The Perfect Roast

Each single origin coffee has its own unique characteristic and nuances of flavor. Bringing them out requires an artful touch, skilled judgment and well-trained eyes and ears. Subtle variations in the roast time, temperature and airflow allow the roaster to take each coffee to its peak of flavor. It's a slower, more demanding roast that stops at the exact point at which the sour-tasting acids have been roasted out, but bitter flavors haven't appeared. That gives the beans a deeper, heartier flavor and a rich chestnut color, as opposed to the cinnamon brown color common with commercial roasts.

For the final step in the roasting process, we air cool our beans (instead of the money saving quench method used by commercial coffee roasters). Then, to ensure freshness, we hand pack them within two hours in special nitrogen flushed valve packages that let gases from the beans escape without allowing air to reach them.

We roast coffee to bring out the best flavor characteristics in each bean, and we continually work to upgrade the quality and consistency of coffee. Our roast is darker than the average roast-it is much darker than commercial coffee, and considerably darker than most of our specialty coffee competitors. We believe that our roast is the best way to harmoniously change and meld together the hundreds of chemical compounds that make up a coffee bean, turning the inert looking green pebbles into rich, chestnut brown beans packed with flavor.

What actually happens to the green coffee is fascinating. The beans are introduced into a large, rotating drum, which is heated using gas. After about 5-7 minutes, a lot of moisture is driven off, and the green beans change to a lively yellow color, and smell like buttery vegetables. The coffee continues to darken and lose moisture, and then, at about 8 minutes, "first pop" occurs. At this point, the coffee pops like popcorn, and nearly doubles in size.

The beans continue to darken, and more moisture is lost, and a few more minutes, oil becomes visible on the surface of the bean. Sometime between 11 and 15 minutes, depending on the coffee and other variables, the coffee beans pop again ("second pop"); then the beans are nearly ready. From this point on, it is up to the master roaster to make the decision as to when the beans are ready. The decision is made as to when the coffee beans are ready. The door of the roaster is opened and into the cooling drum emerges a hypnotic swirl of smoke and chestnut brown coffee beans, still completing second pop, and giving off tremendous amount of heat and energy.

This roasting method is not cheap to produce. All that moisture loss means a lot of weight loss-about 22% for most of our coffees, and nearly 25% for French Roast. Most commercial coffee loses only 10-14% of it's weight during roasting but we roast to please the senses and not save a few cents.