Cafe culture china
The benefits of direct sourcing
W
hen I first started to roast coffee, I was blissfully unaware of the many variables that influence the outcome of a roast. With hindsight, that was a good thing because my ignorance made me focus on my roasting skills and on keeping a meticulous record of the few variables I could control during a roast. As time went on, my experience grew, but still my confidence as a roaster got shaken every now and then by an inexplicable outcome of a roast.
Crafting the perfect cup begins with perfect cherries. As specialty roasters, we are in passionate pursuit of roasting excellence. Hence, we spend considerable amounts of time and money on getting the right equipment, on tweaking our roast profiles, on gadgets that help us improve roast consistency. We glean knowledge and experiences on YouTube and attending roasters’ retreats, we look over the shoulders of champions whenever we get the chance.
Fortunately, with every batch I roasted my host of data had grown as well. So I went looking for unintended alterations to roast conditions: a change in moisture content, a wrong roast profile, a discrepancy in charge temperature, a change in airflow, an inconsistent drum speed. Admittedly, I found a lot of these and they explained most of the roasts that had puzzled me at first. But not all of them.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. It all brings us closer to the desired outcome. Yet, if we focus our attention entirely on the roast process, we miss a simple truth that is of paramount importance: crafting the perfect cup begins with perfect cherries. Simple, yes, but not easy. The sense of transparency and control that we derive from standardized terms for coffee grading, cupping protocols, sampling 30
