Duane Sorenson

The Path

Portland, Oregon, gave specialty coffee a working context in which sourcing, roasting, and service could be argued in public, cup by cup. As founder of Stumptown Coffee Roasters and coffee buyer at Stumptown Coffee, Duane Sorenson built a reputation inside that context by treating coffee with the same scrutiny commonly applied to wine or fine food. The work centered on flavor, provenance, and the decisions that sit between farm and brewed cup. Restaurant work widened the frame from coffee service to daily hospitality. As business owner / restaurateur at Roman Candle in Portland, Oregon, and business owner / restaurateur at Holiday in Portland, Oregon, until 2019, Sorenson worked in formats where coffee sat among food, service, and the use patterns of a city. The current role returns the focus to coffee production and service. Today, Duane is owner of Puff Coffee.

The Work Today

Single-origin coffee and blends solve different problems at the bar and on the shelf. At Puff Coffee in Portland, Oregon, founder Duane Sorenson works with both: singular single-origin coffees for origin, process, and lot-specific expression; reliable blends for repeatable use without treating consistency as an excuse for flattening character. Home brewing can reveal what a roaster expects from extraction. Sorenson’s stated preference is Chemex: “When I brew coffee at home, I generally do Chemex. I love the cup, I love the flavor. It's very clear, it's not muddy or murked down, I have two or three pots of Chemex every morning before I leave the house.” The emphasis is practical and sensory: clarity, flavor, repetition, and the daily check of returning to the cup before service or production work begins.

Signature

Signature roasts include Hair Bender espresso blend.

In Their Words “I don’t feel we’re there yet. But it’s always been my goal that the fine folks here be in tune with coffee processing–the brewing, the roasting–but also coffee farming and all the steps to making the finest coffee in the world.” “When I brew coffee at home, I generally do Chemex. I love the cup, I love the flavor. It's very clear, it's not muddy or murked down, I have two or three pots of Chemex every morning before I leave the house.”

Acclaim

Recognition in coffee usually accrues around repeatable decisions: what gets bought, how it is roasted, how it is served, and whether relationships survive beyond a single lot. In Duane Sorenson’s case, the public record includes founding Stumptown Coffee Roasters in 1999, developing Hair Bender, buying green coffee through farm relationships across Latin America and Africa, and creating Puff Coffee. The method is direct: source carefully, roast with attention, and keep the farmer inside the quality conversation. Puff Coffee’s present work with single-origin coffees and blends keeps that chain visible, not as decoration, but as the operating structure behind the cup.