Walt's Corner

This is the second installment of four articles for what I refer to as the 4 Bs for a great cup of coffee. The first B is fresh Beans. Here, I’ll cover what I refer to as the Burn – or roasting the coffee.

Roasting the coffee beans is what transforms them from the green beans to the chocolate colored beans we see in the stores. How long they roast determines the level of the roast as defined in laymen terms we see on most coffee containers in grocery stores – light, medium, or dark.

Roasters have a different language to describe how long we roast them for. In order of progression from light to dark we have City -(minus), City, City + (plus), Full City, Vienna, and Full French Roast. Any roast from Vienna to Full French is just burned coffee. This is where the beans have this oily sheen all over them. Congratulations, you’ve just cooked all the origin flavor out of them and have turned that bean into a bean of charcoal.

There are many ways to roast your beans. Cowboys roasted them in an iron skillet over a flame. Probably the most common way in the Wild West and there are still those today who roast that way.

Some use air popcorn poppers that can roast up to a quarter pound at a time. There are several other roasting machines built on this same principle of using a hot air-bed to roast your beans. My first roaster was called iRoast that was based on this. If memory serves, I could roast a half pound of beans at a time. The closest roaster I see sold today that resembles my iRoast is the Fresh Roast SR800. I can easily go through over a pound a week so I quickly outgrew this.

The roaster I’ve used for the last 15 years is a Behmor drum allowing me to roast up to a pound at a time (and more). With this I’ll roast a pound or two a week.

Enough about the roasting machines though. We’re here to talk about the actual roast. Not what we use to roast. It’s like cooking a burger. You can use a skillet on a stove, a Weber grill, or a large pit smoker mounted on a double axle trailer. That burger will cook and burn on any of those.

That’s where Starbucks fucks up on the roast. This is their biggest pit-fall. They burn their beans. Good, fresh roasted coffee beans should not have that oily sheen on them. At all. If they do, you’ve cooked the ever living shit out of them. You’ve cooked out all the origin flavor and what you have left is the flavor of ash and charcoal – which is the signature flavor of Starbucks. If that’s what you like your coffee to taste like then Starbucks is your go-to bean.

This is where all big-brand coffee’s go wrong. And here is the kicker – they do it on purpose! Why? Because consumers want consistency. That’s why we buy the brands we buy – we like it for whatever reason and want a repeat experience. Coffee is in no way consistent. Coffee is like wine. Every season is different due to climate and environmental conditions. So how can you get the consistency your customers crave? Buy your beans in bulk from the same origin (pick a spot – Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, etc.) and burn the fuck out of them. Every time. They will taste the same. And it works! Starbucks obviously has its following. People like that flavor and there is nothing wrong with that.

When a customer goes into mom and pops cafe with some fresh coffee, they are going to be shocked at how it tastes. It won’t taste like the coffee they’ve been drinking their entire lives. Some are going to love that flavor, others may not or may not care. But those that love it? They won’t be going back to Starbucks anymore. And they will have paid less. Win win.