sweet Maria’s produced “The Unofficial 2010 Dogs of Coffee Calendar,” which was sold to benefit Coffee Kids and five other charities. The calendar has 15 full-color photographs of dogs from various coffee-producing regions. Co-owner Thompson Owen took the photographs during his travels around the world in search of coffee.

“Maybe he misses our dogs, West Oakland mutts of the first degree, or maybe dogs tend to be a friendly presence. Whatever the reason, over time, Tom has amassed quite a collection of photographs of dogs at coffee origins,” said Maria Troy, co-owner of Sweet Maria’s.

The unique calendar is available for purchase on Sweet Maria’s Web site.

For over ten years, Sweet Maria’s has supported Coffee Kids through various fundraisers and they strive to educate their customers and online followers about our work. Their site is consistently one of the top referrer’s to the Coffee Kids Web site.