A journey to quality
At its core, the coffee process seems simple enough. You harvest the fruit, separate it, dry it, clean it, roast it, and drink it. But as someone deeply invested in creating a quality cup, the more you dig into the process, the more variables you uncover that make a big difference in the freshness, taste, and overall enjoyment of your morning coffee. It’s more than just sourcing great raw green beans and putting them through the roasting process. There are many critical data points to consider.
Let’s break down some of the main factors I think about when trying to create tasty coffee.
Sourcing: I get beans from well-respected farms in regions known for producing great coffee. I’m looking at farm and bean reputation, tasting score, and profiles that work with the flavours I’m trying to create. I prefer to use high-quality beans from Common Goal, an organization that works with exceptional farmers in the Antigua region of Guatemala.
Finding the right profile and region: The roasting process always has a great deal of trial and error to find and coax out the profile, blend, or flavour elements you want to highlight in a bean from a particular region. Especially when you’re working out a new bean or new roast.
Roasting for freshness: There’s two important factors here. Storage of your raw green coffee – away from the sun in sealed containers. And roasting to order. You can choose to roast in large batches. Sure, it saves time, it’s better for scale, and it’s easier. But if you’re nimble enough, you can roast to order and ensure that when the coffee is delivered it’s guaranteed to be fresh.
Proper cooling: It’s essential to quickly cool the newly roasted beans right away to prevent residual roasting after they leaves the heat of the machine.
Inspection: I roast between 7-8 pounds of coffee per hour, which is a small amount. But it also allows me to inspect every batch multiple times throughout the process; from load-in to cooling to bagging, I’m able to make sure every bean going into the bag has been properly assessed, with any delinquent beans tossed away.
Bagging: Believe it or not, how you store your roasted product makes a massive difference in quality. Choose bags or a receptacle that can vent out CO2 after the cooling process. It’s best to let it sit for at least 48 hours (but sometimes even longer! Read more about that here.)
Consumption: This part is largely outside of my control unless I’m serving the coffee. Here’s where it's up to the consumer how you want to prepare your cup (drip, french press, espresso). But there are still a lot of variables in your preparation that can affect the flavour outcomes; from how you grind it, to how quickly you get through your bag. I’ve put together some helpful hints for French press, and Aeropress, and I’m always happy to lend a hand if you ever have questions about the best ways to get a flavourful cup.
I think there’s something unique about the process of getting good coffee to your cup that goes beyond many products you consume. There are a ton of variables that as a roaster I can control and some that I can’t, from sourcing to roasting to packaging but in the end the amount of influence in the final product makes a huge difference in the outcome.