Roast Levels - how are they determined

The level to which a coffee is roasted is mainly determined by a few things

• The actual green coffee bean used:
  • The grade
  • The variety
  • The hardness
  • Where it was grown (shaded and highland grown is what we perfer)
• The Cultural background to coffee drinking

Bean Used

The lower the quality of a coffee bean the darker the roast has to be to extract any flavour out of the bean. One of the reasons for this is that the coffee taste comes mainly from the oils in the bean, and as you roast the bean darker more of the oil comes to the surface (it is actually pushed out almost). The better beans can be full of flavour at very light roasts. Also as you roast more of the sugars are converted to caramel. the darker the roast the more burnt the caramel.

At folk at Quaffee ensure that their coffee beans are roasted to a level where we have found them most tasty. This normally means past the first pop and no further than second pop starting. It is worth noting that the darker the roast the fresher the roasted bean has to be to fully enjoy it, since the closer the oils are to the surface the less they are protected from exposure and it is commonly known that oil exposed to light goes off quicker.

Culture

Culture plays an important part in the expectation of taste. Most cultures prefer a particular taste because it has become a tradition. The French dark roast their beans (about a 15), the Italians not as dark (about a 14). This is mainly because there is a belief that darker roasts decrease acidity. It does but it also decreases flavour, replacing delicate coffee flavours with an almost burnt toast taste. Most of Europe chooses the darker 13+ roasts. This may be related to the fact that although Europeans initially started drinking their coffees from the true source namely Africa, once the modified beans made it to Brazil, and the Robusta's were introduced in the 30's the only way flavour could be reached was to dark roast. We at Quaffee believe that these roasts are not desirable, and none of our roasts will ever go past 12, otherwise it is disposed of.

Third wave of roasting

The third wave of roasting is upon us. The first wave was dump flame and roast, the second controlled the roast a bit more, but still preferred the darker roasts the third is one that is profile driven and continually changing.

Coffee roastery AT Buiten roastery

Same coffee different roasts

Quality control when roasting coffee, is important. So lets look at how Quaffee is controlling Quality.

1. Coffees are put through multiple roasting profiles regularly and then tasted using cupping and traditional brewing methods. This involves taking a single coffee and roasting it 3 to 7 ways and checking while profile tastes the best.
2. Each time coffee is roasted the profile is logged:
• Using a profile sheet that is captured
• Saved in a format where every 15seconds we know the flame level, drum temperature and air flow.
3. Colour and uniformaty is tested all the way during the roast and once the coffee is cool
4. After a coffee is roasted it visually inspected, and any beans that produced flaws during roasting removed.

The importance is that if you are going to try and source high quality coffees, you need to respect the grower by making sure your quality of roast, is the highest you can mange, and that is what they are doing at Quaffee.