What Makes a Good Coffee Roaster?

What makes a good coffee roaster?

Coffee roasters may be machines or persons behind the process. In this case, let’s look at the person who we can also, in other words, call the coffee roaster.

What is coffee roasting?

Coffee roasting is the process of turning green coffee beans into usable coffee products. The roasting process is what produces the characteristic flavor of coffee by causing the green coffee beans to change in taste.

It goes in green, comes out brown. The most obvious thing roasters do,  they apply heat to coffee beans.

What makes a good coffee roaster?

Coffee roasters are scientists who want to do right by their farmers, customers, and coffee.

Coffee roasters should be really appreciated.

Coffee grows in a plant. It’s the seed of the coffee shrub, to be precise. It’s planted, cared for, harvested, processed, and packaged before it even gets to the roaster.

Coffee roasters find this coffee and buy it.

Roasting is not so simple as throwing a bucket of green coffee beans into a big machine, letting them swirl around for a bit, then dumping the roasted coffee out. It’s much more than that.

There are so many chemical reactions that take places within the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to roast a batch of coffee, and controlling these can be quite difficult. Some changes in temperature, humidity, airflow, and time can make dramatic changes to the final cup, so good roasters have to be very precise with their roasting routine and environment.

To find the right roasting recipe, good roasters often perform a few sample roasts in a smaller machine that mimics their regular commercial-sized one. They write down the time, temperature, and other variables to get a close look at what’s happening inside.

Roasters then wait 12 – 24 hours after these sample roasts are complete before testing the coffees for quality. When they do the tasting, called ‘coffee cupping’, they take notes, carefully assessing the flavors, acidity, sweetness, bitterness, aftertaste, body, and aroma.

If you drink coffee from one roaster regularly, then switch to another roaster for a long period of time, you’ll notice the difference. Coffees mostly take on the personalities of their roasters.

Roasting is an art as much as it is a science.

Coffee roasters are scientists and artists. They love their craft and want to share it with others. The best way for them to do that is to invest in the people around them.

Good roasters also love empowering people in their hometowns by publishing transparent information on their coffee sources, telling the stories of farmers around the world, and helping people refine their coffee brewing skills.

Roasters are the bridge between the farmer in the coffee forest and the regular folks enjoying his coffee in a coffee shop somewhere. Roasters play a very important role in our lives.

The most important investment in a roaster is in his effort to bring people and together over a perfect cup of coffee.

Coffee roasters that accomplish the things we’ve stated above are heroes because they provide us with good and healthy coffee.