My Roasting Process

As a micro-roaster, I’m often asked about my roasting process. How I’m able to prep for large events, bulk roast and what equipment I use to push those nice Parliament Roasting flavours. Well, here it is, I’m going to take you through my process and give you a sneak peek into some of my secrets.

Spoiler alert, my roaster is the Genesis by Gene Cafe or the Gene Cafe CBR 1200. It’s a small scale, 1kg commercial electric roaster that lets me push out about six pounds of coffee per hour. It’s a workhorse of a machine, enabling me to do back-to-back-to-back roasts. And it is a manual roaster, my friends, no digital roasting programs or software hookups here. I use my eyes and my ears to decide when and what to do, using my tried and tested recipes, developed through extensive R&D phases over the years (just me and the beans and my machine, trying to crack the code of any particular bean).

The Process

1. Start with the Green
   And I don’t mean money…I mean you’ll want to source some high-quality green beans. I focus on Guatemala because I really love the region, the terroir, and the flavour profiles. For Parliament it makes sense to really focus on one region and dial in those roasts. I use Common Goal Coffee as my importer and procurement specialists to get me high quality micro lots from some of the best producers in the region. Everything I’ve gotten from them has been excellent.
   

2. Preheat and Charge
   Depending on what type of roast I’m doing I’ll do either a long or short preheating phase to get the roaster ready for the first batch. The first preheat always takes a bit longer. For my flagship medium and dark roasts, I tend to set my roaster at 242C and preheat it up to 200C knowing that as soon as I drop the first batch of beans it’ll drop the internal temp to around 150C and then I’ll get my gradual climb up to the 205C mark where things really start happening. Note: For the honey-processed roast I’m doing a much shorter preheat and charge and a more gradual temperature climb and temperature drop so I don’t scorch those beans and bleed the flavour.
   

3. Drying and Maillard Phase
   The first eight to nine  minutes of my roasts are the drying phase. That’s where you’ll see the colour change from green to yellow to light brown. It’s also where your Maillard reactions start happening (yay science!) – that’s where amino acids and reducing sugars in the beans start to react and create your complex flavours, aromas, and body. Some folks want to push through the Maillard phase fast and get to the next stage because they want smooth easy drinking coffee. I like to prolong it a bit because that’s where those tasty notes of toffee, caramel, and hazelnut get formed.
   

4. First Crack and Ride
   The first crack – this has always been the key to the flavour of my roasts. This is your first auditory clue that things are progressing the way they should. It will start to sound kind of like popcorn popping, but much more subdued. For me it happens around the 10:30sec mark when the internal bean temperature hits about 205-207C. This will carry though to about 11:15sec mark and I tend to pull the heat down to about 237C and let it ride to the 14min mark for my medium roast and 15min for my dark roast. When I pull my dark roast, I hear a second set of popping sounds called second crack.
   

5. Cooling and Bagging
   The beans hit the cooling tray for about three minutes to pull down the temp and stop additional cooking of the bean. I also inspect all the beans, taking them from one container to another to make sure they all look the way they’re supposed to. From there, I bag and seal them immediately to start the off-gas process. (I talk about the off-gassing and resting phase in an earlier article. You can read more about that, and when to crack the seal on your coffee, in ‘Stay Fresh' When should you crack the seal on your coffee

So, there you have it. A bit about my roasting process and the way I take my beans from green Guatemalas to deliciously roasted Parliament Coffee.