Roasty, Toasty Goodness

Hey howdy everyone! It’s a semi-slow day here at the shop because it’s COLD, so I thought I’d take time to start talking about the process of roasting beans. Last post I talked about how we choose beans, and the trial and error that leads us to ultimately rejecting certain beans and embracing others. So now that we have our beans, what do we do with them?

As I believe I said before, the name SweetBeans comes from my understanding and belief that it is the job of the RoastMaster (me) to ensure that each bean is roasted to it’s SWEETEST possible outcome; to take the bitter, green bean and find it’s sweet spot. That, again, takes alot of trial and error, tweeking certain aspects of the roast until the RoastMaster determines that they have found the best way to bring out the best characteristics in the bean. For each bean, I spend a few hours roasting it in various ways, cupping (testing) each roast, and then making a judgment on which roasting method brought out the best in the bean. So let’s talk about the roast levels of coffee, the phases of roasting, and what each phase contributes to the coffee. Because of the complexity of this topic, we’ll start with this post and continue through to another.

At it’s base level, roasting coffee and the method of roasting is determined by and enabled by three major things: the coffee you roast and how much you are roasting, heat produced either by burning gas or electrical conduction, and air flow. With those major components in place, the determination is then made as to what type of roast you want to produce. There is a decidedly strong push in the world of specialty coffee to move far away from the CharBucks system of roasting everything to the point of ashes and more toward roasting much lighter. Indeed, it is embarassing to admit that I was a fan of the Char because that’s all I knew in my life, apart from the swill called Folgers, which my mother drank. CharStucks had more flavors of chocolate and nut and was much richer than the Folgers in a can, so I stuck with it. But by accident a year ago, my spouse and I went to a cute coffee shop in Omaha, Astute Coffee, (which I later found out was owned by a grade school classmate - shout out Miah!) and experienced coffee that wasn’t burnt to a crisp. It was bright, citrus forward, a little fruity and a shock to my system. I was so shocked, in fact, that I argued with the barista, telling them there was no way they gave me espresso! After a cordial discussion about coffee trends, I then realized that there was a whole new world to coffee that I had been sheltered from by going to SmuckDucks. And so I started experiencing new and amazing flavors I didn’t know were possible with coffee.

So, let’s talk about roast levels. I hate to call roasts “light, medium or dark” because, well, it’s just not specific enough. And so I tend to refer to information I’ve found online and in books that refers to 8 different levels of roast that are achieved through the application of time, heat and air: Light City, City, City +, Full City, Full City+, French and Italian. The 8th level of roast is what I call “Bean Death”. These roasts are determined by the temperature to which the bean is roasted and at which it “ends” - leaves the roaster and begins the process of cooling.

The spectrum of coffee…

From green to brown, light to dark, roasting coffee well is an art form!

Light City: 410 degrees F - often referred to as “light roast” or “American Roast”

City: 423-426 degrees F - often referred to as “medium light roast”

City+: 431 degrees F - often referred to as “medium roast”

Full City: 437-439 degrees F - often called “medium dark roast”

Full City +: 442 degrees F - often called “dark roast” or “Vienna Roast”

French: 462-464 degrees F

Italian: 470-473 degrees F - if not done right, can be referred to as “a charred mass of biological devastation” or “on the brink of needing a fire extinguisher”!

I will say there are very few roasters who know how to accurately and successfully produce an Italian roast. And at that temperature, you’ve essentially destroyed all the flavenoids, the inherent compouds within the coffee bean that give the coffee its unique flavor and aroma, thus rendering the coffee nothing but a vessel for the flavors of burn and char. Yum?

So you might ask - what is THE best roast? The answer is that there is no single best roast because how you roast a bean is as important to the unique bean as the flavenoids that are part of that bean. As I’ve said before, this is the art of roasting coffee - to recognize the absolute “sweet spot” that the beans you have should be roasted to to produce the best possible cup of that coffee. This is why we are “SweetBeans” - we roast each unique bean to the point that, what emerges, is the sweetest cup of that coffee possible.

So how do you produce sweetness, and what does it take to get there? Next time, the process of roasting esplained….

Until then,

Stay amazing, and have a BEAUTIFUL DAY BeanHeads!

James