The process of roasting is a fascinating aspect of coffee drinking. Understanding the commitment and thought that goes into roasting will completely alter your appreciation of coffee.  Your local coffee roasters are at the forefront of the roasting industry producing some of the best coffee beans you’ll ever experience. Just as winemakers can produce different tasting wines from the exact same grape, Roasters can do the same with the coffee bean.  There’s an experience waiting behind every bag. 

Like Winemakers

Through science, Roasters use high-end roasting equipment to achieve consistency and control three key aspects of taste: sweetness, acidity and bitterness. Their preference of equipment comes down to the Roaster, some prefer to be hands on and micro-manage each roast while others defer to computer software to assist them.  Roasting is not a ‘set it and forget it’ process as some believe. It’s a highly sensitive process where the smallest shift in controllable factors can drastically alter the chemistry and finishing quality of the coffee bean. High-end roasting equipment achieves consistency by controlling these variables to produce coffee that tastes the same time and time again. Like the same bottle of wine, you should expect a consistent taste from the same bag of beans every time.

The Artist

The art of roasting is discovering what flavour notes are hidden within each batch of green beans. The Roaster, acting as an artist, uses their experience and imagination to determine what flavour notes are hidden and which ones to pronounce.  Is it a nutty bean with an almond undertone they want to enhance or maybe it’s a fruity bean with a hint of blackberry? Remember, coffee has more flavour notes than wine so it’s up to the Roaster to discover and bring out specific notes. The green bean is their blank canvas, with their experience and knowledge of the beans origin, terroir and history, the Roaster uses their roasting skills to shape the final character of the coffee. Every Roaster is producing something different and they want to share their results with you.

(the Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel by the Specialty Coffee Association)

So Now What?

Through My Local Coffees you can immerse yourself in the exciting world of coffee and discover some of the best coffee beans produced locally. Subscribe now and start exploring coffee from local roasters in your area.  It’s better and it’s local!

Coffee lovers understand that stale coffee beans are a disservice to their brewed coffee and that they’ve infiltrated grocery stores and big box coffee chains for years.  Up until now, consumers who were unaware and complacent about this fact have been drinking subpar coffee and fail to realize that coffee can offer them a richer and tastier experience.  To protect consumers against stale coffee, the coffee industry recommends that consumers follow these golden rules:

(i) buy coffee beans that have a roast date printed on the packaging

(ii) consume coffee beans within 1 to 3 weeks after roasting for peak freshness

(iii) purchase only enough coffee so that it doesn’t sit around for longer than 3 weeks after its roast date

(iv) buy wholes beans instead of ground and grind fresh at home

Roasting Date

Coffee sold at grocery stores will often sit in storage and on shelves for months before it’s consumed.  Instead of a roast date, most have a ‘best before’ date printed on the packaging that is 12 to 24 months after the date of roasting.  While coffee this old is safe to drink since it’s considered shelf stable, it’s well past its prime date. Coffee should be treated as a fresh product since, after all, it’s the seed from a fruit (the coffee cherry). Not knowing the exact roast date, you are very likely buying coffee that is stale and has formed unpleasant flavours.  Local roasters know the importance of consuming fresh roast which is why they print the roast date on each bag.  In addition, to limit the shelf life of each bag, local roasters only roast in small batches to ensure they are only selling fresh product. 

The Science

You don’t’ have to be a coffee connoisseur to know why coffee beans are best consumed when fresh.  The smell alone can convince anyone that there’s a considerable difference between coffee roasted fresh and coffee sitting on shelves for months.  As soon as you open a bag of fresh roasted coffee your senses are hit with an explosion of aromatics and scents that transport you back to the best café experience you’ve ever had.  The reason why the smell and taste of fresh roasted coffee is more vibrant is similar to other fresh food products and can be explained by science.  For too long, coffee drinkers have ignored the fact that the quality of coffee begins to deteriorate after it’s been roasted.  Even the best packaging techniques can only limit the staling process and can’t stop it.  The staling process is exacerbated every time you open a bag and that’s because there are two main stages to this process: aromatic departure and oxidization.  Firstly, the aromatic compounds that give coffee its smell and flavour are slowly released from the beans after roasting and escape every time you open the bag (this is why the scent is so powerful every time we squeeze or open a bag).  As the coffee gets older, this steady loss of aromatics causes the coffee to lose its character and complex tastes (coffee tastes flat and woody – typical big box coffee shop taste).  Secondly, similar to how fresh produce and vegetables go bad when exposed to the air, coffee beans are also adversely impacted.   When a bean is roasted it undergoes hundreds of chemical reactions that alter the anatomy of the bean. Internal oils caramelize and a browning reaction ensues, physically the bean grows in size and changes porosity, colour and density while stored moisture is vaporized.  After roasting, each bean starts to expel carbon dioxide through outgassing. It’s only when the rate of outgassing drops that oxygen is able to find its way into the bean through its pours and this is when the oxidization occurs.  This process replaces positive flavour molecules with inferior compounds causing the bean to dramatically lose flavour. 

Similarly, it’s important to grind coffee beans just before brewing. As soon as beans are grounded, the surface area exposed to air is multiplied making it even more vulnerable to the effects of oxidization.  The flavours and aromatic compounds begin to immediately escape and so the longer you wait to brew after grounding the poorer the quality of the brew. 

Discover

My Local Coffees was built to help consumers unlock the secret behind fresh roasted coffee.  Get fresh roasted coffee shipped direct to your door. Its the better coffee experience. Find out why we say “It’s better and it’s local”. 

 

One of my first jobs was at a big box grocery store in the GTA.  Working there, I learned a few of their marketing secrets that I carry with me  today whenever I’m shopping for myself.  Fish that can no longer be sold as ‘fresh’ will instead be coated with Teriyaki sauce and sold as ‘marinated’ fish.   Meat that can no longer be sold as ‘fresh’ will be used to make prepared foods.  

Why does coffee from macro-roasters taste burnt? 

Selling fresh is hard!  It’s much easier for macro-roasters (Starbucks, Lavazza, Kicking Horse, etc.) to produce at one central plant, often located in a low-cost location, then ship to warehouses and finally to stores.  It’s very efficient and low-cost.  But there are downsides to the consumer.  One major one is that it’s not possible for coffee to arrive fresh at the grocery store. By the time the coffee has arrived it’s been sitting around for weeks or months and has travelled 1000s of kms.  What is saved in efficiency is lost in transport and in freshness. The consumer is cheated. However, by over-roasting the coffee to the point where its burnt, it doesn’t matter if the coffee is fresh or been sitting in warehouses for months, because it’ll generally taste the same. The flavour is consistently….poor.

The second biggest reason is to disguise the fact that they may be using low-quality beans. If you over-roast a low-quality and high-quality bean the resulting flavour profiles will be similar, you homogenize the taste and disguise the quality of the bean. For the same reason you should avoid ordering your steak well-done, you should steer away from coffee that tastes burnt and err on the side of caution if its marketed as ‘bold flavour’ or ‘dark’. We’ll leave it to our old friend and mentor Anthony Bourdain to explain.  In his best-selling memoir “Kitchen Confidential” he wrote “Saving meat for ‘well done’ is a time-honoured tradition dating back to cuisine’s earliest days: meat costs money. So what happens when the chef finds a tough, slightly skanky end-cut of sirloin, that’s been pushed repeatedly to the back of the pile? He can save it for well-done – serve it to some rube who prefers to eat his meat incinerated into a flavorless, leathery hunk of carbon, who won’t be able to tell if what he’s eating is food or flotsam.  The dumb (customer) is paying for the privilege of eating his garbage!”  Mic drop. No further explanation required. Thank-you Mr. Bourdain.

 

Experiment 

If you’re hooked on burnt coffee from macro-roasters, do yourself a favour and experiment with what your local roasters are producing.  You will be amazed at the difference. Subscribe or purchase one-time to experience the difference with My Local Coffees!