Our Roasting Process

coffee origins

There are many legends surrounding the origins of coffee, utmost gravitate towards the story of jumping goats in Ethiopia. Legend has it that a goat herder in Ethiopia noticed that when his goats ate the berries off of a particular plant, they had more energy than usual. They would jump around all day and could not fall asleep at night. Word traveled of this energizing berry and soon coffee cultivation began. Ethiopia produces the world’s most awarded coffee today and has always been treasured as the birthplace of coffee.

coffee’s journey

After its discovery, people realized coffee’s profitability and coffee was traded through the Middle East, Asia, and Europe before European colonizers brought coffee to the Americas. As the demand for coffee increased, Europeans began importing enslaved people from Africa to labor on plantations in the Caribbean, Asia and the Americas. This was part of what became known as the Triangular Trade. In 1773, the Boston Tea Party made coffee the #1 drink in the world and coffee became the predominant crop on most plantations that originally were mostly sugarcane. Saint-Domingue, Haiti produced more than half of the worlds coffee during the 17th-18th century and due to the heinous treatment of enslaved people, this led to the Haitian Revolution.  

farms & processing

Coffee’s journey from seed to cup starts with the farmer. Farmers do the most labor, yet are the most underpaid group in the entire chain. Some farms do their own processing, but the equipment needed is very expensive so typically they sell the ripe coffee cherries to a processor who almost always underpays them. As you follow the coffee chain, you will see the higher you get the more profit is made up until shipping. 

Baby coffee plants are called seedlings and take 2-5 years to start producing cherries. Once these cherries are ripe, the farms employ several seasonal workers to help harvest all the cherries before they over-ripen. 

roasting

Every lot we get in requires a different roast profile that we develop through sensory roasting based on the characteristics of the beans. Although we often import coffee from the same general regions, we cannot roast them exactly the same. The lot came from a different farm, may be a different variety and may have been processed differently. We monitor the coffee very closely while it roasts to determine what temperature the roaster should be at and when to drop the beans.