Celtic Cup Coffee Roasting

Founder and roast master Doug Ilg is a computer scientist by training. Over a 30+ year career he worked as a contractor with NASA and other agencies, devising ways to compute, organize, store and distribute science imagery from Earth-observing environmental satellites, before deciding to follow his passion for coffee and help his community broaden their home brewing horizons. His earliest coffee memory is as a boy of six or eight, pleading with his parents to be allowed to join the adults with a cup of coffee; when it was finally allowed, it took the form of a carafe of hot water and a packet of Sanka instant. In the 1990s a co-worker, whose husband roasted coffee on a cookie sheet in their home oven, introduced Doug to home roasting. After a short tutorial he started roasting tiny batches in his own oven, and cycled through several small home roasters, learning the intricacies of the craft. In 2019 he founded Celtic Cup Coffee, custom roasting in micro-batches as small as one pound. It began as a Maryland Cottage Food Business, operating out of the home. On January 2, 2025, Celtic Cup opened its first brick-and-mortar location, a Coffee Roastery and Tasting Room in the Argent Spring Building on Colesville Road in downtown Silver Spring. Celtic Cup is a member of the Specialty Coffee Association and its Coffee Roasters Guild, and was named a 2026 Best of Bethesda Editors' Pick for Best New Coffee Shops That Roast Their Own Coffee.