I’ve been busy at the Roastery.
It’s difficult to find time outside of daily production to play around. But a scientist is only as good as their experiments; the result is only as good as its process. So, I found thirty minutes here and there to wander the wilderness of coffee roasting, and I have been finding some cool things along the way.
In the last year, I’ve been experimenting and tweaking our coffees and playing around with different blend options. A little bit of this, a lot bit of that, tasting coffee constantly. This led to many wild and jittery afternoons. But it also led to some exciting things, like the Dawn Chorus Blend, released earlier this year. It also made me a much more confident roaster by learning how our coffees perform in our Diedrich IR-12 with different charge temperatures and finishes, different roasting approaches (hot and fast v. low and slow), and different components in blends.
These experiments were often done in very small, 100-gram batches in our Ikawa sample roaster. Only when I felt really good about the result did I up the batch size. Tweaks in the larger roaster were only ever minor. I wasn’t looking to reinvent the wheel, per se, just to true the wheelset.
I’ve also received coffee samples from like-minded coffee importers like our friends at Coffee Quest, who supply us with our EA Decaf (If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it. Might change your mind about what a decaf can be.). This led me to drink even more coffee, which can only ever be a good thing.
In total, it all led to some awesome discoveries.
I’d like to share some of them with you.
Introducing the Roaster’s Pick Coffee Line
Our new Roaster’s Pick coffee line is for those wanting to try something new, and often. It’s the small, good things I found and will find along the way in my experiments. There will not be a consistent release date, but they will be released when ready (with the first of the line coming out real soon!).
Here’s how it will work:
- The Roaster’s Pick will vary—sometimes a blend, sometimes a small lot from a single producer, sometimes they will be lightly roasted, sometimes dark, sometimes they will be iterations of a coffee you may love (like Ramon Enamorado’s coffee, but roasted light).
- All Roaster’s Picks will only be available for a short time, with 30-100 lbs produced per run, and may never return. Get them while you can!
- Roaster’s Picks will only be available in one-pound bags at our cafes in Muskegon and Grand Haven (but may appear as a Roaster’s Choice option online)
- They will always have a description on the bag and be released with a blog that tells the story behind the coffee and my process along the way
Follow us on social media or sign up for our email subscription to stay tuned for the Roaster’s Picks as they are released, like The Downshifter Half-Caff Blend that is about to make its debut at both cafes (Read the story behind The Downshifter here.)
Thanks for reading. I’m excited about this one. I hope you are, too.
Coffee on,
Head Roaster, Aldea Coffee
